Chinese History...In A Fountain

My water post for today.

Once again back at Union Station.

This fountain was created to showcase the many things that were discovered, as they dug out the Red Line Subway, that began operation in the early 1990's. If you know the history of Los Angeles, the land that Union Station is on, was the original Chinatown for the city. The chinese workers who were brought in to work on the railroad, had to live somewhere and this, the original settlement, is where they put down roots. They were relocated in the 1930's a few blocks over, to make way for the building of the station. As they excavated the site in the late 1980's, they found all sorts of artifacts of the lives of the original residents and comissioned a work of art that would put these things on display. So if you look at the sculpture closely, you see dishes, milk bottles, drug bottles and silverware, all embedded into the concrete. Water slowly drips down from a pipe and it meanders along a channel, again filled with artifacts. There is bench seating on either side of the channel and at the other end, another place where water enters the area and slowly joins up with the water from this end. I like the fact that they could have done anything with this space, but that they CHOSE to honor those who came before.

Enjoy.