MY father used to take me with him to Hangzhou almost every month before I started primary school at seven in 1991. He told me all kinds of stories about the various attractions of the city, but one place remained constantly mysterious.

We visited the Solitary Mountain and the Xiling Seal Engraving Society on the mountain more often than we visited West Lake, but I really didn't know anything about it.

Dad often left me with one of the staff who would take me to play on the mountain while he left for two or three hours at a time. He must have been visiting some secret special places, I thought.

I never found out and gave up trying to follow him as I became distracted by the elegant garden and the sculptures and stones inside °?- nothing like the boring words of introduction I found on the society's bulletins.

The bulletins say the Xiling Seal Engraving Society was founded in 1904 and remained the best non-governmental Chinese academic society involved in engraving. With around 400 members from all over the world, it is famous for its research and collections of metal and stone seal carvings. The society extends its expertise to other sorts of engravings as well as Chinese calligraphy and painting.

The four founders of the society, all highly respected intellectuals and seal engraving masters at the time, named the society after the location. That area, the west part of the Solitary Mountain, was called Xicun in ancient China °?- xi meaning west and cun meaning village.

But since the middle of Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) for no reported reason, the area has been called Xiling - meaning cold and deserted. No wonder. The place always looks quiet and deserted, rather strange even if it is within the popular and crowded West Lake scenic area.

Many Chinese tourists have only heard the name - more than half remember it but have the wrong pronunciation saying Xileng instead of Xiling. Some even think just by looking at the name that the society is a shop selling seals.

At the age of seven, I had no idea what phrases like "metal and stone seal carvings," "engravings," or "calligraphy" meant. I was busy having fun in the large and beautiful garden of the society - playing with birds, giving nicknames to the standing stones and sculptures according to their pictures (only later did I discover that those were Chinese characters in the ancient style) and establishing my little secret kingdom.

So I didn't care or understand any of those terms until I was in the third grade in 1994 and watched a film about the notorious Emperor Huizong of the Song Dynasty (960-1279).

Even before I saw the film, I had learned from my picture books that he was one of the worst and most stupid of all the Chinese emperors.

This emperor, according to the legend, was addicted to pleasure and neglected his real work like the daily meetings with the heads of departments to make decisions on national affairs. He found a high official, Cai Jing, who took his seat at these meetings so that he, the emperor, would have more time to indulge himself.

And like most bad emperors, he didn't have a good eye for people. Cai was an evil man who cheated the emperor, killed good officials, demanded too much in taxes from the people and ignored floods and droughts.

When a rival country attacked, Cai even lied to the emperor about the battles when the rival army was actually invading the then capital city of Kaifeng in Henan Province. Emperor Huizong was still playing with his servants when his enemies stormed into his bedroom and captured him with most of his concubines and children. The shamed emperor then led the life of prisoner for eight years until he died.

His failure was one of the major reasons why the Song Dynasty had to retreat to the south with a new emperor, his son, and a new capital, Hangzhou, where the weakened court survived for another 100 years.

I was always curious about what the loser emperor was addicted to - it must have been something enormously intriguing to divert the head of the nation for so many years. My picture books never said anything about it but I finally discovered his secret in the film.

What a coincidence!

The emperor's fascination turned out to be those phrases I could not understand from the bulletins of the Xiling Seal Engraving Society. That was why my father liked going there too, I thought, and it made all those phrases, particularly the seal engravings, even more mysteriously charming.

I accused my dad of not sharing his fun with me. He admitted that he went there to have his seals done by "the person I respect the most in the world." This reminded me of the ordinary-looking middle-aged craftsman carving repetitively on a small stone throughout the film.

Dad was my hero and I couldn't believe his hero was someone in such a boring profession with little skill °?- the impression I had gained from the stories I heard about and read. Craftsmen were never graceful and talented heroes in any of my picture books.

I didn't understand the significance of the seals dad showed me either and he refused to explain them.

"You'll understand by yourself when you grow up," Dad said - one of the lines children hate most to hear most from adults. But this made me stay away from my favorite childhood garden for a long time.

"Didn't you have fun with the engravings by the society before? You gave them rather cute nicknames. You don't have to understand to appreciate," dad told me.

Later, dad gave me a personal seal for my 15th birthday, with "Xie Zhai Zhu Ren" carved on it. Xie means crab, zhai a study, and zhu ren means owner. It is common for ancient Chinese intellectuals to possess a nickname as the owner of their studies which are symbolic rather than a real room. The name of the study is often related to an animal or a plant like a dragon or bamboo, all considered objects or symbols of high culture.

But the crab is not. The crab is often used in writing to depict bad people who ignore rules and laws, for the crab walks sideways rather than straight ahead.

I thought my father had given me a gift which was a metaphor °?- an ironic way of describing my adolescent rebellion at the age of 15. I put it away and never used it. After all, these days a signature is more appropriate than a seal.

(To be continued on Wednesday)