LibraryTechtonics

This morning our delegation headed out for a cultural program day at about 8:00am, with our first stop at the Forbidden City in the exact center of Beijing.

As we walked through parts of the city selected by our National Guide Tony (the whole complex is gigantic, and would take days to explore fully), he offered us many great nuggets of historical and architectural information. He even recommended From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi as further reading about the last emperor of China, and an interesting read on the history of China.

As topics came and went, I found myself thinking of the many content-based items I’d consumed in the past that related to Chinese culture and history, as well as the Forbidden City. Here’s the quick list I came up with:

* The Last Emporer: A biographical account of the last emporer of China, Puyi. He lived there, you know.
* Raise the Red Lantern: As we walked through the courtyard of the concubines’ rooms, Tony spoke of how concumbines were in a constant war and competition with each other for the favors of one master, the emporer. While not nearly the same time period as the reign of the last emporer, Raise the Red Lantern is still a decent fictional account of how crazy concubine life was.

* Snow Flower and the Secret Fan: The Empress Dowager was the single most powerful woman in China for about 48 years, recruiting one child emporer after another as puppets to allow her to rule the country. Women didn’t normally have such power, and in a completely blatent and ineffective effort at making her influence less obvious, she set up a screen that hung between her and the baby emporers to give the illusion that she wasn’t there. Despite her influence, she was limited in her power. Men constantly tried to put women in their place, and one way to limit women’s power and influence was to bind their feet. Long story long, this book is a fictional story centered around foot binding for women in China.

Tags: china2006