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A TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow of a travel blog to Beijing, China by TravelPod blogger Wendyworld titled “Empress Cixi’s Summer Palace” Wendyworld’s travel blog entry: “There was once, at the end of the Qing Dynasty, a notorious empress. She rose from a childhood of genteel poverty and neglect to become the emperor’s favorite concubine, and, eventually, ruler of the Middle Kingdom. Empress Cixi, known by some as the Dragon Lady, was the last empress of China. Stories about her abound, though she remains cloaked in mystery. Some paint her as evil and power hungry, and blame her for the collapse of the Qing Dynasty at the turn of the 20th century. “One of the ancient sages of China foretold that China will be destroyed by a woman. This prophecy is approaching fulfillment,” wrote London Times correspondent George Ernest Morrison, whose dispatches from China fascinated the British public.. Others have ben more empathetic, arguing the Qing Dynasty was already in decline due to western colonialism, and that her reputation was badly tarnished by her many political opponents who believed a woman should not wield so much power. “[Cixi] has shown herself to be benevolent and economical,” wrote Charles Denby, an American envoy to China in 1898. “Her private character has been spotless.” Later it turned out that Morrison’s reports were basely largely on false information fed to him by a con man who proclaimed to know the empress. Despite the revelations, somehow the “dragon lady …
Landscape painting in the Tang dynasty takes two directions: a detailed and colorful style, and the beginnings of an ink-monochrome style. Examples of both in surviving copies and fragments, along with a tomb wall painting. a rubbing from a stone engraving, and the background landscape from a Buddhist image are shown and discussed in this 1 hour 10 minute lecture.
