Saturday, July 21, 2007

游故宫

Even under the baking sun, there are still many tourists visiting the Forbidden City. (I don't think Forbidden City is an exact translation for this former imperial palace.)

Places like this you can see people speaking different languages, and with different skin colors. They are taking pictures with great interests.

The Palace is not a good place to live in. The more we look around, the stronger we feel this way. We have to watch out for all the stone doorsteps to every house, and all the thresholds between rooms. Rooms are not drafty. Few trees are growing there. I do have seen some pines, which seemed to be their liking, but they have small crowns as we know.

You can feel the supreme power emanating out of even the architecture. You can see ancient treasures from all over the country, although some of them look timeworn and even covered with dusts now. What had those emperors really owned? Power, jewelries, or the comfort of living in this large palace, with many women? I deeply doubt about that. And I deeply feel sorry for those women who had lived in such a place, which was nothing better than a tomb. Even as a mere material place it was not humane, to say nothing of the feudal system.

I even feel glad when I find wild grass growing in brick crevices in a patio, almost treeless like all the others.

Power is such an awful thing if you can not use it correctly. And all the treasures, the largest jade carving, the longest ivories... once someone owns them, they ruin them.

The tour makes me getting angrier. The whole history of Chinese feudalism, is totally a history of killing women and children. When power was being used to oppress people, it led to its own demise. The history decayed all the way.

那些价值连城的珍宝, 笼罩着一股破败之气. 那巨大的玉雕, 那世界上最长的象牙...一旦人们拥有了它们, 也就毁坏了它们.

封建社会的历史, 可以说就是一部迫害妇女和儿童的历史.