Page:Peking the Beautiful.pdf/124

 A Queen's Bedroom

REAT care has always been exercised by the Chinese in choosing the sites for important buildings and shrines, so that the beauties of nature should enhance the work of the architect This in numberless instances w has been so skillfully done that in the best of Chinese architecture, we I find a most perfect blending of the natural and the purely artificial - a 2. blending of nature and art so cleverly wrought out that it is difficult at times to tell where the one begins and the other ends. In the little pavilion celebrated as the private bedroom of the Empress Dowager, we have a perfect example of this pleasing type of architecture—where gently sloping tile clad roofs, colorful eaves, and tracery of latticed door and windou lay half revealed, half concealed behind the beauties of rock and shrub and tree-converting the simple courtyard into a charming woodland paradise. The whole atmosphere of this palace bedroom and its surrounding courts suggests not action but repose, the Oriental's ideal of life Our photo shows a portion of the north end of this ornate little building facing the hillside, with the early morning sunlight streaming in through the trees, lighting up the huge red pillars that support the roof, and casting featherlike shadows on marble terrace and pavements of chiseled stone. Passing through an archway we enter the southern courtyard. Here to our delight we find the four apple trees - two on either side of the court in full bloom] The delicate pink and white blossoms fill the air with fragrance and transform this courtyard into a thing of living beauty. Between the trees and directly in front of the main building there slands in solemn dignity a row of lifelike bronzes representing stork and deer, with a huge bronze vase on either end, and in the center of them all a little sundial of elegantly wrought and glistening marble. (See page 69.) We invite ourselves in, but the wide strips of paper pasted so characteristically across the doorway indicate that the place is sealed, and we must not intrude. So we content ourselves with simply gazing through the latticed doors and the unusual plate glass windows at the wonders within. There in the corner, built into an alcove and hung with the Imperial yellow hangings, is the Empress's bed. Above the bed are some shelves where once stood a collection of clocks. These clocks, it is said, "were Her Majesty's weakness," for at times "she had as many as fifteen going at one time." Reluctantly we turn away from this delightful spot and wend our way along the shady lakeshore toward our next goal—the lofty Fo Hsiang Koma great circular pagodalike temple on the summit of the hill. For a description of the Fo Hsiang ko, and other places of interest at the Dan Shou Shan, see paqes 20, 38, 46, 58, 88, 80, 90, 94, 104, 116, and 1so.