Sunday, September 10, 2006
Hey, I went to watch the Forbidden City: Portrait of an Empress after tuition today. Story goes like this.
Kate Carl, an American artist, is invited to paint the portrait of an empress dowager, CiXi. When she arrives in China, she hears many rumours about the empress. She also meets George Morrison, an English Journalist. He tells her not to be intimidated. Kate begins the portrait and while she paints, the empress tells her about her life.
The empress known as Yehenara as a young girl, was a concubine in the Forbidden City. She desperately wanted to be chosen by the Emperor to be his escort. And she was, indeed chosen and after 3 months, she became pregnant. She was then taken to the Summer palace for her to give birth and rest. She gave birth to a boy, Tung Chih. This was the Emperor's first son and as the tradition goes, the baby was to be taken away for the court to look after.
Prince Tun, the Emperor's brother, was devastated by the birth of Tung Chih, as he had plans to take the throne for himself. The Royal Party fled to the winter palace when the allied forces invaded China. However, whilst at the Summer palace, the Emperor was much weakened and Yehenara knew that if he died without naming Tung Chih as his successor, Prince Tun would claim the throne and her son's life and her own life would then be endangered. She found her son and rushed to the Emperor. With his last breath, the emperor named Tung Chih as his successor and Yehenara as Regent.
But Tung Chih grew up as a rebellious young man and was influenced by Prince Tuan, son of Prince Tun to go to the brothels. He enjoyed life there and was later dignosed with syphillis. Yehenara was helpless but to clean his feverish brow with her handkerchief. Again, Prince Tun saw a chance to take over the throne, but Yehenara quickly named her nephew, Kuang Hsu as the next emperor.
At this time, Kate has been writing to George and telling him about all the stories that CiXi told her. George is amazed that the Empress Dowager is being so opened about her story. She also told Kate that Kuang Hsu became an ambitious Emperor, determined to reform China. But this lead to the Boxer Rebellion and China was crippled by the internal conflict. Despite everything Yehenara had tried to do, she is surrounded by loss and failure.
Kate meets with George. She is falling in love with him and George continues to be fascinated by the Empress Dowager's stories. The day arrives when Kate is to show the Empress her portrait. But the Empress is furious.......
What happened?
HAHA. You have to watch it yourself. But its really a nice show and the songs are really wow.
Guess what. Everytime I watch a show, I will see an artiste ( Yi ren) Last time was Stephanie Sun, this time was the Huang Ding Rong. I was there resting during the interval then I saw eh, look so alike. So I was like bending my head to see whether it was Huang Ding Rong. Who knows he suddenly turned his head then I like a bit pai sei. HAHA. He smiled at me. HAHAHAHAHA. then I smile back lor. Ming xing yuan I have. (:
//GARY CHAW//
school of witch craft at 9:45 AM
