The building is 80 feet long and has a stone gallery with columns that occupies an entire side of the courtyard. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 infoThe large glass mirrors and the tall house made it possible for the Queen Mother and the Emperor to see everything that was happening on the stage inside, and of course they could hear everything clearly. The houses on the other two sides of the courtyard, at 90 degrees from the royal box, were divided into small rooms, each about the size of a typical opera house's box. There were no seats in these small rooms, and the people inside sat on the floor, because courtiers could not have seats in front of the emperor and the queen mother. The emperor and the empress dowager sometimes invited princes and ministers to the theater to watch plays, and these small rooms were prepared for them.

Carol didn't invite any other guests on the day she first arrived at the palace, and the actors were specially summoned for them. The Empress Dowager sat in a chair covered with yellow satin on the red colonnade of the Imperial Box. The emperor sat on a yellow stool to her left, which was a respected position in the Qianguo. Madame Danby and Carol were to the right of the Queen Mother, and the Queen, princesses, and female officials were standing around.

They don't understand this kind of Qianguo-style drama Carol at all, they can only watch the action, but because of the novelty, they also think it is very interesting. Two or three acts later, Mrs. Danby stood up and said goodbye to the Emperor, the Queen Mother, and the princesses. Carol then accompanied her to a courtyard outside and parted with her.

After she left, Carol was alone in the palace.

Carol had a strange feeling of being in another world. A sense of loneliness came over her, and she feared that this strange situation would affect her work, and that what she wanted to do in the palace would not be done. She stood and considered my situation for a few minutes, but it was not long before two female officers came to her side, who had studied with the French teachers at the Tongbunkan and were fluent in English and French, and they conveyed a message from the Queen Mother that she had gone to rest and that Carol did not have to go back to the stage. She told me Carol that it would be better for me to go to my room and try to get some sleep. The Queen Mother wanted her to be happy in the palace, hoped that she would rest comfortably in the palace that the Queen Mother had allocated to her, and told her to ask for anything as casually as if she were in her own home.

Qingqiyuan, like all the palaces, temples, and even the residences of the wealthy in the Qianguo, consisted of a series of buildings with porches. These buildings are built around rectangular or square courtyards, with white marble pedestals about 8 inches above the ground, usually one storey, connected to each other by open-air passageways resembling verandahs. The room allocated for Carol's personal use was to the left of the Queen Mother's throne room, and the two were close together - so that she could come and go as she painted her portrait.

These rooms occupy an entire pavilion. The pavilion is beautiful, with a glittering white marble floor and beautifully carved fans, painted walls and a beautiful view of the flower-filled courtyard. There are movable fans in such palaces, and the rooms can be divided into small storage rooms or the size of an entire building.

Carol's house consisted of two sitting rooms, a dining room, and a beautiful bedroom, separated by an intricately carved screen-like openwork wooden fan that exposed blue silk between the hollows. In the larger interstices are artistic panels, painted with flowers on white silk, or quotations from poems and scriptures written in the unique and unique Qianguo calligraphy. On one solid wall is a watercolor painted on white silk, which realistically depicts a peacock among the flowers; On the other solid wall is a huge mirror. The glass-covered lower windows were covered with blue silk curtains, and the white-papered upper windows were rolled down, and the rich fragrance of flowers wafted from the courtyard. For Carol's sake, an American, several foreign art treasures were placed on the table and on the window shelves. The bed is connected to three walls and is covered with blue satin cushions. The window is covered with a blue silk awning, and the interior is soft and very shady, and it looks very peaceful. The bed was so tempting, and it wasn't long before Carol was in a state of real rest, and the events of the day flashed through her mind like a kaleidoscope. Although the mat was a little stiffer, the dozen or so eunuchs who had been dialed to serve Carol spoke in a low voice outside the window, waiting for the summons at any time, she was exhausted, and there were so many unusual things that day, so it didn't take long for her to fall asleep.

Carol could not have imagined that she would become a witness to a great piece of history.

At 5 o'clock, one of the two female officials knocked on Carol's door and told her that the Queen Mother had woken up and that she was ready to go to the throne room. When they had gone, the Queen Mother called Carol to her side and asked her if she was well rested and if her room was comfortable.

Once again, the Queen Mother said she hoped that Carol would be happy with her. The Queen Mother said that she would not paint today, and that she would spend more time painting tomorrow, and asked Carol to tell her if she had anything she particularly liked, so that she could come for Carol. Then the Queen Mother had dinner alone. When the Queen Mother finished eating, the Queen and the princesses brought Carol into the throne room, and they dined at the Queen Mother's table, while her seat was empty. The queen took the place to the left of the empty seat, placing Carol to her left. During the meal, the queen and the ladies took special care of Carol, as if trying to dispel her inhibitions and nervousness.

After dinner, they stood up and said goodbye to the Queen Mother. After the farewell, Carol and the two female officials left the queen mother's throne room to say goodbye to the queen and the princesses.

The next morning, Carol was anxious to wait for the Queen Mother to fulfill her promise to make Carol paint longer. Yesterday's painting process strengthened Carol's desire to take the painting a step further. When Carol and the female officials entered the palace, they met the Empress Dowager and the Emperor coming out of the court hall in the morning. When the Queen Mother saw Carol and the female officials, she stopped, as did her long line of attendants and eunuchs. She called Carol to her side, grabbed her hand, and asked how she was resting and if she could get to work. This question showed her insight, for she could see from the eagerness and haste with which Carol had used time the day before that work was Carol's first purpose. She smiled slightly as she asked. Carol walked beside her, from the main hall of the court to the throne room where the portrait had been painted the day before. When Carol and the ladies arrived at the throne room, she loosened her clothes, drank a cup of tea, and then called a maid with her hair to take out the clothes and jewelry she had worn the previous day, and prepared to pose Carol for the second time.

This time, Carol looked at the Queen Mother critically. Carol feared that yesterday Carol's good impression of herself and her appearance might have been formed too hastily because of the unusual strength she felt when she began to paint; Carol thought that the eastern environment might dazzle her and prevent her from seeing the Queen Mother for what she really was, and Carol was ready to be disappointed.

Before she was seated on the throne, before she was quite ready for Carol to begin, before she had pierced her through with her shrewd gaze, before she knew that Carol was watching her, Carol used all the insight she could to scrutinize her body and her face.

Carol saw the Queen Mother, with her head on her shoulders in the right position, so that her figure was just right; The hands are very beautiful, small and elegant, with a cultured appearance; The face is well-proportioned and well-constructed, with large ears and well-grown upper parts; The jet-black hair above the delicate broad forehead lay flat and divided in half; The eyebrows are curved and elongated; The radiant black eyes were neatly embedded in the face; The nose is high, which the Qianguo people call "nose straight", and it is wide and perpendicular to the forehead; The upper lip was extremely resolute, the mouth was slightly larger, but beautiful, and the two flexible red lips parted over the resolute white teeth gave her smile a rare sharpness; The jaw is strong, but not overly resolute and shows no signs of stubbornness.

If Carol hadn't known she was 51, Carol would have seen her as a well-groomed 30-year-old woman. Because she is a widow, she does not use makeup, and her face has a healthy natural flush. It can be seen that in terms of dressing up, there is nothing she does not meticulously and meticulously cook. The neat appearance, coupled with the good choice of colors and accessories that suit her, makes her almost magically youthful appearance look even younger. More important than all these physical features are the fact that she seems to have a keen interest in her surroundings and is clearly intelligent, which results in an unusually powerful personality.

When Carol had reached this point in examining the appearance of the Queen Mother, she had finished speaking to her attendants, sat firmly in the throne, and turned her face to ask Carol where she had painted the portrait. Carol was told that she would be happy if she painted her face. Carol felt it important to make her happy at first, so she changed her routine of refining and continuing to paint the whole figure, starting with the face. Try to modify the bottom line first, and then apply a thin layer of color.

During the painting, the female officials, attendants, and eunuchs came and went, and the Empress Dowager drank tea and chatted, but she seemed to understand that her head had to remain in the same position, and if she moved, she would look apologetically at Carol. Carol didn't want her to be too dull, preferring that she moved a little rather than look like a clay sculpture.

The Queen Mother, like all Oriental ladies, smoked. During the portrait, the eunuch and the princess either brought her a few puffs of a beautiful shisha, or she smoked a European cigarette.

She uses a long cigarette holder and never lets the latter touch her lips. Whether she smokes a cigarette or a hookah, her movements are extremely elegant.

After a little more than an hour of work, the Queen Mother decided that she had done enough in the morning, and that it was time for Carol and her to rest. She walked over to look at her face on canvas. Obviously, once she added the color, she liked it a lot now.

She stood behind Carol and discussed it for a while, and then said that she wished that someone else could paint the face for the artist instead of herself, so that she could sit there and watch it take shape little by little. She felt that it was amazing to be able to express the unevenness of the face on a flat canvas. Then she turned to Carol and said that she knew that Carol must be tired physically and mentally after so many hours of standing and drawing, and persuaded Carol to go to her room for lunch and rest, and that she would try to let Carol paint again before Carol went out for a walk in the afternoon.

At this moment the chief eunuch appeared again, and his face was very solemn, as if something important had happened, and Carol and the princess retreated, and the chief eunuch came to the queen mother, and whispered something in her ear, as he had done the last time.

This time, Carol noticed an angry look in the Queen Mother's eyes, although only for a moment, it was enough to make Carol feel inexplicable fear and awe.

"I saw it, they just couldn't see that our sister had such a money bag in her hand, and they were bent on looking for him. Now that our big officials are getting more and more powerful, this kind of news can be heard, stabbed to me, it's not one or two, so many people, how do you know that the woman named Li Sizhu is the daughter of long-haired loyalty? Do you have credentials? Just shouting and killing and screaming there? ”

It was the first time that Carol had heard the Queen Mother speak in such a voice, and although she didn't know what was going on, she could tell that the Queen Mother was really angry.

"The queen mother is angry, her words are rumors, and they don't care if there is evidence or not......" The chief eunuch said, giving the queen mother a look.

The Empress Dowager may have realized that the presence of foreigners should not be such a gaffe, so she immediately returned to her normal appearance and waved her hand to the chief eunuch, who quickly retreated.

Carol returned to her room with the two female officials, whom the Queen Mother had appointed to dine with her. In the palace there was a young and beautiful Bo girl named Ge Quinoa, whose father had been an attaché to Mr. Guo Yunxian, "the most intelligent and courteous envoy in the East" in England, and she could speak fluent English, so she was also sent by the Queen Mother to dine with them. This way, Carol has company, can converse in her own language, and relaxes during meals. Besides, the little dry language she mastered was not enough to command the servants or let them know what she needed, and they were all interpreters for the Queen Mother.

Every meal in the palace was the most extravagant, and at the beginning twenty or thirty pots of dishes were placed on the table, while noodles, rice, and several other items were brought from the table next to them. The Qianguo people are masters of culinary arts, and there are many kinds of delicacies on the Qianguo feast, such as shark fin, deer tendon, fish brain, shrimp, chicken and duck tongue, precious fish, bird's nest soup, and many special foods that make up the home-cooked Laipu. No one can cook ducks, geese, and even all birds and animals to the perfection of the Qianguo people. The richness and flavor of their soups are simply unattainable. When foreigners first taste their bread and pastries, they think that they are the most unpalatable of their food, especially bread, which is steamed, not baked, and is not attractive. But when the pyramid-shaped thing with its 5 magenta-dotted half-baked outer layer is overcome, or rather bite through, it's sweet and nutritious. This is made of black flour, because the Qianguo people are not like foreigners, who think that there is any benefit to processing flour to fine white. The cream they make is just the right amount of viscosity and tastes good, and like their preserves, it is usually valued by foreigners.

In the palace, food was served in painted porcelain pots, and everything was put on the table at once - soups, preserves, roasted and roasted, with the exception of noodles and rice. The noodles and rice of the Qianguo people are always put in a warm pot before they are served, and they are piping hot when eaten. In front of each person was a bowl, a small saucer, and a pair of chopsticks. A small square of extremely soft cloth is used as a napkin. There was never salt on the table. In the small dish next to each guest is a very salty condiment, which is used if salt is needed. The Qianguo people thought that the powdery salt was too coarse, and the food could no longer be used for flavoring after it was cooked. Qianguo people rarely drink alcohol when they eat, and even if they do, they only drink a small cup of hot glass, about the size of a small tall glass. The wine is poured from a silver flask, which in turn is placed in a container filled with boiling water to keep warm.

The liquor of the Qianguo is sweeter and higher in strength than the liquor of the West, and is usually distilled from flowers and herbs, and has a pleasant aroma. Some of these wines have very poetic names, such as "Rose Morning Dew" and "Bergamot Drops". Because Carol was an American, she was always prepared with a selection of wines, except for Bordeaux or Burgundy. The Qianguo people don't drink coffee, and after leaving the table, they drink tea without milk or sugar.

The noon of the Qianguo people is dedicated to napping, and in the summer heat, everyone returns to their room for 2 hours after lunch. Carol felt that the cushions on the Qianguo bed were too hard and uncomfortable, so she brought a foreign eiderdown cushion to her room. After a few days, one day she came back to the house and saw two lovely new mats, both with light blue, removable silk covers. She touched it and felt soft, cool and fragrant. It was made of tea leaves and was a gift from the Queen Mother. She thinks they are much better than duck down or duck feather mats, especially in the summer.

Although Carol didn't like to take such a long break in the middle of the day, she had to go back to her room. Because there is nothing else to do.

At this time, Carol remembered the Queen Mother's gaffe that day, and she was curious about what happened to make the Queen Mother so angry.

There seems to be a name of a Qianguo woman in the words of the Queen Mother, by the way, her name is "Li Sizhu", who will this woman be?

At this time, the song quinoa came, and Carol asked her about what happened that day and the woman named "Li Sizhu".

Although Carol only asked casually, a panicked look immediately appeared on Song Quinoa's face, she immediately put a finger to her lips, made a "silence" motion, and then cautiously looked out the window, and after seeing that there was no one, she exhaled and came to Carol and sat down. (To be continued.) )