Showing posts with label emperor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label emperor. Show all posts

Friday, October 10, 2014

Secret Memo to the Emperor


Postcard TW-1378800 from Taiwan, styled after file folders for secret memos to the emperor in ancient China, was one of the three new postcards made by the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Those memos ranged from official statements of the facts, proposals of measures, and greetings. The emperor would mark the memo as read with a cinnabar red pen and return it to the sender. Last year, the National Palace Museum in Taipei issued paper tapes with an emperor's handwriting "marked as read", as part of a cultural and creative project. It was an instant success.


Taiwan celebrated the Double Ten Day - its National Day on October 10, 2014, the 103rd birthday of the Republic of China (ROC). The ROC government fled to Taiwan in 1949 in a civil war against communist forces in mainland China, and moved more than 696,000 pieces of ancient Chinese imperial artifacts and artworks from the Forbidden City in Beijing to Taipei, which became the National Palace Museum's permanent collection.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Terra-Cotta Army


Postcard US-2663925 to Germany shows a warrior replica of the Terra-Cotta Army embedded on the wall at the Beijing Friendship Hotel where I stayed in 2007. The "Terra-Cotta Warriors and Horses", is a collection of life-size clay sculptures of the armies of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China, in a form of funerary art buried along with the emperor in 210–209 BC for the purpose of protecting the emperor in his afterlife.

During her second leg of the multi-day tour in China, Michelle Obama got to see the authentic Terra-Cotta Army up close and personal in the ancient city Xi'an on Monday, March 24, 2014. Few of the museum’s five million annual visitors got to look direct into their steely faces, as the first lady did when she was invited down to the pits where as many as 6,000 warriors lined up in battle formations.