City of Lingering Splendour

副标题: A Frank Account of Old Peking's Exotic Pleasures

ISBN: 9781570626371

出版社: Shambhala

出版年: 2001-5-1

页数: 280

定价: USD 24.95

装帧: Paperback

内容简介

In his early twenties, John Blofeld spent what he describes as "three exquisitely happy years" in Peking during the era of the last emperor, when the breathtaking greatness of China's ancient traditions was still everywhere evident. Arriving in 1934, he found a city imbued with the atmosphere of the recent imperial past and haunted by the powerful spirit of the late Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi. He entered a world of magnificent palaces and temples of the Forbidden City, of lotus-covered lakes and lush pleasure-gardens, of bustling bazaars and peaceful bathhouses, and of "flower houses" with their beautiful young courtesans versed in the arts of pleasing men. With a novelists' command of detail and dialogue, Blofeld vividly re-creates the magic of these years and conveys to the reader his appreciation and nostalgia for a way of life long vanished.