The Forbidden City

This is the first place I want to go if I ever get to China.  How could anybody resist with a name like--The Forbidden City?  It was the central location of goverment for China for hundreds of years.  My Chinese friend said the palace complex has 9991/2 rooms.  This is because the first emperor that lived there was offspring of the Sun God. The Sun had 1,000 rooms in his palace so naturally his own son would not be permitted to equal or outdo his father. 

Palaces and beautiful places are common enough in the world.  What makes the Forbidden City special to me are the NAMES of everything.  These are just great.  For starters, here is a picture of "The Hall of Imperial Zenith."

  

In the outer court we'll find "The Hall of Supreme Harmony," "The Hall of Central Harmony" and "The Hall of Preserving Harmony."  Somewhere there is also the "Hall of Medium Harmony."  In the Inner Court there is "The Palace of Heavenly Purity," "The Hall of Union" and the "Palace of Earthly Tranquility."  

Apparently the emperors used to live in the "Palace of Earthly Tranquility" until the Qing Dynasty--after that he lived in the smaller "Hall of Mental Cultivation."  

Also in the complex is the "Pavillion of 10,000 Spring Seasons", the "Hall of Union and Peace," "The Hall of Protective Harmony", "The Gate of Divine Prowess" and finally "The Hill of Accumulated Elegance."

I don't know about you, but I could do with some "Supreme Harmony, Tranquility and Elegance."   

The Empty Pot

Warning!  Plot Spoiler!

This is one of my all time favorite books which happens to be set in China,  by Demi.  The pictures are wonderful and the story is sweet.  In short, the emperor needs to choose a sucessor and he makes a grand announcement that all the children are to come to the palace and get a seed--whoever grows the most beautiful flower will become emperor.  One little boy is a very good gardener and he is sure he can grow something beautiful.  He plants and tends his seed but it doesn't grow.  He tries everything, but when the great day comes and all the children are to show their flowers he still has nothing but an empty pot to show for his efforts.  He is very embarrassed but he goes anyway.  The emperor is frowning at all the flowers but stops at the boy's pot and asked what happened?  The boy confesses that he tried as hard as he could but the flower just wouldn't grow.  He brought the empty pot because "it was the best he could do."  The emperor honors this boy for his integrity and chooses him to be his heir.  All of the seeds he had given out had been cooked and could not possibly grow.
   Story is told much more beautifully of course.  It's a book I treasure.   

James Bond

Here we are in China!  For reasons best known to herself, the first thing Catherine looked up was how to write James Bond in Chinese characters. 

007

The Canopy

I'd love to spend some time in a treehouse living in the rainforest canopy.  I can just imagine myself on my little treehouse porch with binoculars watching the parrots and other birds.   This bird, the Toucan is one of my all time favorites--probably owing to the Saturday morning Froot-Loop commericals.   Happily for the bird, it's beak is mostly air so it doesn't weigh as much as one might think.  Apparently it's bright colors are great camoflauge for it's life up in the canopy--but the birds don't seem to care.  They squawk and chatter and don't make any effort at hiding at all.  They lay 2-4 eggs a year and both parents take care of the little ones which are born without beaks.

Rainforest Dinner

We ate dinner in the rainforest last night.  Or, at least as close as you can get in Utah.  We turned on a "sounds of Mother Nature" station on the computer and had an "authentic" Suriname dinner.  At least this one felt authentic and it was pretty good too!  We ate a lentil curry with mango--excellent, Roti--a very large thin tortilla, fried plaintains (first time I'd ever used plantains) with a peanut sauce (all of use mediocre on the sauce, I didn't think it went well with the plantains)--and for dessert a flourless cake made with one cup of yucca root ant two cups of coconut.  Very good and very filling. 

Piranha

Well.....I began with good intentions.  Thinking of cool things in a rain forest, I naturally thought of piranha.  I did a search, but unfortunately for the quest of knowledge, the first hit was the 1978 movie Piranha.  I've been breaking my brains over a math class all week and had reached the point of frustration where nothing sounded better than feeding innocent people to hungry piranha.  Oddly enough, the 1978 movie is supposedly quite good.  I wouldn't know.  The video store only had MEGA PIRANHA.  It's a new release and is gloriously, hopelessly awful.  It was just the thing--people tromping through the rain forest (although not Suriname) and the piranha getting bigger and meaner every minute until they ate a nuclear submarine and the only thing that saved the world was that a brave navy seal got in the water with them and killed one thereby causing a feeding frenzy.  Why this caused a frenzy instead of just one piranha gulping the dead fish parts and then continuing toward Washington DC I don't know.  And I don't know why it worked this last time when it didn't work twice before earlier in the movie.  The important thing is that mankind is saved! And the bad guy got eaten (fish leaped out of the water and ate him, helicopter and all).  

The moral here is probably a good one---don't go swimming in remote Amazon rivers. (I think I may have figured out this moral without help)  And stay seated in the boat!  No one in this movie had any kind of balance whatsoever and would fall into the river at the slightest movement.   But no need to worry about crocodiles, hippos, leeches, bugs or anything else--apparently those things never bother anybody.

Cool Tree

Check out this cool tree trunk from the Suriname rainforest.