Empress Orchid

I am most attracted to the way Anchee Min describes the details of Forbidden City. She delivers a fictional peek into the palace - the rituals and the grand celebrations and the powerful eunuchs and the manipulative concubines and the conspiracy and everything!. Terasa nak ke China gitu, ke muziumnya perhaps? nak tengok segala baju2, eksesori2, lukisan2 diraja..boleh?

And I especially love this poem,

To give it up is to accept your fate
To give it up is to create peace
To give it up is to gain upper hand, and
To give it up is to have it all

To rescue her family from poverty and avoid marrying her slope-shouldered cousin, 17teen yr old Orchid competes to be one of the Emperor’s wives. When she is chosen as a lower ranking concubine, she enters the erotically charged and ritualized Forbidden City. But beneath its immaculate façade lie whispers of murders and ghosts and the thousands of concubine will stoop to any lengths to bear the Emperor’s son. Orchid train herself in the art of pleasuring a man, bribes her way to the royal bed, and seduces the monarch, drawing attention of dangerous foes. Little does she know that China will collapse around her, and that she will be its last Empress. ** from the book**

and yet to buy the sambungan...out of stock i heard, zie?