OLD CHINA

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28180, 19 January 1957, Page 3

OLD CHINA

China’s Courts and Concubines. Some People in Chinese History. By Bernard Llewellyn. George Allen and Unwin. 214 pp. Index.

The colourful past of ancient China, rich in story and legend, is mirrored in this picturesque collection of “potted biographies” of fourteen men and women whose stories are part of the long heritage of the Chinese people. Western readers are here introduced to an array of fascinating people. There are the beautiful women who brought emperors and Kingdoms to ruin, like Hsi Shik the peerless beauty and Yang Kueifei most celebrated of concubines; the Emperor Wu befuddled by his magicians, and the poet Li Po befuddled by wine; the cunning Chu-Ko Liang who, even in death, was too much for his enemies; Wu Tao-tzu the greatest of Chinese artists, and Wei Chungksien the greatest of villains. In the palace of the Emperor Ch’ien Lung the reader meets the Fragrant Concubine, and in the Nunnery of Boundless Contentment he encounters a far from holy nun.

These stories take the reader to the eunuch-ridden harems of the Chinese court and into the mysterious mazes of Peking’s Forbidden City where murder and intrigue stalked hand-in-hand. The characters span the centuries — from the village girl who destroyed a kingdom in the fifth century B.C. to the Empress Dowager T?u Hsi, whose life lasted into the opening decade of the twentieth century. These people are among the “immortals” of China, beloved of her poets and painters and living still in the hearts and songs of her people. Bernard Llewellyn has no academic pretensions yet it is obvious that he is a scholar as well as a traveller. Certainly as a writer he is an expert craftsman. These quaint tales of extravagance and splendour, of poverty and tragedy, are alive with the very flavour of ancient Chinese life itself. The book will please the general reader, who will pronounce it as indeed a delight. It is beautifully produced, and the text as charmingly illustrated by delicate line drawings by Pauline Baynes.