Summer Palace

The loss sustained by having this house burned we never recovered, as my father, being an official of the government, it would have been very bad form to have tried to recover this money, besides a possible loss of standing, as government officials are supposed never to consider themselves or families in the service of their country, and any private losses in the service must be borne without complaint.

On the first of March nineteen oh three, Prince Ching and his son, Prince Zai Zhen, came to see us and told us that Her Majesty wished to see my mother, my sister, and myself at once, that we should be at the Summer Palace, Wan Shou Shan, at six o'clock the following morning.

My mother told Prince Ching that we had been wearing foreign clothes all these years while abroad and had no suitable Manchu clothes to wear.

He replied that he had told Her Majesty all about us and also mentioned that he had seen us in European attire, and she had said that it would not be necessary for us to wear Manchu costume to go to the palace, that she would be glad to have us wear foreign clothes, as it would give her an opportunity to study the foreign way of dressing.

Chapter two.

At the palace.

When we reached the city gates, which were about halfway between our house and the summer palace, they were wide open for us to pass.

This quite surprised us, as all gates are closed at seven o'clock in the evening and are not opened except on special occasions until daylight.

Mrs. Conger immediately informed me of the reception of this document, and I left Shanghai for Peking on the 29th of July.

I was cordially received on my arrival in Peking by Mr. and Mrs. Conger at the American Legation, and on the 5th of August was presented by Mrs. Conger to Her Majesty, the Empress Dowager at the Summer Palace in private audience.

As it was a great innovation in Chinese customs and a breaking away from long-established tradition for an imperial portrait to be painted, there was no precedent to follow, and all arrangements were of the vaguest kind.

And when I went to the palace for my first audience, I did not know whether I would have one sitting or ten, and no one else seemed to have any more definite information.

Chapter 1.

My Presentation and First Day at the Chinese Court.

The day of my first audience at the Chinese court, August 5th, we were up betimes at the American legation, for it takes full three hours to drive out to the Summer Palace from Peking, and punctuality is the etiquette of Oriental as well as of Occidental potentates.

Our audience was for half past ten, and the portrait of the Empress Dowager was to begin at eleven.

Wow.

And we shot at Summer Palace, and we shot at all these places where, where, where, with the, um, Empress Dowager.

Yes.

We shot in those places.

The loss sustained by having this house burned we never recovered, as my father, being an official of the government, it would have been very bad form to have tried to recover this money, besides a possible loss of standing, as government officials are supposed never to consider themselves or families in the service of their country, and any private losses in the service must be borne without complaint.

On the 1st of March, 1903, Prince Ching and his son, Prince Zai Zhen, came to see us and told us that Her Majesty wished to see my mother, my sister, and myself at once, that we should be at the Summer Palace, Wanshoushan, at six o'clock the following morning.

My mother told Prince Ching that we had been wearing foreign clothes all these years while abroad and had no suitable Manchu clothes to wear.

He replied that he had told Her Majesty all about us and also mentioned that he had seen us in European attire, and she had said that it would not be necessary for us to wear Manchu costume to go to the palace, that she would be glad to have us wear foreign clothes, as it would give her an opportunity to study the foreign way of dressing.

Chapter two.

At the palace.

When we reached the city gates, which were about halfway between our house and the summer palace, they were wide open for us to pass.

This quite surprised us, as all gates are closed at seven o'clock in the evening and are not opened except on special occasions until daylight.

Like it's just taking it slow.

I think, and in many ways, the M, when we've changed, like there was a day where we were going to see like the Summer Palace, I think in Beijing and the line was so long and she's like, I don't want to go to this.

And I'm like, okay, let's just go and sit in the park.

And we sat in the park and then there was, This exhibition of the Chinese military, they were doing a drill and then like some kind of parade came past and then we got some food.

And that was such a better day than queuing up to go through the Summer Palace, even though that was our idea of what we'd do for that day.

So being really flexible, like just paid off so much.

And that's pretty much how we started.

[laughs]

And I was like, "Okay." [laughs] And so while we were in Beijing for our three nights, our big thing was I was like, we need to go to the Great Wall and I wanna go to the Summer Palace, because those were two things that Tim and I did on our, our trip.

And the funny thing is when we did that trip in 2014, I was actually pregnant with Rose, like our oldest, and so I took a picture of like these little booties on the Great Wall of China.

So then like we found like the tower where we took that and like took a picture of her sitting there-

It was like they sold, like, jade jewelry and, like, figurines in the downstairs, and then lunch was upstairs.

And I was like, "No, we've done enough tours.

We're like, we- this is just part of it." And so after lunch, then we went to the Summer Palace, and we did just kind of like a walking tour through there, and then they dropped us back off at our hotel.

So yeah, if you wanna book a tour in Beijing, contact Jerry.

took things.

If they hadn't taken those statues from the Summer Palace or whatever, they would no longer exist.

They burned and

broke everything in Mao's China.