Old Palace

Author: Zhu Yong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-03-01
Features: The palace clearly indicates the violent nature of power. If you do not enter the power system, the palace is just a view in your sight; if you challenge the imperial authority, the blood-red palace illuminated by the setting sun constantly questions you, whether the courage and sacrifice you have prepared are enough. The faint candlelight can illuminate every intricate detail inside the hall—the faint light reflects on the dark lacquered folding screen, as if it comes from the dark depths of the colorful pavilion and garden pattern on the screen; on the huanghua liu wooden desk, drafts are scattered; under the amber paperweight, the last line of poetry is still wet with ink; the paper from Chengxin Tang has a smooth and lustrous surface. He moves the candle, his steps a bit faster, the flame almost extinguishing. The hall instantly darkens, as if it is a rehearsal for permanent darkness. He sees the boundary between light and darkness in time. He knows that the boundless light of the flame will eventually lead him into boundless darkness. The Old Palace is a complex text. It is difficult to summarize it in a few words, and even impossible to classify it according to the current conventional genre classification principles.
The subject of The Old Palace is the Forbidden City, but it has gone beyond the mere writing about a royal palace. It has incorporated a large amount of violence and blood from the Ming Dynasty's imperial court. The imaginative depiction of the castration of eunuchs allows the "reality" of the prose to mix with the "fiction" of the novel. In the early chapters, the description of the martial arts competition between the prince Bai and the avenger Hui also shows the style of a wuxia novel. In response, the prose writer Zhu Yong stated that The Old Palace is an interdisciplinary writing that spans various genres, including fiction, historical research, and prose. He attempts to combine the strengths of different genres to achieve an unexpected effect. In The Old Palace, the palace is merely a carrier of power, and its significance lies in providing people with another perspective to observe history. "The Forbidden City is an incredibly vast stage, where an incredibly solemn yet absurd, incredibly benevolent yet incredibly cruel drama is performed. The gilded and colorful palace appears as a result of power struggles, while the processes of all conspiracies are hidden by time. I hope this prose can reveal the possibilities that are hidden and show the parts that cannot be seen at present."
The palace in the book indicates the violent nature of power. If you do not enter the power system, the palace is just a view in your sight; if you challenge the imperial authority, the blood-red palace illuminated by the setting sun constantly questions you, whether the courage and sacrifice you have prepared are enough.