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ellarienIn which Louise has an unexpected encounter in the Forbidden City.
Louise had not been quite prepared for the dragons. They were everywhere: dragons strode across the bronze trim around window frames and the gilt decorations of door-hinges; grey stone dragons writhed on the great ramps leading up to the palace halls; tiny dragons coiled on the tile roundels along the edge of every roof; dragon heads in rows carried water drained from the terraces; dragons twisted around marble fenceposts; dragons repeated endlessly across gilded and painted ceilings. Even the bronze elephant wore a rug adorned with dragons. Other creatures – lions with elaborate and unlikely hairstyles and shaggy-tentacled turtles – watched over the courtyards, and yet others marched in miniature down the corner of every roof, but it was the dragons that caught the eye at every turn. In the sticky, grey heat of Beijing’s summer, picking her footsore way over uneven pavements and up and down the worn stone staircases of the Forbidden City among the crowds of jostling, chattering, umbrella-wielding locals, Louise was beginning to feel overwhelmed.
Louise had not been quite prepared for the dragons. They were everywhere: dragons strode across the bronze trim around window frames and the gilt decorations of door-hinges; grey stone dragons writhed on the great ramps leading up to the palace halls; tiny dragons coiled on the tile roundels along the edge of every roof; dragon heads in rows carried water drained from the terraces; dragons twisted around marble fenceposts; dragons repeated endlessly across gilded and painted ceilings. Even the bronze elephant wore a rug adorned with dragons. Other creatures – lions with elaborate and unlikely hairstyles and shaggy-tentacled turtles – watched over the courtyards, and yet others marched in miniature down the corner of every roof, but it was the dragons that caught the eye at every turn. In the sticky, grey heat of Beijing’s summer, picking her footsore way over uneven pavements and up and down the worn stone staircases of the Forbidden City among the crowds of jostling, chattering, umbrella-wielding locals, Louise was beginning to feel overwhelmed.
