Lifting the Veil on Beijing's Forbidden City

The Forbidden City
Geremie Barmé,
Profile Books
Reviewed: 29 March 2008

Professor Geremie Barmé is one of Australia’s foremost contemporary sinologists. . Few anglophones could be better qualified to produce a cultural overview of the role of the Forbidden City through 600 years of Chinese history.

Don’t look to this book for a strict chronological history or a systematic museum guide. Barmé addresses the Forbidden City’s “a metaphorical life”, holding that over the centuries the reality of a sequestered imperial administration has fed the perception of China as perpetually enigmatic and inscrutable.

Tales of palace intrigue here only skim the simmering cauldron of dynastic power politics between eunuchs; the wives, concubines and their factional supporters; the royal siblings; the military and civilian officials; the foreign powers co-opted with dire consequence.  Read the full review



Richard Thwaites was Beijing correspondent for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation 1978-83.