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I flaked on Froog last night. I was completely beat from a day of translating documents and just didn’t have the energy to go out after midnight to watch the FA Cup game between Manchester United and Arsenal. I have a hunch that I’m in for a raft of crap about how my tepid support for Arsenal cost them the match. The mechanism for this is not abundantly clear…some sort of karmic time/space buttefly effect or what not. Seriously, the only way I could have affected this game in the positive for the Gunners is if I teleported myself to the hallway outside the Manchester United training room and pulled a Tonya Harding on young Mr. Rooney. Besides, it was only the FA Cup and we dressed 14 players. Watching the preview for the match on Friday night, a shot of the manager standing at practice with the net in the background caused one wag to remark, “Is the injury bug so bad that Arsene Wenger’s now his own starting keeper?” The final score probably wouldn’t have been much changed if he actually had been minding the goal. Anyway….
I did escape The Studio for an hour or so to
…is up at Frog in a Well, Korea. Many thanks to Konrad Lawson for his hard work putting it together and for the kind words directed at this little hobby of mine. I wanted to particularly call people’s attention to the list of online video and audio history resources, kudos for pulling that together.
This week was Valentine’s Day, and no matter what you think of market-driven holidays, it does provide a good occasion to take your wife out for a quiet dinner in an otherwise hectic week. Wanting to avoid the overpriced and crowded Valentine’s Day “specials” at the Chaoyang restaurants, we decided to go local: Dongcheng style, baby.
Our first choice was Yueming Lou, an old-style Beijing restaurant in a hutong behind Houhai. We’ve eaten there before, but this day the act of taking reservations proved too complex for the staff. Not wanting to leave anything to chance, I hung up and called over to Dali, a courtyard-style Yunnan restaurant off of Gulou Dongdajie, also tucked in a hutong, this one not far from Mao Livehouse. What a great place. Nice decor, a set menu that was both ample and delicious, and perfect ambience…not too Sino-kitsch, but just enough of the old courtyard feel to add the perfect touch to the dinner. The wood burning stoves (granted, it’s not the best insulated place) warmed us up just fine and added a nice romantic glow to our dinner. Even better? 100 RMB per person set price, and solid value for that coin.
After
Today is the birthday of Emperor Yingzong (r. 1063-1067), born in 1032. Yingzong came to the throne by a somewhat atypical route, he was not the son of his predecessor, Emperor Renzong (r. 1022-1063), who towards the end of his long reign had committed the huge imperial faux pas of getting sick without siring any male heirs. Given this speed bump to succession, Renzong agreed to adopt a couple of potential heirs, including the future Emperor Yingzong, a young man who was the son of Renzong’s cousin, the powerful court official Zhao Yunrang (995-1059).
All to the good, until Renzong died and it came time for the newly installed Yingzong to do the appropriate rituals to his “parents.” Since Yingzong was technically Renzong’s adopted son, many in the court felt that Yingzong should make the necessary filial sacrifices to Renzong, and wanted to ‘demote’ Zhao Yunrang to the status of “Imperial Uncle.” Yingzong, quite unhappy with this decision, wanted his biological father acknowledged as such, and garnered support for his position from, among others, scholar-official heavyweights such as Ouyang Xiu.
While acknowledging that the imperial line of succession was a key part of maintaining dynastic legitimacy, Yingzong faced a filial
Zhou Dynasty founded 557 On this date in 557, Yuwen Hu, a general in the court of the Western Wei Dynasty (535-557), forced the emperor to cede the throne to a cousin, Yuwen Jue, and so began the Zhou Dynasty (557-581). If you’re thinking this sounds familiar, it’s because February 13th marked the founding of another Zhou Dynasty (950-960). Neither of these two decidedly average Zhou’s should be confused with the original Zhou dynasty, founded in 1046 B.C. or with Zhou Enlai, born in 1898. The Zhou Dynasty founded in 557 sputtered along with three different emperors under the regency of Yuwen Hu, until the latter was poisoned in 578. In 581, one of the Zhou generals, Yang Jian, rose up against the court and founded his own dynasty, the Sui. It was the Sui who would reunify China under a single ruler for the first time in over three centuries.
(And if you’re wondering why we’ve had so many ‘on this date such and such a dynasty was founded’ this month, it’s because it was customary to announce the founding of a new political regime on the first day of their lunar calendar.)
Gu Yanwu passes away, 1682 Today
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