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Title: The Stone of Heaven: Unearthing the Secret History of Imperial Green Jade by Cathy Scott-Clark, Adrian Levy ISBN: 0-316-09558-3 Publisher: Back Bay Books Pub. Date: 02 January, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (1 review)
Rating: 5
Summary: An excellent and thorough read
Comment: Levy and Scott-Clark are excellent story tellers, and do they ever have a story to tell. Tracing the history of imperial green jade, or jadeite, they begin in the late 18th century with Chinese emperor Qianlong and 400 rivetting pages later end in present day Myanmar. Along the way the reader is exposed to the unrestrained profligacy of the Chinese emperors and the equally unrestrained ignorance and arrogance of the British colonialists. There is scheming and plots within plots as players in the Chinese dynasties kill their own progeny to ensure a malleable emperor will succeed. The plundering by the British of the old Imperial summer palace is shocking, and the primitive warfare of the Kachin in Burma is horrifying. Levy and Scott-Clark's descriptions put the reader right into the midst of the action: the writing is so effective that you can feel the clinging humidity of the Burmese jungle as 19th century British explorers plod along in search for the mines from whence the jadeite is extracted.
Also of tremendous interest were the passages about the Dowager Empress Cixi. If all you know about the last emperor Pu Yi is from the wonderful movie "The Last Emperor," this book will help round out some of the events and issues driving the Pu Yi story along that were alluded to in the movie. Besides, the movie's only allusion to Cixi is in the very beginning when the toddler Pu Yi is brought to the Forbidden City. Levy and Scott-Clark reveal to the reader from where Cixi came and how her desire for the jadeite was often at the core of her political machinations.
And then there are the final chapters that reveal a scenario so horrifying, so shocking that even the surrealistic visions of Francis Ford Coppola in "Apocolypse Now" cannot compare.
This is definitely the best book I've read so far this year, and probably the best book I've read in the past five years. After reading this book you will not be able to look at another piece of jadeite, no matter how beautiful, and not whince because now you know the stone's infamous history.
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Title: Jade by Fred Ward ISBN: 1887651063 Publisher: Gem Guides Book Company Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Jade by Louis Zara ISBN: 0595159036 Publisher: Backinprint.com Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: Empress Orchid by Anchee Min ISBN: 0618068872 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Company Pub. Date: 01 February, 2004 List Price(USD): $24.00 |
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Title: Chinese Jade from the Neolithic to the Qing by Jessica Rawson, John Williams, David Gowers ISBN: 1588860337 Publisher: Art Media Resources, Ltd. Pub. Date: 01 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $80.00 |
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Title: The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure by Catherine Scott-Clark, Adrian Levy ISBN: 0802714242 Publisher: Walker & Company Pub. Date: 01 May, 2004 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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