Xanadu Residence 2
Divina Milliken
If you are living in Xanadu compound or if you ever had the chance to visit one of the apartments of Xanadu residence, you will probably agree that the developer of Beijing Xanadu, Beijing Capital Land, did a good job for the design and the construction of the residence, calling for splendor and magnificence!
Designed by the GBBN Architects, Xanadu Apartments has attractive design and good layout apartments, high ceiling, good exposure to natural light. Cleaning contract has been signed with Kelilaien cleaning company, to ensure highest standards of cleaning.
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree. Those lines are from the poem "Kubla Khan" (published in 1816) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge's fantastic description of an exotic utopia fired public imagination and ultimately contributed to the transition of "Xanadu" from a name to a generalized term for an idyllic place. The Xanadu in the poem was inspired by Shang-tu, the summer residence of Mongolian general and statesman Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan). You might also recognize "Xanadu" as the name of the fantastic estate in Orson Welles's 1941 film Citizen Kane.
By the time William Randolph was born, grand displays of wealth were something of a tradition in the Hearst family. After making his millions in the California Gold Rush, his father, George Hearst, bought up huge swathes of land, purchasing about 30,000 acres of Rancho Piedra Blanca and the entirety of Rancho Santa Rosa in 1865. In the final years of the 1910s, his son, a politician, newspaper publisher and businessman in possession of an enormous fortune, decided to follow in his footsteps. With enough money to make his dream residence a reality ten times over, William Randolph Hearst set about crafting a palatial mansion of Xanadu-esque proportions.
Venetian traveller Marco Polo described Shangdu to Europeans after visiting it in 1275. It was conquered in 1369 by the Ming army under Chang Yuchun. Historical accounts of the city inspired the famous poem Kubla Khan, written by English Romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1797.
Shangdu was located in what is now Shangdu Town, Zhenglan Banner, Inner Mongolia, 350 kilometres (220 mi) north of Beijing. It is about 28 kilometres (17 mi) northwest of the modern town of Duolun. The layout of the capital is roughly square shaped with sides of about 2.2 km (1.4 mi). It consists of an "outer city", and an "inner city" in the southeast of the capital which has also roughly a square layout with sides about 1.4 km (0.87 mi), and the palace, where Kublai Khan stayed in summer. The palace has sides of roughly 550 m (1,800 ft), covering an area of around 40% the size of the Forbidden City in Beijing. The most visible modern-day remnants are the earthen walls though there is also a ground-level, circular brick platform in the centre of the inner enclosure.
In 1872, Steven Bushell, affiliated with the British Legation in Beijing, visited the site and reported that remains of temples, blocks of marble, and tiles were still to be found there. By the 1990s, all these artifacts were completely gone, most likely collected by the inhabitants of the nearby town of Dolon Nor to construct their houses. The artwork is still seen in the walls of some Dolon Nor buildings.[6]
And when you have ridden three days from the city last mentioned, between north-east and north, you come to a city called Chandu, which was built by the Khan now reigning. There is at this place a very fine marble palace, the rooms of which are all gilt and painted with figures of men and beasts and birds, and with a variety of trees and flowers, all executed with such exquisite art that you regard them with delight and astonishment.
Round this Palace a wall is built, inclosing a compass of 16 miles, andinside the Park there are fountains and rivers and brooks, and beautifulmeadows, with all kinds of wild animals (excluding such as are offerocious nature), which the Emperor has procured and placed there tosupply food for his gerfalcons and hawks, which he keeps there in mew.[7] Ofthese there are more than 200 gerfalcons alone, without reckoning theother hawks. The Khan himself goes every week to see his birds sitting inmew, and sometimes he rides through the park with a leopard behind him onhis horse's croup; and then if he sees any animal that takes his fancy, heslips his leopard at it, and the game when taken is made over tofeed the hawks in mew. This he does for diversion.
Moreover at a spot in the Park where there is a charming wood he hasanother Palace built of cane, of which I must give you a description. Itis gilt all over, and most elaborately finished inside. It is stayed ongilt and lacquered columns, on each of which is a dragon all gilt, the tailof which is attached to the column whilst the head supports thearchitrave, and the claws likewise are stretched out right and left tosupport the architrave. The roof, like the rest, is formed of canes,covered with a varnish so strong and excellent that no amount of rain willrot them. These canes are a good 3 palms in girth, and from 10 to 15 pacesin length. They are cut across at each knot, and then the pieces aresplit so as to form from each two hollow tiles, and with these the houseis roofed; only every such tile of cane has to be nailed down to preventthe wind from lifting it. In short, the whole Palace is built of thesecanes, which I may mention serve also for a great variety of otheruseful purposes. The construction of the Palace is so devised that it canbe taken down and put up again with great celerity; and it can all betaken to pieces and removed whithersoever the Emperor may command. Whenerected, it is braced against mishaps from the wind by more than 200cords of silk.
The Khan abides at this Park of his, dwelling sometimes in the MarblePalace and sometimes in the Cane Palace for three months of the year, towit, June, July and August; preferring this residence because it is by nomeans hot; in fact it is a very cool place. When the 28th day of [the Moonof] August arrives he takes his departure, and the Cane Palace is taken topieces. But I must tell you what happens when he goes away fromthis Palace every year on the 28th of the August [Moon]..."[8]
The lament of Toghon Temur Khan (the "Ukhaant Khan" or "Sage Khan"), concerning the loss of Daidu (Beijing) and Heibun Shanduu (Kaiping Xanadu) in 1368, is recorded in many Mongolian historical chronicles. The Altan Tobchi version is translated as follows:
In Xandu did Cublai Can build a stately Pallace, encompassing sixteen miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightfull streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumpuous house of pleasure, which may be moved from place to place.[10]
In 1625 Purchas published an expanded edition of this book, recounting the voyages of famous travellers, called Purchas his Pilgrimes. The eleventh volume of this book included a more detailed description of Shangdu, attributed to Marco Polo and dated 1320:
This Citie is three dayes journey Northeastward to the Citie Xandu, which the Chan Cublai now reigning built; erecting therein a marvellous and artificiall Palace of Marble and other stones, which abutteth on the wall on one side, and the midst of the Citie on the other. He included sixteene miles within the circuit of the wall on that side where the Palace abutteth on the Citie wall, into which none can enter but by the Palace. In this enclosure or Parke are goodly meadows, springs, rivers, red and fallow Deere, Fawnes carrying thither for the Hawkes (of whom are three mewed above two hundred Gerfalcons which he goeth once a week to see) and he often useth one Leopard or more, sitting on Horses, which he setteth upon the Stagges and Deere, and having taken the beast, giveth it to the Gerfalcons, and in beholding this spectacle he taketh wonderful delight. In the middest in a faire wood he hath a royall House on pillars gilded and varnished, on every inch of which is a Dragon all gilt, which windeth his tayle about the pillar, which his head bearing up the loft, as also with his wings displayed on both sides; the cover also is of Reeds gilt and varnished, so that the rayne can doe it no injury; the reeds being three handfuls thick and ten yards log, split from knot to knot. The house itselfe also may be sundered, and taken downe like a Tent and erected again. For it is sustained, when it is set up, with two hundred silken cordes. Great Chan useth to dwell there three moneths in the yeare, to wit, in June, July and August.[11]
In 1797, according to his own account, the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge was reading about Shangdu in Purchas his Pilgrimes, fell asleep, and had an opium-inspired dream. The dream caused him to begin the poem known as 'Kubla Khan'. Unfortunately Coleridge's writing was interrupted by an unnamed "person on business from Porlock", causing him to forget much of the dream, but his images of Shangdu became one of the best-known poems in the English language.
In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in 'Purchas's Pilgrimes':
The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. "A person on business from Porlock" interrupted him and he was never able to recapture more than "some eight or ten scattered lines and images."[12]
c80f0f1006