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8 Yang Gui Fei During the end of the T’ang Dynasty (AD 618–907 ), Yang Gui Fei was the favored concubine of Emperor Li Long-Ji. She was forced to commit suicide on the slopes of Mangwei Village. Surely you know I will rule your besieged kingdom in the afterlife, build the rivers so they flow into a great bath, populate the land with plum trees, foliate the skies with golden birds. Once I was more than a woman, more than a gold hairpin, more than three thousand bathing concubines. Once the soldiers followed the scents of my long braiding curls, cording around my neck. They followed a peeling leader who trailed me the way a buzzard steals breath from the dying. Surely you know that on this slope, aspens and spruce will eventually be wrapped in fencing, honeysuckles hung with mesh, petunias draped by a stockade fence, tethered animals will go round and round a tree until they strangle themselves. My body will hang without its shadow. ...

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