Today’s empress
Look closely.
One silk portrait by Xiang Li. Six lanterns to find her by.
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Every portrait in this game was painted by hand on silk by Xiang Li, who spent thirty-seven years restoring paintings inside the Forbidden City before she began painting the empresses of China — one portrait for every empress she could find in the histories.
Each day one of Xiang Li’s silk portraits hangs rolled up on a scroll. Unroll it and you see a close detail. Type an empress; every wrong guess shows more of the painting and opens a clue — her dynasty, her emperor, the painting’s title, her name in Chinese characters and a line of her story. You have six guesses.
Yes. Everyone playing on the same date gets the same empress, and a new one appears at midnight your local time. Your streak is kept in your own browser — there is no account.
The daily painting is one of 35 single portraits Xiang Li has painted of empresses from the Han to the Qing. You can guess any woman in the Chinese Empresses collection.
A guess marked in celadon is right; persimmon means she is from the same dynasty as the answer; cinnabar means another dynasty, with a note saying whether the empress you are looking for lived earlier or later.
Each day’s empress is one of these single portraits, painted by Xiang Li on silk. Every one has a page of her own with the full story — read them, and the close-ups get easier.