Word: kublai
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...Kublai Khan's family rules China. Korea and Mongolia from Dadu (today's Beijing), but related Mongol khanates in central Asia and Russia are virtually independent if not hostile; and the once subservient (and Buddhist) Il-Khans of Persia have converted to Islam. Meanwhile, drawn by the decay of Byzantium, Osman and his Turks germinate the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia...
...fully realize how much water matters in Vegas until you see the works of Kublai Wynn, the Bellagio especially. Never was a city built and embellished in such opposition to its own environment. The Mormons tried settling this parched valley, nothing but dust, rocks and Gila monsters, in the 1850s; they failed. In 1905 it was set up as a dry-gulch railroad town handling transshipments of fruits and vegetables from California to the Midwest. Labor strikes all but destroyed the railroad, and with it Las Vegas, in the 1920s. And then, in the '30s, three things made the place...
...official portrait approaches a kind of apogee in the Ming dynasty too, but the show contains some striking earlier examples. Witness the anonymous 13th century effigy of the Empress Chabi, wife of the first Yuan Emperor, Shih-tsu, better known to us as Kublai Khan. Did she look like that, this formidable dumpling? Who can know? But it's an image of detached power, the moon face framed in the magnificent red profiles of robe and towering formal headdress...
...Jesus who was merged with the Buddhist deity Maitreya, the Boddhisatva of the future, who, like Christ, will come at the end of the world. As the centuries passed, this Manichaean-tinged Maitreya would inspire millenarian revolts in China, one of which helped bring down the empire of Kublai Khan in the 14th century. The leader of the successful rebel coalition rewarded his allies of the "Bright" religion by naming the new regime after their faith--Ming-chiao in Chinese. And, thus, the opulent and imperious Ming dynasty, which later inspired Enlightenment philosophers in Europe with secularizing ideas...
...wonder the local Kublai Khans are planning more. Treasure Island's Steve Wynn, who also owns the tony Mirage, is ready to break more banks with his new Beau Rivage resort next year. The Grand's Kirk Kerkorian, when he's not plotting his takeover of Chrysler, looks at plans for his new hostelry, New York-New York, whose facade will be in the shape of the Manhattan skyline. Even the Walt Disney Co. is rumored to be looking at Las Vegas property-though Disney chairman Michael Eisner denies any interest in bringing Disney to Vegas...