Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

by Chang, Jung

  Cixi mourned Empress Zhen’s death as that of an intimate and superior family member – by wrapping her own head in a white silk scarf. This went beyond the prescribed mourning etiquette for the empress dowager and earned her ‘immense admiration’ from the traditionalists like Grand Tutor Weng. Although dynastic rules only required the period of mourning to be twenty-seven days, Cixi extended it to 100 days, during which time all joyful activities, like weddings, were prohibited. What was more, she decreed a twenty-seven-month ban on music in the court. This, just over a year after the four-year ban following the death of her son, and in the middle of an illness during which she craved music, was a real sacrifice. So starved of music was she that, months before the end of the ban, she started planning performances and selecting singers from outside the court. Within days after the ban was lifted, in summer 1883, she watched opera non-stop for ten hours. Thereafter there were continuous performances for days, one lasting twelve hours.

  The death of Empress Zhen deprived Emperor Guangxu of a mother figure. It also left a vacuum as there was no one to act as conciliator between him and Cixi. When the child grew up and was increasingly alienated from his Papa Dearest, there was no one to bring them back together. No one was in a position to, and no one had the clout. Empress Zhen, senior to Cixi in rank, a friend from her teenage years and a comrade in launching their coup, for which both of them had risked death by a thousand cuts, had been the only person to whom Cixi displayed humility. Cixi had respected the empress’s judgement in a working partnership that spanned two decades, and had deferred to her in domestic affairs – even in a matter as crucial as the choice of a wife for her son. Without Empress Zhen’s help, Cixi was unable to halt the gradual worsening of her relationship with Emperor Guangxu, a deterioration that would result in disasters for the empire, as well as for themselves.

  At this stage Cixi behaved like an ‘absentee parent,’ who, apart from receiving the child’s daily ritual greetings, confined her involvement with him to his education. She engaged Grand Tutor Weng, who had taught her late son, to be the chief teacher. The fact that she and the conservative Weng had disagreed on so many issues did not prevent her from appointing him to the post. Weng was by consensus the most upright and acclaimed of scholars, and could be trusted to instil in the child all the qualities that a good emperor should possess. Cixi was firmly committed to Chinese culture, even though she was open to Western ideas. It was taken for granted that a Chinese monarch had to be brought up in the Chinese way. It does not seem to have occurred to her that this emperor should be educated differently, but, even if it did, no other way would have been approved by the grandees, who had a voice in how their emperor was educated. As a result, Emperor Guangxu was moulded like his ancestors: no part of his education would equip him to handle the modern world.

  The child emperor began his lessons when he was four. On a sunny early spring day, he was taken into his study to meet his tutors. Sitting behind a low desk, facing south, he spread a large piece of paper on the desk and asked for a brush. He had already learned to write a little. Grand Tutor Weng dipped a brush into a well of ink and handed it to the child, who proceeded to write two phrases, each with four characters, in what his tutor called ‘extremely symmetrical and pleasing’ calligraphy. One phrase meant ‘peace and stability under Heaven’, and the other ‘upright, magnanimous, honourable and wise’. Both were Confucian ideals to which a good monarch should aspire. With this delightful start, Grand Tutor Weng showed the child the word ‘the Morality of the Emperor’, di-de, which he repeated after the tutor four times. Next Weng opened a picture book, Lessons for an Emperor, in which the famously good and notoriously bad emperors were portrayed. As he explained to the child why they were good or bad, the boy’s finger, following that of his teacher, paused over the portraits of the mythical Emperors Yao and Shun of the Three Great Ancient Dynasties, who were worshipped as exemplary monarchs. The four-year-old seemed to be attracted to them. After lingering over their images, he asked Grand Tutor Weng if he would again write down the word ‘the Morality of the Emperor’, which the Grand Tutor did. The child gazed at the word for some time before the first lesson ended.

  This first session, recorded in Grand Tutor Weng’s diary, provides a glimpse of Emperor Guangxu’s education and the sort of pupil he would become. Quite the opposite of his cousin and immediate predecessor, Emperor Tongzhi, who dreaded the lessons, Guangxu seemed to take to them. At the age of five, to Cixi’s amazement, he was reciting at all times – ‘sitting, standing, walking or lying down’ – what must have been to him incomprehensible classics. Such dedication may well have had something to do with the strong attachment he formed to his teacher, Weng. The boy wanted to please the old man. When he was six, Weng was away for some time, tending to the repairs of his family tombs. During his absence the child played like a normal boy, and did not do the homework the tutor had left him. Weng had asked him to recite some classical texts twenty times each, in order to learn them by heart, but Guangxu only read them once. The day Weng came back, the child threw himself into the old man’s arms and cried: ‘I have been missing you for such a long time!’ Then he went to his desk and started reciting the texts, twenty times each. A eunuch in attendance commented: ‘We haven’t heard this sound for ages!’

  With this powerful motivation to imbibe, and a good memory, Emperor Guangxu rapidly excelled. Grand Tutor Weng’s diaries, which had been littered with exasperated outbursts about his former pupil, were now peppered with satisfied exclamations such as ‘good’, ‘very good’, ‘extremely good’ and ‘brilliant!’ By nine, the emperor was able to decorate fans with calligraphy that ‘has a really artistic feel’, said the delighted tutor, a renowned calligrapher himself. Barely into his teens, the boy could write ‘utterly fluent’ poetry and essays at speed, as if mature thoughts flew out of his young head ‘with wings’.

  The child’s whole life was given over to his studies, which included the Manchu language, as well as some Mongolian, though Chinese classics remained the core subject. From the age of nine he began to practise reading reports and writing instructions on them in crimson ink. For this purpose, a copy was made of some reports for him to practise on. As the Chinese language had no punctuation marks in those days, the child first had to divide the sometimes very long texts into sentences by marking each pause with a crimson dot. The instructions he gave were sensible, though understandably limited to generalities. Sometimes, Cixi would sit with him while he practised, like a parent watching her child doing his homework today. One report came from a governor requesting a piece of calligraphy from the emperor, which would be carved on a plaque and mounted on the entrance of a temple to the God of Thunder. Apparently the god had been seen to make an appearance, which was interpreted by frightened locals to mean that there would be storms coming to destroy their crops. Royal reverence to the god could placate its wrath. The nine-year-old granted the request, in a reply that he had clearly absorbed from his readings. Cixi then showed him what he might say of a more specific kind, by writing an additional instruction to the effect that the official must not just count on the royal inscription for good harvests, and that the gods would be better pleased if he performed his duties conscientiously.

  On another report, from Marquis Zeng Jr, suggesting allowing junior diplomats abroad to come home for vacation and paying for their extra costs, the then ten-year-old duly gave his consent. Cixi added the principle: ‘The most important thing is to choose the right people. Once you have them, don’t begrudge them expenses.’

  So Emperor Guangxu was groomed, by the empress dowager as well as his Grand Tutors, to be a wise ruler. By the age of ten he was giving occasional audiences. When Cixi was ill, he stepped in and was able to talk to officials in this way: ‘What are the crops like in Henan? Is there still a lack of rain? We in the capital are also suffering from drought. How we long for the rain!’ These were the standard lines expected of a good emperor. And Grand Tutor Weng felt ‘much
rewarded and contented’.

  Indeed Emperor Guangxu grew up to be a model Confucian monarch. From the Grand Tutor he learned to despise ‘personal wealth’, cai, and declared that he preferred ‘thriftiness’, jian – at which the old man exclaimed: ‘What great fortune for all under Heaven!’ His essays and poems, in their hundreds and well kept in envelopes of yellow silk in the Forbidden City archives, mostly expressed his thoughts on how to be a worthy emperor. ‘Care for the people’ (ai-min) was a constant theme. Writing about the moonlight over a palace lake, the emperor would think about far-away starving villagers, who shared the same moon, but not his luxury. In summer, on cooling himself in an open pavilion, nibbling ice-chilled fruits, his poems were about feeling pity for peasants toiling under a scorching sun. And in winter, on cradling a gilded charcoal burner in the heated palace while listening to howling winds, he imagined how the wind would be lashing at ‘tens of thousands of families in inadequate homes’.

  His sentiments and the language he used to express them conformed exactly to precedent, established over centuries, for a good Confucian emperor. And yet, for all the concerns he displayed for his subjects, the emperor had nothing to say about how to improve their lives through modern means. Nowhere in his writings did he mention industries, foreign trade or diplomacy. The emperor’s young mind was frozen in the past.

  Trained as a Confucian purist, he regarded fun as sinful. His holidays were mostly spent in the study, as were his birthdays. On his eighth birthday the court staged operas over several days. Each day he put in a brief appearance before returning to his study. He was a diligent pupil, but he had also been taught by Weng to dislike opera for its melodrama and tuneful melodies, which were deemed to be ‘vulgar’. To the tutor’s delight, the child said that he considered it to be something only for his attendants – that he preferred the ‘elegant sounds of bells and drums’, ancient music that was stately (if monotonous), designed not for pleasure, but for contemplation and ceremonies, approved of by Confucius.

  The child shunned play, or any vigorous physical activity, including riding, which was on the curriculum for a Manchu emperor. To meet his obligation he had a wooden horse installed and sat on it for his lessons. But he did like to exercise his hands, and loved to take apart and reassemble watches and clocks. Eunuchs purchased these European imports from an enterprising Dane, who had a shop in the capital.

  Guangxu was physically weak, timid and nervous, with a stutter, and he was easily frightened. The sound of thunder terrified him. When there was a storm, a crowd of eunuchs would gather around him, shouting at the top of their voices so as to drown out the thunder. Unlike his Papa Dearest, or his cousin, Emperor Tongzhi, Guangxu seemed to have no vitality. He expressed no desire to travel, not even to go beyond the Forbidden City: he was content in his isolation from the outside world.

  Inside the Forbidden City, intense labour over the classics lasted for a decade – the time needed to produce a scholar. At the end of it, Emperor Guangxu’s tutors pronounced that he had completed his studies ‘with distinction’. In summer 1886, when he turned fifteen, he was deemed well qualified to be the ruler of China. Cixi felt obliged to issue an edict, bidding the imperial astrologer to select an auspicious date at the beginning of the following year for the young man to assume power.

  The imminent departure of Cixi threw the modernisers into panic. Deprived of her energetic initiative and drive, the reform projects she had started were likely to peter out. For days Earl Li was ‘unable to sleep or eat properly’ and was ‘in a constant state of trepidation’. In the end he wrote to Prince Chun, imploring him to think of a way for Cixi to stay on. The prince was well aware that his son could not fill Cixi’s shoes, and so conducted a petition campaign pleading for Cixi to act as the emperor’s ‘Guardian’ for a few more years. He put pressure on his son to go down on his knees and beg the empress dowager not to retire. Cixi encouraged the campaign by having the Grand Council draft petitions for officials. One, singing her praises, proclaimed that she had ‘brought the country into a brand new and glorious phase unprecedented in its long history’ – an assessment that Grand Tutor Weng, who was most anxious that his pupil should take his rightful place, found ‘inappropriate’. As always, Cixi considered every angle and anticipated the concern of some petitioners that, by calling for her to delay the handover, they might annoy the emperor: she let it be known that the emperor himself had begged on his knees for her to stay.

  Eventually Cixi announced that she would ‘continue to act as the Guardian for a few more years’. Earl Li was overjoyed. Prince Chun wrote: ‘My heart, which has been in my mouth for days, has now returned to its proper place. This is really good fortune for all in the empire.’ Earl Li commented: ‘How extremely true.’ Grand Tutor Weng was not pleased, but, as a seasoned courtier, he made no protest. When the empress dowager asked him whether his pupil was really ready to take over, he replied that, as the emperor’s tutor, he could not boast that His Majesty had left no space for improvement; and that even if he had, ‘the interests of the dynasty override all’.

  Emperor Guangxu was disappointed. After being forced to perform the sham ‘begging’, he was unwell for days – ‘under the weather, with a cold and a headache’, Weng recorded. The emperor suspended the lessons, and when he next saw his tutor, he appeared so depressed that the old man, struggling to cheer him up, burst into tears. The normally placid young man became emotional. His tutor encouraged him to speak his mind to the empress dowager. But he did not. Of all the virtues extolled by Confucius, filial piety was foremost.fn1 The concept had been drilled into the young man partly through ritual: every day, so long as they were staying in the same place, he never failed to go to his Royal Father to bid her ‘good morning’ and ‘goodnight’. He had to remind himself constantly ‘not to be disrespectful’, but his heart grew bitter. As his mind was no longer on his studies, the previously joyful tutor now began to lament his pupil’s lack of concentration.

  An introverted man, Emperor Guangxu brooded. His health deteriorated, and every few days he would take some sort of medicinal stew. He wrote later that it was from this time that he ‘felt permanently cold around his ankles and knees, and would catch cold from the slightest draught’ or if he was ‘not tucked in extremely tightly at night’. His voice dropped to the level of a whisper and was unintelligible to officials in the occasional audiences he gave. Even his handwriting evinced signs of feebleness – the brush strokes trailing shakily, the characters dwindling to half their usual size, as if he were too weak to hold his brush.

  Cixi was well aware of her adopted son’s condition. She asked Grand Tutor Weng to persuade him to settle back into his studies, tearfully defending her delayed handover as doing her ‘duty to the ancestors’. But the only remedy for his malaise was for her to release power, which she was unwilling to do.

  Emperor Guangxu turned sixteen in summer 1887. This was the age at which Cixi’s own deceased son was married, his wedding preparations having started when he was thirteen. Cixi had delayed her adopted son’s marriage because it would signal his coming of age, after which she could hardly remain in charge. But the marriage could not be delayed indefinitely, and the nationwide selection of his consorts had to begin. The process took a long time and, one day in 1888, Emperor Guangxu exploded in frustration. He refused to go to a scheduled lesson and in tremendous agitation smashed the glass on a window. (The emperor was known to have a bad temper, and once, recorded his tutor Weng, ‘in a fury he had three eunuchs from the Tea Department thrashed harshly, one of them to the verge of death, all for trifles’.) Now his anger towards his Papa Dearest could no longer be contained. Cixi was taken aback. Two days after this outburst, she announced that the wedding would take place at the beginning of the following year. Soon there was another decree declaring that she would retire immediately after the wedding – whereupon her adopted son issued his own decree dictating arrangements for her retirement ceremony, leaving no chance for anyone to int
ervene. Within days of these announcements, Cixi moved out of the Forbidden City into the Sea Palace, which was to be her retirement home. The paint in her new quarters was still wet, and she had to stay in a temporary apartment.

  As the empress dowager, Cixi was entitled to help decide who should be her adopted son’s wife. She wanted an empress who was totally obedient to her. After going through the obligatory selection process, she made clear her choice: a daughter of her brother, Duke Guixiang.fn2 She had always liked the girl, and had ‘reserved’ her as the empress for some years. Longyu was meek and good-natured, with beautiful manners. But she was very plain – a defect that was not compensated for by wit. And, being three years older than the emperor, she was twenty-one at the time of their marriage, well over the normal age for a royal bride. Even in the average family she would be considered an old maid. When Grand Tutor Weng recorded the choice of consorts, he omitted the new empress’s age, mentioning only the ages of the two concubines, Pearl, twelve, and Jade, fourteen.

  Emperor Guangxu disliked his empress – and liked her father still less. Duke Guixiang was a figure of scorn. He was an opium smoker, even though his sister, the empress dowager, detested the drug. Considered hopelessly incompetent, he never held any post of substance. As he had squandered much of his wealth, Cixi felt obliged to subsidise his family, not by giving him money, which might well go directly to the opium seller, but by giving him gifts from time to time. When the eunuchs came with a porcelain vase or a cloisonné jewellery box from the empress dowager, they expected handsome tips, which the duke had to raise by pawning some of his belongings. The eunuchs would time their arrival to give the family the opportunity to visit the pawn shop, and meanwhile would hang around the duke’s house offering greetings to all members of the household, as well as paying endless compliments over tea to the duchess, who could not resist flattery. After receiving their tips, the eunuchs would lewdly ridicule the duchess among themselves. She and the duke were not the parents-in-law an emperor could feel proud of.