Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

by Chang, Jung

  Cixi kept the petition to herself, and issued no such decree.

  The Boxer mayhem under Cixi appalled and alienated all her old kindred spirits, especially Earl Li and Viceroy Zhang Zhidong. They wrote to rebuke her: ‘If you continue to indulge yourself in this wilful manner and are only concerned to vent your anger, you will ruin our country. Into what deeper abyss will you plunge it before you are satisfied?’ They pointed out that she was doing the Boxers no favours: ‘Such huge numbers of them have been killed, and their corpses litter the fields . . . One can’t help pitying them for their stupidity.’ Besides, north China was by now reduced to ‘a land of desolation’ by the drought as well as by the Boxers: it was about time she paid some attention to the lives of her people.

  The Viceroys across the country cabled each other daily, plainly agreeing that they would ‘definitely not obey’ her decrees. For the first time in her rule, most of the regional magnates, crucial to the vast empire, had apparently lost faith in Cixi. She had never been so friendless. When she launched her palace coup at the age of twenty-five; when she arbitrarily picked a three-year-old to place on the throne; when she ruled for decades without a mandate; and even when she made a prisoner of the emperor – at all those times they had always backed her. Now she was alone.

  Isolation did not frighten her. A determined Cixi charged on single-handedly, gambling that she might find a way to deal with foreign invasions. But she had no wish to drag in the whole empire, and positively encouraged the Viceroys to stay out of her gamble. She told them that they must preserve their own territory and act in a ‘totally realistic’ way. It was with Cixi’s implicit consent that the most important Viceroys, led by Earl Li and Viceroy Zhang, signed a pact of ‘neutrality’ with the powers, which ensured peace in most of China, especially the south, restricting fighting to the area between the Dagu Forts and Beijing. Most provinces were spared Boxer-style violence.

  As the Allies pressed closer to Beijing, Cixi was forced to sue for peace. She asked Earl Li, still in Canton, to come to the capital to be her negotiator, offering him as an inducement the job he wanted: to be Viceroy of Zhili. Having previously been eager to go the earl was now reluctant. He knew that surrender was the only option, but that the empress dowager was not ready to accept it and was hoping for better terms. Indeed, she was preparing to fight on even when the powers reached the walls of Beijing, moving in ammunition and troops for its defence. The earl went north only as far as Shanghai, where he paused, claiming to be sick. Meanwhile, Viceroy Zhang collected a long list of signatures, including six of the nine Viceroys of the empire, plus a number of governors and generals, asking Cixi to allow the earl to negotiate with the powers in Shanghai. Rarely had a petition been signed by so many powerful regional figures.

  Cixi was convinced that without her direct supervision the outcome of the negotiation would not be acceptable, and she vetoed the proposal. Then she fired a warning shot at the petitioners, aiming particularly at Viceroy Zhang, their ringleader. On 28 July, she ordered the execution of two men who were closely connected to him. One of them, Yuan Chang, a senior official in the Foreign Office, was known as the Viceroy’s eyes and ears in Beijing. (The Viceroy had a sizeable information-gathering network in the capital, which Cixi was willing to condone.) The other man, Xu Jingcheng, had been China’s minister to Berlin at the time when Germany was preparing to grab Qingdao. Documents from German archives have now revealed that he advised the German government, ‘hinting – extremely secretly of course’ – that the ‘threat of military force’ was the only way to get Beijing to hand over territory, and that Germany should ‘simply go and occupy a harbour that suits it’. The Kaiser acted on his advice and abandoned the original plan for a less aggressive approach. The Kaiser told the German Chancellor, Prince Hohenlohe, that ‘it is really shameful that we need a Chinese Minister to tell us stupid Germans how to act in China in our own interest’. Minister Jingcheng may well have been tormented by his conscience, for on the execution ground he appeared to welcome death: ‘tidying up his hat and robe carefully, and then going down on his knees facing the north [direction of the throne], he put his forehead on the ground and expressed gratitude to the throne. There was not a look of grievance or complaint on his face.’

  It seems that Cixi had got wind of Minister Jingcheng’s treachery. The imperial decree announcing the executions charged the men with ‘harbouring private agenda when dealing with foreigners’. Being vague about a charge that involved a foreign power was Cixi’s style.

  Viceroy Zhang understood that these executions were intended as warnings to him. He had indeed been plotting with foreign powers, especially Britain and Japan, which thought highly of him. He was famously a man of probity who preferred coarse cotton to fine furs and silks for his wardrobe, who invariably declined gifts and accumulated no personal wealth. When he died, there was not enough money in his family to pay for an appropriate funeral. His passions were nature and cats – of which he kept dozens and which he looked after himself. Westerners who dealt with him regarded him as being ‘exceedingly honest and devoted to the welfare of his people’, ‘a true patriot’. He was one of the few officials the Japanese regarded as incorruptible and really respected. Former Prime Minister Itō said that the Viceroy was ‘the only man’ who could handle the monumental task of China’s reforms; and the British considered him the most desirable man with whom to do business. Disappointed with Cixi, and thinking that once she was driven out of Beijing her government would collapse – a view shared by many – the Viceroy contemplated supplanting her. His representative in Tokyo, whose official job was to oversee the students from his viceroyalty, said to his Japanese contact that ‘If the throne is forced to leave Beijing (probably to Xian) and the Qing empire is without a government’, the Viceroy ‘will be ready to step forward and form a new government in Nanjing together with two or three other Viceroys’. The same message was given to the British. To prepare for this eventuality, the Viceroy asked the Japanese to supply him with officers and arms. Cixi may not have known the exact details of these machinations, but she had her spies – and powerful instincts.

  Giving notice to the Viceroys not to deal covertly with foreign powers, Cixi fought her war to the end. After a strategic defeat that exposed Beijing, her commander at the front shot himself. In his place she appointed Governor Li Bingheng, the man who had stopped Cixi from squeezing the population for the restoration of the Old Summer Palace – only to be promoted – and who had then been sacked under pressure from the Germans, as he was determined to resist their occupation. Loathing the invaders with all his heart, he vowed to Cixi that he would fight to his last breath; but he found the war a lost cause. The army had been thoroughly routed, and the soldiers ‘simply fled without putting up any fight, blocking the roads in their tens of thousands. Wherever they passed, they plundered and torched the villages and towns,’ Governor Bingheng reported to Cixi – before committing suicide.

  On the day of his death, 11 August, all Cixi’s hopes were finally extinguished: Beijing would be occupied by the powers in a matter of days. Three more high officials were executed, charged with being ‘traitors’. One of them was her then Lord Chamberlain, Lishan, with whom she had been very close. Cixi believed that there were ‘quite a few traitors’ selling secrets to foreigners. Eunuchs remembered her muttering that ‘there must be spies in the palace, otherwise how is it that whatever decision we make here is instantly known outside?’ Her suspicion of Lishan may well have originated in 1898, when he had gone to great lengths to prevent a raid that she had ordered on Sir Yinhuan’s house – a raid that could have found evidence of Yinhuan’s liaison with the Japanese. But the executions were more to do with the present moment: Cixi wanted to stop senior officials from collaborating with the victorious Allies who were about to enter Beijing.

  Finally Cixi’s mind turned to flight. She enquired about transport, and learned that 200 carriages and horses had been on standby, but that they had been sn
atched by retreating troops, and it was now impossible to buy or hire replacements as everyone was running away. The fact that Cixi did not have these 200 lifelines well guarded shows that fleeing had been very far from her thoughts. At the news of the loss of the transport, she sighed, ‘Then we’ll stay.’ And she stayed. It seems that she was prepared to die right there in the Forbidden City. But at the eleventh hour she changed her mind. On the early morning of 15 August, while the Allies were pounding at the gates of the Forbidden City itself, at the urging of a prince Cixi left in a mule-cart that he had brought from his house.

  As there were only a few mule-carts available, most of the court had to be left behind. Cixi took with her Emperor Guangxu, Empress Longyu, the heir-apparent, a dozen or so princes and princesses and grandees, and the emperor’s concubine, Jade. The other concubine, Pearl, who had been living under house arrest for the past two years, presented a problem for Cixi. With transport at a premium, Cixi did not want to make room for her, but neither did she want to leave Emperor Guangxu’s favourite concubine and accomplice behind. She decided to use her prerogative, and ordered Pearl to commit suicide. Pearl declined to obey and, kneeling in front of Cixi, tearfully begged the empress dowager to spare her life. Cixi was in a hurry, and told the eunuchs to push her into a well. As no one stepped forward to do this, she shouted angrily for a young and strongly built eunuch, Cui, to carry out her order at once. Cui dragged Pearl to the edge of the well and threw her into it, as the girl screamed vainly for help.

  * * *

  fn1 Katharine Carl remarked, after staying in the Legation Quarter: ‘When I saw the position of the Legation quarter and especially that of the British Legation, where all the foreigners finally congregated . . . I felt convinced that had there not been some restraining force within their own ranks, the Chinese could have wiped out the foreigners in less than a week. Bad firing on their part could only have averted, for a short space, the inevitable result to the Legations. Had there not been some power that was acting as a check upon the Chinese, no European would have been left to tell the tale; and this restraining force I feel confident came from the Emperor and the Empress Dowager themselves.’

  24 Flight (1900–1)

  HER HAIR TWISTED into a bun, and in an informal blue cotton gown that she often wore at home, Cixi began her flight in a mule-cart. It was the height of summer and the clothes she wore stuck to her wet body. The sweating animals and their load attracted swarms of flies and insects. Soon it began to rain, and although she was not soaked like her unprotected entourage of about 1,000 people, who rode and trudged through the mud, the cart jerked violently, throwing her this way and that. Later someone found a chair borne by two mules, one in front and one at the back, and she had a little more comfort, but the chair still swung around on the bumpy roads. Crossing a flooded river with no bridge, her guards lifted the bottom of her chair. The floods were swift, and she was nearly swept away.

  She was fleeing to the west, into the interior. In front of her lay a wasteland of smouldering villages and towns, pillaged by the Boxers and by the shattered imperial army. Hardly a door or a window was intact and the walls were scarred by bullets. Not an inhabitant was in sight. She was desperately thirsty, but when eunuchs went to draw water from a well, they found human heads floating in it. So she had to chew plant stems for their moisture. No matter how hungry she felt, there was no food. And there was no bed, either. She and the emperor sat throughout the first night on a bench with their backs against each other, staring at the roof. Near dawn, a chill rose from the ground and seemed to penetrate her bones. Famously immune to the cold, the sixty-four-year-old now found it hard to bear – as she would later describe. On the second night, the emperor slept in a mosque, on a prayer mat, with a rattan dustpan and a handleless broom wrapped in a grey chair-cover as his pillow. In the morning, His Majesty rolled up his precious bedding into a bundle, which he clutched to his chest, not trusting it to the eunuchs. Many eunuchs lagged behind and sneaked away: they were unused to long-distance walking on stone-strewn country roads in their cotton-soled shoes, which, soaked in mud, made every step agony for them.

  The emperor, also holding on tight to his pure-gold water pipe, was dressed in a thin silk gown and shivered uncontrollably once the sun set and the temperature plummeted. Lianying, the head eunuch, offered His Majesty his own padded jacket, which he presented on his knees, with tears streaming down his cheeks. Later the emperor would often say that without Lianying he would not have survived the journey, and that he was forever grateful. Thereafter he treated the eunuch as his friend.

  After two nightmarish days and nights, Cixi arrived at a town where the local chief was still in place to greet her. County Chief Woo Yong had received notification of their arrival on a piece of dirty, crumpled paper without an envelope. It gave a long list of the court that he was ordered to provide for – and provide for in style. In keeping with imperial pomp, a Full Banquet of Manchu and Han Dishes (man-han-quan-xi) was to be laid out for the empress dowager and the emperor. After that, a Grade One Feast was to be served to each of the dozen princes and grandees. The note said that the number of officials and servants was unknown, and that he should prepare as much food and horse-feed as possible. This was a tall order in a county town that had been emptied by the Boxers and soldiers. County Chief Woo’s staff had advised him to ignore the piece of paper and to pretend not to have received it – or just to get out of the place, like other officials on the royal route. But Woo was a loyal and kind-hearted subject, so rather than dismissing the demands as ludicrous, he fretted about how best to fulfil them.

  County Chief Woo’s best was pitiful. His cook had gathered some food, but was robbed on his way to the kitchen by soldiers from the retreating army, who simply grabbed the donkey that carried the provisions. When the cook resisted, he was slashed on the right arm. He eventually succeeded in making three woks of mung-bean and millet gruel, but two were wolfed down by starving soldiers, who reluctantly left one for the royals. Woo placed sentries around the remaining wok, ready to open fire on anyone who came close.

  He then tidied up a room in a deserted inn for the empress dowager to rest in, managing to put cushions on the chairs and curtains on the doors, even paintings on the walls and some ornaments on the tables. When she arrived and set eyes on this luxury and on the County Chief prostrating himself on the floor, Cixi burst into tears. Between loud sobs she told Woo that she had never thought things would become as bad as this. After describing the misery of the journey, she brightened up at the news of the mung-bean and millet gruel, and was about to order it brought in when she suddenly remembered the emperor, and told Lianying to take the County Chief to greet His Majesty. Woo saw a shabby man, unshaven and unwashed, wearing an old padded jacket, which hung loosely about him. Emperor Guangxu did not say a word and Woo withdrew to fetch the gruel. It then emerged that he had forgotten chopsticks, so Cixi told the servants to bring some sorghum stems. As Woo retreated outside the room, he heard Their Majesties sucking eagerly at the gruel. After a while Lianying came out and gave an approving thumbs up, saying how pleased the empress dowager was. He also said that ‘the Old Buddha’ longed for an egg. Thereupon Woo searched the town, at last finding five eggs in an empty drawer inside an abandoned store. Having lit a fire and boiled the eggs himself, he served them in a coarse bowl with a few pinches of salt. Lianying carried them in to Cixi and, on his return a few minutes later, smiled to Woo: ‘The Old Buddha loved them. She ate three, and left two to the Master of Ten Thousand Years. No one else got to touch any. This is good news. But now the Old Buddha would love to have a puff of her water pipe. Do you think you could find some spills?’ Woo improvised by rolling up some rough paper on the windowsill. Shortly afterwards, the empress dowager stepped out of the room onto the terrace, parting the curtain on the door herself (a job always done by servants). Lighting the pipe herself as well, she puffed at it and seemed the picture of perfect contentment.

  Looking around h
er, she caught sight of Woo and began to speak to him, which obliged the County Chief to go down on his knees in the muddy yard. She asked him if he could find some clothes for her. Woo said that his wife had died and her clothes were all in Beijing, but he had some clothes that his late mother had left behind, and ‘if the Empress Dowager did not mind their coarseness . . .?’ At this Cixi said, ‘Anything that can keep me warm. By the way, it would be just wonderful if you could also find some clothes for the emperor and the princesses, who brought no changes either.’ Woo went home and opened his late mother’s trunk. He found a wool coat for the empress dowager, a long waistcoat for the emperor and a few robes for the princesses. From his sister-in-law he took a dressing-table set, which had a mirror, a comb and face powder. Wrapping everything into a large bundle, he delivered it to a eunuch. Later on, when the royals came out of their quarters, they were all dressed in his family’s clothes. This was the first time Cixi was seen wearing Han Chinese attire.

  The imperial party stayed in County Chief Woo’s town for two nights. Cixi learned from him that the Boxers had not only wrecked his county, but also came close to killing him during the time they occupied the town. On one occasion, they had seized him and told him they wanted to satisfy themselves that he was not a ‘Secondary Hairy’. The verdict, fortunately in his favour, hinged on whether the ashes from a piece of paper they burned went up or down. On another occasion, a letter from him to a good friend in which he complained about the Boxers had been intercepted, and he only escaped retribution after vehemently denying it was his handwriting. On the most recent occasion, when he was actually trying to get out of the town in order to greet the royal company, the Boxers refused to open the gate, but snorted: ‘They are fleeing and don’t deserve to be on the throne!’ But the mob feared the approaching Praetorian Guards after all, and took to their heels.