Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

by Chang, Jung

  Prince Su was to promote a Japanese takeover of China as fanatically as his daughter would. For now, though, he lay low. In 1903, Cixi was warned about his true colours. The revelation came from Qing Kuan, a court painter (whose panoramic depiction of the Summer Palace and Emperor Guangxu’s wedding are today among China’s national treasures). Fiercely devoted to Cixi, the painter had been instrumental in the capture of the assassin Shen Jin. Afterwards he had written to Cixi confidentially to say that the arrest had only been possible because it was kept secret from those closest to Prince Su. Cixi confronted the prince, who was reduced to mumbling, unconvincingly, in his own defence. She removed him from his post as Chief of Police, on the pretext that his duties had become too onerous, and had him closely watched. He told a liaison man from Wild Fox Kang that even his favourite concubine was working for Cixi and that he felt as though he was permanently ‘sitting on a blanket of needles’.

  With the prince now under surveillance, Cixi reappointed him, in June 1907, as head of the newly established Ministry of Public Services, under which the police force came. This move was a smokescreen for the benefit of Tokyo: as she was clearing Officer Cen and others out of the court, she wanted to avoid giving the Japanese the impression that the expulsions were connected with them. Meanwhile she ensured that the police force was firmly in the hands of the prince’s deputy, a man she trusted.

  Still, the capital’s fire brigade was the responsibility of the prince’s ministry. He told Clerk Wang Zhao, a member of the 1898 conspiracy, who had been released from prison in Cixi’s amnesty: ‘I have armed the fire brigade and drilled it like an army. When the time of drastic change comes, I will use it to storm the palaces on the pretext of putting out a fire, and the emperor will be restored to the throne.’ Wang Zhao totally agreed: ‘The moment we get hold of the information that the Empress Dowager is ill and bed-ridden, Your Highness can take the fire brigade into the Sea Palace to secure the emperor, sweep him into the grandest hall in the Forbidden City and place him on the throne. Then the grandees can be summoned to take orders from him. Who would dare to disobey?’fn8

  The Summer Palace was too far away from the city for Prince Su’s fire brigade to reach it. So, it seems, another scheme was devised for it. The Japanese government offered the empress dowager a present: a steamer, to be tailor-made for the Kunming Lake. This was a gift Cixi could not refuse. So Japanese engineers were let into the Summer Palace, where they made a full-scale survey of the lake, together with the canal that linked it to the city, noting down exactly how deep and wide the waters were and how best to manoeuvre in them. They inspected her other boats, to make sure theirs was superior. The steamer was manufactured in Japan and shipped over to the Summer Palace to be assembled in its dock – by more than sixty Japanese technicians, who took to walking around the grounds, peering at the villas. Finally, at the end of May 1908, the steamer was presented to the empress dowager, complete with its own Japanese crew. She was requested to name it, which she did: Yong-he, Forever Peace. The dedication ceremony took place in the Summer Palace and was attended by officials from both countries – but no Cixi, or Emperor Guangxu. Only eventually did the last Japanese engineers and crew leave. There is no record of Cixi ever setting foot on the ‘gift’.

  A Grand Council secretary expressed dismay in his diary at the time. ‘The security of the imperial residences is a grave matter,’ he wrote, ‘and even the average officials cannot enter the grounds. And yet these foreigners are wandering round day and night. This does not seem right. I have also heard that the Japanese are often drinking and yelling. I wonder what will happen if they barge into forbidden places by force.’ It was impossible for Cixi not to share the secretary’s misgivings. The steamer (which actually resembled a warship in appearance) was like a Trojan Horse within her palace grounds and could be used to reach Emperor Guangxu, whose villa was right on the waterfront.

  The Trojan Horse entered the Summer Palace just as Cixi was becoming ill. For a while her strong constitution had sustained her, and on a visit to the country’s first modern experimental farm in May, she walked several kilometres, while Emperor Guangxu was carried in a chair by two bearers. But from the beginning of July she really had to struggle to carry on with her work, as she felt feverish and dizzy all the time, with a metallic ringing in the ears.

  Worrying news also crashed in on Cixi from her Manchurian Viceroy about problems at the border with Korea, now in Japanese hands. The Japanese were building ferry points on the Korean side and laid a railway line up to the river bank. They had even been constructing a bridge, which had reached the middle of the river before they were forced to dismantle it as a result of fierce protests from Beijing. As all this was taking place, the Japanese minister to Beijing presented a diplomatic note, threatening that their force would cross the border to strike an anti-Japanese Korean gang that was making trouble for them. It seems that Tokyo could use any excuse to send in troops – as backup for what might be happening in the palaces.

  On 18 July, Japan’s legendary military-intelligence gatherer, Lieutenant-General Fukushima Yasumasa, arrived in China and went straight to Hunan province to visit Officer Cen, whom Cixi had appointed provincial governor. Perhaps prompted by a sense of foreboding, Cixi told General Yuan and Viceroy Zhang to inspect the confiscated files containing the correspondence of Wild Fox Kang and his associates. It was an order unusual enough for a Grand Council secretary to note it in his diary with surprise. Cixi normally took care to avoid doing things that were likely to incriminate those who had connections with her political foes; now she seemed to feel the need to find out whether there were other as-yet-unexposed Officer Cens.

  It was in the middle of this nerve-racking tension that Emperor Guangxu’s thirty-seventh birthday was celebrated on 24 July. Cixi chose an opera to be performed for the occasion – and it was about the death of a king, Liu Bei, in AD 223. Cixi, who loved this particular opera, had had all the costumes and props made in the colour of mourning: white. On the stage the cast wore white brocade, with the dragon pattern on the king’s robe embroidered in stark black thread. The armour and banners were also brilliantly white. As a rule, the colour white was taboo on an imperial birthday: courtiers would not even wear robes with sleeves that showed white linings – to avoid bad luck. But Cixi was begging for her adopted son to have bad luck. Only his death could halt the Japanese machinations to use him as their puppet.

  * * *

  fn1 It is often claimed that Mr Shen was executed because he was an outspoken journalist. In fact, there is no sign that he wrote anything for any newspaper or other publication. His role in journalism was restricted to obtaining a document that has been referred to as the ‘Sino-Russian Secret Treaty’, which was then published in Japanese newspapers. This was actually a list of demands made by Russia to Beijing in the aftermath of the Boxer mayhem, in exchange for withdrawing troops from Manchuria. Beijing never accepted the demands, and there was no treaty, ‘secret’ or otherwise. (The only treaty had been in 1896.) The Japanese wanted this document to stoke anti-Russian fervour. Even so, passing this document to the Japanese was not the cause of Mr Shen’s execution. His ‘crime’ was his role in the armed rebellion of 1900. Cixi wanted him dead urgently because she knew he was in Beijing to try to kill her again.

  fn2 Der Ling went on to describe the scene more fully: head eunuch Lianying advised that the chair-bearer must be seen to be punished, as this was the rule. ‘After saying this, he turned his head to the beaters (these beaters, carrying bamboo sticks, went everywhere with the Court, for such occasions as this) and said: “Give him eighty blows on his back.” This poor victim, who was kneeling on the muddy ground, heard the order. The beaters took him about a hundred yards away from us, pushed him down and started to do their duty. It did not take very long to give the eighty blows and, much to my surprise, this man got up, after receiving the punishment, as if nothing had happened to him. He looked just as calm as could be.’ Clearly, the beaters jus
t went through the motions, knowing that the empress dowager was not angry with him. Eunuchs who made mistakes punishable by thrashing were not always so lucky. Many took to wearing rubber mats around their backsides, just in case.

  fn3 The italics and square brackets in the Kaiser’s comments are in the original quotes. The journalist also wrote that during the interview, ‘His Majesty’s face flushed and he lifted his arm, his fist clinched [clenched] in air [sic]. Between set teeth with his face close to mine, he exclaimed . . .’

  fn4 Just over three decades later, with its wings fully fledged, Japan launched a surprise strike on the US base in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, before invading the Philippines.

  fn5 General Yuan was flamboyant as well as formidable. His guards, selected for their size, wore leopardskin-patterned uniforms, and looked like ‘tigers and bears’, commented gawking onlookers.

  fn6 Junglu died in 1903.

  fn7 Puyi’s story is immortalised in Bernardo Bertolucci’s film, The Last Emperor.

  fn8 Wang Zhao tried to persuade Prince Su to act straight away, but the prince was cautious and wanted to wait for the right moment. He said: ‘The rules of our dynasty are especially strict concerning us princes. We can’t enter the palaces without being summoned. One foot wrong and I am a dead man.’ As Wang Zhao urged him to take the plunge, he countered: ‘This is not something that risk-taking can achieve. Look what taking risks got you, straight into the prison of the Ministry of Punishments. What use was that?’

  31 Deaths (1908)

  AT THIS TIME Emperor Guangxu was in fact gravely ill, and doctors from the provinces were summoned to Beijing. In notes to his doctors, His Majesty complained that he was hearing noises, ‘sometimes distant wind and rain and human voices and drum beating, other times cicadas chirping and silk being torn. There is not a moment of peace.’ He described ‘great pains from the waist down’, difficulty in lifting his arms to wash his face, deafness and ‘shivering from cold even under four quilts’. He berated his doctors for not curing him or making him feel better. But he hung on tenaciously to life.

  The emperor had acquired a little more freedom since the court’s return from exile, and had resumed the most important duty: visiting the Temple of Heaven on the winter solstice and praying for Heaven’s blessing on the harvests in the coming year. Since he had first been imprisoned, this ritual had been performed in his stead by princes, and Cixi had been frightened of Heaven’s wrath. Now, confident that the guards and officials would obey her rather than the emperor, she finally allowed him out of the palace grounds without her.

  Yet she still lived in constant dread that he might be spirited away, and was always vigilant, especially when there were foreign visitors. On one occasion Cixi spoke to a group of foreign guests and one of them later recalled:

  The Emperor, probably becoming weary of a conversation in which he had no part, quietly withdrew by a side entrance to the theatre which was playing at the time. For some moments the Empress Dowager did not notice his absence, but the instant she discovered he was gone, a look of anxiety overspread her features, and she turned to the head eunuch, Li Lienying [Lee Lianying], and in an authoritative tone asked: ‘Where is the Emperor?’ There was a scurry among the eunuchs, and they were sent hither and thither to inquire. After a few moments they returned, saying that he was in the theatre. The look of anxiety passed from her face as a cloud passes from before the sun – and several of the eunuchs remained at the theatre.

  It seems that Emperor Guangxu did make several attempts to get away. One day he walked towards a gate of the Sea Palace, before eunuchs dragged him back by his long queue. On another occasion a Grand Council secretary saw him outside their office, tilting his head to the sky as if praying, before heading for a gate out of the Forbidden City. His way was instantly barred by a dozen or more eunuchs.

  It was forbidden to visit him in his villa, and only a trusted few had conversations with him. When Louisa Pierson first joined the court, her young teenage daughter, Rongling, used to chat with him when they bumped into each other. One day, the eunuch who was always at the emperor’s side came to her room and showed her a watch. A character in crimson ink was written on its glass surface. The eunuch told the girl that His Majesty wanted to know where the man with this surname was. Having grown up abroad, Rongling could hardly read Chinese and did not recognise the character. The eunuch grinned, ‘You don’t know this? It’s Kang.’ It dawned on her that it referred to Wild Fox Kang, whose name even she knew was unmentionable in the court. Scared, she said that she really did not know where Kang was and that perhaps she should go and ask her mother. At this, the eunuch told her to forget the whole thing. Given that the eunuchs around Emperor Guangxu had all been selected by Cixi with the utmost care, it seems unlikely that the character ‘Kang’ had really been written by the emperor. More likely, Cixi was testing the girl, whose chats with the emperor had doubtless been reported to her, and she needed to be sure that Rongling was not being used as a messenger between the Wild Fox and Emperor Guangxu.

  From summer 1908, Cixi began to suffer from diarrhoea, which depleted her. She carried on with her mountainous workload, only occasionally delaying her morning audience until nine o’clock. Most of the decrees she issued in this period were to do with creating a constitutional monarchy. She endorsed the draft constitution, authorised the Election Regulations and specified the nine-year time frame for establishing the parliament.

  She also concentrated her declining energy on an upcoming visit of the thirteenth Dalai Lama. The Qing empire had incorporated Tibet into its territory in the eighteenth century. Since then, Tibet had been running its own affairs while accepting Beijing’s authority. An Imperial Commissioner was stationed in Lhasa acting as the link, and Beijing rubber-stamped all Lhasa’s decisions. On this basis, in 1877, Cixi (in the name of Emperor Guangxu) had approved the Tibetan Regent’s identification of the child Thubten Gyatso as the reincarnated thirteenth Dalai Lama. Her subsequent edicts had endorsed the educational programme drawn up for the child, whose teachers were all Tibetans. There was nothing Han or Manchu on the curriculum. The Tibetans were cooperative with her, and she left them completely alone. She was, however, always well informed: since the telegraph came to China, the Imperial Commissioner in Lhasa had been equipped to conduct cable communications with Beijing.

  In 1903–4, a British military expedition, led by Major Francis Younghusband, invaded Tibet from British India. The Tibetans fought the invaders and suffered heavy casualties. The Dalai Lama fled, and Younghusband pressed on to Lhasa. There he signed a treaty with the remaining Tibetan administration before withdrawing. The treaty imposed a war indemnity of £500,000, and required Tibet to open more centres for trade. It went on: ‘As security for the payment of the above-mentioned indemnity and for the fulfilment of the provisions relative to trade marts . . . the British Government shall continue to occupy the Chumbi Valley . . .’ It told the Tibetans to ‘raze all forts and fortifications and remove all armaments which might impede the course of free communication between the British frontier and the towns of Gyangtse and Lhasa’. Tibet could not make any foreign-policy decision ‘without the previous consent of the British Government’.

  When the Qing Imperial Commissioner cabled her the terms of the treaty, Cixi saw that her empire’s ‘sovereignty’ over Tibet was in jeopardy. In an edict on 3 October 1904, she announced: ‘Tibet has belonged to our dynasty for 200 years. This is a vast area rich in resources, which has always been coveted by foreigners. Recently, British troops entered it and coerced the Tibetans to sign a treaty. This is a most sinister development, and . . . we must prevent further damage and salvage the present situation.’ She dispatched representatives to India to negotiate with the British and to establish the principle that Britain had to deal with Beijing over Tibet. ‘No concession over sovereignty,’ Cixi instructed her negotiators.

  Britain agreed to renegotiate with Cixi’s representatives. It signed a treaty with Beijing in April 1906
, which basically (though not unambiguously) recognised Tibet as part of the Chinese empire.

  Cixi held a strong card: the fleeing thirteenth Dalai Lama. A good-looking man in his late twenties, wearing a monk’s habit, he travelled northeast, finally arriving at Urga, now Ulan Bator, capital of Outer Mongolia and, at that time, part of the Qing empire. The Dalai Lama was the spiritual leader of the Mongols as well as the Tibetans. Cixi immediately dispatched officials to attend him and ordered local officials to look after him. She also cabled her sympathies for his arduous journey. She urged him to return to Lhasa as soon as the British were gone and to run Tibet as before.

  The thirteenth Dalai Lama did not return for some time, but asked to go to Beijing and meet the empress dowager. During his absence a Han official, Chang Yintang, was running Tibet (though not as Imperial Commissioner – a post traditionally specified not to be given to a Han). Yintang attempted to implement ‘reforms’, with the intention of making Tibet more like a Han province. Having been in India negotiating with the British, and having seen how they ran things there, he advised Beijing to adopt the British method: to send in a sizeable army, make the Imperial Commissioner a ‘governor-general’, appoint the administration and treat the Dalai Lama and Panchen Lama like the Indian maharajas, taking away their political power and paying them off handsomely. Cixi did not endorse Yintang. After receiving reports that his plans were hugely unpopular among the Tibetans, she transferred him to another post, effectively aborting his programme. It seems she understood that the Tibetans’ desire to be left alone was non-negotiable, and came to the conclusion that only by respecting it could she keep Tibet in the empire. Her approach was registered by the Dalai Lama, who regarded it as his best option, and so repeatedly asked to see her – in order to nail down an agreement. Eventually Cixi issued the invitation, and on 28 September 1908 the thirteenth Dalai Lama arrived in the capital.