Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

by Chang, Jung

  She also paid a heavy personal price. Cixi was a devout believer in the sanctity of the final resting place, but her own tomb ended up being desecrated. The leaders of the first few Republican administrations, starting with General Yuan (who died in 1916), observed the agreed terms of the abdication and protected the Qing mausoleums. In 1927, the more radical Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, drove these men out and established a new regime. A year later, and twenty years after Cixi’s death, an unruly army unit broke into Cixi’s tomb to plunder the jewels that were known to have been buried with her. Using dynamite, officers and men blasted a breach in the wall and, with bayonets and iron bars, forced open the lid of her coffin. After seizing the jewels around her, they tore off her clothes and pulled out her teeth, in search of any possible hidden treasure. Her corpse was left exposed.

  When Puyi, the last emperor, heard about the sacrilege, he was devastated, as he later described. Now in his twenties, Puyi had been summarily expelled from the Forbidden City in 1924 (which had been a breach of the abdication agreement) and had since been living in Tianjin. He sent members of the former royal family to rebury Cixi’s remains, and protested to the Chiang government. As the robbery became a national scandal, there was an investigation, but it petered out and no one was punished – thanks, it seemed, to handsome bribes all round. When Puyi heard a widely believed rumour that the pearl in Cixi’s mouth had been plucked out and used to decorate Mme Chaing’s shoe, he became filled with bitter hatred. The outrage cemented his resolve to throw in his lot with the Japanese, who made him the Emperor of Manchukuo, the puppet state set up in Manchuria, which they occupied in 1931. Japan then invaded China proper in 1937.

  Cixi had struggled to thwart Japan’s attempts to turn China into part of its East Asian empire, and had murdered her adopted son to prevent it. Ironically, if she had delivered China to Japan, it is almost certain that her last resting place – and her remains – would have been respected.

  Chiang Kai-shek, a true heir to Cixi, fought Japan throughout the Second World War. The Japanese devastation of Chiang’s state paved the way for Mao to seize power in 1949, although the pivotal role in his rise was played by Stalin, Mao’s sponsor and mentor. While post-war Japan metamorphosed into a flourishing democracy, China was plunged into an unprecedented abyss by Mao’s twenty-seven-year rule, which swallowed the lives of well over seventy million people in peacetime – until his death in 1976 put a stop to his atrocities. For his misrule Mao offered not a word of apology, unlike Cixi, who publicly expressed remorse for the damage she had done – which, though grave, was a fraction of what Mao inflicted on the nation. Pearl Buck, the Nobel Prize-winner for literature, who was born in 1892 and grew up in China when Cixi was in power, and who then lived under, or observed, the subsequent regimes, described in the 1950s ‘how the Chinese whom I knew in my childhood felt about her’: ‘Her people loved her – not all her people, for the revolutionary, the impatient, hated her heartily . . . But the peasants and the small-town people revered her.’ When they heard she was dead, villagers felt ‘frightened’: ‘“Who will care for us now?” they cried.’ Pearl Buck concluded, ‘This, perhaps, is the final judgment of a ruler.’

  The past hundred years have been most unfair to Cixi, who has been deemed either tyrannical and vicious or hopelessly incompetent – or both. Few of her achievements have been recognised and, when they are, the credit is invariably given to the men serving her. This is largely due to a basic handicap: that she was a woman and could only rule in the name of her sons – so her precise role has been little known. In the absence of clear knowledge, rumours have abounded and lies have been invented and believed. As Pearl Buck observed, those who hated her were simply ‘more articulate than those who loved her’. The political forces that have dominated China since soon after her death have also deliberately reviled her and blacked out her accomplishments – in order to claim that they have saved the country from the mess she left behind.

  In terms of groundbreaking achievements, political sincerity and personal courage, Empress Dowager Cixi set a standard that has barely been matched. She brought in modernity to replace decrepitude, poverty, savagery and absolute power, and she introduced hitherto untasted humaneness, open-mindness and freedom. And she had a conscience. Looking back over the many horrific decades after Cixi’s demise, one cannot but admire this amazing stateswoman, flawed though she was.

  Cixi was a devout Buddhist and revered Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy. In 1903, she dressed as Guanyin to have photographs taken; here with the two eunuchs closest to her, Lianying (to her left) and Cui (to her right), in the costumes of characters associated with the Goddess.

  Old Beijing streets. Visible in the foreground are mule-carts, taxis of the time. It was one of these that bore Cixi to the Forbidden City in 1852 to be inspected by Emperor Xianfeng, who chose her as one of his concubines.

  A caravan of camels passing in front of a Beijing city gate. It was said that some five thousand camels came into Beijing every day.

  When Emperor Xianfeng died in 1861, Cixi’s five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. She launched a coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China. She is carried to the regular morning audience, surrounded by eunuchs in richly-coloured robes. Cui, front left; Lianying, front right.

  THE EMPRESS DOWAGER’S MEN

  Prince Chun, who was married to Cixi’s sister.

  Prince Gong, Cixi’s right-hand man and adviser.

  Viceroy Zhang Zhidong, major supporter of Cixi and renowned moderniser.

  Li Hongzhang (Earl Li), the most important reformer to serve Cixi. In Britain in 1896, with Lord Salisbury, British Prime Minister (on the left), and Lord Curzon (on the right).

  General Yuan Shikai, later first President of the Republic of China.

  Junglu (front centre), a fierce devotee of Cixi, entertaining Western female visitors.

  CIXI’S WESTERN FRIENDS

  Anson Burlingame, President Lincoln’s first Minister to China (1861—7), and afterwards China’s first Ambassador to Western countries. Standing in the middle of his delegation, he is flanked by his two (seated) Chinese deputies, Zhigang and Sun Jiagu, and the two secretaries of the mission, one British, one French (seated).

  Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Gordon (‘Chinese Gordon’), who helped defeat the Taiping Rebellion. This victory paved the way for the Cixi era.

  Sir Robert Hart, with his Western band of Chinese musicians. He was Inspector General of Chinese Maritime Customs for the entire period of Cixi’s political life.

  Sarah Conger (in dark dress), wife of the US Minister to China (1898-1905), holding hands with Cixi with other ladies of the American Legation.

  A painting by Cixi.

  Cixi learned to write characters as big as this (panel size 211 cm x 102 cm) in one single stroke. This was considered extraordinary, especially as she was small and elderly. This character reads shou, meaning ‘longevity’.

  Horse and calligraphy by Emperor Xianfeng when he was sixteen.

  A court painter’s rendering of Cixi playing Go with a eunuch.

  A photographic portrait Cixi sent to US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, thanking him for his good wishes for her seventieth birthday. Her face had been airbrushed in the photograph.

  Emperor Xianfeng, a standard portrait of a monarch produced after his death. Xianfeng died in 1860 in self-imposed exile, partly because the Old Summer Palace had been burned down by the British.

  From that palace, ‘Lootie’, a Pekinese, was taken to Britain and presented to Queen Victoria, who had it painted.

  Cixi’s son, who would become Emperor Tongzhi, playing with his half-sister.

  Emperor Guangxu who, upon Tongzhi’s death in 1875, was put on the throne by Cixi when he was three.

  Zhen, Empress to Xianfeng, and lifelong friend of Cixi.

  The harem, at the rear of the Forbidden City. Cixi found its high walls and closed-in alleys ‘depressin
g’.

  The front and main part of the Forbidden City, vast and grand - and out of bounds for women. Cixi never set foot in it, even when she was the supreme ruler of China.

  As a woman, Cixi was not supposed to see her officials, who were all male. So, during audiences, she would sit behind the throne and the yellow silk screen. The child emperor was sometimes seated on the throne in front.

  The Summer Palace, which Cixi loved passionately, by a foreign artist.

  Portrait of Cixi by the American painter Katharine Carl, for the St Louis Exposition in 1904.

  Katharine Carl, in Chinese costume selected – possibly designed – by Cixi.

  In snow in winter 1903-4. Slightly in the background is Cixi’s close adviser, Louisa Pierson, half-American, half-Chinese, whose two daughters, Der Ling and Rongling, are on either side of Cixi.

  Louisa Pierson (seated), her husband, Yu Keng (far right), China’s minister to France, their two daughters and son Hsingling (far left), here in a Paris restaurant entertaining Prince Zaizhen (seated in the middle), who had just attended the coronation of King Edward VII in London in 1902.

  Rongling, their daughter, studied dancing in Paris and has become known as ‘the First Lady of modern dancing in China’.

  Hsingling dressed as Napoleon at a fancy dress ball given by his parents to celebrate Chinese New Year in 1901.

  A high class courtesan with a strong resemblance to Prettier Than Golden Flower, consort to Cixi’s minister to Berlin in the mid-1880s.

  As part of Cixi’s modernisation programme, in the 1870s groups of young teenagers were sent to America to receive a comprehensive education.

  In 1889, Emperor Guangxu took over the running of the empire whereupon Cixi retired. Here, Guangxu’s favourite concubine, Pearl.

  Grand Tutor Weng, a father figure to him.

  Guangxu detested his empress, whom Cixi (centre, in cape) had picked. Empress Longyu (second from left), was stooped and looked a pitiful figure in the court. Far left: Cui, the eunuch; and far right: Louisa Pierson.

  CIXI’S FOES

  Sir Yinhuan, Emperor Guangxu’s confidant and possibly Tokyo’s biggest agent. He helped Kang Youwei to gain influence over Guangxu. Kang plotted to kill Cixi.

  Kang Youwei.

  Liang Qichao, Kang’s main disciple.

  Former Japanese Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi, featured on a modern banknote, was the architect of Japan’s war against China in 1894.

  The xenophobic Boxers, who created mayhem in north China in 1900. Western powers invaded and Cixi was driven out of Beijing.

  The Allied forces entered the Forbidden City.

  Cixi returned to Beijing at the beginning of 1902, travelling the last leg by train, with the imperial locomotive provided by the Allies. A foreigner on the city wall snapped a picture of her (above) as she turned to wave at them, a handkerchief in hand.

  The imperial locomotive.

  Girls with bound feet. One of Cixi’s first decrees upon her return to Beijing was to outlaw foot-binding.

  Convicts in the cangues. The legal reforms started by Cixi abolished medieval forms of punishment like this - and ‘death by a thousand cuts’.

  Putting a flower in her Manchu-style coiffure. Cixi took great care of her appearance. She designed her clothes and jewellery and supervised the making of cosmetics such as rouge, perfume and soap. In the background, apples from her orchard were on display for their subtle fragrance.

  The only photo in which Cixi is smiling. She actually liked laughing, but would switch off her smiles and assume a serious air when she went to work — or faced the camera.

  On a barge on the lake of the Sea Palace, amidst lotus flowers. With court ladies and eunuchs. Louisa Pierson far right; fifth from right Imperial Concubine Jade, Pearl’s sister. All had to stand in Cixi’s presence, who alone was sitting.

  Wearing opera costumes. Cixi was passionate about music, and helped make Peking Opera the national opera of China.

  Leading the first group of court ladies to the American Legation for dinner in 1902 was Cixi’s adopted daughter, the Imperial Princess, acting as her representative. Seated in the middle, with Sarah Conger next to her.

  The courtyard outside the dining-room of the Congers. In the summer, the open-air court and the whole building were covered by a giant ‘mosquito net’, made of reed matting by ingenious eunuchs. Sarah Conger wrote: ‘The air is fresh, and the beautiful trees, potted plants, shrubs, many flowers, and delightful guests make the day truly a happy one.’

  Cixi among four young, good-looking eunuchs, Lady-in-waiting Der Ling to the side. Such physical intimacy was bound to lead to sexual desires in her younger years. In fact she fell in love with a eunuch, An Dehai, when she was in her early thirties. He was beheaded in 1869, and she suffered a breakdown.

  On her deathbed in 1908, Cixi made her two-year-old great-nephew, Puyi (standing), the next emperor, and his father, Zaifeng (seated holding Puyi’s brother), the Regent.

  Sun Yat-sen (centre), known as the ‘Father’ of Republican China, had tried repeatedly to overthrow the Manchu dynasty by military means.

  Cixi’s funeral. Brooke Astor, American philanthropist, was a child in Beijing and watched the procession with her family from the city wall: ‘All day it passed beneath us through the gate. There were Buddhist and Taoist priests in white robes and Buddhist lamas in yellow with red sashes. There were endless bands of eunuchs dressed in white, who tossed paper money in the air (for the Empress’s use on her way to heaven) ... There were twenty-four white camels, with yellow brocade tents on their backs ... and a whole company of white ponies ... there were papier-mache replicas of all the Empress’s palaces ... All this passed accompanied by the cries of the mourners, who tore their hair and beat their chests to the clashing of cymbals.’ The colossal palanquin was covered with yellow brocade embroidered with phoenixes. When it passed by, all Westerners rose and took off their hats.

  The Eastern Mausoleums of the Qing monarchs outside Beijing, where Cixi was buried with her husband and her son. In 1928, an unruly Republican army unit broke into her tomb to plunder the jewels that were buried with her. Her corpse was left exposed.

  Notes

  The page references in these notes correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created.

  Chapter 1 Concubine to an Emperor (1835–56)

  Page

  3 ‘the woman of the Nala family’: First Historical Archives of China (ed.) 1998, vol. 4, no. 164; Wang Daocheng 1984, p. 213; Yu Bingkun et al., p. 56; footnote: Professor Wang argued convincingly that Lan was not Cixi’s maiden name: Wang Daocheng 1984, pp. 216–18. Also: Yehenala Genzheng & Hao Xiaohui 2007, p. 13

  5 Cixi’s family: Wang Daocheng 1984, pp. 195–208; Huizheng: Yu Bingkun et al., pp. 7–43

  6 Manchu translated into Chinese: Weng Tonghe 2006, vol. 1, p. 148; Jin Liang 1998, p. 161; Daoguang against extravagance: Xin Xiuming, p. 1; Forbidden City Publishing House (ed.), p. 39; the state coffer incident: Yu Bingkun et al., pp. 13–31; Yehenala Genzheng & Hao Xiaohui 2007, pp. 17–18

  8 ‘Limping Dragon’: Xin Xiuming, p. 2; consort selection: Wang Daocheng 1984; Yu Bingkun et al.; Shan Shiyuan 1990, pp. 1–23; Wang Shuqing, 1980, no. 1; Li Guorong, pp. 216–19; Maugham mused: Maugham, p. 2

  9 ‘After ten hours’: Freeman-Mitford, pp. 151–2

  10 ‘a high nose’: Carl, p. 19

  11 ‘I don’t know why’: Xin Xiuming, p. 14

  12 For food: Wang Shuqing, 1983, no. 3; Wang Daocheng 1984; Xianfeng sex life: Wang Daocheng 1984, p. 196; Mao Haijian 2006, p. 148; cf. Forbidden City Publishing (ed.), pp. 22–3; Li Guorong, pp. 260–1; Tang Yinian, pp. 23–4; footnote: Jin Liang 1933, p. 27

  13 Xianfeng wept: Mao Haijian 2006, p. 75

  14 Imperial Apology: Qing History Institute, Renmin University (ed.), vol. 9, p. 69; silver reserve etc.: Archives of Ming and Qing Dynasties (ed.) 1979, vol. 1, pp. 1–80; Mao Haijian 2006, p. 106; admonitions: Palace Museum (ed.) 2002, vol. 10, p. 2
76; her father: Yu Bingkun et al., pp. 14–22

  15 ‘crafty’: Woqiu Zhongzi, p. 2; ‘exterminated’: Yun Yuding, vol. 2, p. 782; Empress Zhen mediated: Xue Fucheng 1983, p. 25; ‘Younger Sister’: Xin Xiuming, p. 10; named Yi: First Historical Archives of China (ed.) 1998, vol. 4, no. 164; Ding Ruqin, p. 229