Quote:
Originally Posted by sun surfer
First Cixi is presented as having almost total control after her husband's (he was her husband too, yes?) death and the coup, ruling with the empress and the red ink stamps that they used to make decisions for the young future emperor.
Then, out of nowhere, in I think it was chapter 7, there is I think it was a grand council who seem just as strong if not stronger than her, allowing her favourite eunuch (and possibly her lover) to be executed after he was arrested for leaving palace grounds.
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This sounds like good careful reading.
This whole time the Qing Dynasty was dying. Chang certainly mentions this, as in statements about how the court would never be the same after the Boxer rebellion.
How much to focus on the life, and how much on the times, has to be a dilemma for any biographer. It seems to me Chang heavily puts the focus on the life of Cixi. But it's not like there is some standard reliable account of who was really in charge at every moment, and it is being hidden from us.
If you haven't finished you might not want to read this yet, but here is the one most simultaneously scholarly and negative review I found:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...76477589,d.cWc
I think reviewer Pamela Crossley is right that Chang pushes her Cixi-the-powerful thesis quite hard. But, as far as I can tell, Crossley's alternative story -- essentially, that Cixi was controlled by the
Beiyand Army -- is far from proven. And I didn't like the sneering tone of Crossley's review.