[issybird]

This book was very much a mixed bag for me. It was an engaging and entertaining read, it covered a broad sweep of Chinese history about which I knew nothing, and the details of court life in imperial China were riveting. I’m also amenable to the notion that powerful women suffer in the accounts of contemporary chroniclers and historians and also that in this particular case, an anti-Manchu backlash contributed to the anathematization of Cixi.

That said, Chang still lost me. Part of this was her fangirlish style. It didn’t read like serious history, but more like a high school theme with all the passion and blindness to alternative theories that implies. Ultimately, it was just silly. In overselling her case, she undermined it. Given the popular impression of Cixi endorsed by many historians, she needed to examine the evidence against her case. Instead, she was fond of sweeping judgments such as, “This was wrong.” Evidence, please? Making a character like Kang both the villain and responsible for much of the popular perception of Cixi only made him a proto-Cixi. Nuance is a concept seemingly foreign to Chang.

Worse, and this was a point made in the review linked to by bfisher which I didn’t read until after I had made up my own mind, is that Chang’s assigning all the responsibility for sweeping changes in China, industrial and economic and social, to Cixi’s farsightedness and abilities is flatly ridiculous. Again, I know nothing about Chinese history, but I know enough about economic development to know it just doesn’t happen that way, and especially in a country as large and populous as China. This read like the Book of Genesis, Cixi issuing various dicta from on high and they just happened. She was clearly an adept at palace intrigue, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to managing the intricate webs of national commerce and development. Knowing nothing about the specifics of Chinese development, I still don’t buy it. If it were so, Chang needed to provide supporting material and perhaps spend a little less time on fingernails and jewels, although then the book wouldn’t have been as juicy.

Some of the book was unintentionally amusing, as Chang tried to avoid her own entanglements. I loved how it was ok because Cixi didn’t steal a lot of money from the Navy, only a little. And there was no way, given her biases, that Chang could make sense of Cixi’s agency in the Boxer Rebellion.

All of this is not to say I didn’t enjoy the book or think it worth reading, it just caused frequent huge eye-rolls.

As an aside, because I didn’t want to fall too far behind, I ended up listening to the audiobook and the narration by Jolene Kim was dreadful. Mispronunciations, errors that she corrected rather than rerecording the muffed bit, and worst of all, pacing that made frequent pauses where there was no punctuation. Unfortunately it’s the only version I see available from Audible and OverDrive in the US; obviously sun surfer had a better experience.

Finally, I’d like to bring up an issue for possible discussion. I imply no criticism of the book as a choice; I can’t, since not only had I already bought it, I voted for it. But my judgment after reading it is that the book doesn’t qualify as literary biography. It clearly falls into the “popular” category for me.

Litfic is relatively easy to judge (although reasonable people may disagree, obviously); I just apply the Justice Potter Stewart litmus test. (For non-Americans, that’s “I know it when I see it.”) But for nonfiction, while seemingly less literary on the face of it, I think it’s easier to define qualifications. For me, non-fiction can be deemed literary because of writing style, the scholarship, ground-breaking theory or methodology. Obviously Chang’s intent was to be ground-breaking, but I think she needed to support her interpretation better than she did. My overall impression was that the book was an interesting and fun read and that I learned a fair amount from it, but that the treatment ultimately was cheesy and it didn’t make the cut as a literary work, for me.