Literary Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang

[Bookworm_Girl]

What an interesting comparison to Game of Thrones! I just finished watching Season 4 a few days ago. I googled "martin cersei inspiration cixi" and apparently many people have similar thoughts.

[sun surfer]

Originally Posted by Bookworm_Girl

What an interesting comparison to Game of Thrones! I just finished watching Season 4 a few days ago. I googled "martin cersei inspiration cixi" and apparently many people have similar thoughts.

Thanks! I've read all the books over the last year or two and watch the series. I don't think I would've noticed the comparison if I hadn't listened to the audiobook because I would've never guessed that Cixi was pronounced like that, but listening I hear the name over and over so it's hard to miss.

[ccowie]

I must say that I too am really enjoying this book. I'm woefully ignorant of the history of the region so I'm appreciating all that I'm learning. I found some of the simple descriptions of the opium wars, precipitating factors and fallout really helpful. The author really doesn't get too bogged down in unnecessary historical detail or include a hundred characters I can't keep track of.

I also find the Cersai connection to be an interesting one. I wouldn't have thought of that, but I can see a lot of character similarities.

I just finished the lengthy description of her scheme to ensure a daily supply of human breast milk for her tea - and so soon after reading The Grapes of Wrath! I think I'll take a break for a day and pick up a mystery novel.

[Bookpossum]

Well, I finished it last night - spurred on by the approaching deadline for returning it to the library.

I enjoyed the book and found it very interesting. Cixi was certainly an impressive woman, particularly considering the society in which she lived, with all its rules and protocols, and the position of women in that society. She was of course flawed - aren't we all? - and I thought that Jung Chang was perhaps prepared to cut Cixi a bit more slack than I would over things such as poisoning the Emperor so he didn't outlive her, having his favourite concubine thrown down a well to get rid of her, having someone executed by bastinado, and so on. However, she did mention these actions rather than omitting them from the narrative. I agree with her that Cixi was not the monster she has been portrayed to be.

Cixi was smart and could see the advantages that other nations had over China in terms of education, industrialisation, constitutional monarchy and so on. But although she had started setting things in train to move to a constitutional monarchy, she wouldn't ride in a car because the chauffeur wasn't able to drive while kneeling, and needed to sit with his back to her, which she found totally unacceptable. Would she really have coped with a change to mere respect rather than grovelling submission?

The book was obviously well researched and well written, but I don't think Jung Chang is in the same class as Han Suyin.

[SteveEisenberg]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

. . . I thought that Jung Chang was perhaps prepared to cut Cixi a bit more slack than I would over things such as poisoning the Emperor so he didn't outlive her, having his favourite concubine thrown down a well to get rid of her, having someone executed by bastinado, and so on.

The thesis of this good book is that Cixi was a strong reformist dictator.

Once you accept that she did have lots of real power -- and, as far as I can tell, it's a plausible interpretation -- the problem is how you balance the dictator part against the reformer part. This is a problem not just with writing a biography of Cixi, but also for anyone writing about Mao successor Deng Xiaoping, or Chiang Ching-kuo (son and successor of bad dictator Chiang kai-Shek), or Singapore strongman Lee Kuan Yew.

In a way, by pushing the Cixi-was-powerful thesis to the max, Chang leads us to cut Cixi less slack.

If we want to give her some measure of forgiveness, the fact that she effectively grew up in the middle ages, with its famed violent tenor of life, is a reason.

[Bookpossum]

Yes, I agree - she was moving from a very medieval society to something approaching modernity, and facing huge opposition from those who benefitted under the old system. It would be very hard to change completely.

[desertblues]

I have started rereading this very interesting book. Interesting in matters political, but is also gives a view into the workings of the Chinese court. For example; can anyone imagine ‘nationwide selections for imperial consorts’ these days? But in those days being a concubine brought some economic security for the woman who was chosen as one.
What follows for this 16-year old girl, which is chosen as one of the many concubines for the emperor, is that she is the one who will determine for a great part the political future of China. I keep thinking that her lineage has something to contribute to it as ‘ She came from one of the oldest and most illustrious Manchu families’.
Though the book has only 373 pages (without the notes), it is a though but exciting read. Jung Chang has managed to write a riveting story about the life of a concubine who came out of the anonymity, about the intrigues within the Chinese imperial court, the domestic policy, and the foreign policy, in particular with England after the two opium wars.

[bfisher]

My initial impression was that Jung Chang's presentation of Cixi was uncritical. However, as she began to describe actions of Cixi that were unflattering, it made her book more credible.

While she did have significant power, it appears to have been more power of influence or persuasion, not absolute power. I was struck by Jung Chang's observation that she would never enter the Forbidden Palace by the front gate - that she was very aware that there were limits on what she could do.

It would be interesting to compare Cixi's career with that of others in somewhat similiar circumstances, like Catherine the Great, Marie de' Medici or Isabella of France. I have Robert Massie's biography of Catherine on my TBR; I'm planning on moving that up on my reading queue.

[ccowie]

Originally Posted by bfisher

While she did have significant power, it appears to have been more power of influence or persuasion, not absolute power.

Yes, I agree with this. Because of this she can't fairly be compared with a lot of other "dictators". What I found so fascinating about her was that she consistently needed to manipulate and maneuver herself into a position of sufficient power to ensure her will would be prevail. She wasn't always in a position of legitimate authority where she could simply vision reform and give orders carte blanche. I'm impressed that she was able to accomplish as much as she did.

[bfisher]

Yes, it must have been exasperating to have a clear idea of what needed to be done, but see her advice ignored or opposed.

[sun surfer]

Along the same lines, one aspect of the book so far has confused me, not knowing much about the intricacies of the Chinese ruling systems and so forth.

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.

Did I miss part of the text? Did I accidentally skip a chapter where the book explained this council? Because the tone shift seemed jarring to me, from the book making out as if Cixi had all the power to all of the sudden there's this group of men whom she had to be very careful of.

I know there was the council of men who were supposed to rule until her son became emperor that she and the empress overthrew, but unless I missed a pertinent explanation, another council being formed that had that much power wasn't mentioned until chapter 7. Perhaps her forming a new council after the coup was mentioned, but if so, it was related as if they didn't have any real power and definitely didn't have any power over her; as if she ruled over them instead and they could only manage the mundane bureaucracy and must have everything approved by her.

It doesn't make sense. If she ruled with the red ink stamps, then how were the others able to have her eunuch lover executed? Couldn't she have just made a decree with the stamp?

[bfisher]

Cixi never ruled in her own right, but as a regent for the titular Emperor. Therefore, lacking legitimacy, her power was limited to decreeing what was acceptable to most of the grandees. As long as she was proposing things that would maintain or strengthen the existing power structure, the grandees as a group would have been prepared to go along with her. When she sent her eunuch favorite An Dehai on the silk procurement trip, it was unnecessary, as there was an existing system for doing that; she wasn't trying to resolve a crisis. Worse, she sent a eunuch out as the head of an official mission, which scandalized the grandees, even those who usually supported Cixi.

Executing An Dehai offended nobody but Cixi, and would have pleased almost everyone else in China.

At the same time, since her son has 13, and would normally be expected to assume power at 14. Cixi would have been seen as a lame-duck regent, so anyone who contemplated do something that might offend Cixi may not have worried about retribution from Cixi.

[SteveEisenberg]

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.

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.

[Bookpossum]

Thanks for the link to the Crossley review, Steve. Interesting to read her viewpoint.

[SteveEisenberg]

Here's another, much more positive, review by a historian who knows the era:

http://www.chinafile.com/surprising-empress

My feeling is that the overall picture is probably sound.

Some of the incidents where Cixi comes out worst (alleged ordering of Consort Zhen to be thrown into the well, and of the Guangxu Emperor to be poisoned), I found least convincing.