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floer009's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
tense
slow-paced
4.0
Very interesting, well researched and unexpected. A fascinating person.
aiyaivy's review against another edition
4.0
This was such a fascinating read and it provided so much historical context to a lot of events I already was aware about
Quotes
- In the court registry, she was entered simply as 'the woman of the Nala family', with no name of her own. Female names were deemed too insignificant to be recorded. In fewer than ten years, however, this girl, whose name may have been lost for ever, had fought her way to become the ruler of China, and for decades - until her death in 1908 - would hold in her hands the fate of nearly one-third of the world's population.
-In 1644, the Ming dynasty in China was overthrown by a peasant rebellion, and the last Ming emperor hanged himself from a tree in the back garden of his palace.
(Ivy commentary - Jing Shan!!!!! I have seen the said tree)
-The ruling family, the Aisin-Gioros, produced a succession of able and hard-working emperors, who were absolute monarchs and made all important decisions personally.
-The Chinese language is extremely hard to learn. It is the only major linguistic system in the world that does not have an alphabet; and it is composed of numerous complicated characters - ideograms -which have to be memorised one by one and, moreover, are totally unrelated to sounds.
-[About the Old Summer Palace] When the sun was in the right place a rainbow appeared in the waterfall, matching the sharp arch of a bridge that dropped from the top of the waterfall down to the pond. To gaze at the rainbow and listen to the water music in a dainty pavilion perched on the bridge was a favourite pastime of the court. In this pleasure palace, grandeur was of no concern - beauty was everything. Priceless art and treasures that had been accumulated for more than 100 years filled every cranny.
-An elderly imperial concubine, who did not flee with the court, had died of fright when the allies arrived. Her dogs, five Pekinese, were brought to Britain and became the origin of the Pekinese breed outside China.
-The little dog caused a little frisson at Windsor. The housekeeper, Mrs. Henderson, wrote to her superior, 'It is very dainty about its food and won't generally take bread and milk - but it will eat boiled rice with a little chicken and gravy mixed up in it and this is considered the best food for it.' Her superior seemed somewhat annoyed and scribbled on the back of another, similar letter, 'A Chinese dog that insists on chicken in its dietary!'
-Sushun had been the only man on the Board who had some idea of Cixi's intelligence, and he had wanted her killed. But having no inkling of her ambition and ability, he had allowed the others to persuade him to abandon his plan. On the way to the execution ground he howled with regret that he had underestimated 'this mere woman.'
-Poverty drove their parents to have them castrated as young children, hoping they would earn a better living at court. Usually the father would take the boy to a specialist castrator, who operated by the appointment of the court. After a contract was signed, absolving the castrator from any responsibility in case of death or failure (both highly likely outcomes), the unimaginably painful operation was performed. The castrator's fee was huge and had to be paid from future earnings. If the boy's rank stayed low, it could take him years to clear the debt. In order to save money, fathers would sometimes castrate their own sons.
Eunuchs were regarded with visceral disgust by most other men. Emperor Kangxi, who ruled for sixty-one years, called them 'the lowest and basest, more worms and ants than men.' Qianlong the Magnificent said that 'no one is smaller or lower than these stupid peasants', and that 'the court is extravagantly generous to allow them to serve here at all'. They lived like virtual prisoners in the palaces from which they were rarely allowed out. The punishments to which they were subject did not have to follow the Qing legal procedure: all it needed to have a eunuch beaten to death was the emperor's whim. Ordinary folk sneered at them for the most common problem they suffered: incontinence, the result of castration, which became worse as they grew older and for which they had to wear nappies all the year round. Eunuchs were universally despised for having lost their manhood. Few men showed them compassion or considered that they had been driven to their wretched condition by desperate poverty. Pity and affection were usually felt only by the court women who lived in their company.
-No Qing emperor had ever sent a eunuch out of the capital on an errand. But all Cixi could think of was how excited Little An would be. He would get out of the Forbidden City, out of Beijing, and travel down the Grand Canal that linked north and south China. He could even celebrate his forthcoming birthday on the boat. Cixi would have loved the journey herself. She disliked the Forbidden City intensely, seeing it as a 'depressing' place with only walled-in courtyards and alleys.
-[About Miss Alute] According to some eunuchs, when her husband expired, her father had a food box delivered to her, and when she opened it and found it empty, she knew that he was telling her to starve herself to death. She did as told, and was hugely admired for being a worthy daughter to her father. She died seventy days after her husband, on 27 March.
-Then Cixi named the new emperor: Zaitian, the three-year-old son of her sister and Prince Chun.
Prince Chun was in the room, and the announcement, far from delighting him, sent him into a terrified frenzy. Kneeling in front of the throne, he fell into convulsions, howling and knocking his head on the ground until he passed out - a heap of court gown and underclothing. The boy was his only son at the time, and was treasured by him and his wife almost with desperation, not least because their previous son had died. It seemed that he was losing his only son for ever. Cixi, looking utterly unmoved, ordered that the prince be taken out of the hall. According to an eye-witness, 'he lay in a corner, with no one paying him any attention. It was a wretched and desolate scene.'
-She was a giant, but not a saint.
-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.
-She brought in modernity to replace decrepitude, poverty, savagery and absolute power, and she introduced hitherto untasted humaneness, open-mindedness, and freedom. And she had a conscience. Looking back over many horrific decades after Cixi's demise, one cannot but admire this amazing stateswoman, flawed though she was.
Quotes
- In the court registry, she was entered simply as 'the woman of the Nala family', with no name of her own. Female names were deemed too insignificant to be recorded. In fewer than ten years, however, this girl, whose name may have been lost for ever, had fought her way to become the ruler of China, and for decades - until her death in 1908 - would hold in her hands the fate of nearly one-third of the world's population.
-In 1644, the Ming dynasty in China was overthrown by a peasant rebellion, and the last Ming emperor hanged himself from a tree in the back garden of his palace.
(Ivy commentary - Jing Shan!!!!! I have seen the said tree)
-The ruling family, the Aisin-Gioros, produced a succession of able and hard-working emperors, who were absolute monarchs and made all important decisions personally.
-The Chinese language is extremely hard to learn. It is the only major linguistic system in the world that does not have an alphabet; and it is composed of numerous complicated characters - ideograms -which have to be memorised one by one and, moreover, are totally unrelated to sounds.
-[About the Old Summer Palace] When the sun was in the right place a rainbow appeared in the waterfall, matching the sharp arch of a bridge that dropped from the top of the waterfall down to the pond. To gaze at the rainbow and listen to the water music in a dainty pavilion perched on the bridge was a favourite pastime of the court. In this pleasure palace, grandeur was of no concern - beauty was everything. Priceless art and treasures that had been accumulated for more than 100 years filled every cranny.
-An elderly imperial concubine, who did not flee with the court, had died of fright when the allies arrived. Her dogs, five Pekinese, were brought to Britain and became the origin of the Pekinese breed outside China.
-The little dog caused a little frisson at Windsor. The housekeeper, Mrs. Henderson, wrote to her superior, 'It is very dainty about its food and won't generally take bread and milk - but it will eat boiled rice with a little chicken and gravy mixed up in it and this is considered the best food for it.' Her superior seemed somewhat annoyed and scribbled on the back of another, similar letter, 'A Chinese dog that insists on chicken in its dietary!'
-Sushun had been the only man on the Board who had some idea of Cixi's intelligence, and he had wanted her killed. But having no inkling of her ambition and ability, he had allowed the others to persuade him to abandon his plan. On the way to the execution ground he howled with regret that he had underestimated 'this mere woman.'
-Poverty drove their parents to have them castrated as young children, hoping they would earn a better living at court. Usually the father would take the boy to a specialist castrator, who operated by the appointment of the court. After a contract was signed, absolving the castrator from any responsibility in case of death or failure (both highly likely outcomes), the unimaginably painful operation was performed. The castrator's fee was huge and had to be paid from future earnings. If the boy's rank stayed low, it could take him years to clear the debt. In order to save money, fathers would sometimes castrate their own sons.
Eunuchs were regarded with visceral disgust by most other men. Emperor Kangxi, who ruled for sixty-one years, called them 'the lowest and basest, more worms and ants than men.' Qianlong the Magnificent said that 'no one is smaller or lower than these stupid peasants', and that 'the court is extravagantly generous to allow them to serve here at all'. They lived like virtual prisoners in the palaces from which they were rarely allowed out. The punishments to which they were subject did not have to follow the Qing legal procedure: all it needed to have a eunuch beaten to death was the emperor's whim. Ordinary folk sneered at them for the most common problem they suffered: incontinence, the result of castration, which became worse as they grew older and for which they had to wear nappies all the year round. Eunuchs were universally despised for having lost their manhood. Few men showed them compassion or considered that they had been driven to their wretched condition by desperate poverty. Pity and affection were usually felt only by the court women who lived in their company.
-No Qing emperor had ever sent a eunuch out of the capital on an errand. But all Cixi could think of was how excited Little An would be. He would get out of the Forbidden City, out of Beijing, and travel down the Grand Canal that linked north and south China. He could even celebrate his forthcoming birthday on the boat. Cixi would have loved the journey herself. She disliked the Forbidden City intensely, seeing it as a 'depressing' place with only walled-in courtyards and alleys.
-[About Miss Alute] According to some eunuchs, when her husband expired, her father had a food box delivered to her, and when she opened it and found it empty, she knew that he was telling her to starve herself to death. She did as told, and was hugely admired for being a worthy daughter to her father. She died seventy days after her husband, on 27 March.
-Then Cixi named the new emperor: Zaitian, the three-year-old son of her sister and Prince Chun.
Prince Chun was in the room, and the announcement, far from delighting him, sent him into a terrified frenzy. Kneeling in front of the throne, he fell into convulsions, howling and knocking his head on the ground until he passed out - a heap of court gown and underclothing. The boy was his only son at the time, and was treasured by him and his wife almost with desperation, not least because their previous son had died. It seemed that he was losing his only son for ever. Cixi, looking utterly unmoved, ordered that the prince be taken out of the hall. According to an eye-witness, 'he lay in a corner, with no one paying him any attention. It was a wretched and desolate scene.'
-She was a giant, but not a saint.
-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.
-She brought in modernity to replace decrepitude, poverty, savagery and absolute power, and she introduced hitherto untasted humaneness, open-mindedness, and freedom. And she had a conscience. Looking back over many horrific decades after Cixi's demise, one cannot but admire this amazing stateswoman, flawed though she was.
buffyb's review against another edition
3.0
This was a tough slog at points. I realise that we need to know background info on what was happening during her life, but sometimes we veered so far away from her for long periods of time that it seemed like the book wasn't about her. I prefer biographies that are much closer to the subject. I want to feel as though I'm getting to know the person the book is about. I didn't get that from this book. She seemed like an interesting person but this book didn't capture that for me.
yanners's review against another edition
3.0
China history never fails to strike me as bad reality TV on steroids. But then again, China imperial families are a whole other breed. No matter how luxurious their lives look there’s always like 1001 nefarious plots to assassinate or force them to abdicate so they have to spend their lives twiddling their thumbs and like spying on people and sending more spies to spy on their original spies.
Introducing (ahem)…Papa Dearest, our shining star—Empress Dowager Cixi
All may bow to the ultimate mastermind who despite entering court as a humble imperial concubine rose the ranks to become important enough for the history books to record her existence!! She’s bitter and will make sure you’re punished if you cross her path (such as taking away your toddler to become the heir apparent and forcing him to effectively marry his cousin) but at the same time she’s the old grandma downstairs who’ve been through like a lifetime worth of modernisation and can perhaps be credited for like half of where China is because she saw how much it sucked having one underserving and corruptible family decide where the country was headed and put her foot down.
At the end of the day, all you need to know is that this is a story about how important it is to keep a diary because Grand Tutor Weng was like hard carrying this book and actually has the time and commitment to record everything. Side note it’s also about Wild Fox Kang and how sucking up to people in power can get you to places. Lots of places.
Bottom line: we love Cixi even though she’s orchestrated the murder of dozens of people (love conquers all baby)
3.5 stars
Introducing (ahem)…Papa Dearest, our shining star—Empress Dowager Cixi
All may bow to the ultimate mastermind who despite entering court as a humble imperial concubine rose the ranks to become important enough for the history books to record her existence!! She’s bitter and will make sure you’re punished if you cross her path (such as taking away your toddler to become the heir apparent and forcing him to effectively marry his cousin) but at the same time she’s the old grandma downstairs who’ve been through like a lifetime worth of modernisation and can perhaps be credited for like half of where China is because she saw how much it sucked having one underserving and corruptible family decide where the country was headed and put her foot down.
At the end of the day, all you need to know is that this is a story about how important it is to keep a diary because Grand Tutor Weng was like hard carrying this book and actually has the time and commitment to record everything. Side note it’s also about Wild Fox Kang and how sucking up to people in power can get you to places. Lots of places.
Bottom line: we love Cixi even though she’s orchestrated the murder of dozens of people (love conquers all baby)
3.5 stars