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mkesten's review against another edition
4.0
This kaleidoscopic tour through 19th century China and the life of Empress Dowager Cixi (which I pronounce as Empress Suzi) once again gives us a great appreciation for what we have today compared to what peasants in medieval China — and the rest of the world — had to expect from life.
No indoor plumbing. No indoor heat. Floods. Famine. Competing empires. Little of anything we’d call an education.
It is no wonder contemporary Chinese look back on their history with not a little distain and resentment for how the West treated them during the period of denial when the “Western devils” encroached on their idyllic Confucian society.
It was a brutal existence. Bound feet for the women. Patriarchal society. Domination of the Han Chinese by the Manchu. Filthy streets. Corruption rampant.
The British injected a steady stream of poisonous opium into this society and then objected when the Chinese dumped their precious commodity into the bay of Canton. Sound familiar, you Americans out there?
When the Qing Emperor died and left his young son in command, the boy’s mother —- the concubine Empress — and the legit empress established a regency with her in control. She reigned on and off for 47 years.
Jung Chang contends that Cixi opened the trade door wide and tried to Westernize and modernize China going so far as to plant the seeds for a constitutional monarchy.
She brought in trains, modern schools, new military technology, and a modern appreciation for science.
Along with Western trade came Christian missionaries and a new religious dogma. It brought turmoil, unruly mobs, and catastrophic social unrest including the Taipeng Rebellion and later the Boxer Rebellion.
Foreign governments took over large territories in China. Foreign troops ruined national monuments.
China has lifted herself up after a century after Cixi’s regency. Hundreds of millions have moved to cities and modern conveniences. Illiteracy has declined dramatically. And there is a huge middle class.
While its streets are no longer cesspools of filth, though, today Beijing’s air is foul and toxic. The country’s biggest rivers are polluted, and mining tailings pollute large swaths of the countryside.
Its population has quadrupled, and its goverment is a Leninist clique.
Modernization has come at a steep price. And not just China’s modernization.
No indoor plumbing. No indoor heat. Floods. Famine. Competing empires. Little of anything we’d call an education.
It is no wonder contemporary Chinese look back on their history with not a little distain and resentment for how the West treated them during the period of denial when the “Western devils” encroached on their idyllic Confucian society.
It was a brutal existence. Bound feet for the women. Patriarchal society. Domination of the Han Chinese by the Manchu. Filthy streets. Corruption rampant.
The British injected a steady stream of poisonous opium into this society and then objected when the Chinese dumped their precious commodity into the bay of Canton. Sound familiar, you Americans out there?
When the Qing Emperor died and left his young son in command, the boy’s mother —- the concubine Empress — and the legit empress established a regency with her in control. She reigned on and off for 47 years.
Jung Chang contends that Cixi opened the trade door wide and tried to Westernize and modernize China going so far as to plant the seeds for a constitutional monarchy.
She brought in trains, modern schools, new military technology, and a modern appreciation for science.
Along with Western trade came Christian missionaries and a new religious dogma. It brought turmoil, unruly mobs, and catastrophic social unrest including the Taipeng Rebellion and later the Boxer Rebellion.
Foreign governments took over large territories in China. Foreign troops ruined national monuments.
China has lifted herself up after a century after Cixi’s regency. Hundreds of millions have moved to cities and modern conveniences. Illiteracy has declined dramatically. And there is a huge middle class.
While its streets are no longer cesspools of filth, though, today Beijing’s air is foul and toxic. The country’s biggest rivers are polluted, and mining tailings pollute large swaths of the countryside.
Its population has quadrupled, and its goverment is a Leninist clique.
Modernization has come at a steep price. And not just China’s modernization.
awesomejen2's review against another edition
5.0
I have to say I don't normally read purely historical nonfiction books because typically they are too dry for me but this was the exception. I knew absolutely nothing about Empress Cixi, picked up this book purely on the recommendation of a podcaster and I am so glad I did. Empress Cixi was such a dynamic person and there were multiple times where I just went "Woah, she is a bada** motherf**ker". This woman was unbelievable! She did such much for China and it was disheartening to learn how she was mispresented by her enemies for such a long time. She truly deserves a lot of credit for being the driving force in modernizing China. This was a great educational read and I highly recommend it.
mxcoyote's review against another edition
2.0
I've seen documentaries and fictional re-imaginings about Empress Dowager Cixi. I don't believe my expectations were too high, but I was not blown away by this.
plaidpladd's review against another edition
4.0
This was a very interesting read, both because Cixi is a complex and singular historical figure and because I learned a lot about the setting and time period. Exhaustively researched, I really appreciated how the author engaged with other scholarship and historical narratives on the topic too.
siria's review against another edition
3.0
Jung Chang's biography of the Empress Cixi is a fascinating look at a period of history about which I know very little. As I'm not familiar with the existing historiography, I don't know to what extent exactly this is a revisionist biography—certainly, if Chang's characterisation of previous historical works on Cixi is true, then this is a swing of the pendulum in the other direction. Chang presents a picture of a woman who was not without her faults, who could be ruthless if necessary, and who was firmly rooted in a traditionalist and monarchist worldview, but who was also a reformer and a moderniser. Chang bases this, she claims, in large part on Chinese-language sources which have been largely disregarded by Chinese scholars and inaccessible to Anglophone ones.
I think there's much to consider here, and Chang is good at unpicking the ways in which gender shaped both how Cixi had to present herself and the ways in which both her contemporaries and later scholars have viewed her. However even I could see that there was special pleading in operation here. Telling me that Cixi rarely used torture or execution as a political tool when diplomacy and tact would do instead is one thing—but you cannot then gloss over in a couple of lines the fact that Cixi ordered that her adoptive son be poisoned when she was on her own deathbed, or his favourite concubine thrown down a well because there wasn't enough room for her in their entourage when fleeing Beijing!
Empress Dowager Cixi really reads like the first salvo in a broader reassessment of Cixi's life—Chang has probably been too laudatory here, but I think this biography should lead to further study and reassessment.
(To nitpick as a historian, I really disliked the citation style—why do publishers seem to think that a popular audience will faint away if footnotes are used? I also really, really wish that people would stop using the word 'medieval' as a synonym for 'barbaric.')
I think there's much to consider here, and Chang is good at unpicking the ways in which gender shaped both how Cixi had to present herself and the ways in which both her contemporaries and later scholars have viewed her. However even I could see that there was special pleading in operation here. Telling me that Cixi rarely used torture or execution as a political tool when diplomacy and tact would do instead is one thing—but you cannot then gloss over in a couple of lines the fact that Cixi ordered that her adoptive son be poisoned when she was on her own deathbed, or his favourite concubine thrown down a well because there wasn't enough room for her in their entourage when fleeing Beijing!
Empress Dowager Cixi really reads like the first salvo in a broader reassessment of Cixi's life—Chang has probably been too laudatory here, but I think this biography should lead to further study and reassessment.
(To nitpick as a historian, I really disliked the citation style—why do publishers seem to think that a popular audience will faint away if footnotes are used? I also really, really wish that people would stop using the word 'medieval' as a synonym for 'barbaric.')