A review by ztada
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang

3.0

There is something to be said when an historian/author writes something that goes against what the majority of other historians have written. I was always taught, and have always read Empress Dowager Cixi as the villain of Chinese history. Jung Chang, in fact, portrays her as powerful, but also civil, fair, and as a thoroughly positive modernising force for China. Regardless of whether you whole-heartedly agree with Chang's portrayal of 'The Old Buddha', it does make quite a good read, where history is presented as a story, much like Chang's 'Wild Swans.'