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