Anchee Min
Empress Orchid
The first book in the Empress Orchid series, 2004
My intercourse with Tzu Hsi started in 1902 and continued until her death. I had kept an unusually close record of my secret association with the Empress and others, possessing notes and messages written to me by Her Majesty, but had the misfortune to lose all these manuscripts and papers.
– SIR EDMUND BACKHOUSE,
coauthor of
In 1974, somewhat to Oxford’s embarrassment and to the private dismay of China scholars everywhere, Backhouse was revealed to be a counterfeiter… The con man had been exposed, but his counterfeit material was still bedrock scholarship.
– STERLING SEAGRAVE,
One of the ancient sages of China foretold that “China will be destroyed by a woman.” The prophecy is approaching fulfillment.
– DR. GEORGE ERNEST MORRISON,
London
1892-1912
[Tzu Hsi] has shown herself to be benevolent and economical. Her private character has been spotless.
– CHARLES DENBY,
American envoy to China, 1898
She was a mastermind of pure evil and intrigue.
– Chinese textbook (in print 1949-1991)
THE FORBIDDEN CITY
1. Orchid’s palace
2. Imperial Gardens
3. Nuharoo’s palace
4. Lady Soo’s palace
5. Grand Empress’s palace
6. Lady Mei’s palace
7. Lady Hui’s palace
8. Lady Yun’s palace
9. Lady Li’s palace
10. Palace of Celestial Purity
11. Emperor’s palace
12. Senior concubines’ palace and temple
13. Hall of Preserving Harmony
14. Hall of Perfect Harmony
15. Hall of Supreme Harmony
16. Gate of Supreme Harmony
Prelude
THE TRUTH IS that I have never been the mastermind of anything. I laugh when I hear people say that it was my desire to rule China from an early age. My life was shaped by forces at work before I was born. The dynasty’s conspiracies were old, and men and women were caught up in cutthroat rivalries long before I entered the Forbidden City and became a concubine. My dynasty, the Ch’ing, has been beyond saving ever since we lost the Opium Wars to Great Britain and its allies. My world has been an exasperating place of ritual where the only privacy has been inside my head. Not a day has gone by when I haven’t felt like a mouse escaping one more trap. For half a century, I participated in the elaborate etiquette of the court in all its meticulous detail. I am like a painting from the Imperial portrait gallery. When I sit on the throne my appearance is gracious, pleasant and placid.
In front of me is a gauze curtain-a translucent screen symbolically separating the female from the male. Guarding myself from criticism, I listen but speak little. Thoroughly schooled in the sensitivity of men, I understand that a simple look of cunning would disturb the councilors and ministers. To them the idea of a woman as the monarch is frightening. Jealous princes prey on ancient fears of women meddling in politics. When my husband died and I became the acting regent for our five-year-old son, Tung Chih, I satisfied the court by emphasizing in my decree that it was Tung Chih, the young Emperor, who would remain the ruler, not his mother.
While the men at court sought to impress each other with their intelligence, I hid mine. My business of running the court has been a constant fight with ambitious advisors, devious ministers, and generals who commanded armies that never saw battle. It has been more than forty-six years. Last summer I realized that I had become a candle burnt to its end in a windowless hall-my health was leaving me, and I understood that my days were numbered.
Recently I have been forcing myself to rise at dawn and attend the audience before breakfast. My condition I have kept a secret. Today I was too weak to rise. My eunuch came to hurry me. The mandarins and autocrats are waiting for me in the audience hall on sore knees. They are not here to discuss matters of state after my death, but to press me into naming one of their sons as heir.
