Chinese port of Haishenwei, soon to be known as Vladivostok.
I will never forget the moment when Emperor Hsien Feng signed the treaties. It was like a death rehearsal.
The brush pen he held seemed to weigh a thousand pounds. His hand couldn’t stop shaking. He couldn’t bring himself to write his name. To stabilize his elbows I added two more pillows behind his back. Chief Eunuch Shim prepared the ink and laid flat the pages of the treaties in front of him on a rice paper pad.
My sorrow for Hsien Feng and my country was beyond expression. Saliva gathered at the corners of His Majesty’s purple lips. He was crying, but there were no tears. He shouted and screamed for days. Finally his voice simply died. Each breath was now a struggle.
His fingers were like brittle sticks. His frame was no better than a skeleton. He had begun the journey of vanishing into a ghost. His ancestors hadn’t answered his prayers. Heaven had been merciless to its son. In Hsien Feng’s helplessness, however, he demonstrated the dignity of the Emperor of China. His struggle was heroic-the dying man holding on to his brush, refusing to sign China away.
I asked Nuharoo to bring Tung Chih. I wanted him to witness his father’s struggle to perform his duty. Nuharoo rejected the idea. She said that Tung Chih should be exposed to glory, not shame.
I could have fought with Nuharoo. And I almost did. I wanted to tell her that dying was not shameful, nor was having the courage to face reality. Tung Chih’s education should begin at his father’s deathbed. He should watch the signing of the treaties and remember and understand why his father was crying.
Nuharoo reminded me that she was the Empress of the East, the one whose word was the house’s law. I had to retreat.
Chief Eunuch Shim asked if His Majesty cared to test the ink before putting down his stroke. Hsien Feng nodded. I adjusted the rice paper.
The moment the tip of the brush touched the paper Hsien Feng’s hand trembled violently. It started with his fingers, then spread to his arm, his shoulder and his entire body. Sweat soaked through his robe. His eyes rolled up as he drew deeply for breath.
Doctor Sun Pao-tien was summoned. He came in and knelt beside His Majesty. He bent his head over Hsien Feng’s chest and listened.
I stared at Sun Pao-tien’s lips, which were half hidden by his long white beard. I feared what he might say.
“He might slip into a coma.” The doctor rose. “He will wake, but I can’t guarantee how much time he has left.”
For the rest of the day we waited for Hsien Feng to return to consciousness. When he did, I begged him to complete the signature, but he didn’t say a word.
We had reached a deadlock-Emperor Hsien Feng refused to pick up the brush pen. I kept grinding the ink. I wished that Prince Kung were here.
Feeling helpless, I started to cry.
“Orchid.” His Majesty’s voice was barely audible. “I won’t be able to die in peace if I sign.”
I understood. I wouldn’t want to sign either if I were he. But Prince Kung needed the signature to continue negotiating. The Emperor was going to die, but the nation had to go on. China had to get back on its feet.
In the afternoon Hsien Feng decided to yield. It was only after I said that his signature would not be an endorsement for invasion but a tactic to gain time.
He picked up the brush pen but was unable to see where on the paper he was to put his signature.
“Guide my hand, Orchid,” he said, and tried to sit up, but collapsed instead.
The three of us-Chief Eunuch Shim, An-te-hai and I-laid His Majesty down on his back. I put the paper near his hand and told him that he could ink his signature now.
With his eyes fixed on the ceiling, Emperor Hsien Feng wiggled the brush. I carefully guided his strokes to prevent his signature from looking like a child’s scribble. By the time we covered his name with the red Imperial seal, Hsien Feng had dropped the brush pen and passed out. The ink stone fell and black ink splattered all over my dress and shoes.
In July of 1861 we celebrated Hsien Feng’s thirtieth birthday. His Majesty lay in his bed and drifted in and out of consciousness. No guests were invited. The birthday ceremony included a food parade. The dishes were barely touched; everyone sensed his coming death.
A month later, Hsien Feng seemed to hit bottom. Doctor Sun Pao-tien predicted that His Majesty’s demise was a week, perhaps days, away. The court grew tense because the Emperor had not named his successor.
Tung Chih was not allowed to be with his father because the court was afraid it would be too disturbing. This upset me. I believed that any affection demonstrated by His Majesty would sustain Tung Chih’s memory for the rest of his life.
Nuharoo accused me of placing a curse on Hsien Feng by telling Tung Chih that his father was going to die. Her astrologer believed that only when we refused to accept his death would Hsien Feng be saved by a miracle.
It was hard to fight Nuharoo when she had her mind set. I could only manage to have An-te-hai sneak Tung Chih to his father’s bedside, usually when Nuharoo went with the Buddhists to chant or was enjoying her teatime opera, provided by Su Shun and performed in Nuharoo’s quarters.
To my disappointment Tung Chih didn’t want to be with his father. He complained about his father’s “scary look” and “bad breath.” He was miserable when I pushed him toward the sickbed. He called his father a bore and once yelled, “You hollow man!” He pulled at Hsien Feng’s sheets and threw pillows at him. He wanted to play Ride the Horsy with the dying man. There wasn’t a single compassionate bone in his little body.
I spanked my son. For the next week, instead of leaving Tung Chih to Nuharoo I spent time observing him. I discovered the source of his poor behavior.
I had instructed Tung Chih to take riding lessons with Yung Lu, but Nuharoo made excuses for the child to be absent. Instead of practicing with real horses, Tung Chih rode the eunuchs. More than thirty eunuchs had to crawl around the courtyard to make him happy. His favorite “horse” was An-te-hai. It was the child’s way of getting revenge, for An-te-hai had been ordered by me to discipline him. Tung Chih whipped An-te-hai’s buttocks and forced him to crawl until his knees bled.
Worse than this treatment of An-te-hai was that he ordered a seventy-year-old eunuch named Old Wei to swallow his feces. When I questioned Tung Chih, he replied, “Mother, I just wanted to know if Old Wei had been telling the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That I could do anything I wanted. I only asked him to prove it.”
I looked at my son’s little face and wondered how he had become capable of such mean tricks. He was clever and knew whom to punish and whom to reward. If An-te-hai hadn’t been loyal to me, he would have yielded to Tung Chih’s every desire. Tung Chih had once claimed that he knew Nuharoo’s favorite dishes. It didn’t occur to me that this was my son’s way of rewarding her. I even praised him when he sent Nuharoo her favorite fancy moon cakes. I thought it was an appropriate gesture of piety and was pleased that my son got along with her. Then Tung Chih bragged about how Nuharoo encouraged him to neglect school. She had said to him, “There are emperors in history who never spent a day in the classroom but had no problem bringing their country to prosperity.”
I confronted Nuharoo and pointed out the danger of not disciplining Tung Chih. She told me that I was overreacting. “He’s only five years old! As soon as we get back to Peking and Tung Chih resumes his normal schooling, everything will be fine. Playing is a child’s nature, and we must not interfere with Heaven’s intent. He asked for the parrots yesterday, but An-te-hai had brought none with him. Poor Tung Chih-he only asked for a parrot!”
This time I decided not to give in. I insisted that he attend his classes. I told Nuharoo that I would check with the tutors regarding Tung Chih’s homework. But I was disappointed. The head tutor begged me to release him from Tung Chih.
“His Young Majesty threw paper balls and knocked off my glasses,” the rabbit-toothed tutor reported. “He will not listen. Yesterday he made me eat a strange-tasting cookie. Afterward he told me that he had dipped the cookie in his own waste.”
I was shocked at the way Tung Chih ruled his classroom. But what concerned me more was his interest in Nuharoo’s ghost books. He stayed up late to listen to her stories of the underworld. He got so scared that he would wet his bed at night. Yet he was so drawn to those stories that they became an addiction. When I interfered by
