The Last Empress

I told him that I had a name picked out. And I apologized, telling him I had been grief-stricken and hadn't seen to many things. 'The name is Lan-yu, or simply Lan.' The name meant 'honorable abundance.'

Kuei Hsiang was thrilled.

I took a good look at my niece. She had a bulbous forehead and a small pointed chin. Her narrow face highlighted her protruding upper front teeth. She appeared unsure of herself, which was unsurprising given how she had been raised. My brother was what the Chinese would call 'a dragon at home but a worm outside.' A typical Manchu, he had little respect for women, regarding his wives and concubines as his property. He wasn't unkind, but he was prone to ridiculing others. I hadn't witnessed his treatment of his daughter, but her behavior offered more than I needed to know.

'My wife thinks our daughter is a beauty, but I told her that Lan is so plain that we will have to give a discount to her marriage suitor.' Impressed by his own sense of humor, he laughed.

I offered Lan a cupcake, and my niece thanked me in an almost inaudible voice. She chewed like a mouse and wiped her mouth after every bite. She fixed her eyes on the floor, and I wondered whether she had found something interesting to look at. Teasing, I asked her. 'Crumbs,' she replied.

I suggested that my brother take Lan to visit Princess Jung, my husband's daughter. The princess had suffered a great misfortune-her mother, Lady Yun, had committed suicide-but had grown into a thoughtful young woman.

'What do you want us to learn from the girl?' Kuei Hsiang asked.

'Ask Jung to tell the story of how she survived,' I replied. 'It will be the best lesson for Lan. And please, brother, don't belittle your daughter. I think Lan is beautiful.'

Hearing my words, Lan raised her eyes. When her father answered, 'Yes, Your Majesty,' she giggled.

'I know of Princess Jung,' Lan said in a small voice. 'She studied in Europe, is it not true?'

'She tried but was forced by the court to return home.' I sighed. 'However, it is her courage that I admire. She has a positive spirit and leads a productive life. You will meet her when she comes to help me in my work.'

'But Orchid,' my brother protested, 'I'd prefer your influence, not the influence of a disgraced concubine's daughter.'

'It is my influence, Kuei Hsiang,' I said. 'Jung lived with me, and she witnessed how many of my dreams went unrealized. The courage to keep dreams alive despite all is what matters.'

My brother looked confused.

Guang-hsu cried for hours on end, and I became frustrated. I sang nursery songs until I became sick of their tunes. I compared Guang-hsu's situation with how peasants grew rice. 'Roots of rice shoots must be broken in order to encourage splits,' the village saying went. I remembered working in rice fields to help break the roots. The tearing sound bothered me at first, for I didn't believe that the rice would survive. I left a small patch untouched, to see what would happen. The torn shoots came back healthier and stronger than those that went untorn.

Guang-hsu's attendants said, 'His Young Majesty continues to wet his bed every night and is afraid of darkness and people.' My adopted son also had a speech impediment, wore the expression of a prisoner and was sad all the time. After a few months, his weight began to drop.

I summoned Guang-hsu's former wet nurses. They told me that Guang-hsu had been a happy baby when he was born. It was his mother, my sister, who tried to 'fix his ill manner' by hitting him every time he tried to eat or laugh.

Nuharoo and I couldn't do enough to make the little boy happy. Guang-hsu quivered and screamed when repairmen pounded nails or sawed wood. The summer's rolling thunder became another problem. On hot days before the rain came, we would keep his door and window shut so the noise wouldn't bother him. Guang-hsu wouldn't venture out on his own. The kitchen was no longer allowed to chop vegetables; the chefs used scissors instead. The maids were instructed to be quiet when washing dishes. Li Lien-ying used a slingshot to scare away the woodpeckers.

To help the Emperor smooth the transition, I ordered one of his former wet nurses to come to the Forbidden City to live with us. I hoped that Guang-hsu would find comfort in her. But Nuharoo sent the wet nurse right back. 'Guang-hsu should forget all his former conditions,' she insisted. 'He ought to and will be treated as palace born.'

Tension began to build between Nuharoo and me, something that was all too familiar from when we raised Tung Chih. I feared that I would again be fighting another losing battle.

During an especially heated argument that nearly came to blows, Nuharoo ordered me to go, and I stormed out. She took over Guang-hsu's care, which for her meant leaving the young boy to her eunuchs. Nuharoo wasn't one to devote time and energy to a child. As it happened, her frustrated eunuchs did what Guang-hsu feared most: they locked him inside a closet, then scared him by knocking loudly on the closet door.

When Li Lien-ying learned what had happened, and protested, Nuharoo's chief eunuch responded, 'His Young Majesty has fire in his chest. Give him a chance to sing and he will douse it.'

For the first time, and without getting permission from Nuharoo, I ordered her chief eunuch whipped. As for the rest of the servants, they got no food for two days. I knew it was not the servants' fault; they were merely doing what they were told. But the beating was necessary to warn Nuharoo that I had reached the limit of my patience.

Nuharoo told Li Lien-ying that in all our years together she had never seen me act with such wild rage. She called me a village shrew and then retreated. Deep down, she must have known that as much as I held myself responsible for Tung Chih's death, I held her responsible as well. Nuharoo's wisdom told her that it would be foolish to sprinkle salt over my wound.

I wanted to spend as much time with Guang-hsu as possible, but over the next couple of years I felt like an acrobat spinning plates on thin sticks, desperately trying to keep a dozen dishes in the air, knowing that whatever I did, some would come crashing down.

China's economy was collapsing under the weight of forced war compensations. The foreign powers threatened to invade because our payments were late, or so they said. My audiences were devoted to discussions of how best to play the foreigners against each other so we could gain time. News of peasant uprisings and calls for help from local officials arrived daily.

I did not even have time to bathe properly. My hair got so dirty that the roots hurt. I could not wait for elaborate meals to be prepared for me; I usually ate my food cold at my writing table. I kept my promise to always read my son a bedtime story, but I often fell asleep before the end. He would wake me up to finish, and I would kiss him good night and go back to work.

By the time Guang-hsu was seven years old, I had developed chronic insomnia, which was soon followed by a persistent pain in my abdomen. Doctor Sun Pao-tien told me that I suffered from a liver ailment. 'Your pulse is telling me that your fluids are not in proper balance. The risk to your system could be dire.'

One day I felt too exhausted to work. Nuharoo let me know that she would take over the audiences until I regained my strength.

This made me happy, because I was able to concentrate on what I most desired: raising Guang-hsu. Several times my tongue slipped and I called him Tung Chih. Each time, Guang-hsu would take out his handkerchief and wipe my tears with amazing patience and sympathy. His inborn tenderness touched me. Unlike Tung Chih, Guang- hsu was growing into a sweet and affectionate child. I wondered if it was because he was weak himself, and so understood what it was like to be in pain.

As time went on, Guang-hsu also began to reveal a strong sense of curiosity. Although he was never able to completely defeat his fears, his self-confidence became more robust. He had lovely manners and delighted visitors with his enthusiastic questions about the outside world. He loved to read, write and listen to stories.

For years the minister of Imperial etiquette had protested against my allowing Guang-hsu to sleep in my room. I insisted on keeping him with me until he was ready to face his enormous bedroom without fear. I was accused of coddling him, and worse, but I didn't care. 'To the court Guang-hsu was never a child to begin with,' I complained to Nuharoo.

Guang-hsu soon developed interests of his own. He fell in love with clocks and spent endless hours in the palace's Grand Clock Room, where clocks of all kinds were on display, gifts from foreign kings, queens and ambassadors. This pleased me, for in my early days in the palace I too was drawn to these new and intricate