Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (46 page)

County Chief Woo’s best was pitiful. His cook had gathered some food, but was robbed on his way to the kitchen by soldiers from the retreating army, who simply grabbed the donkey that carried the provisions. When the cook resisted, he was slashed on the right arm. He eventually succeeded in making three woks of mung-bean and millet gruel, but two were wolfed down by starving soldiers, who reluctantly left one for the royals. Woo placed sentries around the remaining wok, ready to open fire on anyone who came close.

He then tidied up a room in a deserted inn for the empress dowager to rest in, managing to put cushions on the chairs and curtains on the doors, even paintings on the walls and some ornaments on the tables. When she arrived and set eyes on this luxury and on the County Chief prostrating himself on the floor, Cixi burst into tears. Between loud sobs she told Woo that she had never thought things would become as bad as this. After describing the misery of the journey, she brightened up at the news of the mung-bean and millet gruel, and was about to order it brought in when she suddenly remembered the emperor, and told Lianying to take the County Chief to greet His Majesty. Woo saw a shabby man, unshaven and unwashed, wearing an old padded jacket, which hung loosely about him. Emperor Guangxu did not say a word and Woo withdrew to fetch the gruel. It then emerged that he had forgotten chopsticks, so Cixi told the servants to bring some sorghum stems. As Woo retreated outside the room, he heard Their Majesties sucking eagerly at the gruel. After a while Lianying came out and gave an approving thumbs up, saying how pleased the empress dowager was. He also said that ‘the Old Buddha’ longed for an egg. Thereupon Woo searched the town, at last finding five eggs in an empty drawer inside an abandoned store. Having lit a fire and boiled the eggs himself, he served them in a coarse bowl with a few pinches of salt. Lianying carried them in to Cixi and, on his return a few minutes later, smiled to Woo: ‘The Old Buddha loved them. She ate three, and left two to the Master of Ten Thousand Years. No one else got to touch any. This is good news. But now the Old Buddha would love to have a puff of her water pipe. Do you think you could find some spills?’ Woo improvised by rolling up some rough paper on the windowsill. Shortly afterwards, the empress dowager stepped out of the room onto the terrace, parting the curtain on the door herself (a job always done by servants). Lighting the pipe herself as well, she puffed at it and seemed the picture of perfect contentment.

Looking around her, she caught sight of Woo and began to speak to him, which obliged the County Chief to go down on his knees in the muddy yard. She asked him if he could find some clothes for her. Woo said that his wife had died and her clothes were all in Beijing, but he had some clothes that his late mother had left behind, and ‘if the Empress Dowager did not mind their coarseness . . .?’ At this Cixi said, ‘Anything that can keep me warm. By the way, it would be just wonderful if you could also find some clothes for the emperor and the princesses, who brought no changes either.’ Woo went home and opened his late mother’s trunk. He found a wool coat for the empress dowager, a long waistcoat for the emperor and a few robes for the princesses. From his sister-in-law he took a dressing-table set, which had a mirror, a comb and face powder. Wrapping everything into a large bundle, he delivered it to a eunuch. Later on, when the royals came out of their quarters, they were all dressed in his family’s clothes. This was the
first time Cixi was seen wearing Han Chinese attire.

The imperial party stayed in County Chief Woo’s town for two nights. Cixi learned from him that the Boxers had not only wrecked his county, but also came close to killing him during the time they occupied the town. On one occasion, they had seized him and told him they wanted to satisfy themselves that he was not a ‘Secondary Hairy’. The verdict, fortunately in his favour, hinged on whether the ashes from a piece of paper they burned went up or down. On another occasion, a letter from him to a good friend in which he complained about the Boxers had been intercepted, and he only escaped retribution after vehemently denying it was his handwriting. On the most recent occasion, when he was actually trying to get out of the town in order to greet the royal company, the Boxers refused to open the gate, but snorted: ‘They are fleeing and don’t deserve to be on the throne!’ But the mob feared the approaching Praetorian Guards after all, and took to their heels.

Disapproving though he was of her backing for the Boxers, County Chief Woo loyally found the empress dowager a sedan-chair and another for Emperor Guangxu. Cixi took Woo along with them, making him a manager for the onward journey. She told him: ‘You have done a very good job, and I am deeply grateful. I will not forget your loyalty, and will show my gratitude. The emperor and I appreciate how difficult it will be for you to manage the logistics . . . We would not dream of being difficult or demanding. Please be at ease, and don’t have any misgivings.’ These words brought tears to Woo’s eyes, and he took off his hat and touched his forehead on the floor. Then Cixi enquired gently, ‘That cook of yours, Zhou Fu, is really good. The noodles he just served are quite delicious, and the stir-fried shredded pork is very tasty. I am thinking of taking him with me on the journey, but I wonder whether he would be willing?’ To this delicately put command Woo naturally answered affirmatively on the cook’s behalf, adding that it was his honour too. Having lost his cook, he had to eat at a friend’s house that evening. The cook was promoted to the Royal Kitchen and was given an impressive title.

Cixi had fled the capital and Western Allies had occupied it. The Chinese defences had disintegrated, and yet Cixi’s rule did not collapse, as most had anticipated. In flight, and in a sorry state, she showed that she was still the supreme leader.
Eye-witnesses seeing her climbing onto the mule-cart said that she did so as if it were the imperial throne. From then on, wherever she was became the nerve centre of the empire.
The orders she sent to the provinces, using the same language and tone as always, conveyed absolute authority. Reports from all over China found their way to her. She asked for troops to escort the royal group, and troops rushed over as fast as their horses or legs could carry them. She asked for money, food and transport, and these poured in quickly and abundantly. She was well provided for during the rest of her journey, which covered more than 1,000 kilometres and lasted for more than two months. In late October, in western China, as she settled in the ancient city of Xian, capital of more than a dozen Chinese dynasties from 1100
BC
, she received more than
six million taels from all over the empire. When the court returned to Beijing a year later,
2,000 carts were loaded with tributes as well as paperwork. This miraculous display of loyalty in an unprecedented crisis spoke volumes for the general stability of the empire, rooted in a deep faith in the empress dowager by the population, the grass-roots leaders and the provincial chiefs – a deep faith that overrode their recent disenchantment.

That she was still alive and very much in command stopped in their tracks those who had thought of jumping ship. One straw in the wind concerned the fate of her bête noire,
Sir Yinhuan. When she had ordered the governor of Xinjiang, where Sir Yinhuan was in exile, to execute him, the governor chose not to do so. He was hedging his bets: the invaders were marching on Beijing and Sir Yinhuan was their friend. The order was only carried out fifty days later, on 20 August, when the governor learned that Cixi had left the capital and was safe.

That she was evidently still at the helm and her government had not collapsed changed the mind of Viceroy Zhang, who abandoned his plan to set up a separate regime in Nanjing. The people he had envisaged joining him in his new government – who in fact had not been told about his plan – had affirmed their allegiance to Cixi. Earl Li left Shanghai for Beijing to act as her negotiator. And when the British approached
Viceroy Liu Kunyi, his closest colleague, telling him that London looked to him and Viceroy Zhang to take control and negotiate with the Allies, Liu was horrified. He cabled Viceroy Zhang and asked him whether he had received the same bizarre message. He also reminded Zhang that the man the British should be dealing with was Earl Li, who took instructions from the empress dowager. So, when Tokyo was still talking about ‘setting up a new government’, implying that there would be a key role for him, Viceroy Zhang flew into a panic and fired off a cable marked with an unusual ‘
thousand times urgent’ to his representative in Japan, telling him to ‘stop this at once at all costs’. He sent a follow-up the next day, explaining that any such move now ‘would most definitely ignite internal strife and throw the whole of China into warring chaos’.

Zhang proceeded to
lobby Western powers to protect Cixi. Indeed, her safety had always been one of his priorities, even when he contemplated forming a new government. He and Viceroy Liu had told the British Acting Consul-General in Shanghai, Peiham L. Warren, who reported to Lord Salisbury, that ‘unless it is guaranteed that her person shall be protected they will be unable to carry out the agreement of neutrality’ (which the Viceroys had signed with the powers, promising to maintain peace and protect foreigners in their provinces). When he heard that Allied troops had entered Beijing, Viceroy Zhang repeated his request that Cixi must not suffer ‘the slightest alarm’. And when he learned that Cixi had fled, he cabled the Chinese minister in London, asking him to see Lord Salisbury and request ‘the same assurance once more’.

The unequivocal support for Cixi by the Viceroys dashed Westerners’ hopes of pursuing and toppling her. Many had advocated replacing her with Emperor Guangxu. Sir Claude MacDonald, the British minister, was one of them. But he was warned off by Lord Salisbury:
‘There is great danger of a long and costly expedition which, at the end, would not succeed.’ The Prime Minister rejected the idea of a joint occupation of conquered territory: ‘The attempt to undertake the maintenance of order in Northern China would be hopeless even if we stood alone. But as it would certainly produce a collision between ourselves and our allies, it could only end disastrously.’ No occupation would work without a high-ranking Chinese collaborator. But the powers realised that all the most senior Chinese
‘ranged themselves solidly’ on the side of the empress dowager. They had thought that ‘the empire was in the hands of the Viceroys’, who were furiously opposed to Cixi; but now, when the crunch came, they found that these men were still in thrall to her. Not one of them was willing to step forward to challenge her. It was all too clear that Cixi was the only person who could hold the empire together. Her demise would result in civil war, which for Westerners would mean especially the collapse of trade, the default of loans and the emergence of more Boxers. And so, for these overwhelming reasons, the Allies decided not to pursue the empress dowager. On 26 October 1900, confident of her safety, Cixi took up residence in Xian. Her representatives, Prince Ching and Earl Li, opened negotiations with the powers.

Meanwhile, Viceroy Zhang, the only man in the regime who had contemplated replacing her and who had enlisted foreign powers’ assistance, was anxious to explain himself to her. From the shots she had fired across his bows, he knew Cixi was conscious of his machinations, which could be deemed treason by many a monarch. Although she did not punish him, he reckoned she could not have been pleased. He wanted to explain to her in person that his had only been a contingency plan in the case of her government’s demise, and he had never wanted to overthrow her. He wrote and asked for an audience, saying that he had not seen Her Majesty for well over a decade and, filled with regret and a sense of guilt, he longed to come to a place on her route ahead of her, to ‘welcome Your Majesty on my knees’. Cixi’s reply was a curt ‘No need to come’. Her displeasure was transparent. The Viceroy then asked a close associate to intercede on his behalf when the man had an
audience with Cixi. The Viceroy had ‘not seen Your Majesty for eighteen years,’ said the man, ‘and since Your Majesty’s journey to the west, he has been so concerned and worried about Your Majesty, and missed Your Majesty so much that he has been unable to eat or sleep properly. Dare I ask why Your Majesty declines to receive him?’ Cixi gave an excuse: ‘he can’t leave his post at the moment as things have not quite settled down’, and she promised to ‘ask him to Beijing once we are back’. But when eventually she returned to the capital at the beginning of 1902, she found another pretext and postponed the audience again. Another year later, the Viceroy could not wait any longer and wrote to announce that he was coming to Beijing in the spring of 1903 anyway as he would be free of duties then, and he just had to see Her Majesty, whom he had been ‘missing for twenty years’. This time, he received a positive one-liner: ‘You may come for an audience.’

In May that year, Viceroy Zhang arrived in Beijing and at last had his meeting. According to the Grand Council secretary who escorted him in the Summer Palace, and the eunuchs outside the audience hall,
he and Cixi said virtually nothing to each other. The moment he went in, she burst into tears, at which he too began to cry. She went on sobbing and did not ask him any questions, so Zhang was unable to talk. The audience protocol was for the official to speak only when the monarch addressed him. And Cixi gave Viceroy Zhang no chance to open his mouth. They sobbed for a while, before Cixi told him to go and ‘have a rest’, upon which he withdrew. The silence was by design. For Cixi, what the Viceroy had done was best left unsaid. Spelling it out and trying to explain would only upset and alienate her – she had already decided to accept his action, which she judged to be of decent motive. She further demonstrated to Zhang that she held nothing against him by having delivered to him the next day a painting by her own hand – of a pine tree, symbol of uprightness, next to a plant,
zi-zhi
, to which a man of integrity and wisdom was often compared. The meaning was eloquent and the Viceroy was relieved and overjoyed. Immediately putting pen to paper, he wrote: ‘Like a withered old tree touched by the most gracious winds / Overnight, the colour of black returned to the greyed hair on my temples.’