Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (54 page)

Given her love of travelling and her intense curiosity, Cixi would have liked nothing better than a foreign tour. But she never seriously contemplated the idea, as she judged it unfeasible. Similarly, even though she was the supreme ruler of the empire, she never set foot in the front section of the Forbidden City, or entered the palace through its front gates. She would not challenge such enormously controversial conventions for the sake of gratifying her own desires. Although she must have wished to mix freely with men, and would not have minded at all having a foreign man paint or photograph her, Cixi would have resisted doing so.
^fn1
Her restraint and her discrimination were key qualities that enabled her to change the empire as well as rule it. Her judgement as to what should be changed – and when and how it should be done – was crucial to the fact that there was little upheaval throughout her revolution.

When Xunling came to take Cixi’s photographs, he had to do so on his knees at first: everyone was obliged to kneel when they engaged the empress dowager’s attention. But in this position he was unable to reach the camera on its tripod. Lianying, the head eunuch, brought him a stool to kneel on, but he could not balance himself while handling the camera. Cixi said, ‘All right, exempt him from kneeling while he takes the photographs.’

Cixi, now in her late sixties, looked her age in the photographs. These realistic pictures would have made her frown, so before they were presented to her, they were touched up, which was not uncommon in those days. Her face was airbrushed, with the wrinkles erased and puffy bags under her eyes smoothed away. Many years were expunged, leaving the images of a beautiful woman in her bloom. This ‘facelift’ is unmistakable when comparing the prints in Xunling’s own collection (now in the Freer Gallery, Washington DC), which were not worked on, with the prints of the same photographs in the Forbidden City archives.

These touched-up images were not what her mirrors had been telling her for quite some time. Cixi was thrilled when she saw them, and there followed a frenzy of photo-taking. She posed in various postures – in one, putting a flower in her hair, like a coquettish young girl. She changed clothes, jewels and surroundings, and had complicated sets constructed, as if for the stage. She had long wanted to act in an opera, and courtiers had spotted her singing and dancing in the palace grounds when she thought no one was watching. Now she dressed up as Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, had court ladies and eunuchs clothed in the costumes of the characters associated with the Goddess, and posed with them on the sets. Her favourite pictures were then enlarged to as big as
75 by 60 centimetres, tastefully coloured and framed, and mounted on the walls of her palace, so excited was Cixi by her own younger and prettier looks.

Some large, framed prints were later presented
to foreign heads of state, who had written to congratulate her on her seventieth birthday in 1904. These were delivered to the legations with considerable solemnity. American newspapers commented: ‘The picture gives her the appearance of
forty years instead of seventy.’

The touching-up, enlargement and framing of the pictures were done by the oldest and best-known photographic studio in Beijing, owned by one
Ren Jingfeng, who had studied photography in Japan. Ren was soon invited to the court, where he was put in touch with the great Peking Opera actor,
Tan Xinpei, a member of the court’s Music Department. The actor’s biggest fan was the empress dowager, who not only rewarded him handsomely, but also enabled him to command huge fees when he performed outside the court. Now Tan was directed by Ren in China’s first film,
The Dingjun Mountain
, showing an episode in a Peking Opera of the same name. This was 1905, and Cixi could reasonably be credited as China’s
first movie ‘executive producer’.

The film was shot in spite of an earlier accident. The
British had given Cixi a projector and some silent movies for her birthday the year before. After three reels in the first screening, the motor had exploded. Cixi does not seem to have taken to films. Their appeal to her was limited as there was no soundtrack, which meant no music. But Ren and others went on to make other films, and cinemas showing their work as well as foreign films, including short detective stories, blossomed and percolated into the vast interior.

The news that Cixi had photographs taken with eunuchs in stage costume – at a time when no woman could appear on stage, and to be playful with eunuchs was considered ‘improper’ – soon became known to her enemies, who seized upon it in an attempt to damage her reputation. From late 1904 to the end of 1905,
Shi-bao
, a newspaper set up by Wild Fox Kang (with his right-hand man, Liang, as the main contributor writing from Japan), carried daily advertisements offering photographs of Cixi for sale. The advertisements, in the name of the paper’s sister publishing house owned by a Japanese,
Takano Bunjiro, highlighted the fact that she was dressed up in theatrical costume and ‘
sitting side by side’ with her two favourite eunuchs, one being Lianying. This was calculated to arouse public disgust. In addition, the prints were being offered at exceedingly low prices and were marked as discount goods, so as to maximise the insult.

Cixi did nothing about the advertisements, or the publishing house, which had an office in Beijing, a stone’s throw from the Forbidden City, as well as in Shanghai. Rather, she turned the table on her enemies by giving a
photo of herself with Lianying as a present to a Japanese diplomat.

The impact of the advertisements seems to have been non-existent. Cixi was enjoying considerable popularity. Pearl Buck, the Nobel Laureate for literature, was then living in China among peasants and other ordinary people (her parents were missionaries), and she observed that they ‘
loved her’. For her seventieth birthday Cixi had decreed that there would be no celebrations. But many still celebrated. In Beijing, outside the Qianmen gate, numerous
lanterns of different colours and shapes illuminated the whole area, attracting crowds of spectators and revellers. In Shanghai, Sarah Conger wrote:

In driving through the streets in the foreign concession of Shanghai, we saw many beautiful decorations in honor of Her Majesty’s birthday. The Chinese stores were aglow with brilliant colors; even the Chinese flag was waving, a most unusual thing, as the flag, in China, is used only officially. I never before saw such a departure from old customs . . . Myriads of beautiful lanterns in their almost endless varieties added brilliancy to the many other decorations. The Chinaman proclaimed his loyalty to China and her rulers in such a way that the foreigner could understand that loyalty . . .

For all the dramatic reforms sweeping across China, Cixi introduced very few at court. Rules did relax for the eunuchs, who were allowed to visit bars and theatres outside the palace. But the medieval practice of keeping eunuchs remained – and so, consequently, did the castration of boys for this purpose. There was a moment when
Cixi considered abolishing eunuch-keeping, but the eunuchs reacted with a campaign of weeping to get her to change her mind, and she suspended the move. On the whole the court stuck to the old rules, with rigid etiquette and formality. Prescribed costumes for different occasions remained sacrosanct. Arriving at a gathered court, Cixi would with a glance take in all the details of the clothes being worn and would address any errors. In her presence, people continued to stand, if not kneel. On the only occasion when she dined with the ladies of the diplomatic corps, she and the foreign diners were seated, while the Chinese princesses stood. As the banquet proceeded, Sarah Conger asked if the princesses might not be seated, too. Cixi felt obliged to turn to them and, with a wave of her hand, tell them to sit. This was the only time any Chinese (except the emperor) sat down to eat with her. But they did not really eat. An eye-witness observed, ‘
They sat down in a timid, rather uncomfortable way on the edge of the chair, but did not presume to touch any of the food.’ During the dinner, China’s
minister to Britain interpreted for her, on his knees.

Cixi was especially strict about officials observing etiquette. Every time she travelled between her palaces, designated officials had to kneel at the arrival and departure points to greet her or see her off – even in the rain.
One day the rainwater dripping from a kneeling figure was bright red and green, and it turned out that the official was too poor to own a real formal robe for the occasion and had had to wear a painted paper one. On another occasion, after she had bestowed gifts on a large number of officials, they gathered and waited to thank her by going down on their knees. Because of their numbers, they had to perform the ritual in the courtyard where it was raining hard. They waited for more than an hour, while
Cixi watched the rain from behind a curtain. When the rain subsided, she ordered the ritual to proceed, during which the officials knelt on the wet ground, spattered with mud.

The obligation to kneel was a nuisance for everyone. Grandees found it unbearable if the audiences were protracted. Eunuchs had knee pads permanently sewn into their trouser legs, as they had to drop to their knees whenever she addressed them, at all places, whether it was on stone floors or rocks. Arthritis of the knees was a common problem for eunuchs.

Cixi understood that it was painful to kneel and would usually curtail the time people had to do so. Once, for the benefit of Katharine Carl, some
court painters were summoned to draw chrysanthemums in the fields. As the empress dowager was watching, the painters had to kneel while drawing. Their discomfiture was visible to Cixi, and she told them to pluck some flowers and go and paint at home. For one reception she gave, the Foreign Office official presenting the diplomats, Wu Tingfang, was supposed to kneel. This would have put him in an embarrassing position, as the foreign diplomats he presented would be standing. He would ‘look like a dwarf next to foreigners’, he complained to Louisa Pierson. On her advice Cixi exempted him: ‘
In that case, he doesn’t have to kneel.’

Wu was then posted as China’s minister to Washington, and led a life of heady freedom, acquiring a reputation as the ‘man who enjoyed making
blandly insolent remarks at dinner parties’. Upon returning to Beijing, he interpreted for Alice Roosevelt, daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, when she visited China in 1905 and had an audience with Cixi. Having got used to the American way of treating himself as an equal to anyone, Wu seems to have forgotten that he had to be on his knees to Cixi, or ask beforehand for permission not to kneel. He stood and chatted, quite at ease. Alice wrote:

He stood between us, a little to the side, but suddenly, as the conversation was going on, the Empress said something in a small savage voice, whereat he turned quite gray, and got down on all fours, his forehead touching the ground. The Empress would speak; he would lift his head and say it in English to me; back would go his forehead to the ground while I spoke; up would come his head again while he said it in Chinese to the Empress; then back to the ground would go his forehead again . . . One literally had the feeling that she might at any moment say, ‘off with his head,’ and that off the head would go.

This was in fact the time when Wu was co-heading the empire’s legal reforms – and enjoying Cixi’s esteem. In those years, with her blessing, even rather conservative governors banned kneeling as part of the etiquette in their provinces. But Cixi retained it in the court. At stake for her was the god-like sacredness of the throne, which was the one thing that gave the throne its hold over the vast empire. Kneeling was the manifestation and reinforcement of that sacredness, without which – without all those bent knees – the throne, and even the empire, might falter.

To hold on to this symbol of total submission in an increasingly enlightened empire, Cixi sacrificed her curiosity and never rode in a car. She had been presented with one by General Yuan, who had stepped into Earl Li’s shoes in ways more than one. Not only had he inherited the earl’s jobs and role as a close adviser to the empress dowager, but, like the earl, he was a talented gift-giver. The car he bought for her was lacquered in imperial yellow, with a dragon motif and a throne-like seat within. Cixi longed for a ride, particularly as she had just had fun
riding a tricycle, also a present from the General. But with a car there was an insurmountable problem: it was impossible for the chauffeur to operate the wheel while kneeling, or even standing. The chauffeur would have to sit down, right in front of her. The car remained the only modern device that was interesting and available to the empress dowager which she
did not try.

^fn1
Hubert Vos’s portrait of Cixi, on the other hand, shows more of her character than Katharine Carl’s painting. His portrait was most likely based on a photograph of Cixi, taken by Xunling.

29 The Vote! (1905–8)

CIXI WAS AWARE
that the throne could not be sustained for long by symbols. Something more solid was needed to ensure its survival. There was the option of shutting down her revolution and winding back the clock, but she rejected it and chose to press forward. In 1905 she set the ball rolling for the most fundamental of all her reforms: to turn China into a constitutional monarchy (
li-xian
) with an elected parliament. She hoped that a constitution would set in concrete the legitimacy of the Qing dynasty, while enabling a large part of the population – most of all Han Chinese – to participate in the affairs of the state. This historic move, involving an election with as wide an electoral base as in the West, meant the introduction of the vote into China.

Cixi was convinced that China was unable to do as well as Western countries because there was not the same sense of connection between the ruled and the rulers. ‘
In foreign countries,’ she remarked, ‘the ruled [
xia
] feel connected with the ruling [
shang
]. This is why they are so formidable.’ Only the vote could produce this connection. From her vantage point, she saw clearly the benefit of a parliamentary monarchy such as Britain. Once, talking about Queen Victoria, Cixi observed, ‘
England is one of [the] great powers of the world, but this has not been brought about by Queen Victoria’s absolute rule. She had the able men of parliament back of her [
sic
] at all times and of course they discussed everything until the best result was obtained . . .’ In China, ‘I have 400,000,000 people, all dependent on my judgment. Although I have the Grand Council to consult with . . . anything of an important nature I must decide myself.’ Proud though she was of her own abilities, she conceded that even she had made a disastrous mistake, in the case of the Boxers. Her adopted son had been calamitous. Indeed, she could think of no one at court remotely capable of succeeding as an absolute monarch, especially in the modern world.