Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (10 page)

When the ceremony was over, a procession escorted the scroll out of the Forbidden City to the Tiananmen Gate to the south. On top of the Gate, the scroll was opened and read out, first in Manchu and then in Chinese, to the gathered officials at the foot of the outer wall, all of whom were on their knees. When the declaration and the ritual of repeated prostration were over, the scroll was placed in the beak of a gold phoenix, slowly lowered on a rope along the outer wall and installed in a shrine, which was escorted away by a guard of honour. At the Ministry of Rites the proclamation was copied on special royal paper and delivered to the provinces, where it was read out to the officials, level by level, down to the grass roots. Notices were posted in towns and word spread to the villages. Along the routes that the copies were taken, all officials and ordinary people prostrated themselves.

Cixi was not at the coronation. The majestic main part of the Forbidden City was out of bounds to her – because she was a woman. She still could not set foot in it, even though she was now the de facto ruler. In fact, when her sedan-chair went within sight of it, she had to
close the curtain and show humility by not looking at it. Virtually all decrees were issued in the name of her son, as Cixi had no mandate to rule. It was with this crippling handicap that she proceeded to change China.

^fn1
In order not to confuse readers, this book will continue to refer to Dowager Empress Ci’an as Empress Zhen.

^fn2
It is a common assumption that Emperor Xianfeng had intended Empress Zhen and Cixi to use the seals as a counterbalance to the Board of Regents. There is no evidence for this. In fact, he left power only to the eight men. It is also improbable that he should have intended the two women to have political power.

^fn3
It is commonly assumed that this regnal name referred to the ‘joint rule’ of the Two Dowager Empresses, as the word
Tongzhi
can mean ‘joint rule’ in modern Chinese. This is wrong. Their ‘joint rule’ was a temporary arrangement for which they felt obliged to apologise. It could not have been solemnised by being designated the name of the reign. The regnal name in fact comes from the Confucian teaching: ‘There are many ways of being a good government, and they can all be summarised as order and prosperity; there are many ways of being an evil government, and they can all be summarised as chaos and mayhem.’

^fn4
Decades later, in 1915, when General Yuan Shikai made himself the new emperor, he had the throne moved back and away from the ball, apparently fearing that the ball might fall on him.

PART TWO
Reigning Behind Her Son’s Throne (1861–1875)

5 First Step on the Long Road to Modernity (1861–9)

THE SIGNS OF
a new era were immediately apparent. Prince Gong now headed the Grand Council and the half-dozen new Grand Councillors were intelligent and sensible men like him. To Frederick Bruce, the first British minister to reside in Beijing, these were ‘
statesmen who understand our character and motives sufficiently to place confidence in us’, and who ‘are satisfied of our moderation, as well as of our strength’. He regarded the change of leadership as ‘the most favourable incident that has hitherto taken place in the course of our relations with China’.

Indeed, through Prince Gong’s reports, and the fact that the British-French troops had withdrawn from Beijing, Cixi had come to the conclusion that amicable relations with the West were possible, and she began to strive for such a relationship. She asked the most fundamental and clear-eyed questions: Are foreign trade and an open-door policy such bad things for China? Can we not benefit from them? Can we not use them to solve our own problems? This fresh way of looking at things heralded the Cixi era. She was pulling China out of the dead end into which it had been rammed by Emperor Xianfeng’s all-consuming hatred and by the closed-door policy of 100 years. She was setting the country on a new course: opening it up to the outside world.

This Herculean process was presided over by Cixi, together with Empress Zhen, from the harem. They got up between five and six in the morning, sometimes even at four – which was always a struggle for Cixi – to be ready at the audience hall by seven o’clock. They would be splendidly dressed, in phoenix-patterned formal robes, pearl-studded shoes and bejewelled, gate-tower-shaped coiffure. In the hall they sat side by side, behind a yellow silk screen, through which they discussed business with the Grand Councillors. The Councillors would have been waiting for some time in their deliberately simple offices, with plain tables and chairs covered in cloth. When the meetings were over, the two women gave audiences to officials from around the empire. The child emperor, Tongzhi, now sat on a small throne in front of the screen facing the officials, while the women remained vaguely visible behind him. To attend these audiences, officials got up soon after midnight to travel to the Forbidden City, the rumbling of their mule-carts and the clatter of the mules’ feet almost the only sounds in the deserted streets of Beijing. Throughout the audiences they prostrated themselves, their eyes cast down.

Cixi was the one who usually asked the questions. She was good at projecting authority. While in the harem,
as many observed, she was vivacious and fond of laughing; but the moment a eunuch came to announce, on his knees, that her sedan-chair was ready to take her to the audience hall, she would switch off her smiles and assume a daunting air. Even with the screen separating them, the officials could feel her commanding presence – and she could assess their personality. Many who had audiences with her described how Cixi seemed to be able
‘to read our thoughts’, and that ‘at a glance’ she seemed able to ‘see through the character of every one that appears before her’.
Empress Zhen was quiet and retiring, willingly playing second fiddle.

After the audiences, back in their quarters, the women changed into less formal and more comfortable clothes, taking off some of the jewels that made their headdresses very heavy. They took the day’s reports out of a yellow box and, using court conventions which they quickly picked up, they folded one corner of a page, or dented it with a finger nail, to indicate ‘Report registered’, ‘Do as recommended’, and so on. A lot of the daily work consisted of pure administration, such as approving official appointments. Empress Zhen dealt with these on her own, and most documents of this nature were stamped by her
seal only. Policy was Cixi’s domain. For two decades the two women were to work in perfect harmony, until Empress Zhen’s death in 1881. The fact that they remained lifelong friends as well as political partners was a most remarkable feat –
‘almost if not entirely unique in history’, commented an American missionary.

It is commonly claimed that Prince Gong made all the decisions for Cixi, who, as a ‘semi-illiterate’ woman, was limited in knowledge and experience. The massive documented exchanges between them, and between Cixi and the officials, point to the contrary: that Prince Gong and all others in fact reported to Cixi, who was the decision-maker. She would, of course, always consult Prince Gong, and sometimes initiate debates among the top echelon. Her orders were then given verbally to the Grand Council, and the Councillors or their secretaries would write them up as decrees. Having approved them, she and Empress Zhen would stamp them with the seals. Following Qing rules, Grand Councillors (Prince Gong included) were prohibited from adding or changing anything in a decree.

As a check to its policies, the dynasty had the traditional institutionalised watchdog, the Censors,
yu-shi
, who were the official ‘criticisers’. In addition to these, Cixi encouraged critical comments from other officials, starting a trend that led to the involvement of the literati in state affairs, a sharp break from the tradition that discouraged their political participation. These informal ‘opposers’ became a substantial force in the land and acquired a collective name,
qing-liu
, or ‘clear stream’, signifying that they were above self-interest. Their targets included Cixi herself. Over the years, members of the government would complain that these attacks hindered their work, but Cixi never tried to silence them. Instinctively she seems to have known that a government needs dissenting voices. Among those voices she spotted outstanding people and promoted them to high office. One such man was Zhang Zhidong, who became one of the most eminent reformers. Cixi took care not to go against majority opinion, but the final decision was always hers.

Running the empire needed more language skills and more knowledge of the classics than Cixi possessed. So she studied with educated eunuchs.
Her lessons were like bedtime readings and took place before her after-lunch siesta or at night. She would sit cross-legged on her bed, with a book of poetry or one of the classics in her hand. The eunuchs would sit on cushions on the floor at a low table. They would go through the texts with her, and she would read after them. The lesson would go on until she fell asleep.

Under Cixi, China entered a long period of peace with the West. The British government, for instance, noted that
‘China is now prepared to enter into intimate relations with foreigners instead of . . . endeavouring to prevent all intercourse whatever with them’. And ‘since the policy of China is to encourage commerce with the nations of the world, it would be suicidal on our part not to endeavour to assist the enlightened Government of China . . .’ Britain and other powers therefore adopted a ‘co-operative policy’. ‘Our present course,’ said Lord Palmerston, now British Prime Minister, ‘was to strengthen the Chinese empire, to augment its revenues, and to enable it to provide itself with a better navy and army.’

Prince Gong, leading China’s first Foreign Office as well as the Grand Council, got on well with Western diplomats. He was a charming man. The Mitford grandfather, Algernon Freeman-Mitford, observed that he was ‘
full of jokes and fun’, even appearing to ‘have a flippant manner’: ‘My single eyeglass was a real boon to the Prince. Whenever he was getting the worst of an argument, and was at a loss for an answer, he would stop short, throw up his hands in amazement, and pointing at me cry out, “A single eyeglass! Marvellous!” By thus creating a diversion at my expense he gave himself time to consider his reply.’

The immediate benefit that Cixi gained from this new friendly relationship was the help of the Western powers in defeating the Taiping. At the time, in 1861, these peasant rebels had been waging ferocious battles in the heartland of China for a decade, and were holding large swathes of the country’s richest land along the Yangtze River, together with some of the wealthiest cities, including Nanjing, their capital, next door to Shanghai. Because the rebels claimed to be Christians, Westerners had at first been rather sympathetic towards them. But disillusion eventually set in, when it became all too clear that the Taiping had little in common with Christians. Their leader, Hong Xiuquan, for a long time imposed total sexual abstinence on ordinary members and decreed the death penalty for those who broke the ban, even if they were husbands and wives; but he officially bestowed up to eleven wives on each of his chiefs and took eighty-eight consorts for himself. He wrote
more than 400 crude ‘poems’ telling the women how to serve him – the Sun, as he called himself. And this was not the worst thing, as hordes of peasant rebels indulged in cruel and wanton slaughter of the innocent, burning villages and towns wherever they went. The area they devastated was as large as all Western and Central Europe combined. The English-language
North China Herald
came to the conclusion that the
‘whole history’ of the Taiping ‘has been a succession of acts of bloodshed, rapine, and disorganisation; and [its] progress from the south to the north, and now in the east of this unhappy land, has been invariably attended by desolation, famine, and pestilence’. The rebels were not friendly to Western Christians, either: they turned down their request to leave Shanghai alone, and instead tried to seize the city, jeopardising Westerners’ own business and security.

Some powers had offered help to fight the Taiping while Emperor Xianfeng was still alive. But he detested them as much as he did the Taiping themselves. Shortly after he died, the matter was raised again, and Cixi was enthusiastic. To those who suspected that Westerners were up to no good and might well occupy the land they took from the rebels, she reasoned: ‘
Since the treaties were signed, Britain and France have kept their word and withdrawn. It is in their interest to help us.’
She was cautious, though, and declined to employ Western troops, taking note of the counsel of Thomas Wade, Secretary to the British Legation, that foreign troops on Chinese soil were not a good idea for China.
^fn1
That Wade should give advice with China’s interest in mind was not lost on Cixi. She chose to have Western officers arming, training and leading local men, under overall Chinese command.

With her encouragement, Frederick Townsend Ward, a thirty-year-old American from Salem, Massachusetts, a tough adventurer and soldier of fortune with leadership qualities, organised an army of several thousand Chinese, with Western training and Western officers. Ward and his army won many battles, of which Cixi learned in glowing reports. She publicly conferred on him prominent honours, and named his force the ‘Ever-victorious Army’. It was unheard-of that
imperial decrees ‘frankly and explicitly recognised’ the merits of a foreigner, and Westerners saw this as ‘a significant indication of the change in the Chinese attitude’.

Ward was fatally wounded in a battle in 1862 and Cixi ordered a temple built to commemorate him. Charles Gordon, an English officer, assumed the command of the Ever-victorious Army. Gordon felt strongly that ‘the rebellion ought to be put down.’ He wrote,
‘Words cannot express the horrors these people suffer from the rebels, or the utter desert they have made of this rich province. It is all very well to talk of non-intervention; and I am not particularly sensitive, nor are our soldiers generally so; but certainly we are all impressed with the utter misery and wetchedness of these poor people.’ Like Ward, Gordon had a penchant for bravado and would go into action armed only with a rattan cane. A hero to his men, he would become the famed ‘Chinese Gordon’ and played a key – and, some say, indispensable – role in defeating the Taiping and rescuing the Qing dynasty.