Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (18 page)

Miss Fengxiu, Cixi’s preferred choice, was made the
No. 2 consort. Just before the wedding day she was carried into the Forbidden City through the back gate, in a small sedan-chair borne by just four men with a tiny procession. The almost shabby ceremony had been prescribed for a concubine. She and another three imperial concubines fared no better than the empress, so far as their husband’s affection was concerned. All five women were condemned to a life of loneliness.

After the wedding, in a ceremony on 23 February 1873, Emperor Tongzhi formally assumed office. He was sixteen. To be an absolute monarch so young was not unusual. Bizarre as it might seem, the first two emperors of the Qing dynasty, Shunzhi and Kangxi, took over the running of the empire at the age of thirteen. Emperor Tongzhi’s assumption of power was also a court affair, like his wedding. The people at large learned about it from the imperial declaration, in a scroll lowered from the Tiananmen Gate, copied and distributed throughout the empire, in the same manner as the emperor’s earlier coronation. From now on this teenager, and he alone, would make all decisions relating to the empire. As he would now write with his crimson-inked brush,
the seals that had been stamped on decrees by the Two Dowager Empresses were no longer used. The yellow silk screen behind which Cixi and Empress Zhen had been sitting was folded away and they retired into the harem.

The emperor was determined to be worthy, and vowed to Grand Tutor Weng that he would
‘not be lazy or negligent’ and would ‘not let my ancestors down’. The tutor was overjoyed. For about a year the young man was as good as his word,
reading reports, authorising edicts and giving audiences. But he had none of his mother’s initiative. His crimson-inked instructions were brief and routine. Cixi stuck to the rules and did not intervene in her son’s work. There were no further projects, or attempts to modernise the empire.

There was one
exception. Western legations had been requesting an audience with the throne to present their credentials ever since they entered Beijing. Hitherto, they had been told it was out of the question: the emperor was a child, and the Two Dowager Empresses, being female, could not be seen. The day after he took control, the legations sent a collective note applying for an audience. Furthermore, they insisted on seeing the emperor without going down on their knees and kowtowing. While Lord Macartney had reluctantly done so in 1793, for the sake of his trade mission, the second British envoy, Lord Amherst in 1816, had refused to go. Now the legations pooled their weight and demanded a kowtow-free audience. Most court officials were equally uncompromising, insisting that the kowtow had to be done.

Cixi had already made her decision on this issue: the envoys did not have to kowtow. A few years earlier she had discussed the matter with a small circle of open-minded officials like Prince Gong, Marquis Zeng and Earl Li, and they had all agreed that they could, and should, compromise. Emperor Tongzhi did what his mother told him to do. On 29 June 1873, he received the legation ministers without them kneeling, let alone touching their heads on the ground. This was a historic moment. The ministers stood, took off their hats and bowed at each stage as they advanced towards the throne. The dean of the diplomatic corps delivered a speech offering congratulations, and Emperor Tongzhi’s response of goodwill was spoken by Prince Gong. The whole thing was over in half an hour. The court made no public announcement, not wanting to draw attention to the absence of the kowtow. Among those who heard about it,
Grand Tutor Weng was troubled. Some, angered that the emperor had apparently succumbed to Western pressure, vowed to avenge this slight in the future.

Apart from this one tricky matter, the bureaucracy ran automatically. Traditional Chinese administration was a well-oiled machine, which, barring a crisis, would keep ticking over. Initiatives were not required and rarely offered. State policies depended almost entirely on the dynamism of the throne. While Cixi was full of innovative ideas, her son was entirely lacking in them. Nor was there any particular impetus for change. Cixi had brought peace, stability and a degree of prosperity to the empire. There was no peasant rebellion, or foreign invasion.

Nevertheless, even as a purely bureaucratic emperor, Tongzhi had at least to be hands-on, in order for the machine to run smoothly. Yet he grew tired of it. The tall, good-looking and fun-loving teenager stayed in bed later and later. The number of audiences decreased, until he saw just one or two people a day, and each time asked only a few stock questions. The ever-flowing reports often went unread and he would simply write on them the standard ‘Do as you propose’, whether there was actually a ‘proposal’ or not. Realising this, the ministries did as they saw fit, and the administration became lax.

This state of affairs had already disquieted the grandees when the emperor decided to rebuild part of the Old Summer Palace. He had visited the ruins with his mother and had been dejected by the sight of the remains of the formerly glorious buildings covered in weeds. In autumn 1873, he wrote an edict by hand, announcing his intention to restore the place, at least partially. The reason he gave was that the Two Dowager Empresses needed a home for their retirement. Some felt this was reasonable: Prince Gong donated 20,000 taels of silver towards the cost. Cixi gave enthusiastic support. The restoration was her dream. She longed to live there again. With her characteristic energy and attention to detail, she threw herself into the project, interviewing managers and architects, approving designs and mock-ups, even drawing some interiors herself.

The construction began the following spring, and the emperor inspected the site often, urging the builders to speed up, especially with his own quarters, so that he could move in, even before the dowager empresses. In fact, what the young monarch wanted most was a place where he would be free to pursue his sexual adventures. While he grew negligent with his royal duties, it was widely known that he spent his time ‘revelling and frolicking with eunuchs’. He continued to sneak out of the Forbidden City in disguise to visit disreputable establishments. The Forbidden City was extremely inconvenient to him, as its gates had to be closed at sunset, after which not even the emperor was allowed out without a proper reason. At closing time, the duty eunuchs would cry out the ‘sunset call’ in their high-pitched voices, at which the heavy gates would be pushed shut one by one and locked with a loud clank. The immense compound would then fall into total silence, with only the occasional faint sound of the tap-tap-tap of the night watchmen’s bamboo blocks as they did their rounds in the Beijing streets. Noiselessly, a club was passed from hand to hand by the sentries along the walls of the Forbidden City, to make sure that no guard was asleep or missing and that there were no gaps in the patrols. Emperor Tongzhi dreaded those sunset calls and tightly shut gates. The numerous immutable rules governing the emperor’s life – from being woken up at the prescribed time to being shadowed by note-takers recording his every move – were a permanent irritation. He wanted the Old Summer Palace as a refuge. Vast, with no solid wall encircling it, this was the place where he could lead the life he wanted.

Very soon, however, a chorus of opposition burst out. This followed a tradition of reprimanding the monarch if he was seen to be indulging in excessive pleasure-seeking or embarking on an inordinately expensive undertaking. Petitioners pointed out that the country was not prosperous enough, and the Ministry of Revenue presented the emperor with a balance sheet which showed that the project was beyond the state’s means. The emperor’s uncle, Prince Chun, told him that the
Old Summer Palace must only be a reminder of his father’s death and of his duty to
avenge him. But Emperor Tongzhi was set on fun, rather than revenge.
He ignored his uncle, and threw the report from the Ministry of Revenue back at the prostrating minister. This was not a monarch who listened to his critics, and he wrote in crimson ink denouncing the petitioners, charging them with trying to prevent him from fulfilling his filial duties – a serious sin, according to Confucian ethics. Adopting the air of holding the moral high ground, the emperor fired one official ‘as a warning’ and told the rest ‘there will be punishment for those who bring up the matter again . . .’ Eventually Prince Gong, who had come to recognise that the project was not feasible, put his name to a petition entreating his royal nephew to change his mind. The young man snapped at him: ‘Perhaps you want me to give up my throne to you!’ One Grand Councillor, prostrating himself on the floor, was so shocked by the emperor’s reaction and wept so hard that he passed out and had to be helped away.

Amidst the confrontation over the rebuilding of the Old Summer Palace, His Majesty’s general lifestyle was raised disapprovingly, including his obsessive love of opera, his neglect of state duties and, in particular, his nights out in disguise. Tongzhi demanded to know from his two uncles who had been telling tales. Prince Chun cited the specific places of ill repute, and Prince Gong named his eldest son, who was a friend of the emperor, as a source of the information. In a fury, the emperor charged them with ‘bullying’ him, along with other accusations that amounted to high treason. The two princes kept knocking their heads on the floor, but it did nothing to reduce the emperor’s wrath, and he penned a crimson-ink edict, stripping Prince Gong and his son of their titles, sacking Prince Gong from all his posts and placing him under guard in the Department of the Nobles. Another edict fired Prince Chun.

Luckily for the grandees, the emperor’s mother was on hand. The grandees wrote to Cixi, imploring her to intervene.
She came to her son’s office with Empress Zhen and told her son to heed the majority. Tearfully she reprimanded him for his treatment of Prince Gong. While she talked, the young emperor stood and listened, and went down on his knees when his mother’s rebuke became emotional. The emperor was obliged to show submission to his mother, according to the traditional code. He also loved her. All the sacking orders were rescinded – and Cixi had to abandon her dream of moving into the Old Summer Palace.

Emperor Tongzhi was unwilling to give up his sexual pursuits outside the Forbidden City and set his heart on the Sea Palace next door. Dominated by a vast man-made lake, this large estate housed no grand palaces, but quite a few temples and buildings of architectural distinction, screened off only by symbolic walls. The living quarters had fallen into disrepair as Emperor Tongzhi’s father and grandfather had been hard up. The grandees agreed to the refurbishment, and work started straight away. The emperor became very attached to the place, and continued to visit it as summer turned into winter, until one day when he was out on the lake and caught a cold.

The emperor also caught something much more serious. His medical records from the Royal Clinic show that, on 8 December 1874, rashes appeared on his skin. The next day, doctors diagnosed smallpox. The diagnosis and the prescriptions were circulated among the Grand Councillors. Herbs and other ingredients were mixed and brewed, into which were added special items such as earthworms, which were considered useful in extracting poison. The doctors tasted the brew first, then eunuch chiefs did the same. The court began to observe all the rituals associated with smallpox. The way the Chinese dealt with a deadly force was – and in some ways still is – to appease it, even to put it on a pedestal, in the hope that it would be mollified and would leave them alone. So smallpox was ingratiatingly called ‘heavenly flowers’,
tian-hua
, and the emperor was said to be ‘enjoying the heavenly flowery happiness’. Courtiers put on floral gowns, wore red (the colour of joy) silk scarves, and set up shrines to worship the Goddess of Blisters, the lady supposedly responsible for the pus-filled spots. On the ninth day of the illness, the blisters showed signs of maturity and release. The inner circle was invited in to see His Majesty.

By the side of the royal bed stood Cixi and Empress Zhen, with candles in their hands. They asked the grandees, on their knees some distance away, to come closer. The sick teenager lay with his face towards them and raised an arm for them to inspect. They saw, as Grand Tutor Weng described, that ‘the flowers are extremely dense, from which his eyes are barely visible’. After a while they retreated from the chamber and were then summoned to the audience hall, where Cixi spoke to them at length. She was distraught and burst into sobs as she spoke. She said that her son might need some relaxation during his recovery, and if ‘occasionally’ he wanted music performed, she ‘trusted’ the grandees ‘would not object’. With these words of obvious reproach, the grandees repeatedly banged their foreheads on the floor.

Cixi then discussed state affairs with them. Because he had been unable to work, she said, the emperor had grown anxious during recent days. He wished the grandees to find a solution. They proposed that the Two Dowager Empresses take charge, while the emperor was ‘enjoying the happy event’. They then left to draft a petition to that effect. But Cixi had second thoughts; she recalled the grandees and told them to stop writing. It had occurred to her that a ‘petition’ might give the impression that the emperor was being asked to relinquish power. She decided that the request should come from her son, who, after she spoke to him, said that he was only too happy for her to step in. The following day, he summoned the grandees and, appearing to have more energy than the day before, told Prince Gong in a firm voice: ‘I just have a few words to say. There mustn’t be a day when state affairs are not taken care of. I plan to beg the Two Dowager Empresses to deal with all the reports on my behalf, and I myself will do my duty as before after this happy event . . .’ Cixi then told him that the grandees had already ‘requested’ the same plan the previous day: everyone was of the same mind, so the emperor should stop worrying. The grandees left, feeling relieved and delighted that the reins of power were once again in Cixi’s hands.

On the sixteenth day of the illness, the scabs on the young man’s body began to flake off, and it seemed that he would be all right. The big shrine for the Goddess of Blisters that had been set up in one of the grand halls was lifted in an elaborate ceremony and, accompanied by a large brigade of guards of honour, was carried out of the Forbidden City.