Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (62 page)

A painting by Cixi.

Cixi learned to write characters as big as this (panel size 211 cm x 102 cm) in one single stroke. This was considered extraordinary, especially as she was small and elderly. This character reads
shou
, meaning ‘longevity’.

Horse and calligraphy by Emperor Xianfeng when he was sixteen.

A court painter’s rendering of Cixi playing Go with a eunuch.

A photographic portrait Cixi sent to US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1904, thanking him for his good wishes for her seventieth birthday. Her face had been airbrushed in the photograph.

Emperor Xianfeng, a standard portrait of a monarch produced after his death. Xianfeng died in 1860 in self-imposed exile, partly because the Old Summer Palace had been burned down by the British.

From that palace, ‘Lootie’, a Pekinese, was taken to Britain and presented to Queen Victoria, who had it painted.

Cixi’s son, who would become Emperor Tongzhi, playing with his half-sister.

Emperor Guangxu who, upon Tongzhi’s death in 1875, was put on the throne by Cixi when he was three.

Zhen, Empress to Xianfeng, and lifelong friend of Cixi.

The harem, at the rear of the Forbidden City. Cixi found its high walls and closed-in alleys ‘depressing’.

The front and main part of the Forbidden City, vast and grand - and out of bounds for women. Cixi never set foot in it, even when she was the supreme ruler of China.

As a woman, Cixi was not supposed to see her officials, who were all male. So, during audiences, she would sit behind the throne and the yellow silk screen. The child emperor was sometimes seated on the throne in front.