Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (64 page)

Kang Youwei.

Liang Qichao, Kang’s main disciple.

Former Japanese Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi, featured on a modern banknote, was the architect of Japan’s war against China in 1894.

The xenophobic Boxers, who created mayhem in north China in 1900. Western powers invaded and Cixi was driven out of Beijing.

The Allied forces entered the Forbidden City.

Cixi returned to Beijing at the beginning of 1902, travelling the last leg by train, with the imperial locomotive provided by the Allies. A foreigner on the city wall snapped a picture of her (above) as she turned to wave at them, a handkerchief in hand.

The imperial locomotive.

Girls with bound feet. One of Cixi’s first decrees upon her return to Beijing was to outlaw foot-binding.

Convicts in the cangues. The legal reforms started by Cixi abolished medieval forms of punishment like this - and ‘death by a thousand cuts’.

Putting a flower in her Manchu-style coiffure. Cixi took great care of her appearance. She designed her clothes and jewellery and supervised the making of cosmetics such as rouge, perfume and soap. In the background, apples from her orchard were on display for their subtle fragrance.

The only photo in which Cixi is smiling. She actually liked laughing, but would switch off her smiles and assume a serious air when she went to work — or faced the camera.

On a barge on the lake of the Sea Palace, amidst lotus flowers. With court ladies and eunuchs. Louisa Pierson far right; fifth from right Imperial Concubine Jade, Pearl’s sister. All had to stand in Cixi’s presence, who alone was sitting.

Wearing opera costumes. Cixi was passionate about music, and helped make Peking Opera the national opera of China.