Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (12 page)

Prince Gong had underestimated Cixi. She read the memos carefully, and then sent them out to ten top officials who headed foreign affairs, trade and the provinces, inviting their opinions. In her cover letter there was no anger or any ill feeling towards Hart or Wade – unlike Prince Gong’s own report, in which bitterness flared up here and there. She had taken Western arrogance in her stride, declining to allow it to cloud her judgement. Instead she looked for potential benefits in the proposals. Hart ‘
makes some good points’, she found, ‘in his evaluation of Chinese government, military, finance, and in his suggestions about adopting Western methods of mining, ship-building, arms production and military training . . . As for the matters to do with foreign relations, such as sending ambassadors to other countries, these are things we should be doing anyway.’ She did not address the matter of the threatening language and tone, simply evoking her government’s motto: ‘Make China Strong is the only way to ensure that foreign countries will not start a conflict against us . . . or look down on us.’ Perhaps she was also able to put the offence into perspective, knowing only too well that the Chinese talked about foreigners in a no less offensive manner. Nevertheless, Prince Gong warned Western envoys to
watch their language. They obliged, and omitted offending expressions from subsequent correspondence.
^fn4

A few senior mandarins fumed against Hart, but the empress dowager never turned against him. Hart was honest, and ran the Customs efficiently and with great probity, which was a singular achievement in a country where corruption was endemic. That was enough for her. Never small-minded, she would invariably focus on the bigger picture and soon she would award Hart another honour for his service. Hart headed China’s Customs for as long as her life and reign. For a foreigner to be in charge of a major fiscal channel for nearly half a century was an extraordinary phenomenon, and shows an astonishing lack of prejudice or suspicion on Cixi’s part, as well as the shrewdness of her judgement. It was not blind faith. She was in no doubt that Hart’s ultimate loyalty lay with his own country, Britain. A diplomat of hers reported to her that he had quizzed Hart on where his loyalty would lie, if there were a clash between China and Britain, and that Hart had replied:
‘I am British.’ And yet she had faith that Hart would be fair to China – and she strove to avoid presenting him with any conflict of interest. Few of the top echelon objected to Hart, which was also extraordinary. However anti-West some officials might be, they trusted their country’s Customs to a Westerner. Hart did not let them down. He contributed not only significantly to China’s financial well-being, but also to its general relationship with the outside world. He became somebody to whom Prince Gong turned for all sorts of services to do with the West. And the empress dowager learned about Western civilisation through dealing with him, even if the contact was indirect.

The modernisation projects proposed by Hart were, however, rejected by all those Cixi consulted. Even the most reform-minded man, whom Westerners came to regard highly, Earl Li, was vehemently against them, summing up their ‘
incalculable damages’ thus: ‘they deface our landscape, invade our fields and villages, spoil our
feng-shui
[geomancy], and ruin the livelihood of our people.’ No one could think of any good that these expensive engineering projects would do, and Western representatives were unable to produce persuasive arguments in their favour. Prince Gong informed Cixi that Westerners had
‘not said anything specific about how exactly these are going to be good for China’.

Instead, there seemed to be plenty of advantages for the West. China was near to paying off the war indemnities and had a huge trade surplus. It could afford these enterprises. Having set foot in the interior, Westerners found the place to be rich in unexploited natural resources. The British naval officer
Henry Noel Shore noted that ‘the coal-fields have been estimated by competent authorities at 419,000 square miles, or more than twenty times greater than those of Europe, while minerals, but especially iron ore of excellent quality, are said to abound in every province’. And mining required telegraphs and railways.

Among the many objections raised was that Westerners would have access to China’s underground treasures and might seek to control them. Railways could carry Western troops into the heartland, if they wished to invade. Millions of people in the travel and communications business – the cart-drivers, goods-bearers, messengers, innkeepers and so on – would lose their jobs. No one seemed to regard a reduction in back-breaking labour as especially desirable, or foresee the creation of new forms of employment. The roaring noise and black smoke produced by machines were seen as a particular horror as they were deemed to interfere with nature – and, worst of all, disturb the dead souls in the numerous private ancestral tombs that defined the landscape of China.

In those days, in China, each extended family had its own burial lot. These grounds were sacred to the population. As Freeman-Mitford observed,
‘in this place, the fairest spots are chosen for burying the dead’. Indeed, people believed that the tombs were their final destination where, after they died, they joined their deceased nearest and dearest. This comforting thought removed the fear of dying. The most deadly blow one could deal to one’s enemy was to destroy his ancestral tomb, so that he and all his family would become homeless ghosts after death, condemned to eternal loneliness and misery.

Like most of her contemporaries, Cixi associated ancestral tombs with profound religious sentiment. Faith was essential in her life, and the only thing that frightened her was the wrath of Heaven – the mystical and formless being that was the equivalent of God to the Chinese of her day. Believing in Heaven was to them not incompatible with having faith in Buddhism or Taoism. Chinese religious feelings were not as well defined as those in the Christian world. To have more than one religious belief was common. Indeed at grand ceremonies, such as an extravagant funeral, which might last well over a month, prayers were said by both Buddhist and Taoist priests as well as the lamas of Tibetan Buddhism, alternating every few days. In this tradition, Cixi was both a devout Buddhist and a devotee to Taoist doctrine. Her most revered Bodhisattva was Guanyin, the Goddess of Mercy, the only female god in Buddhism, who was a Taoist Immortal as well. She frequently prayed in her personal chapels to a statue of Guanyin, with her palms together in front of her chest. The chapels were also her private sanctuaries where she went to be alone, to clear her mind before making critical decisions. As a Buddhist, she followed the ritual of setting captured creatures free. For her birthday, she would buy many birds – latterly as many as 10,000, according to her court ladies – and on the day, choosing the most auspicious hour, she would climb to the top of a hill and open the cages carried by the eunuchs one after another, watching the birds fly away.

It was mainly on account of the ancestral tombs that Cixi’s government rejected the machine-age projects. The spirits of the dead simply must not be disturbed. Prince
Gong told the foreign envoys that if this refusal meant war, then so be it. Cixi treated the threat of war seriously and issued a
severely worded edict ordering provincial chiefs to resolve swiftly any outstanding disputes involving Westerners, so that no one had any pretext to start a war. Her government did its best to stick to the treaties. As Hart acknowledged,
‘I do not know of any infraction of treaties.’ After more futile lobbying, Western companies gave up. China’s industrial age was delayed.

However, it was to creep in through another door.
Cixi’s court was united in favour of building a modern army and arms industry. Foreign officers were engaged to train troops, and engineers employed to teach the manufacture of weaponry. Technology and equipment were bought. In 1866, the building of a modern fleet started in earnest. Its chief foreign supervisor was a Frenchman, Prosper Giquel, who had first arrived in China serving in the British-French invading forces, and had stayed on. He had helped defeat the Taiping by leading a Franco-Chinese force named the Ever-triumphant Army, echoing the Anglo-Chinese Ever-victorious Army, before working in the Customs under Robert Hart. Cixi had faith in Giquel and authorised whatever money the enterprise required. There were many doubters who mistrusted a former French officer of an invading army, and others who were horrified by the astronomical cost. But Cixi was instinctively unsuspicious. She told her officials that Giquel and other foreigners ‘must be treated extra well’. ‘This fleet-building project is really fundamental to our goal to Make China Strong,’ she declared excitedly.

In the space of just a few years, nine steamships were built, of a quality that apparently could hold its own against Western ships. No bottles of champagne were cracked open when they were launched; only solemn ceremonies offering apologies to the Celestial Queen, and the Gods of Rivers and of Soil, all of whom the steamers were about to distress. When the first ship sailed resplendently into the harbour of Tianjin in 1869, crowds of Chinese and foreign inhabitants gathered to witness the spectacle, and those who were involved in its building wiped away proud tears. For his services Giquel was richly rewarded with, among other things, a mandarin jacket in the royal yellow colour.

By the end of the first decade of her rule, Cixi had not only revived a war-torn country, but had also founded a modern navy and begun building a modern army and arms industry, with state-of-the-art equipment. Although full-scale industrialisation did not take off immediately in this ancient land, which had its own strong and deep-rooted traditions and religious sentiments, modern enterprises were appearing one by one: coal- and iron-ore mining, iron-mills building and machine manufacturing. Modern education was introduced to train the engineers, technicians, officers and crew. Railways and telegraphs were waiting just beyond the horizon. Medieval China had taken its first step towards modernisation under the empress dowager.

^fn1
Wade was a pre-eminent sinologist, who pioneered the romanisation system for the Chinese language, later known as the Wade–Giles, a system that for much of the twentieth century was the tool for a non-native speaker to learn Chinese, and was an invaluable aid for the Chinese themselves to learn their own language. This author’s name, Jung Chang, is spelt according to the Wade–Giles system.

^fn2
A statue of Gordon was erected in Trafalgar Square, London, and was later moved to the Victoria Embankment. Winston Churchill spoke in Parliament in 1948 in favour of the statue’s return to its original location, calling Gordon ‘a model of a Christian hero’, and saying that ‘very many cherished ideals are associated with his name’.

^fn3
In the places not despoiled or occupied by the rebels, the recovery was instant. Already in the mid-1860s, observed the English attaché, Freeman-Mitford, ‘The prosperity of Canton is evident, and very striking.’

^fn4
Hart had at first been oblivious to the offence his memo had caused and, thinking he could force Cixi’s government into industrialisation, had burst out into a ‘Hurrah!’ in his diary after submitting it. Then he registered his hosts’ reserve after he had done another round of lobbying at the Foreign Office, selling telegraphs and railways. He wrote in his diary that the Chinese ‘might think I was in foreign & not in Chinese pay’, and he told them ‘I shd. not again refer to the matters about which I had spoken . . .’

6 Virgin Journeys to the West (1861–71)

ON THE ROAD
to modernity Cixi had a kindred spirit, close adviser and dependable administrator in Prince Gong. Her decisions were formulated with the help of the prince, who then implemented them. Between them, the yellow silk screen barely existed.

Without such a man outside the confines of the harem, Cixi could not have ruled effectively. She showed the prince her appreciation by awarding him unparalleled honours – and, crucially, exempting him from having to prostrate before her. An imperial edict issued just after her coup, in the name of her son, specifically
granted the privilege of not kneeling and kowtowing in everyday meetings to Prince Gong, together with Prince Chun and three other uncles of the child emperor. Prince Gong was the main beneficiary, as he saw Cixi every day. It eventually struck her that she really must withdraw this favour. Without the rigid etiquette, she realised, Prince Gong was too relaxed with her and was treating her in the patronising way he tended to treat all women, especially as she was young – still in her twenties. His behaviour irritated and angered her for some time, until one day in 1865 she exploded and in tremendous agitation fired him. She wrote a decree by hand, accusing him of
‘having too high an opinion of himself’, ‘strutting about and giving himself airs’ and, simply, being ‘full of rubbish’. This was one of the few decrees Cixi wrote in her own hand. Her writing was still poor, and her text was littered with solecisms. That she threw caution to the winds and exposed her vulnerability – her lack of scholarship, which mattered so much to the elite – shows how furious she was.

Like most rocky moments in solid relationships, the storm passed. The grandees mediated. Cixi calmed down. Prince Gong apologised, prostrating at her feet (which remained behind the yellow silk screen), weeping and promising to reform his manners. Having made her point, Cixi rescinded her decree and restored Prince Gong to his former posts. She did, however, take away his title,
Grand Adviser, although his role continued as before. She also told him to be deferential in court and stop behaving arrogantly. From now on Prince Gong, tamed, took care to humble himself, and to kneel and kowtow in her presence. This episode served as a warning to other grandees around her that Cixi was not to be patronised. She was the master. They all prostrated before her.