Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (25 page)

Trained as a Confucian purist, he regarded fun as sinful. His holidays were mostly spent in the study, as were his birthdays. On his eighth birthday the court staged operas over several days. Each day he put in a brief appearance before returning to his study. He was a diligent pupil, but he had also been taught by Weng to dislike opera for its melodrama and tuneful melodies, which were deemed to be ‘vulgar’. To the tutor’s delight, the child said that he considered it to be something only for his attendants – that he preferred the ‘elegant sounds of bells and drums’, ancient music that was stately (if monotonous), designed not for pleasure, but for contemplation and ceremonies, approved of by Confucius.

The child shunned play, or any vigorous physical activity, including riding, which was on the curriculum for a Manchu emperor. To meet his obligation he had a
wooden horse installed and sat on it for his lessons. But he did like to exercise his hands, and loved to take apart and reassemble watches and clocks. Eunuchs purchased these European imports from an
enterprising Dane, who had a shop in the capital.

Guangxu was physically weak, timid and nervous, with a
stutter, and he was easily frightened. The sound of
thunder terrified him. When there was a storm, a crowd of eunuchs would gather around him, shouting at the top of their voices so as to drown out the thunder. Unlike his Papa Dearest, or his cousin, Emperor Tongzhi, Guangxu seemed to have no vitality. He expressed no desire to travel, not even to go beyond the Forbidden City: he was content in his isolation from the outside world.

Inside the Forbidden City, intense labour over the classics lasted for a decade – the time needed to produce a scholar. At the end of it, Emperor Guangxu’s tutors pronounced that he had completed his studies ‘with distinction’. In summer 1886, when he turned fifteen, he was deemed well qualified to be the ruler of China. Cixi felt obliged to issue an edict, bidding the imperial astrologer to select an auspicious date at the beginning of the following year for the young man to assume power.

The imminent departure of Cixi threw the modernisers into panic. Deprived of her energetic initiative and drive, the reform projects she had started were likely to peter out. For days Earl Li was ‘unable to sleep or eat properly’ and was ‘in a constant state of trepidation’. In the end he wrote to Prince Chun, imploring him to think of a way for Cixi to stay on. The prince was well aware that his son could not fill Cixi’s shoes, and so conducted a petition campaign pleading for Cixi to act as the emperor’s ‘Guardian’ for a few more years. He put pressure on his son to go down on his knees and beg the empress dowager not to retire. Cixi encouraged the campaign by having the Grand Council draft petitions for officials. One, singing her praises, proclaimed that she had ‘brought the country into a brand new and glorious phase unprecedented in its long history’ – an assessment that Grand Tutor Weng, who was most anxious that his pupil should take his rightful place, found ‘inappropriate’. As always, Cixi considered every angle and anticipated the concern of some petitioners that, by calling for her to delay the handover, they might annoy the emperor: she let it be known that the emperor himself had begged on his knees for her to stay.

Eventually
Cixi announced that she would ‘continue to act as the Guardian for a few more years’. Earl Li was overjoyed.
Prince Chun wrote: ‘My heart, which has been in my mouth for days, has now returned to its proper place. This is really good fortune for all in the empire.’ Earl Li commented: ‘How extremely true.’
Grand Tutor Weng was not pleased, but, as a seasoned courtier, he made no protest. When the empress dowager asked him whether his pupil was really ready to take over, he replied that, as the emperor’s tutor, he could not boast that His Majesty had left no space for improvement; and that even if he had, ‘the interests of the dynasty override all’.

Emperor Guangxu was disappointed. After being forced to perform the sham ‘begging’, he was unwell for days – ‘under the weather, with a cold and a headache’, Weng recorded. The emperor suspended the lessons, and when he next saw his tutor, he appeared so depressed that the old man, struggling to cheer him up, burst into tears. The normally placid young man became emotional. His tutor encouraged him to speak his mind to the empress dowager. But he did not. Of all the virtues extolled by Confucius, filial piety was foremost.
^fn1
The concept had been drilled into the young man partly through ritual: every day, so long as they were staying in the same place, he never failed to go to his Royal Father to bid her ‘good morning’ and ‘goodnight’. He had to remind himself constantly ‘not to be disrespectful’, but his heart grew bitter. As his mind was no longer on his studies, the previously joyful tutor now began to lament his pupil’s lack of concentration.

An introverted man, Emperor Guangxu brooded.
His health deteriorated, and every few days he would take some sort of medicinal stew. He wrote later that it was from this time that he ‘felt permanently cold around his ankles and knees, and would catch cold from the slightest draught’ or if he was ‘not tucked in extremely tightly at night’. His voice dropped to the level of a whisper and was unintelligible to officials in the occasional audiences he gave. Even his handwriting evinced signs of feebleness – the brush strokes trailing shakily, the characters dwindling to half their usual size, as if he were too weak to hold his brush.

Cixi was well aware of her adopted son’s condition. She asked Grand Tutor Weng to persuade him to settle back into his studies, tearfully defending her delayed handover as doing her ‘
duty to the ancestors’. But the only remedy for his malaise was for her to release power, which she was unwilling to do.

Emperor Guangxu turned sixteen in summer 1887. This was the age at which Cixi’s own deceased son was married, his wedding preparations having started when he was thirteen. Cixi had delayed her adopted son’s marriage because it would signal his coming of age, after which she could hardly remain in charge. But the marriage could not be delayed indefinitely, and the nationwide selection of his consorts had to begin. The process took a long time and, one day in 1888, Emperor Guangxu exploded in frustration. He refused to go to a scheduled lesson and in tremendous agitation
smashed the glass on a window. (The emperor was known to have a bad temper, and once, recorded his tutor Weng,
‘in a fury he had three eunuchs from the Tea Department thrashed harshly, one of them to the verge of death, all for trifles’.) Now his anger towards his Papa Dearest could no longer be contained. Cixi was taken aback. Two days after this outburst, she announced that the wedding would take place at the beginning of the following year. Soon there was another decree declaring that she would retire immediately after the wedding – whereupon her adopted son issued his own decree dictating arrangements for her retirement ceremony, leaving no chance for anyone to intervene. Within days of these announcements, Cixi moved out of the Forbidden City into the Sea Palace, which was to be her retirement home. The paint in her new quarters was still wet, and she had to stay in a temporary apartment.

As the empress dowager, Cixi was entitled to help decide who should be her adopted son’s wife. She wanted an empress who was totally obedient to her. After going through the obligatory selection process, she made clear her choice: a daughter of her brother, Duke Guixiang.
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She had always liked the girl, and had ‘
reserved’ her as the empress for some years. Longyu was meek and good-natured, with beautiful manners. But she was very plain – a defect that was not compensated for by wit. And, being three years older than the emperor, she was twenty-one at the time of their marriage, well over the normal age for a royal bride. Even in the average family she would be considered an old maid. When Grand Tutor Weng recorded the choice of consorts, he omitted the new empress’s age, mentioning only the ages of the two concubines, Pearl, twelve, and Jade, fourteen.

Emperor Guangxu disliked his empress – and liked her father still less.
Duke Guixiang was a figure of scorn. He was an opium smoker, even though his sister, the empress dowager, detested the drug. Considered hopelessly incompetent, he never held any post of substance. As he had squandered much of his wealth, Cixi felt obliged to subsidise his family, not by giving him money, which might well go directly to the opium seller, but by giving him gifts from time to time. When the eunuchs came with a porcelain vase or a
cloisonné
jewellery box from the empress dowager, they expected handsome tips, which the duke had to raise by pawning some of his belongings. The eunuchs would time their arrival to give the family the opportunity to visit the pawn shop, and meanwhile would hang around the duke’s house offering greetings to all members of the household, as well as paying endless compliments over tea to the duchess, who could not resist flattery. After receiving their tips, the eunuchs would lewdly ridicule the duchess among themselves. She and the duke were not the parents-in-law an emperor could feel proud of.

This arranged marriage betrayed Cixi’s striking lack of sensitivity for her adopted son. In the case of her late son, she had allowed him to choose his own bride, even though she had misgivings about his choice, a girl whose grandfather had died at her hands and who might well harbour a hatred for her. But Cixi loved her son enough not to veto the choice. This time, she had chosen the empress for her adopted son without a shred of consideration for his feelings. Emperor Guangxu did not protest explicitly, observing the code of filial obedience – and his Papa Dearest was a formidable character to defy. But he had his own way to retaliate and sprang a surprise immediately after his formal assumption of power on 4 March 1889.

The day after was his wedding day, on which
5.5 million taels had been spent. The occasion was predictably splendid, enhanced by sunny weather. Empress Longyu, carried in a golden sedan-chair, travelled along the central line in the Forbidden City, the line that only an emperor – and an empress on the single occasion of her wedding – was allowed to tread. Around her was the treeless immensity of the august front section of the Forbidden City, lined with red-uniformed Praetorian Guards carrying multicoloured banners, and officials in blue robes against a backdrop of crimson walls and golden roofs. Her sedan-chair passed through the Gate of Supreme Harmony, which had recently been burned down and was now a temporary paper-and-wood imitation, even though it looked as glorious as the real one. Like this gateway, Empress Longyu’s marriage would be a sham.

Beyond the gateway stood the most magnificent hall of the Forbidden City, the Hall of Supreme Harmony,
Tai-he
– the location for the most important events of the dynasty.
The grand banquet in honour of the bride’s father, Duke Guixiang, was scheduled to be held there the day after the wedding. But that morning, according to Grand Tutor Weng, Emperor Guangxu got up, ‘complained of feeling dizzy’ and ‘threw up water’. Royal physicians could find nothing wrong with him, but the emperor nevertheless declared that he must avoid draughts, and refused to go to the great hall. The banquet had to be cancelled and all the assembled grandees had to disperse. Such a cancellation was unheard of, and rumours started to fly at once throughout the capital. The emperor made sure that this snub to his bride’s family was driven home by having the untouched food distributed to the officials on the invitation list, and specifically ordered that nothing was to be delivered to his father-in-law’s house. It is easy to imagine Cixi’s anger on learning about her brother’s spectacular humiliation. In her Sea Palace, noted Grand Tutor Weng, ‘opera shows did not stop’ at the news that the emperor was unwell.

Thereafter
Emperor Guangxu treated his wife, Empress Longyu, at best with coldness. Under the gaze of the court he would look right through her as if she did not exist. She tried to please him, which only annoyed him. It was widely known that when she ‘came into his presence he not infrequently kicked off his shoes at her’. Cixi’s desire to supervise her adopted son backfired and further strained her own relationship with him. Now that she was obliged to retire, the last thing Emperor Guangxu wanted to do was consult her about anything, least of all matters of state.

The emperor favoured Imperial Concubine
Pearl, a lively young girl who, noticed the eunuchs, did not appear in front of him as a woman. She wore no make-up and sported a man’s hairstyle (with a queue down her back), a man’s hat, a riding waistcoat and flat black satin boots. As he later described to his doctors, including a
French doctor, Dr Dethève, Emperor Guangxu had been experiencing involuntary ejaculations at night since early adolescence. He would feel aroused by the sound of percussion instruments in his dreams, which would give him sensual feelings and lead to nocturnal emissions. However, at other times, wrote Dr Dethève in his medical report, such ejaculations did not occur and ‘there is no possibility of having an erection’. This suggests that Emperor Guangxu was unable to have conventional sex. People in China guessed as much at the time – and called it ‘castration by Heaven’. Pearl, dressed like a man, thus put no pressure on him to have sexual intercourse, and he was able to feel relaxed with her. The emperor took up musical instruments such as gongs, drums and cymbals – all the ones that sexually aroused him – and became a rather good percussionist.

In spite of his physical problems, the emperor carried out his royal duties conscientiously, continuing, at the same time, with his study of the Chinese classics and the Manchu language. His life was spent exclusively in the Forbidden City, with excursions only to the adjacent Sea Palace and occasional trips to temples to pray for good harvests, or to the royal mausoleums to beg for his ancestors’ blessings. He was as close as ever to Grand Tutor Weng, a father figure with whom he had spent all his formative years and whom he still saw virtually daily. There was another tutor, a modern-minded man named Sun Jianai, who urged him to think about reforms. But the young man was not interested. Nor did he have a rapport with this tutor. Only Weng was in a position to shape the policies of Emperor Guangxu’s reign.