Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (47 page)

Viceroy Zhang composed fifteen similar
Poems of Gratitude. They described his time with the empress dowager, and noted all her little tokens: dishes from her own table, fruits from her orchards, ravishing silks, brocades and a long coral necklace to wear on official occasions, and so on. One day, in her presence, some sweet melons grown in the palace grounds were brought for him. She pronounced that they were not beautiful enough, and servants were dispatched to town to search for better-looking melons. Another day, he heard from an official that the empress dowager had compared him to a great historical figure who had been the pillar of his dynasty. These ‘Celestial words’, as he wrote, sent the Viceroy into a grateful frenzy and made him more humbly devoted than ever. When he left Beijing, Cixi gave him various farewell presents, including 5,000 taels of silver, which he used to start a modern school. When he reached home, three lots of gifts from her were already awaiting him. The Viceroy was overcome and wrote another of his poems of gratitude.

Thus Cixi conquered the hearts of her subjects and earned herself phenomenal loyalty. When she was fleeing Beijing in 1900,
Junglu, another devotee, took it upon himself to lead an army in a different direction, aiming to lure away potential pursuers. Among the voluntary decoys was
Chongqi, the father of Cixi’s late daughter-in-law. When the pursuers did not materialise, and in despair that he was not able to do more to help, Chongqi hanged himself with the sash of his robe, leaving behind a few poignant lines: ‘I fear that I am powerless to be of any service to the throne. I only have my life to offer, and I hereby offer it.’ When the Allies entered the capital, his wife had two huge pits dug in their house and conducted the whole family, children included, to sit in them in an orderly manner, before she told the servants to fill the pits with earth and bury them alive. When the servants refused and fled in horror, her son set the house on fire, killing all thirteen of them. This was not an exceptional case. Scores of families committed
suicide by setting their houses on fire, in addition to individuals drowning or hanging themselves.
^fn1

Cixi also had determined enemies – who saw their chance in 1900. Wild Fox Kang set about raising an army and occupying a number of major cities, with arms supplied from Japan. Many Japanese took part in his venture, while he himself stayed overseas. An
assassination squad was formed, comprising more than thirty sea pirates. Recruited from the south coast around Hong Kong, it was led by a Japanese, and was ready to go north with the twin objectives of assassinating Cixi and restoring Emperor Guangxu. Hoping to persuade Britain and other powers to help them achieve their goal, the Wild Fox’s men wrote to Acting Consul-General Peiham L. Warren in Shanghai, stating, as
Warren cabled to Lord Salisbury, ‘that, unless the Emperor was restored to the Throne, they were prepared to stir up the Secret Societies throughout the country with the object of compelling foreign powers to intervene. It was pointed out in this communication that grave injuries would be inflicted on foreign trade by popular risings, which they regarded as inevitable, and . . . destruction of missionary property was to be anticipated.’ Clearly, this line of argument was unlikely to be persuasive. It merely confirmed to the British that Kang’s force was no better than the Boxers. Not surprisingly, Britain lent them no support. The Wild Fox had been dreaming of being collected, protected and conveyed to Beijing by a British gunboat. The dream was dashed. Instead, the powers fully backed Viceroy Zhang as he rounded up Kang’s men who gathered in his territory, Wuhan, the moment their uprising began. Britain supported the Viceroy’s execution of the main rebels, as the British representative there reported to Warren (who forwarded the cable to Lord Salisbury):

Peace of Yang-tsze [
sic
], otherwise secure, is imperilled by Reform party [Kang’s group], which is actively fomenting a rebellion; they [? give –
sic
in original] out that they have our support . . . Arms and ammunition have been smuggled from Japan, and incendiary Proclamations have been posted up everywhere. It is no longer a question of reform, but of anarchy and pillage. There are many Japanese among confederates of Kang. Viceroy [Zhang] requests that you will confer secretly with the Japanese Consul-General [to stop Japanese participation].

Tokyo reined in the Japanese in Kang’s camp. The demise of the empress dowager and internal strife across China were not in Japan’s interest at this time, when there were the armies of other powers on Chinese soil, all with territorial ambitions of their own. The Japanese leader of the assassination squad pulled out, claiming illness, and was replaced by a Chinese, Shen Jin. But before it set off, Kang’s rebellion had collapsed.

Also hoping to take advantage of Cixi’s troubles was one Sun Yat-sen, an early proponent of Republicanism. A dark-moustachioed Cantonese, who had long shed his queue and Chinese costume in favour of a European-style haircut and clothes, he was dedicated to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty by force. In 1895, in the aftermath of the disastrous war with Japan, he launched an armed uprising in Canton. It failed, but made his name known to the court. He fled overseas, eventually to London, where he was seized by the Chinese and detained in their legation in Portland Place. The British government, which had refused to extradite him, intervened and secured his release. Later on, in Japan, he sought a collaboration with Wild Fox Kang, but Kang refused to have anything to do with him. Undeterred, Sun worked doggedly for his Republican ideal through armed insurrections, and acquired a Japanese following as well. In 1900, according to one of his Japanese comrades who reported to Tokyo, Sun’s plan was to carve away six provinces on the south coast and ‘
found a Republic, before gradually expanding to all eighteen provinces of China, toppling the Aisin-Gioros, and finally establishing a Great East Asia Republic’. In spite of his flirtation with Japan, the Japanese gave him only limited and intermittent support. Sun also got nowhere.

The empress dowager, exiled in Xian, remained the unshakable ruler of China. And she was adept at turning her plight to her advantage. She would sometimes
burst into tears when she received her officials. A picture of vulnerability, she made the men feel protective and forgiving, happy to rise to the occasion and help a woman in need. But anyone stepping over a line would see a very different person, as County Chief Woo witnessed. As he had given her crucial service at her most difficult time and she never forgot a favour, he had been treated with intimacy, so much so that he felt bold enough to offer her some advice. One day he told her she should not have executed the officials before her flight, especially the former minister to Berlin, Jingcheng, the man who, unbeknownst to the County Chief, had given the Germans critical advice that had done China untold harm. ‘
In the middle of a sentence, the Empress Dowager’s face suddenly fell, her eyes were like shooting daggers, her jaws set tightly, the veins in her forehead bulged, and she gnashed her teeth, hissing in the sternest voice . . .’ She told Woo that his criticism was unfair and born of ignorance of what had really happened. ‘I had never seen the Empress Dowager in anger, and all of a sudden her wrath crashed down on me and scared the soul out of me.’ Woo felt ‘sweat trickling down my back’. He kowtowed and apologised, and ‘the Empress Dowager calmed down, and in an instant all her angry expressions vanished, and her face was relaxed and unclouded again . . .’ The shift was like ‘the mightiest storm of thunder and lightning changing into a clear blue sky in a blink without leaving any trace’. The County Chief remarked that he had not imagined that ‘the Empress Dowager’s wrath had such force. People said that great figures like Marquis Zeng and Earl Li were so awed by the Empress Dowager that they lost their composure in her presence. I now believe it.’ Cixi had a gift of simultaneously inspiring protectiveness and fear – although not hate.

In exile and a less rigid environment, more people had access to Cixi and Emperor Guangxu. They never failed to be struck by the contrast between the two. The hardship of the long journey left her unmarked by any sign of fatigue or fragility, while her adopted son looked permanently on the verge of collapse. At audiences, sitting side by side, the emperor always kept his mouth shut, no matter how long and awkward the silence, until Cixi turned to him:
‘Your Majesty, do ask some questions.’ Even then, he rarely asked more than two or three: ‘Is everything all right outside?’ ‘Is the harvest good?’ County Chief Woo, who saw him many times, remembered that he only asked two identical questions. ‘His voice was extremely tiny, like the buzz of a fly or a mosquito. You could hardly make out what he was saying.’ In contrast, Woo observed, ‘the Empress Dowager talked most eloquently, quoting classical stories with ease, while at the same time being totally down to earth, familiar with the ways of people and society. She could read your mind after a few words, so the grandees were afraid of her. With an Empress Dowager so smart and strong, and the emperor so odd and weak, no wonder he was under her thumb . . .’ Eventually, the officials who noted down their audiences often simply referred to Cixi as ‘
Shang
(the Monarch)’ – a designation usually reserved for the emperor. Cixi herself was well aware of the shift of status. In Xian, for formal audiences, she had a
throne set up for herself, behind and above the emperor’s, thus presenting herself quite literally as superior to the emperor. When they returned to Beijing, Cixi would sit on a centrally placed throne during an audience, while Emperor Guangxu was seated lower down on the dais to her left.

The ordeal of the invasion, rather than damaging Cixi’s authority, had enhanced it and brought her a new sense of security and confidence.

^fn1
In one case, while the family waited for the fire to devour them, at the last moment they allowed their two young children to escape the burning building.

25 Remorse (1900–1)

THE LAST THING
Cixi did before fleeing the Forbidden City was to give the guardians of the palaces a handwritten note, stamped with her seal, telling them that only someone bearing an authorisation from her which was marked with the same seal could remove anything from the precinct. The treasures in the palaces preoccupied her as she set out on her journey.

Within days she was cheered by reassuring news from the guardians. Instead of wantonly looting or burning the palaces, the invaders had actually placed guards on them. The heavy gates were shut and fixed with notices addressed to the occupying army that all men were
‘politely requested not to kick the Chinese attendants because they declined to open doors . . .’ With palpable relief, the
guardians informed Cixi that ‘foreign troops are now guarding the Royal City and everywhere within . . . all the palaces and government offices are intact . . . All palaces and temples are safe.’

The guardians continued to keep Cixi informed. She was told that foreigners had been visiting the Forbidden City but, apart from a handful of objects, most things were undisturbed. Later, when the foreign troops withdrew, and the guardians checked the inventory of all the objects in the palaces, they found that relatively few valuables had gone. The biggest loss was from the Royal Kitchen, where sixty-eight gold and fifty-four silver items were missing. Otherwise, forty vases and 200 plates and bowls had been stolen from the porcelain warehouse – more likely by local robbers, as access had been obtained by digging through the walls. The Summer Palace, where the Italians and British stayed, was left as it had been, with only minor damage. (The ruins of the Old Summer Palace next door, however, were picked bare – by the locals – who sneaked in and thoroughly dismantled all the buildings that had been left standing after the fire, stealing everything from timber to bricks.) Unlike the situation under Lord Elgin in 1860, looting was strictly forbidden this time. When the Western Mausoleums – in which a number of Qing emperors were buried – lost some ceremonial vessels made of gold, silver and bronze, a complaint was made to the French minister, and the French army, which had been stationed there, handed back the ones they had taken.

What did disappear was silver bullion.
Millions of taels were seized from the Forbidden City and from various ministries in both the capital and Tianjin, and were shipped abroad. There were also
losses from wealthy homes, forcibly entered at the beginning of the occupation by foreign soldiers demanding silver. But such incidents lasted only a few days, after which the guardians had a meeting with
Robert Hart, who helped stop them. According to their report to Cixi, the guardians told Hart that ‘the most urgent and the most important thing is to protect the dynastic temples, the Eastern and Western Mausoleums, and all the palaces including the Forbidden City and the Royal City; the next thing is to protect the lives of millions of people . . .’ To this Hart replied, not without irony, ‘In the West, we regard the lives of the people as of primary importance, and the dynasty comes second. Still, your request is not hard to meet . . .’ Hart produced two posters, one in various foreign languages and one in Chinese, and told the guardians to print thousands of copies and paste them all over the city. The first poster forbade foreign soldiers from disturbing the local people. And the second one ordered the Boxers and other bandits to go home and resume their normal life, threatening ‘extermination’ if they disobeyed. Most Boxers did scatter. Cixi wrote to Hart to express her gratitude:
‘For decades Your Excellency has lent your talents to a land that is not your own, and today your sincere devotion to it is clear to all. I cannot be more appreciative.’

A small number of Boxers made futile attempts to resist the foreigners. One Allied officer remembered being led by local Christians to round up a group in their hiding place:
‘The place was evidently securely held and refused to surrender. Grouped all round, and armed with choppers, bars of iron and long poles, the crowd of native rapscallions waited in a grim silence for the denouement. It was an extraordinary scene. Everything and every one was so silent . . . Such things never happen twice in a lifetime.’