Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (50 page)

While still in Kaifeng, in anticipation of returning to the capital, Cixi annulled the
title of the heir-apparent and sent him away from the court. The teenager’s father, Prince Duan, had been designated the chief culprit responsible for the Boxer atrocities. Cixi knew that everything done by the prince in relation to the Boxers had in fact been approved by her, and that she should bear the ultimate responsibility. Feeling indebted, she had preserved the heir-apparent’s position at court – although officials had been urging her to repeal his title. She herself was aware that the heir-apparent could not possibly have made a decent emperor. He showed no aptitude for state affairs and lacked the bearing of a monarch-to-be. His interest lay in caring for his many pets – dogs, rabbits, pigeons and crickets – and he was fond of playing practical jokes. On one occasion he caused Emperor Guangxu, his uncle and the Son of Heaven, to fall sprawling on the ground. His Majesty tearfully complained to Cixi, who ordered twenty (largely symbolic) lashes for the heir-apparent. Eunuchs despised and poked fun at him as he played with them in ways judged to be beneath him. But Cixi waited for a whole year to go by before revoking his title: she did not want to ‘heap frost onto snow’, as the old saying went. Now the time had come to act, but her decree mentioned none of his defects. It said that he himself had begged to be relieved, citing his problematic circumstances. The young man left the court as a prince, with his old nanny, to be reunited with his father in exile.

It was also the moment to say
farewell to County Chief Woo. Cixi gave him a post in the coastal province of Guangdong, telling him that she was sending him to a prosperous area because she knew he had been out of pocket while serving her. She meant that there would be opportunities for him to make money there. Such corrupt practice was a way of life. The Chinese knew it was a problem and that Westerners despised them for it, but they despaired of ever changing it. Cixi herself, for all her radical reforms past and future, never attempted to tackle it. She went with the flow – and, in doing so, inevitably helped maintain it.

During the audience, repeatedly wiping away tears, Cixi told Woo how grateful she was to him, that he had been a friend in need; she said that she was sad at parting and that she would always miss him. Leaving the audience with the empress dowager’s presents, silver taels and scrolls of calligraphy written in her own hand, the County Chief was overwhelmed with gratitude.

Woo then worked non-stop for a day and a night to attend to the details of Cixi’s crossing of the Yellow River upon leaving Kaifeng. A snowstorm had swept the ancient capital the day before her scheduled departure, but the weather had cleared by the time she set out and the crossing was perfectly smooth. With her departure attended by officials and local people on their knees, Cixi prayed in a riverside marquee, and paid homage to the God of the River. Then she stepped onto a boat decorated in the shape of a dragon, and the massive flotilla, all colourfully kitted out, rowed to the north in water as still as glass, disturbed only by the oars cutting the surface. Cixi was delighted. She saw this ‘
extraordinarily smooth’ crossing as a sign of the gods’ protection – and approval of the course she had chosen. But she also rewarded the boatmen handsomely for their work.

The last leg of Cixi’s three-month journey was by
train – travelling on the northern section of the great Beijing–Wuhan Railway, whose history was almost as chequered as Cixi’s own. The year before, the tracks outside Beijing had been uprooted by the Boxers and a number of stations torched. The railway was repaired by the foreign invaders, who then handed it over to her government, with a royal carriage for her use. She rode to Beijing in style on 7 January 1902, and entered the city through the southern gates, which had hitherto been reserved for the emperor: first the Qianmen, whose massive gate-tower had caught fire during the Boxer chaos, but had since been rebuilt; then, further north, the Gate of the Great Qing. But she
stopped short at the front gate to the Forbidden City itself, and turned to go round and enter the harem through the back gate. For a woman to enter the front section of the Forbidden City would have been seen as such a shocking afront to the sacredness of the monarch that Cixi made sure she did not break this rule.

Inside the Forbidden City, one of her first acts was to pray to the ancestors of the Qing dynasty. And as soon as arrangements were made, she took the court to the Eastern Mausoleums to pay homage to the buried ancestors and to beg their protection. While there, she spotted a little
pet monkey that belonged to an official and was hopping on his tent. She expressed affection for the monkey and got herself a ‘tribute’. It was soon leaping about wearing a beautiful yellow silk waistcoat.

But before all else, the day after she returned from exile Cixi
honoured Imperial Concubine Pearl, whom she had had drowned in a well just before she fled. This was an act of contrition. It was also an attempt to make amends to her adopted son, who had given her his cooperation over several years, especially during the exile. Above all, perhaps, Cixi was making a gesture to the Western powers, who had been appalled by the murder. She was determined to win their goodwill. It would make an enormous difference to the country, and to the way she herself would be treated. The yearly payment of the Boxer Indemnity could vary considerably, depending on the exchange rates, and, with goodwill, the foreign powers could adopt the method of calculation that was advantageous to China. Besides, her transformation of the empire needed the cooperation of a friendly international community.

27 Making Friends with Westerners (1902–7)

FOR HER ENTRY
into Beijing, Cixi broke with tradition and announced that
foreigners were welcome to watch the royal procession. Diplomats were invited to a special building, which allowed a good view of the proceedings. And others stood on the city walls. One of them took a photograph of the empress dowager outside her sedan-chair, about to enter a hall. In the picture she is turning round to wave at them from below, a handkerchief in her hand, her heavily embroidered robe twirling. Waving to spectators was unprecedented: Cixi had encountered it in the descriptions of foreign monarchs written by the travellers she had dispatched abroad.

Twenty days after her return, on 27 January 1902, the diplomatic corps had an audience with Cixi and Emperor Guangxu. There was no silk screen and she sat on a throne. The reception was, in the words of Sarah Conger, ‘
dignified, and most respectful’. A few days later, Cixi gave another reception for the diplomats’ families. As she was unable to socialise with men, her effort to make friends focused on Western women. ‘
The Court is over-doing it in civility,’ wrote Robert Hart in amusement; ‘not only will Empress Dowager receive Ministers’ wives, but also Legation
children
!’

On the day of the
reception the sky was unusually clear, free of the frequent blinding sandstorms. Before the audience, Sarah Conger, the doyenne of the diplomatic ladies and a devout and forgiving Christian, gathered up the women and requested them to be courteous. Inside a hall of the Forbidden City, Cixi sat behind a long altar-like table, upon which lay a coral sceptre. She smiled in recognition at Sarah Conger, who had been at her previous reception three years earlier and had subsequently been caught up in the siege of the legations. Throughout the Boxer turmoil, America had shown most understanding to China and to Cixi. Now Mrs Conger addressed Cixi in a friendly manner, and Cixi replied in the same spirit, with a written speech read out by Prince Ching, who had stepped up to the throne and, on his knees, taken it from Cixi’s hand. All the ladies and children were presented to Cixi, who treated them each with a sort of handshake. They were then presented to Emperor Guangxu, who took the hand of each lady.

After the formal presentations were over, as soon as the group was ushered into another hall for an informal reception, Cixi asked for Sarah Conger, who wrote: ‘She took my hands in both of hers, and her feelings overcame her. When she was able to control her voice, she said, “I regret, and grieve over the late troubles. It was a grave mistake, and China will hereafter be a friend to foreigners. No such affair will again happen. China will protect the foreigner, and we hope to be friends in the future.”’ This was both a performance and a sincere declaration. At the banquet that followed, a reconciliation ritual was enacted. Mrs Conger described the scene: Cixi ‘took her glass of wine, and we did likewise. She placed her glass in my left hand, gracefully pressed my two hands together, so that the glasses touched, and said, “United.” She then took my glass, leaving me hers, and raised the glass to all, and all responded.’ Cixi ‘again and again assured me that such troubles as those of the past two years should never be repeated. Her manner was thoughtful, serious in every way, and ever mindful of the comfort and pleasure of her guests. Her eyes are bright, keen, and watchful that nothing may escape her observation. Her face does not show marks of cruelty or severity; her voice is low, soft, and attractive; her touch is gentle and kind.’ Clearly, Cixi had made the intended impression.

Cixi and her foreign guests then sat down to eat, which was something extraordinary, as court rules required her fellow diners to stand. Her experiment, however, proved to be unpleasant. On one side of her was seated the ‘first lady’ of the British Legation, Lady Susan Townley – the wife of the First Secretary, as the legation minister, Sir Ernest Satow, was unmarried.
Lady Townley had come to China in the aftermath of the Boxer unrest with ‘a decided aversion from the thought of being surrounded by Chinese servants – I imagined they would be dirty and smelly, with repulsive hands’.
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She now leaned towards Cixi and asked her for a gift, the bowl from which the empress dowager was eating. Lady Townley knew well that court etiquette prescribed that no one should share a sovereign’s dishes. Her request could only be perceived as an insult. Later Cixi told a lady-in-waiting: ‘
These foreigners seem to have the idea that the Chinese are ignorant and that therefore they need not be so particular as in European Society.’ But Cixi was also aware that many Westerners hated her because of the Boxers. She swallowed the insult and obliged Lady Townley (who later boasted of her ‘unique present’). Cixi continued to be amiable to the lady, who described herself as the empress dowager’s ‘Prime Favourite’. The affability did not diminish even after Lady Townley was caught trying to help herself to more treasures from the palace. A fellow Westerner who had seen her asking Cixi for the bowl wrote, ‘On another occasion the lady referred to above took an ornament from a cabinet and was carrying it away when the palace maid in attendance asked her to put it back, saying that she was responsible for everything in the room and would be punished if it was missing.’ Cixi showed no ill feelings towards Lady Townley, partly, of course, because she was a representative of Britain. But perhaps the empress dowager also discerned something more sympathetic in Townley. On her way to China in a steamer, Townley had seen a young girl being subjected to foot-binding and was full of pity for ‘the poor little children’.

The banquet was the only one Cixi attended, but it marked the beginning of her frequent socialising with Western women. As she told the diplomatic wives at the end of the meal: ‘I hope that we shall meet oftener and become friends by knowing one another better.’ As gift-giving (especially gifts of a personal nature) was an essential way of expressing goodwill in China, Cixi showered the wives with presents. On this occasion, she took Sarah Conger’s hands in hers and, ‘taking from one of her fingers a heavy, carved gold ring set with an elegant pearl, she placed it upon one of mine; then from her wrists she took choice bracelets and placed them upon my wrists. To each lady she presented gifts of great value. The children and the interpreters were also kindly remembered.’

Back in the legations, the men decided that Cixi was trying to bribe their women, and requested the court not to give gifts in the future. Robert Hart remarked: ‘
The Audiences have all gone off so well that the critics consider them too sweet and so suspect insincerity.’ They accused Cixi of trying
‘to wheedle the foreigners, and curry favour, so that she might receive better treatment at the hands of the Powers’. This was undoubtedly one of her motives. But, as Sarah Conger put it: ‘This historic day cannot do harm . . .’

Other goodwill gestures followed, not least invitations to the Western and Eastern Mausoleums, the Summer Palace and even the Forbidden City. When visitors came to her quarters, gifts from their countries would be prominently displayed. Portraits of the Tsar and Tsarina of Russia stood on a table when the wife of the Russian minister called. And two steel-engravings of Queen Victoria, one of her in regal array, and the other with Prince Albert, surrounded by their children and grandchildren, hung on the wall to catch the eyes of the British, alongside a music-box and other ornaments from the queen. Lots of European clocks would replace her usual display of white and green jade statues of Buddha.

Cixi’s second meeting with the diplomatic wives was, for Sarah Conger, ‘full of womanly significance’. The empress dowager took the most extraordinary step of inviting the foreign ladies into the privacy of her bedroom. ‘When we were taken into the most private room, Her Majesty seemed greatly pleased and waved her hand toward a richly draped and cushioned
k’ang
that reached across one end of the long room.’ The
k’ang
– a heated brick bed and seat – was Cixi’s favourite place to sit. There, as if out of mischief, she gave the women more presents:

Her Majesty got upon the
k’ang
and motioned for me and others to do the same. She took a small jade baby boy from the shelf, tucked it into my hand, and with actions interpreted her unspoken words, “Don’t tell.” I took the dear little thing home, and I prize it. It showed good will, and I do not intend to let go of that thought . . . I was truly grateful that I could see the good spirit manifested in that woman whom the world has so bitterly condemned.