Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (8 page)

In the last months of his life, although he still dealt with state matters diligently, stopping working only on the days he was confined to bed, he no longer wrote the same kind of detailed instructions as before. He allowed himself to indulge in his real passions, opera and other music, which were performed almost every day. The performers had been summoned from Beijing to the Lodge as soon as he had settled down there, and the moment they arrived they had been rushed to him, given no time to change into their costumes. Well over 200 singers, dancers and musicians eventually crowded the Lodge, and the place ran out of habitable rooms. The emperor spent a lot of time with them, selecting the repertoires and picking the cast, watching rehearsals and arguing with the performers about interpretations. He listened to the singing of music that he himself had composed. The performances, which usually lasted for hours, were sometimes staged on an islet in the middle of a lake, in a courtyard theatre poetically named a ‘Touch of Cloud’. At other times they were held in the quarters where he lived, or where Cixi and their young son lived. In the last sixteen days of his life the emperor watched
operas on eleven days, each day for several hours. Two days before he died, he listened to opera from 1.45 to 6.55 p.m., with a break of only twenty-seven minutes. The next day’s scheduled performance had to be cancelled. The emperor was feeling extremely sick, and then he lost consciousness.

When he became conscious again that night, Xianfeng summoned to his bedside the men closest to him, his old inner circle, eight princes and ministers, and announced his will to them. His only son, by Cixi, now five years old, would be the next emperor, and the eight men were to form a Board of Regents, to be jointly in charge. They asked him to write the will down in his own hand in crimson ink, to give it unquestioned authority, but he was unable to hold the brush. So one of the men wrote it for him, making it clear that this had been the emperor’s wish. Emperor Xianfeng died a few hours later, with these men by his side. China was now in the hands of the Regents.

These were the same men who had ordered the capture and abuse of Elgin’s messengers, which had resulted in some of them dying horribly – and had led to the burning of the Old Summer Palace. These were the same men who had helped Emperor Xianfeng make all his disastrous decisions, which ended with his own death. Cixi could see that with these men in charge, stumbling along the same self-destructive road, there would be no end to catastrophe, which promised to destroy her son as well as the empire. She made up her mind to act, by launching a coup and seizing power from the Regents.

4 The Coup that Changed China (1861)

THOUGH HER SON
succeeded to the throne, Cixi had no political power. In fact, as a concubine, she was not even the new emperor’s official mother. That was the role of Empress Zhen, who immediately assumed the title of dowager empress –
huang-tai-hou
(interchangeable with empress dowager). No title was given to Cixi. Nor was she with her son when he was conducted by a Regent to bid goodbye to his late father, acting out a ritual in which he held a gold cup containing liquor over his head, then emptied it on the ground, before placing the cup on a gold-cornered table in front of the bier. Cixi belonged to the
unnamed ‘others’ in court records, who, ‘headed by the dowager empress’, namely Empress Zhen, performed a similar ritual.

Cixi needed the title of a dowager empress. Only then would she acquire the status of the mother of the emperor. Without it she was a mere concubine. A clash with Empress Zhen seemed inevitable, and the two women had an
emotional row for the first time in their relationship. But they soon found a solution. Court records were trawled and it was discovered that there had been a similar case. Almost exactly 200 years previously, when Emperor Kangxi succeeded to the throne in 1662, his mother had also been a concubine, but had been given the title of dowager empress, so there had been two dowager empresses simultaneously. With this precedent, the Board of Regents awarded Cixi the title. The friendship of the two women was unscathed, and they were referred to as the Two Dowager Empresses. In order to distinguish between them, they decided on different honorific names. Empress Zhen took ‘Ci’an’, which means ‘kindly and serene’,
^fn1
and Cixi, hitherto called Imperial Concubine Yi, took Cixi, meaning ‘kindly and joyous’. It was from now on that she became known as Empress Dowager Cixi.

The two women did more than resolve a major problem, they went on to form a political alliance and launch a coup. Cixi was twenty-five years old and Empress Zhen a year younger. Facing them were eight powerful men in control of the state machine. The women were well aware of the risk they were taking. A coup was treason, and if it failed the punishment would be the most painful
ling-chi
, death by a thousand cuts. But they were willing to take the risk. Not only were they determined to save their son and the dynasty, but they also rejected the prescribed life of imperial widows – essentially living out their future years as virtual prisoners in the harem. Choosing to change their own destiny as well as that of the empire, the
two women plotted, often with their heads together leaning over a large glazed earthenware water tank, pretending to be appraising their reflections or just talking girls’ talk.

Cixi devised an ingenious plan. She had noticed a loophole in her late husband’s deathbed arrangements. The Qing emperors demonstrated their authority by writing in crimson ink. For nearly 200 years, beginning with Emperor Kangxi as a young adult, these crimson-inked instructions had always been written strictly by the hand of the emperor. Now, however, the monarch was a child and could not hold the brush. When the decrees were issued by the Board of Regents in the child’s name, there was nothing to show authority. There was the official seal, but it was only used on very formal occasions, and not on everyday communications. This deficiency was pointed out to the Board after it issued the first batch of decrees. It was told, then, that the late emperor had given one informal seal to the child, which was kept by Cixi, and another similar seal to Empress Zhen. It was suggested to the Board that these seals could be stamped on the decrees as the equivalent of the crimson-ink writing, to authenticate them. It was undoubtedly one or both of the women who pointed out the deficiency and made the suggestion. Such informal seals, numbering in the thousands in the Qing court, were not political items, but objects of art commissioned by the emperors for their pleasure, which they sometimes stamped on their paintings and books – or gave as presents in the privacy of the harem.

The Board of Regents accepted the solution and announced that all future edicts would be stamped with the seals. They made the announcement as a postscript on a decree that had already been written and was about to be issued – a sign that the idea had only just been put to them, that they had approved it and had hurriedly put it into practice. The postscript also stated that they were issuing the current edict without the seals, as there was no time to stamp it. Clearly they had not known about the existence of the seals until then and had to have them fetched from the harem.
^fn2
A formal proclamation followed, making the use of the two seals obligatory on all edicts: one at the beginning and the other at the end.

The authority of the
seals was thus established, an accomplishment that would be vital in the forthcoming coup. It is possible that the seal allegedly given to the child and kept by Cixi was actually a present to Cixi herself, which she attributed to the child emperor, to give it more weight. The Board of Regents readily agreed to the use of the seals because they regarded them as mere rubber stamps. The women had given them the illusion that
‘all is in harmony, and all is fine’, and ‘everything is following old rules . . .’ The Regents felt ‘very pleased’ about the compliance of the Two Dowager Empresses and had no idea what was in their minds.

Next the women tried to secure Prince Gong as an ally. The prince was the foremost nobleman in the land and was held in high esteem. There was a consensus among top officials and generals that he should have been made the Regent. Whereas the appointed Board had only brought disaster to the empire, the prince had succeeded in getting the allied troops out of Beijing and in restoring peace. The army and the Praetorian Guards listened to him. It was also clear to Cixi that the prince, too, wanted a different approach to foreign policy.

Prince Gong was in Beijing at this moment. He had stayed on after concluding the treaties the year before, on the express order of Emperor Xianfeng. When he had begged to come to the Hunting Lodge to visit his half-brother, who had fallen ill, Emperor Xianfeng had replied:
‘If we saw each other, we could not avoid recalling the past, and that would only make us feel sad, and would really not be good for my health . . . I therefore order you not to come.’ On his deathbed, the emperor had again sent instructions specifically telling Prince Gong to remain in the capital. He had not wanted the prince around because he had intended to exclude him from the Board of Regents – for the same reason as their father had kept the prince off the throne. Prince Gong was no hardline hater of the West; he was pliable towards Westerners, as the signing of the treaties had proven. The prince felt no bitterness for any of Emperor Xianfeng’s decisions, however apparently unfair they had been. He had a reputation for being honourable. Ever since his half-brother had ascended the throne, he had shown no resentment – only a complete absence of personal ambition. He had composed eulogies to his half-brother, as befitted a prince to an emperor, and had written poetic lines on his brother’s paintings, which was something done between close friends. The prince’s character had won him the trust of his half-brother. Emperor Xianfeng had left him alone in the capital to deal with the Europeans, who he knew preferred the prince to him and were entertaining plans to put Prince Gong on the throne in his place. Prince Gong’s impeccable record of loyalty, his lack of interest in supreme power and in intrigue were also important factors to Cixi as she prepared to make herself his boss.

So, within days of her husband’s death, Cixi quietly extracted an edict out of the Regents allowing Prince
Gong to visit the Hunting Lodge to bid his late half-brother farewell – in spite of the late emperor’s order. Not to allow the prince to come would simply be unseemly.

When Prince Gong arrived, he threw himself to the floor in front of the bier and cried out in floods of tears. An eye-witness observed that
‘no one had shown so much grief as he did’. Those present in the hall were moved and started sobbing themselves. After this show of sorrow, a eunuch came with a message from Cixi and Empress Zhen, summoning the prince to the harem. Some grandees were against the meeting, pointing out that tradition dictated that brothers and sisters-in-law should be kept apart, especially when the sister-in-law had just lost her husband – even if there was the obligatory screen to separate them. But the Two Dowager Empresses insisted, sending more eunuchs to deliver their request.
Prince Gong, always anxious to behave correctly, asked the Regents to go in with him. But the two women sent out a firm ‘No’. He went in alone, and did not re-emerge for two hours.

This was a very long audience, much longer than any the Regents had been given. But it rang no alarm bells with them. They believed Prince Gong’s explanation that he had to spend a great deal of time trying to persuade the women to return to Beijing as soon as possible, and to reassure them that there would be no danger from the foreigners. The Regents had total confidence in Prince Gong’s probity, and had been lulled by the two women into a relaxed and complacent frame of mind.

Knowing how prudent the prince was, Cixi, it seems, did not broach the idea of a coup at this first meeting. Overturning the late emperor’s solemn will was not something he would readily contemplate. What the conversation seems to have achieved was an acceptance from Prince Gong that the empire should not be left entirely in the hands of the Board of Regents, who, after all, had such a woeful track record. On this basis, the prince agreed to get someone in his camp to petition for the Two Dowager Empresses to take part in decision-making, and for ‘
one or two close princes of the blood to be selected to assist with state affairs’. The petition would not mention Prince Gong by name. He clearly wanted to avoid the impression that he coveted power, even though he had solid ground to stake a claim.

This idea was secretly conveyed to Prince Gong’s camp in Beijing, and a relatively junior subordinate was designated to write the petition. Prince Gong feared that the Board of Regents might detect the link with him when they saw the petition, so he left the Hunting Lodge before it arrived. On the eve of his departure for Beijing, he saw Cixi and Empress Zhen again. And this time the discussion was inescapably about what should be done if the Regents turned down the proposal.

It seems that Prince Gong agreed that force could be used to oust the Regents – but only as a last resort, and only after some unpardonable act on their part had been exposed, so that the coup would appear legitimate. The prince cared very much about his honour. What his role would be after the coup was still not decided, which suggests that Prince Gong thought it unlikely that the coup would happen soon, if at all.

Nothing would have happened, if there had been no further initiative from Cixi. As expected, the Regents rejected the petition unequivocally, on the grounds that the late emperor’s will could not be altered, plus the cast-iron rule that women must be kept away from politics. Cixi now had to make the Regents do something inexcusable so that Prince Gong would agree to oust them. She and Empress Zhen set out to provoke an offence.
Cradling the child emperor, they summoned the Regents and engaged them in a heated confrontation about the petition. The men grew angry and replied contemptuously that, as Regents, they did not have to answer to the two women. As they roared, the child became scared and cried and wet his pants. After a prolonged row, Cixi gave the impression that she bowed to their verdict. The petition was publicly rejected in the name of the child emperor.