intersting pics, she looks very tiny, such small person but yet so powerful. wonder how she managed to rule qing dynasty! wonder what she looked like at younger age for her to become the Empress.
I really would like to learn more of Chinese Histories. I heard there is a particular good drama on the Empress Cixi for this period. Does anyone know of? I think it was made by aTV some years back.
I don't know how much you can really learn from a television drama, as most of those things take so much artistic license that you have to wonder if they're really the same person you read about in history. If you seriously want to know a bit more about her, you can download a book written three years after her death, penned by a prolific British author of the lives of popular historic figures, Philip Walsingham Sergeant. The book is entitled: The Great Empress Dowager Of China published by Dodd, Mead & Co, New York, in 1911. As it is no longer under copyright protection, you can freely download it from Google Books (a great resource for old, out of print, or rare books that you would otherwise never be able to get). The Google version is a digitized PDF image copy of the real book (similar to taking a photograph of each page) that was donated to Harvard's Library in 1927. The Title I gave you is also the download link. Enjoy.
To Snowwhites, If you're interested, I just recalled that there might be another person who's works you should read about, and that is the books by "Princess" Der Ling, who was a daughter of a Manchu official. She was European educated (a rare event for a Chinese of those times, and as a woman, doubly so), and had studied dance with the legendary Isadora Duncan. Upon her return to China she was taken in by the Manchu court, and became Cixi's First Lady in Waiting. She took the title of 'Princess' and was allowed almost unfettered access to Cixi's inner and secretive world, becoming both a translator and confidante of sorts for nearly two years. She subsequently married an American and detailed her intimate knowledge of Cixi with a book entitled Two Years In The Forbidden City, written in 1917. She moved to the United States but continued to write several other books that greatly fanned interest in Chinese culture and history. You can download her book for free, just click on the title above. Mind you now, Der Ling's life was also subjected to much scrutiny, as she was a complicated embodiment of the crossroads of east and west, old and new. Much has been made of her life and she is the object of intense debate in the new book Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling Unfortunately, the latest book is not free...
Wow this thread is really interesting, and shows how much I need to brush up on my chinese history. Cultural differences even between generations can be great.
LOL... But allow me to pass on a very unpleasant observation; you'll never be able to learn it all. Even 300 years of US history is more than enough to stump a lifetime, could you imagine 2000 years of Imperial Chinese known history, and several thousand more of tribal pre-history? If I were you, just concentrate on getting down the chronological order and general themes of each dynasties. Then specifically focus on something in particular that you find personally fascinating. Some folks find love for the mad and bloody short reign of the First Emperor of Qin, whose funeral mound is still being excavated in Xian (probably process will be the next century or more, shame I won't live long enough to see it), while others prefer the more sedate but academically intriguing golden ages of Han or Tang China. Still others may find the chaos and free for all nature during the Age of Fragmentation more to their liking. I personally like the late Qing simply because my Chinese is horrible, but can be compensated by the tremendous amount of material available in English. Believe me, the more you dig into it, the more you will appreciate the scale of what Chinese culture and history is; the unimaginable heights of achievement along with the unbelievable depths of wanton degradation. But most of all, treasure it, because it belongs to all of us Chinese. It is what defines us both as a people and as a culture. -lol
It is wonderful to know about the history. Glad someone post this. I wasn't interested in history during high school time but guess I want to know more now. =)
She is responsible for the lost of the first Sino-Japanese war(1890s) and also for letting the British colonize over China which led to other European countries taken over pieces of China. She invested most of the yuan to revitalize her garden when weapons and technology were more important at that time. what a disgrace to the chinese people. I never liked the Qing dynasty and I don't know why others would love it so much aside from Emperor Kangxi, Emperor Yongzheng, Emperor Qianlong, there shouldn't be anything else thats worth loving for. that b!tch Cixi can lick my balls.
You saved me the effort of typing it myself, that bitch lead to the death of an uncountable amount of Chinese people.
China had the man-power to take out all other countries at that time during the 1800s. The only problem was we weren't united and we didn't have a powerful figure like Hitler or the first Emperor Qin to lead us.
China in the 1800's was not only fragmented, but its main failure was a lack of leadership and too much hubris. Far from being the only problem, it was at the head of a long list of problems. China thought itself the center of the universe and that it did not need anything from anyone. It let its military fall way behind everyone else to the point that it had to import military technology and expertise. It didn't have the manufacturing capability to produce the kinds of weapons that the Europeans had. Nearly all heavy cannon weapons were imported. So yes, China had more mouths to feed, but other than that, it's national defense posture was abysmal to the point of ridicule. Having a ruthless figure like Hitler or the First Emperor would have mattered little; only more Chinese would have died as a result. If you want to read something interesting, find out about Charles 'Chinese' Gordon a British officer that was hired by the Qing to help it put down the insurrectionist of the Taiping Rebellion. The Taiping Rebellion was the period in Chinese history that was depicted in Jet Li's movie The Warlord. An estimated 20 million Chinese died in that 15 year period.
yea still, if we had a influential, ruthless figure like Hitler in the first place we wouldn't need to go through all that bullshit revolutionary wars. We would be following one leader orders and go by one value/belief. Everything would be systematic and easy. We wouldn't have to waste resources off fighting some bullshit nationalist and some bullshit communist over nothing. From time to time, we have always been fighting against each other and on top of that we had corruption (which is why most dynasties couldn't survive-- ming dynasty for example). Corruption may/may not be what led to the downfall during the Ming dynasty but it led a huge downfall during the industrial age. If it weren't for Cixi, China would probably be like Europe where most part of their country is full of rich resources and culture. Not to mention artifacts such as the summer palace and parts of forbidden kingdom etc. etc. would be well preserved because most parts were burned down by the foreigners. Religion also played a vital role in culture domination. If it weren't for Cixi, we wouldn't have had foreigners come and break us apart and spread their Christianity belief which led to the opium trades. Our race as a whole would be well bonded since we all have the same religion/belief/values. Sometimes I wish all of our emperors were like the first or hitler or karl marx or even fucking columbus. At least there wouldn't be any "rape of nanking" embarassing shit happening to our soil.
wow, I think I'm going to read these books. This is very interesting topic...hope to find them in the library.....
The problem with your scenario is that you seem to ignore the fact that under Qin Shi Huang, who nominally "united" China, only did so by killing half of China to do it. He did this not for any love of the Chinese people, but rather for his own ego and power lust. Likewise, another despotic and ruthless ruler of China, Mao, also ruled not for the Chinese, but for himself. Great Leap Forward Hundred Flowers Campaign & Anti-Rightist Campaign Cultural Revolution I wonder why you wish for a stronger China? I can only assume that it would be to prevent Chinese people from being victimized or taken advantage of. However, we need to be careful in our rush to a stonger Chinese civilization that we don't enslave the Chinese people to a despotic yoke of our own making. IMHO, at present the most dangerous thing to the Chinese people is the Chinese Communist Party. And remember, the CCP only came into power as a result of foreign (Soviet) intervention. The People's Republic of China was considered to be the Soviet Union's greatest foreign policy success story, achieved by using the greed and hunger for power of an ambitious local named Mao. Once Mao rose to power however, when he no longer needed the Soviets, the PRC cut all ties with Moscow. Communist International The Chinese people need to be strong, but they certainly do not need to do it by submitting to despotic self serving rulers. BTW, if you want to talk corruption, that is the biggest problem in the PRC right now and everyone knows it. Even the government is afraid to stop it. Why? Because they would have to arrest just about every member of the CCP to do it. To do so would literally remove the CCP from power, and we know they're not about to do that. I'm not so sure. The Rape of Nanking happened for a variety of reason, principle amongst it was Japanese pride and their racism against Chinese; they just didn't consider Chinese to be people like them, but a lesser race that was to be naturally subjugated by them. When Chiang KaiShek fought against them for three months and cost them 70,000 plus troops, they were shamed in front of the world, and lost tremendous face. The prevailing notion at the time was, that China was a backwater republic of many loosely connected warlord fiefdoms that was equipped with backward weapons like swords and spears. A modern army was thought to have no problem in defeating them. Hence, the Japanese had anticipated taking Shanghai in three days. Not only did the Chinese, with inferior resources and weapons, and no air or naval support, hold; they did so for three months, and more importantly, gave the better trained Imperial Japanese Army troops a real bloody nose. Despite it being historically categorized as a military loss, the implication was that Chinese were not only willing to fight against foreigner intrusion, but could do it. The speculation then became that had Chinese troops been trained and better fitted, they would have kicked the Japanese out of Shanghai. It was a not only a huge political victory for China, but a real slap across the face of Japan. Thus when Japan went into the next big battle at Nanking, any semblece of civility was gone. They went in not only to win a battle, but with the intent to humiliate the Chinese in any way that they could. Additionally, some historians openly fault Chiang KaiShek for his decision to retreat through, but not defend Nanking. Battle of Shanghai Battle of Nanking Rape of Nanking (aka Rape of Nanjing, Nanking Massacre) What is interesting to me is how Chinese people look at the Nanking incident and rally around that, while quite literally many more Chinese suffered equal cruelty at the hands of other Chinese during the Chinese civil war that occured both before and after the fight with Japan. I guess it's always easier to point your finger without than within. As for religion, it was not as much a problem to the Chinese of history as was greed and avarice, both of foreigner and Chinese as well. Cixi was the end of a long line of Qing rulers that failed their nation. Though really foreigners (Manchu) themselves, they had conquered and ruled China for over two centuries and were sufficiently assimulated to be considered, for all intents, Chinese. The only other nation that successfully conquered and administered China were the Mongols (Yuan Dynasty), who kept reign for nearly a century. They too, were eventually subsumed by Chinese culture and eventually overthrown by the Ming. Cixi certainly bears a lot of blame for allowing continued European incursions into China. However, the road map for Chinese inability to hold onto sovereign matters was already drawn by others nearly a century before she even rose to power.In essence, she was the one left holding the bag. On the other hand, had Qing administration been better, we may still have a monarchy, and guys like Mao and Chiang would have had their severed heads dangling from a cage (for insurrection) over the city gates nearly a hundred years ago.
