May 15, 2013 • 21 mins
After becoming a concubine for Emperor Xianfeng at the age of 16, Cixi rose to power when he died and her young son inherited the throne. She governed China from behind a screen for more than 45 years, and eventually sealed the fate of the Qing Dynasty.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Frying and I am Tracy V. Wilson. And
today we're talking about an area of history that I
super love, which is any Chinese history. I really love it.
(00:22):
It's such a rich, rich tapestry. It's been going on
for so long and there have been so many interesting
dynasties and cultural things that it's just I love Chinese history. Yeah,
I love it. So today we're talking about Um Chinese
Empress Dowager c G, who has been characterized with a
(00:43):
great deal of gossip and speculation. She's often described as
pure evil UH and her story includes some sexual scandals,
UM poisoning scandals, and without a doubt she was exceptionally
powerful and she actually ruled the Ching dynasty for more
than for five years. But in all of these characterizations,
(01:04):
they kind of come down to archetypes and they're not
really a full picture of a human being, which she was. UM.
So I thought it would be interesting to examine a
little bit her life and some of the UH things
that we do know, things that have been theorized and
probably the truth which is somewhere in the middle. So
(01:28):
she was born on November twenty ninety five, and she
was actually the daughter of a low ranking military officer.
She became a concubine for Emperor shal Fun's harem at
the age of sixteen, and this was really a great honor.
It might sound unpleasant to be sent off to to
a harem when you're a teenage girl, but this was
(01:50):
a swank appointment. Yeah, she was chosen because you know,
they thought she was beautiful and lovely and had many gifts. Right,
shal Fung was pretty new to being emperor at that point.
He had reigned for less than two years when this happened,
and the story goes that her beautiful singing voice actually
drew the emperor's attention and she quickly became one of
(02:10):
his favorites, and her popularity really paid off with the
emperor really paid off in a big way. She bore
Shaofung his only son, Uh Princess Itun in eighteen fifty six,
and at this point she was given the title of
Virtuous Imperial Concubine, which is like third in rank. So
for anyone that doesn't know about how that works in
(02:32):
Chinese history you. There were many wives and they each
had a ranking order, and she was getting promoted based
on being a favorite and then bearing a son, and
the next year she moved up to the second rank
and was given the title Virtuous honorable Concubine. And meanwhile,
while her personal life and child bearing and relationship with
(02:54):
the Emperor was going on, the Second Opium War was
also underway, and that could ease Lee be its own
podcast episode. It's very involved, but the cliffs Notes version
is this um Britain, France, Russia, and America were fighting
for diplomatic embassies and access to Chinese ports and foreign
(03:14):
travel rights in China so that foreigners could actually travel
through the country. And they also wanted to legalize the
opium trade. And there were other elements um of their
war that they wanted that that those aren't the only things,
but those were the big primary ones. And the war
actually ended in eighteen sixty with the ratification of the
Treaty of Tiensen under the Convention of Pay King. In
(03:38):
eighteen sixty one, Shao Fung fell ill and died at
the Imperial Summer Resort, where he had gone after fleeing
Pa King during the war. So when Shao Fung died,
that left, of course the emperor position open, and he
had an air he did because because this relations had
(04:01):
borne him this son, and that son was only five
at the time, and he became Emperor tong Ji, which
made s G the honored Mother Empress dowager. But shortly
before he had died, Shao Fung had actually appointed eight
ministers to assist the young emperor as a as ruler,
and those eight ministers were headed up by Sushun. Allegedly,
(04:25):
CD had been handling some state affairs for shal Fung
while he was sick, uh, and was not really interested
in handing over this power to anybody else. But this
is not really well well substantiated, right, I Mean, we
can't know what was really going on in her mind.
We don't even know really how much she was or
was not handling. It's all. This is one of those
(04:47):
parts of it that's really kind of based on rumor
and speculation of the people around her. Right. A lot
of what was going on in the Forbidden City was
just not transparent do anyone else, right, Uh? And they were,
you know, at the the Imperial Summer Resort at this
point but yeah, their whole inner workings were very isolated,
(05:08):
and they kind of projected outward what they wanted people
to see. But the interior we really don't know all
that much about. But what we do know is that
either through an agreement on their part or through an assignment,
I have seen it characterize both ways in historical texts.
She formed an alliance with the Empress Dowager Chan, who
(05:28):
was the one wife that outranked her um, and this
alliance together gave them more power than if either of
them had tried to stand alone. They actually could make
some decisions and hold some um sway in court and
in the political decisions with the two of them united.
(05:49):
And she also allied with two of the imperial princes,
Gong and Chun So. Those were brothers of the deceased
Emperor and uh Si g and the now emperor her
son preceded the funeral procession that went back to Beijing,
picking since it's changed names many times in the Western
(06:09):
characterization of the city, and in the time before the
ministers could arrive, since they had proceeded the procession at
that point, she colluded with those two princes to charge
the regent ministers that Jaufang had appointed with incompetency in
that Second Opium War that we talked about. Just a
moment ago, Uh Shiji and Prince Gong penned an accusatory
(06:31):
document entitled eight Guilts of the Regent Ministers, and basically
they just set up this thing that like they were
poor advisors, they really allowed other countries to walk all
over us. Um you know, they weakened the Emperor's position.
And as a consequence of all of this intrigue, all
of those regents were dismissed, all of the eight that
Jaufang had appointed from his deathbed. Uh but three of
(06:53):
them were actually executed. And that's another area where things
get a little um gossipy in historical record and speculative.
Some people think that she g wanted to make an
example out of them. Others say that she wasn't really
involved in that decision, but we do know that they
were no longer in power, and basically now she had
(07:16):
all the power. This put the duo of Empress Dowagers
in power as regents. But Empress Dowager Chan didn't really
have a lot of interest in political matters, so cg
assumed the role of leader, and Prince Gong was appointed
in a position as the Emperor's aid. And it's interesting
(07:37):
that she became so powerful because women held a lower
position both socially and politically than men at this point,
So shej was basically running the country from behind a screen,
like literally, when people would come to court and they
would have discussions, she would be sitting behind a screen
listening to everything, but she couldn't actually be seen by
the people she was having a direct, powerful impact on.
(08:00):
She ruled as regent for twelve years until her son,
Emperor Tongsi, turned seventeen in eighteen seventy three, CD stepped
down as a regent to let her son rule on
his own, but he died two years later at the
age of nineteen. Officially he had smallpox, but there are
lots of rumors that he may have died of a
sexually transmitted disease. Those, as with many of the things
(08:24):
that are coming up in this episode, that's never been substantiated. Yeah, there,
they issued their official proclamation from the palace, but we
don't know. But what we do know is that when
Uh Tongsi died, she's nephew and the son of Prince Chun,
so it's Shed's nephew by marriage. Um Guangshu became the emperor,
(08:48):
but he was only three years old at the time,
and this once again UH put she G in a
position of power because she actually adopted Guangshu as her
son is part of this whole like power structuring for
the new emperor. There's some controversy about how glad she
became the emperor when tongs He died without an air
(09:09):
one of his concubines was pregnant. The concubine died while
the debate about who would be the next emperor was
still going on, and so the possible air was never born,
so we don't really know if this would have been
a boy or a girl. We don't really know whether
this child he wasn't born would have really been the
next in line, which means of course that there was
(09:30):
suspicion that this was possibly murder. Yeah, and this feeds
into some of the stories of c G being really,
you know, an evil, evil woman, that she colluded with
others to create this UM to ensure that her power
remained intact, and that she actually Um was involved in
the murder of this woman. UH. Even though the death
(09:52):
was announced publicly. Again, the proclamation from the palace was
that it was a suicide. Uh. She remains a historical suspect,
but so do the other princes that were involved. Um
Ja Fang's brothers that had not come to power when
he passed away, c G continued to rule from behind
her screen, and even once the new emperor came of age,
(10:15):
she still held the reins of power. Uh. And this
is where things became a little contentious. She and Uh
and Guang Sho diverged in their political views about what
they wanted wanted to do. During the First Sino Japanese War,
Guangshi wanted to engage the enemy, but CG was you know,
(10:37):
she wanted to compromise, and she blocked his efforts. So,
after China was defeated, Guangsho started to recognize and think
about the ways that he thought China needed to reform. Yeah,
and he Uh really realizing that the old ways were
not going to carry the country forward. And so on
June eleven, Guangsho started what is called the Hundred Day Reform,
(11:01):
and that was a series of proclamations that he issued
that were intended to modernize China and revitalize the dynasty.
He wanted to change and evolve the country's education, their industry,
their foreign affairs, and all of his proclamations were indirect
opposition to the conservative Manchu nobility and especially Shiji. Because
(11:21):
CIG still held power over the loyal military, it was
really easy for her to stage at coup. At this point,
CV re established her role as regent. She got assistance
from other people who did not like the reform plans,
and she sent the emperor to confinement and yan Tai
terrorists for ten years. The public announcement was that the
(11:43):
emperor was sick to the point of being incapacitated, when
in fact he had really just been shoved off his
throne uh and then so he basically stayed there the
rest of his life, which didn't last a whle lot longer.
Obviously it was ten years, and we'll talk about that
a little bit in the moment. But as this point
(12:05):
of the story and these reformation reformation efforts have happened,
she starts to make some missteps. Um during the Boxer
Rebellion of nineteen hundred, which was led by the righteous
fists of Harmony. But they kind of get called the boxers,
and translation, she sided with the insurgents, and she was
against foreign diplomats and the Chinese Christians. She didn't really
(12:28):
want change. She thought that they should protect their heritage
in their history and their old ways of doing things.
And some historians have theorized that this was actually just
a play to minimize damage on the Chang dynasty, but
and that she was trying to, you know, create as
little damage as possible from the rebellion. But it really
really did nothing for her image on the global stage.
(12:50):
She was basically saying, no, foreigners were not interested in
you uh. And so when the coalition troops had stamped
out the rebellion, she was really left to the ugly
reputation as being you know, unwelcoming and stubborn and close minded.
She really wanted to improve her image at this point,
(13:11):
so she commissioned a photographer to create portraits of her
in nineteen o three. The portraits are staged similarly to
ones of Queen Victoria, and they were intended to be
given as gifts to visiting dignitaries, but before long copies
are being sold in the street as souvenirs and as
for helping her reputation. This was not exactly successful. She
(13:33):
was still seen as a dangerous dragon lady by westerners
and then Uh. Five years after that, on November fourteenth
and nineteen o eight, Emperor Guangshu died at the age
of thirty seven. Empress Dowager she died the next day,
just Shy of the age of seventy four, and this
(13:53):
became another part of the intrigue. At the time, there
were suspicions that he had been murdered. Uh. But then
a hundred years later, in two thousand eight, a five
year research study actually concluded that had examined samples of
the emperor's remains, I think seven of his bones were sampled,
both the interior and exterior of his tomb garments that
(14:14):
he had been wearing, and the analysis revealed that the
emperor had actually been poisoned with arsenic more than triple
the amount that would have been a fatal dose. And
for a while there was before this study was finalized,
people had suspected that it was one of those things
where people sometimes take poison as a medicine um and
then it was accumulative poisoning. But because of the way
(14:36):
the evidence played out, it was obviously like a one
huge dose situation. It was an acute onset poisoning, not
a cumulative one. Of course, Empress Dowager CV is one
of the people suspected in the poisoning because she might
have known that she was dying and she didn't want
gland Shoe and his reforms to take over China. Yes, so,
(14:56):
and that rumor persists. I mean, there's um there was
actually a story that came out around the same time
where some of the people that worked on this analysis
are pretty confident she was the one who poisoned him. Well,
and there's kind of a trail of possibly mysterious deaths
in her wake earlier in her life. Yes, and there
is one account that someone mentions of a close friend
(15:22):
of hers who was supposed to be a Unich. There's
also some rumor that maybe he wasn't really a unique
and they had a sexual relationship, but someone saw him
carrying food into the emperor right before he died. Uh So,
there are there is some evidence that suggests that, however,
we don't know for certain, very circumstantial. Uh. Sheik was
(15:43):
incredibly powerful and politically strong, but unfortunately her anti foreign
conservatism and some pretty bad administrative missteps. In her later reign,
Uh really really caused some problems. For example, she spent
naval funds on a summer palace, which weakened the military
and precipitated the defeat in the Sino Japanese War, and
(16:05):
her mausoleum, which is built prior to her death, is
actually filled with precious materials in amounts that exceed most
emperors tombs. She really like demanded that she have only
the best things, and in numbers that were just sort
of ridiculous at the time. You know, It's like, I want,
I think I saw a thing that said that most
(16:26):
tombs had like three golden pillars and hers has something
like sixty four. I mean, she really wanted only the
best and most immaculate and most amazing UH. And unfortunately,
all of that kind of behavior, and particularly her conservatism
and unwillingness to kind of open uh China's doors to
(16:47):
the rest of the world, really were direct contributors to
the demise of the Ching dynasty. There's also an interesting
footnote in all of this, which is that the accounts
of her Uh intrigues in her life have actually caused
their own sort of story of drama amongst biographers. Early
accounts were mostly written by George Morrison and linguist reporter
(17:09):
Edmund Backhouse, who wrote reports for Westerners from taking in
the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. UH. In
the early nineteen nineties, Sterling Seagrave wrote a biography of
Shiji called The Dragon Lady, and in his book he
really discredits Morrison and back House. Uh. Several sources have
shown that back House fabricated some of his stories, and
(17:31):
even Morrison's diary mentions that he had discovered that the
back House was writing fake stories, presumably to further his career,
but that at that point Morrison was so deep in
that he would have discredited himself had he blown the whistle.
So it's kind of interesting. Uh. I feel like that's
(17:52):
a story that we continue to hear today sometimes when
people fabricating craziness and then get it published. But there
is also resistance to see graves version of the story
because he really paints a much more sympathetic um picture
of s g and characterizes her as a fearful figurehead
and you know, she knows that she's trapped in an
impoverished dynasty. And she's really struggling with everything around her.
(18:16):
But as often is the case, the truth is probably
somewhere in the middle, because there are things like evidence
that she misspent naval funds making herself a beautiful summer home,
and that she had this, you know, insane mausoleum built
for herself, and so those are not really the things
that I would normally associate with a fearful person who
is very you know, scared and trapped. Though she may
(18:38):
have had I'm sure she was a human, she probably
had fears and concerns. But I think somewhere between those
two is really where we get the reality. Right. Plus
the trail of bodies, I mean, that could entirely be coincidence,
but at the same time that seems a little unlikely
that there was not something. There's a lot of death
(18:59):
and intrigue, and that's story. You also have some listening
mail I do, indeed. Uh. This is actually from our
Facebook page and it's from our listener, Lily And and
she says, I was wondering if you could encourage your
listeners to give blood. My answer, absolutely, Uh. There was
recently a major tragedy in my area, A fertilizer plant
(19:19):
explode exploded, leaving many people injured, and the blood banks
are in desperate need of donations. This service is a
reminder that a tragedy can happen at any moment, and
the best way to deal with it is to be prepared.
People are so willing to flood blood banks after a
major incident, but that leaves every other day lacking. If
we could set up a great supply before something like
this happens, then we wouldn't be in such dire need
when we need blood the most. So true. I would
(19:42):
also encourage people to give platelets if that is something
they are interested in. That is another thing that is
much needed and needed all the time. Platelets kind of
leaks is for five days I think once they're donated,
so they need a constant supply. Huh, much like blood,
these things go lacking in tragedies something And if you
cannot do either thing for whatever reason, Yeah, there are
(20:04):
many other ways to contribute, either with money or time. Yeah,
we highly encourage that. I'm not usually a candidate for
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my blood no matter how much steak I eat, So
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(20:25):
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Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm Holly Frying and I am Tracy V. Wilson. And
today we're talking about an area of history that I
super love, which is any Chinese history. I really love it.
(00:22):
It's such a rich, rich tapestry. It's been going on
for so long and there have been so many interesting
dynasties and cultural things that it's just I love Chinese history. Yeah,
I love it. So today we're talking about Um Chinese
Empress Dowager c G, who has been characterized with a
(00:43):
great deal of gossip and speculation. She's often described as
pure evil UH and her story includes some sexual scandals,
UM poisoning scandals, and without a doubt she was exceptionally
powerful and she actually ruled the Ching dynasty for more
than for five years. But in all of these characterizations,
(01:04):
they kind of come down to archetypes and they're not
really a full picture of a human being, which she was. UM.
So I thought it would be interesting to examine a
little bit her life and some of the UH things
that we do know, things that have been theorized and
probably the truth which is somewhere in the middle. So
(01:28):
she was born on November twenty ninety five, and she
was actually the daughter of a low ranking military officer.
She became a concubine for Emperor shal Fun's harem at
the age of sixteen, and this was really a great honor.
It might sound unpleasant to be sent off to to
a harem when you're a teenage girl, but this was
(01:50):
a swank appointment. Yeah, she was chosen because you know,
they thought she was beautiful and lovely and had many gifts. Right,
shal Fung was pretty new to being emperor at that point.
He had reigned for less than two years when this happened,
and the story goes that her beautiful singing voice actually
drew the emperor's attention and she quickly became one of
(02:10):
his favorites, and her popularity really paid off with the
emperor really paid off in a big way. She bore
Shaofung his only son, Uh Princess Itun in eighteen fifty six,
and at this point she was given the title of
Virtuous Imperial Concubine, which is like third in rank. So
for anyone that doesn't know about how that works in
(02:32):
Chinese history you. There were many wives and they each
had a ranking order, and she was getting promoted based
on being a favorite and then bearing a son, and
the next year she moved up to the second rank
and was given the title Virtuous honorable Concubine. And meanwhile,
while her personal life and child bearing and relationship with
(02:54):
the Emperor was going on, the Second Opium War was
also underway, and that could ease Lee be its own
podcast episode. It's very involved, but the cliffs Notes version
is this um Britain, France, Russia, and America were fighting
for diplomatic embassies and access to Chinese ports and foreign
(03:14):
travel rights in China so that foreigners could actually travel
through the country. And they also wanted to legalize the
opium trade. And there were other elements um of their
war that they wanted that that those aren't the only things,
but those were the big primary ones. And the war
actually ended in eighteen sixty with the ratification of the
Treaty of Tiensen under the Convention of Pay King. In
(03:38):
eighteen sixty one, Shao Fung fell ill and died at
the Imperial Summer Resort, where he had gone after fleeing
Pa King during the war. So when Shao Fung died,
that left, of course the emperor position open, and he
had an air he did because because this relations had
(04:01):
borne him this son, and that son was only five
at the time, and he became Emperor tong Ji, which
made s G the honored Mother Empress dowager. But shortly
before he had died, Shao Fung had actually appointed eight
ministers to assist the young emperor as a as ruler,
and those eight ministers were headed up by Sushun. Allegedly,
(04:25):
CD had been handling some state affairs for shal Fung
while he was sick, uh, and was not really interested
in handing over this power to anybody else. But this
is not really well well substantiated, right, I Mean, we
can't know what was really going on in her mind.
We don't even know really how much she was or
was not handling. It's all. This is one of those
(04:47):
parts of it that's really kind of based on rumor
and speculation of the people around her. Right. A lot
of what was going on in the Forbidden City was
just not transparent do anyone else, right, Uh? And they were,
you know, at the the Imperial Summer Resort at this
point but yeah, their whole inner workings were very isolated,
(05:08):
and they kind of projected outward what they wanted people
to see. But the interior we really don't know all
that much about. But what we do know is that
either through an agreement on their part or through an assignment,
I have seen it characterize both ways in historical texts.
She formed an alliance with the Empress Dowager Chan, who
(05:28):
was the one wife that outranked her um, and this
alliance together gave them more power than if either of
them had tried to stand alone. They actually could make
some decisions and hold some um sway in court and
in the political decisions with the two of them united.
(05:49):
And she also allied with two of the imperial princes,
Gong and Chun So. Those were brothers of the deceased
Emperor and uh Si g and the now emperor her
son preceded the funeral procession that went back to Beijing,
picking since it's changed names many times in the Western
(06:09):
characterization of the city, and in the time before the
ministers could arrive, since they had proceeded the procession at
that point, she colluded with those two princes to charge
the regent ministers that Jaufang had appointed with incompetency in
that Second Opium War that we talked about. Just a
moment ago, Uh Shiji and Prince Gong penned an accusatory
(06:31):
document entitled eight Guilts of the Regent Ministers, and basically
they just set up this thing that like they were
poor advisors, they really allowed other countries to walk all
over us. Um you know, they weakened the Emperor's position.
And as a consequence of all of this intrigue, all
of those regents were dismissed, all of the eight that
Jaufang had appointed from his deathbed. Uh but three of
(06:53):
them were actually executed. And that's another area where things
get a little um gossipy in historical record and speculative.
Some people think that she g wanted to make an
example out of them. Others say that she wasn't really
involved in that decision, but we do know that they
were no longer in power, and basically now she had
(07:16):
all the power. This put the duo of Empress Dowagers
in power as regents. But Empress Dowager Chan didn't really
have a lot of interest in political matters, so cg
assumed the role of leader, and Prince Gong was appointed
in a position as the Emperor's aid. And it's interesting
(07:37):
that she became so powerful because women held a lower
position both socially and politically than men at this point,
So shej was basically running the country from behind a screen,
like literally, when people would come to court and they
would have discussions, she would be sitting behind a screen
listening to everything, but she couldn't actually be seen by
the people she was having a direct, powerful impact on.
(08:00):
She ruled as regent for twelve years until her son,
Emperor Tongsi, turned seventeen in eighteen seventy three, CD stepped
down as a regent to let her son rule on
his own, but he died two years later at the
age of nineteen. Officially he had smallpox, but there are
lots of rumors that he may have died of a
sexually transmitted disease. Those, as with many of the things
(08:24):
that are coming up in this episode, that's never been substantiated. Yeah, there,
they issued their official proclamation from the palace, but we
don't know. But what we do know is that when
Uh Tongsi died, she's nephew and the son of Prince Chun,
so it's Shed's nephew by marriage. Um Guangshu became the emperor,
(08:48):
but he was only three years old at the time,
and this once again UH put she G in a
position of power because she actually adopted Guangshu as her
son is part of this whole like power structuring for
the new emperor. There's some controversy about how glad she
became the emperor when tongs He died without an air
(09:09):
one of his concubines was pregnant. The concubine died while
the debate about who would be the next emperor was
still going on, and so the possible air was never born,
so we don't really know if this would have been
a boy or a girl. We don't really know whether
this child he wasn't born would have really been the
next in line, which means of course that there was
(09:30):
suspicion that this was possibly murder. Yeah, and this feeds
into some of the stories of c G being really,
you know, an evil, evil woman, that she colluded with
others to create this UM to ensure that her power
remained intact, and that she actually Um was involved in
the murder of this woman. UH. Even though the death
(09:52):
was announced publicly. Again, the proclamation from the palace was
that it was a suicide. Uh. She remains a historical suspect,
but so do the other princes that were involved. Um
Ja Fang's brothers that had not come to power when
he passed away, c G continued to rule from behind
her screen, and even once the new emperor came of age,
(10:15):
she still held the reins of power. Uh. And this
is where things became a little contentious. She and Uh
and Guang Sho diverged in their political views about what
they wanted wanted to do. During the First Sino Japanese War,
Guangshi wanted to engage the enemy, but CG was you know,
(10:37):
she wanted to compromise, and she blocked his efforts. So,
after China was defeated, Guangsho started to recognize and think
about the ways that he thought China needed to reform. Yeah,
and he Uh really realizing that the old ways were
not going to carry the country forward. And so on
June eleven, Guangsho started what is called the Hundred Day Reform,
(11:01):
and that was a series of proclamations that he issued
that were intended to modernize China and revitalize the dynasty.
He wanted to change and evolve the country's education, their industry,
their foreign affairs, and all of his proclamations were indirect
opposition to the conservative Manchu nobility and especially Shiji. Because
(11:21):
CIG still held power over the loyal military, it was
really easy for her to stage at coup. At this point,
CV re established her role as regent. She got assistance
from other people who did not like the reform plans,
and she sent the emperor to confinement and yan Tai
terrorists for ten years. The public announcement was that the
(11:43):
emperor was sick to the point of being incapacitated, when
in fact he had really just been shoved off his
throne uh and then so he basically stayed there the
rest of his life, which didn't last a whle lot longer.
Obviously it was ten years, and we'll talk about that
a little bit in the moment. But as this point
(12:05):
of the story and these reformation reformation efforts have happened,
she starts to make some missteps. Um during the Boxer
Rebellion of nineteen hundred, which was led by the righteous
fists of Harmony. But they kind of get called the boxers,
and translation, she sided with the insurgents, and she was
against foreign diplomats and the Chinese Christians. She didn't really
(12:28):
want change. She thought that they should protect their heritage
in their history and their old ways of doing things.
And some historians have theorized that this was actually just
a play to minimize damage on the Chang dynasty, but
and that she was trying to, you know, create as
little damage as possible from the rebellion. But it really
really did nothing for her image on the global stage.
(12:50):
She was basically saying, no, foreigners were not interested in
you uh. And so when the coalition troops had stamped
out the rebellion, she was really left to the ugly
reputation as being you know, unwelcoming and stubborn and close minded.
She really wanted to improve her image at this point,
(13:11):
so she commissioned a photographer to create portraits of her
in nineteen o three. The portraits are staged similarly to
ones of Queen Victoria, and they were intended to be
given as gifts to visiting dignitaries, but before long copies
are being sold in the street as souvenirs and as
for helping her reputation. This was not exactly successful. She
(13:33):
was still seen as a dangerous dragon lady by westerners
and then Uh. Five years after that, on November fourteenth
and nineteen o eight, Emperor Guangshu died at the age
of thirty seven. Empress Dowager she died the next day,
just Shy of the age of seventy four, and this
(13:53):
became another part of the intrigue. At the time, there
were suspicions that he had been murdered. Uh. But then
a hundred years later, in two thousand eight, a five
year research study actually concluded that had examined samples of
the emperor's remains, I think seven of his bones were sampled,
both the interior and exterior of his tomb garments that
(14:14):
he had been wearing, and the analysis revealed that the
emperor had actually been poisoned with arsenic more than triple
the amount that would have been a fatal dose. And
for a while there was before this study was finalized,
people had suspected that it was one of those things
where people sometimes take poison as a medicine um and
then it was accumulative poisoning. But because of the way
(14:36):
the evidence played out, it was obviously like a one
huge dose situation. It was an acute onset poisoning, not
a cumulative one. Of course, Empress Dowager CV is one
of the people suspected in the poisoning because she might
have known that she was dying and she didn't want
gland Shoe and his reforms to take over China. Yes, so,
(14:56):
and that rumor persists. I mean, there's um there was
actually a story that came out around the same time
where some of the people that worked on this analysis
are pretty confident she was the one who poisoned him. Well,
and there's kind of a trail of possibly mysterious deaths
in her wake earlier in her life. Yes, and there
is one account that someone mentions of a close friend
(15:22):
of hers who was supposed to be a Unich. There's
also some rumor that maybe he wasn't really a unique
and they had a sexual relationship, but someone saw him
carrying food into the emperor right before he died. Uh So,
there are there is some evidence that suggests that, however,
we don't know for certain, very circumstantial. Uh. Sheik was
(15:43):
incredibly powerful and politically strong, but unfortunately her anti foreign
conservatism and some pretty bad administrative missteps. In her later reign,
Uh really really caused some problems. For example, she spent
naval funds on a summer palace, which weakened the military
and precipitated the defeat in the Sino Japanese War, and
(16:05):
her mausoleum, which is built prior to her death, is
actually filled with precious materials in amounts that exceed most
emperors tombs. She really like demanded that she have only
the best things, and in numbers that were just sort
of ridiculous at the time. You know, It's like, I want,
I think I saw a thing that said that most
(16:26):
tombs had like three golden pillars and hers has something
like sixty four. I mean, she really wanted only the
best and most immaculate and most amazing UH. And unfortunately,
all of that kind of behavior, and particularly her conservatism
and unwillingness to kind of open uh China's doors to
(16:47):
the rest of the world, really were direct contributors to
the demise of the Ching dynasty. There's also an interesting
footnote in all of this, which is that the accounts
of her Uh intrigues in her life have actually caused
their own sort of story of drama amongst biographers. Early
accounts were mostly written by George Morrison and linguist reporter
(17:09):
Edmund Backhouse, who wrote reports for Westerners from taking in
the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. UH. In
the early nineteen nineties, Sterling Seagrave wrote a biography of
Shiji called The Dragon Lady, and in his book he
really discredits Morrison and back House. Uh. Several sources have
shown that back House fabricated some of his stories, and
(17:31):
even Morrison's diary mentions that he had discovered that the
back House was writing fake stories, presumably to further his career,
but that at that point Morrison was so deep in
that he would have discredited himself had he blown the whistle.
So it's kind of interesting. Uh. I feel like that's
(17:52):
a story that we continue to hear today sometimes when
people fabricating craziness and then get it published. But there
is also resistance to see graves version of the story
because he really paints a much more sympathetic um picture
of s g and characterizes her as a fearful figurehead
and you know, she knows that she's trapped in an
impoverished dynasty. And she's really struggling with everything around her.
(18:16):
But as often is the case, the truth is probably
somewhere in the middle, because there are things like evidence
that she misspent naval funds making herself a beautiful summer home,
and that she had this, you know, insane mausoleum built
for herself, and so those are not really the things
that I would normally associate with a fearful person who
is very you know, scared and trapped. Though she may
(18:38):
have had I'm sure she was a human, she probably
had fears and concerns. But I think somewhere between those
two is really where we get the reality. Right. Plus
the trail of bodies, I mean, that could entirely be coincidence,
but at the same time that seems a little unlikely
that there was not something. There's a lot of death
(18:59):
and intrigue, and that's story. You also have some listening
mail I do, indeed. Uh. This is actually from our
Facebook page and it's from our listener, Lily And and
she says, I was wondering if you could encourage your
listeners to give blood. My answer, absolutely, Uh. There was
recently a major tragedy in my area, A fertilizer plant
(19:19):
explode exploded, leaving many people injured, and the blood banks
are in desperate need of donations. This service is a
reminder that a tragedy can happen at any moment, and
the best way to deal with it is to be prepared.
People are so willing to flood blood banks after a
major incident, but that leaves every other day lacking. If
we could set up a great supply before something like
this happens, then we wouldn't be in such dire need
when we need blood the most. So true. I would
(19:42):
also encourage people to give platelets if that is something
they are interested in. That is another thing that is
much needed and needed all the time. Platelets kind of
leaks is for five days I think once they're donated,
so they need a constant supply. Huh, much like blood,
these things go lacking in tragedies something And if you
cannot do either thing for whatever reason, Yeah, there are
(20:04):
many other ways to contribute, either with money or time. Yeah,
we highly encourage that. I'm not usually a candidate for
any of that whause I don't have enough fire in
my blood no matter how much steak I eat, So
I'm trying desperately, but so I try to someons volunteer.
I'll help do patient check in. If you would like
(20:25):
to write to us, you may do so. You can
email us at History podcast at discovery dot com. We're
on Twitter at misston History, and we're on Facebook at
Facebook dot com slash history class Stuff. We're also on
tumbler at misst in history dot tumbler dot com, and
you can find us on interests UH. If you would
like to learn more about what we talked about today,
you can go to our website and type in the
(20:47):
words Chinese traditions and you will come up with an
article called how Chinese Traditions Work. If you like to
learn more about that, or anything else your mind can conjure,
you can do so at our website, and that website
is house to works dot com. For more on this
and thousands of other topics, does it hostaff works dot com.
(21:16):
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