Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

by Jung Chang

Overview

A New York Times Notable Book
An NPR Best Book of the Year

In 1852, at age sixteen, Cixi was chosen as one of Emperor Xianfeng’s numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a coup against her son’s regents and placed herself as the true source of power—governing through a silk screen that separated her from her male officials.
        Drawing on newly available sources, Jung Chang comprehensively overturns Cixi’s reputation as a conservative despot. Cixi’s extraordinary reign saw the birth of modern China. Under her, the ancient country attained industries, railways, electricity, and a military with up-to-date weaponry. She abolished foot-binding, inaugurated women’s liberation, and embarked on a path to introduce voting rights. Packed with drama, this groundbreaking biography powerfully reforms our view of a crucial period in China’s—and the world’s—history. 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780307456700
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	09/09/2014
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	464
Sales rank:	77,227
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.80(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Jung Chang is the best-selling author of Wild Swans, which The Asian Wall Street Journal called the most widely read book about China, and Mao: The Unknown Story (with Jon Halliday), which was described by Time as “an atom bomb of a book.” Her books have been translated into more than forty languages and sold more than fifteen million copies outside mainland China, where they are both banned. She was born in China in 1952 and moved to Britain in 1978. She lives in London.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One, Concubine to an Emperor (1835–56)
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "Empress Dowager Cixi"
by .
Copyright © 2014 Jung Chang.
Excerpted by permission of Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Editorial Reviews

Cixi’s extraordinary story has all the elements of a good fairy tale: bizarre, sinister, triumphant and terrible.” —The Economist

“A truly authoritative account of Cixi’s rule. Her story is both important and evocative.” —Orville Schell, The New York Times Book Review 

“A fantastic Machiavellian tale. . . . Dives into a genuinely fascinating figure: a fierce imperial consort who ruled behind the thrones of two successive Chinese emperors and helped ease China into the twentieth century.” —New York magazine
 
“Certain to become the standard by which all future biographies of the Dowager Empress are measured.” —The Daily Beast

“Jung Chang has written a pathbreaking and generally persuasive book.” —The New York Review of Books

“If there is one woman who mattered in the history of modern China, it is the empress dowager Cixi. . . . [Her] conventional image is queried in this detailed and beautifully narrated biography, which at long last restores the empress dowager to her rightful place.” —The Sunday Times (London)

“Sets out to rehabilitate the reputation of a woman who, [Chang] argues, helped modernize China. . . . While Chang acknowledges Cixi’s missteps—such as allowing the Boxers to fight against a Western invasion, which led to widespread slaughter—she sees her as a woman whose energy, farsightedness, and ruthless pragmatism transformed a country.” —The New Yorker

“[An] authoritative and epic biography.” —The Toronto Star

“Well-researched and provocative. . . . Cixi deserves to be remembered and this book is to be welcomed for giving an important figure in Chinese history the prominence she deserves. . . . This spirited biography reminds us that a greater female presence might be a trigger for much-needed political change.” —New Statesman

“Fascinating. . . . Wonderfully illuminating. . . . Jung Chang’s new book gives the infamous concubine Cixi her due.” —The Spectator

“This is a rich, dramatic story of rebellions, battles, plotting, rivalry, foreign invasion, punishment and forbidden love. . . . [Chang] uses new evidence and meticulous research to cast a spotlight on the amazing woman she regards as the mother of modern China.” —Daily Mail

“Corrects a longstanding misconception about a woman whose impact on China can’t be overstated. It’s a fascinating look at power, politics and the gender divide.” —BookPage

“A rich and fascinating book that never relaxes its hold on the reader despite the marshalling of a mass of complex historical details seen through the prism of Cixi.” —The New York Journal of Books

From the Publisher

In her absorbing new book, [Chang] laments that Cixi has for so long been "deemed either tyrannical and vicious, or hopelessly incompetent—or both." Far from depicting her subject as a sinister conservative who obstructed reforms, Chang portrays Cixi as smart, patriotic and open-minded. In her view, the empress was a proto-feminist who, despite the narrow-minded, misogynistic male elite that made up the imperial bureaucracy, "brought medieval China into the modern age"…While Chang's admiration can approach hagiography, her extensive use of new Chinese sources makes a strong case for a reappraisal…[Cixi's] story is both important and evocative.

The New York Times Book Review - Orville Schell

08/26/2013
Her original first name was considered too inconsequential to enter in the court registry, yet she became the most powerful woman in 19th-century China. Born in 1835 to a prominent Manchu family, Cixi was chosen in 1852 by the young Chinese Emperor Xianfeng as one of his concubines. Literate, politically aware, and graceful rather than beautiful, Cixi was not Xianfeng's favorite, but she delivered his firstborn son in 1856. When the emperor died in 1861, he bequeathed his title to this son, with regents to oversee his reign. Cixi did not trust these men to competently rule China, so she conspired with Empress Zhen, her close friend and the deceased emperor's first wife, to orchestrate a coup. Memoirist Chang (Wild Swans) melds her deep knowledge of Chinese history with deft storytelling to unravel the empress dowager's behind-the-throne efforts to "Make China Strong" by developing international trade, building railroads and utilities, expanding education, and constructing a modern military. Cixi's actions and methods were at times controversial, and in 1898 she thwarted an assassination attempt sanctioned by Emperor Guangxu, her adopted son. Cixi's power only increased after this, and she finally exacted revenge on Guangxu just before her death in 1908. Illus. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

First a Red Guard, then the recipient of a doctoral degree in linguistics from England's Bristol University, then the hugely best-selling author of Wild Swans and Mao, Chang has a remarkable life story. Her subject here is even more remarkable. Made a concubine at age 12, Cixi gave birth to Emperor Xianfeng's only male heir and had herself appointed regent when he succeeded to the throne as a four-year-old in 1861. When he died, she had a young nephew appointed emperor and continued what many consider an enlightened reign until her death in 1908.

Library Journal

Jolene Kim brings just the right tone to this book about nineteenth-century Chinese history. She pronounces Chinese names and phrases with a Mandarin accent that adds to the atmosphere. But her skilled reading cannot overcome the author’s sometimes stilted writing. This is a book written for the eye, not the ear. The writing style may be due to the fact the author, currently a British resident, was born in China. The book tells the fascinating story of how a bright but initially illiterate concubine is able to rule through her young son and effect a transformation in China. Listeners will come away with a better understanding of China as it prepared to enter the twentieth century. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2013 - AudioFile

Jolene Kim brings just the right tone to this book about nineteenth-century Chinese history. She pronounces Chinese names and phrases with a Mandarin accent that adds to the atmosphere. But her skilled reading cannot overcome the author’s sometimes stilted writing. This is a book written for the eye, not the ear. The writing style may be due to the fact the author, currently a British resident, was born in China. The book tells the fascinating story of how a bright but initially illiterate concubine is able to rule through her young son and effect a transformation in China. Listeners will come away with a better understanding of China as it prepared to enter the twentieth century. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2013 - AudioFile

2013-09-15
An impassioned defense of the daughter of a government employee who finagled her way to becoming the long-reigning empress dowager, feminist and reformer. Chang (Wild Swans: The Daughters of China, 1991) strongly argues for a fresh look at this much-maligned monarch, who presided over China at a challenging period, when it was on the cusp of modernization and foreign invasion. Chosen as one of several concubines for the teenage Emperor Xianfeng in 1852, 16-year-old Cixi possessed more poise than beauty and was used to asserting her will in her own family; her star rose when she gave birth to the emperor's first son. A shrewd observer of the failed policy of trying to block Western influence in China, Cixi believed shutting out the enemy only brought catastrophe for the empire. After engineering the coup in 1861 that defeated the regents, effectively installing the two dowager empresses to power, Cixi ushered in a new era in the expansion of foreign trade centered in Shanghai and the buildup of a modern navy and arms industry. She welcomed foreigners and sent emissaries to tour Europe to report back on the outside world for the first time. The short-lived reign of her son Tongzhi, who died in 1875, meant that she continued on the throne, installing her sister's son, Guangxu, as her adopted son, so that her popular modernization policy continued--e.g., the beginning of coal mining and the installation of electricity. The coming-of-age of Emperor Guangxu meant the retirement of Cixi and a heap of foreign humiliation on the country, starting with the war with Japan. Yet this tenacious empress rebounded from an assassination plot and exile to implement a series of remarkable reforms in the six years before her death in 1908. In an entertaining biography, the empress finally has her day.

Kirkus Reviews