Forbidden City Sunset (Volume 1 & 2) - Guangxu's Ascension to Power Yingtai's Regret: Guangxu's Ascension to Power Yingtai's Regret

Author: Hui Yishen
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: In the long history of China spanning thousands of years, twenty years is but a fleeting moment! However, these two decades of turbulent events were absolutely extraordinary, filled with world-shaking major incidents: the wedding of Emperor Guangxu, Cixi's return to power, the First Sino-Japanese War, the Hundred Days' Reform, the Boxer Rebellion, the Eight-Nation Alliance, the Empress Dowager's flight to the West, the Boxer Protocol negotiations, and the simultaneous deaths of the Emperor and Empress.
The author's grandfather, Qi Ling, was a high-ranking official during the late Qing Dynasty and served as a minister in the Imperial Household Department. He spent many years accompanying the Empress Dowager Cixi as well as the Emperors Guangxu and Xuantong. The Empresses Zhen and Jin of Emperor Guangxu were the author's aunts. The author's family's close ties with the imperial family gave them access to a wealth of family-handed Qing Dynasty historical materials.
It took the author six years to weave together the numerous firsthand, little-known behind-the-scenes accounts of her grandfather Qi Ling's experiences, based on his diaries, writings, memorials, letters, and photographs, into the historical narrative. Starting from the wedding and enthronement of Emperor Guangxu and culminating with his and Cixi's nearly simultaneous deaths, the dramatic, thrilling, and moving stories that unfolded around Emperor Guangxu in the Forbidden City over less than two decades are retold, reshaping those difficult-to-explain historical fragments.