Princess Der Ling

Author: Xu Xiaobin
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-05-01
Features: De Ling (1886–1944) was a travel writer, woman, Manchu, and native of Jingzhou. De Ling was born in Wuchang in 1886 and spent her childhood and youth in Jingzhou and Shashi. At that time, her father Yu Geng was in charge of the Shashi customs office, overseeing foreign affairs and teaching. In 1895, Yu Geng was appointed by the Qing court as the Special Envoy to Japan, and the entire family followed him to Tokyo for his assignment, where they stayed for three years. After completing his duties in Japan, Yu Geng returned to China and then went to Paris to serve as the Chinese envoy to France. These six years of living abroad broadened De Ling's perspective as an Eastern woman.
In the spring of 1903, at the age of 17, De Ling returned to Beijing with her father. Due to her lively and innocent personality and skilled social skills, she and her sister De Ling won the favor of Empress Dowager Cixi. Cixi, eager to further understand the West and facilitate interactions with the wives of foreign envoys in China, kept the sisters by her side, making them one of the Eight Imperial Concubines in the Forbidden City. In March 1905, Yu Geng fell ill and went to Shanghai for treatment, summoning De Ling and her sister to join him. The two years of court life also made De Ling see the coldness, darkness, and dangers of the palace. De Ling requested to go to Shanghai and was granted permission, after which she immediately left the court.
After Yu Geng's death, De Ling met the Vice Consul of the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai, Theodorus White, and they married on May 21, 1907. In 1915, De Ling accompanied White to the United States and began writing in English, publishing several works under the name "Princess De Ling," becoming one of the most famous writers in the U.S. at the time. Her memoir, Two Years in the Forbidden City, attracted widespread attention from people across all social classes in Western society. The book, written in the first-person narrative style, details the life in the Qing court's inner courtyard from 1903 to 1904, with extensive chapters describing Empress Dowager Cixi's daily life, attire, behavior, and character. Many of the revelations in the book hold significant historical value.
Later, De Ling wrote several other memoir-style works in English, including Recollections of the Late Qing Court, Orchids in the Imperial Garden, and the documentary Blood on the Island of the Blue Waters, as well as The Fragrance of the Imperial Incense. The total word count of her works reached hundreds of thousands. These works first gained a large readership overseas and were later translated into Chinese by Gu Qiuxin and Qin Shou'ou, spreading them domestically. Some of them were serialized in top domestic newspapers like Shanghai Daily, exerting a great influence.
During the War of Resistance, Soong Ching-ling organized the China Defense League in Hong Kong, mobilizing overseas Chinese and overseas Chinese to resist Japan. De Ling also made contributions in the "China Night" and "One Bowl of Rice" campaigns of the China Defense League. On November 22, 1944, De Ling died in a car accident in Canada, at the age of just under 60.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the beautiful and intelligent De Ling, daughter of the Chinese envoy to France, stepped into the mysterious, eerie, and perilous Forbidden City. Here, she witnessed the final struggles of a declining dynasty as it slowly faded into the mists of history, experienced the violent shocks of the Qing feudal monarchy being challenged by social reform movements, and, as a "Sino-Western hybrid," brought countless collisions of Eastern and Western cultures to the grand inner courtyard of the Qing court. This led to a series of unexpected tragedies, beautiful love stories, enigmatic human relationships, profound cultural heritage, and vivid Beijing-style language, highlighting the ideological and artistic value of the novel.
The author's repositioning and bold subversion of some important historical figures make the novel unique. This is the first long novel in China to explore the late Qing court life through the eyes of a "Sino-Western hybrid." In fact, De Ling was also a writer, as her works such as Two Years in the Forbidden City, The Fragrance of the Imperial Incense, and Blood on the Island of the Blue Waters earned her a high reputation overseas.