Open Your Eyes to Empress Dowager Cixi - A Classic of Reason Struggling Between Power and Femininity

Author: Li Ao
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2007-01-01
Features: When we brush away the thick layers of dust covering the years, a true history will once again be revealed before us. During the Qing Dynasty, the figure of Empress Dowager Cixi was the center of too much attention and stories. A woman, with her charm and wisdom, rose to the pinnacle of power and controlled an empire for forty-eight years amidst the struggle between ambition and reason. Her love, her hatred, her desires, her helplessness, her methods, and everything about her left an undeniable impact on modern Chinese history and also prompted more reflection. Let us open our eyes to examine Empress Dowager Cixi through the lens of history and explore the people and events of that tragic period in the later years of the Qing Dynasty. Essentially, she was a woman who valued a refined lifestyle and enjoyed a rich, elegant life. What made Cixi choose power over tenderness in the face of authority and delicacy? What made Cixi choose indifference over family ties in the face of emotions and detachment? These are the lingering questions in the hearts of every person who seeks to understand Cixi. Empress Dowager Cixi embodied the contradictions of modern China—reform and conservatism, charm and authority, instinct and reason, wisdom and conspiracy, strength and weakness, prosperity and decline. She was a focal point of late Qing Chinese society, an invaluable historical specimen awaiting analysis, and the very person who contributed to the gradual decline and eventual downfall of the Great Qing Dynasty after the reign of Emperor Xianfeng. We know that among the empresses in Chinese history, Empress Dowager Cixi was the most infamous. She was the female figure in Chinese history who held state power for the longest time and caused the greatest disaster for the nation and its people. She was a symbol of ambition and conspiracy, an embodiment of autocracy and cruelty, and a prototype of extravagance and corruption.