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A key to this padlet, red means there is a quote, green is a outside source and yellow is just information. Just a warning, the Last Empress goes by many names, which I will use throughout this project. To make it less confusing I will list her names,  she is first known as Lady Yehenara, then when she becomes Empress she is called Tzu Hsi, not Tzu An. The Westerners interpret her name as Cixi, but I will use Tzu Hsi. There are more used in the book, but I will stick with those two. Also, it may look like everybody's name is spelled wrong, but I assure you, they are spelled correctly.

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Not much is known about the last Empress of China, most facts about her are fake and depict her as a monster, but that is not the case at all. She was just trying her best to survive in a world dominated by men. It all started the day she was born. "She was born on November 29, 1835, the same year as Robert Hart, somewhere in China, but where exactly we do not know"(Seagrave, 18).

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The reasons are unknown why Yehenara entered the Forbidden city becoming a concubine, but what is known is that she did enter and was not well educated, she learned everything after being chosen. "One of those chosen in 1851 was sixteen-year-old Yehenara. After a year of outside preparation, she entered the Forbidden City in 1852, to spend another year learning court protocol within its rose walls"(Seagrave, 32).

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Lady Yehenara's child was the only male heir to the throne and thus she was elevated in status. Even though the child was her, she was not the legal mother, the other mother was the empress. Yehenara did not get to raise her child at all, she was only the person who gave birth to him, yet she still felt very attached to her son and loved him deeply. "Her child was delivered on April 27, 1856, a boy, the first and so far only male heir"(Seagrave, 37).

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During this time there were many, many foreign enemies, the British, French, Russia, the U.S and lots more all looking to exploit China and makes tons of money. Due to this there are many wars between China and everybody else. The Chinese are very old fashioned and like traditions and customs that the westerners do not understand, because of that the westerners think they can do whatever they want, but they are insulting China and its thousands year history. One very important rule is that the Forbidden Palace is very sacred and the Emperor only sees a select few, but the westerners demanded to speak with the Emperor, ignoring all customs that the Chinese have. The foreigners started to close in on Peking, the Emperor, being a coward decided to flee to the Jehol, a different palace about a 10 day walk away.

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In 1860, a force made up of British and French soldiers came to Beijing. The Emperor fled and abandoned the palace, bringing along with him everything that they could carry. The foreign enemies pillaged and tore the summer palace about, then finally burning it so there was nothing left. The Summer Palace had some of the most beautiful and amazing artifacts, it had so much history and knowledge that is was irreplaceable. The westerners did not understand this either, burning it without thinking about how much was going to be lost.

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Empress Dowager Cixi.

Cixi stands out as infamous in Qing Dynasty history (ruling 1861-1908). Past the smoke and screens, she lived as a powerful ruler behind two of the last emperors, and had a hand in imperial court policy in the last several decades of the Qing Dynasty.

Opinion on This Mysterious Ruler is Divided

People say that she ruled behind the screens somehow, and people around her died mysteriously. A lot of mystery surrounds her life. What is true or false about the myths and legends about her is perhaps impossible to determine.

Her life was hidden behind the screens, and she never really came out. Many people in the early 20th century after she was dead painted her as a monster responsible for the fall of the empire.

But some modern historians portray her as maybe ruling better than others in the royal court, and as a woman caught between rival factions.

Early Life (1835-1861)

Cixi was born to a Manchu family on November 29, 1835 in Beijing, at a time when the Qing empire (1644-1912) still seemed to have a lot of strength.

When she was 16, she was sent to be a concubine. This means that she had sex with the emperor at his request. She was one of dozens or hundreds of concubines for Emperor Xianfeng early in the 19th century.

This was considered an honor for girls at that time. It meant she would live in the royal courts and have sex with the emperor along with maybe hundreds of other women. It also meant that her life was in Emperor Xianfeng's hands, and she might die at any time if he was displeased.

Cixi's Rise to Power

The Summer Palace, in which Dowager Cixi spent her whole life.

She quickly became one of the favorites of the Emperor. He had an Empress, his official "wife," but Cixi had a son by him.

In 1860, British and French troops attacked Beijing with a comparatively small force. Emperor Xianfeng fled with Cixi, and the army destroyed the Imperial Summer Palace.

It is said that when the Emperor Xianfeng heard of this, he fell into a depression, turned heavily to alcohol and drugs, and became seriously ill.

When he was dying in 1861, he named eight regents for his five year old son who was to be the emperor when he died. He also wanted Cixi (his son's mother) and his Empress to help his son. Being the boy emperor's mother gave her some real power in the court. She was about 26 years old then.

Reign (1861-1908)

Cixi was an honorific name meaning 'Kind Joy' given to her when Emperor Xianfeng died and she became the regent with her young son as emperor. It is said that at birth, she was called Yu Lan or 'Little Orchid', however her true name remains unconfirmed.

She had come to power in a world where poisonings and assassinations were common. It was either kill or be killed. Somehow, for some reason, the Empress made Cixi a co-Empress. So she gained even more power. What followed after this were various plots and assassinations. Somehow, she ruled the empire from behind the screens during the reigns of two emperors.

Her son reigned from 1861 to 1874. Then, her nephew was emperor from 1875 to 1898. So she was an Empress Dowager for 47 years.

An Era of Crises

When she started to reign in 1861, there was a major military crisis. The Taiping Rebellion seemed to be successful in holding a lot of important territory. They had an army of between one million to three million people at their height and some alliances with other rebel leaders.

After that, the empire went through one crisis after another. There were civil wars and foreign attacks, and the Qing Empire fell further behind the industrialized world. But it is said that she didn't much appreciate the need for modernization of industry.

In the late 1800s, there were a lot of economic troubles due to modernization and imports. A lot of people lost their traditional work because railroads replaced other means of transportation such as the ancient canal system. Modernized factories in the empire replaced some laborers, and many kinds of foreign imports such as imported clothes put local craftsmen and traditional factories out of business. So the poor died and faced starvation, and the population became poorer overall.

There were also several natural disasters in the late 1800s. The Yellow River flooded in 1898. Then, in 1900, there was a serious drought in most of North China.

Manchu Court Politics

The Manchu rulers were the hereditary rulers. The highest power in the royal court was under their control. The Manchu faction's general aim was to expel all the foreigners. Another faction of leaders thought there was a need for modernization.

Cixi was also a Manchu, but she went against the empire's tradition and appointed Zeng Guofan who wasn't a Manchu to a high military position to lead an army against the Taiping Rebellion. In 1864, Zeng Guofan beat the Taiping at Nanjing.

Education in the Empire

Cixi gave non-Manchu people control of the southern part of the empire. One good policy decision was that she moved to support some small programs for industrialization and education. Young people were sent to other countries to study, and an academy for foreign learning that was staffed with foreigners was set up in Beijing.

But compared to the need, these reforms were small. It is said that when Western-educated people tried to make reforms or criticized the court, she grew defensive and viewed the educated people as a threat to her power.

She probably didn't understand how to set up a modern school system. At the end of the empire, most of the modern education in the empire was provided by missionaries.

Cixi Imprisoned Emperor Guangxu (1875)

Her nephew became the Guangxu Emperor in 1875. In 1894, the Qing navy was destroyed by the Japanese navy in the Sino-Japanese War. This was shocking because the Japanese showed the superiority of their armaments and tactics, but they were traditionally thought to be a backward people.

Reformers wanted to follow the example of the Japanese for economic and political change. The Guangxu Emperor announced many policy reforms in 1898, but a ruling faction opposed the changes. Cixi then had the Emperor put under arrest and imprisoned on a tiny island linked to the Forbidden City in Beijing. He wasn't killed, but his power was ended. Cixi ruled in his place until they both died in 1908.

The Boxer Rebellion (1900)

The disasters and economic troubles increased the discontent of the people. Unemployed and poor people blamed their problems on the Qing Dynasty, foreigners and Christians. In 1900, the Boxer Rebellion started among the poor and unemployed. It was led by people who studied martial arts.

At first their goal was to overthrow the government, and kill Christians and foreigners. But Cixi supported the movement secretly, and then the Boxer leaders supported the Qing court. Then Cixi declared war on the Europeans, and Qing troops marched against the foreigners in Beijing. Foreign armies defeated the Qing troops and the Boxers.

Cixi's Reversal of Policy (1900-1908)

After this, the Empress Dowager made a remarkable reversal of policy. She started to invite foreigners to visit her in the Forbidden City, and she sent high officials to tour Japan and Europe to learn how to implement reform. She promoted a reformer named Yuan Shikai who became president after she died. In 1905, she abolished the Imperial Examination that was an important for selecting Confucian scholars to be officials in the Empire.

Cixi's Death (1908)

She died in 1908 one day after the Guangxu Emperor died, on November 15, 1908. Recently, tests on his remains showed that he had consumed a large amount of arsenic. People suspect that Cixi poisoned him, but no one knows for sure. On the day he died, a two year old boy named Puyi was named the new emperor. She died the next day. Some people suspect she was poisoned as well.

After she died, a man named Blackhouse who lived in Beijing wrote books about her life. His books and much false information that he gave to a newspaper correspondent colored the public's perception of Cixi for decades. Historians now believe that much of what he said about her was false.

Learn More About Cixi and Imperial Life in China

The Forbidden City, Summer Palace are the two best places to explore life of dowager Cixi, as she spent her whole life in these two places. Forbidden City and Summer Palace are two of the most famous attractions in Beijing. They are included in almost every tour itinerary to Beijing. See China our Beijing tours.

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Empress Dowager Cixi: Her Life, Reign, and Mystery

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Empress Dowager Cixi. Cixi stands out as infamous in Qing Dynasty history (ruling 1861-1908). Past the smoke and screens, she lived as a powerful ruler behind two of the last emperors, and had a hand in imperial court policy in the last several decades of the Qing Dynasty.

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After moving to Jehol, the Emperor's health declines drastically, after a long time in there, the court officials announced that the Emperor was dying. The Emperor was at his last day on this Earth, but he has yet to claim who would succeed him. Which is a big deal in Chinese customs, so Su Shun, who was aiming to be the next Emperor was hoping that he could rule China. Yehenara was scared for her child's life, knowing that if Su Shun was to rule, her son and herself would be killed. So, as the Emperor was lying there taking his final breaths, Yehenara bursts into the chambers holding her son and begging him to make his son the next Emperor. The Emperor, who hadn't spoken a word in days looked at his son and said, yes, he also said that his two mothers will watch over him as Co-Empresses.

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Because Su Shun wanted to rule China, he prevented the two Empresses from becoming Empresses, in doing so he got lots of backlash because that wasn't what the Emperor wanted. Su Shun gave in and appointed Empress Tzu An as Dowager, he got more backlash from that too. Su Shun had no choice but to also give Yehenara the same status. "The following morning, August 23, 1861, the court at Jehol was assembled and Su Shun announced without expression that Lady Yehenara, known as I Kuei Fei the Concubine of Feminine Virtue, was now elevated to the rank of empress dowager with the widowed Empress Niuhuru(Seagrave, 74)"

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1861, the emperor died in Jehol, but was to be buried in Peking, when the Emperor died there was a huge power struggle, because the next in line was not of age yet, the question was who was to rule next. On his deathbed he said that the two mother's of his son would be Co Empress Dowagers, but other's did not like that two women would be ruling. The entire party was to depart for Peking for the ceremony of the Emperor's death, which included many haters of Yehenara

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The most hateful of Yehenara was the Gang of Eight, with Su Shun as their leader. He was aiming for the throne and the fact that Yehenara didn't let that happen made him very upset. Luckily for Yehenara, Prince Kung, the Emperor's half-brother didn't like Su Shun and didn't want him in the court anymore. Prince Kung devised a plan to get rid of him. When the party got back to Peking Prince Kung arrested the Gang of Eight on the spot. "They took the Gang of Eight by surprise at the town of Panpitien below the Great Wall. Prince Chun, who was traveling with the funeral cortege, then revealed his part in the plot and was given the honor of personally arresting Su Shun(Seagrave, 79)"

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As China wad dealing with all of these foreign problems they also had to deal with all the problems within. Including, rebels that disrupted the civilians lives. After the Emperor's death and such matters, the next big thing to deal with was the rebels. Never before in the Manchu history of ruling was a Chinese appointed any high position, but that changed when Prince Kung appointed Tseng to be the general and stop the rebels. "But in 1862, at Prince Kung's urging, the two dowagers put the fate of the dynasty in the hand of Tseng Kuo-fan, the man who later judged them both to be unexceptional, and left the resolution of the Taiping Rebellion to him(Seagrave, 104) The rebels were finally defeated on July 19, 1864.

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Yehenara's son was very rebellious and troublesome for everybody. At a young age he found out that nobody could oppose him because he was the son of heaven. As he got older he became even more of a problem, he would sneak out and he wouldn't do any of his work. Everybody feared when he would take the throne, the Empress's delayed it for as long as they could, he took the throne at age 17. He still snuck out, so the court wanted him to get married, this way he wouldn't want to sneak out. After getting married he still did, he neglected all of his duties as Emperor and things were looking bad. Due to sneaking out all the time he contracted a disease, they are unsure what is was, but he become very ill. He died at the young age of nineteen, it should have been very sad, yet everybody blew a sigh of relief knowing he wouldn't be Emperor anymore. "The following day, January 12, Tung Chih died. He was only nineteen years old(Seagrave, 134)"

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Li Hongzhang, to get her support in railways for the country, he decided to give the Empress her own railway. 1886 was when the construction of the first railway in China began. It was finally finished in 1888, resulting in a 1,510 meter long track. It started near her residence at the time and ended near her dining hall.

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Laramie Mok
Laramie is a bilingual editor and journalist on the South China Morning Post's Specialist Publications desk. She is particularly interested in arts and culture, and Hong Kong history. Her writing covers a range of topics, including fashion and beauty, lifestyle, design and social journalism. Before joining the SCMP, she was a reporter at various local magazines and newspapers. Writing inspiring features with an interesting angle is where her enthusiasm lies.

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The woman who 'ruled' China: what you didn't know about Empress Dowager Cixi

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Laramie Mok Laramie is a bilingual editor and journalist on the South China Morning Post's Specialist Publications desk. She is particularly interested in arts and culture, and Hong Kong history. Her writing covers a range of topics, including fashion and beauty, lifestyle, design and social journalism.

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Empress Tzu Hsi finally thought she would be done from the political part of China, even though she never really had any say in ruling China. She wanted to live out the rest of her life peacefully in the Summer Palace, which was rebuilt buy her own son so he would have a place to run off to. Tzu Hsi was 54 when she gratefully retired. She even gave rewards to a great many of people to mark her retirement.  Sadly, the worst war ever to happen since 1860 broke out between China and Japan, the Chinese court needed her. She was propelled back into the role of regent in 1894, for only a short time though.

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The return of Cixi, China's Empress Dowager

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During this time Empress Tzu Hsi was semiretired, she was still staying at the Summer Palace, which was still not fully rebuilt. Most of the money that was earned was thought to be used by her to rebuild the palace, but it was actually princes trying to get on her good side that spent lots of money to give her gifts and rebuild parts of of it. The Emperor, after another defeat fell into depression again so he stayed with his aunt at the summer palace, there were many problems that needed to be resolved, so the semiretired Empress was put back on duty officially.

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Beijing Dispatch

The Hall of Dispelling Clouds at Empress Cixi's Summer Palace in Beijing. It was renovated in 1895 for her 60th birthday extravaganza. Credit... Giulia Marchi for The New York Times

BEIJING - She entered the world of an ancient empire as a teenage concubine, chosen by the emperor to share his bed for her good looks, immaculate comportment and, above all, her ability to sing.

The male-dominated court was a swirl of intrigue, forced suicides and poisonings. Eunuchs assigned to the emperor prepared her for sex with the ruler, undressing her and carrying her to his bed. After the Emperor Xianfeng's death, she governed in the name of young male heirs - from behind a screen.

Perhaps as an escape from these oppressive restrictions, Empress Dowager Cixi (pronounced TSIH-shee), the de facto ruler of China in the final decades of the imperial dynasty, rebuilt a fantastic wonderland, the Summer Palace. It's an extended estate of glittery lakes, luxurious gardens and elaborate wooden pavilions on the edge of the nation's capital, attracting up to 100,000 visitors a day.

Most of them are curious Chinese from across the country who read in their Communist Party-authorized school books that Cixi was a harridan who stole the nation's wealth and was responsible for China's humiliating defeat by the Japanese in 1895.

But was she? Cixi, a peer of Queen Victoria's and apparently iron-willed, has invited revisionist interpretations that view her as a feminist, at least in the context of the late 19th century, when women in China were treated little better than spittoons.

Strong women in China are often portrayed as power-hungry, and sometimes irrational, and are notably absent from the highest ranks of government. There is no Hillary Clinton figure in contemporary China (the real Mrs. Clinton is vilified by the government for talking about human rights in the country), or an Angela Merkel, who has stood up to China on trade.

When Bo Xilai, a rival to the current ruler, Xi Jinping, was put on trial for corruption, he described his wife as "insane" in an effort to lessen his sentence.

So harking back to the pre-communist era for a feminist trailblazer makes sense. And to search for feminist ideals in a woman who ruled for nearly 50 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908, is understandable.

But the case of Cixi - who was isolated, undereducated and never made a break for personal freedom - is a hard argument to make.

A Chinese historian, Jung Chang, began the re-evaluation of Cixi with her biography, " Empress Dowager Cixi." Ms. Chang, who lives in exile, argues the empress brought medieval China into the modern age, calling her an "amazing stateswoman."

But Ms. Chang's damn-the-man portrait of Cixi is a tad too generous even for some sympathizers. How could the empress dowager have ushered in groundbreaking innovation when much of her career was devoted to her drive to preserve the imperial family that crumbled three years after her death?

And Cixi did undermine a bold reform program begun by her adopted son, Emperor Guangxu, who favored a constitutional monarchy, not an absolute one. She then supported the Boxer rebellion, an anti-foreign, anti-Christian uprising that cost China dearly, a move she later blamed on her bossy male advisers.

A Chinese scholar, Zhang Hongjie, recently took up the cause of the empress in a sympathetic essay, "Woman Cixi," featured in an anthology about Chinese women and men who have struggled against the odds.

He argued that she was held back by her lack of education, a given at the time because she was a woman, and that she should be given credit for trying to make amends for her mistakes at the end of her rule. But Mr. Zhang said his positive portrait made little impact.

"Cixi is still a negative character," he said.

Her endeavors to preserve the imperial family above all else make for comparisons with Michael Corleone, the fictional Mafia boss.

"She had one of the most ruthless, savvy political minds, she was like a gangster," said Jeremiah Jenne, a historian who leads visitors on walking tours around the Summer Palace, where he points out 500-year-old juniper and cypress trees, and paint-faded pavilions like the Hall of Dispelling Clouds, which was renovated in 1895 for her 60th birthday extravaganza.

Cixi had the Summer Palace rebuilt after an invading European army looted and burned the original, which, with its jewel-encrusted furniture and over-the-top silks, was said to be on par with Versailles.

Her reconstruction was not quite as opulent, but it was a sumptuous personal pleasure ground, intended to signify the strength of the family and its immense retinue of courtiers.

Despite the scholarly ruminations about Cixi, many Chinese tourists seem more interested in her extravagant lifestyle and come to see what is left of the loot, much faded because of neglect by the Communist Party's cultural administrators.

A favorite is the "marble boat," officially known as the Boat of Purity and Ease, a two-story wooden pavilion with wide verandas built into the side of the lakeshore and painted to resemble pale marble.

The official school curriculum says Cixi stole funds from the imperial navy to renovate the boat just two years before the outbreak of war with the Japanese. Because of her thievery, the textbooks say, China lost the naval battles against Japan in 1894.

Crowds, shoulder-to-shoulder on a recent spring day, pressed against the lakeside rail, taking selfies framed by the newly green willow trees that dipped into the water.

"She had an expensive lifestyle, and China had one disaster after another," said a middle-aged primary-school teacher, who identified herself as Ms. Ye. She said she had no sympathy for Cixi.

"When you are backward as China was then, people will take advantage of you," she said.

In the gift shops, there are no images of Cixi, just a few pieces of pink silk emblazoned with her calligraphy, sold as wall hangings. Commemorative coins with the portrait of Mao Zedong, cheap bangles, tea sets and hand fans do a brisker trade.

"No one likes her," one of the young saleswomen said. "In history she is bad. Who would buy souvenirs of Cixi?"

Young Chinese tourists showed more sympathy.

"As a woman, she couldn't make decisions in politics like the men," said Xiao Yangchuan, 18, a first-year university student. "I think we should see her as a real person. She has her own flaws, and we should understand her era," she said.

In the last decade of her life, the empress dowager tried to polish her image by making herself more accessible, especially to Western diplomats. But in the end, she could barely overcome the impression that, like many royals in the West, she was most interested in her dogs, gardening and fancy clothing, wrote Sterling Seagrave in his empathetic biography, " Dragon Lady."

Pictures of her are banished to a pavilion near the exit of the palace grounds, where a large sepia photo shows her, surrounded by ladies in waiting, dressed in an embroidered gown with pearls said to be the size of canary eggs, and long, talon-like fingernails.

The day before she died, the young emperor, Guangxu, was found dead - of natural causes, imperial records show. In 2008, Chinese medical investigators found extraordinarily high levels of arsenic in his remains, leading to a popular conclusion that the empress had killed him to try to stop him from introducing political reforms after her own death.

Did she do it? "I am going with Cixi," said Mr. Jenne, the historian.

In her final years, she was known as the "old Buddha," a term that friendly biographers say was a term of endearment. Others see it as an appropriately scornful term for a woman who was barely literate, left little for other women to emulate and led the bankrupt Qing dynasty to its downfall in a country whose government remains as male-dominated as ever.

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Was This Powerful Chinese Empress a Feminist Trailblazer?

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Beijing Dispatch BEIJING - She entered the world of an ancient empire as a teenage concubine, chosen by the emperor to share his bed for her good looks, immaculate comportment and, above all, her ability to sing. The male-dominated court was a swirl of intrigue, forced suicides and poisonings.

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The Boxer Uprising is easily the most misunderstood Asian event. It started in China, but it ended with the foreigners who claimed that it wasn't their fault. The Ironhats, which was the most influential group in the Chinese court was humiliated with the defeat from Japan, and all other past defeats. They wanted to fix what was wrong with China, they looked at someone to blame, so they pointed it the foreigners, they wanted to purge China of all outsiders. Because of their influence, the plan they were plotted for years started to take action. Missionaries were viewed as spies and evil beings, from 1891 to 1895 there were many riots to get rid of them. After more conflicts with the foreigners, the more the Chinese started to dislike them. People stared to build militia to get rid of the foreigners, then to get more people trained in martial arts there was a method called boxing. They tricked people into believing they were invincible, the numbers started to grow. They were called spirit boxers, they made their first move in 1896. "Here was instant Wushu, that anyone could perform with minimum effort. Boxing was less important than spirit possession, for it was this collective assumption of invulnerability that made the Boxers feel irresistible(Seagrave, 297)"

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Despite all of the squabbles with the boxers, they only ever attacked other Chinese who converted, the entire death toll of foreigners was up to 8, which isn't a very big number compared to the hundreds of boxers dead from the foreigners shooting them. The boxers only carried swords, while everybody else had guns. The court was split in half, because half of them liked foreigners, while the others hated them, the Emperor and Empress were caught in the middle. Well, except they were being held hostage in their own palace, one of the princes had gained control of the entire inner palace guard and had a lot of power. He started to threaten the Empress to go to war, which she never wanted, but she was frightened beyond compare. She couldn't stop him. The only real battle that happened was for Fort Taku, which was taken very easily. As the war was pretty much over, and the Chinese lost, the foreigners wanted to go back, but couldn't due to the boxers all around, they thought they were under siege, but the Empress had forbade any person from attacking a foreigner. It was only the foreigners who attacked the Chinese. After that, most of the boxers were drafted into the imperial military or sent far away. "No direct assault on the foreign community had yet taken place. In Peking only Chinese had been attacked by Boxers. No Boxer or imperial soldier had yet fired a single shot into the legations. Nobody in the legations had been killed or wounded. All the shooting was going in the opposite direction: foreigners were shooting the Chinese(Seagrave, 322)

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During the teaching of Kuang Hsu, the soon to be Emperor, Empress Tzu An died of a viral flu. Many people believed that Tzu Hsi was the one to kill her, but that is not true, she died of natural causes. Because of her death this made Tzu Hsi the only Dowager Empress and the only ruling regent. Tzu An was of higher status than Tzu Hsi, so she never really had any say in any matter, including her own son, but that all would change. The soon to be Emperor was not of age yet, so she to the outside world, looked like she was the sole ruler of china for that period of time. When Kuang Hsu came of age, she retired from the regency.

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China needed an Emperor to function, so they choose Tzu Hsi's sister's son. He was abused as a child and was only 3 years old when he entered the palace. To not have a repeat of what happened with Tung Chih, the scholars and teachers disciplined him like his mother did, so growing up, even in the palace he was abused. He was a frail boy, but he was very smart. He was also taught Western concepts, which has never been taught before. "There was a positive side to his years of suffering. For the first time the education of an emperor of China was broadened to include more than just the Confucian classics(Seagrave, 166)"

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During these last few years, the Emperor Kuang Hsu and Empress Tzu Hsi's health have both been declining. Kuang Hsu died on November 14, the day before the Empress died. Because the Emperor died the Empress's grieve and stress of the successor added to her rapid decline. She promised one of the prince's son that she would make him emperor, so she did. Many people viewed the Emperor and her relationship as a bad one, but she truly loved him, she thought of him as her son, even though he was her nephew. The Emperor also viewed her as his mother, they ruled China together for a long time.

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The day the the Empress died was on November 15, 1908, at age 72. She died after ruling China for nearly 50 years, she was the last Empress of China, because China become a republic 3 years after her death. Lady Yehenara outlived the life span of three emperor's and ruled along each one of them. Most historians depict her as a monster, a person who inflicted great harm on others, a person who clawed her way up and killed anyone who got in her way. People believed these lies for a very long time, and still believe them to this day, but the truth is much different. Yehenara was a girl who just wanted to be loved, but her husband left her. A girl who wanted her child's affection, but wasn't allowed to raise him and watched him grow into a terrible person. A girl who wanted to enjoy retirement, but couldn't because the court wanted to manipulate her and get her back. A girl who was forced to hold China together, but couldn't due to her lack of knowledge about the outside world and the skewed information she was getting. A girl who wasn't allowed to do anything in the court, but all the blame and hate was forced on. The true life and story of the Last Empress of China has few ups and many downs and the truth about her needs to be known.

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Three centuries after Elizabeth I, at the other side of the globe, another formidable woman breathed her last. The Dowager Empress of China, Tzu-hsi (or Cixi), had started life in a minor Manchu family in 1835. Pretty and charming, at 17 she was recruited to the harem of the Son of Heaven, the Hsien-feng (or Xanfeng) emperor, to whom the court eunuchs presented her naked within a red robe whenever he wanted her for the night. She was the only one of his wives and concubines to give him a son, the future Tung-chih (or Tongzhi) emperor, and when the little boy succeeded his father at the age of six in 1861, she as co-regent made herself the effective ruler of the country.

Shrewd, determined and ruthless, Tzu-hsi had no intention of relinquishing power and when her son came of age at 17 she kept him busily occupied with women and opium. He succumbed to venereal disease in 1875 and his favourite concubine, who was pregnant with a possible heir, died in mysterious circumstances. His mother contrived to get him succeeded, contrary to the rules but with the support of the army, by her three-year-old nephew as the Kuang-hsu (or Guangxu) emperor and continued to run the empire. In 1889, in her mid-fifties, she apparently relinquished her grip on the country to retire to the gorgeous summer palace she had built for herself outside Beijing. In 1898, however, the young emperor announced a programme of modernizing reforms, which conservative mandarins opposed, and with their support and the backing of the army, Tzu-hsi took control again. In 1900 came the Boxer Rebellion and Western armies besieged and took the capital. Tzu-Hsi was combing her hair in the palace when a bullet came through the window and rattled on the floor. Disguised as a peasant woman, she fled, taking Kuang-hsu with her, and China was forced to accept humiliating peace terms. She continued in power until in 1908 she suffered a severe stroke. She apparently took care to have Kuang-hsu poisoned and his death was announced the day before her own.

After lunch and a substantial helping of her favourite crab-apples with clotted cream, the Dowager Empress fainted and was carried to her apartments, dressed in her Robes of Longevity. Marina Warner in her biography The Dragon Empress reports her on her deathbed, looking back over the last 50 years and saying that she had never enjoyed a moment's respite from anxiety. She died in the afternoon, shortly before her 73rd birthday, after ruling China for close to 50 years. Her forceful personality had kept the imperial system in existence. It was overthrown three years after her death, in 1911, and China became a republic.

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Three centuries after Elizabeth I, at the other side of the globe, another formidable woman breathed her last. The Dowager Empress of China, Tzu-hsi (or Cixi), had started life in a minor Manchu family in 1835.