Free Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang

a few hours later, with these men by his side. China was now in the hands of the Regents.
    These were the same men who had ordered the capture and abuse of Elgin’s messengers, which had resulted in some of them dying horribly – and had led to the burning of the Old Summer Palace. These were the same men who had helped Emperor Xianfeng make all his disastrous decisions, which ended with his own death. Cixi could see that with these men in charge, stumbling along the same self-destructive road, there would be no end to catastrophe, which promised to destroy her son as well as the empire. She made up her mind to act, by launching a coup and seizing power from the Regents.

4 The Coup that Changed China (1861)
    THOUGH HER SON succeeded to the throne, Cixi had no political power. In fact, as a concubine, she was not even the new emperor’s official mother. That was the role of Empress Zhen, who immediately assumed the title of dowager empress – huang-tai-hou (interchangeable with empress dowager). No title was given to Cixi. Nor was she with her son when he was conducted by a Regent to bid goodbye to his late father, acting out a ritual in which he held a gold cup containing liquor over his head, then emptied it on the ground, before placing the cup on a gold-cornered table in front of the bier. Cixi belonged to theunnamed ‘others’ in court records, who, ‘headed by the dowager empress’, namely Empress Zhen, performed a similar ritual.
    Cixi needed the title of a dowager empress. Only then would she acquire the status of the mother of the emperor. Without it she was a mere concubine. A clash with Empress Zhen seemed inevitable, and the two women had anemotional row for the first time in their relationship. But they soon found a solution. Court records were trawled and it was discovered that there had been a similar case. Almost exactly 200 years previously, when Emperor Kangxi succeeded to the throne in 1662, his mother had also been a concubine, but had been given the title of dowager empress, so there had been two dowager empresses simultaneously. With this precedent, the Board of Regents awarded Cixi the title. The friendship of the two women was unscathed, and they were referred to as the Two Dowager Empresses. In order to distinguish between them, they decided on different honorific names. Empress Zhen took ‘Ci’an’, which means ‘kindly and serene’, fn1 and Cixi, hitherto called Imperial Concubine Yi, took Cixi, meaning ‘kindly and joyous’. It was from now on that she became known as Empress Dowager Cixi.
    The two women did more than resolve a major problem, they went on to form a political alliance and launch a coup. Cixi was twenty-five years old and Empress Zhen a year younger. Facing them were eight powerful men in control of the state machine. The women were well aware of the risk they were taking. A coup was treason, and if it failed the punishment would be the most painful ling-chi , death by a thousand cuts. But they were willing to take the risk. Not only were they determined to save their son and the dynasty, but they also rejected the prescribed life of imperial widows – essentially living out their future years as virtual prisoners in the harem. Choosing to change their own destiny as well as that of the empire, thetwo women plotted, often with their heads together leaning over a large glazed earthenware water tank, pretending to be appraising their reflections or just talking girls’ talk.
    Cixi devised an ingenious plan. She had noticed a loophole in her late husband’s deathbed arrangements. The Qing emperors demonstrated their authority by writing in crimson ink. For nearly 200 years, beginning with Emperor Kangxi as a young adult, these crimson-inked instructions had always been written strictly by the hand of the emperor. Now, however, the monarch was a child and could not hold the brush. When the decrees were issued by the Board of Regents in the child’s name, there was