Empress Cixi's Summer Palace
Trip Start
Nov 29, 2008
1
12
16
Trip End
Jan 03, 2009
Beijing,
China
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Empress Cixi, known by some as the Dragon Lady, was the last empress of China.
Stories about her abound, though she remains cloaked in mystery. Some paint her as evil and power hungry, and blame her for the collapse of the Qing Dynasty at the turn of the 20th century. "One of the ancient sages of China foretold that China will be destroyed by a woman. This prophecy is approaching fulfillment," wrote London Times correspondent George Ernest Morrison, whose dispatches from China fascinated the British public..
Others have ben more empathetic, arguing the Qing Dynasty was already in decline due to western colonialism, and that her reputation was badly tarnished by her many political opponents who believed a woman should not wield so much power. "[Cixi] has shown herself to be benevolent and economical," wrote Charles Denby, an American envoy to China in 1898. "Her private character has been spotless."
Later it turned out that Morrison's reports were basely largely on false information fed to him by a con man who proclaimed to know the empress. Despite the revelations, somehow the "dragon lady" reputation stuck, and she has remained subject of fascination since her death in 1908.
Today I am at Empress Cixi's summer palace, to the west of Beijing. Rimmed by misty mountains and set among classical Chinese gardens, the Summer Palace is set like a jewel in the trees, part of the natural landscape that surrounds Kunming Lake. The empress spent much of her time here, where she bore the Emperor's only son and heir, and later dealt with matters of state and hosted visiting dignitaries.
No wonder she loved it; the lake is beautiful. Sunlight glows on its frozen surface. People walk out into the middle like tiny figures in a Chinese painting. In the distant hills, two pagodas appear in the mist like long-lost lovers. Near the shore, reeds poke through the ice.
In the north, the Summer Palace, home to Empress Cixi, stands out from the hillside. Leading there is a covered walkway where the empress must have walked, clothed in fine robes, ornaments in her hair. Now, mothers attend to their much-adored single children, bundled up in bright candy-coloured parkas. Families gather for an afternoon snack of noodles, biscuits and tea from the cafes. Dutiful daughters push their elderly parents in wheelchairs.
There are so many things to see, so many diversions. Souvenir shops sell Russian nesting dolls, glass bead bracelets, Cloissone boxes of intricate copper inlay, and hand painted paper umbrellas. At the Hall of Dispelling Clouds, where the empress stayed on her many visits from the Forbidden City, the entrance is flanked by statues of long-necked cranes and graceful deer with branches in their mouths, symbols of longevity.
Like other buildings here, the hall was ransacked by the English and the French armed forces in 1860, yet another victim of colonialism and a painful reminder to the Chinese of a time when they lost some of their most valuable treasures to the west. In part, it explains why Cixi was so staunchly anti-western and refused to allow modernization to take place It also explains why Communism later took hold, to regain a sense of order to the country and protect it from western influences.
The buildings have since been painstakingly restored, including the octagonal tower on the hill, the Tower of Buddhist Incense which houses a five-meter tall Guanyin bodhisattva, and the Hall of Finest Jade, where Cixi entertained on her birthdays. Fine vases and statuary, gifts from dukes, princes and cabinet ministers, line the windows.
Cixi has been accused of embezzling navy funds to rebuild the Summer Palace for her own ends. It was she who spent a fortune restoring the gardens and the many halls, buildings and corridors that western forces burnt to the ground.
The most contentious object is the boat Cixi is reported to have built at the navy's expense in 1893. Two-tiered, and made of marble with stained glass windows, it looks like a grand old Mississippi riverboat, built, despite her mistrust in things western, in the western style. The building of this boat, the guidebooks suggest, is believed to be her ultimate mistake, leading to the downfall of the Qing Dynasty.
The boat, however, was already in existence. It was Emperor Qianlong who had the boat made; she paid to restore it, with a few flourishes of her own. Her motives may have been selfish, maybe not. The annals of history are almost completely dominated by men, including speculation on the empress. History has vilified her, but the evidence of her life here speaks only of beauty.
What we do know is that this, the largest Imperial garden in the world, has been declared a world heritage site. What some may call the squandering of funds has helped to restore what was lost, and now thousands of tourists come here to enjoy it, dispelling the superstitious prophecies of China's downfall like so many clouds.
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TIP: Two fascinating reads on the life of Empress Cixi are the historical novels Empress Orchid and The Last Empress, by Chinese-American author Anchee Minn. Based on historical evidence and a woman's point of view, they provide an insider's glimpse into life in the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace, and what it must have been like to be a woman of power in what has been, traditionally, a man's world.
