Picture the Scene: It is the year 1850. China’s young Xianfeng
Emperor (age 20) needs a bride. Sixty young women are brought to Beijing’s
Forbidden City as potential candidates. Among them, the well-educated and
ambitious 15-year-old Lady Yehenara. These 60 candidates are carefully
examined. The Emperor’s mother will choose one to be his bride, and the rest
will be his concubines. (Mother knows best, after all.) Much to Yehenara’s
disappointment, she is not chosen as Empress, and is relegated to the status of
low-class concubine. Having been passed over as Empress, Yehenara knew that her
only hope of raising her status in the imperial harem was to give birth to the
Emperor’s son. Not satisfied to languish and wait for the emperor to summon her
to his bed, Yehenara takes matters into her own hands.
What. A. Babe.
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| Official Portrait of the Xiangfeng Emperor. Who couldn't love that face? |
This is the
story of how a concubine became the behind-the-scenes ruler of China for almost
half a century, and possibly the last true imperial power in China. Unlike some
of the other women who have appeared (or will appear) in this blog, Cixi (pronounce "sue-she", as Yehenara is later known) does appear
in the history books – it would be absurd if she didn’t, considering she was
the de facto ruler of China during some of the most pivotal moments of the 19th
century – but the books tend to leave out the best parts of her biography, and
focus on her as the Machiavellian Dragon Lady who refused to reform China at
its peril, leading to its ultimate collapse. To my mind, the story is a bit more
complicated than that. Cixi was fiercely conservative and her unwillingness
to allow reform may not have been stubbornness or stupidity, as is usually
depicted. She knew she needed to protect China from Western incursion and she
tried to do so in the best way she knew how. She worried that reform would only
deepen the European toehold on China. Let’s examine this, shall we?
Yehenara,
as a concubine, had limited access to the Xianfeng Emperor. During her first
two years in the Forbidden City, she only saw him once: on his wedding day.
There was no way for Yehenara to catch his eye or impress him. Daily life in
the palace was run by an army of eunuchs, who had greater access to the emperor
than nearly anyone else. Yehenara’s luck began to change when she enlisted the
aid of her equally ambitious eunuch servant to catch the Emperor’s eye.
How? Easy. Her servant helped her
curry favor with the Chief Eunuch, by presenting him with the “engagement gift”
that Yehenara had received from the “emperor” upon her arrival to the Forbidden
City. One of the Chief Eunuch’s daily duties was to present the Emperor with a
“menu” of his concubines so that the Son of Heaven could make his evening
selection. After Yehenara and her servant greased the wheels of the machine,
the Chief Eunuch started to talk up Yehenara’s beauty to the Emperor until the
Emperor finally summoned her.
In theory, concubines were not supposed to
get pregnant, BUT Yehenara sufficiently impressed the emperor in one night to
become his exclusive lover for three months. (Dayum!) Some historians speculate
that since the eunuchs were always on hand during the Emperor’s nightly romps,
they may have given Yehenara special instruction on the Emperor’s preferences
in order to give her an edge.
As often
happens during these sorts of situations, Yehenara became pregnant, and gave
birth to the Emperor’s first son in 1856 – drawing the ire of the childless
Empress and the other women at court. (The Xianfeng Emperor had a lot of sex,
but not many children to show for it.) Yehenara got her wish, and became the
most powerful woman at court, second only to the Empress, but it came with some
costs: such as the fact that she was not allowed to raise her own son, and was
once more cloistered in the harem.
But this
did not keep Yehenara down for long!
Outside of
the harem, the sickly Xianfeng Emperor was dealing with a fraught international
situation. To make a long story short (and given how much I love diplomatic
history, I could make this a very loooong story), the Chinese and British
governments were acting like toddlers. That is to say, China did not want to
share its toys (wealth) and so the British tried to distract China with a
“better toy” (Opium). China broke Britain’s toy (Opium), so Britain hit China,
hard (with gunboats), and made China promise to share its toys.
Historical
theories abound about why Anglo-Chinese relations broke down in such a bad way,
but I think the most logical and compelling argument is that the two
governments simply did not understand each other and could not see the
situation from each other’s point of view. From the British perspective, their
sovereign was every bit as great as China’s and the British government deserved
to be treated as equals, rather than inferiors, and China’s refusal to allow
for a British embassy was arrogance and foolishness. From China’s perspective,
they were the greatest Empire on the planet and had been for pretty much ALL OF
HUMAN HISTORY and they conducted their international business by acquiring
tribute kingdoms, not embassies and ambassadors. The European style of
international relations was completely unheard of in China. Besides, Britain
didn’t have any trade goods that the Chinese wanted, so why should China
increase trade with them?
The poor,
tired Xianfeng Emperor had to deal with increasing demands from Europeans to
increase access to trade in China, a large rebellion (Taiping Rebellion) in
Southern China, and continuing problems with Opium addiction (courtesy of
Britain) throughout the country. As he grew sicker, and his problems more
complicated, he relied more and more heavily on his educated consort, Yehenara,
for advice, even requesting her to stay by his side when important court
visitors came to call – a very large gesture in a government where women were
typically neither seen nor heard.
In 1861,
eleven years after Yehenara had first come to the Forbidden City, she and her
six-year-old son were summoned to the side of the dying Xianfeng Emperor. The
Emperor named his son as his successor, giving him the name Tong Zu Emperor:
ruling together. He named Yehenara as the boy Emperor’s regent.
From this
point forward known as Empress Dowager Cixi, our heroine inherits a China
still very much in crisis.
Sources:
I will post a more detailed list of sources after my second post on Cixi, but most of my information comes from Episode 2 of the Smithsonian special on the Forbidden City. It's on Netflix!
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