Review
In
Empress Orchid,
the first of Anchee
Min's two novels about Empress Tzu Hsi the reader
meets the young girl, later to be known as Orchid,
and her impoverished mother, on their way to Beijing
to bury Orchid's recently deceased father. Once in
Beijing, Orchid learns that the young Emperor Hsien
Feng is looking for brides who, to preserve the
purity of the Imperial line, must be Manchurian,
which she is. She is chosen and exchanges a life of
poverty for the restricted life of a third-grade
concubine in the Forbidden City.
Through wily maneuvering she seduces the Emperor and
bares him his first son, who is five years old when
declared Emperor on the death of his father. To
ensure that both she and her son stay alive,...
Beyond the Book
Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi
(spelled Cixi in Pinyin;
pronouced Tsoo Shee) had a bad
reputation while she lived and
after she died. However, in
recent decades the tide of
historical opinion has been
shifting. Much of the West's
view of Cixi comes from the
writings of
Edmund Backhouse (1873-1944)
who claimed to have had close
contact with the Empress over
many years and portrayed her as
a ruthless, extravagant,
psychopathic nymphomaniac.
However, in 1974 Backhouse was
revealed to be an unmitigated
fraud. Unfortunately, by that...
