Empress Dowager Cixi, the 100 Days of Reform and the Boxer Rebellion

The Death of the Empress Dowager and the End of the Qing Dynasty

This is a transcript of the third part of the discussion about Empress Dowager Cixi.

I am joined again by Lauren Schill of Well Behaved Women.

She is here for episode three of our discussion about the Empress Dowager Cixi.

At the end of last episode, we had talked about the Sino Japanese war, the really horrific peace treaty forced on China by Japan, and now Cixi was coming back into the picture. The Emperor Guangxu is still alive, but now his papa dearest, his adopted mother, the Empress Dowager, is coming back into the scene.

Do you want to tell us more about that, Lauren?

Lauren: Sure. Let's talk for a moment about the morale of the country. At the time, Guangxu Emperor had just survived this war, and mommy dearest had had to come in and do a lot of finagling to help peacefully end all of this. And it wasn't without great cost.

He started to think that maybe the country should be more reform minded. And he made this huge, sweeping declaration that was aimed to change laws, politics, and society itself. It was called the 100 Days Reform, and he made it without the advisement of his ministry.

Cixi stepped in and killed it before it even got started.

Paul: So that's one version of history.

Lauren: And we've had a few.

Paul: What you're saying has been the traditional view, which was that the Emperor was trying to bring in these reforms and that the Empress Dowager was this great conservative.

But I think if we consider what we've already discussed in the first two episodes, she was usually the modernizer, she was usually the Westernizer, and in the build up to the Sino Japanese war, it was the Guangxu Emperor who was surrounding himself with conservatives who were resisting forward movement.

So, I think it's worth looking at a little bit more about how these reforms happened, why they happened then, and what was really going on.

Here's the diary of Grand Tutor Weng on June 11, 1898. This was the start of the hundred days of reform. And this is the Emperor's Grand Tutor, who's a conservative allied more with the Emperor than with the Empress Dowager. And he wrote in his diary: “Today, his Majesty relays a decree from the Empress Dowager. What Censor Yang Shenxui and Learning Companion Shu Zhijing said in the past few days is absolutely right. The fundamental policy of our state has not been made clear to all. From now on we should comprehensively adopt western ways make an unequivocal and unambiguous public announcement etc. The Empress Dowager is utterly determined. I ventured my view to His Majesty that of course Western ways should be adopted but it is more important not to abandon our own sage’s teachings in ethics and philosophy. Then I withdrew and drafted the imperial edict.

Grant Tutor Weng here at the time in his diary is giving the Empress Dowager credit for these reforms. But also who are these Censor Yang and Learning Companions Shu that are mentioned here?

There's a bit of backstory. One of the people that's well known to history is Kang Youwei.  Kang was considered the reformer. And what's been shown is that he was ghost writing edicts and texts for Censor Yang and Learning Companion Shu and paying them to present them to the court as if his own and that Kang had been introduced to the court by Sir Yinhuan who was that person on the payroll of Japan.

There's actually a lot going on behind the scenes here. Japan is paying Sir Yinhuan. Sir Yinhuan is presenting Kang to the court. Kang doesn't have any family money or money of his own, but yet somehow he's paying people in court to present Kang's writing as his own.

And Cixi actually liked these reports, these ideas for reform, and she was endorsing them to the emperor. This is how these reforms started and what are some of these reforms?

There were reforms meant to update the imperial examinations to get rid of the most arcane subjects and to start bringing in more modern and western content, things like natural and social sciences into the state examinations.

There was going to be legal reforms western style primary and secondary schools as well as universities were to be established.

Peking University was founded in this way. The majesties were to take the train to Tianjin in the fall to inspect the army that was symbolic of showing both the importance of the railroad and the army.

Patent regulations were being written for the first time to reward inventions in China. So, there were a lot of reforms that were good on their face and Cixi liked them, was promoting them in court and had even made sure that Kang was being offered a position in the foreign office.

But Kang was insulted by this he wanted to be the right-hand man to the emperor. He wanted to be Cixi, wanted to be the puppet master in court and he had a very high opinion of himself. He was from a fairly low family he was from Guangdong province in the south.

He wrote an autobiographical manuscript entitled The History of Me and he declared that he showed signs of greatness by age five. At age 20 he saw the heaven and the earth and everything else become one with me. “I knew I was the sage and I smiled joyfully.”

He seems to have believed himself to be the reincarnation of the sage, perhaps Confucius.

Lauren: Check out the ego on that guy.

Paul: Yeah.

Lauren: So how did he go from this no one to such a position of power?

Paul:  I think that's a good question. He definitely was facilitated by Sir Yinhuan, who was on the payroll of the Japanese. Let's take a step back.

Japan was promoting modernization in Japan. It was promoting modernization in Korea, which it controlled and I think Japan wanted to have China modernized, but in a way where Japan would have influencing and control.

And there were people in China that were actually open to Japan, because here was an Asian country that had made a lot of progress in a few decades and had just beat them in a war.

There was some genuine respect among Chinese for the Japanese. But certainly if we fast forward to what happens with Japan in the 20th century, with China, Japan was not benevolent towards China when it wanted to influence and control China. It was doing it for its own purposes, and it was already and it would end up being brutal in China.

It was looking out for number one.

Lauren: As one does.

Paul: There's something else that was happening here. Kang not only had a high opinion of himself, but he was able to get text directly to the emperor through some of the people who were being paid by Japan or people that he was paying.

And in particular, he really flattered the emperor. I'll give you an example. He called the Guangxu Emperor the wisest ever in history, and that any problems he experienced were because of old officials. All the emperor needed to do was rectify that with the right people, and he would achieve greatness.

In Confucian China, the emperor is not supposed to hear such florid praise. He's supposed to embrace criticism and steer clear of flatterers.

But let's think about who this Guangxu emperor was and what his life was like. He was the emperor, but he was second fiddle to Cixi, to this older woman. He had lost the war with Japan. China was being humiliated. In many ways, he was being humiliated.

So now, to hear that he has greatness in him, he really wants to believe that.

The emperor at this point takes all of Kang's petitions, has them collected into booklets for his study, and he calls them the Petitions of the Hero. He reads them at night. And Kang takes advantage of this. He's getting intel on the emperor's mental health from Sir Yinhuan, the guy who is paid by Japan.

Lauren: Yeah.

Paul: Who tells him that the emperor has a sore spot about Russia, and Kang sends him a document that's about Poland. Kang writes the story of Poland as this parable for China. It had a great king, a wise king, a young king, and then Russia came and devoured the country, and now Poland is no more. And this was meant to suggest that Russia was going to do that to China.

Lauren: And this guy desperately did not want that to happen.

Paul: Now, the emperor doesn't sleep very much at night and says he wants 2000 taels of silver sent to Kang.

The main proposal that Kang was making that was controversial in the court was for an advisory board. An advisory board would be like a cabinet. And such a thing didn't exist in the Qing dynasty. The emperor was in charge.

Now, there was this idea of an advisory board and it was discussed for months in the court. And there was some merit in it. But at the end, the Grand Council and Cixi didn't endorse it because the question was who would be on this council? How would they be decided?

One recommendation was that they would be elected and that they would be subject to public scrutiny. But they felt that China wasn't quite ready for that at this point. That there really wasn't any precedent for such steps. But what Kang wanted was he wanted his and his gang to be those ten people to advise, to influence the emperor.

Kang has often been regarded by history favorably because Kang wrote things for newspapers and Japanese funded newspapers in the concessions published his work and then other foreign newspapers in the foreign concessions republished that Kang's version of all of this came out.

And he was always anti Cixi because she was the threat. She was the one who was controlling the emperor and he wanted to be the one to control the emperor.

Many people have looked favorably on him and thought that he was this great reformer and perhaps a democrat. But in his writings, Kang made clear that he didn't believe China was ready for democracy. This is an exact quote, though I guess it's translated. “The Chinese people are like toddlers and infants. May I ask how the family of a dozen babies can function if the parents don't have the exclusive right to make decisions, but instead let all the toddlers and infants make their own decisions? I can tell you that in China, only the emperor must rule.”

Lauren: Okay.

Paul: He told his band of supporters that Confucius had actually been king of China replacing the emperor of the time, which was not true. When that got around to the emperor, then he said, “no, no, I was misunderstood. I didn't mean that Confucius was ever king.”

He strikes me as a manipulator.

Now, the real reason that the 100 Days reform ended is because Kang and his group were orchestrating a plot to assassinate Cixi.

Lauren: Really?

Paul: Yes.

Lauren: Okay.

Paul: And I've got details.

Kang asked Clerk Wang Zhao to get involved. Clerk Wang refused and said it was a pipe dream.

The military was controlled by Cixi. She had put Ronglu, also known as Junglu, in charge. General Yuan Shikai reported to Ronglu, General Yuan would be president of China in 14 years. He's certainly a historic figure.

General Yuan noticed the appointments that the emperor was making and befriended them. And on September 18, 1898, Kang supporter Tan Sitong visited General Yuan and explained that bloodshed would be necessary for reform. Quote, “there's been no reform without bloodshed since ancient times.” “We must kill all those deadbeats”. He said, the emperor wanted General Yuan to kill Ronglu, his commander in Tianjin, and for General Yuan to take his troops to Beijing and to surround the Summer Palace and capture the empress dowager. Tan said his job would be to slay the rotten old woman, so, the general wouldn't have to kill her. He just needed to have his troops surround them.

Yuan thought Tan looked semi deranged, was noncommittal, and said such a big thing would take some time to arrange.

Lauren: Yeah, let me get my guys together. You just hang out here and let me get my guys. Give me a minute.

Paul: So, Kang had a plan for this. He ghostwrote a proposal from Censor Shenxui claiming that there was buried gold and silver in the old Summer Palace and that troops were needed to dig for it because the state needs money, and there's this gold and silver under the earth. If only there could be these soldiers that would come and dig it out, then the emperor would have the money he needs.

Lauren: It was literally the buried treasure ruse.

Paul: Yes.

Lauren: Oh, my God.

Paul: And the plan was for that report to come to the emperor just before Yuan's next visit, so that the emperor would see this and go, oh, great idea. Oh, General, you're here. Why don't you do that? Bring your troops in, dig for the gold.

Now, Yuan was no dummy. He ended up being President of China after the Qing Dynasty. He realizes he's caught in a difficult place.

Now, there's one other factor here. The emperor himself told General Yuan, don't report to Ronglu anymore. You report to me directly. You work for me. This was the emperor telling them that.

Now General Yuan is in a tough spot. He's caught between the emperor and this gang and the Empress Dowager Cixi, and he decides not to go with this assassination attempt.

He reports this to Cixi and her people.

Lauren: Is that an act of loyalty on his part?

Paul: Yes. He was loyal to Cixi, and he was disloyal to the emperor.

Lauren: Yeah.

Paul:  Cixi finds out about this, and around this time, Count Ito is coming from Japan to see the emperor. Count Ito had been Japanese Prime minister during the Sino Japanese War, and now he's retired, and he's trying to get employment. He's going to be an advisor to the emperor. That's his proposal.

And Cixi didn't really want to antagonize Japan, but didn't want him to have control over the emperor either. Cixi said to the emperor, Japan has done some good things. You can learn from him, but have him send his suggestions to the Foreign Office.

In other words, sure, have him as an advisor. But if his recommendations go through the Foreign Office, then things can be managed. Good ideas can get through. He won't be right in the ear of the emperor, and Japan won't be the puppet master to the emperor.

Lauren: Right.

Paul: And around the time that Count Ito was coming to court, General Yuan had this appointment with the emperor. Cixi made sure that she was within earshot of that conversation.

And when General Yuan met with the emperor, he said to the emperor that “his new friends were going about things in a careless and ill thought-out manner, and if there was a slip, your Majesty would be incriminated.”

According to the report, the emperor gazed at Yuan silently, understanding the message and showing signs that it had touched him, and Cixi took that to mean that the emperor was implicated.

Lauren: Wow.

Paul: Cixi let Ito leave, and then she put her son under house arrest.

Lauren: That's where they put him on the island?

Paul:  Yes, on an island in the Sea Palace, as well as his favorite concubine, who had herself been doing maneuvers.

Lauren: So, I have that as the end bit. That makes a lot more sense. It was only accessible through one controlled causeway, so he just had food delivered, and then that was it. He was all alone?

Paul: Yeah.

Lauren: Wow.

Paul: So that's the version that I've read. But of course, Kang is promoting a different version, and he ended up going traveling.

Kang realized that the gig was up when General Yuan wasn't doing what he wanted, so he already got out of town.

Kang knew things were bad. He got out of town, he got to Tianjin, and he got on a British ship heading to Shanghai. By the time the British steamer arrived in Shanghai, detectives and policemen were on the wharf in Shanghai with a promise of $2,000 for Kang's arrest.

But the foreign newspapers were favorable to Kang, and they believed that he was the reform guy, and they didn't appreciate that Cixi was involved in reforms. They had no knowledge of this attempt on her life.

Britain was allied with Japan, and the official representative of Great Britain, Brennan, had the Times correspondent Mr. Bland intercept Kang before the ship landed. Kang was then sent on a British gunboat to Hong Kong, where the Japanese consul visited him in Hong Kong and invited him to live in Japan.

Kang's right-hand man, Liang, received asylum in the Japanese Legation in Beijing the day after Ito's audience. And Ito helped him travel to Japan via Tianjin, where he boarded a Japanese warship to Japan.

Lauren: So, basically political asylum.

Paul: Yeah. Kang later traveled extensively promoting these reforms, and he was quite influential in North America.

I may do an episode talking about the overseas Chinese and their debates that were at the heart of what China should do to go forward. Whether it was going to be reform or revolution.

You had Sun Yat-sen pushing for revolution. You had Kang talking about reform, and both of them were speaking to big audiences in North America and raising funds in North America among the Chinese overseas.

Kang continued to spread his side of the story, and he was the one who publicized this idea that Cixi had had Cian, the late Empress Zhen, killed, and that she had her son's, Miss Alute, swallow gold, and that's how she was killed.

Lauren: So, there were all the way back to Miss Elute. Wow.

Paul: Yeah. So, there were all these slanderous rumors being propagated by Kang and his gang against Cixi.

Lauren: They weren't fans.

Paul: No. This has been supported by Japanese archives that were revealed in the 1980s, and it revealed that Bi, who was the designated killer for Cixi, gave full testimony and that this was a real plot on her life.

Lauren: It's another instance of you cross her and she will come after you like the power of a thousand sons.

Paul: Yeah.

And he was also promoting this idea that it was Cixi that was responsible for the loss to Japan and not the emperor, because he was always promoting the emperor. Restore the emperor, get rid of Cixi. In private, through assassination. In public, through retirement.

Lauren: Let's talk about that. Where Guangxu is put on a little island, she's back in power. But there are still international relationships that they have to maintain. Guangxu is kind of brought back as more of a figurehead.

Paul: Yes. And when there are foreign delegations visiting, it would be both of their majesties that they would see now is when the silk screen is removed, and they're both on the throne, Cixi and Guangxu. And she doesn't allow him to ever be seen by audiences, by himself.

Lauren: The damage to his reputation had already been done. No one ever saw him as an authority figure ever again. And he'd been a figurehead for a long time, but he had been fairly powerful for some years. And this really took him out of that.

Paul: Yes. From around 1889 until about 1898, he was in charge. There were times when he was relying more on Cixi and times when he was relying less on her. But now, as of mid 1898, she's back in charge.

He's still alive, he's still there, but he's sitting beside her and not saying much.

Lauren: She is back. Can't get rid of her.

Let's talk about the Boxer Rebellion, since we're right around there.

Paul: The Boxer Rebellion starts in Shandong Province, and Shandong Province is a bit southeast of Beijing, and that's where the Germans had taken control of Qingdao, the port, following the Sino Japanese War. And the Germans were being a bit heavy handed, and their soldiers had done some retaliation, some retributions for some Chinese violence, and had been pretty brutal in suppressing it.

That, combined with some bad harvests, a drought condition, led to this local rebellion.

It's called a Boxer Rebellion because these people of Shandong were into martial arts, and it was a form of martial arts that looked, at least to Westerners, like a boxing movement. A lot of hand gestures that looks a bit like a Boxer.

They're operating there and Cixi initially is having her people suppress them, but just for the violence, not for the movement. She's not trying to punish Chinese for expressing anti Westerner sentiment, but for any anti missionary, anti Western violence, any attacks on churches, any killings and so on. Those people she's making sure are executed. And it's sort of calming down. Also, the rains improved. The harvest situation was looking like it was going to improve.

Then a little bit north of that Zhili province, so that's close to Beijing, close to Tianjin. That area was then starting to go into drought conditions. There was also some presence of the Boxers in both those provinces, and the Westerners were putting a lot of pressure on her to create a nationwide edict prohibiting the Boxers, to make them illegal across the country. And she's resisting that because she's saying, they're only in two provinces, let's not do overkill. Why should we bring attention to them in other provinces when they don't exist in those provinces? But Westerners are putting pressure on them.

And ultimately, she does publish an edict without naming them specifically where she is making clear that everyone needs to get along and that violence will not be tolerated.

And that is sort of satisfying the Western audience. But they decide that they're still going to send troops to protect the foreign legations Tthe embassies and the foreign staff around Beijing). It starts with 400.  Cixi's okay with that. Then they start sending 2000 troops without her permission, without Chinese permission. And that seems to be the moment where her view changes and she's feeling pressured by foreigners.

This foreign army is coming towards Beijing. Maybe that sets off something in her mind from previous times, but now all of a sudden, she's like, well, maybe we should use the Boxers to resist this invasion. And she is half hearted about it, but she does engage with them.

And these foreign troops are going to come by railroad from Tianjin to Beijing. And she certainly encourages and authorizes the Boxers and the army to stop them. And the Boxers do a good job of ripping up the railroad, which delays this foreign army. And Cixi is emboldened by this.

A lot of the officials in the country are telling her that this is a terrible idea to ally with the Boxers, but she basically starts arming them and authorizing them to resist this invading army.

But I say that she does it half heartedly because she doesn't allow them to attack the main area where the foreigners are in Beijing. She sends Ronglu, her number one army person. This is the person who the Emperor told General Yuan not to report to. She sends him to be in charge of the attack on the foreign legations, and he sets the sights of his cannon so that they fire too high, so that they make a lot of noise. There's a big show, but they don't really do any damage.

So, it ends up being this blockade of the foreigners in the foreign ligation for 55 days, but she sends fruit and vegetables to them. This is what I mean by this, like, half hearted, two minded view, where, on one hand, she's emboldening these rebels, arming them, and they're doing damage. On the other hand, she's not really wanting to kill all the foreigners, and her officials are telling her that she's nuts for the most part, and it goes really badly because the troops do arrive.

They do take control of Beijing, and she's caught in the Forbidden City with the Emperor. It gets so bad. Troops are fleeing, and she remembers that someone had put aside 200 horses and carriages, and she asks about them, and she's told the retreating army, grabbed them, there's nothing left. And she's like, okay, I guess we'll stay. And then she says, no, let's go. And she leaves in a mule cart, which is a very uncomfortable way to travel in there. And the Emperor and she's in a light outfit, almost like night wear, and he's in a thin, silk garment. To me, it strikes me that they were just wearing their night wear when they left Beijing.

Lauren: Wow.

Paul: And when they leave the Forbidden City and they're heading into the interior. It's a wasteland out there. There had been a drought in this area, but also there's been these rebels attacking, as well as retreating armies. It's scorched earth, and they get nothing for days.

It takes them about two days before they meet some official who puts them up in their house, and he really has nothing to provide them. She gives him instructions to get food. He tries, but that food gets stolen by retreating army people.

And then he gets some millet, just some basic grains to turn into a porridge, and even three of, there were three bowls made of that, and two of them are stolen. So, then he has people guard the last remaining one. So, that's what the Empress Dowager and the emperor get to eat. And then she's like, oh, this is wonderful. I haven't eaten for two days. Do you have any eggs? So, he scrounges up five eggs, and she eats three of them, and the emperor eats two of them. And then she's like, do you have any clothes? And he's like, well, my wife is dead, but you can have her clothes. Cixi gets these clothes from his wife, and he gives some of his clothes to the emperor. And this is the first time in their lives that they've worn Han Chinese clothing. They've always worn Manchu clothing up to that date.

Lauren: Yeah.

Paul:  And then things start to go a little smoother for them, and they end up retreating to Xian in the interior, the ancient capital, and then she's taken charge again and she's having all of the correspondence from the Empire go to her in Xian and tax revenue is going to Xian. 6 million taels of silver come in there. Cixi's established court with her and the Emperor in Xian, but I don't know what she was thinking. I'd like to hear your thought on it, but I don't think this is her best moment. Certainly, arming these rebels and starting this half hearted rebellion against the west.

Lauren: Right. I definitely do think it's, oh, how the mighty have fallen towards the end. But I was actually going to ask, I wonder if there is almost an element of internal sabotage because she is making these orders, but is it also her order to make all of these bad calls on the field? Or is it people that are on the field making these calls, knowing that it's going to cost them?

You did say there were plenty of people that were on different payrolls. Were any of these people on Western payrolls?

Paul: Earl Li had been on the payroll of both Russia and Japan. Sir Yinhuan was receiving bribes from both, so it's certainly possible there was corruption, there was people taking money, but I don't think it's just that.

I think some people genuinely felt that the foreigners weren't wrong to try to protect their own people during a rebellion.

My understanding is that the dynasties would generally try to put down rebellions, not enable rebellions.

Lauren: Yeah.

Paul: These people weren't sophisticated. They accidentally set fire to the Qianmen Gate and looted a lot of things in Beijing. It was playing with fire, she was playing with fire and they knew that and a lot of them didn't support it. I'm wondering what's going on in her head at this point.

Lauren: I mean, we did talk about how there was a balancing effect of Cian and being able to kind of maintain these relationships. I wonder we see all of these efforts for Cixi to try and maintain diplomatic relations and she is trying to care for her people. I don't know where it's coming from. It doesn't make sense for her thought process.

Paul: One thing I can add is I think one of her sensitive spots was this idea of foreign troops in the capital. Think about how her late husband had died. Think about how she had come to power. This was following the Emperor fleeing from Beijing during an invasion by the British and the French, and they had gone to the hunting lodge north of Beijing. I think it's a trigger. That's my best explanation for it, why she's not at her best and thinking her best.

She gets to Xian. The foreigners leave Beijing. She's receiving reports that they actually had been quite upright when in Beijing. They had protected the Forbidden City, they had protected the palaces, there had not been looting, and in fact, while they were there, they cleaned up the city. They had had people dispose of garbage and bodies, and for the most part, they left Beijing in better shape than they took it.

And she was pleased with that. That softened her towards them, but she still wouldn't go back while they were in Tianjin. And she started her march back. She was in Kaifeng, another former capital, and she was waiting there and she received the message that the foreigners weren't going to leave Tianjin until she returned to the capital. Cixi then finally took the steps to continue on from Kaifeng to the capital.

That's why I'm saying I think there's something mental, some trigger about troops around there that she's really defensive about.

Lauren: Yeah.

Paul: Anyway, the Boxer Rebellion is a failure. They did more damage to China than they did to the foreigners.

Lauren: It takes them 18 months just to come back to Beijing. And it's kind of a wreckage, isn't it?

Paul: Not so much a wreckage. The Westerners had rebuilt the railroad that had been destroyed by the rebels, so that allowed Cixi and the court and the emperor to return by railroad for the last stretch. For the most part, the palaces are all in good shape. The city, there had been some improvements. I think maybe electricity was brought in and some services like that. Public bathrooms were introduced at this point, so there were some services.

Lauren: Finally.

Paul: And the Westerners collected the tax revenue, administered services and kept a complete and to the penny accounting of it. And this was impressive because that's not what the Chinese were used to. They were more used to corrupt officials. So that was the good part. The bad part was then the foreigners decided to tally up what reparations would be.

And it started around maybe it'll be around 30, 45 million. And then they had a meeting and they decided, no, why don't we ask for more? And Russia and Japan in particular asked for more. And the final number ended up being 462,000,000 taels of silver. They said, let's round it down to 450,000,000. Essentially what all of the countries had added up on their list, and no one saw any reason to downplay the number in the other countries. So, it ended up being this huge amount.

But it also worked out roughly one tael for every Chinese person. So, then the idea came around that they were charging one tael of silver for every Chinese person. That's not how the calculation happened, but that was just a coincidence.

Lauren: Yeah. It certainly does go a long way to devalue a Chinese life, if that's how you're saying it now. Is this amount in addition to the land that she had to give up?

Paul: She didn't have to give up any land as a result of the Boxer Rebellion that I know of.

Lauren: I guess part of the Boxer Treaty was that she maybe not land, but she allowed a bunch of other nations to have space in China for bases and for schools. They were allowed to have a presence there. I know that she lost a lot of land. She, as a country, I know they lost a lot of land after the Sino Japanese War. I thought that it was a second version of that where okay, well, now the land that we have left yes, this country can have a base here, and this country can have a hospital where you need it and all of that.

Paul: There may have been educational facilities and hospitals. I'm not sure about that. I'm not aware of much of a land grab. But Russia did send troops into Manchuria, and then they didn't leave. So, Russia they didn't officially take the territory, but basically they occupied Manchuria now, and they didn't leave. So that's a very significant amount of land. That part is true.

I guess, we're looking at the start of the collapse of the Qing Dynasty. We're in 1901. The Qing Dynasty is over by 1911, 1912. We're now into the final seven years of her life and the final, let's call it eleven years of the Qing Dynasty.

Lauren: Yeah. She's running a broken, dying country. As much effort as she tries to have it come back, people just won't leave her alone, so they return to the Forbidden City. She adopts a lot of the modernization reforms that are going on and modeling a lot of it off of Japan. She just takes that cue and moves on with it. And she still tries to have all of these gears moving and to have China catch up with everyone else.

She understands how lacking they are in technology and military and defense. She's trying her hardest. Despite being a very broken and broke country, she's really trying to have them catch back up.

And she even got to the point in her effort towards modernization, she had photographs taken of the royal family. I'm pretty sure that was the first family photo of the she was photographed.

Paul: She was having her portrait taken. She was having photographs taken of her by women. She didn't allow men to take her photo because that was pretty intrusive. But outside, when she was walking with eunuchs, she had a photograph taken of her waving at the camera. She was on a charm offensive.

She was having foreign legations come and have dinners at the palace. This was new, so there were lots of things like that happening.

The reforms at this point are evolving. There's more education reforms happening now, more women's education. She's founding and being patron for some schools for aristocratic women, but also for general female education. Female students start being sent abroad.

She updates marriage laws. And now, for the first time, I think, in Qing history, marriage between Han Chinese and Manchu is allowed. Cixi's breaking down the ethnic divide between those two groups, allowing intermarriage.

She brings in an edict to end the foot binding of women. It's worth mentioning that she never had her feet bound because she was Manchu, and that wasn't a Manchu tradition. That was a Han Chinese tradition. But she enacts an edict to eliminate that. But it doesn't really happen quickly. That took still probably another couple of decades before that practice really ended in China. This binding of girls’ feet that would crush their bones and make their feet smaller.

Lauren: Just hearing about it makes my feet hurt.

Paul: Yeah.

Lauren: I've seen photos of it. It's just a horrible, horrible practice. Those poor girls. I'm really glad that she was able to end that.

Paul: Yeah, she was moved by it, and she also noticed how foreign women were moved by that. And I think that was an influence on her.

She did have conservatism in her. She wasn't a radical, but she was taking steps in a modern direction. And one of the major steps she was taking was trying to move the Qing Dynasty towards a constitutional monarchy. Especially in the last couple of years of her life, there were real progress being made towards drafting constitution, determining who would vote, when elections would take place, what the balance of power would be between the Emperor and the court. And if I can simplify, it was more of a German style constitutional monarchy with a strong monarch who would make the final decision. But there would be a two-house parliament that would be advising the Emperor. And in case of disputes, her view was that both sides should compromise a bit. So, it was more of a strong monarch constitutional monarchy, as opposed to England, which was a strong House of Commons constitutional monarchy.

Lauren: Right.

Paul: But this never came to pass because she died in 1908. Do you want to tell us about that?

Lauren: Well, let's talk about the 14th of November 1908.

Paul: Okay.

Lauren: Guangxu Emperor dies of arsenic poisoning. When his remains were tested a full century later, the levels of arsenic that remained in his body were over 2000 times that of normal people a century later.

Paul: Yeah. So, this poisoning did happen, and I truly believe she was behind it.

Lauren: Yeah. Way happened. There are rumors. And so, let's talk about a couple of the rumors.

Paul: You go ahead, because I'm fully in the camp on this one, that she was involved somehow, that she was in poisoning him.

Lauren: Yeah. The 14th of November, Guangxu emperor dies of arsenic poisoning. Now, some of the rumors, obviously there's one rumor, and this is pretty much the accepted theory, is that Cixi herself poisoned him. But there's also the idea that a military commander named Yuan Shikai.

Paul:  General Yuan. Yeah, I've mentioned him already in the...

Lauren: General Yuan. Yes. General Yuan was the culprit. And a lot of this theory is kind of given a little bit of weight by the fact that he murdered a eunuch, years and years later, perhaps in an effort to silence him.

But again, these are two, three, five different stories for all of the things that are happening here. But he was poisoned. I'm going to go ahead and agree with Paul here that she definitely poisoned him or she at least had a lot to do with it.

I'm pretty sure it's because she knew she was on her way out. So he dies on the 14th and Cixi dies on the 15th.

Paul: Yeah. And she was working until 3 hours before her death. So, I think this was cleaning up loose ends. She didn't want the Emperor to survive her because she was worried about what that would mean.

I don't know if she gave the poison to the Emperor or if someone else did, but she certainly wanted it. I mean, the evidence is that the arsenic was in his body and the timing is just too close to her death to really suggest any natural causes.

Lauren: Yeah, it's very suspicious.

Paul: So, who does she want to succeed in? Do you know about that?

Lauren: Puyi. The day that the Emperor dies, Cixi puts in another nephew who took the name Xuantong, but the power was still with I want to say Miss Alute. It's Empress Longyu.

Paul: Okay. Miss Alute is not Empress Longyu. Empress Dowager Longyu is the wife of her second son, her adopted son, the Guangxu Emperor.

Lauren: It's not like we have a lot of these things to keep track of. She only survived three emperors.

Paul: Yeah. Puyi is the son of Zaifeng, who is the son of Prince Chun. So, the Puyi Emperor is the grandson of Prince Chun, who we've mentioned a lot in our series. And Kaifeng, the empress Dowager believed was upright. He was not going to sell out China to Japan, and he would be regent to his son, this Puyi Emperor. Who is, what, about three years old at this point?

Lauren: Right.

Paul: The Empress Dowager dictated her very last political decree. It says, “I am critically ill and I am afraid I'm about to pass away. In the future, the affairs of the empire will be decided by the regent. However, if he comes across exceptionally critical matters, he must obey the Dowager Empress.”

That's the Empress Longyu. What I understand by that is she was worried about the trouble ahead, and she sensed that the Manchu aristocracy, the Manchu men, would fight to preserve the Qing Dynasty and would fight to the death.

And by saying that in exceptional circumstances, the final word went to the Dowager Empress, she knew that she was weaker and would cave. And this means that the Empress Dowager wanted that. And this ended up happening in 1911, where there starts to be a civil war in these revolutions.

The Manchu are starting to be killed by the Chinese. And the Empress Dowager says, okay, Puyi is going to abdicate. And that ends the Qing Dynasty. It ends this long history of imperial dynasties in China, and it saved China from this ethnic cleansing against the Manchu.

And the suggestion of the book that I read is that's what's behind that final instruction, that Cixi thought, if things get really bad, I don't want ethnic cleansing, and that she thought that the Empress Dowager would cave, would know. And that's what happened.

And remarkably quickly we end up in this Republic of China I'll have to get into that in a future episode. There's a lot more to talk about this.

But maybe to wrap up, what are your impressions of this Empress Dowager Cixi?

Lauren: I think a lot of it was summed up perfectly from a quote by Sterling Seagrave. “One might wish, for her sake that her life had been just such a burlesque, filled with Florentine intrigues and Viennese frivolity, because the truth is melancholy. Under those layers of historical graffiti was a spirited and beautiful young woman trapped in a losing proposition. A figurehead empress who had lost three emperors to conspiracy. A frightened matriarch whose reputation was destroyed as she presided over the decline of a bankrupt dynasty. She was dealt a losing hand. And for 40 years she fought and fought and fought to keep this thing alive, to protect her people, to protect her family, of course, to protect her own power.”

We certainly see all of these levels of a desire to protect, whether she was a hero or a villain, I think there's elements of both. But she was dealt a losing hand and for 40 years she fought it off.

Paul: I think at the time of her death, she was beloved by her nation and she was pretty well respected by Westerners. I think that's good. I think that that's a credit to her. She was not universally loved. There was a lot of movements to restore the Emperor, to have her resign. They were definitely people seeking reform and revolution who viewed her as the enemy. And in many ways she was their enemy.

I'll just leave it that she was a remarkable woman who ruled China fairly competently, not perfectly at a time when she was never able to set foot in the front part of the Forbidden City. For all of her years in power, she never entered the front part where the real power lay.

Lauren:  It always through the side door.

Paul: She had to come in through the back.

Lauren: Incredible

Paul: For a woman in her time, in her place, she accomplished a lot.

Lauren: Absolutely. I mean, enough to where we had to cover it in three episodes.

Paul: Yes. Thank you, Lauren, for joining me for these three episodes. I really enjoyed speaking with you about the Empress Cixi.

Lauren: Thank you so much for having me. This has been super fun, wildly educational for me. Since I know jack all about a lot of Chinese history. So, this has been incredibly educational for me as well. So, thank you for having me.

Paul: I've really appreciated having your perspective. I don't want to be a man talking about this remarkable woman without having a woman like you, who talks about Well Behaved Women in your podcast and I'd encourage people to check it out.