Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China Read Online Free PDF Page A

had dictated that they should be given to servants, and their leftovers be fed to cats and dogs. Even the remnants were not to be thrown away: they must be dried and made into bird feed.
    fn4 It is sometimes asserted that Cixi helped her husband read official reports and write instructions. There is no evidence of this.

2 From the Opium War to the Burning of the Old Summer Palace (1839–60)
    THE BIRTH OF Cixi’s son, the emperor’s firstborn male, was a monumental event for the court. Emperor Xianfeng had had only one daughter by this time, the Grand Princess, by a concubine who had entered the court with Cixi; but, as a female, the princess was not entitled to carry the dynastic line. With the arrival of Cixi’s son, apalace file was opened with the title ‘Imperial Concubine Yi Gave Joyous Birth to a Grand Prince’. It shows that several months earlier, in accordance with a sensible royal household rule, Cixi’s mother had been invited into the Forbidden City to look after her daughter. On an auspicious date determined by the court astrologer, a ‘Hole of Joy’ had been dug behind Cixi’s apartment, in a ceremony during which ‘Songs of Joy’ were recited. Into the hole were placed chopsticks wrapped in red silk next to eight treasures, including gold and silver. Chopsticks have the same pronunciation, kuai-zi , as the expression ‘to produce a son quickly’. The hole was to be used for burying the placenta and the umbilical cord.
    Silks of all kinds, the finest cotton and muslin, for baby clothes and bedding, were readied. Scores of women with childbirth experiences were interviewed. Together with doctors from the Royal Clinic, these mature women would stay by Cixi’s side when her pregnancy entered the seventh month. Actually, court rules specified the eighth month, but an anxious Emperor Xianfeng decreed special treatment. He was kept closely informed about the development of Cixi’s condition, and the moment the child was born, the chief eunuch rushed over and reported that ‘Imperial Concubine Yi has just given birth to a prince’, and that the royal doctors had found ‘the pulses of the mother and the son are both peaceful’. (The pulse is regarded as a crucial indicator of health.) All cried: ‘Oh great rejoicing to our Master of Ten Thousand Years!’
    Overjoyed, Emperor Xianfeng instantly elevated Cixi to a higher rank. The whole court was swept into a frenzy of celebration over the baby, who was named Zaichun. On the third day he was given a thorough wash, in a large bowl of pure gold, with the date, time (noon) and position (facing south) painstakingly calculated by the court astrologer. Soon, to great fanfares, the baby was formally placed in a cradle. More festivities took place when he was one month old, during which he had his first haircut. On his first birthday, a pile of objects was laid out for him to grasp: his choice was supposed to indicate his future disposition. The first item he grabbed was a book – for which he would in fact develop a phobia. On all these and other occasions he received lavish presents. Gift-giving was carried to extraordinary lengths at the time, and no occasion was thought proper without it. At the court, scarcely a day went by without presents being brought in or sent out, or exchanged by those within. By the end of his first year, Cixi’s son had received some 900 objects made of gold, silver, jade and other precious stones, as well as more than 500 pieces of clothing and bedding in the finest textiles.
    Thanks to her son, Cixi quickly became the undisputed No. 2 consort, second only to Empress Zhen. Her position was made even more secure when the emperor’ssecond son, born two years later to another concubine, lived only a few hours and died before he was given a name. The strength of her position enabled Cixi to persuade her husband tomarry her eighteen-year-old sister to one of his younger half-brothers, the nineteen-year-old Prince Chun. Consorts