15 In Retirement and in Leisure

(1889–94)

BECAUSE the Summer Palace was still under construction when Cixi retired in 1889, she lived first in the Sea Palace, adjacent to the Forbidden City. There her adopted son had a villa, Yingtai, in the middle of the lake, where he often stayed. Seeing her almost daily for the routine greetings, Guangxu was totally silent about state business. He had long yearned to be in charge of his own affairs and wanted even less of Cixi's interference after she imposed a detested marriage on him.

Before her retirement, a set of rules, the Statutes, had been drawn up by Prince Chun and the grandees concerning her future political role, which she had accepted. The Statutes did not require Emperor Guangxu to consult her over policy, nor did they give her any say over the emperor's decisions – with the single exception of the appointment of senior officials, for which her approval had to be obtained before an announcement could be made. In addition, Emperor Guangxu was obliged to send her the titles of the reports he received, from which she could get a vague idea of what was going on in the empire, but no details. These copies were for information only. However much Prince Chun wanted Cixi to continue at the helm, and however much she wanted to be, this was as far as they could go. When, just before her retirement, an official petitioned for all reports that were destined for the emperor to be presented to her as well, she had no alternative but to reject the idea out of hand.

Emperor Guangxu followed the Statutes to the letter, and the first list was sent to Cixi on the very day after he assumed power. Simultaneously her contacts with the Grand Council and other officials were severed, including with Earl Li. At first, it seems, the woman who had been at the centre of historical action for nearly three decades found it hard to stay away. That summer she stepped in and announced the launch of the Beijing–Wuhan Railway in a decree that said specifically: ‘His Majesty on the order of Her Majesty the Empress Dowager Cixi …' She was able to do this probably because Grand Tutor Weng was away attending to his family tombs, and the emperor bowed to her forceful intervention. But when the tutor was back and disapproved of the project, Guangxu shelved it. Early the following year, 1890, she seized the opportunity presented by a trip to pay homage at the Eastern Mausoleums, for which senior officials gathered, to meet with the Grand Council and Earl Li. They discussed railway projects and the latest situation in Korea, a vassal state of China's, where a crisis involving rivalrous foreign powers was looming. The meeting created such bad odour with the emperor that, it seems, he had it out with her, which in turn made Cixi furious. When she handed out fruits as a goodwill gesture to officials, she excluded the emperor's attendants. Similar moments of tension continued into 1891.

Cixi's formal move into the Summer Palace on 4 June 1891 put an end to this struggle, as she was now physically removed from the decision-making centre. Any further effort would involve nothing short of conspiracy. Emperor Guangxu made a point of marking her departure with an imperial decree and an elaborate ceremony attended by a large contingent of officials. That morning he led them all in formal garb to kneel outside the gate of the Sea Palace to see her on her way. After her sedan-chair set off, he went ahead, in order to greet her, again on his knees, upon her arrival at the Summer Palace. They had dinner together, after which he returned to the Forbidden City. Thereafter he visited the Summer Palace regularly, but only to bid her good health. These shows of etiquette kept her firmly away from politics. As Cixi later told a Viceroy, ‘After my retirement, I no longer had anything to do with state affairs.'

Her royal duties were symbolic and prescribed. When harvests failed on a large scale, she would issue a public announcement, donating money from the court. When Prince Chun died in 1891, it was her responsibility to oversee all the requisite arrangements, from the interment to the construction of a temple dedicated to the prince. Otherwise, she spent her days with eunuchs and ladies of the court.

The person who looked after her and made sure things ran smoothly was her head eunuch, Lee Lianying – the man who had been taken by Prince Chun on his tour to inspect the navy. The trip had been Cixi's gift to the key figure in her daily life, as well as the prince's way of making amends to her. The American painter Katharine Carl, who met him some years later, described Lianying:

In person he is tall and thin. His head is, in type, like Savonarola's. He has a Roman nose, a massive lean jaw, a protruding lower lip, and very shrewd eyes, full of intelligence, that shine out of sunken orbits. His face is much wrinkled and his skin like old parchment … He has elegant, insinuating manners, speaks excellent Chinese – having a fine enunciation, a good choice of words, and a low, pleasant voice.

Lianying's future as a eunuch was sealed when he was six by his poverty-stricken father, who took the child to a professional castrator. When he first entered the court, the boy preferred play to work and was considered ‘lazy'. But strict training and severe punishments for ‘dereliction' changed him and made him assiduous in serving his masters and obeying court rules. Exceptionally cautious and sensitive, he looked after Cixi to perfection. He was her taster – and also her best friend. Cixi was lonely. Some of her eunuchs recalled:

Although the Empress Dowager had many matters to deal with, it appeared that her life was rather empty. When she was not working, she painted and watched operas, and so on, but she was often restless. The only person who could relieve her restlessness was the eunuch Lee Lianying. He knew how to look after her and became her indispensable companion. We could see that they were very, very close.

The eunuchs remembered that Cixi often dropped into Lianying's room and called out: ‘Lianying, let's go for a stroll.' They ‘would then walk together, and we would follow them from a distance. The empress dowager sometimes even called Lee Lianying to her bedchamber … and they would chat deep into the night.' When Lianying was ill – or pretended to be ill in order to stay in bed, according to the eunuchs – ‘the Empress Dowager would worry and would summon the court doctors at once. She would stay with him until he took the medicine.' (Herbs and other ingredients took time to dole out, mix and brew.) In the court medical records Lianying had his own file, unique for a member of staff, who shared files. This medical privilege was unavailable even to lower-rank royal concubines. Cixi showered him with expensive gifts and promoted him to a high rank that was unprecedented for a eunuch in Qing history.

In the court Lianying's privileged position generated little malicious jealousy, as by consensus he was ‘always respectful to his superiors, and always generous to his inferiors'. But in the country at large, because of his closeness to Cixi, and because he was a eunuch, officials were constantly accusing him of meddling in state affairs, although no one ever produced any proof. As a matter of fact Cixi never involved him in politics, following the Qing rules meticulously. But the accusations refused to die down. When he was taken on the navy inspection tour by Prince Chun, the news generated such a tempest that it almost overshadowed the inspection itself. One Censor wrote to reprimand Cixi, alleging that sending Lianying on the trip had caused floods that had ruined the crops in several provinces. Cixi broke her own rule of not punishing critics and accused the Censor of slander, on which basis she publicly and emphatically rejected his petitions (‘threw them back at him'), and demoted the hapless man. When another official wrote to say that eunuchs should not be let out of the capital at all, she ignored the petition. Still there was widespread gossip that Lianying had attained his privileged position through his exceptional skill in dressing Cixi's hair – a baseless rumour that was charged with sexual innuendo. Even a later defeat by Japan during Cixi's retirement was blamed on her relationship with Lianying.

Lianying would get even in his own way. Often offered expensive gifts by officials hoping for a sinecure, he would accept them, but then do nothing. Cixi was well aware this was happening and acquiesced.

Trying all sorts of ways to reward Lianying, Cixi invited his sister to stay in the court. But her stay was short. As the relative of a eunuch she was in an awkward position. When other ladies rode in sedan-chairs, tired after a long walk, she had to trot, like her brother, alongside the chairs, which was excruciating for her bound feet. A palace maid observed that the empress dowager would have allowed her a sedan-chair for herself, but the prudent Lianying would never have accepted the favour. His sister's station was considered so low that the servants would not even take tips from her. ‘We wouldn't accept her tips even if we were dying of poverty,' one of the maids snorted. Before long, the sister stopped appearing at court.

The court ladies around Cixi were mostly young widows. They had all had their marriages arranged by the empress dowager, which was considered the greatest of privileges, and all were prohibited by the traditional code of honour from marrying again after their husbands had died. Among them was a daughter of Prince Ching, Si Gege, who was clever and vivacious, fun-loving and popular, and who made Cixi laugh. Cixi said the girl reminded her of her younger self, and missed her whenever she was away. Another teenage widow was a Lady Yuan, who was not actually married in the normal sense: the man to whom she had been engaged, a nephew of Cixi, had died before the wedding. But before the funeral Lady Yuan dressed herself in a widow's garb, and in a sedan-chair draped with white sackcloth, a sign of mourning, went to his coffin and performed the ritual that established her position as his widow. This highly regarded act of spousal loyalty set her on a lifetime of chastity and loneliness. To an observer she was wooden and lifeless, and Cixi did not have much to say to her. But she took pity on Lady Yuan and always included her in the invitations.

Empress Longyu was a perennial fixture in Cixi's retinue. The emperor completely ignored her, even when they bumped into each other and she went down on her knees to greet him. People regarded her as ‘sweet', ‘charming' and ‘lovable', ‘but there is sometimes a look in her eyes of patient resignation that is almost pathetic'. Her life was empty and she was very bored. Some said she took out her frustration and bitterness on servants and pets, and that her cats always ran away after a few months. All the ladies would try to be cheerful when they were around Cixi, but there was little real happiness.

Cixi led a well-ordered life. In the morning she took her time getting up, no longer forcing herself to rise at five or six, but lingering sometimes until after eight. When she was ready for the day, signalled by the windows in her quarters being opened, the whole palace began to buzz. Eunuch messengers raced around to announce the ‘news' and chief eunuchs congregated outside her apartment to await instructions.

In her room she put on a silk dressing gown, while a maid rushed to the kitchen to fetch hot water, which was poured into a silver bowl held aloft by a junior eunuch on his knees, with maids standing holding soap dishes and hand towels. Cixi attended to her face by covering it with a hot towel for a few minutes before patting it dry. Then she wrapped her hands in another towel and soaked them in the hot water for a rather long time – long enough for the water to be changed two or three times – which was said to be her secret for keeping her hands soft like a young girl's.

After rinsing her teeth, she sat on a chair facing south and a eunuch came in to dress her hair. According to the eunuchs, Cixi had begun to lose hair from the age of forty, and a jet-black toupee was placed over the thinned patch. It required considerable skill to keep the wig in position while combing her hair and fixing it in the complicated Manchu style, with jewelled pins. Her hairdresser would also supply her with the gossip of the previous day and she would slowly take her daily jelly of ‘silver fungus' (yin-er), which was supposed to be good for one's health and looks. When the hairdressing was over, she placed ornaments in her hair. No Manchu lady's coiffure was considered complete without flowers, and Cixi preferred fresh flowers to jewels. She would deftly make flower arrangements on her hair, sometimes weaving the snowy blooms of jasmine into a diadem. (Her palace maids also wore flowers in their hair, and when they stood beside her, those on her right would have flowers on their right side and those on her left their left.)

There was not much she could do to her face: as a widow, she was not supposed to wear make-up. Otherwise, Manchu ladies painted their faces excessively white and pink, and had a vivid patch of red on their lower lip, to produce a ‘cherry'-like small mouth, considered beautiful in those days when wide lips were deemed ugly. Longing to use a little make-up, Cixi would discreetly apply a touch of rouge on her cheeks and on the centre of her palms, even a little on her lips. The rouge used in the court was made with roses that grew in the hills west of Beijing. The petals of a certain red rose were put in a stone mortar and crushed with a white marble pestle. A little alum was added and the dark-red liquid thus produced was poured into a ‘rouge jug' through fine white gauze. Silk wool was cut into small square or round pads and placed in the jug for days, to soak up the liquid. The silk pads were then dried, inside a room with a glass window to avoid catching dust, before ending up on the royal dressing table. Cixi would dab the pad with lukewarm water before applying it. For her lips she would roll up a pad, or twist one around a jade hairpin, to form a kind of lipstick, and daub the rouge in the centre of her lips – more on the lower lip than the upper. For perfume she mixed the oils of different flowers herself. (The Palace also made its own soap, under Cixi's direction. The maids would show her the paste that would eventually solidify into soap, and she would vigorously stir it herself.)

As a widow, Cixi could not wear brilliant colours like bright reds or greens. But even clothes that were considered discreet were colourful by European standards. Around the house she might put on a pale-orange robe with a pale-blue waistcoat, embroidered only along the hems, and for a special occasion one of her favourite outfits was a blue brocade robe embroidered with big white magnolias. Katharine Carl, the American painter who spent eleven months with her, observed:

She is always immaculately neat. She designs her own dresses … has excellent taste in the choice of colors, and I never saw her with an unbecoming color on, except the Imperial yellow. This was not becoming, but she was obliged to wear it on all official occasions. She used to modify it, as much as possible, by the trimmings, and would sometimes have it so heavily embroidered that the original color was hardly visible.

Cixi's jewels were often set to her own designs, among which was a pearl mantle that she would wear over an official jacket. Diamonds were an acquired taste. The Chinese of her time considered their brilliance to be vulgar, and mostly used them as drill tips.

Dressing up was important to Cixi. She would examine herself at length in the mirror – for longer than seemed fitting, given her age, or so thought some of her maids and ladies-in-waiting. Cixi guessed what was in the young women's minds and one day told the lady-in-waiting, Der Ling, who recorded their exchange:

‘It must seem to you quite funny to see an old lady like me taking so much care and pains in dressing and fixing up. Well! I like to dress myself up and to see pretty young girls dressed nicely; it makes you want to be young again yourself.' I told her that she looked quite young and was still beautiful, and that although we were young we would never dare compare ourselves with her. This pleased her very much, as she was very fond of compliments…

Before she left her dressing room Cixi would stand and take a last look at her shoes, which had a comfortable square-cut toe, quite unlike the sharply pointed ones worn by Han women. Her socks were made of white silk, and were tied at the ankle with a pretty ribbon, and she would look to see if the edges of the socks showing above the shoes were as they should be. Each pair was worn only once, so a constant supply was needed. Apart from a team of seamstresses, her family and other aristocratic households also made socks for her and presented them as gifts.

Her morning toilette completed, Cixi started towards the door to the outer hall, with her ‘erect carriage and light swift walk'. A maid parted the curtains and at this movement, for which the eunuch chiefs outside had been waiting, their eyes fixed on the drapes, all dropped to their knees and cried out: ‘Old Buddha [lao-fo-ye], all joy be with you!' She had adopted this nickname for herself, which, both illustrious and informal, was how she was addressed now in the court and was popularly known in Beijing.

While giving the eunuch chiefs their instructions for the day, Cixi took her first smoke from a water-pipe, which had an elongated stem and a small rectangular box to be held in the palm. Most of the time she did not hold her own pipe. This was the job of a pipe-maid, standing ‘about two paving bricks' distance away from the Empress Dowager', according to one of them. When Cixi glanced at her, the pipe-maid's right hand that held the pipe would gently extend its tip to within an inch of the corner of Cixi's mouth, whereupon, with a slight turn of the neck, the firm lips would part to take it. The pipe remained in the hands of the maid while Cixi puffed on it. For this service the maids had been trained for many months, until their right palms could hold a cup of hot water for a long time without twitching.

After two pipes of tobacco, breakfast arrived. First came her tea. The Manchus drank tea with a lot of milk. In her case, the milk came from the breasts of a nurse. Cixi had been taking human milk since her prolonged illness in the early 1880s, on the recommendation of a renowned doctor. Several wet nurses were employed, and took turns to squeeze milk into a bowl for her. The nurses brought their sucking babies with them, and the woman who served her the longest stayed on in the palace, her son being given education and an office job.

While she sipped her tea, a team of eunuchs carried over her food in lacquered boxes wrapped in yellow silk with the dragon motif. Lianying, the head eunuch, took the boxes at the door and brought them himself to Cixi. She ate sitting cross-legged on a kang – a long, rectangular brick structure the height of a bed, which could be heated from underneath and was used all over north China as a bed or a seat. She liked to sit by a window, so that she could look out on the courtyard and enjoy the light and the sky. Her food was placed on a low table on the kang and extended to some small tables that would be folded away when the meal was finished. When the food boxes were properly arranged, they were opened in front of Cixi's eyes, as court rules dictated. They contained a large variety of porridges, rolls and cakes – steamed, baked and fried – and many kinds of drinks, ranging from soya-bean juice to beef-bone consommé. There were also plenty of savoury side-dishes, such as duck's liver cooked in soya and other spicy sauces.

The empress dowager had a hearty appetite and would go on to have another two sizeable meals and small snacks. The meals were taken wherever she happened to be: she had no fixed dining room. The scale and presentation of the meals followed court stipulations. They would only be reduced if there was a national disaster. As the empress dowager, Cixi was entitled to a daily allocation of 31 kilos of pork, one chicken and one duck. With these, as well as vegetables and other ingredients, the quantities of which were all specified, dozens of dishes were cooked and, for a main meal, would be set out in more than a hundred plates or bowls. Most of the dishes were never touched and were only there to amplify the presentation. She seldom drank with her meals, and mostly ate on her own, as anyone invited to join her had to do so standing – except the emperor. Often court ladies in attendance would be asked to eat at her table after she had finished and left, in which case they were permitted to sit down. Usually dishes from her table would be given to courtiers as tokens of imperial favour. The emperor would also receive her dishes if he was staying in the same palace complex. The vast quantities of leftover food from the court enabled a string of food stalls in the neighbourhood to do a brisk business, and at certain times each day ragged beggars were allowed to come to a particular gate to receive the remnants and sift through the rubbish before it was carted away.

Lunch was followed by a careful hand-washing, and then a siesta. Before she dozed off, Cixi would read the classics with her eunuch instructors, who would enliven the texts by weaving in jokes that amused Cixi. When she got up, there was another tremor in the palace, as an eye-witness described: ‘when Her Majesty awakes, the news flashes like an eletric spark through all the Precincts and over the whole inclosure, and everyone is on the “qui vive” in a moment'.

Before she went to bed, at around 11 p.m., she often enjoyed a foot massage. Two masseuses first soaked her feet in a silver-plated wooden bowl, with wide rolled-back ‘arms' as foot rests. The water in the bowl was boiled with flowers or herbs, as prescribed by her physicians, bearing in mind factors such as the climate and her physical condition. In summer, it might be dried chrysanthemum, and in winter it could be flowering quince. The masseuses pressed the various pressure points, especially on the soles – rather like a reflexology session today. If her toenails needed cutting, the masseuses would gently request permission to use scissors, which the chief maid then brought in. Sharp objects were normally forbidden in Cixi's quarters. A manicure meant tending to her long fingernails – extraordinarily long on the fourth and fifth fingers, as was common among aristocratic Manchu women. The exceptionally long nails were protected by shields made of openwork cloisonné or gold, set with rubies and pearls. As no lady of position would dress herself or comb her own hair, such nails did not present an insurmountable problem.

Her bed was a kang built into an alcove in the room, with shelves around the three enclosing sides, on which were placed ornaments such as small jade figures. Her bedside reading amounted to another session of studying the classics with her eunuch instructors, which sent her to sleep. As she slept, a maid sat on the floor of the room, as noiselessly as a piece of furniture. More maids and eunuchs were in the antechamber outside the apartment, and elsewhere in the building. The night-shifts would hear the snoring of a sound sleeper.

Cixi was now in her early fifties and in very good health. She played the game of kick-shuttlecock with more agility than her much younger entourage, and climbed hills fast, without any sign of fatigue. In Beijing's biting winter she normally declined heating, preferring nothing in her bedroom and only charcoal-burning copper braziers in the large halls. Picturesque though these were, they produced little more than curling blue flames and made little difference to the temperature. The doors of her apartment were left open and draped with padded curtains, which were constantly lifted for the passage of eunuchs and maids, so blasts of cold air swept in at every entry or exit. Everyone else felt frozen to the bone, and yet Cixi seemed impervious. She just wore silk-wool undergarments and a fur coat, at most with a big fur cloak on top.

Her mind was as sharp as ever, and so it was difficult for her to shut herself off completely from politics. What made it possible for her to endure the enforced isolation and leisure, day in, day out, was her wide range of interests. She was curious about all new things, and wanted to try everything. Having added a couple of steamboats to the lake, she asked to be flown in a hot-air balloon, which had been bought some years earlier for military use. But Earl Li gave her (via Prince Ching, as the earl was no longer permitted to communicate directly with her) the disappointing news that the balloon was not in a fit condition and might explode.

The Summer Palace was a source of endless pleasure for Cixi, and she never tired of walking in its grounds. Strolling in the rain appealed to her the most. The eunuchs always brought an umbrella, but she would only use it in heavy downpours. A large retinue of eunuchs followed her, together with ladies-in-waiting and palace maids, bearing her ‘clothes, shoes, handkerchiefs, combs, brushes, powder boxes, looking glasses of different sizes, perfumes, pins, black and red ink, yellow paper, cigarettes, water pipes, and the last one carried her yellow satin-covered stool …' – like ‘a lady's dressing room on legs', according to one lady-in-waiting. Often Cixi and her ladies were carried in sedan-chairs to a picturesque spot of her choosing, where she would sit on her yellow satin stool, gazing for a long time into the distance. One scenic stop was the top of a high-arched bridge, which undulated in a soft, flowing way and was suitably named the Jade Sash. Another place she liked was a cottage built and furnished entirely of bamboo, where she often had tea. Her teas were the finest – the first leaves from all over the empire – which she drank from a jade cup, into which she would drop a few dried petals of honeysuckle, jasmine or rose. The dried blossoms were brought to her in a jade bowl, with two slender cherry-wood sticks, which she used to pick up the blossoms, drop them into her cup and stir the tea.

A favourite activity was boating on the lake, during which her barge was sometimes followed at a distance by eunuch musicians, playing the bamboo flute or bamboo recorder, or the yue-qin, a moon-shaped instrument like the mandolin. All would be silent when Cixi listened, ‘as if entranced'. Sometimes, in moonlight, she would sing softly to the music floating over the water.

Nature was her passion and she adored plants. Chrysanthemums were among her best-loved flowers. During the season for propagation Cixi would lead the court ladies in taking cuttings and setting them out in flower pots, watering them religiously until they began to bud. The buds were then covered with mats so that they would not be damaged by heavy rain. For this she would even forgo her usual nap. Later on, when she returned to power, she broke with the old custom of allowing no plants in places of official duties and filled the audience hall with a profusion of potted flowers, arranging them in tiers. Officials coming for their audiences had to orient themselves before they went down on their knees, as her throne seemed to be hidden behind a ‘flower mountain'.

She was devoted to her orchard, from which large baskets of fruits would be brought before her daily when they were in season. She would inspect their colour and shape, and would hold up a cluster of grapes against the light, for a long time. Apples, pears and peaches filled the huge porcelain pots in the halls, for their subtle fragrance. When the fragrance was gone, the fruits were divided among the servants. The scentless gourd also commanded her affection, and she would often stroke them on their trellises, sometimes in torrential rain. Her collection of gourds ran to several hundred, which an artistic eunuch sculpted into musical instruments, dinner sets and a variety of fanciful articles, adding miniature paintings and calligraphy to their surface. Cixi prepared some of the gourds to be carved by using a sharpened piece of bamboo to scrape off the outer skin.

Every few days, she would visit her large vegetable gardens and would be delighted if she could take away some fresh vegetables or other farm produce. Occasionally she cooked them herself in one of the courtyards and once she taught her ladies-in-waiting how to boil eggs with black tea leaves and spices.

Mosquitoes could be a nuisance in the Summer Palace, especially on summer evenings, but Cixi's eunuchs devised an ingenious solution. They erected giant marquees, each BIG ENOUGH to enclose a building and its courtyards completely. Roofed and curtained with reed matting and a system of ropes and pulleys that rolled and unrolled the top and hoisted and lowered the curtains, these works of art served as vast mosquito nets, in addition to shielding the large enclosures from the sun during the day. With lanterns hanging discreetly and candles flickering in the breeze, evenings were a scented pleasure, scarcely troubled by the insects. The same marquees were erected for the foreign legations.

Cixi loved birds and animals. She learned how to rear and breed them and engaged a eunuch who was a great expert to teach her. Birds in his care were not always confined, although there were hundreds of cages hanging in rows of bamboo frames in one of the large courtyards. Some flew freely, having made their home in the Summer Palace. To protect these rare species, young men with knowledge of birds were recruited into the Praetorian Guards to patrol the grounds with crossbows, ready to shoot down any natural predators or unwanted wild birds that had the temerity to gatecrash. The demand for foods for Cixi's birds created a flourishing trade outside the Summer Palace, selling all sorts of caterpillars, grasshoppers, crickets and ant nests, each said to benefit a different avian attribute.

Some birds were trained to fly towards a high-pitched trill in order to receive their favoured foods. Wherever Cixi was whether climbing a hill or boating in the lake, eunuchs near her would sound the trill so that the birds would fly around her. Cixi herself was skilled at imitating birdsong and could entice birds to her outstretched fingertips. Her bird-taming ability later mesmerised Western visitors. One, her American portraitist Katharine Carl, wrote:

She had a long, wand-like stick, which had been cut from a sapling and freshly stripped of its bark. She loved the faint forest odor of these freshly cut sticks … she held the wand she carried aloft and made a low, bird-like sound with her lips, never taking her eyes off the bird … He fluttered and began to descend from bough to bough until he lighted upon the crook of her wand, when she gently moved her other hand up nearer and nearer, until it finally rested on her finger!

Miss Carl was ‘watching with breathless attention, and so tense and absorbed had I become that the sudden cessation, when the bird finally came upon her finger, caused me a throb of almost pain.'

Even fish were induced to jump onto her open palms – to her own childlike shrieks. It took buckets of a special kind of earthworm, red and about 3 centimetres long, to entice the fish to leap up towards a human hand at a quay where Cixi often disembarked for lunch.

She bred dozens of dogs. They lived in a pavilion furnished with silk cushions to sleep on and a large wardrobe of jackets, in brocades embroidered with chrysanthemums, crab-apple blossoms and other gorgeous patterns. To avoid undesirable couplings, only her dogs were allowed in the palace grounds. The hundreds of pet dogs belonging to the court ladies and eunuchs had to be kept in their owners' own courtyards. Some dog breeders considered that Cixi ‘did more for the Pekingese than any other fancier since the origin of the breed'. One type of Pekinese whose breeding she discontinued was the ‘sleeve-dog', a miniature that could be carried in the courtiers' ample sleeves that were used as pockets. The growth of the sleeve-dogs was said to be stunted by feeding them only on sweets and wine and making them wear tight-fitting wire-mesh waistcoats. Cixi told Katharine Carl that she detested such unnatural methods, and that she could not understand why animals should be deformed for man's pleasure.

The pets she was particularly fond of were a Pekinese pug and a Skye terrier. The latter could perform tricks and would lie completely still at Cixi's command, moving only when she told him to, no matter how many others spoke to him. The Pekinese pug had long and silky fawn-coloured hair and large, pale-brown, liquid eyes. He was not easily taught and was affectionately called Little Fool (sha-zi) by Cixi. Later she had their portraits painted by Katharine Carl, sitting behind the painter herself and taking ‘the liveliest interest'.

In Beijing there was a large collection of birds and animals built up by the French missionary zoologist and botanist Armand David, who, since coming to China in the early years of Cixi's reign, had identified many hundreds of new species unknown in Europe, among them the giant panda. When Cixi heard about the collection she was intrigued and eager to see it. It so happened that the collection was attached to a Catholic cathedral, which overlooked the Sea Palace. After negotiations with the Vatican (through an English intermediary), her government paid 400,000 taels for another cathedral to be built elsewhere, and bought the old church along with the collection. Cixi visited it, but only once. She had scant interest in the dead creatures.

The only competitive games that tradition permitted her were parlour games. Cixi did not enjoy cards, or mah-jong, which she refused to allow at court. Dice-throwing was a popular pastime, and Cixi occasionally played. She invented a dice game not unlike ‘Snakes and Ladders', except that the board was a map of the Chinese empire, with all the provinces marked in different colours. Eight carved ivory deities, representing the legendary eight Taoist Immortals, travelled round the empire attempting to reach the capital. In the process, they might be diverted to beauty spots like Hangzhou, or sent into exile, in which case they would have to drop out – all depending on the throw of the dice. The one who reached Beijing first was the winner and would receive sweets and cakes, while the losers had to sing a song or tell a joke. Gambling was not involved. In fact it was officially banned, with offenders being fined and caned.

Painting was a serious hobby, for which Cixi engaged a Lady Miao, a young widow, to be her teacher. Lady Miao was Han and was conspicuous in the court from her hair to her toes. Instead of the complicated and much-decorated Manchu headdress, she combed her hair in a neat coil on the back of her head and encircled the coil with strings of pearls. Rather than a full-length Manchu robe, she wore a loose upper garment that came down to just below her knees, over a long plaited skirt, which revealed a pair of ‘three-inch golden lilies' – bound feet on which she teetered and swayed along in agony. Cixi, who as a Manchu had escaped foot-binding, would cringe at the sight of the deformed feet. Once before, when she had set eyes on the bare feet of one of the nurses who provided milk for her, she had said that she could not bear to see them, and had had them unbound. Now she asked Lady Miao to unbind her feet, an order that the painting teacher was only too happy to obey.

Under Lady Miao's tutorship, Cixi became a proficient amateur painter, wielding her brush ‘with power and precision', according to her teacher. She achieved something much valued in calligraphy: to write in just one brush stroke a giant character that was as big as a human figure. These characters, denoting ‘longevity' and ‘happiness', were ritually given to top officials as gifts. Lady Miao's reputation as the empress dowager's tutor enabled her to sell her own paintings for high prices, to buy a large house and support her family.

Near the Summer Palace were many Buddhist and Taoist temples, which organised regular festivals, which women, if chaperoned, could attend, dressed in the most gorgeous colours. Folk artists came from far and wide, walking on stilts, bouncing in lion-dances, waving dragon-lanterns and performing acrobatic and magic tricks. As they passed by the Summer Palace, Cixi often watched from a tower above the walls. Knowing the empress dowager was there, the performers would show off their skills, and she would cheer and give generous tips. One bearded man, who gyrated in the disguise of a village woman, was for a while the recipient of the largest rewards: Cixi was a great fan of popular entertainments and never regarded them as beneath her.

It was in this spirit that she helped turn the genre of Peking Opera into the national opera of China. This genre had traditionally been for the ‘average folk of the alleys and villages', as its music, stories and humour were easy to follow and enjoy. Considered ‘vulgar', it had been shunned by the court, where only orthodox opera, with its restricted tunes and story lines, was staged. Cixi's husband, Emperor Xianfeng, began to patronise Peking Opera, but it fell to Cixi to mould it into a sophisticated art form, while retaining its playfulness. She extended royal approval by bringing in artists from outside the court to perform for her and to instruct the eunuchs in the Music Department. She demanded professionalism. Historically, Peking Opera was rather casual, with unpunctual opening times, slapdash make-up and costumes; actors would often hail friends from the stage or make impromptu jokes. Cixi addressed all these details with a series of specific orders. She made punctuality mandatory, threatening to cane repeated offenders. On one occasion a principal actor, Tan Xinpei, was late, and she, being a huge fan and feeling unable to have him caned, made him play a clownish pig in The Monkey King. Professional acting was handsomely rewarded. While previous emperors tipped the leading players one tael of silver each at most, Cixi habitually lavished dozens of taels on them – as much as sixty to a lead actor, for instance to Tan, who was also given presents as part of the dowry for his daughter's wedding. (In comparison, the chief of the Music Department at the court earned seven taels a month.) In one year her tips to all involved in the opera shows totalled 33,000 taels.

Being so well treated, Peking Opera actors became celebrities – like the film stars of a later age. The public could see how prestigious they were: in one case, 218 artists travelled in the royal procession from the Summer Palace to the Forbidden City, all on horseback, with twelve carts carrying their costumes and paraphernalia. A career in the opera became highly sought-after.

Cixi's opera houses were constructed with carefully designed artistry. In the Sea Palace, a pavilion-style theatre was built in the middle of the lake, where there were lotuses all around so that summer shows took place among their blooms. In the Forbidden City, a heated glass conservatory was erected, as a cosy warm theatre in the midst of winds and snows. In the Summer Palace, she restored a two-storey theatre in an area that attracted orioles: their call was said to go well with the arias. Then she built another, more magnificent three-storey opera house, with a stage 21 metres high, 17 metres wide and 16 metres deep, and a backstage large enough to hold complicated sets. This was the grandest theatre in China. Both the ceiling and the floor could be opened during the performance, to allow gods to descend from Heaven and the Buddha to rise from the depths of the Earth sitting on an enormous lotus flower; snowflakes (white confetti) could shower from the sky, and water could spout upwards from the mouth of a giant turtle. A pool of water under the stage enhanced the acoustics. The theatre was situated next to the vast lake, so that the melody could travel unimpeded over its surface.

The Peking Opera repertoire was enormously expanded under Cixi. She revived a number of obsolete dramatic pieces by having their libretti dug up from the court archives and adapted to the tunes of Peking Opera. In the process of adaptation, and trying to accommodate Cixi's own lines, one actor-composer, Wang Yaoqing, enlarged the Opera's musical range. With Cixi's rewards and encouragement, the actor-composer revolutionised Peking Opera by giving female characters (played by men, including him) proper acting roles. They had traditionally been confined to minor parts and could only sing stiffly, not act. Now, for the first time, Peking Opera had lead female roles.

In this undertaking, Cixi became intimately involved in the writing of a 105-episode work, The Warriors of the Yang Family, about a tenth- to eleventh-century family who took up arms defending China against invaders. In recorded history, the warriors were all men. But in folk legends the women of the family were the heroes, and this was reflected in a script in Kunqu, a disappearing drama form. Cixi knew the story and took it upon herself to make it a part of the Peking Opera repertoire. She summoned the literary men of the court, mainly doctors and painters, and read out to them her translation of the Kunqu script. The men were divided into groups, each being given some episodes to write for Peking Opera. Supervising them was a woman – a widow and a poetess – who had been sought out by Cixi at the same time as Lady Miao. Cixi herself remained the chief editor of the whole drama. Since then, episodes of The Female Warriors of the Yang Family have become some of the most-performed and best-loved Peking Opera numbers, and have been much adapted into other art forms. The names of the female warriors have entered everyday language as synonyms for brave and bright women who outshine men.

Cixi detested age-old prejudices against women. During one opera performance, when a singer sang the oft-repeated line ‘the most vicious of all is the heart of a woman', she flew into a rage and ordered the singer off the stage. Her rejection of the traditional attitude was undoubtedly shaped by her own experience. No matter how successful her rule on behalf of her son and adopted son, she would always be denied the mandate to rule in her own right. Once the boys entered adulthood, she was obliged to give way and could no longer participate in politics. She could not even voice her opinions. Watching Emperor Guangxu shelving the modernisation projects she had initiated, Cixi could not fail to despair. And yet there was nothing she could do. Any attempt at changing the status quo would have to involve violent and extreme means, such as launching a palace coup – which she was not prepared to contemplate. Only one woman in Chinese history – Wu Zetian – had declared herself emperor and run the country as such. But she had had to do so in the face of mighty opposition, which she had quelled using hair-raisingly cruel means. On the long list of alleged bloody murders was that of her own son, the crown prince. Cixi was a different character and preferred to rule through consensus: winning over the opposition rather than killing them. As a result, she chose to observe the conditions of her retirement. But clearly she admired the female emperor, and would have liked to stake a similar claim – if the cost were not so high. Her feelings were known to Lady Miao, her painting teacher. The painter once presented her with a scroll that depicted Wu Zetian conducting state affairs as a legitimate sovereign. Cixi's acceptance of the painting says much about her aspirations and frustrations.