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Reviews
A Imperatriz de Ferro: A concubina que criou a China moderna by Donaldson M. Garschagen, Jung Chang
mrucker's review against another edition
josiee's review against another edition
4.0
Minor: Ableism, Addiction, Animal cruelty, Body horror, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Chronic illness, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gore, Hate crime, Incest, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Sexual violence, Slavery, Suicide, Terminal illness, Torture, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Blood, Excrement, Police brutality, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Grief, Religious bigotry, Suicide attempt, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Colonisation, War, Injury/Injury detail, and Classism
journeyingjeff's review against another edition
4.0
Cixi's life was full of intrigue and power plays and she effectively managed to rule China for nearly the entire period from 1861 to 1908. I noticed many parallels with the life of Elizabeth I of England, her political astuteness and her willingness to have foes executed, but only when they endangered her hold on power. However, I think the author might be prone to exaggerate Cixi's good qualities and responsibility for modernizing China. This positive depiction may result from a desire to counter the prevailing historical narrative about Cixi, which has been overwhelmingly negative. The author effectively explains the historical context for someone that doesn't have a lot of familiarity with Chinese history. An intriguing read!
katy_bee's review against another edition
4.75
Moderate: Death, Suicide, Torture, and War
mmaguirk's review against another edition
4.0
bethanybarton's review against another edition
5.0
harlando's review against another edition
4.0
I wonder about the bad rap she has historically. She is generally characterized as scheming and grasping. She does clearly seem to have been doing some scheming, but she was on the right side of things more often than not. I think this a pretty common historical mistreatment of women. She is a bit like Hillary Clinton. People who have never met her speak ill of her, but the people who actually knew her seem to be almost universally impressed by her.
I learned a lot about the late imperial period which was more lively and interesting than I had suspected. She lived through the opium wars, Taiping and Boxer rebellions, European division of China, and the precursors to the Japanese invasion.
She had a difficult task ahead of her. The empire was in bad shape before she ever came to the palace and things mostly got worse inside and outside China. I think it would be a miracle for anyone to turn the situation around and generate a positive outcome under the circumstances. Maybe a really charismatic Westernizer could have pushed China into the modern world and played the western powers against each other, but that would require a unique person and some good luck.