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josiee's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
inspiring
sad
tense
slow-paced
4.0
Content Warnings
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
Fascinating read about a historical figure I knew next to nothing about. I came across this book after reading Stephen R. Platt's Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom, a history of the Taiping Rebellion, which briefly describes the young concubine Cixi's coup d'etat after the death of the Xianfeng emporer. I was interested in learning more about her.
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!
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
informative
medium-paced
4.75
I'm not normally a non fiction reader but I was enthralled by this. Chang is a very readable author with a lot of information presented in a really accessible way. While she clearly admires dowager empress Cixi and wants to rehabilitate her reputation, she also describes her errors and flaws. I knew little about this period in Chinese history and I fascinated by the political intrigue and wider social impact.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Death, Suicide, Torture, and War
mmaguirk's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
Very informative but such a slow pace and author goes back and forth expounding on random parallel concepts/events making the storyline drag. Wanted to put it down multiple times but hate not completing a work of literature so trudged through. Information could have been given in half of the page length.
bethanybarton's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
mysterious
medium-paced
5.0
harlando's review against another edition
4.0
Really good! She was a strong and very clever person and must have been interesting to spend time with.
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.
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.
lambsears's review against another edition
3.0
A fascinating biography about a remarkable woman, much of whose work has been lost in distorted history.
I will admit that I found some of the writing a little breathless in it's obvious admiration, but I knew nothing about the Dowager Empress and it seems she has had some pretty bad press since her death. Clearly, she was no saint and made plenty of mistakes, most of which she ultimately put her hands up for, although there is a tendency on the part of the author to gloss over some points. And lets face it, her mistakes were enormously eclipsed by the later disastrous rule of Chairman Mao.
Chang has done some very thorough research here, thanks to the release of hitherto unavailable documentation and presented it in a very approachable fashion, offering a glimpse at a hidden world.
I will admit that I found some of the writing a little breathless in it's obvious admiration, but I knew nothing about the Dowager Empress and it seems she has had some pretty bad press since her death. Clearly, she was no saint and made plenty of mistakes, most of which she ultimately put her hands up for, although there is a tendency on the part of the author to gloss over some points. And lets face it, her mistakes were enormously eclipsed by the later disastrous rule of Chairman Mao.
Chang has done some very thorough research here, thanks to the release of hitherto unavailable documentation and presented it in a very approachable fashion, offering a glimpse at a hidden world.
sevenlefts's review against another edition
4.0
Until I read this, all I knew about Cixi was from the scene at the beginning of the film The Last Emperor in which she bizarrely narrates her own death. I had no idea how powerful she had actually been, or anything about her role in the transformation of China from a feudal empire to a modern state.
Despite being a woman in a society that kept women out of the public eye, she used Manchu standards of filial association to have a strong say in how China was governed for the better part of the 19th century. Though she appointed her son, a nephew and finally a great-nephew as Emperor, she was the one in charge. She was a quick study, and although she made mistakes which led to many conflicts with Japan and western powers, she managed to keep China more or less intact during her lifetime. She made inroads in finance, communication, education, press freedoms and women's rights that are still noticeable in China today.
Cixi was no saint. She had the emperor poisoned with arsenic so that he would die (the day before she died!) and she could appoint his heir. She also had one of his consorts thrown down a well when she refused to commit suicide on Cixi's orders. But through much of the book it appears that Chang is trying to clear-up Cixi's tarnished image as either a despot or a weak ruler. And although Chang clearly admires Cixi's many accomplishments, she does so with a critical eye. In addition to being a solid biography of one of the least-known powerful women in history, it's also a good introduction to the geopolitics of east Asia during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Despite being a woman in a society that kept women out of the public eye, she used Manchu standards of filial association to have a strong say in how China was governed for the better part of the 19th century. Though she appointed her son, a nephew and finally a great-nephew as Emperor, she was the one in charge. She was a quick study, and although she made mistakes which led to many conflicts with Japan and western powers, she managed to keep China more or less intact during her lifetime. She made inroads in finance, communication, education, press freedoms and women's rights that are still noticeable in China today.
Cixi was no saint. She had the emperor poisoned with arsenic so that he would die (the day before she died!) and she could appoint his heir. She also had one of his consorts thrown down a well when she refused to commit suicide on Cixi's orders. But through much of the book it appears that Chang is trying to clear-up Cixi's tarnished image as either a despot or a weak ruler. And although Chang clearly admires Cixi's many accomplishments, she does so with a critical eye. In addition to being a solid biography of one of the least-known powerful women in history, it's also a good introduction to the geopolitics of east Asia during the late 1800s and early 1900s.