A review by avefrater
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang
5.0
I wrote a long review and then GoodReads crashed... Here is the shorter version:
- I need to read more books about Chinese history! This was a great start. My boyfriend and I exchanged books for Christmas Eve, I gave him the 3 key words of “China”, “self-realization”, and “feminism” — and he knocked it out of the park with this book!
- Did not mind the positive take on Cixi as much as other readers did, since many Chinese people (including my mom) curse her name and call her a “despot”. Surely one positively skewed biography can’t hurt?
- Also, she was flawed, for sure, but how many flawed historical men get lauded in their biographies??? All of them!
- She committed heinous deeds BUT she also brought modernization into China, did many great things, and was a powerful woman in a country and time when that was a rarity.
- This book lays that out in a great fashion. The middle is a little bit of a slog, but any time it focuses solely on Cixi or on the descriptions of Court life, it’s a gem. Greatly enjoyed reading it.
- I need to read more books about Chinese history! This was a great start. My boyfriend and I exchanged books for Christmas Eve, I gave him the 3 key words of “China”, “self-realization”, and “feminism” — and he knocked it out of the park with this book!
- Did not mind the positive take on Cixi as much as other readers did, since many Chinese people (including my mom) curse her name and call her a “despot”. Surely one positively skewed biography can’t hurt?
- Also, she was flawed, for sure, but how many flawed historical men get lauded in their biographies??? All of them!
- She committed heinous deeds BUT she also brought modernization into China, did many great things, and was a powerful woman in a country and time when that was a rarity.
- This book lays that out in a great fashion. The middle is a little bit of a slog, but any time it focuses solely on Cixi or on the descriptions of Court life, it’s a gem. Greatly enjoyed reading it.