Read Online Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang - Free Book Online

part of the diary. The fake has puzzled historians, as the editions of the diary that exist in China contain no such references to Cixi. In the faked passages, residents in Beijing were seen to be hanging on Cixi’s every word about the fate of the empire. This may have been the case when Backhouse was in China decades later, but not in 1860, when she, as an imperial concubine, was a non-person to the public.

3 Emperor Xianfeng Dies (1860–61)
    JUST BEFORE HE fled to the Hunting Lodge, Emperor Xianfeng ordered his younger half-brother, Prince Gong, to remain in the capital and deal with the invaders. Prince Gong, twenty-seven years old, was the sixth son of their father, the one who had specifically been ruled out as successor to the throne because of his lack of visceral hatred for Westerners and his tendency to accommodate. Now, thanks to these qualities, he quickly settled with the allies – by accepting all their demands, including paying indemnities of eight million taels of silver to each European country. The Treaty of Beijing with Britain was signed on 24 October 1860 and the Treaty with France the following day. The allies left and peace was restored. Western powers began to install their representatives in Beijing, where they dealt with Prince Gong.
    The prince, pockmarked like most men of his time who had caught smallpox in childhood, was nonetheless good-looking. John Thomson, the celebrated photographer who later took photos of him, said that Prince Gong ‘hadwhat phrenologists would describe as a splendid head. His eyes were penetrating, and his face, when in repose, wore an expression of sullen resolution.’ When he sat, it was in the posture dictated for Manchu aristocrats: legs slightly apart and feet positioned at ten-past-ten. His robe embroidered with dragons in gold thread, his hat adorned with a plume in a jade holder with a coloured button that denoted his rank, he was the picture of a high prince. Whenever he held up his long-handled pipe, a flame would appear instantly at its tiny bejewelled bowl, struck by an attendant dropping on one knee. The prince’s pipe was held in his lined black satin boot, in an inside compartment – the gentleman’s ‘pocket’ in those days. These pockets held a variety of items, from tobacco to state papers, from sweets to pieces of tissue with which the aristocrats wiped their mouths and their ivory chopsticks after dining out. (They usually took their own chopsticks with them.) The prince’s chopstick-case, and a profusion of bejewelled objects including a fan-case, dangled from his girdle. When he travelled in the capital, his sedan-chair would be under a canopy, surrounded by a showy entourage on horseback. All traffic would make way for him. Nearer his destination, a horseman would ride ahead and alert people to his imminent arrival so that they would line up to greet him.
    Prince Gong’s half-brother, the emperor, enjoined that, as a great prince, he must not lower himself by receiving the Europeans in person, even though they were the victors. But the prince was practical and knew his brother’s order was unrealistic. He signed the treaties himself with the British and French, even arriving at the venue early to wait for Lord Elgin. When Elgin arrived, with an escort of 400 infantry, 100 cavalry and two bands playing at the head of the procession, Prince Gong advanced to greet him with his hands closed together in front of his chest, a gesture that he would use with an equal. Lord Elgin, according to General Grant, ‘returned him a proud contemptuous look, and merely bowed slightly, which must have made the blood run cold in poor Kung [Gong]’s veins. He was a delicate gentlemanlike-looking man . . .’ Elgin soon toned down his show of hauteur. ‘Both of the national representatives . . . appeared willing to treat each other as equals, but not as superiors.’ Prince Gong’s conciliatoriness won him sympathy from the Europeans. Elgin wrote a