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Book: Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China by Jung Chang
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Authors: Jung Chang
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was adamant. Lord Elgin had carried to China on his two trips in 1858 and 1860 handwritten letters from Queen Victoria to Emperor Xianfeng, professing goodwill. These letters were brought back to Britain, undelivered and unopened.
In the north, in the Hunting Lodge beyond the Great Wall, Emperor Xianfeng maintained contact with Prince Gong in Beijing, and continued his administrative routine, dealing with dozens of reports from all over the empire each day. The documents were delivered through an ancient, but efficient system, with messengers riding on horses whose speed was specified, depending on the urgency of the message. The most urgent took two days to arrive from Beijing. At first, the emperor was keen to return to the capital once the British and French had pulled out. The weather at the Lodge was getting very cold and worse with each passing day. Having not been inhabited for decades, the palaces were not equipped to cope with the severe winter. But then he hesitated: several times, after announcing that he was departing, he cancelled the trip. Officials urged him to go, anxiously pointing out that the country risked instability if the emperor was not on the throne in the capital. But the argument did not move the monarch; nor did the thought of his own health. He finally chose to spend the grim winter in the northern wilderness, knowing it was bad for his delicate physique. The emperor, it appears, was determined not to be in the same city as the Western legations. He seems to have been living out the Chinese idea of ultimate hatred: ‘Not under the same sky!’ ( bu-gong-dai-tian ). Or he could not bear being near the ravaged Old Summer Palace. His self-imposed exile was prolonged, and became permanent. Spending the interminable harsh winter in the ill-equipped Hunting Lodge, he fell ill and coughed blood. Eleven months after arriving, on 22 August 1861, he died.
In the last months of his life, although he still dealt with state matters diligently, stopping working only on the days he was confined to bed, he no longer wrote the same kind of detailed instructions as before. He allowed himself to indulge in his real passions, opera and other music, which were performed almost every day. The performers had been summoned from Beijing to the Lodge as soon as he had settled down there, and the moment they arrived they had been rushed to him, given no time to change into their costumes. Well over 200 singers, dancers and musicians eventually crowded the Lodge, and the place ran out of habitable rooms. The emperor spent a lot of time with them, selecting the repertoires and picking the cast, watching rehearsals and arguing with the performers about interpretations. He listened to the singing of music that he himself had composed. The performances, which usually lasted for hours, were sometimes staged on an islet in the middle of a lake, in a courtyard theatre poetically named a ‘Touch of Cloud’. At other times they were held in the quarters where he lived, or where Cixi and their young son lived. In the last sixteen days of his life the emperor watchedoperas on eleven days, each day for several hours. Two days before he died, he listened to opera from 1.45 to 6.55 p.m., with a break of only twenty-seven minutes. The next day’s scheduled performance had to be cancelled. The emperor was feeling extremely sick, and then he lost consciousness.
When he became conscious again that night, Xianfeng summoned to his bedside the men closest to him, his old inner circle, eight princes and ministers, and announced his will to them. His only son, by Cixi, now five years old, would be the next emperor, and the eight men were to form a Board of Regents, to be jointly in charge. They asked him to write the will down in his own hand in crimson ink, to give it unquestioned authority, but he was unable to hold the brush. So one of the men wrote it for him, making it clear that this had been the emperor’s wish. Emperor Xianfeng died
In the north, in the Hunting Lodge beyond the Great Wall, Emperor Xianfeng maintained contact with Prince Gong in Beijing, and continued his administrative routine, dealing with dozens of reports from all over the empire each day. The documents were delivered through an ancient, but efficient system, with messengers riding on horses whose speed was specified, depending on the urgency of the message. The most urgent took two days to arrive from Beijing. At first, the emperor was keen to return to the capital once the British and French had pulled out. The weather at the Lodge was getting very cold and worse with each passing day. Having not been inhabited for decades, the palaces were not equipped to cope with the severe winter. But then he hesitated: several times, after announcing that he was departing, he cancelled the trip. Officials urged him to go, anxiously pointing out that the country risked instability if the emperor was not on the throne in the capital. But the argument did not move the monarch; nor did the thought of his own health. He finally chose to spend the grim winter in the northern wilderness, knowing it was bad for his delicate physique. The emperor, it appears, was determined not to be in the same city as the Western legations. He seems to have been living out the Chinese idea of ultimate hatred: ‘Not under the same sky!’ ( bu-gong-dai-tian ). Or he could not bear being near the ravaged Old Summer Palace. His self-imposed exile was prolonged, and became permanent. Spending the interminable harsh winter in the ill-equipped Hunting Lodge, he fell ill and coughed blood. Eleven months after arriving, on 22 August 1861, he died.
In the last months of his life, although he still dealt with state matters diligently, stopping working only on the days he was confined to bed, he no longer wrote the same kind of detailed instructions as before. He allowed himself to indulge in his real passions, opera and other music, which were performed almost every day. The performers had been summoned from Beijing to the Lodge as soon as he had settled down there, and the moment they arrived they had been rushed to him, given no time to change into their costumes. Well over 200 singers, dancers and musicians eventually crowded the Lodge, and the place ran out of habitable rooms. The emperor spent a lot of time with them, selecting the repertoires and picking the cast, watching rehearsals and arguing with the performers about interpretations. He listened to the singing of music that he himself had composed. The performances, which usually lasted for hours, were sometimes staged on an islet in the middle of a lake, in a courtyard theatre poetically named a ‘Touch of Cloud’. At other times they were held in the quarters where he lived, or where Cixi and their young son lived. In the last sixteen days of his life the emperor watchedoperas on eleven days, each day for several hours. Two days before he died, he listened to opera from 1.45 to 6.55 p.m., with a break of only twenty-seven minutes. The next day’s scheduled performance had to be cancelled. The emperor was feeling extremely sick, and then he lost consciousness.
When he became conscious again that night, Xianfeng summoned to his bedside the men closest to him, his old inner circle, eight princes and ministers, and announced his will to them. His only son, by Cixi, now five years old, would be the next emperor, and the eight men were to form a Board of Regents, to be jointly in charge. They asked him to write the will down in his own hand in crimson ink, to give it unquestioned authority, but he was unable to hold the brush. So one of the men wrote it for him, making it clear that this had been the emperor’s wish. Emperor Xianfeng died
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