Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (29 page)

Cixi loved birds and animals. She learned how to rear and breed them and engaged a eunuch who was a great expert to teach her. Birds in his care were not always confined, although there were hundreds of cages hanging in rows of bamboo frames in one of the large courtyards. Some flew freely, having made their home in the Summer Palace. To protect these rare species, young men with knowledge of birds were recruited into the Praetorian Guards to patrol the grounds with crossbows, ready to shoot down any natural predators or unwanted wild birds that had the temerity to gatecrash. The demand for foods for Cixi’s birds created a flourishing trade outside the Summer Palace, selling all sorts of caterpillars, grasshoppers, crickets and ant nests, each said to benefit a different avian attribute.

Some birds were trained to fly towards a high-pitched trill in order to receive their favoured foods. Wherever Cixi was whether climbing a hill or boating in the lake, eunuchs near her would sound the trill so that the birds would fly around her. Cixi herself was skilled at imitating birdsong and could entice birds to her outstretched fingertips. Her bird-taming ability later mesmerised Western visitors. One, her American portraitist Katharine Carl, wrote:

She had a long, wand-like stick, which had been cut from a sapling and freshly stripped of its bark. She loved the faint forest odor of these freshly cut sticks . . . she held the wand she carried aloft and made a low, bird-like sound with her lips, never taking her eyes off the bird . . . He fluttered and began to descend from bough to bough until he lighted upon the crook of her wand, when she gently moved her other hand up nearer and nearer, until it finally rested on her finger!

Miss Carl was ‘watching with breathless attention, and so tense and absorbed had I become that the sudden cessation, when the bird finally came upon her finger, caused me a throb of almost pain.’

Even fish were induced to jump onto her open palms – to her own childlike shrieks. It took buckets of a special kind of earthworm, red and about 3 centimetres long, to entice the fish to leap up towards a human hand at a quay where Cixi often disembarked for lunch.

She bred dozens of dogs. They lived in a pavilion furnished with silk cushions to sleep on and a large wardrobe of jackets, in brocades embroidered with chrysanthemums, crab-apple blossoms and other gorgeous patterns. To avoid undesirable couplings, only her dogs were allowed in the palace grounds. The hundreds of pet dogs belonging to the court ladies and eunuchs had to be kept in their owners’ own courtyards.
Some dog breeders considered that Cixi ‘did more for the Pekingese than any other fancier since the origin of the breed’. One type of Pekinese whose breeding she discontinued was the
‘sleeve-dog’, a miniature that could be carried in the courtiers’ ample sleeves that were used as pockets. The growth of the sleeve-dogs was said to be stunted by feeding them only on sweets and wine and making them wear tight-fitting wire-mesh waistcoats. Cixi told Katharine Carl that she detested such unnatural methods, and that she could not understand why animals should be deformed for man’s pleasure.

The pets she was particularly fond of were a Pekinese pug and a Skye terrier. The latter could perform tricks and would lie completely still at Cixi’s command, moving only when she told him to, no matter how many others spoke to him. The Pekinese pug had long and silky fawn-coloured hair and large, pale-brown, liquid eyes. He was not easily taught and was affectionately called Little Fool (
sha-zi
) by Cixi. Later she had their portraits painted by Katharine Carl, sitting behind the painter herself and taking ‘
the liveliest interest’.

In Beijing there was a large collection of birds and animals built up by the French missionary zoologist and botanist Armand David, who, since coming to China in the early years of Cixi’s reign, had identified many hundreds of new species unknown in Europe, among them the giant panda. When Cixi heard about the collection she was intrigued and eager to see it. It so happened that the collection was attached to a Catholic cathedral, which overlooked the Sea Palace. After negotiations with the Vatican (through an English intermediary), her government paid 400,000 taels for another cathedral to be built elsewhere, and bought the old church along with the collection.
Cixi visited it, but only once. She had scant interest in the dead creatures.

The only competitive games that tradition permitted her were parlour games. Cixi did not enjoy cards, or mah-jong, which she refused to allow at court. Dice-throwing was a popular pastime, and Cixi occasionally played.
She invented a dice game not unlike ‘Snakes and Ladders’, except that the board was a map of the Chinese empire, with all the provinces marked in different colours. Eight carved ivory deities, representing the legendary eight Taoist Immortals, travelled round the empire attempting to reach the capital. In the process, they might be diverted to beauty spots like Hangzhou, or sent into exile, in which case they would have to drop out – all depending on the throw of the dice. The one who reached Beijing first was the winner and would receive sweets and cakes, while the losers had to sing a song or tell a joke. Gambling was not involved.
In fact it was officially banned, with offenders being fined and caned.

Painting was a serious hobby, for which Cixi engaged a Lady Miao, a young widow, to be her teacher. Lady Miao was Han and was conspicuous in the court from her hair to her toes. Instead of the complicated and much-decorated Manchu headdress, she combed her hair in a neat coil on the back of her head and encircled the coil with strings of pearls. Rather than a full-length Manchu robe, she wore a loose upper garment that came down to just below her knees, over a long plaited skirt, which revealed a pair of ‘three-inch golden lilies’ – bound feet on which she teetered and swayed along in agony. Cixi, who as a Manchu had escaped foot-binding, would
cringe at the sight of the deformed feet. Once before, when she had set eyes on the bare feet of one of the nurses who provided milk for her, she had said that she could not bear to see them, and had had them unbound. Now she asked Lady Miao to unbind her feet, an order that the painting teacher was only too happy to obey.

Under Lady Miao’s tutorship, Cixi became a proficient amateur painter, wielding her brush ‘with power and precision’, according to her teacher. She achieved something much valued in calligraphy: to write in just one brush stroke a giant character that was as big as a human figure. These characters, denoting ‘longevity’ and ‘happiness’, were ritually given to top officials as gifts. Lady Miao’s reputation as the empress dowager’s tutor enabled her to sell her own paintings for high prices, to buy a large house and support her family.

Near the Summer Palace were many Buddhist and Taoist temples, which organised regular festivals, which women, if chaperoned, could attend, dressed in the most gorgeous colours. Folk artists came from far and wide, walking on stilts, bouncing in lion-dances, waving dragon-lanterns and performing acrobatic and magic tricks. As they passed by the Summer Palace,
Cixi often watched from a tower above the walls. Knowing the empress dowager was there, the performers would show off their skills, and she would cheer and give generous tips. One bearded man, who gyrated in the disguise of a village woman, was for a while the recipient of the largest rewards: Cixi was a great fan of popular entertainments and never regarded them as beneath her.

It was in this spirit that she helped turn the genre of Peking Opera into the national opera of China. This genre had traditionally been for the ‘average folk of the alleys and villages’, as its music, stories and humour were easy to follow and enjoy. Considered ‘vulgar’, it had been shunned by the court, where only orthodox opera, with its restricted tunes and story lines, was staged. Cixi’s husband, Emperor Xianfeng, began to patronise Peking Opera, but it fell to Cixi to mould it into a sophisticated art form, while retaining its playfulness. She extended royal approval by bringing in artists from outside the court to perform for her and to instruct the eunuchs in the Music Department. She demanded professionalism. Historically, Peking Opera was rather casual, with unpunctual opening times, slapdash make-up and costumes; actors would often hail friends from the stage or make impromptu jokes. Cixi addressed all these details with a series of specific orders. She made punctuality mandatory, threatening to cane repeated offenders. On one occasion a principal actor, Tan Xinpei, was late, and she, being a huge fan and feeling unable to have him caned, made him play a clownish pig in
The Monkey King
. Professional acting was handsomely rewarded. While previous emperors
tipped the leading players one tael of silver each at most, Cixi habitually lavished dozens of taels on them – as much as sixty to a lead actor, for instance to Tan, who was also given presents as part of the dowry for his daughter’s wedding. (In comparison, the chief of the Music Department at the court earned seven taels a month.) In one year her tips to all involved in the opera shows totalled 33,000 taels.

Being so well treated, Peking Opera actors became celebrities – like the film stars of a later age. The public could see how prestigious they were: in one case, 218 artists travelled in the royal procession from the Summer Palace to the Forbidden City, all on horseback, with twelve carts carrying their costumes and paraphernalia. A career in the opera became highly sought-after.

Cixi’s opera houses were constructed with carefully designed artistry. In the Sea Palace, a pavilion-style theatre was built in the middle of the lake, where there were lotuses all around so that summer shows took place among their blooms. In the Forbidden City, a heated glass conservatory was erected, as a cosy warm theatre in the midst of winds and snows. In the Summer Palace, she restored a two-storey theatre in an area that attracted orioles: their call was said to go well with the arias. Then she built another, more magnificent three-storey opera house, with a stage 21 metres high, 17 metres wide and 16 metres deep, and a backstage large enough to hold complicated sets. This was the grandest theatre in China. Both the ceiling and the floor could be opened during the performance, to allow gods to descend from Heaven and the Buddha to rise from the depths of the Earth sitting on an enormous lotus flower; snowflakes (white confetti) could shower from the sky, and water could spout upwards from the mouth of a giant turtle. A pool of water under the stage enhanced the acoustics. The theatre was situated next to the vast lake, so that the melody could travel unimpeded over its surface.

The Peking Opera repertoire was enormously expanded under Cixi. She revived a number of obsolete dramatic pieces by having their libretti dug up from the court archives and adapted to the tunes of Peking Opera. In the process of adaptation, and trying to accommodate Cixi’s own lines, one actor-composer, Wang Yaoqing, enlarged the Opera’s musical range. With Cixi’s rewards and encouragement, the actor-composer revolutionised Peking Opera by giving female characters (played by men, including him) proper acting roles. They had traditionally been confined to minor parts and could only sing stiffly, not act. Now, for the first time, Peking Opera had lead female roles.

In this undertaking, Cixi became intimately involved in the writing of a 105-episode work,
The Warriors of the Yang Family
, about a tenth- to eleventh-century family who took up arms defending China against invaders. In recorded history, the warriors were all men. But in folk legends the women of the family were the heroes, and this was reflected in a script in Kunqu, a disappearing drama form. Cixi knew the story and took it upon herself to make it a part of the Peking Opera repertoire. She summoned the literary men of the court, mainly doctors and painters, and read out to them her translation of the Kunqu script. The men were divided into groups, each being given some episodes to write for Peking Opera. Supervising them was a woman – a widow and a poetess – who had been sought out by Cixi at the same time as Lady Miao. Cixi herself remained the chief editor of the whole drama. Since then, episodes of
The
Female
Warriors of the Yang Family
have become some of the most-performed and best-loved Peking Opera numbers, and have been much adapted into other art forms. The names of the female warriors have entered everyday language as synonyms for brave and bright women who outshine men.

Cixi detested age-old prejudices against women. During one opera performance, when a singer sang the oft-repeated line
‘the most vicious of all is the heart of a woman’, she flew into a rage and ordered the singer off the stage. Her rejection of the traditional attitude was undoubtedly shaped by her own experience. No matter how successful her rule on behalf of her son and adopted son, she would always be denied the mandate to rule in her own right. Once the boys entered adulthood, she was obliged to give way and could no longer participate in politics. She could not even voice her opinions. Watching Emperor Guangxu shelving the modernisation projects she had initiated, Cixi could not fail to despair. And yet there was nothing she could do. Any attempt at changing the status quo would have to involve violent and extreme means, such as launching a palace coup – which she was not prepared to contemplate. Only one woman in Chinese history – Wu Zetian – had declared herself emperor and run the country as such. But she had had to do so in the face of mighty opposition, which she had quelled using hair-raisingly cruel means. On the long list of alleged bloody murders was that of her own son, the crown prince. Cixi was a different character and preferred to rule through consensus: winning over the opposition rather than killing them. As a result, she chose to observe the conditions of her retirement. But clearly she admired the female emperor, and would have liked to stake a similar claim – if the cost were not so high. Her feelings were known to
Lady Miao, her painting teacher. The painter once presented her with a scroll that depicted Wu Zetian conducting state affairs as a legitimate sovereign. Cixi’s acceptance of the painting says much about her aspirations and frustrations.