Infatuated, he began picking her name from the nightly roster of choices to visit his bedchamber, and soon she bore him a son. At age 16, she was brought to the Forbidden City to join Emperor Xianfeng's harem-which may sound like punishment to modern ears, but was considered a swank role for Chinese women of her time.ĭaniele Vare's book, The Last Empress, says Yehenara (he calls her Yehonala) rose to the top of the concubine ranks when the emperor overheard her singing and asked to see her. She entered history on Novemas a rather ordinary Chinese girl named Yehenara, although there was a certain prestige in being born to a family from the ruling Manchu minority. What do we really know about this woman who indirectly controlled China's throne for almost half a century, in the twilight of the Qing dynasty? But recent scholarly analyses discredit many of those sensational stories and suggest a more complicated woman than this caricature. Others link her to tales of sexual intrigue within the palace walls, even questioning whether her favorite eunuch was truly a eunuch. Some sources paint her as a veritable wicked witch of the east, whose enemies often mysteriously dropped dead. A century after the death of China's last and most famous empress, Cixi, the story of her life and reign remains veiled by varying versions of the truth. History can be a slippery substance, particularly when it comes to personalities. Daniele Vare, an Italian diplomat in Peking, in his 1936 biography of Cixi,'The Last Empress' Nor is it certain that the historian, could he lift the veil, would discover the truth.' This vagueness is like the nebulous parts of a Chinese painting it has a charm that it might be a mistake to dispel.

Even when the facts are known, there are two or three versions, each giving a different rendering of what occurred. 'Too much mystery surrounds the Forbidden City for us to write of its inmates with assured authority.

Cixi book