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Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China
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List Price: $18.95
Our Price: $12.89
Your Save: $ 6.06 ( 32% )
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Manufacturer: Vintage
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 951.035092
EAN: 9780679733690
ISBN: 0679733698
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 624
Publication Date: 1993-08-31
Publisher: Vintage
Release Date: 1993-08-31
Studio: Vintage
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Editorial Reviews:
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The author of The Soong Dynasty gives us our most vivid and reliable biography yet of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, remembered through the exaggeration and falsehood of legend as the ruthless Manchu concubine who seduced and murdered her way to the Chinese throne in 1861.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: fascinating
Comment: Truth is still much more interesting than
fiction. A glimpse into a different world.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Well-researched
Comment: This book is a good read for anyone wanting to know the truth about the infamous Empress Tzu Hsi/Cixi. Seagrave clearly has researched his facts, and I also enjoyed the fact that he shared facts about China itself as well, and about the Manchu court among other things, to add to the facts that he found out about Tzu Hsi herself. My only real beef is with the title, as Cixi was not really the last empress (Empress Dowager Longyu and Empress Wan Rong, who was only titular Empress) came after her, though it could be argued that Cixi was the last Empress who had any real power.
This book does much to restore Cixi's image, without trying to praise her or make up good things about her, in my opinion. A must-read for anyone wanting to know about Cixi, in my opinion.
Customer Rating:
Summary: More a history book than a biography
Comment: People expecting to find a straightforward biography will be surprised by the lack of solid material on the Empress Dowager. Instead 'Dragon Lady' is a detailed history book containing important events in China that led to the fall of the Manchu empire. The huge cast of characters described by Seagrave can be daunting at times but with a little effort, it is a rewarding read and gives a vivid picture of life in 19th century China for both the Chinese and the foreigners living there at the time.
Seagrave makes a good effort at uncovering the motivations behind the Manchu government and the Western powers, and the truth is unsettling to say the least. Anyone who reads this will get a good understanding as to why the current Chinese government mistrusts the West so much.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Revisionist View But No Definitive Answers
Comment: The life story of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi (or Cixi) seems destined to remain shrouded in the fog that surrounds the history of the Forbidden City in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She has been portrayed as a single-minded ruthless ruler who murdered her son in order to retain power, engaged in sexual escapades with her "eunuchs", and wasted precious military resources on personal luxuries. Sterling Seagrave presents a revisionist view of her as being on the edges of power, barely surviving court intrigues, and an almost unwilling political actor.
The first view was perpetrated by Edmund Backhouse and held from the early 1900's until Backhouse was exposed as a forger and con man by Hugh Trevor-Roper in his 1976 book Hermit of Peking: The Hidden Life of Sir Edmund Backhouse (History & Politics). Backhouse had forged a purportedly Chinese diary. In his own memoirs Backhouse revealed himself to be delusional as well as pornographic. He claimed to have sexual liaisons with a parade of famous people including prime minister Lord Rosebery, Oscar Wilde, and Tzu Hsi herself (some 150 to 200 times by his account). Backhouse also is reported to have fabricated thousands of corroborating documents that he donated to eminent libraries in England.
Seagrave takes Trevor-Roper's work as a starting point and then launches into his own history that soon bogs down in minute details of court intrigue. While it seems clear that Backhouse's accounts have no credibility, it is not so clear that Seagrave's account is a fair, full, and true account either.
Trevor-Roper and Seagrave have their own credibility issues. Trevor-Roper initially authenticated the false `Hitler diaries' in 1983, which benefited his employer the Times of London. He later withdrew this opinion when scientific tests proved the documents were fakes. As for Seagrave he wrote the book Yellow Rain: A Journey Through the Terror of Chemical Warfarein 1981 endorsing the claim that the Soviets engaged in chemical warfare against the Hmong peoples. That dispute has never been resolved.
The recent novels by Anchee Min (Empress Orchidand The Last Empress: A Novel) have expressed a view similar to the one presented by Seagrave. Tzu Hsi is presented as more of a victim of political intrigue than a perpetrator of murderous plots. A version of the older view was set forth in George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman and the Dragon Lady.
On the whole I have found the attempt to understand who Tzu Hsi really was, how much power she possessed, and how she exercised that power to be incredibly frustrating. The Chinese imperial court was so absurdly isolated for so long that it appears impossible to ever determine the truth of the matter. My guess, for what it's worth, is that Seagrave and Min version is likely more true and that the portrayal of her as the evil dragon lady conveniently fed into the justification of British imperial aggression.
This review has strayed farther from discussing the merits of this book than I like to do. Seagrave performed a service in exploding Backhouse's false history, but his writing is not particularly good, he loses the reader (this one anyway) in a maze of details, and he asserts facts with far more certitude than appears warranted. I can not recommend reading the book unless you really want to immerse yourself in the mystery of Tzu Hsi's life. This book tells part of the story, but can not be relied upon to tell it all.
Customer Rating:
Summary: So what really DID happen to the Pearl Concubine?
Comment: Until I read this book (and another recent one Empress Orchid) I had been convinced that Tzu Hsi was an evil, scheming witch who survived her successive regencies by having the child emperors imprisoned and murdered, for that is the tale told by Backhouse, the self-proclaimed expert. That theory began to crumble in the 70's when Hugh Trevor-Roper wrote his wonderful Hermit of Peking: The Hidden Life of Sir Edmund Backhouse (History & Politics) which pretty well debunked EVERYTHING that Backhouse said about anything. Backhouse was exposed as a liar, thief, forger and false historian. Why did he do it? Because that was the way his brain was wired, and he was a genius, if a mad one.
During Backhouse's long life there was no one to take him to task over it, since the Europeans liked the excuse it gave them for their terrible behavior during the Boxer rebellion, when tens of thousands of Chinese were murdered by the English, Russians, Japanese, Germans and Americans in retribution for the murders of less than fifty people, most of whom were killed in one place on the orders of one person, and many of whom had it coming. So no one looked for a reason to doubt, and Tzu Hsi took the blame for the evil acts of the occupying powers.
The Qing dynasty was failing during her long regency, due to their inability to fight against the invaders. Every loss of territory to Japan, Germany, England or even Portugal was a knife in the side of the Manchus. Han rebels took Backhouse's story and turned it into a propaganda campaign against the Manchu, retelling the story around the world. The isolated Empress was never to know the full extent of the slander directed against her.
This book is a major work by a great researcher and writer. It makes a wonderful read and should not be missed by any lover of Chinese history.
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