Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

Name: Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China
Author: Jung Chang
ISBN: 9780307456700

by Jung Chang

Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China is a 2013 biography written by Jung Chang, published by Alfred A. Knopf. Chang presents a sympathetic portrait of the Empress Dowager Cixi, who unofficially controlled the Manchu Qing dynasty in China for 47 years, from 1861 to her death in 1908. Chang argues that Cixi has been "deemed either tyrannical and vicious, or hopelessly incompetent—or both", and that this view is both simplistic and inaccurate. Chang portrays her as intelligent, open-minded, and a proto-feminist limited by a xenophobic and deeply conservative imperial bureaucracy. Although Cixi is often accused of reactionary conservatism, Chang concludes that Cixi "brought medieval China into the modern age."

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"Empress Cixi — a low-ranking consort who became regent for her son and ruled for four decades — is often perceived as a viciously insular ruler who brought down the Qing dynasty, China’s last emperors. Jung Chang is out to change that, with a biography that takes on elements of the best political thrillers. Chang’s sympathy for Cixi is strongly in evidence in this fascinating story, and her ability to assemble context unobtrusively in the background makes her exhaustive research seem effortless. Cixi is one of those necessary biographies that illuminate an era, as well as recounting a life."

NPR Books We Love — 2014 · apps.npr.org