DRAGON LADY

av Sterling Seagrave

Papermac 1993.

Häftad tegelsten i mycket gott skick, lite bruksspår.

Tzu Hsi, had read about Queen Victoria, but thought that she herself must be the cleverest woman who ever lived. She had been a low-ranking concubine of the lethargic Hsien Feng Emperor, and had borne his only living son. This (although there was no Chinese law of primogeniture) gave her status in the Imperial household. When Hsien Feng died she became Dowager Empress and regent and ruled China for nearly half a century, surviving the Anglo- French invasion, the Opium Wars, defeat by Japan, the Boxer uprisings, the whole disastrous collision course between the Middle Kingdom and the expansionist Western demons. 'For forty years have I lain on brushwood and eaten bitterness because of them,' she said. She saw Peking fall twice. But in 1908 she died peacefully in the Forbidden City, wearing the Robes of Longevity, her face correctly turned towards the south. Tzu Hsi was not a Chinese girl with lily feet but a tough Manchu from the South. That she came from a poor official's family but died worth millions in gold and silver shows that she was certainly acquisitive.

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