Empress Orchid

Empress Orchid is a historical novel covering the first 15 years of the last empress of China, Empress Dowager Cixi's, reign. Before reading this book I knew nothing about Cixi and her legacy. I discovered a world of ritual, wealth, power, deceit and sorrow that existed in the Forbidden City for hundreds of years. I find it infuriating that historically, women in power lives' and personalities are lambasted and spun so as to create a negative and inaccurate portrayal of who they really were. In Empress Orchid and its follow up novel The Last Empress Anchee Min attempts to deconstruct the elaborate lies surround Cixi's reign and portray her as the woman she really was.

Cixi, or Orchid, is the daughter of a minor Manchu noble whose family lost almost everything when her father passed away. In order to save her family from desolation, Orchid presents herself to the Emperor of China, along with thousands of other young women,to be chosen as one of his concubines.  Surprisingly, Orchid is chosen as the fourth wife out of seven. She believes that she is lucky because as wife, unlike the Emperor's hundreds of concubines, she has a chance at winning his heart and bearing him a son. She quickly learns that not everything is at it seems in the Forbidden City, and that love and honesty is not enough to get by. Instead, she must depend on her own cunning, will and passion in order climb to the top of power and gain the Emperors attention. She does this all whilst navigating a social and political minefield where one wrong step can lead to death. 

After finishing Empress Orchid  I delved deeper into Cixi's history and was surprised by what I found. Apparently, it is a widely held belief in modern day China that Cixi was an evil woman and that she was responsible for China's embarrassing defeat in the Boxer Rebellion and the era of foreign spheres of power. I found it hard to believe that she was as horrible as these claims, so I searched harder for more accurate accounts. Within the past decade or so historians have begun to uncover information that proves that she wasn't as horrible a person or ruler as some would like us to believe. Foreign powers published many slanderous accounts of the Empress, so as to justify invading China and taking huge spheres of trade, land, money and power. Many historians believe that if it wasn't for Cixi's leadership, China would have fallen to foreign powers and internal discord much sooner. I plan on trying to find more historically accurate accounts of Cixi when I get a chance to drag myself to the UB library.