Reading Chinese carried Cixi from junior concubine to ruler behind the curtain
Most Manchu women in the Qing palace could not read Chinese. Cixi could, and an ailing emperor began having her read state papers and write out his instructions. That apprenticeship taught her how the empire ran, and after his death she used it to steer China, in one form or another, for nearly half a century.
Born in Beijing in 1835 to a Manchu official, she was chosen in 1851 from about 60 candidates as a concubine for the Xianfeng Emperor, entering the Forbidden City at a low rank. In 1856 she bore his only surviving son, which lifted her to second place among his consorts. Meanwhile the Second Opium War went badly: in 1860 British and French troops burned the Old Summer Palace and the court fled north to Rehe, where the emperor, sinking into illness, named eight regents for his young heir and died the following year.
Her position as the junior empress dowager carried no formal power, so she built alliances. She proposed that she and the senior widow, Ci'an, a long-time friend, rule jointly, and she courted two of the late emperor's brothers, Prince Gong and Prince Chun. Returning to Beijing ahead of the funeral procession gave her time to split the regents and have them dismissed on charges of mishandling the foreigners. Three were executed, but she refused to punish their families as tradition allowed. Known as the Xinyou Coup of 1861, it made her the only Qing empress dowager to act as regent, ruling from behind a curtain.
She guided the Tongzhi Restoration, adopting Western weapons and technology while rejecting Western political institutions. When her son died in 1875 she placed her nephew on the throne as the Guangxu Emperor, and in 1898 she crushed his Hundred Days' Reform and confined him for life. Backing the Boxers in 1900 brought foreign occupation of Beijing and her flight to Xi'an.
Judgements remain divided. Long cast as a ruthless reactionary, she is seen by some historians as a pragmatic reformer blamed for problems beyond her control, noting her support for Peking University and the Beiyang Army. She died in 1908.
Source: Empress Dowager Cixi
