The Last Empress (25 page)

Both Prince Ts'eng and Prince Ch'un Junior insisted that hiring a past enemy was itself an act of betrayal.

Guang-hsu bore the pressure until the last minute. Then he changed his mind and canceled the commission.

"Had it been done," the disappointed Prince Kung complained later, "China would have been safe and Japan would have eventually paid us an indemnity."

I did not realize it then, but the moment the Emperor changed his mind, his uncle became disheartened. So disheartened that, over the days and weeks to come, Prince Kung would gradually withdraw. I suspected that his pride had been injured but that he would eventually get over it and continue his fight for the dynasty. But Prince Kung's heart retreated to his chrysanthemum garden and he would never come out again.

By the end of January 1895 Guang-hsu realized that he had no other option but to negotiate with Japan. To his further humiliation, Japan refused to discuss the treaty with anyone except the disgraced Li Hung-chang.

On February 13, Guang-hsu relieved Li of his duties as viceroy of Chihli and instructed him to lead the Chinese diplomatic effort. Once again, I was to receive Li Hung-chang in the name of the Emperor.

Li did not want to come to Peking. He begged to be excused from his duty. Believing that the Emperor and the Ironhats would sooner or later make him a scapegoat, he had no confidence that he would survive. He pointed out that things had changed. We had lost our bargaining chip. There was no way to bring Japan to the negotiating table.

"Any man who represents China and signs the treaty will have to sign away parts of China," Li predicted. "It will be a thankless task, and the nation will blame him no matter what the reason for the outcome."

I pleaded with him to think it over, and sent him a personal invitation to have dinner with me.

Li responded, saying in his message that he was not fit for the honor and his advanced age and ill health made travel difficult.

"I wish that I weren't the Empress of China," I wrote back to Li. "The Japanese are on their way to Peking, and I can't bear to even begin to imagine how they will violate the Imperial ancestral grounds."

Perhaps it was my urgent tone, perhaps it was his sense of noblesse oblige—whatever the reason—Li Hung-chang honored me with his presence, and he was quickly appointed as China's chief negotiator. He arrived at Shimonoseki, Japan, on March 19, 1895. About a month later,
the negotiations took a startling turn: while leaving one of the sessions with Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi, Li was shot in the face by a Japanese extremist.

"I was almost glad the incident took place," Li replied when I wrote asking after his condition. "The bullet grazed my left cheek. It gained me what I could never get at the negotiating table—the world's sympathy."

The shooting resulted in an international outcry for Japan to moderate its demands on China.

I felt that I had sent Li to die and he survived only by pure luck.

Also in his message Li Hung-chang prepared Emperor Guang-hsu for the most difficult decision: to agree to the negotiated terms, including the cession to Japan in perpetuity of the island of Taiwan, the Pescadores and the Liaotung Peninsula; the opening of seven Chinese ports to Japanese trade; the payment of two hundred million taels, with permission for Japan to occupy Weihaiwei Harbor until this indemnity was cleared; and recognition of the "full and complete autonomy and independence of Korea," which meant relinquishing it to Japan.

***

Guang-hsu sat on the Dragon Throne and wept. When Li Hung-chang returned to Peking for consultations, he could not get a word out of the Emperor.

It was then that I told Li what I had been thinking: "Give up what China must in the form of money, but not land."

He raised his eyes. "Yes, Your Majesty."

I told him that once we had sanctioned foreign occupation inland, as we had allowed to happen with the Russians in our Ili region, China would forever be lost.

Li understood perfectly and negotiated accordingly.

The image of Li Hung-chang in the audience hall with his forehead touching the ground remained in my mind after he was gone. I sat frozen. The sound of a big clock in the hallway grated on my nerves.

"Korea and Taiwan are gone," Guang-hsu muttered to himself over and over.

He didn't know, of course, that within months we would also lose Nepal, Burma and Indochina.

Another rape. And then another.

Japan had no intention of stopping. Its agents now had spread deep into Manchuria.

***

The dragon carvings on the palace columns again went unpainted this year. The old paint had started to peel and the golden color turned a parched brown. The Board of the Interior had long run out of money. The danger was not only the visible dry rot, it was the invisible termites.

One morning Chief Eunuch Li Lien-ying ventured to make a formal plea to the throne: "Please, Your Majesty, do something to save the Forbidden City, for it is built with nothing but wood."

"Burn it down!" was Guang-hsu's response.

The audiences went on. In Li Hung-chang's telegrammed updates the Japanese demanded the right to build factories in the treaty ports. "Accept these terms or there will be war," Japan threatened.

Guang-hsu and I understood that if we granted Japan's demands, the same demands would be made by all the other foreign powers.

"The latest concessions also brought up the issue of mineral rights," Li's telegram continued, "and there is little we can do to resist..."

The sun's rays came through the windows of my bedroom, throwing shade like rustling leaves onto the floor and furniture. A large black spider hung on its thread by a carved panel. It swung back and forth in the gentle breeze. This was the first black spider I had seen inside the Forbidden City.

I heard the sound of someone dragging his feet. Then Guang-hsu appeared in the doorframe. His posture was that of an old man with his back hunched.

"Any news?" I asked.

"We lost our last division of Moslem cavalry." Guang-hsu entered my room and sat down on a chair. "I am forced to disband tens of thousands of soldiers because I have to pay the foreign indemnities. 'Or war,' they say. 'Or war'!"

"You haven't been eating," I said. "Let's have breakfast."

"The Japanese have been building roads connecting Manchuria to Tokyo." He stared at me, his big black eyes unblinking. "My downfall will come along with the fall of the Russian tsar."

"Guang-hsu, enough."

"The Meiji Emperor will soon be unchallenged in East Asia."

"Guang-hsu, eat first, please..."

"Mother, how can I eat? Japan has filled my stomach!"

The Imperial kitchens tried to find reasons not to cancel my birthday banquets. The same attitude was shared by the court, which saw my retirement as an opportunity for everyone to make money. Li Hung-chang was forced to negotiate additional loans to save the day.

I concluded that the only way out of my birthday trap would be to address the nation in a public letter:

The auspicious occasion of my sixtieth birthday was to have been a joyful event, and I understand that officials and many citizens have subscribed funds wherewith to raise triumphal arches—twenty-five percent of your yearly income, I was told—to honor me by decorating the Imperial Waterway along its entire length from Peking to my home ... I was not disposed to be unduly obstinate and to insist on refusing these honors, but I feel that I owe you, above everything else, my true feelings. Since the beginning of the last summer our tributary states have been taken, our fleets destroyed, and we have been forced into hostilities causing great despair. How could I have the heart to delight my senses? Therefore, I decree that the public ceremonies and all preparations be abandoned forthwith.

I sent my draft directly to the printer without going through a grand councilor. I was afraid that my words would be violated, just as had my wish to cancel my birthday banquets.

***

I would have also liked to share with the nation my regret that our neglect of Li's advice had only stiffened the penalties China had to pay. I could not begin to express my anger that Li Hung-chang, at the age of seventy-two, returned home from Japan only to be called a traitor. People in the streets spat at his palanquin as it passed.

As a way to show support for Li, I persuaded the court to send him to St. Petersburg not long after the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II.

Li requested that an empty coffin accompany him on the trip—he wanted to be prepared. He asked me to inscribe his name on the lid, which I did.

As a result of Li Hung-chang's visit, a secret agreement between Russia and China was negotiated and then signed. Each country agreed to defend the other against aggression from Japan. The price we paid was to accept a clause allowing Russia to extend its Trans-Siberian Railway across Manchuria to Vladivostok. We would also allow the Russians to use the railway to transport troops and war materiel through Chinese territory.

It was the best Li Hung-chang could achieve under the circumstances. He and I had a gut feeling that Russia could not be trusted. As it turned out, once we gave the Russians the right to harbor their fleet in our ice-free Port Arthur, they refused to leave, even after Japan was expelled.

Around this time, as Guang-hsu and I were working out the practicalities of a land-leasing program to generate payments for our foreign loans, his wife, my niece Lan, arrived unexpectedly.

The moment Guang-hsu saw Lan entering, he excused himself and left the room.

Lan was dressed in a robe embroidered with patterns of roses. Matching ornaments of tiny roses made of ribbon were in her hair. The high collar of her robe forced her chin up and out, making her discomfort palpable. It seemed that she had quit caking her cheeks with white powder; her heartache was visible in her expression. The corners of her mouth drew downward. Tears fell before she could speak.

Witnessing their troubled marriage was worse than living with the deaths of my husband and son. The deaths of Hsien Feng and Tung Chih cured nothing, but they set the stage for healing. Memory was selective and altered itself over time. I no longer remembered the hard feelings. In my dreams my son loved me, and Hsien Feng was always adoring.

With Guang-hsu and Lan, misery was like mold growing in a wet season: it started in the corner of an eave and slowly took over the entire palace.

"I came from the bedside of my mother-in-law." Lan was speaking, of course, about my sister. "Rong is doing poorly."

My sister had been bedridden and had refused my visits. Rong had insisted that I was the cause of her illness, so I had sent Lan in my place.

"I know you are not here to talk about my sister," I said to Lan. "All I can tell you is that Guang-hsu is under great pressure."

Lan shook her head, setting the ornaments in her hair fluttering. "He needs to spend time with me."

"I can't force him, Lan."

"Yes, you can, Aunt, if you truly care about me."

I felt guilty and promised her that I would try again. I moved Lan and her household to a compound right behind Guang-hsu's, using the termite problem as a pretext. My thinking was that the couple could visit each other through a connected archway door. But the very next day, Guang-hsu blocked the passage with furniture. When Lan had the furniture removed, Guang-hsu issued an order for the doorway to be permanently sealed with bricks.

In the meantime, I could see that Guang-hsu was falling in love with his Pearl Concubine, who had just turned nineteen and was a stunning beauty. Her curiosity and intelligence reminded me of my own youth. I was fond of her because she inspired Guang-hsu to live up to the nation's expectations.

I felt sorry for Lan when she tried to compete with Pearl. Lan carried too much of my brother's blood. She had ambition but not the will to realize it. When she threatened to commit suicide, Guang-hsu only became more disgusted with her.

I called Kuei Hsiang for help, but he said, "You are the matchmaker, sister Orchid. You have to fix it."

I arranged a tea party for just the three of us. When Lan insisted that Guang-hsu taste the peach cake she had made for him, he became fretful and got up to leave. I touched his elbow and said, "Let's take a walk in the garden." I fell in behind them, hoping that they would start a conversation. But Guang-hsu kept his distance, as if his wife carried a disease. Lan held on to her pride and kept silent.

***

"You have to make a choice, Lan," I said after Guang-hsu had left to attend a court function. "You were aware that things might not go as you wished. I did warn you."

"Yes, you did." My niece wiped her face with a handkerchief. "I believed that my love would change him."

"Well, he hasn't changed. You must accept that."

"What am I going to do?"

"Get busy with your duties as Empress. Conduct ceremonies and pay homage to the ancestors. You can also do what I do: learn about the world and try to be helpful."

"Will that lead me to the affection of Guang-hsu?"

"I don't know," I replied. "But you should never deprive yourself of the possibility."

Lan began her apprenticeship with me. First, I assigned her to read a recent report on the death of Queen Min of Korea.

"'Led by informers, the Japanese agents forced their way into the palace of the Queen.'" Lan gasped, covering her mouth with her handkerchief.

"Keep going, Lan," I instructed.

"'After ... after murdering two of her ladies in waiting, they cornered Queen Min. The minister of the royal household came to her rescue, but the intruders lopped off both his hands with a sword...'" Lan was horrified. "What ... what about her bodyguards? Where were they?"

"They must have been killed or trapped or bought off," I replied. "Go on and finish, Lan."

"'Queen Min was stabbed repeatedly and was carried outside...'" Lan went on reading, but her voice was no longer audible. She turned toward me with her head leaning to one side, like a puppet with a broken string.

"What happened?" I asked.