Empress Dowager Cixi and I

This is a different perspective to understand and look at the Empress Dowager Cixi. The author is an American Chinese named De Ling. It was a girl who appeared by his side when he was old and whom she loved very much. She is very real and vividly continues to write about the unknown and unknown side of Cixi. It is different from the very powerful and domineering Cixi we are familiar with. It describes her sadness and vulnerability as a woman and a mother. Perhaps only in this football can we see and feel his love for his children, just like any other mother.

Empress Dowager Cixi is no stranger to me. She has been indispensable in film and television works and history textbooks since I was a child. But it's hard to say how much he knows about her. Zuo is nothing more than a sinner who led the Qing Dynasty to destruction. But if you think about it carefully, people are very complex and multi-faceted, and Cixi is no exception. Living in Wan Qing's era of seclusion and women were just like objects, she must have had a lot of helplessness and difficulties. For example, for the first time, I learned that the Qing Empire also had a national flag. "On the yellow background are two dragons with wide-open mouths, and a big bead in the middle. The two dragons represent the emperor and the empress dowager, and the beads represent the entire universe. The meaning conveyed by the whole picture is that the world is always in their hands." This was probably the most magnificent national flag in the world at that time, and it was definitely a royal style that shocked everyone. With a bunch of pretentious and flattering people around her, didn't Cixi have any idea? Of course not. A person who ruled the Qing Dynasty for more than 40 years must have an above-average IQ, and she is definitely not the heroine Mary Sue. She just pretended not to know, and she was like a mirror in her heart. She once commented on the various people on the train: "They are so elegantly dressed! In this monotonous journey, these colorful and pretentious things really added a lot of fun to us!"

This is a memoir of looking at China from a Western perspective, written in English by Chinese-American De Ling. The book adopts the perspective of Western culture and tells in detail the actual life in the Qing court she observed while serving the Empress Dowager Cixi, including Cixi's diet, daily life, clothing, words and deeds, and her experience of traveling by train, etc. After reading this book, I remembered the play about De Ling and Ci Xi that I had watched before, and I was able to understand the friendship between these two interesting women, De Ling and Ci Xi, from a Chinese and Western perspective.

The content of the book is very rich, and the author's descriptions are also very vivid, especially the details about the life of the Empress Dowager Cixi and the secrets of the palace, which really opened my eyes. However, seeing the extravagance and stupidity of Empress Dowager Cixi also made me deeply realize that the prosperity and strength of a country requires a wise leader. I think this book is interesting and can make people think. It is worth reading.

In the eyes of the young De Ling, Cixi, who was in her 70s, had a solemn appearance and already had the most aging love in the Ming Dynasty. She is a woman who cares very much about appearance, has her own aesthetics, and is very sensitive to color. The craftsmen of the palace were delivering exquisite costumes every day. In Cixi's dressing philosophy, different clothes and accessories should be matched with different seasons, different occasions and even different moods. She often pointed out the inconsistencies in the clothes of the female officials around her and asked them to change them immediately.

Each one is exquisite and all are exquisite. This is the biggest impression I have on Empress Dowager Cixi after reading this book. The author De Ling's perspective is very unique. He describes the Empress Dowager Cixi's diet, daily life, clothing, words and deeds, etc. With vivid language and a strong sense of picture. We can not only learn about the luxurious life of the Queen Mother, but also capture another side that is not well understood by us, and even get a glimpse of a real Manchu dynasty from between the lines. This book is well worth reading.

Reading and writing are okay, but there is no follow-up?

A very good book!

Very good, very detailed content