On the thirteenth day of the eleventh month in the sixty-first year of Kangxi’s reign, at Changchun Garden, Ming Xuan, a third-rank palace guard serving before the emperor, witnessed the transfer of power that changed the fate of the Great Qing. Longkodo read aloud the imperial edict: “The fourth prince, Yinzhen, is of noble character and greatly resembles me. He will surely be capable of succeeding to the throne.”
Yet Ming Xuan knew the edict had been altered.
The original words, “Pass the throne to the fourteenth prince,” had been changed overnight to “Pass the throne to the fourth prince.” More astonishing still, before Kangxi’s death, he had secretly entrusted Ming Xuan with a yellow box containing a message: “If anyone alters my edict, do not expose them. Keep watch over this empire for me.”
Yongzheng ascended the throne. Some said he had murdered his father and forced his mother into submission; others claimed he had falsified the edict. But Ming Xuan saw another side of Yongzheng: an emperor who slept only two hours a day, personally reviewed tens of thousands of memorials, and made enemies of the gentry throughout the empire to implement the policy of taxing land according to its population. When Yongzheng admitted on his deathbed, “I was the one who changed the edict,” Ming Xuan asked, “Your Majesty, do you regret it?” Yongzheng replied, “If I had not become emperor, the Great Qing would have fallen within thirty years.”
Ming Xuan chose to bury the truth forever.
But that was only the beginning. Over the next two hundred years, Ming Xuan’s descendants, from salt administration officials during the Qianlong era, to naval officers during the Daoguang era, to Westernization advocates in the Tongzhi and Guangxu years and revolutionaries during the Xinhai Revolution, each stood at the turning point of their times. Some chose to protect the dynasty, some betrayed it, some shed their last drop of blood for it, and some brought it down with their own hands.
