The Last Empress

by Anchee Min

The giant pale moon hanging outside above the bare trees brought back memories. I recalled a moment in Jehol when Tung Chih begged me to let him bathe in the hot springs. I refused him because he had a cold. I remembered breathing the fresh air and wishing that I could raise Tung Chih there. We stood among the wild tall bamboo that evening. The leaves danced in the breeze. Thick ivy draped forty or fifty feet down from century-old oaks like Heaven's curtains. The stone-paved ground was bleached by moonlight, as white as it was tonight. The shadowy jasmines on each side of the path looked like frozen ocean waves.

  I went to the library looking for material that would help me construct Tung Chih's obituary. A slim book, Convalescent Home for the Winter Plum Flowers, caught my eye. It's author was J. Z. Zhen of the early Ch'ing Dynasty. I found myself unable to put the book down once I started reading.

  In southern China, especially in Soochow and Hangchow, a floral winter plum tree has been popular. It has become a subject for famous painters. However, the tree's beauty lies in its sickness: abnormal shapes and bent branches with giant knots and exposed roots were preferred. Straight and healthy trees were considered plain and tasteless. Foliage was trimmed off and the tree reduced to bare trunks.

  Once the tree growers understood what their customers wanted, they began to shape the trees. In order to suppress normal growth, the trees were bound like a woman's feet. The branches were braced to form desired shapes. The trees grew sideways and downward. They were considered "fabulous" and "elegant" when released.

  Winter plum flowers all over China are diseased now, because the growers had invited worms to create knots. The grotesquely shaped branches caused the tree to suffer a slow death, while merchants profited.

  One man gathered his family fortune and went to the local nursery. He purchased three hundred pots of diseased winter plums. Turning his house into a convalescent home, the man began to care for the trees. He cut off the braces, destroyed the pots, and planted the trees in the ground. He left the trees alone to grow naturally and covered the soil with rich compost. Although the sickest winter plum didn't survive the disease, the population did.

  Tung Chih was like those winter plum trees, I thought, closing the book. Since birth, he had been bent and twisted into a showpiece. I had dreamed of him swimming in the lake near my hometown of Wuhu. I even fancied him riding on the back of a water buffalo like the boys I knew when I was a girl. But Tung Chih was a winter plum that was bound and braced and skewed. His schooling included everything but common sense. He was taught pride but not understanding, revenge but not compassion, and universal wisdom but not truth. Endless ceremonies and audiences drove him to desperation. Tung Chih achieved the desired form, but at the cost of his life. He was deprived of an understanding of himself and the world, robbed of options and opportunities. How could he not have grown sideways?

  Flirting with brothel girls might have been Tung Chih's attempt to find out who he was behind the mask of an emperor. Maybe he possessed a hunter's nature and had needed to pursue freedom and adventure. Three thousand concubines competing for his dragon seeds killed the hunter in him. Had I seen things from his point of view, I might have learned of his suffering. After his funeral I discovered more obscene materials in his bedroom. They were hidden inside his pillows, between his sheets, under his bed. The books had the lowest taste and quality. The private world of my son, the Emperor of China.

  I remembered my husband once saying to me, "You come to occupy my bed like an army." He said it with disgust in his voice. I had participated in forcing the same displeasure on my son, which made his death a true revenge.

  I sent Li Lien-ying to invite my daughter-in-law Alute for tea. To my shock, she sent back a message threatening to commit suicide.

  I was confused and asked for an explanation.

  "I will be entitled to the regency when I give birth to a son," Alute declared in her return message. "And I expect you to hand over power. However, I have been told that you will never step down because you live only for that power. I can see no other option but to remove myself from this indecent world. I have decided that my unborn child should go with me."

  I had never taken Alute seriously when she acted like this. I had let it pass when she hadn't bothered to be sweet or humble in front of me. She didn't like my wedding gift, a light green silk-embroidered summer dress. Openly she criticized my taste and insisted on redecorating her entire palace. When I invited her to my favorite opera, The Peony Pavilion, she kept her head turned away throughout the performance. She believed that as an Imperial widow I should be ashamed of myself for enjoying a silly romantic opera.

  I was displeased, but I left her alone. I thought that if she was this way with me, she would be the same with her eunuchs, her maids and her fellow concubines, who would in turn do her great harm. The Forbidden City was a place where females ganged up on one another. It seemed that Alute took my silence as an invitation for more insults.

  Would Alute be capable of ruling the country, assuming my grandchild would be a male and she took over the regency? She seemed to believe that she could handle a national crisis without any training or experience. As an outsider, she saw glamour and glory in my position. I, on the contrary, could see reflections of a double-edged sword. If Alute only demonstrated some aptitude and merit, I would gladly assist her.

  Everything Alute did told me that she was spoiled and had no idea of the consequences of her actions. Instead of taking part in her husband's mourning, she spent her days with senior court members, my opponents.

  If Alute left me with a choice, I would be able to show her the way. But she couldn't conceive that transferring power would involve contending political factions at court and in the government nationwide. She didn't believe there could be a struggle. Alute let me know that she didn't desire my help and that her distrust of me was solid and final.

  How could an innocent girl who didn't know me hate me so much? I was more puzzled than upset. Although Alute was Nuharoo's pick, I didn't think Nuharoo was aware of the depth of Alute's hatred.

  I feared this girl Alute, and I worried for my grandchild. The fact that Alute had considered taking her unborn's life scared me. What would she do to China if she were given total power?

  I wrote back to Alute after she rebuffed my proposal for a sensible solution between us: "The ministers, governors and commanders in chief of China would not be willing to serve unless their ruler proved to be worthy of their devotion and lives. It would not be as easy as attending a dinner party, doing embroidery or watching an opera."

  Alute answered me with her suicide.

  She left the court an open letter, which she might not have written alone. The language was vague and her metaphor obscure.

  "When a bird is dying, its song is sad," Alute began. "When a lady is dying, her words are kind. This is the condition in which I find myself today. Once went a girl to her death, and she could not walk erect. A bystander said to her, 'Are you afraid?' She replied, 'I am.' 'If you are afraid, why not turn back?' The girl replied, 'My fear is a private weakness, but my death is a public duty.'"

  Did Alute believe that she had a duty to die? I saw it as nothing but a protest and a punishment against me. I had not only lost Tung Chih but his unborn child. No enemy could destroy me more.

  Alute's maid said that her mistress was pleased with the decision to end her life. Alute treated the suicide as an event to celebrate. She awarded the servants with money and keepsakes for helping her. The servants were called to witness the suicide act. Alute declared that anyone who dared to disrupt her would be whipped to death. When the morning of the set date arrived, Alute dosed herself with opium and then dressed herself in an eternal robe. The servants were then dismissed. Alute shut herself in her bedroom, and by afternoon she was dead.

  The opium Alute took was smuggled into the Forbidden City by her father, who had learned of his daughter's plan. Although he was against it, as a patrician loyalist who had been given a high royal title upon his da
ughter's marriage, he complied with her wish. He feared that her misbehavior would cost him his own good life. After he had supplied Alute with enough opium to kill her, he wrote to the court that he had nothing to do with his daughter's action.

  I summoned the father and asked him if he had said anything to upset Alute. The man replied, "I told her to stop grating on Your Majesty's nerves."

  I felt sorry for Alute, for she had received no support from her family. More than that, I resented her for killing my unborn grandchild. Then it dawned on me that I had never received confirmation of Alute's pregnancy from any doctor, nor had I seen her belly swell.

  Doctor Sun Pao-tien came at my summons. He reported that an examination had never taken place, because Alute had never granted his entrance.

  Was it possible that all was staged?

  If the pregnancy was false, Alute's suicide would make more sense. She would have ended up being one of scores of Tung Chih's backyard ladies. She would not have been given the role of regent, since she was childless. By accompanying Tung Chih to his grave, she achieved virtue and would be honored. In the meantime, her letter placed the responsibility for her death squarely on me.

  Beneath Alute's shy manners was a strong and willful mind, an unquiet character with a monstrous ambition.

  My opponents made good use of Alute. It disgusted me to look at her father, who appeared to be harmless. I couldn't forgive a man who would encourage his daughter to kill herself. If this was how Alute was raised, it might be fortunate that she didn't have a child.

  In Alute's imagination I had posed a great threat. She might have fantasized about her life as regent, and I was the only obstacle she needed to overcome. The way Alute worded her letter sounded confident. The fact that she had no doubt she was carrying a male child was in itself evidence of a mental disorder.

  Grandchild or no grandchild, the possibility would continue to haunt me. What saddened me was that the death of her husband had aroused no sympathy in Alute. If she had truly loved Tung Chih, she wouldn't have murdered his child.

  It hurt me to think of the possibility that my son was cheated out of his only love. The thought led me to other possibilities, such as the reasons behind Tung Chih's addiction to whores. Was it because he was denied affection? Tung Chih was no angel, but he was a child who had always been hungry for love.

  I tried to stop my thoughts from dwelling on guilt. I told myself that Tung Chih and Alute were once true lovers and that should count and continue to count.

  Before spring, an official accused me of "precipitating the Emperor's relapse." I paid no attention to this; the idea was ridiculous. What I didn't expect was that the story made its rounds and was picked up and published by a respected English journal. It made me the center of an international scandal—the prime suspect of Emperor Tung Chih's "murder."

  "The loving Alute was visiting Tung Chih on his sickbed," the article read. "She complained about her mother-in-law's interfering and domineering ways, and she was happily looking forward to the day Tung Chih would be well again. It was at that moment the raging Dowager Empress Lady Yehonala entered. She rampaged through the room, seizing Alute by the hair and hitting her while Tung Chih suffered a terrible nervous crisis, which caused the fever to return and eventually to kill him."

  13

  I dreamed of ice floating on a lake in the midst of its melting, thin and fragile. The ice didn't look like ice but pieces of rice paper. Tung Chih had no idea what southern China's winter looked or felt like. He was used to the solid ice of Peking winters. He was never allowed to skate on the frozen palace lake; instead he watched his cousins play all day long. The most Tung Chih was allowed was to tie straw strings around his shoes so that he could walk on the ice with the help of his eunuchs.

  In my childhood memory, winter was always cold and damp. When the northwest wind blew strong against the windows and made the panes rattle as though someone were knocking, Mother would announce that the coldest part of winter had arrived. Because the temperature never really dropped below freezing in the south, few of the houses had heaters.

  I remember Mother taking out all of our winter clothes from cases made of sandalwood. We put on thick cotton jackets, hats and scarves, and everyone smelled of sandalwood. When it was cold in the house, people went out into the street to warm themselves under the sun. Unfortunately, most southern winters were sunless. The air was damp and the color of the sky remained gray until the season passed.

  Today I woke in a well-heated room. Li Lien-ying was so grateful when I didn't push away my breakfast that he was almost in tears. He served me a southern-style meal: hot porridge with preserved tofu, root vegetables and peanuts, with roasted seaweed and sesame seeds. He told me that I had been ill and had slept around the clock.

  I looked up and my neck felt stiff and achy. I noticed that the red lanterns in the room had been changed to white. Thoughts of Tung Chih returned, and my heart suffered a stabbing pain. I pushed to get myself up. My eyes caught a pile of documents lying on the desk.

  "What must I know?" I asked.

  There was no response. Li Lien-ying looked at me as if he didn't understand. I realized that I was still used to An-te-hai's ways and that Li Lien-ying hadn't yet learned the role of being my eunuch secretary.

  "You may brief me, starting with the weather."

  Li Lien-ying was indeed a quick learner. "The icy wind has been blowing down sandstorms from the desert," he began, helping me to dress. "Last night the braziers were lit in the courtyards."

  "Go on."

  "Li Hung-chang moved his army from Chihli on your orders. He has secured the Forbidden City. Governors of the eighteen provinces have hurried to get here, some by carriage and some on horseback. They are entering the gates at this moment. Yung Lu has been notified of the situation and should be here within days."

  I was surprised. "I did neither the ordering nor the summoning."

  "Empress Nuharoo did."

  "Why didn't she inform me about it?"

  "Empress Nuharoo was here several times while you were sleeping," Li Lien-ying explained. "Her exact words were 'Tung Chih has left no heir, and an emperor has to be chosen.'"

  "To the Hall of Spiritual Nurturing! Palanquin!" I ordered.

  Nuharoo was relieved when she saw me enter the hall. "Three candidates have been suggested." She presented me with notes of the day's discussion. "All members of the Imperial clan are present."

  Although my fatigue persisted, I tried to look as if I had never left the court. I examined the candidates. The first was a two-month-old named P'u-lun, grandson of Emperor Tao Kuang's eldest son—my husband's brother Prince Ts'eng. Since Tung Chih's "Tsai" generation was followed by the "P'u" generation, the infant was the only nominee who complied with Imperial family law, which stated that the successor to the throne could not be a member of the same generation as his predecessor.

  I quickly dismissed P'u-lun. My reason was that my husband had told me that P'u-lun's grandfather Prince Ts'eng had been adopted from a junior branch of the Imperial family and so was not of the true bloodline. "We know of no precedent for the grandson of an adopted son to mount the throne," I said.

  The truth behind my rejection was that I had some idea of the kind of man Prince Ts'eng was. While pleasure-seeking had been his hobby, he was a corrupt political radical. He had little respect for me until he learned about my son's death. He knew that I would have the power to choose an heir.

  When an advocate of Prince Ts'eng's, a court official, produced a document from the Ming Dynasty's records proving the prince's legitimacy, I reminded the court, "That particular Ming prince's reign ended in disaster, with the prince himself captured and murdered by the Mongols."

  The next male child in line was Prince Kung's eldest son, Tsai-chen, Tung Chih's former playmate. As hard as I tried, I could not forgive the fact that he had introduced Tung Chih to the brothels. I rejected Tsai-chen by saying, "The law requires that the living father of an emperor retire in
to private life, and I don't think the court can function without Prince Kung."

  I wanted to yell at Nuharoo and the court: How could we entrust a playboy with the nation's responsibilities? I would have ordered Tsai-chen's beheading if he were not Prince Kung's son!

  The last one in line was Tsai-t'ien, my three-year-old nephew, son of Prince Ch'un, my husband's youngest brother, who was also the husband of my sister, Rong. Although we would be violating the "no-same-generation" rule if we selected Tsai-t'ien, we had no other option.

  In the end, both Nuharoo and I gave our votes to Tsai-t'ien. We let it be known that we would adopt the child if the court were to accept our proposal. In fact, I had already been thinking about adopting Tsai-t'ien. The idea came when I learned that three of my sister's children had died "accidentally" in their infancy. The deaths were regarded as the work of fate, but I was aware of Rong's mental condition. Prince Ch'un complained about his wife's ongoing deterioration, but no action was taken and Rong was given no treatment. I was concerned for Tsai-t'ien's survival the moment he was born. I had spoken to Rong about putting him up for adoption, but she insisted on caring for the baby herself.

  Tsai-t'ien was underweight for his age and his movements appeared wooden. His nurses reported that he would cry through the night, while his mother continued to believe that feeding her child a full meal would kill him.

  The child's father encouraged the adoption. "I am willing to do everything to help my son escape his mother," Prince Ch'un told me. "Isn't it enough that three of my sons have died under your sister's care?" When I expressed concern about his own separation from Tsai-t'ien, he said he would be fine, since he had children with his other wives and concubines.

  Next the court heard a report on the character and history of the nominee's father. I was not surprised that Prince Ch'un was found to be a man of "double characters." I had learned from my husband, Emperor Hsien Feng, that "brother Ch'un would tremble in every limb and fall into a faint at his father's temper." And yet he was also "the big braggart" of the family. Prince Ch'un represented the hardliners of the Manchu clan. While claiming to have no interest in politics, he had been a longtime rival of his own brother Prince Kung.