Empress Orchid

by Anchee Min

  For the rest of the day we waited for Hsien Feng to return to consciousness. When he did, I begged him to complete the signature, but he didn’t say a word.

  We had reached a deadlock—Emperor Hsien Feng refused to pick up the brush pen. I kept grinding the ink. I wished that Prince Kung were here.

  Feeling helpless, I started to cry.

  “Orchid.” His Majesty’s voice was barely audible. “I won’t be able to die in peace if I sign.”

  I understood. I wouldn’t want to sign either if I were he. But Prince Kung needed the signature to continue negotiating. The Emperor was going to die, but the nation had to go on. China had to get back on its feet.

  In the afternoon Hsien Feng decided to yield. It was only after I said that his signature would not be an endorsement for invasion but a tactic to gain time.

  He picked up the brush pen but was unable to see where on the paper he was to put his signature.

  “Guide my hand, Orchid,” he said, and tried to sit up, but collapsed instead.

  The three of us—Chief Eunuch Shim, An-te-hai and I—laid His Majesty down on his back. I put the paper near his hand and told him that he could ink his signature now.

  With his eyes fixed on the ceiling, Emperor Hsien Feng wiggled the brush. I carefully guided his strokes to prevent his signature from looking like a child’s scribble. By the time we covered his name with the red Imperial seal, Hsien Feng had dropped the brush pen and passed out. The ink stone fell and black ink splattered all over my dress and shoes.

  In July of 1861 we celebrated Hsien Feng’s thirtieth birthday. His Majesty lay in his bed and drifted in and out of consciousness. No guests were invited. The birthday ceremony included a food parade. The dishes were barely touched; everyone sensed his coming death.

  A month later, Hsien Feng seemed to hit bottom. Doctor Sun Pao-tien predicted that His Majesty’s demise was a week, perhaps days, away. The court grew tense because the Emperor had not named his successor.

  Tung Chih was not allowed to be with his father because the court was afraid it would be too disturbing. This upset me. I believed that any affection demonstrated by His Majesty would sustain Tung Chih’s memory for the rest of his life.

  Nuharoo accused me of placing a curse on Hsien Feng by telling Tung Chih that his father was going to die. Her astrologer believed that only when we refused to accept his death would Hsien Feng be saved by a miracle.

  It was hard to fight Nuharoo when she had her mind set. I could only manage to have An-te-hai sneak Tung Chih to his father’s bedside, usually when Nuharoo went with the Buddhists to chant or was enjoying her teatime opera, provided by Su Shun and performed in Nuharoo’s quarters.

  To my disappointment Tung Chih didn’t want to be with his father. He complained about his father’s “scary look” and “bad breath.” He was miserable when I pushed him toward the sickbed. He called his father a bore and once yelled, “You hollow man!” He pulled at Hsien Feng’s sheets and threw pillows at him. He wanted to play Ride the Horsy with the dying man. There wasn’t a single compassionate bone in his little body.

  I spanked my son. For the next week, instead of leaving Tung Chih to Nuharoo I spent time observing him. I discovered the source of his poor behavior.

  I had instructed Tung Chih to take riding lessons with Yung Lu, but Nuharoo made excuses for the child to be absent. Instead of practicing with real horses, Tung Chih rode the eunuchs. More than thirty eunuchs had to crawl around the courtyard to make him happy. His favorite “horse” was An-te-hai. It was the child’s way of getting revenge, for An-te-hai had been ordered by me to discipline him. Tung Chih whipped An-te-hai’s buttocks and forced him to crawl until his knees bled.

  Worse than this treatment of An-te-hai was that he ordered a seventy-year-old eunuch named Old Wei to swallow his feces. When I questioned Tung Chih, he replied, “Mother, I just wanted to know if Old Wei had been telling the truth.”

  “What truth?”

  “That I could do anything I wanted. I only asked him to prove it.”

  I looked at my son’s little face and wondered how he had become capable of such mean tricks. He was clever and knew whom to punish and whom to reward. If An-te-hai hadn’t been loyal to me, he would have yielded to Tung Chih’s every desire. Tung Chih had once claimed that he knew Nuharoo’s favorite dishes. It didn’t occur to me that this was my son’s way of rewarding her. I even praised him when he sent Nuharoo her favorite fancy moon cakes. I thought it was an appropriate gesture of piety and was pleased that my son got along with her. Then Tung Chih bragged about how Nuharoo encouraged him to neglect school. She had said to him, “There are emperors in history who never spent a day in the classroom but had no problem bringing their country to prosperity.”

  I confronted Nuharoo and pointed out the danger of not disciplining Tung Chih. She told me that I was overreacting. “He’s only five years old! As soon as we get back to Peking and Tung Chih resumes his normal schooling, everything will be fine. Playing is a child’s nature, and we must not interfere with Heaven’s intent. He asked for the parrots yesterday, but An-te-hai had brought none with him. Poor Tung Chih—he only asked for a parrot!”

  This time I decided not to give in. I insisted that he attend his classes. I told Nuharoo that I would check with the tutors regarding Tung Chih’s homework. But I was disappointed. The head tutor begged me to release him from Tung Chih.

  “His Young Majesty threw paper balls and knocked off my glasses,” the rabbit-toothed tutor reported. “He will not listen. Yesterday he made me eat a strange-tasting cookie. Afterward he told me that he had dipped the cookie in his own waste.”

  I was shocked at the way Tung Chih ruled his classroom. But what concerned me more was his interest in Nuharoo’s ghost books. He stayed up late to listen to her stories of the underworld. He got so scared that he would wet his bed at night. Yet he was so drawn to those stories that they became an addiction. When I interfered by taking the picture books away, he fought with me.

  Tung Chih was willing to do anything to get away from me. First he pretended to be sick in order to avoid his classes. When I caught him, Nuharoo would come to his defense. She even secretly ordered Doctor Sun Pao-tien to lie about the “fever” that kept him out of school.

  If this was the way we prepared Tung Chih to be the next emperor, the dynasty was doomed. I decided to take the matter into my own hands. In my eyes, the situation was of national significance. All I knew was that my time was running out.

  Every day I escorted my son to his tutors and then waited outside until the classes were over. Nuharoo was upset that I didn’t trust her, but I was too angry to worry about her feelings. I wanted to change Tung Chih before it was too late.

  Tung Chih knew how to play Nuharoo and me off each other. He knew that I couldn’t deny his visiting Nuharoo, so he went as often as he could, to make me jealous. Unfortunately I fell into his trap. And he continued to cause trouble in school. One day he pulled out the rabbit-toothed tutor’s two longest eyebrow hairs. He knew full well that the old man regarded them as his “longevity sign.” The man was so crushed, he was seized by a stroke and sent home for good. Nuharoo saw the incident as a comedy. I didn’t agree, and intended to punish my son for his cruelty.

  The court replaced the old tutor with a new one, but he was fired by his student the first day on the job. Tung Chih’s stated reason was that the man farted during lessons. He charged the tutor with “disrespect for the Son of Heaven.” The man was whipped. Upon hearing this, Nuharoo praised Tung Chih for “acting like a true ruler,” while I was shattered.

  The more I pressed, the worse Tung Chih rebelled. Instead of supporting me, the court asked Nuharoo to “watch over” my “outrageous behavior.” I wondered if Su Shun was behind it. Tung Chih now had no problem talking back to me in front of the eunuchs and the maids. He was good with words. Sometimes he sounded too sophisticated for a five-year-old. He would say, “How low of you to deny my nature!” or “I am an end
owed animal!” or “It’s wrong for you to put me to sleep in order to play the tamer!”

  I had heard the same from Nuharoo: “Allow Tung Chih to journey forth, Lady Yehonala” and “He is a traveler who understands the universe. He thinks not of himself, but of the voyage, of dreams and of the soul of the Buddha’s spirituality” and “Throw your keys to the winds, and leave his cage open!”

  I began to doubt her intentions. There had always been something perverse about her approach to Tung Chih. No matter what he did, she was always the loving one. I realized that unless I stopped Nuharoo, I wouldn’t be able to stop Tung Chih. For me the struggle had turned into a battle to save my son. I spent days thinking about how to talk to her. I wanted to be firm about my intentions without injuring her pride. I wanted her to understand that I appreciated her affection for Tung Chih, but she had to learn to discipline him.

  To my surprise, Nuharoo came to me before I went to her. She was dressed casually in an ivory gown. She brought fresh lotus flowers as a gift. She complained about my restrictions on Tung Chih’s diet. She insisted that he was too thin. I explained that I had no problem with his eating more, but that his diet must be balanced. I told her that Tung Chih sat for hours on the chamber pot without producing a single turd.

  “I don’t see it as a problem,” Nuharoo said. “Children take their time when it comes to the potty.”

  “The children of peasants never have that problem,” I argued. “They eat plenty of roughage.”

  “But Tung Chih is no peasant’s child. It is insulting to make that comparison.” Nuharoo’s expression turned cold. “It is only right that Tung Chih follow the Imperial diet.”

  I had personally hired a chef to prepare healthful meals, but Tung Chih complained to Nuharoo that the chef had served him rotten shrimp, giving him cramps. No one except Nuharoo believed the lie. However, to please Tung Chih, she fired the chef.

  I had to restrain myself from fighting openly with Nuharoo. I made a decision to concentrate on Tung Chih’s studies first. Every morning I took a whip and escorted Tung Chih to his tutor.

  He was being taught about the celestial globe. I asked the tutor for a copy of the text and said to my son that I would test him myself after he finished the lesson.

  As I expected, Tung Chih couldn’t recall a word of what he had learned. He had just come from school and we were about to eat our dinner. I ordered his meal to be removed and took him by the hand. As we left I picked up the whip. I took him to a small shed in the back garden, away from the main halls and apartments. I told Tung Chih that he would not be released until he recited the full text.

  He let out a loud cry to see if anyone would come to his rescue. I had prepared for this. An-te-hai had been told to keep the tutors away, and I had expressly ordered that no one inform Nuharoo of Tung Chih’s whereabouts.

  “‘In very early times,’” I said, to start my son off. “Begin.”

  Tung Chih sobbed and pretended not to hear.

  I grabbed the whip and lifted my arm so that its length danced before him.

  He started to recite. “‘In very early times, there were four huge star patterns in the starry sky. Along the Yellow River there were figures of animals …’”

  “Go on. ‘A dragon …’”

  “‘A dragon, a tortoise with a snake, a tiger and a bird, which rises up and then sets down …’” He shook his head and said that he didn’t remember the next line.

  “Start over and read it again!”

  He opened his textbook but stumbled over the words.

  I read to him. “‘… One after another, arcing around the north celestial pole, flows an asterism called the Northern Dipper.’”

  “This is too hard,” he complained, and threw down the text.

  I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. “This is for a spoiled boy who lives without laws and without any thought of the consequences!” I lifted him off the floor and stripped away his robe. I raised my arm and let the whip fall.

  A clear red line settled on his little behind.

  Tung Chih screamed.

  My tears fell, but I struck again. I had to force myself to continue. I had let him run loose for too long. This was my punishment and my last chance.

  “How dare you whip me!” His expression was incredulous. The little eyebrows met in the center of his frightened face. “No one hits the son of the Emperor!”

  I whipped harder. “This is to make you hear the sound of foreign cannons. This is to make you read the treaties!” I felt the collapsing of an emotional dam. An invisible arrow shot through my head. Choking, I continued, “This … is … to make you look your father in the face … I want you to know how he turned into a hollow man.”

  As if acting under its own power, the whip changed direction. Instead of landing on Tung Chih, it landed on me. The sound was loud and crisp. Like a hot snake, the leather wrapped around my body, leaving its bloody trace with every slap.

  Intoxicated by the spectacle, Tung Chih fell silent.

  Exhaustion overwhelmed me and I collapsed and hugged my knees to my chest. I cried because Hsien Feng wouldn’t be alive to educate his son; I cried because I couldn’t see myself raising Tung Chih properly with Nuharoo standing between us; I cried because I heard my son shouting that he hated me and that he couldn’t wait for Nuharoo to punish me; and I cried because deep down I was disappointed in myself and, more fearfully, I didn’t know what else to do.

  I continued with the lesson as I held the whip high. “Answer me, Tung Chih. What does the dragon signify?”

  “The dragon signifies a transformation,” the terrified little man replied.

  “Of what?”

  “What ‘what’?”

  “A transformation of …?”

  “Transformation of … of a fish. It is about the fish’s ability to leap over a dam.”

  “That’s correct. That was what made the fish a dragon.” I put down the whip. “It was about the effort it made against a monstrous obstacle. It was about the heroic leaping action it took. Its bones were broken and its scales scraped away. It could have died from the effort, but it didn’t give in. That was what set it apart from the ordinary fish.”

  “I don’t understand this. It is too hard!”

  He was no longer able to follow me, even if I read the same phrase over and over. His mind seemed to have come to a halt. He was in shock. I had scared him. In his life so far, no one had ever raised a voice to him. He always had his way, no matter how demeaning to others it might be.

  I was determined to go on. “Listen carefully and you will get it. ‘The tiger is the spirit of beasts, the tortoise is the spirit of shells, and the phoenix is a bird who is capable of rising from ashes …’”

  Tung Chih began to follow me, slowly and painstakingly.

  There came a loud banging on the door of the shed.

  I knew who it was. I knew she had a spy in my palace.

  The banging continued, with Nuharoo screaming, “I am reporting your cruelty to His Majesty! You have no right to punish Tung Chih. He doesn’t belong to you! He came through you. You were only a house that once sheltered him. If I find him hurt, you will be hanged!”

  I went on reading, my voice clear and resonant. “‘In ancient Chinese philosophy the five colors correspond to the five directions. Yellow corresponds with the center, blue with the east, white with the west, red with the south, black with the north …’”

  Nineteen

  THE WILD GRASS around Jehol turned yellow while the court waited for the Emperor to die. Hsien Feng could no longer swallow. The herb soup I prepared continued to be brought to him by the eunuchs, but he no longer touched it. The dragon robe for burial was ordered and His Majesty’s coffin was nearing completion.

  Yet my son had not been appointed the successor, and His Majesty had not uttered any words regarding the matter. Every time I wanted to see my husband, Chief Eunuch Shim would block me, saying that His Majesty was either sleeping or meeting with hi
s advisors. He made me wait endlessly. Frustrated, I would return to my quarters. I had no doubt that Shim was acting on Su Shun’s orders.

  I was concerned because Hsien Feng could slip away, leaving me powerless to help Tung Chih. When An-te-hai reported that Su Shun had been trying to recruit him to spy on me, the grand councilor’s intentions became clear.

  I thanked Heaven for An-te-hai’s loyalty. The cost to him was that his name went on Su Shun’s list of enemies.

  “Su Shun is looking to kick your dog,” Nuharoo said during a visit. “I wonder what has made him hate An-te-hai so much.” Lifting her eyes from her embroidery, she searched my face for an answer.

  I didn’t want to share my thoughts. I didn’t want to point out that it was not An-te-hai but me Su Shun was after. If I revealed my feelings, Nuharoo would want to interfere and try to get an apology out of Su Shun. She considered herself a champion of justice, but her kindness could do more harm than good.

  Nuharoo enjoyed being known for her amiability, courtesy and fairness. But she wouldn’t be able to solve this problem. She would only end up making it easier for Su Shun to get rid of me. He would use Emperor Hsien Feng’s hand. It would not be the first time. Yung Lu’s story about the horrible fate of a certain minister who was disloyal to the grand councilor was but one example. Su Shun might also want to make Nuharoo his ally. She would be easy prey if flattered. The master of tricks could wrap her around his finger. Nuharoo lived to glorify her name, and any attention from Su Shun would be especially appealing. After all, my survival wouldn’t be Nuharoo’s priority.

  An-te-hai stumbled over the doorsill. He reported that it had been decided that I would be “honored to accompany Hsien Feng when he returns to his source,” which meant that I would be buried alive when the Emperor died.

  I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t. Out of three thousand concubines I was the only one who gave him a son. Hsien Feng knew that Tung Chih needed me.

  Making an effort to stay calm, I asked An-te-hai where he had picked up this information. He said that it came from his friend Chow Tee, the Emperor’s attendant.