Grt Empress Dowager Of China

Author : Jung Chang
Publisher : Random House Canada
ISBN 13 : 0307363120
Total Pages : 431 pages
Book Rating : 4.21/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Empress Dowager Cixi written by Jung Chang and published by Random House Canada. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the beloved, internationally bestselling author of Wild Swans, and co-author of the bestselling Mao: The Unknown Story, the dramatic, epic biography of the unusual woman who ruled China for 50 years, from concubine to Empress, overturning centuries of traditions and formalities to bring China into the modern world. A woman, an Empress of immense wealth who was largely a prisoner within the compound walls of her palaces, a mother, a ruthless enemy, and a brilliant strategist: Chang makes a compelling case that Cixi was one of the most formidable and enlightened rulers of any nation. Cixi led an intense and singular life. Chosen at the age of 12 to be a concubine by the Emperor Xianfeng, she gave birth to his only male heir who at four was designated Emperor when his father died in 1861. In a brilliant move, the young woman enlisted the help of the Emperor's widow and the two women orchestrated a coup that ousted the regents and made Cixi sole Regent. Untrained and untaught, the two studied history and politics together, ruling the huge nation from behind a curtain. When her boy died, Cixi designated a young nephew as Emperor, continuing her reign till her death in 1908. Chang gives us a complex, riveting portrait of Cixi through a reign as long as that of her fellow Empress, Victoria, whom she longed to meet: her ruthlessness in fighting off rivals; her curiosity to learn; her reliance on Westerners who she placed in key positions; and her sensitivity and desire to preserve the distinctiveness of China's past while overturning traditions (she, as Chang reveals--not Mao, as he claimed--banned footbinding) and exposing its culture to western ideas and technology.

Author : Katharine Augusta Carl
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 388 pages
Book Rating : 4.58/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book With the Empress Dowager written by Katharine Augusta Carl and published by . This book was released on 1905 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Sir Edmund Backhouse
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 622 pages
Book Rating : 4.93/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book China Under the Empress Dowager written by Sir Edmund Backhouse and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 622 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Philip Walsingham Sergeant
Publisher : London : Hutchinson
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 396 pages
Book Rating : 4.61/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Great Empress Dowager of China written by Philip Walsingham Sergeant and published by London : Hutchinson. This book was released on 1910 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Edmund Trelawney Backhouse (Sir).)
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 614 pages
Book Rating : 4.59/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book China Under the Empress Dowager written by Edmund Trelawney Backhouse (Sir).) and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 614 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : J.O.P. BLAND AND E. BACKHOUSE
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 598 pages
Book Rating : 4.34/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book CHINA UNDER THE EMPRESS DOWAGER written by J.O.P. BLAND AND E. BACKHOUSE and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 598 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Anchee Min
Publisher : HMH
ISBN 13 : 0547346905
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.08/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book The Last Empress written by Anchee Min and published by HMH. This book was released on 2008-04-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Admirers of Empress Orchid will be interested in this sequel. Others may find the introduction to relatively modern Chinese history a revelation” (Rocky Mountain News). During the tumultuous end of the nineteenth century in China, the only constant was the power wielded by one person: the resilient, ever-resourceful Tzu Hsi, Lady Yehonala—or Empress Orchid—as readers came to know her in Anchee Min’s critically acclaimed novel covering the first part of her life. In The Last Empress, Orchid moves from the intimacy of the concubine quarters into the spotlight of the world stage. Devastating personal losses take their toll, leaving her yearning to step aside, but only she—allied with the progressives, but loyal to the conservative Manchu clan of her dynasty—can hold the nation’s rival factions together. Anchee Min offers a powerful revisionist portrait based on extensive research of one of the most important figures in Chinese history. Viciously maligned by the western press of the time as the “Dragon Lady,” a manipulative, blood-thirsty woman who held onto power at all costs, the woman Min gives us is a compelling, very human leader who assumed power reluctantly, and who sacrificed all she had to protect those she loved and an empire that was doomed to die. “The vision of an empress who very nearly had it all: vulnerability and strength, motherhood and power, earthiness and dignity, compassion and ambition.” —The Washington Post “Invokes the intrigue and opulence of nineteenth-century China while telling the story of its improbably dominant ruler.” —Los Angeles Times

Author : Sarah Pike Conger
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 524 pages
Book Rating : 4.09/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Letters from China written by Sarah Pike Conger and published by . This book was released on 1909 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Jung Chang
Publisher : Knopf
ISBN 13 : 0385350376
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book Empress Dowager Cixi written by Jung Chang and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Notable Book Empress Dowager Cixi (1835–1908) is the most important woman in Chinese history. She ruled China for decades and brought a medieval empire into the modern age. At the age of sixteen, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor’s numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China—behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male. In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Cixi fought against monumental obstacles to change China. Under her the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state: industries, railways, electricity, the telegraph and an army and navy with up-to-date weaponry. It was she who abolished gruesome punishments like “death by a thousand cuts” and put an end to foot-binding. She inaugurated women’s liberation and embarked on the path to introduce parliamentary elections to China. Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot. Cixi reigned during extraordinary times and had to deal with a host of major national crises: the Taiping and Boxer rebellions, wars with France and Japan—and an invasion by eight allied powers including Britain, Germany, Russia and the United States. Jung Chang not only records the Empress Dowager’s conduct of domestic and foreign affairs, but also takes the reader into the depths of her splendid Summer Palace and the harem of Beijing’s Forbidden City, where she lived surrounded by eunuchs—one of whom she fell in love, with tragic consequences. The world Chang describes here, in fascinating detail, seems almost unbelievable in its extraordinary mixture of the very old and the very new. Based on newly available, mostly Chinese, historical documents such as court records, official and private correspondence, diaries and eyewitness accounts, this biography will revolutionize historical thinking about a crucial period in China’s—and the world’s—history. Packed with drama, fast paced and gripping, it is both a panoramic depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a woman: as the concubine to a monarch, as the absolute ruler of a third of the world’s population, and as a unique stateswoman.

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 392 pages
Book Rating : 4.62/5 ( download)

DOWNLOAD NOW!

Download or read book China Under the Empress Dowager written by and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: