Anchee Min - The Last Empress

I told him that I could not afford to accept such a gift, but he said that he would manage the cost.

"Where will the funds come from?" I asked.

"Uncle Prince Kung has already contributed twenty thousand taels," my son replied excitedly. "Friends, relatives, ministers and other officials are expected to follow. Mother, for once just try to enjoy life."

It had been nine years since I last visited Yuan Ming Yuan. The place had been further wrecked by wind, weather, scavengers and thieves. Man-tall weeds covered the entire area. As I stood by the broken stone pillars, I could hear the creaking sound of carriage wheels and the footfalls of eunuchs and remembered the day we barely escaped the advancing foreign armies.

I had never told Tung Chih that Yuan Ming Yuan was the place where he was conceived. In that one moment I had it all-Emperor Hsien Feng's only desire was to please me. Brief as it was, it had been real, and it had come at the time of my greatest despair. I had spent everything I had to bribe Chief Eunuch Shim to get a single night with His Majesty. When Hsien Feng ridiculed me, I risked my life to speak to him openly and honestly. It had been my boldness that had gained his respect, and then his adoration. I remembered Hsien Feng's voice gently calling me "my Orchid." I remembered his tireless desire for me in bed, everywhere, and mine for him. The happiness we both felt. The tears that came in the middle of our lovemaking. His eunuchs were terrified that His Majesty would disappear during the night, while my eunuchs waited by the gate to receive him. As the "lady of the night" I was supposed to be prepared like a plate of food offered to His Majesty, but His Majesty offered himself to me. He was thrilled by his own love.

Later, when Hsien Feng took up with other ladies, I experienced something close to death. It was impossible to go on living, yet I couldn't take my own life because Tung Chih was inside me.

The first place Tung Chih wanted to restore was the palace where I had spent most of my time living with Hsien Feng. I thanked Tung Chih and asked how he came to know that the palace was special to me. "Mother," he replied, smiling, "when you are quiet about something, I know that is what you care about the most."

I never doubted Tung Chih's motives. I didn't know that the true reason my son was so eager to rebuild Yuan Ming Yuan was to get me away from him so that he could continue his secret life, which would soon destroy him.

The royal counselors encouraged Tung Chih because they were eager for me to retire. They resented taking my orders and looked forward to governing without my interference. With their approval, Tung Chih ordered the restoration to begin even before the funding was in place. The project was plagued by trouble from the start. When the chief lumber supplier was caught embezzling, the funding stopped. It was the beginning of a never-ending nightmare.

A local official wrote an indignant letter to the court accusing Tung Chih of caving in to my greed. He described the restoration of Yuan Ming Yuan as a misuse of national funds. "The dynasty before ours, the Ming, was one of China's longest, lasting sixteen rulers," the official pointed out. "But later Ming emperors wasted their energies on pleasure. By the end of the sixteenth century, the Ming Dynasty had lapsed into a coma, waiting to be pushed aside. The treasury was empty, taxes became impossible, and the traditional signs of misrule-flood, drought and famine-were everywhere. People transferred their loyalty to a new leader because the dynasty had forfeited the mandate of Heaven."

The court didn't need a minor functionary to remind them that the country was still ravaged by the recent Taiping rebellion and that the Moslem uprisings in the west had not yet been suppressed. However, they rebuked the official for "obstructing the Emperor's filial duty to his mother." Tung Chih was determined to see his goal realized, but after a year and a great deal of expense, he was pressured by Prince Kung to abandon the project.

For years I would be blamed for whatever happened at Yuan Ming Yuan, but I was no longer in a position to advise Tung Chih-I was officially retired. What puzzled me was Prince Kung's change of mind. It was he who first supported the restoration by giving a donation to begin construction, but now he was among those who begged Tung Chih to call off the project.

Throwing a temper tantrum, Tung Chih accused his uncle of using disrespectful language and demoted him. It was Nuharoo who persuaded Tung Chih to reinstate his uncle's position a few weeks later.

I stayed away because I felt that Tung Chih needed to learn how to be an emperor. It had been too easy for him to order others around without ever suffering.

On a warm day in the summer of 1874, I watched my eunuch Li Lien-ying cutting gardenias in my garden. He removed and discarded flower buds and side shoots, then sliced the stems into three-inch pieces, carefully making the cut below a node. "New roots will form at this point," he explained as he inserted the cuttings into containers. "By next spring the plants should be ready to go out in the garden." A month later the cuttings failed to send out any new leaves.

To test if the roots were growing, Li Lien-ying gently pulled on a cutting. He felt no resistance, which indicated that roots were not forming. He told himself to be patient and wait for a few more days. "I have been doing this for years," he said to me. "It is how I've patched up the old gardenia gardens." But the cuttings began to wilt and eventually died. The eunuch believed that it was Heaven's sign that something terrible was going to happen.

"Nothing will happen," the master gardener said to Li. "It could be your mishandling. Maybe the water was contaminated by an animal's urine, or there were insects hidden in the moss. In any case, the plants died of too much stress."

I couldn't help but think of my son. He had been like a houseplant, protected until now from the rigors and uncertainties of the garden.

Tung Chih caught a cold that didn't go away for months. He had developed a fever, and by autumn his body was very weak.

"Tung Chih needs to go outdoors and exercise," Prince Kung urged.

My son's other uncles, Prince Ts'eng and Prince Ch'un, assumed that Tung Chih's nightly dissipations had begun taking a toll on his health. When Doctor Sun Pao-tien requested a meeting to discuss Tung Chih's real condition, he was rebuffed.

I couldn't bear the sight of Tung Chih in a sickbed. It reminded me of his father's dying days. I summoned Alute and Foo-cha and the other wives, and asked them, as they knelt before me, if they had any idea what was wrong with their husband.

Their revelation shocked me: Tung Chih had never quit going to the brothels. "His Majesty prefers flowers in the wild," Foo-cha complained.

Alute resented my questioning. I explained that I didn't mean to intrude or offend and that I was not interested in disrupting her privacy.

Eyebrows twisted into the shape of two flying swords, Alute said that as the Empress of China she had the right not to answer. "It's between Tung Chih and me," she insisted. Her white, porcelain-smooth skin turned pink.

I tried not to show my irritation. I told her that I only meant to help.

"I am not doubting your motives," Alute said to me. "It's just… I don't feel lesser in status."

I was confused. "What are you talking about? Who made you feel 'lesser in status'?"

Alute nodded at the other wives. "Everybody here is afraid of speaking her thoughts in front of you, but I am going to. Dowager Empress, Tung Chih is your responsibility, not ours."

I was offended. "Alute, you have no right to speak for the others."

"I'll speak for myself, then. As His Majesty's mother, have you asked your son about what is wrong with him?"