Anchee Min - Empress Orchid

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I married one, for heaven’s sake! The leaking puts a lot of shame on the man. My husband had a profound understanding of mistreatment and suffering, but that did not stop him from being vicious and jealous. He wished everyone tragedy.”

I didn’t tell my family about what I intended to do, because I was aware that my chance of success was one in a million. The next morning I went to the local courthouse before work. I was nervous but determined. I announced my purpose to the guard and was guided to an office in the back. The room was large. Its columns, tables and chairs were wrapped with red cloth. A bearded man dressed in a red robe sat behind a large redwood desk. On the desk was a rectangular piece of yellow silk. It was a copy of the Imperial decree. I went up to the man and got down on my knees. I stated my name and age. I said that my father was from the Yehonala clan and was the late taotai of Wuhu.

The bearded man measured me with his eyes. “Do you have better clothes?” he asked after a hard stare.

“No, sir,” I replied.

“I am not allowed to let anyone enter the palace looking like a beggar.”

“Well, may I have your permission to ask whether I am qualified for the entrance? If I can get a yes from you, sir, I shall find a way to prepare my appearance.”

“Do you think I’d bother to waste my breath if I didn’t find you qualified?”

“Well,” Mother said, a bit relieved, “I will just have to tell your uncle that Bottle has to wait until the Emperor passes you up.”

“Maybe by then Uncle will get hit by a cart or Bottle will die of an opium overdose,” Kuei Hsiang said.

“Kuei Hsiang,” Rong stopped him, “you don’t curse people like that. After all, they sheltered us.”

I always found that Rong had better sense than Kuei Hsiang. That was not to say that Rong was not afraid. She continued to be delicate and fearful throughout her life. She would spend days working on an embroidery and then suddenly abandon it, saying that she saw its color turning. She would conclude that there must be a ghost at work. She would panic and cut up the piece.

“Why don’t you study, Kuei Hsiang?” I said to my brother. “You have a better chance than Rong and I. The Imperial civil service examination comes up every year. Why don’t you give it a try?”

“I don’t have what it takes” was Kuei Hsiang’s reply.

Big Sister Fann was surprised that I passed the entrance exam at the office of the Imperial household. Grabbing a candle, she studied my features.

“How did I miss it?” She turned my head right and left. “Bright almond-shaped single-lid eyes, smooth skin, a straight nose, a lovely mouth and a slender body. It must be the clothes that diminished your looks.”

Putting down the candle, Fann folded her arms. She paced around the room like a cricket in a jar before a fight. “You are not going to look like this when you enter the Forbidden City, Orchid.” She placed her hands on my shoulders and said, “Come, let me transform you.”

It was in Big Sister Fann’s dressing room that I was turned into a princess.

Big Sister Fann proved to me her reputation-she who was once in charge of dressing the Empress wrapped me in a light green satin tunic embroidered with lifelike white pheasants. Embroidered borders in a darker shade decorated the neck, cuffs and edges.

“This tunic was Her Majesty’s. She gave it to me as a wedding present,” Big Sister Fann explained. “I hardly wore it because I was afraid of stains. And now I am too old and heavy. I loan it to you, the matching headdress too.”

“Won’t Her Majesty recognize it?”

“Don’t worry.” Fann shook her head. “She has hundreds of similar dresses.”

“What will the dress make her think?”

“That you have her taste.”

I was thrilled and told Big Sister Fann that I couldn’t thank her enough.

“Remember, beauty is not the only measurement at the selection, Orchid,” Big Sister Fann said as she dressed me. “You can lose because you are too poor to bribe the eunuchs, who will in turn find a way to point out your shortcomings to His and Her Majesties. I have personally attended this kind of occasion. It was so exhausting that every girl looked the same by the end. His and Her Majesties’ eyes wouldn’t register beauty anymore, and that’s why most of the Imperial wives and concubines are ugly.”

Over the endless months of waiting, I could scarcely contain my agitation. I slept fitfully and awoke from dreams full of dread. Then the waiting ended: tomorrow I would enter the Forbidden City to compete for the selection.

Clouds hung high in the sky and the breeze was warm as my sister and I strode through the streets of Peking. “I have a feeling that you will be one of the two hundred concubines, if not one of the seven wives,” Rong said. “Your beauty is unmatchable, Orchid.”

“My desperation is unmatchable,” I corrected her.

We continued walking and I held her hand tightly. She was dressed in a light blue cotton gown with stitch pads neatly sewed on her shoulders. She and I looked alike in terms of features, except sometimes her expression gave away her fear.

“What if you never get to spend a night with His Majesty?” Rong asked. Her raised eyebrows formed a line on her forehead.

“It is better than marrying Bottle, isn’t it?”

Rong nodded.

“I’ll send you the most fashionable clothes patterns from the palace,” I said, trying to be cheerful. “You’ll be the best-dressed girl in the city. Fine fabrics, fabulous lace, peacock feathers.”

“Don’t you go out of your way, Orchid. Everyone knows that the Forbidden City has strict rules. One wrong move and your head could be chopped.”

For the rest of the walk we were quiet. The Imperial wall seemed taller and thicker. It was the wall that would separate us.

I WAS WALKING among the thousands of girls selected from all over the country. After the first round of inspections the number dwindled to two hundred. I had been among the lucky ones and was now competing to become one of Emperor Hsien Feng’s seven wives.

A month before, the household committee had sent me for a physical examination. The process would have shocked me if I hadn’t been preparing myself. It took place on the south side of Peking, in a palace surrounded by a large formal garden. The house and grounds had once been used as a vacation palace for the emperors. There was a small pond in the middle of the courtyard.

I met many girls whose beauty I didn’t have words to even begin to describe. Each maiden was one of a kind. The girls from the southern provinces were slender, had swan-like necks, long limbs and small breasts. The girls from the north were like ripe fruit. They had breasts like gourds and pumpkin-sized buttocks.

The eunuchs checked our birth signs, star charts, height, weight, the shape of our hands and feet, our hair. They counted our teeth. Everything had to match the Emperor’s own charts.

We were instructed to undress and line up. One by one we were examined by a head eunuch, who had an assistant recording his words in a book.

“Uneven eyebrows,” the head eunuch pronounced as he walked past us, “crooked shoulders, a laborer’s hands, earlobes too small, jaw too narrow, lips too thin, puffy eyelids, square toes, legs too short, thighs too fat.” Those girls were instantly dismissed.

Hours later we were guided to a hall with peach-flower-patterned curtains. A group of eunuchs came holding tapes. My body was measured by three eunuchs. I was pinched and squeezed.

There was no place to hide. “Shrink or stick out your head-either way you won’t escape the dropping ax.” The head eunuch pushed my shoulders and yelled, “Straighten up!”