Cixi 慈禧
After the Boxer Rebellion, Cixi (慈禧) began receiving foreign women at the palace and posing for the photographer Yu Xunling. Some portraits were sent to diplomats as gifts, and in one photograph the Dowager Empress appeared in the guise of Guanyin, the bodhisattva of compassion. These photographs, taken at a time when the court's reputation had suffered especially badly, later helped to create the image of the "dragon lady" familiar from cinema. In Li Han-Hsiang's films and in the drama Li Lianying, the Imperial Eunuch, Cixi already has her own view of what is happening to the empire, and people with whom she can talk without court ceremony.
Cixi was born in 1835 into the Manchu Yehe-Nara clan. In 1852 she became a concubine of the Xianfeng Emperor, and four years later bore him a son, the future Tongzhi Emperor. Before his death, Xianfeng appointed eight regents. They came to power in 1861, when the emperor died at Rehe, but lasted only a few months. The heir's mother and the Empress Dowager Ci'an, the late emperor's principal wife, secured the support of his brother, Prince Gong, and removed the regents. The two widows began to rule in Tongzhi's name.
Tongzhi began to rule in his own right in 1873, and in 1875 he died without leaving an heir. The throne passed to Cixi's young nephew, the future Guangxu Emperor. Both empress dowagers again took power into their own hands, and after Ci'an's death in 1881 Cixi remained the sole regent. In time Guangxu began to rule in his own right, but his aunt's influence at court endured. In 1898 the emperor and his advisers embarked on reforms that went down in history as the Hundred Days' Reform. Cixi put an end to them and once again took the government of the empire upon herself. Guangxu was confined on Yingtai Island, some of the reformers were executed, and others managed to flee.
In 1900 the court backed the Boxers, who had besieged the foreign legations in Beijing, and declared war on the foreign powers. When the troops of the Eight-Nation Alliance occupied the capital, Cixi fled with the court to Xi'an. She returned to Beijing in 1902, after the conclusion of peace, under which China undertook to pay an indemnity. In her final years, reforms of administration, the judiciary and education were begun under her. The way the court wished to present itself beyond China's borders was changing too. In 1903–1904 Yu Xunling photographed Cixi in ceremonial robes, among her attendants and on the imperial boat. The Smithsonian Museum preserves 36 original glass negatives from this series.
Cixi died in November 1908, the day after Guangxu. Before her death she chose as heir the young Puyi, the son of Guangxu's younger brother. In Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987), this is the child's first encounter with the court. The boy is brought to the dying Cixi, and she declares that he will be emperor. Lisa Lu, who played her in this short scene, had by then already twice performed the same role for Li Han-Hsiang.
Hong Kong cinema turned to Cixi as early as 1940, when the Cantonese The Empress Dowager was released, starring Tam Lan-Hing. In Li Han-Hsiang's The Empress Dowager (1975), Cixi as played by Lisa Lu and the minister Li Hongzhang strive to avoid war with Japan, while Guangxu, played by Ti Lung, insists on war. In the next film, The Last Tempest (1976), the same actors again play the emperor and his aunt, who come to an open break during the reforms of 1898.
Li Han-Hsiang returned to the struggle for the regency in Reign Behind a Curtain (1983), in which the young Cixi was played by Liu Xiao-Qing. In 1991 the actress appeared in the role again in Li Lianying, the Imperial Eunuch. There Cixi is shown through the eyes of a man who served her for many years and remained at her side even during the flight from Beijing. On television, Cixi appeared both in dramas about the court itself and in stories about the people who had to deal with it. Lu Zhong, who played Cixi in the series For the Sake of the Republic of China (2003), returned to the role three years later in Qiao's Grand Courtyard (2006), a family saga about Shanxi merchants.
