The Last Empress: A Novel [Paperback]

The story here is pretty riveting: In 1852, a delicate-looking young woman from southern China joined a select new crop of imperial concubines in Peking. Known as Orchid, she was thrust forward by her parents, who were willing to gamble their 17-year-old daughter's well-being for a chance to get her inside the palace, known as the Forbidden City for its restrictive rules and clandestine manners.

"It was not a good time to enter the Forbidden City," writes Anchee Min in "The Last Empress," evoking the intrigue and opulence of 19th century China while telling the story of its improbably dominant ruler. "[T]he consequences of a misstep were often deadly."

Orchid did not misstep. Starting at a low rank among the hundreds of concubines, she gradually befriended the eunuchs who ran the palace, then bribed her way into a tryst with the young emperor. They had one nocturnal encounter. She became pregnant and gave birth to a boy -- the first male heir to the throne. For Orchid, it was the equivalent of hitting the jackpot.

Yet she did not stop there. When the emperor died unexpectedly a few years later, Orchid vied to become regent for her son, the new emperor-to-be, until he came of age. She created secret alliances, outfoxed the leading minister and had him publicly beheaded. In the years that followed, Orchid bested every rival who came along, including her co-regent, her emperor son and her emperor nephew, each of whom died in mysterious circumstances. Incredibly, in a culture that generally subjugated women, Orchid ruled China for 47 years. She died in 1908.

Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi, as Orchid was formally known, is a standout even in the impressive pantheon of Chinese history. A political reactionary who blocked reform in an era that desperately needed it, she has been reviled by historians for her stubborn adherence to traditional ways, a recalcitrance that hastened the collapse of China's imperial system. Her staunch secrecy made her the subject of wild rumors about bloodthirsty killings and voracious sexual appetite. What actually happened inside the walls of the Forbidden City in her day will never fully be known, yet Orchid's ability to hold on to power suggests that, at the very least, she was one wily politician.

In "The Last Empress," Min takes a provocative view, offering a sympathetic portrait of Orchid as a selfless woman striving to hold together a fractured nation. Orchid narrates the tale and is presented as kindhearted and uninterested in power but constantly forced to fend off the venal and small-minded noblemen of the Manchu court.

"The Last Empress" is the second volume in Min's story, continuing where she left off with "Empress Orchid" (2004). In that earlier book, Min crafted a taut narrative that followed Orchid as she grew from a naive young woman into a capable and conscientious empress. The storytelling was absorbing, and Min used historical events and sensuous, textured descriptions of China to set the scene well.

This time, unfortunately, it is not a convincing portrayal. "The Last Empress" progressively loses coherence as Orchid rises in authority. When those around her fall away, she laments in not-too-believable fashion, nor do her justifications for seizing power at critical junctures ring true. Her personality is not particularly engaging, and secondary characters -- particularly her legendary top eunuchs, An-te-hai and Li Lien-ying -- are (contrary to all historical evidence) disappointingly dull.

As in her earlier book, Min effectively employs historical detail to enrich the narrative. The scarcity of firewood in Peking one winter, for example, inspires a description of the cold, noxious hallways of the palace, smoky from the burning of raw green wood. The Taiping Rebellion, war with Japan and the Boxer Rebellion serve as dramatic backdrops for Orchid's personal odyssey. It would have been far more interesting, though, if the author had conveyed the inevitable conflict of ambition and doubt within Orchid herself, as she struggled to master diplomacy and court politics. Instead, Min gives us a good-hearted woman who responds to each crisis by trying to do the right thing. Yawn.

One cannot help but ponder Min's motivations in creating this anodyne portrait. At first I wondered whether she might be succumbing to the common hankering for a benevolent dictator. After all, in every culture there are those who yearn for a powerful leader unfettered by bureaucracies or elections, who makes political decisions that are genuinely in the national interest. It is a perennial fantasy. Yet as I read, I came to think that Min was impelled by something more personal. Her first book, the memoir "Red Azalea," beautifully captured her own fiery personality as an artistic rebel who hated to be told what to think and was singularly ill-suited to live under the totalitarian rule of China's Cultural Revolution. Min now takes a historical character, reviled in the schoolbooks of Communist China as "a mastermind of pure evil and intrigue," and presents her as a loving and generous soul. Min has said in interviews that she identifies with the Empress Dowager as a strong, independent-minded woman determined to beat the odds and that she wanted to rewrite the "lies" told by the Communists. They are indeed world-class liars, and they deserve to be challenged on history. But doing so effectively requires a more compelling and credible story.

Min herself has certainly beaten the odds, arriving in the United States in 1984 as a 27-year-old who did not speak English. Since then, she has emerged as a talented and widely acclaimed novelist in her adopted language, a remarkable feat. She is an evocative, bold writer who seems eager to take on a broad canvas. This effort is disappointing. But I suspect, and hope, that we will be hearing from her again.

In much the same way Su Tong presented imperial life in MY LIFE AS EMPEROR, Anchee Min in THE LAST EMPRESS gives the lie to Mel Brooks's oft-cited, tongue-in-cheek remark in the movie "History of the World, Part I" that "It's good to be king!" In this sequel to EMPRESS ORCHID, Ms. Min continues her novelistic, and novel, retelling of the life of Lady Yehonala, the imperial concubine who rose to become (Dowager) Empress Tsu Hsi.

Known now in the modern English (pinyin) transliteration as Ci Xi, the last Empress of China has long been reviled in China as the Dragon Lady. Portrayed as the manipulative power behind the throne of the last four Emperors of China (her husband and then her own son, followed by a nephew and finally by the infamously impotent Pu Yi), Ci Xi has been portrayed in official Chinese history as evil, power-crazed, and the proximate cause of imperial China's downfall. THE LAST EMPRESS tackles Ci Xi's life from a quite different angle. Based on extensive research Ms. Min conducted in Beijing's archives, she portrays the Dragon Lady as an empathetic figure, a loving wife and perhaps misguided mother, a woman who yearned to be released from the bondage of imperial rule over a nation in rapid decline but for the lack of intellectual capacity and political competence of her husband's successors. Thus, we are presented with an "Empress in handcuffs," chained to her position of power and wealth by the exigencies of China's late 19th Century moment.

For readers like myself not deeply schooled in Chinese imperial history, it is difficult to assess the historical veracity of Ms. Min's interpretation. Certainly, Lady Yehonala must have experienced motherly feelings and perhaps wifely feelings as well - as one of a thousand concubines in the Forbidden City, who can know how close she felt to her Emperor husband, or he to her? Whether as Empress and Dowager Ci Xi always acted so nobly in the best interests of her people and her country, however, is doubtless open to historical debate.

Regardless, one can accept THE LAST EMPRESS as a historical novel and read it for its own account. In that respect, Anchee Min offers up a fictionalized retelling of the modern decline and fall of an ancient empire. Her story delineates the rot from within, combining political machinations and self-aggrandizing power games with such intense inward-looking by most of the imperial court that most failed to see the internal and external dangers encroaching on Beijing until it was far too late. At the same time, Ms. Min provides us with a strong and insightful feel for life in China's imperial city - the nearly obscene restrictions on personal freedom and private feelings, the constant fear of physical harm or political usurpation, and the enforced emotional distance among members of the imperial family. Life for an Emperor or Empress in the Forbidden City truly was imprisonment in a gilded cage.

From the Taiping and Boxer Rebellions to the destruction of the imperial park at Yuan Ming Yuan to the economic incursions of the Western powers and the eventual territorial incursions of the Russians and Japanese, Anchee Min's story provides a novelistic framework around an extended lesson in Chinese history from 1850 - 1908. To a limited extent, her work of fiction suffers from the burden of historical fact it seeks to convey. Her story occasionally comes across as heavy on exposition of historical events and explanation of the principal players and their actions, to the detriment of her story's characters and the reader's identification with them. Where Lady Yehonala, Emperor Hsien Feng, Lady Nuharoo, Prince Kung, and the eunuch An-te-hai dominated EMPRESS ORCHID as human characters, these same individuals and a host of new faces come through in THE LAST EMPRESS somewhat less as people and somewhat more as players in a game of 19th Century realpolitik, a game that China was destined to lose despite Empress Ci Xi's apparent best efforts. The authorial trade-off is a difficult one - more intensive focus on (say) the unrequited love affair between Ci Xi and Yung Lu would have made for less history but perhaps warmer and deeper novelistic characterization. In any event, THE LAST EMPRESS offers a fulfilling sequel to EMPRESS ORCHID and a fascinating insider's perspective on the death throes of an ancient empire.

In this sequel to Empress Orchid, Anchee Min continues her revisionist portrait of the Lady Yehonala, aka, Tzu Hsi, Ci Xi, the Dowager Empress, and the Dragon Lady. Min portrays the Empress as a reluctant ruler who worked the levers of power indirectly through her emperor sons Tung Chih and Guang Hsu (who was actually the son of her deranged sister) as well as various Manchu princes and generals.

In Min's version, the empress navigates between competing conservative and reform forces as well as the demands of foreign powers. During much of her reign, China is beset by foreign demands, attacks and wars from Great Britain, France, Germany, the US, and perhaps most ominously, Japan. China is repeatedly forced to grant trade and territorial concessions. China's economy is feeble and its military archaic and ineffectual.

Through it all, in Min's telling, the empress only wants her sons to take the levers of power so that she can fade into the background. Neither is remotely capable of doing so. Someone in the imperial family has to rule and the empress reluctantly gathers the reins to herself. She gradually becomes politically adept at deflecting her enemies and supporting her allies.

Her ability to rule, however, is severely hampered because she is a woman but, even if she wasn't the Manchu are absurdly isolated and weak. They almost never leave the Forbidden City and know very little about the country they rule, let alone the outside world.Late in the book, the empress holds a dinner for the wives of foreign ambassadors, but she sits on a dais without being able to speak a single word to any of them. Nonetheless, this occasion is regarded as a great step forward. Tradition denies her a meeting with China's great friend, Robert Hart until they are both near the end of their careers and lives.

Min's work is no doubt a strong corrective to the previously held view of the empress as a cunning, blood-thirsty, perhaps drug-addled, sex fiend and ruthless tyrant. Whether the empress was really as reluctant to rule as Min portrays her or not, the portrait of her as a ruler in extraordinarily difficult and isolated circumstances forced to exercise her often limited powers through indirection seems highly plausible.

The real problem with The Last Empress book, however, was that the central actors are all tedious, shallow, and tiresome, while nearly all of the really interesting action takes place off-stage, whether it is war with Japan or the Boxer Rebellion. The empress knows little of the details of these events and consequently, neither does the reader. The Manchu dynasty is an out-of-touch empty shell, China will be dominated by outsiders, and whether the empress rules or one of a succession of pretenders makes no difference. The endless court intrigue, the empress' obsession with her appearance becomes tedious. And it is hard to empathize with the worldly sufferings of a woman who is after all an empress. One wonders whether there has ever been a less important ruler over such a long period.

The total result is only moderately interesting and a disappointment after Empress Orchid, which seemed to set the stage for a much more compelling sequel.

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