Reconsidering the reign of the last empress in China

The Last Empress
By Anchee Min
Houghton Mifflin, 308pp., $25

In "The Last Empress," Anchee Min continues the story of China's final empress, Tzu Hsi , who ruled the nation for nearly 50 years until her death in 1908 . As Min showed us in her 2004 novel, "Empress Orchid," Tzu Hsi's power arose from the fact that she produced China's sole male heir in the 1850s, served as co-regent during his childless reign, and then as regent for the son she adopted as his successor.

Referred to as "Dragon Lady" and considered a "murderess" by contemporary journalists, Tzu Hsi, whom Min calls Orchid, is typically described as a ruler primarily considered with maintaining total control of her country. When she died, China fell into chaos. In 1911, Sun Yat-sen declared himself provisional president , and Chiang Kai-shek came to power in the late 1920s. The rest is familiar history.

Min provides a very different version of her heroine's motives. In this novel, as in the first one, her explicit purpose is to rehabilitate Orchid's good name. According to Min, historians misunderstand her actions when they emphasize her ambition and lust for sole control. Orchid ruled because the court asked and the country needed her. Neither son hated her or plotted her assassination. Rather, Min argues in the novel's publicity material, Tzu Hsi should be remembered as a woman trapped in a restrictive society where women were valued only in relation to their male relatives.

Without question Orchid understood her womanly powers, using them to marry Emperor Hsien Feng. She worked her way through the complex hierarchy of the Chinese court, overcoming a system based on bloodlines, class status, and, naturally, gender. At 17, she negotiated her transition from impoverished virgin to third-rank concubine, eventually becoming the second wife of the emperor, and mother of the imperial heir, the Son of Heaven. When her husband died, she survived a coup to see her son take control of China.

Orchid was denied the right to mother her own son because custom made him the son of Hsien's senior wife, the empress Nuharoo. When "The Last Empress" begins, Tung is 7, and the two widowed empresses serve as co-regents. Tung is chiefly interested in prostitutes and pleasure and dies at 19 of smallpox and probably venereal disease. He leaves no heir.

Orchid gets a second chance at motherhood when the two regents select 3-year-old Guang-hsu, the son of Orchid's sister and Hsien's youngest brother. At first, Orchid is optimistic because the intelligent, sensitive Guang becomes the loving son for whom she yearns. Soon enough, though, Guang-hsu also disappoints the empress. Inspired if not seduced by the reformer Kang Yu-wei , he institutes a series of rapid political and economic reforms in China during what is now called the Hundred Days. Fearful of chaos and civil war, Orchid objects to these changes, and Guang-hsu is accused of plotting her murder. In return, she crushes the reforms and encourages the beheading of its popular leaders. At 26, Guang-hsu withdraws from ruling , and Orchid's reputation is established as a "villain of immense power, dedicated to evil."

China's political history, of course, shapes Orchid's destiny as it destroys Guang-hsu; but Min mostly treats these events as subplot. At 73, dying, Orchid sighs that her single accomplishment is keeping "China in one piece." But this was no small achievement. Internally, the country was torn by rebelling warlords, Muslim uprisings, and the Boxer Rebellion. Externally, Japan, England, France, Russia, Germany, the United States, and other countries plotted to plunder China's rich natural resources.

Perhaps because Min believes that the most important milestones in Tzu Hsi's life are her marriage, her mothering, and the deaths of her children, these markers are most vivid in "Empress Orchid." But she also shows us that Orchid was a powerful woman who suffered harsh judgments from her contemporaries and the historians who followed. In the end, Min reminds us not to misunderstand or misjudge a woman ruler who puts her country first and makes her decisions with her heart as well as with her head.

Judy Budz is a professor of English at Fitchburg State College.