Your new book, Empress Dowager Cixi, tells the story of an extraordinary woman who ruled China at the turn of the 20th century. What sparked your interest in her?
I first encountered the Empress Dowager when I was researching Wild Swans in the early 90s, and then again when I was looking into Chairman Mao’s childhood for my biography of him. I realised that all the freedoms Mao enjoyed as child in a China were largely the result of the Empress Dowager’s modernising reforms. It was a very different experience to the one I had growing up as a child under Mao’s repressive regime.
You have described yourself as a “historical detective” in the past, and your book about Mao was focused on overturning any lingering view of him as a misguided but benevolent ruler, what myths about the Empress Dowager did you seek to destroy? The Empress Dowager has been given a seriously bad press over the years in China. There are a lot of negative stories on the Internet and in history books about her rule which make her out to be a cruel, ultra conservative despot. This conflicted with the impression I had formed while researching my other books. For me, she was the ruler who had put an end to the ancient, and terribly painful, practice of foot binding for women and started the modernisation of China. I sensed that there was new material to be uncovered and that I would have something original to say about her.
This sounds like it was a very personal project for you. Was it the challenge of the repairing the Empress Dowager’s reputation that appealed? I like my writing to break new ground, and I enjoy unpicking the past to discover the truth, or as close to truth as possible. But, I didn’t set out to restore Cixi’s reputation because before I started working on the book I didn’t have a clear idea of what she had achieved.
Did the fact that the Empress Dowager is more of an historical than a current political figure help you gain access to the national archives in Beijing? Yes, it did. She’s not as politically sensitive a figure as someone such as Chairman Mao, but let’s wait to see how the Chinese government react to this book once it’s printed. Both my previous books are still banned in China.
Do you foresee this book also being banned, and how would that affect you? I’m hopeful that it might not be banned but I’m also not hugely optimistic. I don’t think the regime would want to promote me in any way, particularly after the publication of my highly critical biography of Mao. The government are trying to re-establish Mao’s reputation as a ruler, and there are loud voices in the government who want to see him put back on a pedestal. Which is extremely ominous for me, of course.
Your first, and still most famous, book Wild Swans tells the history of modern China through the eyes of three generations of women, and this book is also from the female perspective. Do you prefer writing about women? I love writing about women. They’re just so much more… I can’t say they’re more interesting but I can really relate to a historical figure such as the Empress Dowager, whose way of thinking was close to that of the modern women’s.
Are you at all worried that the global impact of the Empress Dowager book might be reduced because Cixi’s story is not so well known outside China? Not really, because her story is just so gripping - in some ways more so than Chairman Mao’s. Mao was a consummate politician and that book is purely about his pursuit of power, whereas the Empress Dowager was a more human character with interests and passions – she even fell in love with eunuch. Cixi was the concubine of a monarch who became the absolute ruler of, what was then, a third of the world’s population and launched women’s liberation in China. I hope the public find her as fascinating as I do.
The book does also show a brutal side to the Empress Dowager, how do you equate that with your portrait of her as an ultimately benevolent ruler? Cixi might have launched modern China and ruled with absolute power for nearly half a century, but she was no saint. She was a politician who was often faced with tough moral dilemmas - rebellions were ruthlessly repressed and those who plotted against her were either executed or exiled. But, compared to her predecessors and successors, she was incredibly benign. She eventually released all but three of those she had imprisoned on political grounds.
The male emperors in the book are largely portrayed as pathetic, spoilt and out of touch with a sense of entitlement clouding their ability to rule. How much of Cixi’s success as a leader do you think was due to her gender? Overall, I think being a woman put her at a tremendous disadvantage. She could not be seen by her advisors and had to conduct audiences from behind a silk screen. She wasn’t allowed to travel and that damaged her international reputation. But, her big advantage was that she didn’t have an automatic mandate to rule, so she had to earn it. Also, she was naturally attracted to western models of government because she could see how much more freedom women in those countries enjoyed. For example she knew that Queen Victoria was allowed to rule in her own right, whereas she could not. She was forced to sit behind the throne of two child emperors – first her son and then her adopted son. As soon as they grew up, she was forced to retire.
Do you think China will ever give the Empress Dowager the recognition you believe she deserves? The Communist regime doesn’t have any incentive to recognise her achievements. They have always sought to portray her as the evil villain who made a mess of China, and themselves as the heroes who rescued the nation from the catastrophe she created. This is only compounded by the fact that her final project was to turn China into a constitutional monarchy and give the vote to Chinese people, which is a policy they explicitly and emphatically reject.
Your last work, Mao: The Unknown Story, received some harsh criticism from academics as well as rave reviews from critics – do you predict a similar split in opinion for this one?| I think it’s likely that it will cause some debate. I can say with pride that, despite the attacks on our conclusions in the Mao biography, nobody has ever spotted a single factual error. I don’t want to make my books bland and emotionless, and I’m happy for people to challenge my interpretations.
Wild Swans was published in 37 diff countries and sold over 13m copies – what level of success do you predict for this new book, and will the success of Wild Swans always overshadow your subsequent works? Probably nothing will exceed the success of Wild Swans but that’s only right as it’s about my family. I don’t waste my time worrying about what other people think or whether or not my books will win prizes, I prefer to focus on what I do well which is writing and researching.
Is it a personal goal to see one of your books published in your homeland, in your lifetime? It’s a hope, rather than a goal, because with a goal you have to pursue it. This is completely out of my control. I’m translating the book into Chinese at the moment, and it will be published in both Taiwan and Hong Kong. Publishers in China have expressed an interest, so we shall see if they succeed in getting it past the censors.
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine who Launched Modern China (Jonathan Cape, £20) is available to buy here
You have described yourself as a “historical detective” in the past, and your book about Mao was focused on overturning any lingering view of him as a misguided but benevolent ruler, what myths about the Empress Dowager did you seek to destroy? The Empress Dowager has been given a seriously bad press over the years in China. There are a lot of negative stories on the Internet and in history books about her rule which make her out to be a cruel, ultra conservative despot. This conflicted with the impression I had formed while researching my other books. For me, she was the ruler who had put an end to the ancient, and terribly painful, practice of foot binding for women and started the modernisation of China. I sensed that there was new material to be uncovered and that I would have something original to say about her.
This sounds like it was a very personal project for you. Was it the challenge of the repairing the Empress Dowager’s reputation that appealed? I like my writing to break new ground, and I enjoy unpicking the past to discover the truth, or as close to truth as possible. But, I didn’t set out to restore Cixi’s reputation because before I started working on the book I didn’t have a clear idea of what she had achieved.
Did the fact that the Empress Dowager is more of an historical than a current political figure help you gain access to the national archives in Beijing? Yes, it did. She’s not as politically sensitive a figure as someone such as Chairman Mao, but let’s wait to see how the Chinese government react to this book once it’s printed. Both my previous books are still banned in China.
Do you foresee this book also being banned, and how would that affect you? I’m hopeful that it might not be banned but I’m also not hugely optimistic. I don’t think the regime would want to promote me in any way, particularly after the publication of my highly critical biography of Mao. The government are trying to re-establish Mao’s reputation as a ruler, and there are loud voices in the government who want to see him put back on a pedestal. Which is extremely ominous for me, of course.
Your first, and still most famous, book Wild Swans tells the history of modern China through the eyes of three generations of women, and this book is also from the female perspective. Do you prefer writing about women? I love writing about women. They’re just so much more… I can’t say they’re more interesting but I can really relate to a historical figure such as the Empress Dowager, whose way of thinking was close to that of the modern women’s.
Are you at all worried that the global impact of the Empress Dowager book might be reduced because Cixi’s story is not so well known outside China? Not really, because her story is just so gripping - in some ways more so than Chairman Mao’s. Mao was a consummate politician and that book is purely about his pursuit of power, whereas the Empress Dowager was a more human character with interests and passions – she even fell in love with eunuch. Cixi was the concubine of a monarch who became the absolute ruler of, what was then, a third of the world’s population and launched women’s liberation in China. I hope the public find her as fascinating as I do.
The book does also show a brutal side to the Empress Dowager, how do you equate that with your portrait of her as an ultimately benevolent ruler? Cixi might have launched modern China and ruled with absolute power for nearly half a century, but she was no saint. She was a politician who was often faced with tough moral dilemmas - rebellions were ruthlessly repressed and those who plotted against her were either executed or exiled. But, compared to her predecessors and successors, she was incredibly benign. She eventually released all but three of those she had imprisoned on political grounds.
The male emperors in the book are largely portrayed as pathetic, spoilt and out of touch with a sense of entitlement clouding their ability to rule. How much of Cixi’s success as a leader do you think was due to her gender? Overall, I think being a woman put her at a tremendous disadvantage. She could not be seen by her advisors and had to conduct audiences from behind a silk screen. She wasn’t allowed to travel and that damaged her international reputation. But, her big advantage was that she didn’t have an automatic mandate to rule, so she had to earn it. Also, she was naturally attracted to western models of government because she could see how much more freedom women in those countries enjoyed. For example she knew that Queen Victoria was allowed to rule in her own right, whereas she could not. She was forced to sit behind the throne of two child emperors – first her son and then her adopted son. As soon as they grew up, she was forced to retire.
Do you think China will ever give the Empress Dowager the recognition you believe she deserves? The Communist regime doesn’t have any incentive to recognise her achievements. They have always sought to portray her as the evil villain who made a mess of China, and themselves as the heroes who rescued the nation from the catastrophe she created. This is only compounded by the fact that her final project was to turn China into a constitutional monarchy and give the vote to Chinese people, which is a policy they explicitly and emphatically reject.
Your last work, Mao: The Unknown Story, received some harsh criticism from academics as well as rave reviews from critics – do you predict a similar split in opinion for this one?| I think it’s likely that it will cause some debate. I can say with pride that, despite the attacks on our conclusions in the Mao biography, nobody has ever spotted a single factual error. I don’t want to make my books bland and emotionless, and I’m happy for people to challenge my interpretations.
Wild Swans was published in 37 diff countries and sold over 13m copies – what level of success do you predict for this new book, and will the success of Wild Swans always overshadow your subsequent works? Probably nothing will exceed the success of Wild Swans but that’s only right as it’s about my family. I don’t waste my time worrying about what other people think or whether or not my books will win prizes, I prefer to focus on what I do well which is writing and researching.
Is it a personal goal to see one of your books published in your homeland, in your lifetime? It’s a hope, rather than a goal, because with a goal you have to pursue it. This is completely out of my control. I’m translating the book into Chinese at the moment, and it will be published in both Taiwan and Hong Kong. Publishers in China have expressed an interest, so we shall see if they succeed in getting it past the censors.
Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine who Launched Modern China (Jonathan Cape, £20) is available to buy here
