Cruelty of Empress Dowager Cixi, revealed in stories of her assassinating other concubines and royal family members for the desire of autocracy, made her the top three evil women in China’s history. Unfortunately, her achievements are often belittled by her brutality, and she was usually considered negatively by her descendants. Despite Dowager Cixi’s ruthless actions, she was a clever woman who remarked significant change in culture, politics and traditional value of China during her reign. Dowager Cixi should newly be renowned as a unusually intelligent empress who played important role in history.
Dowager Cixi had suffered from abject poverty before entering the palace. As if she were to show her success, she lived extravagant life as an empress and believed that she could express the power of empress through luxurious building. Reporter Kim Jungmi claims, “One of the examples that show Empress Dowager Cixi’s luxurious life is the Summer Palace also designated as a China’s cultural heritage.” (Kim, 1, my translation) Dowager Cixi had built the Summer Palace to fulfill her desire on riches, but the palace unexpectedly had ended up as one of the most beautiful place to visit in China. “The Summer Palace in Beijing – first built in 1750, largely destroyed in the war of 1860 and restored on its original foundations in 1886 – is a masterpiece of Chinese landscape garden design,” the UNESCO declared when adding the Summer Palace in World Heritage List on 1998. “The natural landscape of hills and open water is combined with artificial features such as pavilions, halls, palaces, temples and bridges to form a harmonious ensemble of outstanding aesthetic value” (UNESCO,1) The world now recognize the Summer Palace as valuable present fro...
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...ole in the history. Although every aspect of Dowager Cixi cannot be morally justified, her success should not be put down for her evilness, but rather be praised for what she had done to her country and her people.
Works Cited
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"Summer Palace, an Imperial Garden in Beijing." - UNESCO World Heritage Centre. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Nov. 2013. .
Some of the more fascinating documents of the Han period in ancient China were arguably those written by women. The writings were at once contradictory due to the fact that they appeared to destroy the common perceptions of women as uneducated and subservient creatures while simultaneously delivering messages through the texts that demonstrated a strict adherence to traditional values. Those are the paradoxical characteristics of prominent female scholar Ban Zhou’s work called Lesson for a Woman. Because modern opinions on the roles of women in society likely cloud the clear analysis of Zhou’s work, it is necessary to closely examine the Han’s societal norms and popular beliefs that contributed to establishing the author’s perspective and intent.
Most outcasts of history had a particular, exclusive life; full of struggles against the society ever since birth and grew up with a heart made out of steel from the harsh criticism they have endured. They differ from the community within their beginning to their end, and many of their stories end up becoming legends and gaps of the past that nobody will be able to reincarnate. China’s first and last female emperor, Wu Zetian, was one of these exclusives. Ever since birth, her history of tactics to the people around her; in order to ascend the throne, juxtaposed towards society’s attitudes of women at the time; through her breakdown of gender stereotypes and quick knowledge, and offered a new perspective to the world of just how cruel and beautiful women can be. She successfully destructed all accumulated views of women in the Tang Dynasty, and created her future in the way she wanted it – on top of every man in her country. She was an outcast – somebody who juxtaposed against the demands of her. She was history.
No other woman in the Early Han held the same amount of influence as Empress Lü throughout her various titles as Empress, Empress Dowager, and then Grand Empress Dowager. Stories recounting her manipulative nature paint a picture of a scheming empress using her imperial power to bestow favors and political positions to her own clan. This essay argues that Empress Lü used the lack of precedence for her position as Empress Dowager to manipulate court officials into granting power to her clan, which caused political unrest late in her life and resulted in the destruction of the Lü clan. To support this claim, this essay will discuss the exceptional nature of Empress Lü's power and the extent of her ability to manipulate the court, and then this paper will provide evidence of a Lü clan extermination after the death of the empress that held power for fifteen years after her husband died – in a nation with no precedence for this kind of rule.
In this initial chapter, Huang provides an anecdotal history of some of the events that occurred, and includes within it a discussion of the set up of the leadership, the repercussions that occurred in the event of certain actions, including the prospects of an audience with the emperor. Huang reviews these issues as he considers that actions taken by the Wan-li emperor, who was only twenty-four in 1587 and who had been a veteran of ceremonial proceedings, and considers his history as an element of understanding the progression of leadership. Huang outlines the reconstruction of the court under Wan-li who came into power at the death of his father and the seemingly insignificant actions taken by the emperor, from his marriage to the redecorating of the court. Within the scope of this discourse, Huang is able to disclose the excesses of the emperor, and consider the implications of the bureaucratic system that he devised as an extension of this excess (13).
Sit, Tony. "The Life of Empress Cixi” (from Issue 10 of the China in Focus Magazine). Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU), 2001. .
At the center of Japanese and Chinese politics and gender roles lies the teachings of Confucius. The five relationships (五倫） of Confucius permeated the lives of all within the Heian and Tang societies.4 However, the focus here will be on the lives of the courtesans. The Genji Monogatari provides us with an unrivalled look into the inner-workings of Confucianism and court life in the Heian period. Song Geng, in his discourse on power and masculinity in Ch...
Since the beginning of early Confucianism, women in early China suffered oppression. Unfortunately, the religion holds much responsibility for the sexism. Confucius’s answers for the Chinese people’s way of living consisted of sexual discrimination and segregation towards females. Women in China were urged to meet the expectations outlined in Confucian ideals. Such concepts were mainly limited to the men. Thus, Confucianism defined gender expectations. Confucianism stimulated the inequality of women in Chinese culture.
Man, John. The Terra Cotta Army: China's First Emperor and the Birth of a Nation. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo, 2008. Print.
Cleopatra has done to Marc and Julius, both women have the power to seduce men and get what they wanted. Empress Wu next move was to challenge Confucian beliefs against rule by women, Wu began a crusade to elevate the position of women. She had scholars write biographies of famous women and raised the position of her mother's clan by giving her relatives high political posts. Empress Wu’s belief was that an ideal ruler was one who ruled like a mother does over her children.
Jonathan D. Spence creates a memoir to show K’ang Hsi from the first person narration. This technique immediately brings the reader into this remarkable emperor’s world. K’ang Hsi (1654-1722) was the third emperor in Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) and he ruled China for 61 years (start from 1661 and end at 1722), which was the longest period throughout Chinese history. Han Chinese was the majority ethnicity in China and they ruled over China since the start of Chinese history. However, until Yuan D...
Wu Zhou’s childhood was educated but short as she became a junior concubine at a short age. “Wu was given a good education [and] was taught to read, write, and to play music” (“Empress Wu Zetian”). In that time, it was not common for women to gain an education. Her father urged her to gain an education, and living in a wealthy family, Wu could become well educated. “Wu Zhou entered he palace of the Tang Emperor Taizong, at the age of 14, as a junior concubine” (FitzGerald). Being very beautiful in her youth, Wu caught the eye Emperor
After working as a local government official for nearly 20 years, Wang concluded that the unlimited annexation of land weakened the economy. In 1058 Wang Anshi traveled to the capital, Kaifeng, from his home province of Jiangxi to present what would be his most famous memorial to the Emperor Renzong (1023-1064)(For more information please check 宋仁宗 ). Wang’s “Ten Thousand Word Memorial” outlines his general political philosophy while giving a brief preview of the...
In ancient China, throughout many dynasties like the Xia, Han and Tang, fashion, beauty and intelligence played an important role in women’s lives. Although women did not have as many rights as men they still had many grooming rituals and standards they followed, as a means of societal position. Examples of characteristics that defined beauty were related to features and aspects of the body. Some of these traits are still valued and practice today and some of the more gruesome practices are now against human rights and laws. Women also had to be intelligent to be attractive to men. It was said by Queen Yangguifei, who ruled during the Tang dynasty, “That is to say, as a beauty, a woman must be both pretty and bright. A perfect face is not enough;
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Figure 1 shows a perspective view, created in 1875, of the palace grounds and the outlying temples, placed among the mountainous region. Each palace serving a different purpose, each was placed in accordance with the “poetic” views of the resort’s landscape, as these framed pieces of nature were among the most significant aspects of the resort itself. As though were the eight lakes in the Lake Area, the vast grassland of the Plains and the valleys of the Mountain Area. A scenic view is made up of two parts: the view itself and the space for the view to be admired. A perfect Chinese garden will be able to alternate the scenic views by alternating the depths of field seeing the view. Some scenes in the resort, all named by the Kangxi Emperor and the Qianlong Emperor, were given poetic names referring to the scene’s original model of inspiration, which might’ve been a garden, a mansion, or a