Jung Chang Talking Books

Hello, I'm Razia Iqbal, and I'm at Hay Festival for a special series of

Talking Books. Among many of the attractions here is the Chinese

writer Jung Chang. Her book, Wild Swans, catapulted her onto the

international stage, the harrowing story of her own family focusing on

three generations of women. She then tackled the task of thinking about

what we should think about Chairman Mao, and now a book on the Empress

Dowager who ruled to 1908, a woman she says went from concubine to

laying the modern foundations of China.

The Empress Dowager in the book written by Jung Chang is a book in

which she dismisses the predominantly Western view of her as

either tyrannical, or vicious, or even hopelessly incompetent. What

was it specifically that drew you to her as a subject you wanted to

research? I first got interested in the

Empress Dowager when I was researching Wild Swans. In that I

described my grandmother had bound feet, crushed and bound feet. This

was her shoe, she was my size. The foot binding was not only to put a

piece of cloth around the feet, only the big toe was allowed to grow, and

the other toes and the arch were crushed under a big stone, the

binding was there to stop the bones from recovering. This form of

torture tortured Chinese women for 1000 years. I grew up in Communist

China and thought that foot binding was banned by the communists. When

researching Wild Swans, I realised that foot binding was banned by the

Empress Dowager. That got me interested, because her image and

reputation was this archconservative who dragged China behind, who was

responsible for all of the horrible things that happened in China. And

that she was cruel. She was a despot. That was different from the

image that I got, from the banning of bound feet. That is how I became

first interested. The binding of the feet is an image that will stay with

anyone who has read Wild Swans, as a kind of potent image of what was so

oppressive for women in particular. Tell us a bit about her story. It

was an extraordinary entrance into the Imperial Court. This was a

daughter of a provincial official, who became the Emperor's concubine.

Although there was a fatalism to what her future might be, she made

her own destiny. She was born in 1835. When she was 16 years old she

went through one of those periodic, nationwide selections for imperial

consorts. She caught the eye of the Emperor. She became Imperial

concubine. In 1860, the British invaded China. They burned down the

Old Summer Palace. The emperor fled north with the court. And so she was

with him. The Emperor was so heartbroken at the burning down of

the Old Summer Palace. He refused to return to the capital. He died in

the northern wilderness. The Emperor and Empress had one son. The Emperor

had one son. That was by the Empress Dowager. That son became the next

Emperor. When the emperor died, he appointed eight grandees to

supervise his son, who was only five years old at the time. The Empress

seized the moment and launched a coup and ousted the eight grandees.

That was because she thought the eight grandees would go down the

same road of confrontation with the west. At that time, in 1861, China's

door had been closed for more than 100 years. The emperors had resisted

Western effort, particularly British, to open that door, which

led to the burning of the Old Summer Palace and the death of the Emperor.

The Empress thought, you know, why must we engage in this confrontation

with the West? Why can we not open the door of China and do business

with the west? And to benefit China itself. That is common sense, change

China. She opened the door of China. The period you are talking about,

China was beset by revolt within the country and also the possible

incursion it had just seen with the British in the second Opium War.

Tell us about the traditional culture that meant that although she

may have engineered the coup, it was not possible for her to rule openly.

She was carried to a morning audience by eunuchs. She could not

see them face`to`face because she was a woman and they were men. She

had to sit behind a screen, not on the throne. Her five`year`old son

was on the throne and she was behind a screen. The officials would

prostrate themselves before the throne. She never set foot in that

front part of the Forbidden City. Even though she was the supreme

ruler of China for half a century. She was confined to the back, the

harem. The relationship between the Empress, who was a concubine, and

the Empress is an interesting one. Tell us how that relationship

worked. Although she had not given the Emperor the son she wanted, it

was Cixi who had the son. The Empress and her relationship with

Empress Zhen is interesting. I was astonished. My idea of the harem was

women stabbing each other in the back. I found that it was like that.

The Empress Zhen and Cixi, the concubine, became best friends. They

launched a coup together. Together, they faced death by 1000 cuts, that

was the punishment which was in practice in China. It was given for

treason and what they did was treason. After the coup, they ruled

together from behind the screen. They divided their work and

collaborated well until 1882, 20 years later, when Empress Zhen died

of a stroke. Cixi, she had always been accused of murdering her, but

documents and archives have proved that she died of a massive brain

haemorrhage. And they were actually best friends. The subtitle of your

book is "the concubine who launched modern China." Lay out for us what

the reforms are you attribute to her. What we have today, modern

things, which existed in the 19th century, were brought in by Cixi.

Electricity, the telegraph, telephones, railways, modern mining,

modern industry, a modern Navy, ironclad, which had just been

invented in Europe. A modern equipped army. And educational

system. A Chinese educational system, traditionally, was to

subject a four`year`old boy to this regime of spending every waking hour

memorising the classics of Confucius, which were dry and

incomprehensible, certainly for a four`year`old. Many people at the

time described it as intellectual infanticide. Cixi, herself, did not

go through the regime because she was a woman. She was described as

semi`illiterate. That may have worked to her advantage, because she

kept a supple mind, an open mind that was ready to absorb new ideas.

When she had power, she threw out that system and today the Chinese

educational systems are based on Western educational systems brought

in by her. Of course, as we mentioned, she banned foot binding,

she launched women's liberation and encourage them to have a public

life. She ousted death by 1000 cuts. She died in 1908. She brought in

Western legal systems. The passion with which you speak about her

suggests a closeness, an attachment, to your subject. Tell me a little

bit about how that developed. As you were researching, did you feel that

she was someone that you changed your view? Did you actually begin to

become fond of her? The thing is, I did not have a view about her, but I

heard a lot about her when I grew up. She was big in China. But she

was always the villain, always condemned for all the wrongs of

China. I grew up with an earful of how awful she was. I was first

surprised, as I said, more than 20 years ago, by this foot binding

thing I discovered. Then when I was researching the biography of Mao, I

was astonished by the opportunities and the freedom, the freedom the

young Mao enjoyed growing up under her, and in her legacy. He was born

in 1893. The thing is, Mao was a peasant lad, but he could easily get

scholarships to go to college, to go abroad, he could travel with his

girlfriends, check into hotels, and he could write for an incredibly

free press. By the way, Cixi also introduced the

press into China, which was much more free than the press we have

today in China. That also astonished me, because all

of these things, Mao could do 100 years ago. It was something I could

not dream of doing when I was growing up under Mao. So I feel

there is a degree of astonishment, when I was researching the Empress

Dowager. And also, then, if you Google her today, you will probably

still see her as being described as this conservative diehard despot.

You know, so on, and all these untrue things attributed to her. I

just feel it was very unjust. Certainly some historians have

argued that the reforms that you attributed to Cixi, they were more

to do with the aftermath of the Boxer Rebellion and the Taiping

Rebellion in 1864, which was a complete turning point for that

dynasty. There was an element of devolved power to the provincial

governors, and they had sufficient power, which actually meant that she

may not have been the originator of all the reforms you attribute to

her. You see, I don't think that is true. Yes, the provincial chiefs had

tremendous power, but Cixi gave them the power. In that dynasty, the

Emperor made the decision. There was not even a prime minister to help

make the decision. There was certainly no cabinet. When Cixi's

son was five years old, when her son took over but died in a couple of

years time, Cixi then adopted a three`year`old. Her nephew. She put

the three`year old on the throne and she continued to rule from behind

the screen. Through all these years, she was exercising the Emperor's

power. She issued the edict. It is not true that the provincial bigshot

called the shots. They all had to obey the imperial edicts. No`one

could issue those imperial edicts apart from Cixi. When her adopted

son was young. So you do not accept at all that she was in some way

dependent on those provincial governors? Like a good leader, she

asked people to debate. She took good opinions. Let's talk about how

it worked inside the Imperial Palace. We have heard a little about

how she had to do all of her business behind the screen, but the

powerplay inside the imperial court, that is something that you talk

about in the book, the backstabbing that goes on, she was a part of that

as well, however reforming she was in her mindset, there was a

ruthlessness, she would not have triumphed in the way that she had

done if she was not informed by a ruthlessness in her character. Yes,

yes, she was not a shrinking violet. She had a steely iron wrist. She was

capable of immense ruthlessness. As you said, the court had lots of

battles, but it all boils down to reform or not to reform, to open up

to the west, and accept Western missionaries, and Western contacts,

send people abroad and so on, or to close up China. Cixi really dragged

China into modernity. How she dealt with the conservatives was most

interesting, because she never killed anyone, because they were

conservatives or they did not agree with her. Later, she killed a few

people because they tried to kill her. But for the conservatives, she

preferred to take them along and to reach a consensus, and to reform

China together. That meant that Chinese reforms in those years, they

were earthshattering. But they did not seem to be drastic, because no

blood was shed. This book was many years in the making, not as long as

the research for the Mao book, but I wonder if you can say something

about the process of researching this particular book? The wonderful

thing about writing the Empress Dowager was the archives about her

and her dynasties, they are open. In fact, they have been open from the

late 1970s, after Mao had died. The scholars, Chinese scholars, have

been working on these archives in the Forbidden City. In the Forbidden

City alone there are over ten million documents. Most of the

imperial decrees are digitised. My research was often sitting in the

comfort of my London study, bringing up these imperial decrees on the

screen. Contemporaries, diaries, they were published, the memoirs of

the time. Not to mention the vast archive materials in the

Archives at Kew, and the Royal Archives at Windsor, where I had

riveting times finding all these documents. That is very different

from my previous biography, the biography of Mao, because Mao, his

portrait is in Tiananmen. His corpse is

Chinese capital. His face is on every Chinese banknote.

heirs. Mao is still very covered up. My husband and I had to work like

two detectives to get to the bottom of things and it took us 12 years.

In some respects, you could argue that in terms of the big picture and

China today, many of the issues that faced the dynasty in Cixi's time,

they could be compared to the challenges for the president now. I

never write my books with a current hook, or thinking about the current

relevance. with the evidence, so I wrote Cixi

purely about Cixi. everything. Now where do we go from

here? Cixi's answer was go for a parliamentary monarchy. The

legitimacy of the regime came into question for Cixi as

rigid court etiquette. She introduced everything,

and so on, but she never got into a car. This was because in front of

her, permission, they could stand up, but

in the chauffeur, became an insurmountable

problem, because he could not dry kneeling down, and he could not dry

standing up. `` drive. But she also of course realised that the dynasty

could not survive on people kowtowing, going down on their

knees. It needs fundamental changes. She wanted to introduce that

legitimacy by building a British style constitutional monarchy. And

she launched this project in 1905 and made all sorts of preparations,

including making a nine`year plan from 1908. So, in nine years' time,

China would have finished these preparations, and there would have

been a vote. But that is not the road that today's regime is prepared

to go down. Please join me to thank Jung Chang for a fascinating talk.

Thank you. Over the past few days, some of us

have been relentlessly grey, others humid, with thunderstorms. Today,

most of us in the same boat. A welcome change for many. Some

sunshine, fresh, a good day to be out