Empress Orchid
A novel based on years of research that included documents Min smuggled from the Forbidden City, Empress Orchid tells the story of Tzu Hsi, China's longest-reigning female ruler and its last Empress. For decades Chinese schoolchildren have been taught that Empress Orchid was "a mastermind of pure evil and intrigue," but Min presents a strong-willed, utterly compelling woman who used her beauty to become a concubine of the Emperor and her brains to become his confidante and lover.
In the 1850s, when Orchid and her family make their way to Peking, the opium trade with Europe and peasant rebellions are chiseling away at the power of the Chi'ing Dynasty. Emperor Hsien Feng, a frail young man overwhelmed by the demands of state, must choose his Empress and concubines. Orchid is the daughter of an aristocratic but impoverished family. With an empty belly and chilled bones, she dreams of an easy life within the walls of the Forbidden City. Orchid enters the Emperor's "contest," open to all women of full Manchu blood. To her surprise, she is chosen as a low-ranking concubine.
History becomes art in Min's descriptions of life at court. From the sumptuous craftsmanship of each palace to the beauty of the imperial gardens, from the delicate flowers Orchid cultivates to the crickets and birds kept to induce tranquillity, the Forbidden City is a world at one with nature. In exquisite detail, Min describes Orchid's priceless silk robes and jewels and the intricate hairstyles her maids fashion for her each day. She is surrounded by inexpressible beauty, but her sharp mind and passionate body yearn for fulfillment. "Women in China dreamed about becoming me without knowing my suffering," Orchid says. "By identifying with the eunuchs, I tended my heart's wound. The eunuchs' pain was written on their faces. They had been gelded and everyone understood their misfortune. But mine was hidden."
Life in the Forbidden City is hierarchical, highly structured, full of suffocating tradition and endless waiting — Orchid must wear formal dress and makeup every day, in case the Emperor should call. For months she sits in her palace waiting for the call. When she finally wins the Emperor's attention, after scheming with her trusted eunuch, she becomes the target of thousands of other women trying just as hard to claw their way into his presence. Bribery, betrayal, even murder are the weapons used. When, in failing health, the Emperor requests Orchid's help with affairs of state, his advisers resist her at every turn and eventually plot to have her buried alive.
In 1856 Orchid gives birth to the Emperor's only son, Tung Chih, and in 1861, in the Emperor's official decree after his death, she is named Empress Dowager at the tender age of twenty-six and inherits an empire on the verge of collapse. Min deftly describes Orchid's power struggles and the defiance she encounters from the Emperor's board of regents, whose only expectation of a woman is compliance. She and her son are kidnapped and the British destroy Peking, but Orchid is able to defeat the regents and create her own government, which will rule for forty-six years.
Chinese tradition teaches that "women are like grass, born to be stepped on." Anchee Min has made it her life's work to overturn this tradition. In Empress Orchid the woman she portrays is totally at odds with history's rendering. By showing Orchid's strengths and the efforts she made to save China, Min quietly but defiantly challenges the current regime's assertion that it has been China's only savior. With her skillful writing and precise research, Min shows Orchid to be a passionate woman, a loving mother, and a pioneer of reform — a woman as vibrant and tormented as China itself.
