Vulgar History - International, part 38： Empress Cixi： Final Years (pt 2⧸2)

00:00:00.000 Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History, a feminist women's history comedy podcast. My name is

00:00:17.520 Anne Foster, and this is part two of our discussion of Dowager Empress Sushi, which I mean, welcome

00:00:23.540 if you didn't hear part one. Part one really establishes a lot of stuff of what's going

00:00:28.100 on. But if you just want to jump right into part two, welcome back. But I am going to do a little

00:00:32.600 petite recap so we all remember where we left off before. Also, big shout outs to my references for

00:00:40.000 this episode. The really main one is this book by Jung Chang. I'll put the link to it in the

00:00:46.700 show notes, but Jung Chang with this wonderful, very expansive, much needed biography of sushi.

00:00:53.160 And honestly, when I was reading it, I was, we're going to get to numerous parts of the story where

00:00:56.880 you're like, okay, and that's the end. It's like, oh, it's not. I think everything I talked about

00:01:01.160 in last week's episode was something like the first two chapters of this, I don't know, 500

00:01:05.880 page book. This story is unrelenting. And I'm going to do my best to explain to you the part

00:01:13.600 that I find most interesting, the part that I think you'll find most interesting, what we're 1.00

00:01:17.960 here for, which is the messy drama of the life of this tits out woman. There's a lot of war 1.00

00:01:26.120 related things going on. There's a lot of rebellion related things going on. I'm going

00:01:30.000 to touch on those when they kind of need to be talked about. But if we were getting into the

00:01:33.620 minutia of all the stuff that happened in the background of this woman's life, this would be

00:01:38.240 a 65 part miniseries. And a lot of it would be discussion of war and battles. And that's just

00:01:43.300 not what any of us are here for. Anyway, to get the full picture of her whole life, the book by

00:01:48.360 Zheng Chang, it is called Empress Dowager Sushi, the concubine who launched modern China. And if

00:01:54.140 you want to really like dive into the minutiae of all of this, there's an audiobook of it too,

00:01:59.920 so you can listen to it. I also got some information from the Encyclopedia of Women's

00:02:05.460 Biography, which is this multi-volume work. They have it at the local public library. Maybe it's

00:02:12.080 at your local public library. Whenever I'm in doubt, this book, like whoever I'm looking at,

00:02:17.040 whether it's someone like Sushi, where there's lots of information about her elsewhere, or if

00:02:20.520 it's like Ronnie Ditta or whatever. There's always at least a couple paragraphs on this

00:02:24.220 resource. Thank God. I also got some background stuff from Britannica.com. And I'm going to read

00:02:30.080 to you now from an article I found on Smithsonian.com by Amanda Foreman, which talks about

00:02:35.180 foot binding, which we talked about a bit in the last episode. And we're going to talk about in

00:02:41.420 this episode as well. But just this is some context that I found really useful to understand,

00:02:45.180 because it also just further helps to contextualize what Sushi and her bestie Sa'an were doing given

00:02:52.660 the culture in which they lived, but also kind of the political meaning of why this is being done 0.95

00:02:59.380 to women. So, footbinding. So, the indigenous people of China in the first place were the Han 1.00

00:03:07.580 people who were invaded by lots of different people, including Genghis Khan and the Mongols

00:03:15.840 in 1279. And people on the Patreon will know because I've done an episode about Genghis Khan

00:03:22.820 there. Anyway, so the Han people is a ethnic or a cultural group who, this is kind of one of the

00:03:32.280 things that helped them sort of represent their identity, even though they kept being taken over

00:03:37.980 by other groups. Like Sushi and Sa'an were from the Manchu, from Manjuria. The foot binding,

00:03:44.560 which were just like, I won't get into it. I didn't want to read about it too much myself.

00:03:49.160 I'm a very squeamish person about, you know, body things. But effectively, like you take a little

00:03:55.920 baby girl from the time they're little and you just like break their feet and you wrap them up

00:03:59.520 really tight. So they grow in this really small way that makes it really hard to walk and is

00:04:07.700 awful. Part of this was like an ethnic pride thing, according to this article from Smithsonian. 0.78

00:04:14.860 So like the Manchu people, like when they took over and they were the Qing dynasty.

00:04:19.920 So in the 17th century, they tried to ban this thing, but not because, not strictly because it 0.98

00:04:26.740 was just like a horrible, grotesque thing to do, but also because it symbolized this Han pride and 0.76

00:04:31.600 the Manchus wanted to, you know, people to not have that sense of ethnic pride because that was 0.69

00:04:37.980 maybe a challenge to them. Anyway, so it became a point of difference between the Han and the rest

00:04:43.760 of the world. So we talked in last time's episode, and also we got into this in the Queen Min episode

00:04:50.400 where we're looking at Joseon era Korea, the whole thing about Confucianism. So during the

00:04:58.120 advent of foot binding, so this was like thousands or not hundreds of years before. So she's whole

00:05:04.020 story. So there was this kind of thing called Neo-Confucianism, which stressed the indivisibility

00:05:10.160 of social harmony, moral orthodoxy, and ritualized behavior. So for women, Neo-Confucianism placed 0.98

00:05:16.800 extra emphasis on chastity, obedience, and diligence. A good wife should have no desire 0.99

00:05:21.160 other than to serve her husband, no ambition other than to produce a son, and no interest 1.00

00:05:25.140 beyond subjugating herself to her husband's family. So the act of footbinding, the pain

00:05:30.400 involved in the physical limitations it created became a woman's daily demonstration of her

00:05:35.400 commitment to these Confucian values. So Sushi, who came from the Manchu ethnic group, she never 0.74

00:05:43.540 did foot binding. Although, because, so if you can imagine people who have these little tiny 1.00

00:05:48.380 broken feet, they would walk in these kind of like really small, awkward steps. And so just

00:05:54.180 kind of knowing that the Manchu nobility, I guess, like sushi, they would walk in these really tall

00:06:01.060 sort of platform shoes that would mimic the same sort of walk that people with the foot binding

00:06:05.420 would have. So they kind of, I don't know, just to blend in or something. Anyway, foot binding

00:06:10.380 persisted in China for something like a thousand years until the practice was officially banned

00:06:14.800 in the early 20th century by sushi, but we'll get to that. So where we left off last time,

00:06:21.700 I don't know if you can hear this on the microphone, you probably can't, but my cat

00:06:25.440 Heparin is next to me very loudly drinking from a water dish that I put next to me.

00:06:30.980 This is some behind the scenes information, but I always have a glass of water next to me when

00:06:34.860 I'm recording episodes and Heparin, without fail, will jump on the table and try to drink the water.

00:06:39.560 So today I cleverly put out her own water dish, which she's been drinking from.

00:06:43.720 Anyway, very loudly, that's my pro tip, Podcasting 101.

00:06:48.160 Anyway, so where we left off last time.

00:06:51.260 We have Sushi, and her best friend, So Anne, had pulled off a mostly bloodless coup and

00:06:57.680 had taken power, except for their shared six-year-old son was technically the emperor, but they

00:07:03.800 were the regents.

00:07:04.840 So bear in mind for the entire rest of this story, which, spoiler, is going to last numerous more decades, there are a few things constantly happening all the time, and I won't get into every detail of all of it.

00:07:15.180 As I said before, I'm just really focusing on sushi, her experience, her life, but just know that in the background of everything I'm talking about, there is just chaos constantly.

00:07:26.020 I was trying to think of something to compare it to. It's, I don't know, like America today.

00:07:32.380 But, you know, all the previous emperors and stuff in China, there was always, you know,

00:07:38.500 backstabbing of like, who's going to be the next emperor and who is the heir and like people are

00:07:42.320 scheming and stuff. So that's also going on. We'll talk about that. But in the background,

00:07:46.040 it's just like chaos. So the West, which is how this was often referred to in the biography I was

00:07:53.840 reading, which really just means like England and France, mostly. Other countries became involved.

00:08:01.540 The U.S. becomes on the scene at one point, I think, like Germany. The West was just nonstop

00:08:07.720 fucking things around in China. So England was doing the whole thing we talked about last time, 0.99

00:08:12.440 the opium war, getting people addicted to opium so they would have something to trade for tea

00:08:16.740 because people in England really like tea. This all connects this international season.

00:08:21.260 because remember in the Hortense Mancini episode, it was Charles II's wife who was from Portugal

00:08:26.720 who made tea be popular in England because Portugal had conquested India and they liked

00:08:32.080 their chai. Anyway, the West was just constantly invading. Every now and then, like one country

00:08:40.980 would side with China against another country, but it was like a lot to keep track of. So just

00:08:46.020 know that's going on all the time. Because China had had this closed door policy for so long. And

00:08:51.740 just in the 19th century, they started dealing with other countries a bit more, which led to

00:08:57.960 just all this war, all this invasion, all this stuff happening. Christian missionaries started

00:09:03.060 coming in. We'll see some of the results of that as well. Anyway, so just note, people constantly

00:09:08.700 invading. There's actually a point, so I do want to give credit as well on this episode to friend

00:09:14.100 of the podcast and occasional co-host, Lana Wood Johnson, who I believe she was a TA when she was

00:09:21.880 in university in a class that was studying this period. So she was able to answer a lot of my

00:09:26.320 questions just to understand better the context of what was going on. And in fact, she was the

00:09:30.260 one who suggested this story. Thank you, Lana. So I mentioned this detail to her and she was like,

00:09:35.300 you have to see that on the episode. So the detail was during one of these many permutations

00:09:41.360 of like England and France and China and like who's at war with who and who's allied with who.

00:09:46.540 There was a point at West during one of these wars or battles where the French stepped up and

00:09:50.820 helped out China. And so she issued a proclamation, I think, saying, you know, thank you so much.

00:09:57.900 England and France were really helpful in this situation. Or maybe she said like the West.

00:10:03.020 And France was like, Zutalor! Like, oh mon dieu! They were like, we did it. France. Like,

00:10:08.160 how dare you mention England also did it that wasn't England it was us France and so she was

00:10:12.880 like you're all kind of the same thing to me so like calm down and I like that as a moment

00:10:19.080 in this story because so much of the history that I've read the history of like western

00:10:28.140 civilization quote-unquote is talking about especially like England or European countries

00:10:35.120 and it's always very, you've heard me a million times in this podcast, have trouble remembering

00:10:40.800 what, you know, there's all those places that came together and then that became Spain or like

00:10:46.080 Italy wasn't really country for a long time. It's like, well, this is Naples and this is Rome and

00:10:49.840 they're all different. I have trouble keeping track of all that stuff. And Sushi, who had been

00:10:54.240 in China for so long, they just didn't fuck with the rest of the world at all. Like all these people 0.99

00:10:58.200 coming in and they're like, we're England and we're France. And she's like, this all kind of

00:11:01.480 seems like the same thing to me and I'm just to flip that lens of how you view history I think is

00:11:07.340 really interesting because as much as I mean I was gonna say like no tea no shade but like tea and

00:11:13.620 shade like as much as England has historically presented themselves as like the main characters

00:11:19.260 of all of history it's like they weren't to everyone you're not that special so but also I

00:11:25.380 appreciate it because it's similar. I appreciate the similarity of it to how, like we've talked

00:11:32.960 in the podcast, the Spanish came over to the Americas and they're like, so all the people

00:11:38.500 who are all of these different tribes and nations and federations, and they're all just like the

00:11:42.700 Indians, where it's like, no, actually there's lots of different groups of people who you just

00:11:47.200 encountered. Or like in this era, people from the West would go and they'd be like China, Japan,

00:11:54.120 you know, Vietnam, Korea, and they're just like the Orient where it's like anyone can be dismissive

00:11:59.740 in that way. You just don't often see it happening to England and France. So anyway, love that for

00:12:05.880 them. So yeah, one of the things going in the background was just the West doing shit. And then 0.99

00:12:14.220 also there was a lot of rebellions going on like within China. It's a huge landmass, like the

00:12:21.640 borders of what I'm talking about here is not exactly the borders of modern day China, but

00:12:26.580 similar, similar size. And there's so many different ethnic groups. And like, how can you,

00:12:33.400 how could one emperor stand on top of a landmass that is this big? It's like,

00:12:39.300 when I was reading about Genghis Khan a while ago, I was saying his Mongol kingdom, which again was

00:12:43.800 like, what, like 400 years before all of this. But it was the size of like the continent of Africa.

00:12:49.100 like it's a huge the landmass that is like europe and asia it's gigantic so like just to communicate

00:12:57.120 around anyway so there's lots of rebellions going on all over the place so just please know that's

00:13:01.380 also happening and the rebellions are mostly are the ones that i read about and pertaining to the

00:13:06.520 story are what was described as like peasants so remember the society the confucian society is very

00:13:13.180 this caste system whether you're either like a fancy rich person or you are not and the people

00:13:18.820 who were not, just like, were having a lot of rebellions a lot of the time. So those are the

00:13:24.280 two things, invasions from the West and then internal constant rebellions, that are just

00:13:29.600 always going on in the background of everything I'm telling you about. And those are challenges

00:13:33.680 that were faced by Sushi that previous emperors did not have to deal with. So, but the stuff she

00:13:40.360 was dealing with that all the previous emperors had to deal with were the behind the scenes

00:13:44.000 scheming, lobbying for attention among all the people behind the scenes. So there's a lot going

00:13:51.900 on. It takes like a special person to stay on top of all of this and turns out, so she, she's that

00:13:56.440 girl. So, so she, so and best friends, they're both what, like 25 years old and they're in charge.

00:14:03.220 So she had ideas about how to pull China out of the closed door policy that their shared husband

00:14:09.120 had been so committed to, um, and in which every other Qing emperor had been doing for the past

00:14:13.940 a hundred years. Similar to what Queen Min got up to. And just for scale, Queen Min, her whole

00:14:22.900 life, like from birth to death was shorter than the time period that Sushi was in charge of China.

00:14:30.600 So this is like similar time period, but Sushi stays in power a lot longer, but similar shoes

00:14:37.460 of like, like Joseon kingdom, like China had been closed door policy, which was functional in some

00:14:45.960 ways for their society to kind of flourish internally. But as soon as you start dealing

00:14:50.320 with the West, you need to modernize basically. So yeah. And so she saw that because she was smart. 0.97

00:14:58.160 She saw that it was time to open the kingdom up to the outside world. And these two women,

00:15:02.500 they got to work. The hustle is real. They both got up very early in the morning, like a 4am 1.00

00:15:09.420 type situation, which I appreciate in the biography of a Jung Chang that mentions. So she found this

00:15:14.520 challenging and as a non-morning person, could not relate more. They had to get up there early

00:15:20.020 in order to be dressed and ready by 7am to take their spots in the audience hall. So that's where

00:15:24.980 they sat side by side behind a yellow silk screen in order to talk with counselors with the child 1.00

00:15:31.020 emperor now named tongzi in front of the screen and that was because women and men couldn't be

00:15:36.580 in a room together so they were technically there but behind this yellow screen which i think we've 0.98

00:15:42.840 had i can only remember in agrippina that was a thing where she was like sitting in and all the

00:15:48.560 like meetings of the counselors of the parliament or whatever but she had to stay behind a screen

00:15:53.300 or something so we've seen this before where it's just like it's such a loophole it's like yeah 0.99

00:15:56.560 women can't, like, be in charge of stuff, but, like, they can if they're behind a screen. It's 1.00

00:16:02.320 like, I don't know, the difference between that and just, like, letting them be in charge seems

00:16:07.360 pretty minute to me, but it was, like, a loophole that was necessary, apparently. So, later on,

00:16:13.780 if you'll remember, the recurring character of Prince Gong, Hot Prince Gong, the smoldering

00:16:20.020 smoke show, who was, he was on Team Sushi during the whole usurping the throne situation,

00:16:26.560 Some people later claimed that he was the brains behind the operation. And as evidence, they mentioned that Sushi was, as I described last time, semi-literate. But that is not true. It's not true that Hot Prince Gong was in charge because documents do exist showing that Gong and all of the others, all the other important counselors reported to Sushi, although she would turn to him for advice as needed.

00:16:50.820 and she did like sign off on all the paperwork. She knew that she needed to improve her language

00:16:55.560 skills and learn more about the classics of Confucian literature. So she studied with

00:17:01.060 teachers who were described as educated eunuchs. So they read to her or she read out loud to them 0.60

00:17:07.900 like every day. I think in the midday, she did it until she like fell asleep, had a little nap,

00:17:13.780 woke up, and then did it again that night. The only men that she was allowed to be around,

00:17:18.880 not with the screen were the male eunuchs who were the servants. We're going to talk about

00:17:24.540 them a bit more in a bit. So yeah, under sushi, China entered a long period of peace with the

00:17:31.680 West. Hot Prince Gong was there helping out too, because remember he has these like really good

00:17:36.400 diplomatic skills. He's such a good mediator. A British diplomat who encountered him, Hot Prince

00:17:41.580 Gong, reported that he was full of jokes and fun. So he had like personal charisma as well as

00:17:47.860 hotness and smartness. So this is where I'm just gonna like super quickly talk through this. But

00:17:54.140 so there was a peasant rebellion against a group of people called the Taiping who had been waging

00:18:00.220 battles in China for a decade. These are people from a cult I think I talked about really briefly

00:18:05.840 last time. So the Western Christian missionaries had come on the scene and they were just kind of

00:18:13.400 like, this is our religion. This is our God. His son was Jesus. And then this guy called Hong

00:18:19.420 Ji Quan was like, got it. Jesus was like the son of God. I, Hong Ji Quan, am Jesus's younger

00:18:27.460 brother. And it just got, it turned into quite a situation, a decade long sort of violent,

00:18:35.800 murderous cult running around burning villages and things. Found this guy who claimed to be

00:18:40.420 Jesus's younger brother. There's big potential in his story for, so this asshole on the Patreon, 0.99

00:18:47.240 I might need to get into that. We'll see. Anyway, at this point, Sushi was working with Western 0.98

00:18:54.180 allies and they defeated this group, this quote unquote Christian cult. Other rebellions were 0.97

00:19:01.480 put down one after another. Within a few years of seizing power, Sushi and Sa'an had restored

00:19:06.180 peace, which gave them even more authority. People like trusted them now. So the country

00:19:11.400 though had spent millions on the wars and the streets of Beijing filled with beggars because

00:19:15.080 not unlike now, like when things go really badly financially, just a lot of people end up down on

00:19:22.020 their luck. But within a decade under Sushi's rule, the economy recovered largely due to customs

00:19:29.120 revenue from increased trade with the West. So like she knew that dealing with the West more often

00:19:34.280 would mean you could trade things, which means you could like charge custom fees. And so for

00:19:40.940 the people who just her predecessors who wanted to just like not fuck with the West, like they were 0.81

00:19:45.740 missing out on this income and she saw that this could work. So yeah, so like 10 years passed the

00:19:50.700 first decade of rule within this period of time, Sushi and Saan, although like even Saan would say

00:19:56.460 like Sushi was kind of like the main one in charge. Saan was kind of soft skills. She was

00:20:02.440 they're helping out but like everyone knew so she was kind of like the main one in charge and she

00:20:06.980 had revived a war-torn country founded a modern navy oh yeah because china had not had a navy

00:20:13.100 before despite having a lot of coastline we're going to talk about this in a later episode in

00:20:19.000 more detail but they had they had been sort of like just taking old fishing boats and turning

00:20:24.700 them into like maybe navy vessels at one point they had like hired pirates to work for them like

00:20:28.600 Anyway, she found a Navy. That was an important thing. And she began building a modern army and 0.69

00:20:33.460 arms industry. So using things like the same weapons that people had in the West. And she 1.00

00:20:38.980 did all this from behind the silk screen and not being able to go into like large parts of the

00:20:44.280 Forbidden City because she was a woman, because Hot Prince Gong was a man and he had her back

00:20:49.600 and was totally on the same page and was able to go in those rooms for her. She was also interested

00:20:54.900 in learning more about the world and what was going on in other places. So she started sending

00:20:59.300 travelers overseas to report back to learn more about what things were like in other places.

00:21:04.580 And so that's where she learned things like about Queen Victoria in England and how in Europe,

00:21:08.840 women could be crowned monarchs just like men. One of her emissaries reported back how everybody

00:21:13.420 in Victoria's country sings in praise of her wisdom. So she was seeing like, okay, like in

00:21:18.420 other places, this sort of stuff is possible for women to rule, not just technically as a regent 1.00

00:21:23.600 of a boy from behind a screen. Yeah, so she had taken over when she was around, what, 25? And then 1.00

00:21:29.480 a decade-ish later, when she was around 34 years old, she, I mean, spoiler, I call this section of

00:21:36.260 my notes super sad love story. It is a sad story, but telling. So she fell in love with a eunuch

00:21:45.600 named Ahn de Hai, known as Little Ahn.

00:21:49.260 So eunuchs were men hired to work in the palace.

00:21:53.180 And the only way that you could get those jobs was

00:21:54.920 if either in childhood or in adulthood, 1.00

00:21:57.040 you had your penis and balls cut off. 1.00

00:22:01.200 And that was so that men could interact with women, 1.00

00:22:03.320 but there wasn't the, I don't know. 0.86

00:22:05.440 It's a whole complicated thing. 1.00

00:22:06.720 There's eunuchs in other cultures as well.

00:22:08.800 But these were the only men with whom she was allowed to interact,

00:22:12.020 not from behind a screen.

00:22:13.260 and this caused various medical problems for the eunuchs some like i think they had to wear diapers 1.00

00:22:20.120 and stuff like it caused incontinence to like have like important body parts cut off and eunuchs so

00:22:25.920 although this was like why would anyone take this job it's like well if like you're poor and you need

00:22:30.460 a job this is like a well-paying job you could have in the palace and the only way to work in

00:22:34.340 the palace was to be a eunuch so um that being said eunuchs were regarded with disgust by other

00:22:39.980 men and they lived like virtual prisoners in the palace, they were rarely allowed out. So little

00:22:45.360 Aan served sushi for years and became indispensable to her. Ava knew he was her favorite and that she

00:22:51.640 was in love with him. So the year that her son Tongzi, the emperor, was 13 and it was time for

00:22:59.020 planning to start for his whole selection of choosing his bride and his concubines,

00:23:04.180 planning his wedding party. And so she decided to send her favorite little on to the royal

00:23:10.260 dressmakers in Suzhou near Shanghai to supervise the procurement of the dresses, I guess the

00:23:15.480 gowns and things. What's shocking about this is the No Ching Emperor had ever sent a eunuch out 1.00

00:23:21.180 of the capital on an errand ever before, but she wanted her friend little on. And I would assume 1.00

00:23:27.880 he probably wanted this too. Like he wanted, she wanted him to have like an adventure and to see

00:23:32.800 the world. So he headed out in a group, including other eunuchs and family members. But when they

00:23:39.540 got to Shendong, the governor there arrested him and the group saying that he should be executed

00:23:43.840 for breaking the rules. So the rule was like eunuchs can't leave the palace unless they have

00:23:48.500 permission, but he did have permission. So so she had broken a tradition, if not a law. And this is

00:23:56.000 sort of, that's part of it. But part of it also was Prince Chun. So Prince Chun is the half-brother

00:24:04.400 of Hot Prince Gong and also the half-brother of the dead previous emperor. And he was the one who

00:24:09.220 had married Sushi's sister. So he was her brother-in-law. And he kind of saw her, he wasn't

00:24:16.500 a fan of what she was up to. I think he kind of resented what she was doing. And he saw with what

00:24:21.440 Little Ahn had done. This was a way to kind of indirectly punish her. So he was also insistent

00:24:27.100 Little Ahn must be put to death for leaving the palace. There was a rumor, perhaps, that she was

00:24:32.340 having an affair with Little Ahn, and so Prince Chen maybe wanted to cover that up as a scandal.

00:24:38.140 And then it's kind of like when the momentum is going, it just couldn't be stopped. Prince Gong

00:24:42.160 also agreed Little Ahn should be executed. So she couldn't personally intervene because she was

00:24:47.520 involved in the situation, like she was the one who had sent him out there. She got Sa'an to speak

00:24:52.420 for her, pleading for little Ahn's life to be spared, sent him to prison instead, that sort of

00:24:56.740 thing. But all these efforts failed, and Sa'an was forced to allow the decree to execute him to be

00:25:03.000 sent out. And little Ahn was beheaded, as were the other eunuchs who had accompanied him on this trip.

00:25:09.320 So she was so upset by this. After his execution, she collapsed and was bedridden for a month.

00:25:16.620 Unable to sleep, she just had kind of a nervous breakdown type situation.

00:25:20.940 She was inconsolable.

00:25:22.940 Only music helped her.

00:25:25.200 So to this end, she had operas put on daily and nonstop music played in her quarters,

00:25:29.740 like in an era before recorded music.

00:25:32.800 This just meant people were there playing music or singing.

00:25:36.120 And much like Njinga, a few hundred years before in another part of the world, 0.80

00:25:41.300 she began scheming how to get revenge on Prince Chun for doing this to her beloved

00:25:45.540 a little on. So to explain how she got revenge on Prince Chun, we need to talk for a minute about

00:25:51.560 the new emperor. So he took in the emperor named Tongzi. His name when he was born was Zaiqin.

00:25:58.380 And this was Sushi's son. This is the whole reason why she's able to become Empress Dowager,

00:26:02.560 because she had physically given birth to this child. Although technically, Sian was the mother

00:26:07.880 because she was the emperor's wife. Anyway, we're going to call him Tongzi. And like so many sons 0.97

00:26:13.360 of so many tits out women on this podcast, he was kind of useless. Like if you have your vulgar 1.00

00:26:19.740 history bingo card, which is like somewhere on Instagram, I feel like useless son is on there 0.87

00:26:24.660 because this happens so often. You have these like amazing self-starters, tits out women and 1.00

00:26:30.520 their sons are just kind of like, I don't know. It's like, again, I always come back to Game of 1.00

00:26:35.620 Thrones because it's like Game of Thrones pulls from all history ever, but it's like the Cersei

00:26:40.100 Joffrey thing. Or it's also like in history, it's like Agrippina and Nero. Like it's just

00:26:44.660 these amazing women and their sons were just kind of there. I don't know if it's kind of like

00:26:49.860 all the discussion nowadays, but like Nepo babies and stuff where it's like,

00:26:54.280 if the parent works really hard to succeed, then the children are born with this level of privilege

00:27:00.140 and money where they don't develop that drive and that resourcefulness. So they just don't become

00:27:06.320 as, I don't know, because they don't need to become as much fighters as their parents were. 1.00

00:27:12.260 What I'm trying to say is just Tongzi sucks. So here we go. He, I mean, okay, Tongzi sucks, 1.00

00:27:19.540 comma, and he was just not the right person to be the emperor at this time. And not everybody 1.00

00:27:25.340 is suited for that. And you know, God bless, like Tongzi was just not the right guy for this job.

00:27:30.840 But you wouldn't know that when he was a little boy chosen. So he'd been tutored by the best

00:27:35.140 scholars in China every day since he was five. He was not enthusiastic about schooling. He did

00:27:40.320 not take to it. And he was always bored. So some of the stuff I read was just saying like, he was

00:27:45.580 lazy, he whatever, why I'm just like, this might be like an ADHD, like learning disability situation,

00:27:51.880 like he did not learn to read or write. Far past the age when people would have expected him to,

00:27:56.000 I think he was like 10 or 12. And he still like couldn't read or write. And some of the stuff I

00:27:59.900 was reading was like, because he was lazy, and he hated school, which is possible, like comma, and

00:28:04.520 maybe he had some sort of learning difficulties anyway, but to be in a job where it depended on

00:28:10.480 you reading and writing a lot and memorizing these like Confucian texts, like this was not

00:28:16.700 ideal for him. So his main slash only interest, again, like Emperor Nero from the Agrippina

00:28:22.180 episode was performing. He liked music. He liked opera. He couldn't sing well. So he took on

00:28:28.040 kind of non-singing roles. He would perform in them, dancing and doing martial arts because

00:28:32.660 that was more of his speed. And then as a teenager, he learned about sex, which became the only thing

00:28:38.460 he wanted to do ever. So he would sneak out of the, in the time-honored method of like previous

00:28:44.660 emperors before him, he'd sneak out of the Forbidden City with his best friend to visit

00:28:49.360 sex workers whenever they could. And I believe it was this guy who was said to go visit sex 0.81

00:28:56.600 workers of more than just one gender. Anyway, so he's just a teenager. All he wanted to do is

00:29:02.320 act in operas and just go fucking. Which is like, when you're the emperor, not the priorities one 0.99

00:29:09.440 wants to see. Anyway, meanwhile, Sushi was planning his wedding. They had chosen, like there's that

00:29:15.600 selection again, like the same way Sushi and Sa'an were chosen. And out of all the eligible young

00:29:20.840 girls, the person who's chosen to be his empress is a person, a young girl, who's consistently

00:29:27.220 referred to as either Miss Alut or Lady Alut. I'll just call her Alut, I guess. So she was of

00:29:34.740 Mongol ancestry, the daughter of the only Mongol to ever come top in the national exams. So this

00:29:40.800 was, I forget if I said this before, but like the only way that people who were not Manchu could

00:29:46.800 elevate themselves in this society was to do amazing in these exams, which I think were based

00:29:50.960 on reading Confucian texts and being able to recite them back. So anyway, Elut was an extreme 0.99

00:29:59.440 devotee of Confucian values and obeyed her father absolutely. And I think this is probably why she

00:30:04.620 was chosen. It was assumed she would do the same for her husband. She did. On their wedding night,

00:30:10.100 he sent her away and did not sleep with her. Like there's something about, I think he really

00:30:13.780 pressured Sushi and Sa'an to choose her because he knew he wouldn't want to sleep with her,

00:30:19.180 which is like an interesting thing. So in fact, I don't think he had sex with any of the concubines 0.99

00:30:23.860 who had been chosen for him. He preferred sex workers. So I think he might have preferred also 0.98

00:30:29.620 sex workers with the like bound feet, which is, um, yeah. So after the wedding, a ceremony was

00:30:37.700 held in which Tongzi, age 16, officially took over as emperor. The yellow screen, Sushi and 0.97

00:30:43.380 and sat behind was folded up and they retired to the harem. So in their mid thirties, mid late

00:30:51.060 thirties, he like unsurprisingly, based on what I've told you about him, he did not like having

00:30:57.860 more responsibilities. Um, things that kind of work best when he wasn't responsible for anything.

00:31:04.320 He, um, slept in, he canceled meetings and was generally just like not suited for this job.

00:31:11.380 The one big thing that he was really passionate about was rebuilding the summer palace,

00:31:15.300 which was, so I say the summer palace, but it's like, I'll talk about it a bit more later.

00:31:19.840 It was like more than just one palace.

00:31:21.640 It was like a bunch of buildings all around these lakes.

00:31:23.760 It's this beautiful structure. 0.97

00:31:24.940 And that was the one that had been burned down by the French in part one of this podcast. 0.98

00:31:29.520 He really wanted to be rebuilt, partially because I think he wanted to go and live there 0.99

00:31:33.700 because it would be easier for him to sneak out and go on his like, fuck adventures. 0.97

00:31:37.700 it was complicated to sneak out of the forbidden city as you might imagine for a place called the 0.99

00:31:42.780 forbidden city i think it had like um a time where he had to be back in and stuff so anyway

00:31:48.080 he just kind of wanted to rebuild this this was his whole big passion so yeah so he's sneaking

00:31:52.400 into the palace apparently in disguise um spent his time frolicking with eunuchs i think a lot

00:31:58.520 of what i've read about him as kind of queer coded when you read things like about a young

00:32:03.120 man frolicking with eunuchs. That's where my mind goes. But the thing about the summer palace, 0.80

00:32:10.420 there wasn't enough money to renovate the summer palace because of the country being at war all

00:32:15.420 the time. And also the whole Confucian societal thing was like, the emperor was supposed to sort

00:32:22.060 of hold to these, the standards of the philosophical culture of society. So they didn't want to see

00:32:29.280 him indulging in pleasure-seeking behavior, and everyone knew he wanted to renovate the Summer 0.99

00:32:33.320 Palace to be his, like, fuck palace. So Hot Prince Gong and Prince Chun tried to do an intervention, 0.99

00:32:38.880 but Tongzi flipped out, accused him of bullying him, and then he, like, fired them both.

00:32:44.360 So the counselors wrote to Sushi, asking her to intervene. Like, she was just off

00:32:48.580 enjoying her retirement, but she was just like, ugh, my son, okay. So she got him,

00:32:55.120 she just like came and had like a big talking to with him and he listened to her because

00:32:59.160 one of the writings about her mentioned how her eyes were really intense like when she looked at

00:33:03.400 you you were just like oh okay i'll do whatever you say so i think she gave him the mom look 0.78

00:33:06.760 like the mom facial expression was like get your shit together and he did so he rescinded the 0.91

00:33:12.920 orders to fire prince gong and prince chen and then they both had to abandon the dream of the 0.98

00:33:18.820 summer palace where sushi like bear in mind also wanted to go there she wanted to be rebuilt so

00:33:23.600 she could live there because she loved nature. She wanted to be by the lake, but she was just

00:33:26.820 like, no, we can't financially do this. There's no reason to do this. And then the young teen

00:33:33.260 emperor fell ill. So it was potentially smallpox, which was going around at this time. It may have

00:33:39.340 been a sexually transmitted disease like syphilis. Whatever he had, he was covered with lots of

00:33:44.540 painful blisters and he wound up dead age 19, having ruled on his own for less than two years.

00:33:50.380 There is an allegation that Sushi had him poisoned, but that's just kind of like, anyone who died, there's a rumor that Sushi poisoned them. There is going to be one where she for sure did. But this is like, no, it was her son. As much as he was a shit, not only did she love him as her son, but also the dynasty was so important to her, the monarchy was so important to her, she wouldn't have done that, I don't think.

00:34:16.860 So his wife, Alut, very shortly thereafter, died by suicide because she was so committed to the 1.00

00:34:23.340 Confucian values. For a woman to take her own life upon her husband's death was seen as an

00:34:28.040 illustrious virtue, which is hearkening all the way back to when we were looking at Rani Ditta

00:34:33.420 in medieval Kashmir, where there's the whole thing about her husband died and everyone expected her

00:34:37.780 to kill herself. So the way that Alut died was she starved herself to death intentionally. She

00:34:44.940 died 70 days after him. And again, some people blame Sushi for poisoning her. They're like,

00:34:50.040 maybe she was pregnant and Sushi wanted to kill her so that her son wouldn't be the new emperor.

00:34:54.160 But like, again, like, I mean, I don't think that is true. But where we started with all this was,

00:35:00.400 remember, Sushi was playing a long game to get revenge on Prince Chun? That is what comes next.

00:35:07.280 So after Tongzi died, like right after, when he was still lying there like dead in his bed,

00:35:12.380 so she called in the counselors to discuss what to do next because again he'd had no sons he had

00:35:18.300 not left a will remember you had to like write the will with a special red quill pen in the red ink

00:35:24.000 and put the paper in a box and stuff like there was no they didn't know who was supposed to be

00:35:28.580 in charge next but so she explained and we'll just take her word for this i guess that on his

00:35:35.380 deathbed tongli had requested so she and saan set up the screen and become the co-regents again

00:35:40.700 So she was like, we need to choose a new child to be the next baby emperor.

00:35:44.500 So normally, the widow of the dead emperor would adopt a son, and that would be the next king,

00:35:51.780 or the next emperor. And at this point, like this is a flashback of a bit,

00:35:55.780 and Elut was still alive at this point. So she could have done that. But if she had a baby or

00:36:00.980 adopted a baby, then Sushi wouldn't be the regent because she would be the grandmother of that baby. 0.57

00:36:06.540 So, so she was like, what if Saen and I adopt a new little boy to be the new little boy emperor?

00:36:12.440 And everyone's like, okay. And this is the revenge plan. She's like, and the boy that I choose is

00:36:18.300 Zaytian, the three-year-old son of Prince Chun, her enemy slash brother-in-law. This was also her 0.80

00:36:25.300 nephew because Prince Chun's wife was her sister. So Prince Chun freaked out immediately. Like he

00:36:31.280 fell into convulsions, howling and knocking his head on the ground until he passed out.

00:36:35.980 And I do want to mention that that extreme display of emotion, I don't, I don't have it in my notes

00:36:41.460 every time it happened, but like people felt things very passionately throughout the story.

00:36:45.400 Like I think Prince Gong had moments like that. Like people are just like physically demonstrating

00:36:49.720 emotions. Like really? There's a lot of crying among the people in this story.

00:36:55.600 Why was he so upset? His son was the emperor. Don't you think that'd be good news? It's not

00:36:59.420 because. Zetian was his only son and he adored him. I think he and his wife,

00:37:04.680 so she's sister had had a couple of children who had died in infancy so they really doted on this

00:37:09.700 boy and for him to become emperor meant that chun would lose him he wouldn't be able to have

00:37:13.980 anything to do with him and that would also remove his political role because as the emperor's 0.65

00:37:18.980 biological father he couldn't be the regent and he would have to resign all his official posts to

00:37:24.780 avoid accusations he was using undue influence to meddle in state affairs so this like silenced him

00:37:29.540 and stole his son away from him, but in like a sushi way, like bloodlessly. But at the same point,

00:37:36.260 after he freaked out, the whole thing about like, when they go low, we go high. So she got her

00:37:41.760 revenge, but then she went high. He was appointed by her to supervise Zetian's education, which 0.97

00:37:48.440 would allow him regular access to his son. And so he was like, oh my God, I'm so grateful. Thank you

00:37:53.440 so much. And then he and all of his allies and friends were suddenly like, love Sushi. They're

00:37:59.640 on team Sushi again, no longer was she their enemy. Because she had, she could have been cruel to him, 0.96

00:38:06.000 but she wasn't. And they appreciated that. And so he had like a whole like, complete reassessment of

00:38:12.040 his life and personality. His new motto, Prince Chun, was step back and think how to make up for

00:38:17.240 past wrongs, which was carved into a plaque over the door to his study. Like, he's just like,

00:38:22.520 like, Scrooge in A Christmas Carol after seeing a ghost, Prince Chun was just like,

00:38:27.640 I'm gonna be a good person now. And then, just in terms of, like, gender stuff, I found this 0.54

00:38:33.120 interesting. So she got her new adopted son slash nephew, the new emperor, Zetian, to refer to her

00:38:39.760 as Papa Dearest, or My Royal Father, as she took over kind of a fatherly role in his life while

00:38:46.480 and acted more maternally as kind of a mother figure. So I'm always here for some gender

00:38:52.320 interesting stuff. So, so she is in charge again and she got right to work, sending out emissaries 0.99

00:38:58.000 and ambassadors to Western nations, building a railroad, just getting on with the stuff that

00:39:01.960 she had been up to two years ago when she was had to retire the first time. But, um, this was,

00:39:09.140 remember there's like the West is invading, there's wars going on, peasant rebellions,

00:39:13.500 like this was stressful, and she had another nervous collapse. So for days on end, she couldn't

00:39:18.200 sleep, had no energy, and coughed blood. And so Saan took over. Well, so she was treated by a doctor

00:39:24.580 who seems almost like a time-traveling version of the doctor from the Christine of Sweden episode

00:39:30.220 who told her to take baths and sleep more. Because this guy stepped in, helped her out,

00:39:35.160 and she eventually recovered. But then, in 1881, Sain passed away. Now, she had been ill for a while

00:39:44.180 and had had what seemed like probably a series of at least three strokes, one of which affected

00:39:50.120 her speaking ability, because it was mentioned at some point that she had trouble finding her

00:39:54.760 words, trouble talking for a while. So April 8th, 1881, she suddenly became ill while attending an

00:40:00.580 imperial court session and died within a few hours, just aged 43. Now, again, there were rumors

00:40:07.200 later, not at the time though, that Sushi had poisoned her so she could be in charge completely.

00:40:12.160 But I mean, we all know Sushi would never. They were besties. They were ride or die soulmates.

00:40:18.920 They were like Sandra Oh and Ellen Pompeo on Grey's Anatomy. That was her person.

00:40:24.440 And also like Sushi was in charge, like removing Sian wouldn't get her more power or anything.

00:40:29.960 so anyway so she was obviously extremely upset about this she mourned this death as she would

00:40:35.740 an intimate and superior family member by wrapping her head in her own head in a white silk scarf

00:40:41.480 which was beyond the expected mourning etiquette the etiquette mandated a mourning period of 27 0.69

00:40:46.460 days but she extended that to 100 days along with a 27 month ban on music in the royal court

00:40:52.980 so remember how much she liked music like this was serious business and showed just how what

00:40:58.060 a tribute she wanted to make to her dead best friend so within days after the ban was lifted

00:41:02.720 in 1883 so she just like got all in she watched opera non-stop for 10 hours and thereafter there

00:41:09.340 were continuous performances for days like one performance lasted 12 hours she just like every

00:41:14.920 time someone dies in this story or in Qing Dynasty in this era there was a certain period of like

00:41:20.620 months or years where just no music could be played and between all the emperors dying and

00:41:24.380 and her friend dying. And for someone who loved music, liked to not have music for these long

00:41:28.960 periods of time. It really affected her. And now, without Sa'an there to smooth things over,

00:41:35.040 Sa'an was left on her own. So Zetian, her adopted son slash nephew, was the new boy emperor.

00:41:44.220 She was not as close to him as she had been to her own son she had given birth to. But also,

00:41:50.180 to be fair, she was kept busy with the various things that were always going on.

00:41:53.100 the West, rebellions, people trying to usurp her. At this point, Hot Prince Gong was also

00:42:00.400 going through it. His whole thing of trying to appease people and find mediation, ways to

00:42:05.080 balance things, that was his way. And the fact that Sushi kept deciding to go to war was stressing

00:42:12.080 him out because he was not into confrontation or he's not into going to war. He had also been

00:42:18.140 suffering serious illnesses. And so he'd taken some leave of absences. His energy was exhausted.

00:42:22.600 his judgment started to be not great.

00:42:25.160 So she couldn't dismiss him because he had this high status

00:42:28.080 and he wasn't going to offer to resign.

00:42:29.940 So it's all just getting like awkward for everybody.

00:42:33.100 And now we're just going to take a break for a word from our sponsors.

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00:43:09.600 The war is over and both sides lost.

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00:45:00.060 And we're back.

00:45:01.860 Then, one day in the middle of a series

00:45:03.880 of devastating war defeats,

00:45:05.700 Prince Kong just wandered in to talk to Sushi

00:45:07.420 about her upcoming 50th birthday party.

00:45:09.940 And she was like,

00:45:10.760 with a border situation like this, you're talking about birthday presents. And she was just like,

00:45:16.380 what is up with this guy? So she entailed the help of Prince Chun. And they kind of did this

00:45:22.700 remix of the thing when she took over in the first place. She sent Gong out of town. And then when he

00:45:28.300 came back, they had an official scroll saying he was donezo. He was fired. They didn't see each

00:45:34.680 other again for 10 years. And I'll get to what happened 10 years later. Later. Anyway, regardless.

00:45:40.100 so she was a really effective leader during this period of war and one respect of yet more men

00:45:46.340 who care about things like being a good leader in war prince chun like scrooge after having been

00:45:54.000 visited by the ghosts like with his new personality was her new right-hand guy and in a major gesture 0.77

00:45:59.900 to kind of apologize for the whole like having her best friend murdered he went to inspect new

00:46:04.700 ships, and as a treat, brought along Sushi's new favorite eunuch, Li Linyang, with him.

00:46:12.040 So Chun had basically gotten little on Kilt, but now he's treating her new favorite eunuch to a trip

00:46:16.600 as kind of a gesture of apology, which Sushi appreciated. So 1886, Zetian, who could not be 0.98

00:46:24.940 more different from the previous boy emperor, he was very scholastic-minded, he excelled in his

00:46:29.600 emperor studies. He turned 15, and it was expected Sushi would retire as regent. And because last

00:46:36.220 time that had not gone well, everyone kind of panicked because they knew that she was the best

00:46:39.420 leader they could have. Prince Chun, the biological father of the emperor, convinced Zetian, the son,

00:46:45.440 to beg Sushi to stay. So she did agree to stay on for a few more years. But no, she really just

00:46:52.380 wanted to retire. She wanted to go to the Summer Palace and paint and listen to opera and be not

00:46:57.760 in charge of this country constantly in chaos that caused her all these health problems but

00:47:01.480 they're just like but no one else can do it besides you like the country wouldn't let her go

00:47:05.700 and where this is making me feel I know there are some young people listening to this podcast but

00:47:10.720 I'm remembering my own youth where when you're working together with people in a school project

00:47:15.360 and it's just like no one's taking control no one's being in charge and I like inevitably it

00:47:21.120 was me who's like okay let's get this done like which was always annoying that no one else would

00:47:26.740 step up, but it was always me who had to step up. And this is what Sushi's going through, but at a

00:47:31.600 like countrywide level, she's just like, could someone else please for once be in charge? And

00:47:37.500 all of China is like, not really. So 1889, at the height of her achievements at this point,

00:47:44.720 so she announced she was, so she stayed on for like a couple extra years, like two, three extra

00:47:48.900 years. And then she knows she was going to retire and cede power to the new teen emperor upon his 0.99

00:47:54.040 marriage. So yeah, again, there was The Selection. I just saw the other day, there's that series of 0.95

00:47:59.360 books, The Selection by Kira Cass, which are kind of like romance novels, romance fantasy science

00:48:06.120 fiction novels about like a future world where, I don't know, it's called The Selection and there's

00:48:12.520 all these teenage girls and they all, it's like, who's going to be chosen to be the new wife of

00:48:16.000 the prince? It's like Cinderella, but mixed with The Hunger Games and reality TV. And I like them

00:48:21.280 a lot. Anyway, I saw the selection. I'm like, oh, what's happening here is just like the selection.

00:48:26.120 So all the young Manchu teenage girls slash in the early 20s were presented. And so she helped 0.93

00:48:31.580 to choose who would be the new empress, which she chose her brother's daughter, Longyu, who no one

00:48:37.420 else is very enthusiastic about. She was plain and also had like a boring personality. But so she 0.99

00:48:43.500 liked her as like a blank slate sort of person. At the same time, two sisters were selected as

00:48:48.700 concubines. And their names were Pearl and Jade. Pearl was 12, Jade was 14, and they are important 0.81

00:48:56.600 new characters. So just remember those names, Pearl and Jade. Bear in mind also, re their age,

00:49:03.620 the emperor at this point was 16. So like choosing a 12 and 14 year old as your concubines is like,

00:49:08.560 meh, but it's not like he's 65. Like it's not great, but we've seen worse. So yeah,

00:49:13.880 Zetian didn't like Long Yu, who was like, plain and boring. He treated her coldly. His favorite,

00:49:21.660 he preferred Pearl, who, in a pants moment, and to the Emperor's delight, dressed the way that

00:49:28.420 he wanted her to, which was, with no makeup, her hair worn in a men's style, and men's clothing.

00:49:34.300 So Pearl is wearing men's clothing, like he liked a woman in pants. I just like that Pearl

00:49:41.900 came out of nowhere to give us a pants moment in this episode like love it so yeah um once the

00:49:48.180 emperor took over he kind of stopped aside all of sushi's reforms and the westernization the

00:49:54.720 modernization she'd been up to for like 12 years or something and he went back to running the empire

00:49:59.020 as previous male emperors had done before him so his thing was i had mentioned he was really good

00:50:03.180 at school and things but he was kind of like the way that i've described school before was kind of

00:50:07.700 like memorize these like a thousand year old Confucian writings. So he was kind of, he was

00:50:14.100 living in kind of a theoretical world where he was treating things. He's like, well, this worked in

00:50:18.460 the year, you know, 1500. So let's just do that again, where it's like, uh, 20th century is like

00:50:23.660 on the cusp, like it's not going to work out well for him. I do want to mention right now,

00:50:29.400 because we're getting close to an hour of this episode. And usually I try to keep these episodes

00:50:34.460 to an hour, but for various reasons, Sushi needs to be a two-part episode. So this is like,

00:50:40.620 pace yourselves. Maybe you could stop here and then next week, listen to the next hour of this

00:50:46.520 episode. But like, I'm keeping going. Like I'm not stopping. There's a lot to get through and

00:50:50.640 I can't do a three-parter. I'm halfway through my notes, even with having eliminated an awful

00:50:55.560 lot of stuff. Anyway, so Sushi, Retired Life, part one. She had been, let's see, okay, this is like

00:51:02.280 a controversial part. She'd been setting money aside to go towards the renovation fund to renovate

00:51:08.280 her beloved Summer Palace. The Summer Palace was on Kunming Lake, which she loved. She loved that

00:51:14.820 it was in nature. Like she'd been in the Forbidden City since she was a teenager, which was kind of

00:51:18.640 like indoors, not near nature, not her favorite thing. She wanted to just like live outside in

00:51:24.740 the world so yeah a bit of cc vibes sushi giving cc vibes like she likes nature she likes outdoors

00:51:33.000 and so the restoration of the summer palace and this money she was setting aside is a whole kind 0.98

00:51:38.240 of thing about like did she steal this money was she like laundering this money did she divert

00:51:43.060 money from the navy at a time when the country was at war to restore it and basically kind of 0.99

00:51:50.780 um she did pay a lot of her own money on this but she did divert some money from the government

00:51:57.620 to try and make it be but i'm gonna say everybody was kind of corrupt at this point it's not like

00:52:04.060 everyone there was like amazingly ethical and moral with their money and she was like

00:52:09.060 siphoning money away it's kind of like everyone was doing it so anyway i'm not here to say like

00:52:13.740 she was great and everything she did was great but like this gets overblown i think a bit when

00:52:18.720 people who want to criticize her are just like, the reason the channel left all these wars is

00:52:22.820 because she took all this money that she had gone to the Navy and made a palace with it where it's 0.99

00:52:26.820 like, but also other things were happening. Anyway, to try to cover for spending so much

00:52:33.600 money on this, Prince Chun, her new right-hand man, suggested, well, what if the new Navy

00:52:37.120 did their training in Kunming Lake, which would make it all seem like a necessary expense to

00:52:42.280 restore the lake? And she's like, sure, but the Navy ships wouldn't fit in the lake. So I'm not 0.99

00:52:47.100 sure. It wasn't a great cover story. So again, the Summer Palace is not just one building. It was,

00:52:52.920 and is, a vast ensemble of lakes, gardens, and palaces. So it covers an expanse of 2.9 square

00:52:59.140 kilometers, 1.1 square miles, three quarters of which is water. And part of this is the Marble

00:53:05.840 Boat. Friend of the podcast Landed Wood Johnson emphasized this is important to talk about.

00:53:11.100 So the Marble Boat is a lakeside pavilion on the grounds of the Summer Palace. It was first built

00:53:16.900 in 1755, so like 100-ish years before. And it was originally made from a base of large stone blocks,

00:53:23.780 which supported a wooden superstructure done in a traditional Chinese design. So it's not

00:53:28.260 a boat that can float. It's just like a building in a lake that looks like a boat. So it was burned

00:53:35.660 when the rest of the Summer Palace was burned by the French. So she restored it, which included a

00:53:40.880 new two-story superstructure, which incorporated elements of European architecture. It's made out

00:53:46.660 of wood, but painted to look like marble. And on each deck, there is a large mirror to reflect the

00:53:52.080 waters of the lake and give an impression of total immersion in the aquatic environment.

00:53:56.660 Imitation paddle wheels on each side of the pavilion makes it look like a paddle steamer.

00:54:00.840 It has a sophisticated drainage system, which channels rainwater through four hollow pillars,

00:54:05.300 which is finally released into the lake through the mouths of four dragon heads. It is gorgeous,

00:54:09.200 and one can visit it as a tourist attraction today. But it is. A scene by some is an ironic

00:54:16.520 commentary on the fact that the money used to restore it largely came from funds originally

00:54:20.800 earmarked for building up a new navy. Perhaps instead of funding a navy, they built a marble

00:54:26.960 boat. And this is the thing that comes up by people who like to talk about how. So she was

00:54:31.880 out of touch and not a good leader. So I just had to mention that. It's on my list of things I like

00:54:37.980 to visit one day, frankly. But anyway, she was retired so she could live in the summer palace 0.98

00:54:43.640 as she was renovating it she could finally sleep in um which to her having had to wake up at 4 a.m

00:54:49.900 for the last 12 years um now she could sleep in to like 8 a.m um she hung out with her main eunuch

00:54:57.200 pals who kept her up to date with all the latest goss she spent a lot of time doing a morning 0.92

00:55:02.920 beauty regime getting her hair done just like it sounds like a fabulous life that she was living

00:55:08.900 it's like if you saw a bit ago there was this thing one file that was about england's prince

00:55:12.780 Margaret and her daily routine. And it was kind of like that, just a day of leisure.

00:55:16.780 She gave herself a new nickname, Old Buddha, both because she was a devout Buddhist and she liked

00:55:22.080 that it was like an informal nickname, but also made her sound special. She smoked from a water

00:55:27.400 pipe, which somebody else held for her. She got lots of foot massages. She played kick shuttlecock.

00:55:36.760 She went for walks. At one point she went on a trip in a hot air balloon, which was recently a

00:55:41.660 that was invented. I think it was for the army, but she got a trip. She walked the grounds on her

00:55:46.080 boat rides. She adored plants and she was devoted to her orchard. She grew fruits and vegetables.

00:55:51.040 She bred dogs, especially Pekingese dogs. She trained the dogs to do tricks. She hired a

00:55:57.060 painting teacher who was a woman. She also really leaned into her interest in music and opera. She

00:56:01.360 built a theater in the middle of the lake and would put on these lavish productions and was

00:56:06.200 just like, this is what she wanted for herself. This is what I want for her. I want this version

00:56:10.800 of this. All of us. I want all my retirement to just like be this peaceful and nice. But then

00:56:16.500 after a period of time, all the stuff that was going on the West, the rebellions, it came to be

00:56:21.740 too much. And it turns out that Zetian was not suited to be in charge. While she was retired, 1.00

00:56:27.360 China had gone to war with Japan and the government came to her like, help me Obi-Wan Kenobi,

00:56:33.460 you're our only hope type vibes. Or, you know, like an action movie where they're just like, 0.52

00:56:37.200 we just need the detective to come back for one more case.

00:56:40.000 Like, they're like, Suji, no one else can do this.

00:56:42.480 Or like me doing a group project.

00:56:43.840 They're just like, please come on.

00:56:44.980 And she's just like, I guess.

00:56:47.220 And so she came back to, she came back to be in charge again.

00:56:53.700 Well, initially, she said she's only going to return to Beijing for 10 days.

00:56:57.180 But then that got extended.

00:56:58.860 And she realized what a huge mess of things was going on.

00:57:02.840 The emperor only gave her some information, but not all of it.

00:57:05.440 So she started, she got to work finding a way that she could learn more about what was going

00:57:08.980 on so she could fix it. And it turns out that all the people advising him, like the people

00:57:13.700 were telling him like, don't trust Sushi. Those people were all friends of Pearl, his pants

00:57:18.700 concubine. So she was now 18. And it turns out that she had been taking advantage of her

00:57:23.600 relationship with him to sell official jobs to her friends and to bribe officials, both of which

00:57:28.120 were punishable by death. But because she was his favorite, she was able to get away with this.

00:57:31.860 so she of course found out all about this um she got pearl and pearl's eunuchs to confess by

00:57:38.320 torturing the eunuchs and forcing pearl to watch and so she was like pearl i'll cover up this

00:57:42.860 scandal and not have you punished by death if you allow me access to the reports i want to see oh

00:57:48.120 no sorry she didn't say that to pearl she said that to the emperor and the emperor agreed because 1.00

00:57:52.540 so she turned on her terrifying eyes anyway so as much as it's like oh she's so hardcore look at 1.00

00:57:58.640 doing amazing. Like this also, like emotionally, it was impacting her health wise is impacting her. 0.94

00:58:04.800 She would frequently pass out from stress. When she thought she was alone, people spotted her

00:58:09.220 weeping. And then a whole thing happened where her 60th birthday was coming up. And even though

00:58:15.820 the country is supposed to be in austerity measures because of the wars, she's still,

00:58:20.100 she's kind of tricked into accepting gifts. And then she was criticized for that because it's 0.93

00:58:23.400 like, why isn't she spending the money on the war and stuff? Eventually this war ended at a 0.97

00:58:28.380 great loss of money and prestige and land for China. So she returned to retirement. I'm sure

00:58:34.780 hoping for real this time, but this wasn't as carefree as retirement 1.0 because she was still

00:58:41.700 in the loop of what was happening with the government. So she couldn't just relax into her

00:58:45.560 art classes and opera performances and stuff. And the emperor now came to her regularly to ask her

00:58:50.820 advice because he'd realized like she was a lot better at this than him. He was wounded in an

00:58:55.380 assassination attempt. So things were like high stakes at this point. And at this point, the two

00:59:00.360 of them got along. She said once that he was quote, an extremely nice person. She also is sort

00:59:07.180 of a gesture to him. She restored Pearl's titles as well as those of Pearl's sister, Jade. And she

00:59:12.840 was just trying to like consciously uncouple herself from being in charge. Like, so she was 60

00:59:17.900 plus. She had worked this hugely stressful job for so long. She wasn't the emperor. She just

00:59:23.840 to throw parties and produce operas and take painting lessons and smoke her pipe. But that 1.00

00:59:30.240 wasn't what happened because the emperor was not doing very well. And she was still the only person

00:59:36.900 in the country able of leading. So here's what happens next. 1898, Prince Gong died R.I.P. to a

00:59:45.640 real hot guy. On his deathbed, he had nothing but tears for the shattered empire he had fought for

00:59:51.940 for so long. And so the emperor, now 26 years old, turned to Sushi because he was way out of his

00:59:57.420 depth. And being monarch over China at this point was impossible for like anyone. Even he knew the

01:00:03.980 only person even slightly capable of handling the job was his papa. And so the emperor at this point

01:00:09.980 was all about reforms. Like he had gone from being like theoretical, let's rule, like it's the year

01:00:15.580 1400. And now he was like, no, let's modernize, let's westernize. And that was because he had

01:00:20.400 fallen under the influence of a guy who's kind of like a Rasputin-like figure, whose name is

01:00:26.340 Wild Fox Kang. So his real name was Kang Yo-Wai, but he's called Wild Fox Kang. And this guy,

01:00:35.140 it's like, it's really well into this episode, but he's going to, he's one of the most memorable

01:00:39.340 people in this episode. So Wild Fox Kang had reformist ideas and a very high sense of self,

01:00:47.580 as evidenced by the fact that he wrote a book called The History of Me, all about how amazing

01:00:53.960 he was. And at first, so Sushi was impressed by his writings and his reformist ideas, because they

01:00:59.660 all seemed kind of in line with what she wanted to do, which is like modernize, westernize.

01:01:03.180 But he was called Wild Fox Kang. So I think we know he was not a great ally to anyone other than

01:01:07.780 himself. So he knew that the young emperor was fragile and weak. He knew also that the emperor

01:01:13.520 always kind of resented Sushi. And so Wild Fox Kang encouraged the emperor to trust nobody apart

01:01:18.940 from him. And so the emperor agreed to fire basically everyone and replace him with Wild

01:01:23.780 Fox Kang's friends. So she learned about this and she was just like, oh no, this is just like

01:01:28.980 what Elon Musk did when he took over Twitter. But the emperor was just like, no, Wild Fox Kang is

01:01:35.120 like, he's so smart. I'm going to do everything he says. But secretly, Wild Fox Kang's whole thing

01:01:40.680 was he wanted to make himself the new emperor because he claimed he, Wild Fox Kang, was the

01:01:45.560 reincarnation of Confucius himself. The only person who saw through his like delusions was

01:01:50.700 Sushi, which is why Wild Fox Kang decided to try and assassinate her. But a general loyal to Sushi

01:01:58.560 learned about the assassination plans and told her everything, including that the emperor himself

01:02:02.920 was aware of the assassination plan. Now Sushi, like she learned that this was going to go on,

01:02:08.320 but then she like was like okay she played it so cool she acted like nothing was wrong she just

01:02:13.200 went to visit the emperor and just they just had like a meeting with i don't know some sort of

01:02:17.340 visiting ambassador or something and ever so casually at the end of the meeting she placed

01:02:21.120 the emperor under house arrest confining him to a villa in the middle of the lake at the sea palace

01:02:25.640 reachable only by a long bridge that could be opened and closed so he became her prisoner

01:02:31.260 which is how and why he wrote an official decree saying sushi was now his guardian despite him being

01:02:37.820 27 years old and she was in charge of the country again against her will. So this time the screen

01:02:44.780 was removed. She got to sit there herself. Well, also, I guess, because the emperor maybe couldn't

01:02:50.260 be in the room because he was a prisoner. Anyway, no screen. She's like literally like in charge

01:02:57.120 now. Everyone knows it. She's able to be seen. Just to let you know, also Wild Fox Kang was

01:03:03.320 obviously arrested, or a warrant went out for his arrest, but he escaped to Japan. So she didn't

01:03:09.100 put him and his conspirators on trial, because to do so would reveal that the emperor knew about

01:03:14.000 the assassination plot, and she didn't want anyone to think less of him. So actually, no one knew

01:03:18.840 about this assassination attempt in Wild Fox Kang until the 1980s, when the paperwork about it was

01:03:23.640 discovered. But yeah, Wild Fox Kang did not shut up about any of this. Like the narcissist he was,

01:03:30.540 he fled the country and lived for 30 more years. Almost all of the accusations that have shaped

01:03:35.380 public opinion about sushi, about like her being like inept and like a maniac who just like had 0.97

01:03:41.880 orgies all the time. Like this all originated from literally this guy, Wild Fox Kang, just 0.96

01:03:46.420 talking shit about the women who had outsmarted him. Like she claimed she had male concubines 0.99

01:03:52.920 and knightly orgies with the eunuchs. And like all this stuff was taken as fact for a while

01:03:57.040 because he was just really convincing at making people think he knew what he was talking about.

01:04:00.540 when he did not. Anyway, so she tried to keep the reforms going. Meanwhile, the emperor,

01:04:07.000 her prisoner, was very ill with symptoms, maybe having to do with kidney problems.

01:04:12.060 She wanted to remove him, but she couldn't kill him because politically that would be problematic.

01:04:20.680 And although she was a reformer as well, she wanted to modernize and westernize,

01:04:26.160 he had been so extreme about it. When he was under the thrall of White Fox Kang, 0.94

01:04:29.580 there was this thing called like, what was it? The Hundred Days Reform, where he was trying to 0.98

01:04:35.820 reform things. And then she took over. So people kind of thought that that meant that she was

01:04:38.840 against the reforms where it's like, actually, no, it's the opposite. But once people hate a

01:04:42.960 woman in power, it's hard to change their minds with facts. And meanwhile, all the things were

01:04:47.440 always happening, weren't happening. And a thing called the Boxer Rebellion occurred, which is

01:04:52.140 important. So I'll explain it as briefly as possible for context. So this was a peasant

01:04:58.500 rebellion in 1900. And initially, so she supported it until it all went bad. So the boxers was a

01:05:08.200 name that foreigners gave to a Chinese secret society known as the righteous and harmonious

01:05:12.840 fists. The group practiced certain boxing and calisthenic rituals in the belief it made them

01:05:18.140 invulnerable. Like they thought that if you didn't have exercise and boxing, then like bullets would

01:05:22.680 just bounce off of you sort of thing. So the Boxers started out anti-Westerners and also anti

01:05:29.540 the Qing dynasty, but eventually they kind of changed their mind or they had their minds

01:05:35.140 changed so that they would support the monarchy, but they were very, very anti-foreigners.

01:05:42.420 And so she was like, you know what, at this point, me too. So she supported them and they're like 0.98

01:05:46.440 anti-foreigner sort of rhetoric. And when I say so she supported them, I mean, she had like 1.00

01:05:52.220 government, and everybody team up with them. So the Boxers started openly attacking Chinese 1.00

01:05:57.700 Christians and Western missionaries burning churches and foreign residences, killed suspected 0.97

01:06:02.680 Chinese Christians on sight. The German minister was murdered. Other foreign ministers and their 0.66

01:06:08.040 families and staff, together with hundreds of Chinese Christians, were besieged. And basically, 1.00

01:06:13.160 war broke out. An international force was assembled with the soldiers coming from Japan,

01:06:18.820 Russia, Britain, the United States, France, Austria-Hungary, and Italy to fight against

01:06:25.100 this thing that was happening. On August 14th, 1900, that force of like all these Western nations

01:06:30.180 captured Beijing, which is where she was. So at this point, she's forced to flee along with the

01:06:36.020 emperor slash her prisoner, his wife, remember his boring wife, some other princess and princesses,

01:06:41.700 and also the concubine Jade. What about Pearl and her pants? So Jade's sister Pearl was, 1.00

01:06:47.840 it was complicated because she had been complicit in the assassination attempt and so she didn't

01:06:52.580 maybe want to help her escape so she instructed pearl to kill herself but pearl refused and so 0.99

01:06:59.800 so she ordered the eunuchs to push her into a well which is what happened and then pearl died 1.00

01:07:05.300 r.i.p to pearl and pants so so she aged 64 was hustled into a mule cart where she traveled for 0.55

01:07:13.400 two days and nights to a town where they could be safe along with a big entourage and the place

01:07:17.800 where they were hiding out. Apparently the cook was so good. She loved the food so much. After all

01:07:21.720 this happened, that cook got a new job as working in the royal kitchen. I think it said something

01:07:27.580 about like fried noodles or something. So, I mean, impressive, like quite a break for that cook.

01:07:33.720 Yeah. So wherever she was became the new nerve center of the empire. 1.00

01:07:37.400 So she finally settled into the ancient Western Chinese city of Xi'an. And although the Western

01:07:45.080 enemies wanted to remove her and put the emperor back in power. She was too beloved by all the

01:07:50.980 people who served her, all the ministers, all the politicians of China were all on her side,

01:07:57.000 not the emperor's side. So that just wasn't possible. And she spent two years in Xi'an.

01:08:01.840 And the whole situation really cemented her authority. While she was there, she set up a

01:08:06.920 new throne room where there was a big throne for her, which was higher up, and the emperor sat in

01:08:10.800 a lower down throne. And so just visually, everybody could tell that she was in charge.

01:08:16.100 And when she finally got back to Beijing, she had a similar throne chair situation set up there too.

01:08:22.580 So after extensive discussions between the Chinese and the West in September 1901, a protocol was

01:08:28.400 signed ending the hostilities and providing for reparations to be made from China to the foreign

01:08:33.580 powers. So ultimately, something like 100,000 people died in the Boxer Rebellion, mostly

01:08:41.160 civilians, including thousands of Chinese Christians, and something like 250 foreign

01:08:46.360 nationals, mostly Christian missionaries. Somewhere around 3,000 military personnel

01:08:50.900 were killed in combat, most of them being boxers and other Chinese fighters. And this was,

01:08:56.580 there's been a lot of rebellions in this story that I haven't mentioned, but this was such a

01:09:01.940 major thing because of the international war it caused. So there was really, in terms of this

01:09:06.500 story, there was a time before the Boxer Rebellion and a time after. And Sushi's post-Boxer Rebellion

01:09:12.980 era was quite significantly different. So after all of this, Western governments recognized her

01:09:19.560 as the indisputable leader of China. Wangai compared her to Catherine the Great, Elizabeth

01:09:23.760 I, Hatshepsut, and Cleopatra as one of the great women rulers in history. In the aftermath of the

01:09:29.680 Boxer Rebellion, so she embarked on a course of massive and profound change, really leaning into

01:09:34.520 the modernization and westernization of China. She also made smaller acts of contrition,

01:09:40.420 like she honored Pearl, the pants-wearing concubine who she had had murdered by throwing

01:09:46.440 into a well, partially just to placate the emperor who had loved her, but also because

01:09:51.840 some of the western allies were specifically horrified by that specific thing she had done.

01:09:56.840 Anyway, major milestone changes that she enacted post-rebellion included ending the ban on

01:10:03.400 intermarriage between Han people and Manchu people.

01:10:06.800 She decreed an end to foot binding.

01:10:09.840 She released women from their homes and from male-female segregation, allowing women to

01:10:14.280 appear in public, to go to theaters and cinemas, and allowing women access to education.

01:10:18.780 She opened nursery schools.

01:10:20.740 So already, like, male students had been permitted to study abroad, and now she permitted female

01:10:24.560 students to study abroad. During this era, Women's Daily, the only Women's Daily newspaper in the

01:10:29.820 world at the time, began publishing. She also revamped the legal system to be more in line with 0.67

01:10:35.640 what other nations were up to by doing things like abolishing death by a thousand cuts, prohibiting

01:10:41.140 torture during interrogation. She founded a state bank with a yuan, yuan is the currency, yen, I 0.98

01:10:48.320 think she also made up and i really appreciate this like we're in our current era like with

01:10:54.680 opioids you know fentanyl and stuff like she knew that because of the opium war and britain getting

01:11:01.000 the country intentionally addicted to opium she knew that there's so many people in china who are

01:11:06.220 addicted to opium and she made up a 10-point plan to enable all people in the empire to break the

01:11:10.620 habit of opium addiction so this included she got britain on board with this plan so they would stop

01:11:16.580 like sending opium to them or whatever. But she also got people to stop farming opium. 0.83

01:11:21.760 She provided support for people who are trying to break their addiction. And within 10 years,

01:11:26.180 the British export of opium had come to a complete stop. And I really like this as a

01:11:31.020 compassionate thing. She wasn't just like, she saw the people addicted to opium or people who

01:11:37.260 were in need of help. She didn't just like, let's put them in jail or whatever. So I appreciate that.

01:11:41.980 She also proposed to turn China into a constitutional monarchy with an elected 0.90

01:11:45.600 parliament. So these are like enormous changes to the society that I've talked about thus far

01:11:50.980 in these podcasts. Meanwhile, goddamn Wild Fox Kang was still stirring shit, hating her. He was 1.00

01:11:57.980 allied with the Japanese and he organized repeat attempts to assassinate sushi, which were never

01:12:02.480 successful. So her illness, which like, I do not know what her illness was, worsened. Like whatever

01:12:07.800 her illness has been, you know where she would, whether it was purely stress related or just

01:12:14.020 stress exacerbated it. But we talked before about like there's times where she just like couldn't

01:12:17.520 get out of bed, coughing up blood. Like part of this is obviously psychological, you know,

01:12:23.160 depression and anxiety, but like clearly there's physical symptoms going on. So she was, and this

01:12:26.800 was just worsening. So by the time she was 73, she felt feverish and dizzy all the time with a

01:12:32.340 metallic ringing in her ears. The emperor who was, I think around 37 was also ill. He had been for

01:12:38.860 a while. So four days after her 73rd birthday, she sensed that she would die soon. So she started

01:12:44.700 to put the empire's affairs in order. She knew that if she died before the emperor, the Japanese, 0.99

01:12:50.880 like he was such an ineffectual leader, the Japanese would swoop in and take over. So she 1.00

01:12:55.140 decided that he had to die before her so she could decide on the succession, which is why

01:13:00.940 this is the actual murder. We know she did. She decided to murder the emperor. So the emperor,

01:13:07.840 So his name had been Zaitian, but as the emperor, he was Emperor Guangzhou, and he died.

01:13:13.600 He had been sick for a while, but it was determined, I think, sometime within the last 20 or so years,

01:13:19.980 his remains were exhumed, and it was found that there was a massive amount of arsenic in his body.

01:13:25.960 So, like, more than someone would accidentally have maybe absorbed.

01:13:30.560 so he died from consuming large quantities of arsenic likely laced in the food that was sent

01:13:36.420 to him by sushi his like beloved papa so he died and then because sushi was still alive like

01:13:43.920 apparently his wife was running from like his deathbed to like her deathbed back and forth 0.97

01:13:49.700 remember his like boring plain wife anyway so she outlived him even if it was just for a day she 0.88

01:13:55.920 knew that she was still there and he wasn't so she got to name who the next emperor would be 0.95

01:13:59.340 because he hadn't had any sons. She selected her great-nephew, Puyi, who is two years old as the

01:14:05.720 next emperor with his father as regent, and she died three days after Zaitian. Legacy! So Sushi

01:14:13.440 is one of the longest reigning women in history, having served as regent for 47 years. And I looked

01:14:19.960 up at other monarchs we've looked at on this podcast, and the closest anyone came to that was

01:14:24.740 Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba reigned for 37 years. So 47 years. So her funeral was like a huge,

01:14:34.920 massive thing, like on par with the funeral for any emperor, you know, dignitaries came in from

01:14:42.660 all kinds of other countries to pay respects to her. I do appreciate that this season we've had

01:14:48.000 several really impressive funerals of people. That's a nice thing I like to see. But yeah,

01:14:54.940 so we're going to talk about one then later in the various revolutions that happened after her

01:15:00.040 death. Her tomb was looted, but then the tomb was restored in 1949. As a Manchu minority and a woman

01:15:06.440 ruling a vast country of 400 million for 47 years, during a lengthy and critical period of Chinese

01:15:12.300 world history, her achievements were extraordinary. No other Manchu woman in history has acquired an

01:15:17.320 exercise political power like at all not to mention breaking dynastic laws by her own regency 0.90

01:15:23.120 and the appoint she personally appointed three emperors um despite her limited education

01:15:28.580 she was an art lover um and she promoted and helped popularize things like opera and theater

01:15:36.240 so this is a statement i think it's from the oxford biography of women's history which said

01:15:42.860 with so many factors involved in China's history during Sushi's lifetime, like the rebellions,

01:15:47.300 all the wars, the West, it may be a futile exercise to speculate what might have otherwise

01:15:52.220 been China's experience had there been a different ruler or a male sovereign in control. But I think,

01:15:57.960 I don't think anyone could have done a better job than she did. And as a person, you know,

01:16:02.960 if you separate her acts as like country ruler from who she was as a person, when she hung out

01:16:10.180 with, especially some Western diplomats came like to hang out with wives of ambassadors and stuff 0.97

01:16:14.700 from America. Everybody emphasized that she was warm. She was friendly. She liked to smile.

01:16:19.880 When you see the photos of her, like she always looks very serious, but that's like she put on

01:16:23.720 her serious face for photos. But apparently she was a very smiley, friendly person in general,

01:16:28.640 who was also a really effective military leader. So in the People's Republic of China after 1949,

01:16:37.460 the image of Sushi was debated and changed several times. She sometimes praised for her

01:16:42.940 anti-imperialist role in the Boxer Uprising, and sometimes she was reviled as a member of

01:16:47.440 the feudalist regime. When Mao Zedong's wife, John Ching, was arrested in 1976 for abuse of power,

01:16:54.900 an exhibit at the Palace Museum put Sushi's luxurious goods on display to show that a 0.89

01:16:58.580 female ruler weakened the nation. By the 1970s, views among scholars began to change because,

01:17:04.440 again so much of what was written about her was based on wild fox kang's just like utter slander

01:17:09.900 sue fun chung who was uh is a historian she did a doctoral dissertation at university of

01:17:16.840 california berkeley which was the first study in english to use court documents rather than

01:17:20.840 popular histories and hearsay and to call out that wild fox kang and other haters always said

01:17:26.160 they were taken seriously and other people who said who had dissenting opinions weren't taken

01:17:31.360 as seriously so yeah so like because of wilfax kang like sushi for a while was seen as being a

01:17:39.780 she dragon or someone who was incompetent like this like nymphomaniac like just she wasn't it

01:17:46.460 was really simplified and i don't know not like taking in all the many layers of her as a person

01:17:51.400 so in recent decades a historian of the dynasty named pamela kyle crossley says historians in the

01:17:57.840 West developed what had become truism in the representation of Sushi, that she had been

01:18:02.080 obscured by misogyny and oriental stereotyping, as well as the anti-Manchu sentiment running

01:18:06.860 through Chinese nationalist narratives. Crossley felt that Sushi appealed to feminists as a

01:18:11.200 powerful leader, and to Chinese patriots as a defender of China. In the 1960s and 70s,

01:18:17.620 Sushi was one of a small collection of powerful women newly discovered, and now she appears in 0.91

01:18:21.640 the vanguard of stubborn Chinese opposition to foreign arrogance and encroachment.

01:18:25.280 so it's a wildly complex story of a woman who had many facets to her and it's been really

01:18:33.760 interesting to to read up on her and to see how people have represented her in the past like the

01:18:40.020 amount of details again like this is already a extra long episode uh but yeah i really recommend

01:18:47.360 reading jung chang's biography of her because you can really get into all the all the details about

01:18:52.120 her and what she was up to. So first of all, and this shit comes no surprise, I am awarding the

01:18:57.140 Lady Jane Seymour Memorial Award for Outstanding Supporting Performance to Daoudra Empress Sa'Anne, 0.96

01:19:03.040 who not only saved Sushi from being executed for like having an opinion early on, but then for

01:19:09.720 helping support her, working with her to usurp the throne, like just being the best best friend and

01:19:15.360 never letting any sort of rivalry get in the way of them just being like two women supporting each

01:19:20.640 other i think i'm also going to present this to hot prince gong who i mean things did not end well

01:19:27.000 between the two of them but but he really had her back in some crucial moments which i appreciate

01:19:31.500 and that's what this award is for it's for so many other women we talk about this podcast just

01:19:35.420 it feels like no one was in their corner this is an award for people who like were there prince

01:19:40.020 chun i don't know and i don't know if it's because he's just less hot but i don't i don't see him as

01:19:45.480 although he was he killed little on and sushi got past that but i cannot little on also we just don't

01:19:52.280 know enough about him i like that sushi had various friends though i like i like that she was not

01:19:57.020 isolated or just that we know who her friends were like even like among the eunuch she always had a

01:20:00.980 favorite like she was a friendly person she was friends with her painting instructor like i just

01:20:06.100 like knowing the sense of that she had people to talk to because she was going through this intense 0.96

01:20:10.880 life of nonstop chaos. She had these emotional down points. I just love knowing that there's

01:20:17.640 people there for her to share a laugh with. This score, we'll see how it goes, but I feel like

01:20:23.320 this is going to be up there. Scandaliciousness. So we have her usurping the throne. We have her

01:20:31.240 arresting the emperor. We have her, even just the scandalousness of her being an educated woman 1.00

01:20:36.540 who gave her point of view and she could have been killed at that point. I mean, she threw 1.00

01:20:40.420 pearl in a well like just in this society she was in to be a woman doing anything is scandalous 1.00

01:20:46.640 but for her to usurp the throne and stay in charge anyway i'm giving her a 10 like full marks could 1.00

01:20:54.540 not think of anything more scandalous she could have possibly done even as wild fox kang was like 1.00

01:20:58.640 she was having sex with all these people it's like you know what like that's not the only way 0.57

01:21:04.040 to be scandalicious like what could be more scandalicious than like literally seizing the 1.00

01:21:07.920 throne scheminess is a 10 like that's a straight up 10 she was so smart she was so clever so

01:21:14.080 resilient and just i think almost too schemey like too smart like that's where like everyone knowing

01:21:21.760 she's still alive in the world they're all like well no one else could possibly ever be in charge 0.89

01:21:25.200 of china while she's still in existence and she just wanted to retire and they wouldn't let her

01:21:29.220 but she was like so smart so smart all of her plans so good and part of her smartness was too 0.82

01:21:35.900 And that comes hand in hand with her like friendliness was because she was friends with all the eunuchs and they gave her all the gossip and all the, so she knew what was going on so she could stop, you know, backstabbing.

01:21:47.660 She could know what was going on.

01:21:48.580 Like when people are trying to assassinate her, she learned about it and she's able to get ahead of them.

01:21:52.800 Like part of her scheminess was just making friends with all the right people.

01:21:57.520 Significance, I think, is super a 10.

01:22:00.720 Like everything I read, like that list of all the things that she did.

01:22:04.800 It's like inventing a currency, making like banning foot binding, like I don't know what all the things that I said, like opening China to the West, like inventing schools there.

01:22:18.000 like she radically altered China completely like her the significance is huge 10 like she was the

01:22:27.360 leader during all of these wars and stuff like whether the significance whether you see it as

01:22:31.920 good or bad the things that she did cannot argue that she was not extraordinarily significant I

01:22:37.860 mean when you're in charge of a country for 47 years during these like crucial times yeah

01:22:43.240 significance so it all comes down to the sexism in terms of how high her score is gonna get and

01:22:48.340 this is something that i had asked friend of the podcast lana would johnson about because

01:22:52.340 i've been thinking i'm like i think she's like top marks for almost everything but i feel like 0.54

01:22:56.140 the sexism is maybe not a high score because i don't know how much that got in her way and it

01:23:03.180 was sort of like she knew what the society was that she was living in and she was able to make 0.78

01:23:11.500 that work for her in some ways. She didn't try to have herself named Empress herself. She was just 0.76

01:23:16.240 like, oh, what if we just get a little boy to be the Emperor and I'll just be in charge behind the

01:23:20.560 screen? She achieved so much in a profoundly sexist, patriarchal society. I can't imagine

01:23:27.620 what more she could have done. Even if she was Empress in name, I think her life would have

01:23:32.200 been around the same. But people who would have gotten a higher sexism bonus is maybe 1.00

01:23:37.580 Pearl, who kind of had no chance. But I don't know, like sexism did not get in her way that 1.00

01:23:44.820 much. Like the only thing is maybe she wouldn't have had to retire. So maybe things wouldn't 1.00

01:23:49.140 have gotten bad for those two years. I mean, like, I don't know. She was able to do a lot.

01:23:55.340 She was able to like see that the sexism was going on and then use her scheminess to kind

01:23:59.120 get around it so oh i want only the best for her in this scoring but i have to say you know i'm 1.00

01:24:08.880 gonna go with a five just the straight up five like she dealt with sexism maybe she could have

01:24:13.380 done more without it but it didn't get in her way that much which gives her a 35 which is in terms

01:24:20.440 of her scale a great score so in terms of where that makes her fall on this list christina of

01:24:27.800 Sweden is at 33.5. Queen Min of Korea is 35.5. Madeleine, 35.5. Chevalier d'Alms, 35.5. So she

01:24:38.380 is a bit lower than them, mainly because the sexism didn't get in her way as much, I would say. But 1.00

01:24:46.040 certainly. So where does this put her? One, two, three, four. Ninth. So ninth. So she is fully

01:24:52.480 there in the top 10 on the Fredigan Memorial Scandalicious Scale. Well-deserved. What a wild

01:24:57.620 ride. Honestly, I can't recommend this book enough. It's so good. I've summarized it. It was a challenge

01:25:02.860 to summarize this as much as I had, but please know I had to leave a lot out because this podcast

01:25:07.840 is not 75 hours long, but if you want to listen to something very long, it is an audio book.

01:25:14.040 Anyway, yeah. So you can keep up with me and the show on Instagram at vulgarhistorypod where my

01:25:21.620 DMs are open. You can contact me with your thoughts and feedback and suggestions of people

01:25:26.040 that you think you'd like to hear about on the podcast. I'm also on TikTok at Vulgar History,

01:25:30.980 where you can also send me messages as well and see what I'm posting there.

01:25:35.200 And I also have a website, which is vulgarhistory.com. There's a form there where you can get in touch

01:25:39.880 with me. Again, I'm saying all these things to get in touch with me because I love hearing from you.

01:25:44.140 I love hearing. Recently, somebody named a cat Cece after having listened to the episode where

01:25:50.780 we talked about Cece and it's because the cat has such a voluminous hair. And I was just like,

01:25:54.620 that's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard. Yeah. I'm just happy to hear from you all the

01:25:58.200 time, but also Instagram is where I post a lot of, that's where a lot of the conversation about

01:26:01.780 the show goes on. Um, we have a store, which is at vulgarstree.store, where if you're shopping

01:26:09.560 there for merch, you can always use promo code titsout for free with shipping, titsout10 for

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01:26:32.620 that's where you can do that um also so i have some lists posted on bookshop.org so every book

01:26:39.720 i've ever mentioned on this podcast there's lists there like per season like there's a list for

01:26:43.820 international and there's a list for women trapped in towers are the books that i've mentioned but i

01:26:48.420 also have lists that are like recommended historical fiction, and then also a list of

01:26:52.220 like gift giving suggestions. So if you purchase things on bookshop.org using the link that is in

01:26:58.180 my show notes, then a little bit of money goes to support me in this podcast. And I appreciate that

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01:27:15.140 is early ad-free access to all the episodes of this podcast. And then if you pledge at least

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01:27:26.000 Khan episode of So This Asshole, that's where I do episodes around once a month about famous men 0.98

01:27:30.520 from history, just complaining about how gross they are. Although Genghis Khan, I don't know, 0.94

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01:27:54.740 As I'm recording this episode, we haven't done that vulgar piece theater yet, but I'm really

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Vulgar History - December 07, 2022

International, part 38： Empress Cixi： Final Years (pt 2⧸2)

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