The Last Empress - Anchee Min [140]
My son gave me a tired look and sighed.
Going back and forth from the capital, Yung Lu was eager to discuss the candidate who would run the proposed parliament.
"I am not considering others when Li Hung-chang and you are holding up the sky," I said to him. "Isn't your new title Prime Minister of China?"
"Yes, for the moment. But I'd like to remind Your Majesty that Li Hung-chang and I are in our seventies and in ill health."
"All three of us are in that boat, I'm afraid."
We smiled at each other, and I asked whom he had in mind.
"Yuan Shih-kai," Yung Lu said. "Li Hung-chang and I have gone over the choices and it boils down to him."
Of course I was familiar with Yuan Shih-kai, who had recently come to my aid on our retreat into exile. He had built his name in the southwest during the Sino-French War. After returning from Indochina, he was appointed by Li to take over the Northern Army as its youngest commander in chief. Yuan was known for his no-nonsense training style. A few years later, when Yung Lu combined his forces with the Northern Army and created the New Army, Yuan was appointed as its commander in chief.
Yuan Shih-kai had proved his loyalty by saving my life during the chaos of the Hundred Days reform. He was promoted to the post of senior governor and oversaw key provinces while keeping his military role. Working closely with Li Hung-chang and Yung Lu, Yuan had learned from the masters.
A recent event had also made Yuan Shih-kai a household name in China. According to the terms of the treaty agreement, China was not allowed a military presence in the greater Peking area. Humiliation aside, the stipulation made those who supposedly held the reins of power feel at once vulnerable and vaguely ridiculous.
Yuan studied the treaty and international law and came up with the idea of establishing a Chinese police force. "There is nothing in the agreement that says China can't have its own law enforcement," he stated in his proposal.
Within weeks of my granting permission, Yuan Shih-kai dressed his army as policemen—they looked like British bobbies. In their smart uniforms his men patrolled the coasts and marched around the legations in Peking. The mean-spirited foreign journalists couldn't say a word about it.
Because of Yuan Shih-kai, I could now sleep.
When the homecoming procession arrived at a town near Tientsin, I boarded a train, still a novelty for me. The locomotive pulled twenty-one shining carriages, which had been presented to the nation by Yuan Shih-kai. "Moving rooms," Li Lien-ying called them. My carriage had silk-draped walls, soft-cushioned sofas and a built-in porcelain basin with hot and cold water taps. The car even had its own toilet.
Although Guang-hsu did not give his opinion regarding Yuan Shih-kai's leadership of the parliament, he understood that we were not choosing him because he was a personal friend. Yuan's passion for China's prosperity was what mattered. Already we had been relying on him to execute our edicts.
I witnessed my son's struggle with himself—logic battling his feelings. Often Guang-hsu's dark moods would return. "I'd rather die than support that traitor," he would say. He would break dishes and kick his chair.
"It is a matter of making use of a talent," I said to him. "You can replace him if you find a better person."
When I learned that Yung Lu had fainted on his way to join us in Tientsin, I sent a message wishing him renewed health and requesting that he come as soon as he was able. The moment Yung Lu entered my private car, accompanied by his doctor, he smiled and said, "I got kicked out by the god of death!" He tried to sound as if he had never been sick. "Maybe it was because I hadn't eaten and Hell wouldn't accept a hungry ghost."
"Don't you dare abandon me." I could not hold back my tears.
"Well, I wasn't notified when my body decided to quit."
"How are you feeling?"
"I am fine. But my chest whistles like a wind harp."
"It's your lungs."
He nodded.