The Last Empress - Anchee Min [30]
The court didn't need a minor functionary to remind them that the country was still ravaged by the recent Taiping rebellion and that the Moslem uprisings in the west had not yet been suppressed. However, they rebuked the official for "obstructing the Emperor's filial duty to his mother." Tung Chih was determined to see his goal realized, but after a year and a great deal of expense, he was pressured by Prince Kung to abandon the project.
For years I would be blamed for whatever happened at Yuan Ming Yuan, but I was no longer in a position to advise Tung Chih—I was officially retired. What puzzled me was Prince Kung's change of mind. It was he who first supported the restoration by giving a donation to begin construction, but now he was among those who begged Tung Chih to call off the project.
Throwing a temper tantrum, Tung Chih accused his uncle of using disrespectful language and demoted him. It was Nuharoo who persuaded Tung Chih to reinstate his uncle's position a few weeks later.
I stayed away because I felt that Tung Chih needed to learn how to be an emperor. It had been too easy for him to order others around without ever suffering.
11
On a warm day in the summer of 1874, I watched my eunuch Li Lien-ying cutting gardenias in my garden. He removed and discarded flower buds and side shoots, then sliced the stems into three-inch pieces, carefully making the cut below a node. "New roots will form at this point," he explained as he inserted the cuttings into containers. "By next spring the plants should be ready to go out in the garden." A month later the cuttings failed to send out any new leaves.
To test if the roots were growing, Li Lien-ying gently pulled on a cutting. He felt no resistance, which indicated that roots were not forming. He told himself to be patient and wait for a few more days. "I have been doing this for years," he said to me. "It is how I've patched up the old gardenia gardens." But the cuttings began to wilt and eventually died. The eunuch believed that it was Heaven's sign that something terrible was going to happen.
"Nothing will happen," the master gardener said to Li. "It could be your mishandling. Maybe the water was contaminated by an animal's urine, or there were insects hidden in the moss. In any case, the plants died of too much stress."
I couldn't help but think of my son. He had been like a houseplant, protected until now from the rigors and uncertainties of the garden.
Tung Chih caught a cold that didn't go away for months. He had developed a fever, and by autumn his body was very weak.
"Tung Chih needs to go outdoors and exercise," Prince Kung urged.
My son's other uncles, Prince Ts'eng and Prince Ch'un, assumed that Tung Chih's nightly dissipations had begun taking a toll on his health. When Doctor Sun Pao-tien requested a meeting to discuss Tung Chih's real condition, he was rebuffed.
I couldn't bear the sight of Tung Chih in a sickbed. It reminded me of his father's dying days. I summoned Alute and Foo-cha and the other wives, and asked them, as they knelt before me, if they had any idea what was wrong with their husband.
Their revelation shocked me: Tung Chih had never quit going to the brothels. "His Majesty prefers flowers in the wild," Foo-cha complained.
Alute resented my questioning. I explained that I didn't mean to intrude or offend and that I was not interested in disrupting her privacy.
Eyebrows twisted into the shape of two flying swords, Alute said that as the Empress of China she had the right not to answer. "It's between Tung Chih and me," she insisted. Her white, porcelain-smooth