The Last Empress - Anchee Min [60]
Gently they trail their perfume, ring on ring.
A light mist hides the winding path from view,
From covered walks drips chill and verdant dew.
But who will celebrate the pool in song?
Lost in a dream, at peace, the poet sleeps long.
The foreign press described Nuharoo's death as "mysterious" and "suspicious" and speculated that I was the murderer. "It is generally believed that Tzu Hsi brought about the death of her colleague," a reputable English newspaper stated. "She made up her mind to kill because she was discovered by Nuharoo in bed with a leading man of the opera."
I was able to remain detached until Tung Chih was brought into the stories. "She Did It Again: Yehonala Sacrificed Her Own Child on the Altar of Her Ambition!" shouted one headline in the British press, and the story was picked up by the Chinese papers. The article stated, "When Emperor Tung Chih was critically ill, his mother, far from providing him with the proper medical care, allowed the disease to wreak havoc with his delicate constitution. Should we have any reason to doubt that she had not allowed the same to happen to her coregent?" Another paper echoed, "Yehonala seemed intent on orchestrating the early death of her son and that of Nuharoo. Everyone at court knew that Tung Chih and Nuharoo would not live to see old age."
I felt defenseless. To justify further foreign encroachments in China, I had to be made into a monster.
"It is inconceivable that Yehonala did not know of the shameful exploits of her son and Nuharoo," one Chinese translation read, "and the fatal consequences of such adventures. It was within her power to forbid these revels, yet she did nothing to prevent them."
Day after day, slanderers from around the world poured their venom: "We see how complete was the Dowager Empress's estrangement from her son and how total her lust for power."
"For the young girl from the poorest province in China, no price is too high to maintain her despotic grip on the Celestial Empire."
I dreamed that Yung Lu would come back to defend me. I cried at Tung Chih's altar and walked back in the middle of the night through the Hall of Spiritual Nurturing like a ghost. During the day's audiences, I would break down and weep like a schoolgirl. Guang-hsu kept passing me handkerchiefs until he started to weep himself.
20
The powerful strategist and businessman Li Hung-chang told me that not only was China facing an unavoidable war, but we were already deeply into it. For a week the court had discussed nothing but France's ambitions in our southern border provinces, including Vietnam, which China had long ago ruled before the Vietnamese gained a quasi-independence in the tenth century.
Soon after my husband's death in 1862, France colonized southern Vietnam, or Cochin China. Like the British, the French were hungrily drawn to trade in our southwestern provinces and had set their sights on control of the navigable Red River in northern Vietnam. In 1874 France forced the King of Vietnam to accept a treaty giving it the privileges of overlordship that China had traditionally enjoyed. Much to France's irritation, the King continued to send tribute to my son in exchange for protection.
To help hold the Vietnamese territory in the south, I granted freedom to a former Taiping rebel leader and sent him to repel the French. The rebel had been born in the area and considered it his homeland. He fought valiantly and succeeded in keeping the French at bay. But when the King died, the French negotiated another treaty with his successor, which stated, "Vietnam recognizes and accepts the protectorate of France."
In response to our court's ultimatum, the French launched a surprise military attack. Since we hadn't expected to go to war, our southwestern borders were neither strengthened nor prepared. By March of 1884 Li Hung-chang came to report that all of the major cities in Vietnam had fallen into French hands.
My court was divided over the crisis. Publicly, the dispute was over how best to deal with French aggression. Beneath