Jasper Becker

The Empress Dowager was a moderniser, not a minx. But does China care?

Jung Chang's new book gives the infamous concubine Cixi her due

A youthful portrait of the Dowager Empress. Credit: Corbis 
issue 12 October 2013

For susceptible Englishmen of a certain inclination — like Sir Edmund Backhouse or George Macdonald Fraser — the Empress Dowager Cixi was the ultimate oriental sex kitten, an insatiable, manipulating dominatrix who brought the decadent Manchu empire to its knees. While all seems lost, as foreign troops burn the Summer Palace in Peking, she is to be found, thinly disguised, in the pages of Flashman and the Dragon, locked in our hero’s rugged embrace.

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