I let him and said, "Please understand how awful I feel about what I have done to you. Though hardly a decent excuse, I had no choice."

"I understand, Your Majesty." Li's voice was calm and almost undisturbed. "You did what any mother would do."

My tears came and I broke down.

"If it helps the throne, I am honored," Li said.

"Can you at least let me offer help for your long journey south?"

"There is no need," he said. "I have enough to support my family. My wife understands that if I were charged with treason and found guilty, my life would be forfeited. She only wants me to make sure that our children escape with their lives."

"Has the matter been taken care of?" I wiped my face with a handkerchief.

"Yes, arrangements have been made."

My eunuch came and announced softly, "My lady, the Emperor is waiting."

"Farewell."

Li Hung-chang rose. He took a step back and got down on his knees and kowtowed.

Custom did not allow me to accompany him to the gate, but I decided to ignore it for once.

The door curtain was lifted and we went out to the courtyard. The eunuchs were still doing their morning cleaning. They rushed to get themselves out of sight. Those who crossed our path apologized.

The sky was beginning to brighten. The glazed wing roofs were bathed in golden light. Unlike the Summer Palace, where the air carried the scent of jasmine, Forbidden City mornings were cold and windy.

I heard the sound of my own footsteps, the wooden platform shoes. .h.i.tting the stone walk. Li Hung-chang and I walked side by side. Behind us, sixteen eunuchs carried my room-sized ceremonial palanquin.

Two weeks later, Prince Kung, who was sixty-five, was called out of retirement. Emperor Guang-hsu issued the decree at my urging. Kung was reluctant at first. For ten years he had nursed grievances against those who had removed him from leadership, including his two half-brothers. I pleaded with him, saying that the death of Prince Ch'un should put the unpleasant past to rest. The twenty-four-year-old Emperor needed him.

Guang-hsu and I met with Prince Kung in his chrysanthemum garden, where the ground was covered with star-shaped purple flowers. Prince Kung picked up a leaf. He laid it flat on his palm and hit it with his other palm, creating a sound like a firecracker.

"The balance of power in Asia has been decisively altered since the j.a.panese took our fortified harbor at Weihaiwei." Prince Kung's voice had softened over the years, but his pa.s.sion, perspective and wit remained. "Past misdeeds have bred present impotence. In the world's view, the war is essentially over and China has been defeated."

"But our spirit hasn't!" Guang-hsu's face turned red and his chest swelled. "I refuse to call it a defeat. Our admirals, officers and soldiers committed suicide to show the world that China is not surrendering!"

Prince Kung smiled bitterly. "Our admirals committed suicide to redeem themselves and save their families from death and the confiscation of their estates. You stripped their t.i.tles and ranks but allowed them to remain in the field. You told them that they would be beheaded if they lost a battle. Their deaths were not their choice but yours!"

"Your uncle is right," I said. "I am sure the Emperor has also realized that our nation's patriotism hasn't stopped j.a.pan from occupying the Liaotung Peninsula. We understand that j.a.pan is aiming at Port Arthur's sister fortress and taking over all of Korea."

Guang-hsu fell back into his chair. As if having difficulty breathing, he inhaled deeply.

Kung continued to pick up leaves and slap them, making annoying sounds with his palms.

I was glad that Prince Kung addressed the issue of the suicides, for I had argued with Guang-hsu many times over his death orders. I had desperately tried to convince him that devotion couldn't be forced. There would be no loyalty if mercy and kindness were not first a.s.sured. But I had to end the conversation because Guang-hsu could not comprehend this-he had been raised to take devotion and loyalty for granted. The first thing he had learned about mankind was his tutor's display of sincerity and dedication. I gave in when Guang-hsu complained that I was interfering with his autonomy.

"Mother, are you all right?" Guang-hsu said gently. I had told him that I had been feeling tired and weak.

Then he said, "I have thrown out the pet.i.tions demanding Li Hung-chang's punishment."

I knew by doing this my son meant to please me. But I didn't want to talk about it. Especially not in front of Prince Kung. So I changed the subject. "Have we tried any other option on the j.a.pan front?"

"We have tried through various intermediaries, including the American diplomats," Prince Kung replied. "We tried to reach an accommodation with j.a.pan, but Tokyo has been refusing."

"I don't see any point in wasting time negotiating," Guang-hsu said. As if trying to hold in his emotions, he looked away. "I don't negotiate with savages!" he said through clenched teeth.

"What do you want me me to do, then?" Prince Kung was irritated. to do, then?" Prince Kung was irritated.

"I need your help with defensive preparations," the Emperor said.

"I am not sure I can help," said Prince Kung. "You are wrong to think that I can do better than Li Hung-chang."

I turned to both of them. "Should we not think about walking with both legs? Continuing to seek negotiations with j.a.pan and at the same time preparing our defense?"

Guang-hsu followed Prince Kung's advice and offered to commission foreigners to do the defensive work. A German army engineer who in 1881 had supervised the fortification of Port Arthur was named the chief of China's armies. Guang-hsu hoped that under the leadership of a Western general, he would be able to turn around the situation with j.a.pan.

Both Prince Ts'eng and Prince Ch'un Junior insisted that hiring a past enemy was itself an act of betrayal.

Guang-hsu bore the pressure until the last minute. Then he changed his mind and canceled the commission.

"Had it been done," the disappointed Prince Kung complained later, "China would have been safe and j.a.pan would have eventually paid us an indemnity."

I did not realize it then, but the moment the Emperor changed his mind, his uncle became disheartened. So disheartened that, over the days and weeks to come, Prince Kung would gradually withdraw. I suspected that his pride had been injured but that he would eventually get over it and continue his fight for the dynasty. But Prince Kung's heart retreated to his chrysanthemum garden and he would never come out again.

By the end of January 1895 Guang-hsu realized that he had no other option but to negotiate with j.a.pan. To his further humiliation, j.a.pan refused to discuss the treaty with anyone except the disgraced Li Hung-chang.

On February 13, Guang-hsu relieved Li of his duties as viceroy of Chihli and instructed him to lead the Chinese diplomatic effort. Once again, I was to receive Li Hung-chang in the name of the Emperor.

Li did not want to come to Peking. He begged to be excused from his duty. Believing that the Emperor and the Ironhats would sooner or later make him a scapegoat, he had no confidence that he would survive. He pointed out that things had changed. We had lost our bargaining chip. There was no way to bring j.a.pan to the negotiating table.

"Any man who represents China and signs the treaty will have to sign away parts of China," Li predicted. "It will be a thankless task, and the nation will blame him no matter what the reason for the outcome."

I pleaded with him to think it over, and sent him a personal invitation to have dinner with me.

Li responded, saying in his message that he was not fit for the honor and his advanced age and ill health made travel difficult.

"I wish that I weren't the Empress of China," I wrote back to Li. "The j.a.panese are on their way to Peking, and I can't bear to even begin to imagine how they will violate the Imperial ancestral grounds."

Perhaps it was my urgent tone, perhaps it was his sense of n.o.blesse oblige-whatever the reason-Li Hung-chang honored me with his presence, and he was quickly appointed as China's chief negotiator. He arrived at Shimonoseki, j.a.pan, on March 19, 1895. About a month later, the negotiations took a startling turn: while leaving one of the sessions with Prime Minister Ito Hirob.u.mi, Li was shot in the face by a j.a.panese extremist.

"I was almost glad the incident took place," Li replied when I wrote asking after his condition. "The bullet grazed my left cheek. It gained me what I could never get at the negotiating table-the world's sympathy."

The shooting resulted in an international outcry for j.a.pan to moderate its demands on China.

I felt that I had sent Li to die and he survived only by pure luck.

Also in his message Li Hung-chang prepared Emperor Guang-hsu for the most difficult decision: to agree to the negotiated terms, including the cession to j.a.pan in perpetuity of the island of Taiwan, the Pescadores and the Liaotung Peninsula; the opening of seven Chinese ports to j.a.panese trade; the payment of two hundred million taels, with permission for j.a.pan to occupy Weihaiwei Harbor until this indemnity was cleared; and recognition of the "full and complete autonomy and independence of Korea," which meant relinquishing it to j.a.pan.

Guang-hsu sat on the Dragon Throne and wept. When Li Hung-chang returned to Peking for consultations, he could not get a word out of the Emperor.

It was then that I told Li what I had been thinking: "Give up what China must in the form of money, but not land."

He raised his eyes. "Yes, Your Majesty."

I told him that once we had sanctioned foreign occupation inland, as we had allowed to happen with the Russians in our Ili region, China would forever be lost.

Li understood perfectly and negotiated accordingly.

The image of Li Hung-chang in the audience hall with his forehead touching the ground remained in my mind after he was gone. I sat frozen. The sound of a big clock in the hallway grated on my nerves.

"Korea and Taiwan are gone," Guang-hsu muttered to himself over and over.

He didn't know, of course, that within months we would also lose Nepal, Burma and Indochina.

Another rape. And then another.

j.a.pan had no intention of stopping. Its agents now had spread deep into Manchuria.

The dragon carvings on the palace columns again went unpainted this year. The old paint had started to peel and the golden color turned a parched brown. The Board of the Interior had long run out of money. The danger was not only the visible dry rot, it was the invisible termites.

One morning Chief Eunuch Li Lien-ying ventured to make a formal plea to the throne: "Please, Your Majesty, do something to save the Forbidden City, for it is built with nothing but wood."

"Burn it down!" was Guang-hsu's response.

The audiences went on. In Li Hung-chang's telegrammed updates the j.a.panese demanded the right to build factories in the treaty ports. "Accept these terms or there will be war," j.a.pan threatened.

Guang-hsu and I understood that if we granted j.a.pan's demands, the same demands would be made by all the other foreign powers.

"The latest concessions also brought up the issue of mineral rights," Li's telegram continued, "and there is little we can do to resist..."

The sun's rays came through the windows of my bedroom, throwing shade like rustling leaves onto the floor and furniture. A large black spider hung on its thread by a carved panel. It swung back and forth in the gentle breeze. This was the first black spider I had seen inside the Forbidden City.

I heard the sound of someone dragging his feet. Then Guang-hsu appeared in the doorframe. His posture was that of an old man with his back hunched.

"Any news?" I asked.

"We lost our last division of Moslem cavalry." Guang-hsu entered my room and sat down on a chair. "I am forced to disband tens of thousands of soldiers because I have to pay the foreign indemnities. 'Or war,' they say. 'Or war'!"

"You haven't been eating," I said. "Let's have breakfast."

"The j.a.panese have been building roads connecting Manchuria to Tokyo." He stared at me, his big black eyes unblinking. "My downfall will come along with the fall of the Russian tsar."

"Guang-hsu, enough."

"The Meiji Emperor will soon be unchallenged in East Asia."

"Guang-hsu, eat first, please..."

"Mother, how can I eat? j.a.pan has filled my stomach!"

26.

The Imperial kitchens tried to find reasons not to cancel my birthday banquets. The same att.i.tude was shared by the court, which saw my retirement as an opportunity for everyone to make money. Li Hung-chang was forced to negotiate additional loans to save the day.

I concluded that the only way out of my birthday trap would be to address the nation in a public letter: The auspicious occasion of my sixtieth birthday was to have been a joyful event, and I understand that officials and many citizens have subscribed funds wherewith to raise triumphal arches-twenty-five percent of your yearly income, I was told-to honor me by decorating the Imperial Waterway along its entire length from Peking to my home ... I was not disposed to be unduly obstinate and to insist on refusing these honors, but I feel that I owe you, above everything else, my true feelings. Since the beginning of the last summer our tributary states have been taken, our fleets destroyed, and we have been forced into hostilities causing great despair. How could I have the heart to delight my senses? Therefore, I decree that the public ceremonies and all preparations be abandoned forthwith.

I sent my draft directly to the printer without going through a grand councilor. I was afraid that my words would be violated, just as had my wish to cancel my birthday banquets.

I would have also liked to share with the nation my regret that our neglect of Li's advice had only stiffened the penalties China had to pay. I could not begin to express my anger that Li Hung-chang, at the age of seventy-two, returned home from j.a.pan only to be called a traitor. People in the streets spat at his palanquin as it pa.s.sed.

As a way to show support for Li, I persuaded the court to send him to St. Petersburg not long after the coronation of Tsar Nicholas II.

Li requested that an empty coffin accompany him on the trip-he wanted to be prepared. He asked me to inscribe his name on the lid, which I did.

As a result of Li Hung-chang's visit, a secret agreement between Russia and China was negotiated and then signed. Each country agreed to defend the other against aggression from j.a.pan. The price we paid was to accept a clause allowing Russia to extend its Trans-Siberian Railway across Manchuria to Vladivostok. We would also allow the Russians to use the railway to transport troops and war materiel through Chinese territory.