Jung Chang Empress Dowager Cixi : The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

Discover the extraordinary story of the woman who brought China into the modern age, from the bestselling author of Wild Swans In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Empress Dowager Cixi the most important woman in Chinese history brought a medieval empire into the modern age. Under her, the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state and it was she who abolished gruesome punishments like death by a thousand cuts and put an end to footbinding. Jung Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot and also takes the reader into the depths of her splendid Summer Palace and the harem of Beijings Forbidden City, where she lived surrounded by eunuchs with one of whom she fell in love, with tragic consequences. Packed with drama, fastpaced and gripping, it is both a panoramic depiction of the birth of modern China and an intimate portrait of a woman as the concubine to a monarch, as the absolute ruler of a third of the worlds population, and as a unique stateswoman. Powerful Simon Sebag Montefiore Truly authoritative New York Times Wonderful Sunday Times Shortlisted for the James Tait Black Biography Prize | Jung Chang Empress Dowager Cixi : The Concubine Who Launched Modern China