When she reached out to the wives of foreign dignitaries, a significant milestone in the China/Western relationship, she is portrayed as exceedingly fake, not wanting to engage in any real dialogue or wanting to improve relationships at all, which was bitterly disappointing. Cixi is exceedingly selfish and makes one bad decision after another. Throughout the novel, Buck has no problem portraying Cixi as “evil” and a “tyrant,” using those words with abandon. However, Buck seems to fall into the same old rhetoric used by authors she started out criticizing. Buck says, “I have tried in this book to portray as accurately as possible from available resources and my own memories of how the Chinese whom I knew in my childhood felt about her.” For Buck to see that Cixi was painted as a villain mostly for political reasons, if they had a reason at all, was very astute. Today, Min and Jung (and anyone with internet) has access to mountains of information about Cixi, and it is easy to look at a survey of works written about her during her lifetime and shortly after and see the damning campaign that was waged against this powerful woman, both in China and in the West.

In her forward for Imperial Woman, Buck says “Western writers, with few exceptions, describe unfavorably and even vindictively.” I find it amazing that Buck realized that at the time. While the novel itself was interesting enough, from a historical perspective, I found the novel sorely wanting. I was interested to see if her version of Cixi would be different than writers today. Buck even says in her forward that she visited remote villages where people thought Cixi was still alive and reigning decades after her death. While Buck was not a contemporary of Cixi, she lived in China while some of Cixi’s contemporaries still lived, and her legacy was still fresh in the minds of the people.

Buck had a novel about Cixi, I just had to read her version of this fascinating woman. (You can read my take on Anchee Min’s books here and here and Jung Chang’s here.) Why, yes, this is my fourth review of a book about Cixi.

Pearl buck imperial woman