Empress Dowager Cixi

At the age of sixteen, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor’s numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China—behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male.In this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly describes how Cixi fought against monumental obstacles to change China. Under her the ancient country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state: industries, railways, electricity, the telegraph and an army and navy with up-to-date weaponry. It was she who abolished gruesome punishments like “death by a thousand cuts” and put an end to foot-binding. She inaugurated women’s liberation and embarked on the path to introduce parliamentary elections to China. Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conservative and cruel despot.Based on newly available, mostly Chinese, historical documents such as court records, official and private correspondence, diaries and eyewitness accounts, this biography will revolutionize historical thinking about a crucial period in China’s—and the world’s—history. Packed with drama, fast paced 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 world’s population, and as a unique stateswoman.

'A fascinating and instructive biography for anyone interested in how today’s China began.' -- Library Journal
'Cixi’s extraordinary story has all the elements of a good fairy tale: bizarre, sinister, triumphant and terrible.' -- The Economist
'When an author as thorough, gifted, and immersed in Chinese culture as Chang writes, both scholars and general readers take notice.' -- Booklist
'The author of “Wild Swans” sets out to rehabilitate the reputation of a woman who, she argues, helped modernise China….While Chang acknowledges Cixi’s missteps—such as allowing the Boxers to fight against a Western invasion, which led to widespread slaughter—she sees her as a woman whose energy, farsightedness, and ruthless pragmatism transformed a country.' -- The New Yorker

Jung Chang is the author of the bestselling books Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China (1991), which the Asian Wall Street Journal called the most read book about China; Mao: The Unknown Story (2005, with Jon Halliday), which was described by Time magazine as 'an atom bomb of a book' and Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China (2013), a New York Times 'notable book'. Her latest book, Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China (2019), is regarded as 'another triumph' (Evening Standard London).Her books have been translated into more than 40 languages and sold more than 15 million copies worldwide. She has won many awards, including The NCR Book Award (UK, 1992, the forerunner of the Samuel Johnson Prize), UK Writers’ Guild Best Non-Fiction (1992), Fawcett Society Book Award (UK, 1992), Book of the Year (UK, 1993).She has received a number of honorary doctorates from universities in the UK and USA (Buckingham, York, Warwick, Dundee, the Open University and Bowdoin College, USA). She is an Honorary Fellow of SOAS University of London.Jung Chang was born in Sichuan Province, China, in 1952. During the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) she worked as a peasant, a 'barefoot' doctor, a steelworker, and an electrician before becoming an English-language student at Sichuan University. She left China for Britain in 1978 and obtained a PhD in Linguistics in 1982 at the University of York – the first person from Communist China to receive a doctorate from a British university. Originally a third generation Malaysian born and brought up in Penang, Pik-Sen has lived in the UK for nearly five decades and is a familiar face on British television. An experienced narrator, some of her titles include Watching The Tree To Catch A Hare by Adeline Yen Mah, The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan and Empress Orchid by Anchee Min. Pik-Sen regularly appears on BBC Radio dramas and programs such as Book of the Week.

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