The girl orchid

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Dowager Empress Tz'u Hsi around 1900, she was the model for the novel

The novel Das Mädchen Orchidee by Nobel Prize Laureate Pearl S. Buck tells the life of the Chinese dowager Empress Tsu Hsi from her youth, when she was accepted into the imperial harem, until around 1900, i.e. until after the end of the Boxer Rebellion and its suppression. The narrative is fictional and significantly influenced by the biography of Edmund Backhouse and John Bland published in 1910 . The biography describes Tsu Hsi as a power-hungry and unscrupulous ruler; Pearl S. Buck describes her main character accordingly as a woman who approaches her career at the imperial court with determination and planning. Modern historiography has known since 1970 that the sources on which the biography of Backhouse and Bland is based were forged.

Content of the novel

In the novel, Tsu Hsi came from a simple family and is invited to the Chinese imperial court as a concubine candidate. There the emperor and the empress mother chose the concubines for the emperor. Thanks to her intelligence, her beauty and her self-confident demeanor, Tsu Hsi managed to be selected as a concubine from over a hundred applicants . With the same skill, she managed to become the emperor's favorite concubine. It was quite common at the time that the emperor asked a concubine to come and see him perhaps once and never again, which meant for her to spend the rest of her life in the Forbidden City without doing anything, which often led to suicide.

In order to retain the emperor's favor over the long term, Tsu Hsi took lessons in philosophy, history, calligraphy and painting at court. So she managed not only to gain the emperor's trust, but also to give birth to the first male heir to the throne, which automatically made her the empress mother. Even during the time of the emperor, Tsu Hsi became more and more interested in the politics of the empire.

After the emperor's death, she managed to uncover a plot against her and the heir to the throne and to assert herself against it; with the result that she became regent as empress mother in place of her son until he came of age. But even after her son had taken over, she continued to have significant influence on government affairs. After her son died relatively early and young without fathering an heir to the throne, Tsu Hsi succeeded in appointing a successor at baby age and reigning as regent herself.

When this emperor was of legal age and was open to Western ideas, Tsu Hsi launched a coup against him and practically deposed him. She kept him under house arrest and only allowed him to appear in public as an extra and to nod off her political decisions.

Tsu Hsi's policy was characterized by the rejection of all western influences and hostility towards the western invaders who had forced the opening of China in the Opium Wars .

The development of Tsu Hsi from a woman with a big heart to a more and more power-conscious and coldly calculating power man is also described in an interesting way, without falling into stereotypes .