Download Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China AudioBook Free
Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) is the most important woman in Chinese record. She ruled China for decades and helped bring a middle ages empire into the modern age. At age 16, in a countrywide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen among the emperor's numerous concubines. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old boy been successful to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup resistant to the regents appointed by her partner and made herself the true ruler of China - behind the throne, actually, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who were all male. With this groundbreaking biography, Jung Chang vividly identifies how Cixi fought against monumental obstacles to improve China. Under her the historic country attained virtually all the attributes of a modern state: business, railways, electricity, the telegraph and an army and navy with up-to-date weaponry. It was she who abolished gruesome punishments like "death by one thousand cuts" and put an end to foot-binding. She inaugurated women's liberation and embarked on the path to expose parliamentary elections to China. Chang comprehensively overturns the conventional view of Cixi as a diehard conventional and cruel despot. Cixi reigned during incredible times and got to deal with a host of major nationwide crises: the Taiping and Boxer rebellions, wars with France and Japan - and an invasion by eight allied power including Britain, Germany, Russia and america. Jung Chang not only records the Empress Dowager's carry out of home and international affairs, but also takes the listener into the depths of her splendid Summer season Palace and the harem of Beijing's Forbidden City, where she lived encircled by eunuchs - one of whom she dropped in love, with tragic outcomes. The entire world Chang identifies here, in interesting depth, seems almost incredible in its incredible mixture of the old and the new. Based on recently available, mostly Chinese, historical documents such as court records, standard and private correspondence, diaries and eyewitness accounts, this biography will revolutionize historical considering a crucial period in China's - and the world's - record. Packed with dilemma, fast paced and gripping, it is both a breathtaking depiction of the delivery of modern China and a romantic portrait of a woman: as the concubine to a monarch, as the total ruler of your third of the world's human population, and as a distinctive stateswoman.
