Cixi, The Controversial Empress Dowager Who Modernized China

Born in 1835, the girl who would gain fame as the Empress Dowager Cixi showed no obvious signs of future greatness. This girl, both through good fortune and unyielding determination, would rise to power in China, becoming the Dowager Empress, ruling as the queen regent from 1861 until her death in 1908, one of the most turbulent periods in China’s history. With her iron will and shrewd mind, she helped transform China from a medieval society to a modern power on the global stage.

Few concrete records remain of Cixi’s life before age 16. She was Manchu, the ethnic minority in power since the 1600s, and her heritage kept her feet from being bound, a tradition of China’s ethnic majority, the Han. Her family were most likely government employees. She probably could read, write, draw, and sew. Some historians say her father sought her advice and valued her opinion as highly as he would a son’s.

A respected position in her birth family would not win Cixi respect in the outside world. Because she was born female, her opinions meant little to men. Like other teenage girls at that time, 16-year-old Cixi had to be presented by her family to be considered as a concubine to the newly crowned Chinese emperor, Xianfeng. Selected as a low-ranking consort, Cixi left her family to live in the Forbidden City with the other women in the emperor’s harem. (See also: Beijing's Forbidden City built on ice roads.)

Xianfeng’s chief consort was Empress Zhen. The highest ranking of his wives, she became friends with Cixi. The relationship served them both well, especially after Cixi gave birth to the emperor’s only surviving son in 1856, an event that raised her status and provided her with the keys to power.

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