Cixi Quotes (23 quotes)

“Her changes were dramatic and yet gradual, seismic and yet astonishingly bloodless.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

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“A picture of vulnerability, she made the men feel protective and forgiving, happy to use the occasion to help a woman in need. But anyone stepping over a line would see a very different person as County Chief Woo witnessed.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“Cixi’s style was not to force through drastic change, but to bring it about gradually through perseverence.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“The two wills made it unmistakeably clear that it was Cixi’s dying wish that the Chinese should have their parliament and their vote.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“A night passed while Cixi dealt with one matter after another, conscious all the time that she just murdered her adopted son. She was forced to stop working at about eleven o’clock in the morning as death was imminent. She died less than three hours later.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“It was Cixi who championed women’s liberation in a culture that had for centuries imposed foot-binding on its female population-a practice to which she put an end.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“Empress Dowager Cixi’s legacy was manifold and towering.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

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“In the absence of clear knowledge, rumours have abounded and lies have been invented and believed.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“The past hundred years have been most unfair to Cixi, who has been deemed either tyrannical and vicious or hopelessly incompetent or both.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“For all her faults, she was no despot.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“She was a giant, but no saint.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“It was all too clear that Cixi was the only person who could hold the empire together.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“Her demise would result in civil war, which for Westerners would mean especially the collapse of trade, the default of loans and the emergence of more Boxers. And so, for these overwhelming reasons, the Allies decided not to pursue the empress dowager.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“Cixi’s tolerance of attacks on her government-and on herself-as well as her willingness to permit a diversity of viewpoints were rematched by any of her predessors or, arguably, her successors.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“Those touched-up images were not what her mirrors had been telling her for some time.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“Republicanism was not what Empress Dowager Cixi had hoped for, but it was what she would accept, as it shared the same goal as her wished-for parliamentary monarchy that the future of China belong to the Chinese people.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“The fact that her last enterprise before an untimely death was to introduce the vote testifies to her courage and vision.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“Above all, her transformation of China was carried out without her engaging in violence and with relatively little upheaval.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“Looking back over the many horrific decades after Cixi’s demise, one cannot but admire this amazing stateswoman, flawed though she was.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“Few of her achievements have been recognised and, when they are, the credit is invariably given to the men serving her. This is largely due to a basic handicap: that she was a woman and could only rule in the name of her sons-so her precise role has been little known.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“The ordeal of the invasion rather than damaging Cixi’s authority, had enhanced it and brought her a new sense of security and confidence.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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“She had a hole in her, a thirsty place that gladly drank attention, compliments and praise.”
― Ijen Kim, The Sunset Emperor

tags: china, cixi

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“Only surrender could save her people-as well as spare the country civil war.”
― Jung Chang, Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine Who Launched Modern China

tags: cixi

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