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Reads like a cheap romance novel only more fantasy than historical. Edmund Backhouse would be pleased
We are expected to believe that Orchid, after being chosen as concubine of the Emperor of China, is then sent home. No, it would never happen this way, and I cannot believe Anchee Min proposes that it did.Even more unbelievably, after an incident where Orchid complains that she is so well attended that she cannot go to the bathroom in private, we are asked to believe that she successfully sneaked out of the palace, went home, and went to a whorehouse to learn the arts of pleasing a man for the Emperor. I just don't think this author did her research fully on this novel, given what I already know about ancient China. She describes how she bribed her way into the Emperor's bedchamber. They were not ignorant girls just turned loose, as Min portrays.It was a pleasant novel, but I am going to read others about this Empress, since I just can't believe this one. Now I already know that the Chinese were fanatical about their women being virgin, and Min in fact describes the process where Orchid is examined for virginity. This is the ultimate nightmare of the Forbidden City.
Read "Daughter of Heaven" by Nigel Cawthorne about the ancient Chinese Empress Wu Chao to read how thoroughly concubines were prepared for the Emperor, and he for them. It was a pleasant novel, and I would like to believe it, but a few incidents just stick in my craw, causing me to take the whole thing with a grain of salt. Rubbish. If Orchid is sent home, rather than being kept in the palace after being formally declared a virgin, she could lose that virginity and even conceive a child that was not the Emperor's. She could do so, and pass off a child that was not the Emperor's. They were given extensive illustrated books as well as stretching exercises to do, and lesbianism was rampant. A few incidents that are just outrageous make me doubt the entire sequence.
While she does a wonderful job describing the boring, lonely life as one of a thousand wifes and concubines within the austere strictures of the Forbidden City, the story lacks suspense. The story of a poor girl who wins the heart of the emperor of China, and rises above the jealousies of the other concubines and wifes, and eventually the political class that plan to use her son for their own power at a critical turning point in Chinese history. The last third of the book, in particular, describing the coup that placed the Empress in power, reads like a Wikipedia article -- interesting and informative, but lacking the drama of a skillful storyteller. Oh, what James Clavell would have done with this: an epic of battling royals, deceipt, and palace coups that shape China and the world for generations to come. Unfortunately, suspense is not Anchee Min's strength. Though I did learn a lot about Chinese history as the empire crumbled to the military might of the Western powers at the end of the nineteeth century, and the descriptions of as a wife of the Emperor were insightful, I still wished it was more of a novel and less of a history lesson.
The first is a proposed trilogy on the last Empress of China, this installment tells of Orchid's ascendancy into the Forbidden City, her early court struggles, the impact of the Opiums wars, Orchid's increasing political savvy and her triumph as regent. Clarifies much about Chinese/Manchu court etiquette, role of eunuchs, and ruthlessness of Western powers in subduing China for trade. This is probably the most dramatic third of her life but the evolution of this savvy woman makes reading at least the second book probable.
178: "Wisely, my ancestors had adopted Chinese ways.The culture was so gracious and broad that it both accepted and served us." The Manchu were just following what had happened many dynasties before-- and so making the self-same mistakes.3. Why on earth was this written in Wade code. One gets the feeling that Min's portrayal of the Chinese court was accurate. The Han people have an awful, smug sense of superiority.
Another thing that the author succeeded in doing was demonstrating the resolute backwardness of China at that time (and for many of the preceding centuries). The book was about the failings of the Manchu empire, but this sense of superiority shined through just the same written by a Han many decades after the fact. For example, pp. I guess I have to hand it to the author for recreating scenarios that have been over with for a century and that no one living bears witness to.That said, the strong/ weak points of the book were:1. But 2,200 years (at the point during which this book took place) was bad enough.Overall, this was not quite as good as "Memoirs of a Geisha" in terms of historical fiction. Was this really the intention of the author.4.
"The dynasty was composed of some very sick, sadistic, out of touch people" was the take away message. Since many Chinese dynasties seem to have a lot of overlap, it is not quite clear if this was a composite of many other dynasties (it read that way), or if these things were idiosyncrasies of this particular dynasty.5.
It did shed some light on the many elaborate (and extremely foolish) rituals that composed the life of the royals. The author was born many years after the Hanyu Pinyin were invented, and so she would have to have gone out of her way to find all these spellings of Chinese words that aren't used on the Mainland anymore.2.
Lots of ancestor worship and strange superstitions/ rituals. I know that the author wanted a sympathetic portrayal of the characters of the Imperial court, but she did a very good job in making them look *catastrophically stupid.* One of the most famous quotes of all time has been "Let them eat cake." (Marie Antoinette), but in terms of raw stupidity, she didn't have anything on these royals.
(Neither did the Tsar Nicholas II, who didn't realize what was going on until the Bolsheviks came in and executed him). It would be bad enough that this existed for any period of time.
It's just that their stupidity was so shocking that I can't believe that this actually went down in the history books.
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