Empress Dowager Cixi



Empress Dowager Cixi (Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi; 慈禧太后) (29 November 1835 – 15 November 1908), of the Manchu Yehe Nara Clan, was a powerful and charismatic figure who became the de facto ruler of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China for 47 years from 1861 to her death in 1908.

Sourced
Source:Imperial Decree on events leading to the signing of Boxer Protocol.
 * Had the foreign legations being subjected to the full force of bombardment, would those buildings still be intact today? (Original Chinese:設使火轟水灌，豈能一律保全？)


 * Your tail, is becoming too heavy to wag.


 * Perhaps their magic is not to be relied upon; but can we not rely on the hearts and minds of the people? Today China is extremely weak. We have only the people's hearts and minds to depend upon. If we cast them aside and lose the people's hearts, what can we use to sustain the country? (original quote in Chinese: 法術不足恃，豈人心亦不足恃乎？今日中國積弱已極，所仗者人心耳，若並人心而失之，何以立國?)


 * Now they [the Powers] have started the aggression, and the extinction of our nation is imminent. If we just fold our arms and yield to them, I would have no face to see our ancestors after death. If we must perish, why not fight to the death?


 * 曾令其将忠君爱国合为一事，勿徒欲保中国四万万人而置我大清国於度外，康有为亦似悔之
 * 《清史稿》


 * （一）生而父为中国人者. （二）生於父死后而父死时为中国人者. （三）母为中国人而父无可考或 无国籍者第二 条，若父母均无可考或均无国籍而生於中国地方者亦属中国国籍. 其生地并无可考而在中国地方发现 之弃童同. 第 二章 入籍. 第三条，凡外国人具备左列各款愿入中国国籍者准其呈请入籍
 * 《大清国籍条例》


 * I have often thought that i am the most clever woman that ever lived, and others cannot compare with me.... Although I have heard much about Queen Victoria...I don't think her life was half so interesting and eventful as mine.... she had... really nothing to say about the policy of the country. Now look at me. I have 400,000,000 people dependent on my judgement.
 * As attributed in
 * This is redacted from the account of Princess Der Ling, Two Years in the Forbidden City (1911), p. 356

Misattributed

 * "寧贈友邦,不與家奴." or 宁予於外盗, 不予於家贼. (We would rather give our state to "neighboring friends" (foreigners), not to our household slaves ̈(Han Chinese).)
 * The anti-Qing reformer Liang Qichao accused Gangyi of saying this after the failure of the 1898 Hundred Days Reform, not Cixi. This was never attributed to Cixi by any historian or person until anti-Qing Han nationalists started posting this on internet forums and attributing it to Cixi.

Quotes about

 * Beautiful, cunning and cruel, Empress Dowager Cixi was the archetypal ‘dragon lady’. She rose from obscurity to become the effective ruler of China for 47 years, during which time she presided over a humiliating decline in the country’s fortunes. In the second half of the 19th century, the Qing dynasty that had ruled China for more than 250 years struggled to cope with the challenges posed by modernization and increasing pressure from the European powers. Having suffered military defeats at the hands of its foreign rivals, and faced with growing internal unrest, China’s last imperial dynasty finally fell in 1911. No one had contributed more to this collapse than the empress dowager herself.
 * Simon Sebag Montefiore, Monsters: History's Most Evil Men and Women (2009), pp. 209-210