"Empress Dowager Cixi is a fascinating figure because she represents a contradiction — she wielded immense power in a world that sought to diminish women's authority," says the artist. "Cixi has been ...

Unusually, she could read and write Chinese and became educated in ... But the newly named Empress Dowager Cixi quickly ousted them on fabricated charges of incompetence. She then issued imperial ...

That was Empress Dowager Cixi’s life story; the woman who ruled China in the 19th century and arguably the most important Chinese woman in history. Born in 1835, Cixi was brought in as a ...

The photographs of the Empress Dowager Cixi taken by Xunling are more Western ... “She thought about self-representation, and—out of the norm for Chinese portraiture—she sometimes posed ...

The Northern Wei empire adopted laws, institutions and policies from both Taghbach and Han Chinese traditions. This cultural hybridity enabled the empress dowager to rule directly: On one hand ...

Unlike Chinese culture, Taghbach culture had long known women warriors who could ride horses and shoot arrows without concealing their gender . Empress Dowager Ling was not a warrior, but she ...