EBOOK
About
Behind the gilded walls of the Forbidden City, a woman ruled with the absolute power of heaven itself. She was Empress Dowager Cixi, known to her court as Old Buddha, and for nearly half a century she held the fate of four hundred million souls in her jeweled hands. In this extraordinary firsthand account, Princess Der Ling draws back the embroidered curtain on one of history's most enigmatic figures, offering readers an intimate portrait of imperial China in its final, breathtaking twilight. This is not the story of a distant monarch seen through the cold lens of history. This is the story of a woman, complex and contradictory, terrifying and tender, witnessed up close by someone who stood beside her in the lantern-lit halls of the Summer Palace.
Princess Der Ling served as lady-in-waiting to the Empress Dowager at the height of the Qing dynasty's final years, and what she witnessed defied every rumor and legend that had seeped beyond the palace walls. Here was a ruler who could order a man's execution before breakfast and weep over a dying peony by afternoon. Here was a court of suffocating ceremony and breathtaking beauty, where every whispered word carried consequence and every gesture was freighted with meaning. Der Ling captures the texture of daily life in the imperial household with vivid, sensory precision, from the scent of burning incense drifting through audience chambers to the rustle of silk robes against lacquered floors, from the elaborate rituals of the morning court to the surprisingly human moments when the Dragon Throne's occupant simply sat, aged and thoughtful, watching the seasons change over her beloved gardens.
What makes this book endure is its profound humanity. At a time when China stood at a crossroads between ancient tradition and a modernizing world that would not wait, Der Ling gives readers something no official history could ever deliver, which is the lived, breathing reality of that moment. Readers hungry for richly atmospheric historical narrative, for stories of power and vulnerability, for windows into worlds lost to time, will find themselves utterly absorbed. Old Buddha is a rare gift, an eyewitness testament to an era that shaped the modern world, told by a woman who had the courage to remember it honestly.
Princess Der Ling served as lady-in-waiting to the Empress Dowager at the height of the Qing dynasty's final years, and what she witnessed defied every rumor and legend that had seeped beyond the palace walls. Here was a ruler who could order a man's execution before breakfast and weep over a dying peony by afternoon. Here was a court of suffocating ceremony and breathtaking beauty, where every whispered word carried consequence and every gesture was freighted with meaning. Der Ling captures the texture of daily life in the imperial household with vivid, sensory precision, from the scent of burning incense drifting through audience chambers to the rustle of silk robes against lacquered floors, from the elaborate rituals of the morning court to the surprisingly human moments when the Dragon Throne's occupant simply sat, aged and thoughtful, watching the seasons change over her beloved gardens.
What makes this book endure is its profound humanity. At a time when China stood at a crossroads between ancient tradition and a modernizing world that would not wait, Der Ling gives readers something no official history could ever deliver, which is the lived, breathing reality of that moment. Readers hungry for richly atmospheric historical narrative, for stories of power and vulnerability, for windows into worlds lost to time, will find themselves utterly absorbed. Old Buddha is a rare gift, an eyewitness testament to an era that shaped the modern world, told by a woman who had the courage to remember it honestly.