Court Life in China

Court Life in China: The Capital, Its Officials and People, is by Isaac Taylor Headland, Professor in the Peking University. The preface says that until within the past ten years a study of Chinese court life would have been an impossibility. According to the preface, the Emperor, the Empress Dowager, and the court ladies were shut up within the Forbidden City, away from a world they were anxious to see, and which was equally anxious to see them.

The text says such stories are common in all parts of China during every period of rebellion, war, riot or disturbance of any kind, and that after Miss Chao had been taken into the Forbidden City she would continue to hear them, brought in by the eunuchs. The text says that in 1901, while the court was in hiding at Hsianfu, the city to which they fled when the allies entered Peking, the western half of the Forbidden City was thrown open to the public. From the edicts issued to the foreign legations at Peking, the text says, we learn that it was the Empress Dowager and not Kuang Hsu who appointed Prince Chun as Regent.