Cixi is a famous woman in Chinese history, in the late Qing Dynasty, although she did not claim the title of emperor, but also held the power for nearly 50 years, at first she was only a concubine of Xianfeng, only because she gave birth to the only son of the emperor to have the opportunity to be crowned empress, access to power, from the beginning of her political career, as an empress dowager her life is extremely wasteful, and very exaggerated.
In fact, the loss of the Qing Dynasty's national treasury began from the time of Jiaqing, and later the loss became more and more serious. When the emperor ordered frugality, she was still wasting. It is said that when the Eight-Nation Alliance attacked Beijing and Cixi was forced to flee, she ate a native chicken on the road and actually spent 5,000 taels of silver from the local prefect. Speaking of this matter, let's first look at how wasteful Cixi really is.
First, on top of her costume. Because she had always been listening to the government, she had to dress up well before each pilgrimage, from the mirror to the rouge to the necklace and finally to her armor cover, which was the best at the time, and each of them was worth a lot. There is a lot of attention to her armor sleeve, not everyone can use it, and there are rules for the things embedded in it. And each set of her clothes is worn once and will not be worn again, directly thrown away or given to the palace women.
In terms of eating, Cixi is also very particular, many people have seen that pomp in the TV series, she requires that each meal must have 100 dishes, and must contain specialties from all over the world, so many dishes can be eaten even if each bite can be eaten, then the rest of the ingredients can only be wasted, Cixi She wastes thousands of silver every day. This life lasted until the time of the Eight-Power Alliance's invasion of China.
Because the country at that time was poor and weak, it was impossible to resist, and the empress dowager embezzled military funds because of her own luxury, and in the end we could not even afford to buy weapons, let alone resist the invaders. When confronted with the attack of foreigners, Cixi had to flee in order to save her life. When I fled, I was really very depressed, and the things I usually wasted could not be eaten now.
It wasn't until she was in Datong that she finally ate a good meal, the prefect of Datong was called Qi Futian, and when he knew that Cixi would pass by, he calculated that Cixi, who had fled all the way, would definitely need a good meal, so he began to prepare early in the morning. He found one of the most famous local taverns and asked them to make a "Eight Treasures Imperial Chicken", and in order to ensure the taste, they actually used eight kinds of good ingredients such as ginseng, deer antler velvet, and bird's nest, and now raised a chicken.
Seeing that the prefect was so flattering to Cixi, and thinking about what Cixi usually did, the owner of the tavern wanted to take this opportunity to slaughter him, and the boss said that such a chicken could be fed, but it only needed 5,000 taels of silver, in order to please Cixi, the prefect did not care about how much money, and agreed to it. When Cixi arrived in Datong, the boss casually grabbed a native chicken for her and made it into a "Eight Treasures Imperial Chicken", and Cixi has been appreciating the delicious food because she has not eaten such a good thing for too long.
Cixi's life was really wasteful and extravagant, even when she died, she did not forget to take away a large number of treasures, and we all know that after her death, she shouted a night pearl in her mouth, which was worth a lot, but it was precisely because there were too many treasures in her coffin that she would end up with a stolen tomb.