On the 66th birthday of Empress Dowager Cixi in 1901, Yuan Shikai, the governor of Zhili, specially imported a foreign car from the United States and presented it to Cixi as a birthday gift.
It is said that this foreign gadget was designed by the Brothers Charles Sunley and Frankish in Massachusetts, USA, and made by hand, named "Tulia".
On the day of Cixi's birthday, the tribute was reviewed at the Taihe Hall of the Forbidden City. When she heard that the foreign car could run without a horse, she felt very strange and immediately dictated to the German driver present to drive.
The German driver climbed into the car and stepped on the motor, and the foreign car really rumbled and ran, and Cixi was overjoyed to see it, and asked happily: "This car runs so fast, it needs to eat a lot of grass, right?" The German driver said: "It does not eat grass, it burns oil." Cixi did not understand, and ordered the eunuch Li Lianying to bring out the jewelry and reward Yuan Shikai and the foreign driver who drove the car. Cixi was really uneasy about foreign drivers, but at that time, there were no people in the country who could drive cars.
Therefore, Li Lianying was asked to recruit people who learned to drive a car, and many people took the test at that time, and finally, a man named Sun Fuling in Hademen on the outskirts of Beijing quickly learned to drive a car and became a royal driver that Cixi greatly appreciated.
Sun Fuling often drove and pulled Cixi to play. Playing around like this, the group of ministers did not talk about it, and Cixi herself was accustomed to it. One day, Cixi sat in the car for more than two hours, the mood was particularly happy, immediately rewarded a large bowl of wine for Sun Fuling to drink, Sun Fuling was flattered, a bowl of belly, the spirit is particularly refreshing, stepping on the motor, the foreign car ran up.
Unexpectedly, a small eunuch appeared in front of him, at this time Sun Fuling had a drunken seizure, his heart was flustered, and he could not find the position of the brake in his impatience, and the poor little eunuch returned to the west with his life.
The first case of drinking and driving in Chinese history occurred.
After the accident, the courtiers began to talk about the inauspiciousness of this "Tulia". Some old ministers jointly wrote: "A slave driving a car is actually sitting on an equal footing with 'Lafayette', which is really a loss of great Puritanism." ”
When Cixi heard this, she felt that it seemed to make sense, so she ordered Li Lianying to pass on her will, remove the driver's seat, and let Sun Fuling drive on his knees. There is a lot of trouble at this time, it is difficult to cooperate with the hands and feet on the knees, coupled with the lesson of an accident, Sun Fuling has a lingering palpitation, once there is a mistake, sooner or later he will have to move his head.
So he came up with an idea to block the tubing with broken cotton wool and lie that the car was broken. At that time, no one in China could repair a car, and Cixi never mentioned the car again. However, Sun Fuling was worried every day, afraid that if he exposed the stuffing, he would undoubtedly die, so he fled to the south with his family on the right day.
Since then, this imported car has been quietly drowned in the smoke of history along with the Qing Empire.