In the history of ancient and modern China and abroad, there are many celebrities who are well known to everyone. In addition to the national heroes who have made meritorious achievements, there are also many figures who have left a deep mark on history. Empress Dowager Cixi was one of them.
Empress Dowager Cixi was the last ruler of the Qing Dynasty to hold real power in the ancient feudal dynasty, and a famous political figure in modern Chinese history. After the death of the Xianfeng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, she launched the Xin You coup and immediately ascended to the throne and took over the actual power of the Qing Dynasty.
Until his death in 1909, he dominated the political affairs of the Qing court for decades. It can be said that her life is the epitome of the entire ruling class of the late Qing Dynasty, and she has also become the last political figure in the Qing Dynasty.
Because Empress Dowager Cixi's political actions attracted the attention of the world, it became a talk of later generations when they mentioned the government of the late Qing Dynasty. People who mention her always speak indignantly about what happened to China at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
Most people don't notice that Empress Dowager Cixi, who has been politically successful and inactive, has made a literary move. In fact, Empress Dowager Cixi not only wrote, but was also quite literate.
A poem she once wrote on her mother's birthday was the only poem she wrote in her life. Perhaps this is also the reason why her literary style has not attracted people's attention, and the number of works is small. So what about the quality of the poem?
No one ever thought that a sentence that people often hang on their lips today is derived from the poems written by Empress Dowager Cixi. It has spanned the times and been handed down, and now it is a household name and familiar.
Iron-blooded Empress
There are not many examples of female governance in history, the more famous is the Tang Queen Wu Zetian, during the reign of Wu Zetian, the Tang Dynasty's national fortunes were prosperous, the national strength was getting stronger, and the queen was created.
As a ruler who also held state power, Empress Dowager Cixi ruled the Qing government for many years, but signed a series of unequal treaties with Western invaders that lost power and humiliated the country, the more famous ones being the "Treaty of Maguan" and the "Treaty of Xinugu".
Under Empress Dowager Cixi's "stirring up the wind and making waves", the qing dynasty's life number was shorter. Only four years after her death, the Qing Dynasty collapsed. It has been done for more than forty years, but it has accelerated the decline of the Qing Dynasty, which is really regrettable.
However, they were able to sit in the first seat of power in the patriarchal society of the feudal system, and as women, they could be described as "strong women" at that time. Because of this, their success is often questioned and criticized by the world.
In the environment at that time, women could enter the political arena, and they must pay more efforts and costs than men, not only to have the courage to dare to be the first, but also to have a strong psychological quality to withstand gossip.
Wu Zetian's path to emperorship is a pure blood road. In order to gain the power to claim the throne, Wu Zetian not only designed to kill Empress Wang and Concubine Xiao Shufei, but also killed her own sisters, and more cruelly, she killed her own daughter with her own hands.
Behind Wu Zetian's imperial throne, there is an unknown cruel process, that is, even if she ascends to the throne, she will not be able to obtain peace, and it will still haunt her heart many years later.
Empress Dowager Cixi's path to power was equally bloody. As the biological mother of The Xianfeng Emperor's only son, after the Xianfeng Emperor's untimely death, his son could ascend the throne. However, due to his young age, he was bound to be put in power by Cixi as the empress dowager.
The Xianfeng Emperor was very jealous of Empress Dowager Cixi because he understood it, so he appointed eight ministers to assist him, so Empress Dowager Cixi had no chance before she succeeded.
Empress Dowager Cixi, who had rubbed shoulders with power, did not give up on this, and she joined forces with another empress dowager, and Prince Gong, who was quite powerful at the time, and the three of them took control of the situation in advance before the little emperor ascended the throne, killing all eight auxiliary ministers.
Since then, Empress Dowager Cixi has stepped onto the political stage and seized supreme power. Later, in the coup d'état of Xin You, Empress Dowager Cixi was even more decisive in killing, extremely fierce, and unscrupulously for the sake of power, and finally consolidated her position.
Small poems on birthday ceremonies
According to the memoirs of Empress Dowager Cixi's descendant Yehenara Gen, when Guangxu was in power for more than ten years, on the occasion of the seventieth birthday of her mother Fucha, Empress Dowager Cixi wanted to show filial piety and convey her benevolence and filial piety in order to improve her reputation and win people's hearts.
In fact, Empress Dowager Cixi was indeed a filial daughter, and every year on Fucha's birthday, Empress Dowager Cixi would personally go to wish her a happy birthday. And invite the best drama class, accompany the mother to watch the play and listen to the music, and then take the mother to play, a play is a day.
Now that her mother is on her seventieth birthday, Empress Dowager Cixi originally planned to celebrate it in a big way. But it happened that on that day, foreign envoys were coming to pay respects to state affairs, and the imperial court was going to hold events. Empress Dowager Cixi, who was busy with political affairs, could not find time for a while.
But the mother has a birthday, and even if the daughter can't go to the scene, she should also pay tribute to her own heart. In this regard, Empress Dowager Cixi asked many people and made some thoughts.
In the end, she not only prepared a generous congratulatory gift for people to deliver on time, but also wrote a four-word poem by hand between work, and more carefully, she wrote it twice, once in Chinese and once in Manchu. He then ordered someone to elaborately frame him and send him to the temple to his mother.
This poem is written very plainly and bluntly, the content is: "The world's father and mother love is the truest, tears and blood into the body of children, want to exhaust their efforts to become a son, poor parents in the world." ”
The first three sentences seem to be unremarkable to read, and even inconsistent with the identity of the head of the country of Empress Dowager Cixi, some clumsy, but when reading the last sentence, I believe that many people have a moment's hesitation, and then they must have suddenly realized: The original sentence came from here, ah, long knowledge!
Although Empress Dowager Cixi's poem is indeed not exalted, the language is almost vernacular, it is really not like a poem.
But perhaps it is precisely because this easy-to-understand and sincere text reveals the simplest and most ordinary love of mothers for their children, interpreting the "pitiful heart" of all parents to impress future generations, which makes this sentence a famous saying that has been passed down through the ages.
epilogue
Although Empress Dowager Cixi did not leave a good reputation in history, and many of her actions also caused China to fall into national difficulties, but aside from her status as a ruler of the Qing Dynasty, she also had the affection of a child and a parent, and did not completely become a person without flesh and blood feelings.
But it is limited to this, one yard to one code, when we look at politicians, we must analyze specific issues, you know, Empress Dowager Cixi's private affairs can not become an outlet for her to get rid of the crime.