▲Cixi (November 29, 1835 - November 15, 1908)
Empress Dowager Cixi ruled China for 47 years, and although she was only the empress dowager in name, she was in fact the undisputed female emperor. And its superiority, there are also many stories to tell.
Empress Dowager Cixi was born on November 29, 1835, when the First Opium War had not yet broken out, and the Empress Dowager Cixi was not surnamed Ci, she had her own Manchu surname, called Yehenara, as for the name, she did not have it, only a milk name Lan'er. Yehe is also the name of a Jurchen tribe, literally translated as wild duck, this Jurchen tribe lived in the area of Lishu County in present-day northeastern Jilin Province, where there is still a Yehe township. And the meaning of Nala is translated into Chinese as the sun (a multicolored daylight), so the Yeh Nara clan as a whole is translated into Chinese, which means the sun of the Yeh tribe, or the sun of Yehe.
And speaking of the ancestors of the Empress Dowager Cixi, it can be said that it is very big, it is one of the four Jurchens of Haixi, because at that time the Yehe tribe and the Jianzhou Jurchen led by Nurhachi were the mortal enemies of the immortals, and many wars broke out between the two sides, but in the end the Yehe tribe was defeated by Nurhachi, and the entire tribe was taken into the hands of Nurhachi, it is said that the leader of the Yehe tribe at that time also issued a curse, saying that even if there was only one woman left in the Yehe tribe, Nurhachi's regime would be destroyed, and many people thought that this curse finally fell on Cixi, of course, this is just a feudal superstition, which belongs to shooting arrows first and then drawing targets, which should not be true。
And although Yehe's ancestors and the Qing Dynasty's ancestor Nurhachi had a history of war, once unstoppable, and finally suffered a bloody conquest by Nurhachi, this did not prevent the Yehe family from becoming one of the eight most important families in the Manchurian aristocracy. During the more than 200 years that the Qing Dynasty ruled China, the Yehe family always maintained a high position.
Empress Dowager Cixi was born in Beijing, her father's name was Hui Zheng, and she was a junior clerk in the Ministry of Officials at that time, and she was quietly engaged in drafting manuscripts and copying and writing, and her status was not prominent. As for Cixi, she was selected to the Qing Palace as a show girl in the second year of Xianfeng (1852), and it is said that she was born beautiful and intelligent, and became a Lan noble.
Of course, Cixi's status as a noble Lan is not very high, because the harem system of the Qing court divides the concubines into seven classes, the first class is the queen, the second class is called the imperial concubine, the third class is the concubine, the fourth class is the concubine, the fifth class is the noble, the sixth class is always there, and the seventh class is the promise, so when Cixi first entered the palace, she was only the third-class noble, but she couldn't stand Cixi's life, and she would climb up, and she was promoted to concubine the following year. After she entered the palace, it only took five years for her to climb from the third-class nobleman to the second-class concubine.
And when it comes to the means she used, it is not too difficult, that is, she has a good relationship with the emperor, and won the emperor's favor with her cleverness and literacy and calligraphy, and then gave birth to a son to the emperor, although his husband Xianfeng had many women, but he had no son, and it was not until Cixi entered the palace that he gave birth to a son (1856) - Aixin Jueluo · Zaichun (Emperor Tongzhi), and the only son, under the mother's son, Cixi's status climbed rapidly, and in 1856, she was promoted to Concubine Yi, and the following year she was promoted to Concubine Yi, which was the rank of imperial concubine.
▲Emperor Xianfeng (Aixin Jueluo Yixu, July 17, 1831 - August 22, 1861)
And when Cixi became Yi Guifei, it meant that she began to appear on the stage of power, and got the ticket to the "gladiatorial arena", although Cixi was only a second-class imperial concubine, but at that time Xianfeng's genuine queen did not manage much affairs, did not know how to scheming, so Cixi gradually grasped the power, and so on in 1861 after the death of Emperor Xianfeng, she was directly and filial piety Empress Dowager two palaces, called the Queen Mother, on the emblem Cixi; Prince Gong Yixun launched a coup d'état in Xinyou, executed the eight ministers, seized power, formed a pattern of "two palaces hanging curtains, and princes discussing politics", and eventually became the real ruler of the late Qing Dynasty.