women are like grass, born to be stepped on

Anyone watched 'The Last Emperor' before? Aiyo. I want to watch le. I think I watched the ending half when I was in my last semester in limkokwing. But couldn't concentrate well because of some really big blacks sitting in from of me. The massive curly hair covered half of my view. Can't remember the show too, but I like watching stuff on something like China culture or any countries cultures, myth, legend etc etc. Call me a boring girl but I just feel that it's interesting in a way to learn & to find out more about the olden days' life. I used to be really fond of watching those tv series on how those empress bully & torture the princesses or whoever they hate. Seeing who will win at last, capturing the horny emperor's heart to get his 'dragon seeds'. I'm so cruel. Haha.

I bought a book 'Empress Orchid' by Anchee Min months ago. In the book based on years of research that included documents Min smuggled from the Forbidden City, Empress Orchid tells the story of Tzu Hsi, China's longest-reigning female ruler and its last Empress. For decades Chinese schoolchildren have been taught that Empress Orchid was "a mastermind of pure evil and intrigue," but Min presents a strong-willed, utterly compelling woman who used her beauty to become a concubine of the Emperor and her brains to become his confidante and lover.

- versions of the book cover. I bought the 2nd version because that's the only one I saw & can find -

In the 1850s, when Orchid and her family make their way to Peking, the opium trade with Europe and peasant rebellions are chiseling away at the power of the Chi'ing Dynasty. Emperor Hsien Feng, a frail young man overwhelmed by the demands of state, must choose his Empress and concubines. Orchid is the daughter of an aristocratic but impoverished family. With an empty belly and chilled bones, she dreams of an easy life within the walls of the Forbidden City. Orchid enters the Emperor's "contest," open to all women of full Manchu blood. To her surprise, she is chosen as a low-ranking concubine.

Life in the Forbidden City is hierarchical, highly structured, full of suffocating tradition and endless waiting — Orchid must wear formal dress and makeup every day, in case the Emperor should call. For months she sits in her palace waiting for the call. When she finally wins the Emperor's attention, after scheming with her trusted eunuch, she becomes the target of thousands of other women trying just as hard to claw their way into his presence. Bribery, betrayal, even murder are the weapons used. When, in failing health, the Emperor requests Orchid's help with affairs of state, his advisers resist her at every turn and eventually plot to have her buried alive.

In 1856 Orchid gives birth to the Emperor's only son, Tung Chih, and in 1861, in the Emperor's official decree after his death, she is named Empress Dowager at the tender age of twenty-six and inherits an empire on the verge of collapse. Min deftly describes Orchid's power struggles and the defiance she encounters from the Emperor's board of regents, whose only expectation of a woman is compliance. She and her son are kidnapped and the British destroy Peking, but Orchid is able to defeat the regents and create her own government, which will rule for forty-six years.

Chinese tradition teaches that "women are like grass, born to be stepped on". Anchee Min has made it her life's work to overturn this tradition. In Empress Orchid the woman she portrays is totally at odds with history's rendering. This book, I think Min shows Orchid to be a passionate woman, a loving mother, and a pioneer of reform — a woman as vibrant and tormented as China itself.

It's a nice book. I'm quite a book freak. Bought a lot of books in the past since small. From Sailormoon Comics, Enid Byton, RL Stine, Charles Dickens, magazines, etc etc. Thanks to my mom.. some of it she passed it on to charity, little cousins & also some rubbish bins. She didn't tell me until I found out years later. Her own stack of sweet romantic novels from decades ago, she keep nice nice in her drawer. Argh. The new books I bought recently is all locked up in my room. Halfway through Da Vinci Code. My wishlist recently besides getting rich (hehe), is also to collect the whole wicked set of whatever that has to do with Da Vinci Code. Hoping now la.. but don't know will it come true a not. *fingers crossed*