The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-24

Copyright. 1909, by Frank G. Carpenter) Pekin, China. TNHE body of the great empress dow ager is still in Pelzin. It X lies in one of the palaces Of the Forbidden City, in a coffin of cypress wood almost a foot thick bound with rawhide and covered With leather. It will rest there for several weeks yet and will then be carried to its final home in the eastern tombs. The preparations for the funeral are now making. It's cost will run into the millions and the road to the imperial cemetery will, fguratively speaking, be paved with gold.
 The Richest Woman in Asia.
 The great dowager had luxurious tastes, and was fond of pomp In all of her doings. She spent money like water, and used fabulous sums to keep up her palaces. During the last year of her life she had planned a new home at tho Summer Pal ace, and had ordered the architects to draw the designs. The buildings were to cost four million taels, or about three millions dollars, and the work was to have been bgun in 1909. The plans were made but owing to the dowager's death, they will not be carried out. I am told that her majesty gave equally elaborate
 
 it Is being constructed on magnificent scale.
 The great empress dowager is said to have been the richest woman in Asia. There is no queen living who has had such sums at her command. At the time of her sixtieth birthday, hint was sent out to the various officials that each should give the old lady a present, and money rolled in from all parts of China. H. lion dollars was sent to Pekin.
 This was about the time of the Chinese Japanese war, and some of the money was spent to pay the expenses of that calamitous struggle. The then bad con- dition of the Chinese navy is said to have been partially due to the avarice of the old empress As the story goes, the gov ernment had set aside $15,000,000 for new warships. The old dowager said 1t was a pity to waste so much money that way, and she took the naval appropriation and built a new palace. The officials remon- strated. They said the money had been voted for the navy and must be accounted for.
 That is easy enough" replied the great dowager, and she straightway had carved on the gates of her new buildings an in- scription which read "These are the pal aces of the navy"
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 Since the empress dowager died I have heard many stories about her majesty's champion squeezer, the famous eunuch, Ii Iien Ting He was for a long time her body servant, and later her minister of finance and collector of bribes. He invested her moneys for her in pawnshops and in loans, at high rates, and at the same time took such a goodly rake-off for himself that he is now said to be worth tens of millions of dollars.
 No one outside China can appreciate the bribery connected with public offices. Every official who came to the palace had to pay something to this cobbler's son, and even u Hung Chang was once held up outside the gates for three days be- cause he would not submit to his ex- travagant demands. I am told that 1t cost to pay the palace expenses during the life of the dowager something like thirty million dollars year, and a great deal of this came from such squeezes.
 When the treasury grew very low the dowager sent out collectors. who travelled from official to official over the empire and demanded gifts. One of these col lectors was named Kang-Yi. He was sent on a squeezing tour south, having been ordered to bring back at least two hundred ounces of silver. When Rang Vi visited shanghai he demanded that the Chinese Merchant Steamship Company then under the control of Sheng Kung- Pao. should pay the government two hundred thousand dollars per year. Sheng complained that the business would not stand It. and compromised at half the sum.
 The viceroys of Ranking and Wuchang were heavily bied by Rang VI, as were also those of Tientsin and Canton. The soueezlng in the latter place was proba- bly aided by brother of IA Hung Chang,