Talk:Empress Dowager Cixi/Archives 1

message: Cixi was charismatic? --Menchi 05:45, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  

message: I just want to remind people to use the edit summary field when they update this article, even with just a minor update. This artice has been edited over 40 times in the last 3 days, yet only 2 of those edits have an Edit Summary. It is Wiki policy to use this field and it makes it a lot easier to see what edits have been made without sifting through endless compares. Geisha1021, you have used made 30 or so updates in a sort period of time. Please use the PREVIEW button! Ka-ru 00:19, 5 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Edit Summary

message: Who moved this article, and why? This is getting completely out of hand. Shouldn't this move have been discussed first?--Niohe 23:48, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Article move

message: There had been many witnesses inside the palace who died long ago and of course cannot verify the stories now. Also, the last Qing Emperor, Aisin-Gioro Puyi, had once told these stories to his new wife under the communist arrangement Li Shuxian. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 142.103.168.8 (talk • contribs) .
:I'm sure there must be at least some written records that can be studied. You make it sound like its all hear-say, mostly based on stories told more than 50 years after the events by someone who was 2 years old when Cixi died. I'm no expert in this, so I don't know the sources, but from a study of history point of view, there are direct first person witnesses (albeit mostly Westerners) such as Kate Carl, Sarah Conger, Derling and Hubert Vos who seem to contradict the stories, while I seem to get a lot of vague second-hand, urban legend feeling answers whenever I ask for sources to verify the stories. Just feels like its going around in circles. I think I may join Niohe's attitude on this one and just go back to the areas I'm more knowledgable about. Once I've read up on it all a bit more I might get a better feeling for it. Ka-ru 11:26, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I should just add that my comments are in regard to a very small aspect of the article, namely the stories relating to Cixi's nature, of flying into rages and such. The basic outline of the article is not in dispute and pretty much follows the events and such that I have read. Its the "enrichment" of the stories that I'm questioning. Ka-ru 05:29, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Stories have witnesses, though. 

message: I have deleted the speculative paragraph on Cixis orgins two or three times, but I want to initiate a discussion before I do it again. Has the person who originally wrote this paragraph actually read the book it is based on, or did he or she just read a summary of the book on the Internet? I think the latter is the case, because this article fails to even quote the book.
At any rate, I actually ordered the book on interlibrary loan some time ago and I found the book to be a huge disappointment, it proved to be history-by-hearsay of the worst kind. It is based entirely on the stories of people who claim to be descendants of Cixi, with no other supporting evidence. If some people today claim that they are related to someone who was born 171 years ago, we need more proof that just their own stories and some anecdotes that Cixi liked Shanxi opera. Just do the math. As far as I could tell, none of the evidence that was put forward in the book was even close to Cixi herself. The most ludicrous proof I found was a family tree, which was written out of memory by a self proclaimed descendant of Cixi some time after 1949!
There are many gaps in our knowledge of Cixi's exact birth place, but that is no proof that she was born in Shanxi. The burden of proof is on the authors of this paragraph and for lack of credible evidence, I suggest that this whole paragraph is deleted. Alternatively, those who want to keep it should cut it down and footnote it properly, noting that this is a controversal theory which has not yet been accepted widely inside and outside of China. But we should ask ourselves if we really are supposed to give publicity to this kind of pop history?--Niohe 01:50, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The shorter version seems to have made the photos stack up, leave big empty areas with no text (on my browser, anyway). Maybe removing one of the photos or moving it to another section may help. Ka-ru 00:19, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

text: Its all fine now. Ka-ru 06:35, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origin's of Cixi 

message: Someone has rewritten this article and completely ruined it. It's now definitely a more spectacular read, but unfortunately little of is it based on truth. Cixi was demonized after her death and whoever changed the text just assumed that all the negative propaganda was based on truth. During her lifetime Cixi was a respected empress. All this silly speculation about Cixi kicking Alute in her abdomen etc. was invented by western authors AFTER Cixi's death. There is no proof that any of this happened. Someone should change this article back to the way it was before.
{{subst:Unsigned IP|
::Here is an excerpt from Marina Warner's "Dragon empress: life and times of Tz'u-hsi 1835-1908 Empress Dowager of China":
::"A court official , Yun Yu-ting, accused Tz'u-hsi in his memoirs of precipitating the emperor's relapse. The loving Alute, he said, was visiting T'ung-chih on his sickbed, and, complaining of Tz'u-hsi's interfering and domineering ways, was happily looking forward to the day T'ung-chih would be well again and they could live and rule together. Tz'u-hsi, warned by eavesdropping eunuchs, entered the room in stockinged feet, and hearing Alute's criticisms, flew into a rage and rampaged through the room, seized the young girl by the hair and hit her, shouting that by making love to the emperor she would bring on his illness again. She ordered the eunuchs to take her away and beat her. T'ung-chi, barely over the worst of the pox, suffered such a terrible nervous crise that the fever returned and killed him."
::If you want proof, you should go look at the memoirs of Yun.
WP:SIG
:::And an extract from Sue Fawn Chung from "The Much Maligned Empress Dowager" Modern Asian Studies XIII:2 (1979), p177-196.
:::"Clio, the Muse of History, has not been kind to the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi (1835-1908). Traditional Chinese historians always have been prejediced against feminine influence in court. Moreover, historians have long relied upon works of men such as K'ang Yu-wei (1858-1927) and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao (1873-1929), the two leaders of the radical reform movement, and other pro-Emperor radical reformers, most notably Wang Chao (1859-1935), Yün Yü-ting (1863-1918), Lo Tun-jung (d. 1923), and Li Hsi-sheng, for their information about the workings of the Ch'ing court during the period 1898 to 1900. Since these men were opposed to the power and conservatism of the Empress Dowager, their prejudice is reflected in their writings about the court at that time."
:::Sue Fawn Chung seems to indicate very strongly that Yun was a radical pro-Emperor reformer and is not a very reliable source. Its possible, as with most others in the reform movement, of him never actually having been in the Forbidden City . I can't seem to find any other reference to Yun online and will add it to my list of things to try and look into. Thank you for providing some concrete to research. Ka-ru 08:41, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reliability 

message: "Emperor Guangxu died as she was dying, reportedly poisoned at her direction." -- What is this supposed to mean? TMott 19:32, 4 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  She died as she was ... dying? 

message: "She was later crowned the emperor of China. Cixi made history by becoming China's second Female Emperor after Wu Zetian (Tang Dynasty)." -- Uh... this doesn't sound right. Who crowned her? Was it during the times of ROC or PRC? Or was it back in the Qing Dynasty? Colipon+(T) 18:44, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: How would she be crowned during the times of ROC or PRC? She died in 1908. I don't quite understand the logic there. unixslug 19:03, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crowned Emperor? 

message: It is absolute nonsense that Cixi is the second female emperor of China. She was only the regent and de facto ruler from 1861 till her death in 1908. Tomhongs 13:45, 20 June 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cixi is not the second female emperor 

message: I am about to do a big rewrite, and was wondering if other Wikipedians think that it is really necessary to have that huge section on Cixi's names. Colipon+(T) 20:45, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: why would you want to actually delete information when the original user put so much effort into it? i thought it was interesting. Antares911 23:28, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought it was really interesting too, and I put it on a separate page. It seems too tedious to fit entirely on this page, which should focus on Cixi's influence in politics and how she changed history. I believe that is more important than the stories behind a myriad of names. Furthermore, some of the information on naming can be incorporated elsewhere in the article. Colipon+(T) 05:34, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

text: I think the information about names should definitely remain inside the article. There's this tendency on Wikipedia to break up articles into small components, but in the end it just scatters the information all over Wikipedia, and it's a mess. Why always create different articles, when all the information could be contained in just one article? If you find the naming section tedious, just skip it. That's why there's a little table at the beginning of the article, so that you can directly go to the section you are most interested in. Hardouin 00:11, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revision 

message: I have reverted most of user Colipon's recent edits. Not only user Colipon deleted or moved out of the article a lot of valuable information, but his/her additions are very bad. It seems user Colipon is using some bad Western biographies about the empress, the kind of biographies that can be found in most western bookstores (such as the Dragon Lady), but these biographies are total rubbish I must warn everyone. As someone who actually majored in Chinese language and history, I am appaled everytime I read one of these biographies in mass circulation in the west. First of all, you need to know that all the authors of these biographies, as incredible as it sounds, DO NOT SPEAK A WORD OF CHINESE. Therefore, the books are largely hearsays and comments on second-hand documents. These biographies are flawed with errors. I can see right away that Colipon used these bad books to make his edits. One example: Colipon wrote that the empress consort of the Xianfeng Emperor was of the Sakda clan, which is totally wrong, but this wrong info is found in most western biographies of Cixi. If Colipon had read the Ci'an article, which I wrote based on Chinese documents (Forbidden City official records), he/she would have known that she was of the Niohuru clan. It was the first wife of Xianfeng who was of the Sakda clan. Another example: Colipon changed the Rehe Palace into the Jehol Palace. "Jehol" is an extremely old transliteration that is still found in general public biographies of Cixi, but I'm sorry to say, nowadays people in the scientific community, as well as on Wikipedia, use Pinyin, and Rehe is the correct Pinyin name. And then there are plainly factually wrong things, such as: Cixi never returned to Beijing early to plan the Xinyou coup as Colipon wrongly added, she stayed all the time in Rehe. It was actually Prince Gong who left Beijing secretly to meet with Cixi in Rehe to plan the coup. Where on earth did Colipon find so bad informations? In those infamous biographies I reckon... And I say nothing of Colipon's gross gramatical mistakes ("The Concubine Yi had went a step ahead")...The article certainly needs to be fleshed out. So far it is just a stub (a long stub, yes). All the political things need to be added. But it needs to come from serious sources (i.e. either direct Chinese sources or serious scientific western publications), and edits need to be done by people who actually know something about the subject, not by amateurs. If you don't read Chinese, and you want to edit anyway, you can look for the Cambridge History of China, and get the 1,000 pages or so volume talking about the Qing Dynasty. That's the only western source I would totally trust. Hardouin 01:02, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources of Stories

message: Excellent work on the names section. It should remain because it is very much related to Cixi. I must say the information is very well done up and in great detail. Kudos mate. Tomhongs 06:42, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Preserve the section on the names 

message: Does anyone else think this article has way too many large photos? Many of which would be better off down in the gallery. I tried to improve the aesthetics a bit, but my edits were quickly reversed by the frequentor of this article, User:Geisha1021. - R Lee E  (talk, contribs) 07:40, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
:Yes i agree with you, R Lee E. While we're very thankful towards Geisha1021 for contributing such a wonderful collection of Cixi photos, i do believe that the article is overcrowded with pictures. Furthermore, many of these pictures are either very similar (being taken on the same occasion) or not quite significant. i'd be bold and go ahead to edit the page myself. You guys could voice here your opinions about my edit anytime alright? --Plastictv 13:27, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. There are too many pictures and too many similar pictures. But we should not have a gallery here. We should have a link (Template:commons) to wikicommons. --Jiang 01:08, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

text: i guess it's relevant to have the photo of her corpse to visually impress upon readers the collapse of the Qing Dynasty (even the most powerful empress dowager was exhumed) and the chaotic times following that. --Plastictv 06:19, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

text: I have put down some images which I consider unnecessary. Instead, I'll put up some links if I can. Geisha1021 04:05, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

text: Uh... then you might as well also put a couple of pictures of the Mao lying in his Mausoleum, or maybe even Kim Il Sung's preserved corpse in Pyongyang, perhaps from 5 different angles too. That would certainly visually "impress" the reader about how communist dictators maintain their image after death. I simply suggest the picture be removed. Colipon+(T) 03:32, 7 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi there! Of course we should include a photo of Mao in his crystal coffin if such picture is ever available (there is actually a quite interesting story behind the preservation of his corpse which is not included in the article), but definitely not from all cinematic angles. i don't know if you saw the previous state the article was in, but i believe right now it's no longer image heavy. What it needs now is some rewriting of the introduction. --Plastictv 05:39, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

text: This article is still very image heavy. Wikipedia is not the place for image galleries: please go to Wikimedia Commons for that. I'll gladly help solve the problem, which is mainly a problem because there are too many redundant images—Wikipedia policy is to only include images which they illustrate something important in the text, not just to include them for aesthetics, and while I interpret that a bit more leniently than some and am fine with including a few images to improve the page's readability wherever there are large spans of unillustrated texts, we still shouldn't have so many image that depict essentially the exact same thing with slightly different angles or coloration, especially when it isn't a very significant event that's being depicted. The corpse photo actually sounds very interesting from what people have said above, certainly much more interesting than the nearly-identical photos littering the page currently, and a good choice to add to one of the few image-lacking sections of the page, the tomb part; what's the link to that photo (and other significant removed photos that might help me in reworking this page's layout)? -Silence 20:29, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

text: I agree, there are way too many pictures. I suggest we keep only authentic photograpic images, and remove the drawings and paintings which are not true life images of Cixi. Hardouin 00:18, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is image heavy 

message: There are several references to footnotes that don't exist. Someone please either add the footnotes or delete the references. Thanks! --Angr/ 06:58, 21 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Done.I found them on a version from 5 July 2005. --Valentinian 09:39, 22 September 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Footnotes 

message: From the Road to Power section:
"(Cixi) invented the quick cooking oats. Her favorite food was cream puffs and of course the oats. Nobody really knows about the quick oats. This was during the time she was called Cixi."
Do what?...
LuiKhuntek 22:30, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Quaker Cixi's Oatmeal

message: I have added :Category:Royal mistresses.  I was unsure if this is appropriate, but :Category:Courtesans_and_prostitutes seemed wrong (I would classify her as a courtesan in her early life myself).  Are there any objections?  Please let me know. --KNHaw 00:49, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added to Category:Royal mistresses 

message: I was just wondering were that bit about Cixi making loves comes from. I have never heard of this before. The cause of Ci'ans death has always been unclear. People say that Cixi did not poisoned Ci'an. These stories showed up long after her death by politicians like Kang Yuwei and Yuan Shikai.
A lot of things were done according to legend. I'd like to question the fact that Cixi sang beautifully to attract the emperor. Is that really encyclopedic material? Colipon+(T) 21:24, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  relationship with Ci'an 

message: I deleted some controversial contents, such as "kicking Alute's abdomen" and "poisoning Ci'an". The images are well-chosen, high-quality, and valuable. We should keep the images in their places whenever we edit the text. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Highshines (talk • contribs) .
::Agreed about the images. The article, though, is still very long and it doesn't read very much like an encyclopedic entry (bits of it still sound more like a trash novel). Another suggested change to shorten it a little would be to perhaps remove the section entitled "Attitude towards servants". A part of that section reads "One possible reason for Cixi's cruel treatment on her servants is that...". Do we really need to go into this sort of speculation when its already so long? Can't we sum this whole section up in just a sentence or 2 by saying "she was known to be cruel to her servants, beating them even for minor offences" in another section? This is meant to be article, after all, not a full length novel. This sort of summing up could make the article much more readable. Ka-ru 06:11, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Changes 

message: Changes have been made according to the opinions of some users. Therefore, their discussions and criticisms (before the changes) should be removed to prevent confusing and misleading the current readers. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.71.1.42 (talk • contribs) .
:First, I'd like to remind you: Wikipedia:Sign your posts on talk pages. Second, I'd like to refer you to: Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Behavior_that_is_unacceptable and Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#When_pages_get_too_long. These pages address your concerns and how to handle them. Please do not keep deleting sections of the talk page you dislike or haven't been addressed yet. --Xanzzibar 06:45, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Out-of-date discussions

message: I deleted this paragraph entirely because it isn't supported by any credible evidence. While it remains indisputable that Sushun was a rival of Cixi's, I have not seen any evidence that their enmity predated the coup of 1861. If someone can bring any such evidence to the attention of us editing this page, we can restore and rewrite the section accordingly.--Niohe 21:44, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Enmity with Sushun 

message: I just had a look at Sterling Seagrave's book and I would take anything he says about Cixi with extreme scepticism. Not only has he failed to make any use of Chinese primary or secondary sources, he takes extreme liberties with his English language material. On top of that, he takes a dismissive attitude towards the findings of scholars who are much more knowledgeable than he. Just one example: he accuses Joseph Esherick, one of the major authorities on the Boxer Rebellion, of basing his claims on Backhouse's forgeries. Now, even if you have had only a casual look at Esherick's Origins of the Boxer rebellion, you know that he doesn't even quote Backhouse or mention him a single time. There are several more examples of this.
Given the popularity of Seagrave's book, no wonder that this article looks the way it looks.--Niohe 20:54, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Sterling Seagrave]], again... 

message: I've noticed this book, written in 1909 about Cixi, is now a free resource on the internet for all to read. While a little brief, if gives a good insight into how people at the time viewed Cixi, based on he (a professor in the Peking University) and his wife's experience in China, and of his wife's role for over 20 years as physician to many court ladies in Peking, including Cixi. Its widely available, including at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/eastasia/headland-courtlife.html . Ka-ru 15:59, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Isaac Taylor Headland's "Court Life in China"