The most recommended Empress Dowager Cixi books

Who picked these books? Meet our 4 experts.

4 authors created a book list connected to Empress Dowager Cixi, and here are their favorite Empress Dowager Cixi books.
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Book cover of Manchu Decadence: The China Memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, Abridged and Unexpurgated

Tom Carter Author Of An American Bum in China: Featuring the bumblingly brilliant escapades of expatriate Matthew Evans

From my list on expats in China.

Why am I passionate about this?

Peeking over the American fence, I found myself in China in 2004 as the nation was transitioning from its quaint 1980s/90s self into the futuristic “China 2.0” we know it today. My occupation, like many expats, was small-town English teacher. I later departed for what would become a two-year backpacking sojourn across all 33 Chinese provinces, the first foreigner on record to do so. Since then, I have published three books about China, with two specifically focusing on the expatriate experience. This quirky yet timeless subgenre is my guilty pleasure; the following are but five of five hundred I’d love to recommend.

Tom's book list on expats in China

Tom Carter Why did Tom love this book?

Decades before Carl Crow helped transform Old Shanghai into a playground for the Waspy rich, a young Brit named Edmund Backhouse was reveling in the brothels of Beijing. Backhouse first arrived in China in 1899, where he served as a linguist and, he claimed, as a consultant for the Manchu court (where he also claims to have bedded Empress Dowager Cixi). By night, however, Backhouse was prowling the filthy backstreets for lascivious same-sex encounters with the Chinese, which he chronicled in a secret diary that remained unpublished until 2011. Egregious and borderline pornographic, no China expat (not even Isham Cook, cited below) has ever come close to matching Backhouse’s salaciousness. Should be read in concert with Hugh Trevor-Roper’s Hermit of Peking, who hypothesizes that Backhouse was nothing more than a charlatan with a vivid imagination.

By Edmund Trelawny Backhouse,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Manchu Decadence as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

In 1898 a young Englishman walked into a homosexual brothel in Peking and began a journey that he claims took him all the way to the bedchamber of imperial China's last great ruler, the Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi. The man was Sir Edmund Backhouse, and his controversial memoirs, DEcadence Mandchoue, were published for the first time by Earnshaw Books in 2011. This edition, renamed Manchu Decadence, is abridged and unexpurgated, meaning that it focuses on the most extraordinary and valuable elements of Backhouse's narrative. Backhouse was a talented sinologist, and his book provides a unique and shocking glimpse into the…


Book cover of Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine who Launched Modern China

John Rennie Short Author Of Insurrection: What the January 6 Assault on the Capitol Reveals About America and Democracy

From John's 3 favorite reads in 2024.

Why am I passionate about this?

Author Professor emeritus Urbanist Geographer Maphead Geopolitician

John's 3 favorite reads in 2024

John Rennie Short Why did John love this book?

The last decades of the Qing dynasty are popularly understood as a slide into chaos under the control of an aging reactionary dowager. This book retells the story of how a young concubine launched a palace coup to make herself the real ruler of China. She resisted the foreign penetration of China and inaugurated real reforms. Her life (1835-1908) is filled with rebellions, wars and nasty palace intrigue. The book's vast sweep contains a wealth of details and evocative descriptions of court life. An informative narrative that shifts our understanding of the last days of the Qing.

By Jung Chang,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Empress Dowager Cixi as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908) is the most important woman in Chinese history. She ruled China for decades and brought a medieval empire into the modern age.

At the age of sixteen, in a nationwide selection for royal consorts, Cixi was chosen as one of the emperor's numerous concubines and sexual partners. When he died in 1861, their five-year-old son succeeded to the throne. Cixi at once launched a palace coup against the regents appointed by her husband and made herself the real ruler of China - behind the throne, literally, with a silk screen separating her from her officials who…


Book cover of Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-First Century

Bill Hayton Author Of The Invention of China

From my list on the emergence of modern China.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve spent more than a decade exploring the historic roots of Asia’s modern political problems – and discovering the accidents and mistakes that got us where we are today. I spent 22 years with BBC News, including a year in Vietnam and another in Myanmar. I’ve written four books on East and Southeast Asia and I’m an Associate Fellow with the Asia-Pacific Programme at the London-based thinktank, Chatham House. I love breaking down old stereotypes and showing readers that the past is much more interesting than a series of clichés about ‘us’ and ‘them’. Perhaps through that, we can recognise that our future depends on collaboration and cooperation.

Bill's book list on the emergence of modern China

Bill Hayton Why did Bill love this book?

This book is an excellent introduction to some of the most important characters in modern Chinese history, from nineteenth-century reformers to twentieth-century communist leaders. We meet some of the characters I write about in The Invention of China like the great journalist Liang Qichao and the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, along with others such as Mao Zedong. The authors link their overlapping lives together showing how the old Qing Empire crumbled and was overthrown and replaced by a new Republic, which was itself overthrown within 40 years. It’s a great way to experience China’s journey from a time when it could be described as the ‘Sick Man of Asia’ to an era in which its ‘strength and power’ unsettled the world.

By Orville Schell, John Delury,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Wealth and Power as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

By now everyone knows the basic facts of China's rise to pre-eminence over the past three decades. But how did this erstwhile sleeping giant finally manage to arrive at its current phase of dynamic growth? How, after such a long and painful period of dynastic decline, intellectual upheaval and revolution, foreign occupation and civil war, did a country once derided as the 'sick man of Asia' manage to break out of its old pattern of repeatedly failed reform efforts to burst forth onto the world stage with such an impressive run of hyperdevelopment and wealth creation? How did the century-long…


Book cover of Dragon Lady: The Life and Legend of the Last Empress of China

Sheridan Prasso Author Of The Asian Mystique: Dragon Ladies, Geisha Girls, & Our Fantasies of the Exotic Orient

From my list on Asian women.

Why am I passionate about this?

I have specialized in writing about Asia since first moving to Hong Kong as a journalist in 1989, and spent the past three decades trying to improve understandings between East and West. My Asian women friends repeatedly asked me why Western men expected them to pour their drinks and serve them food. I answered “because that’s what they saw in the movies.” The James Bond films perpetuating these images of servile Asian women scrubbing white mens’ backs in the bathtub were pervasive when they were growing up. I decided to uncover and explain where this history of imagery and the stereotypes they result in come from – and, as someone with an anthropological background, also explain cultural practices that foster misunderstandings. 

Sheridan's book list on Asian women

Sheridan Prasso Why did Sheridan love this book?

This book takes what you think you know about China’s Last Empress, Cixi, and turns it upside down. Far from the monster created by puerile Western conquerors to justify their imperial domination over China, this historical account uncovers the reality behind the woman who held great power in China. This reality is core to the destruction of the Dragon Lady stereotype in Western culture that I lay out in my book.

By Sterling Seagrave,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Dragon Lady as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The author of The Soong Dynasty gives us our most vivid and reliable biography yet of the Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, remembered through the exaggeration and falsehood of legend as the ruthless Manchu concubine who seduced and murdered her way to the Chinese throne in 1861.


Book cover of Manchu Decadence: The China Memoirs of Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse, Abridged and Unexpurgated
Book cover of Empress Dowager Cixi: The Concubine who Launched Modern China
Book cover of Wealth and Power: China's Long March to the Twenty-First Century

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