The Summer Palace in Beijing is probably the place where unofficial histories and secrets about the Empress Dowager Cixi are circulated the most inside and outside the city.
The Summer Palace is the largest existing royal garden in China and a standard northern royal garden. It has beautiful scenery and is surrounded by mountains and rivers. It was deeply loved by the Empress Dowager Cixi, who lived here for several years.
Cixi made a contribution to the Summer Palace. She built the longest existing corridor in my country (in a garden) in this largest royal garden in my country, with a total length of 728 meters. Set a "Guinness World Record".
After visiting the Summer Palace, I found out that China already had electric lights at that time, but Cixi was afraid of damaging Feng Shui, so she refused to install them. What Lafayette didn't use, people all over the country couldn't use, so the foreigners bribed Li Lianying.
Li Lianying cut first and then played, and put the lamp directly on.
When Cixi came back, she found that the house was extremely bright, so she asked: Little Lizi, why does this eggplant shine?
Li Lianying said: To return to the Queen Mother, this slave is doing a trick for you. Look at this eggplant, it will light up if I let it light up, and it will not light up if I don't let it light up.
Cixi thinks this eggplant is pretty good, so let’s keep it. From then on, all Chinese people used electric lights.
About Empress Dowager Cixi and Li Lianying, there are various legends circulating in the Summer Palace, which I will not describe here. However, Li Lianying's house in the Summer Palace was a second courtyard, larger than Guangxu's residence. It was next to the Leshou Hall where Cixi lived, which shows the deep friendship between the two.
It is said that Cixi killed many people, including Guangxu’s favorite concubine Zhen.
Concubine Zhen entered the palace at the age of 13. She was as beautiful as a flower. She was not only good at chess, calligraphy and painting, but also independent-minded and interested in Western learning. However, she was not very peaceful and often talked too much about government affairs, which made Cixi very unhappy. In the year when the Eight-Power Allied Forces attacked Beijing, Cixi found an excuse before fleeing and threw the little girl into a well. The body was soaked for a year before being taken out and buried?
As a great emperor, Guangxu The man who is "more than ten thousand people" lived a very aggrieved life. He spent his whole life in the imprisonment of Cixi. Coincidentally, 20 hours before Cixi died, Guangxu died in Zhongnanhai before her at the age of 38.
The Empress Dowager Cixi was very superstitious about Feng Shui, and every scene in the Summer Palace had a meaning. She likes stones very much, and she likes to write articles on various stones. Every stone in the Summer Palace has a different meaning. Two of them were placed at the door of Guangxu's palace, just to "suppress" him.
Cixi’s life is divided into two parts. When she was young, she followed Xianfeng and lived in exile. She had no serious problems in the first half of her life, and her thoughts were considered enlightened. She valued Western learning and even regained Xinjiang. After 45 years old, Cixi had real power in her hands. First, she killed the Empress Dowager Ci'an, and then began to The road of being arbitrary and arbitrarily led to a dead end.
When repairing the Summer Palace, Cixi misappropriated navy funds, which led to the defeat of the Qing army in the Sino-Japanese War of 1884-1894, and then the entire Beiyang Navy was annihilated. Then the 61-year-old woman sued for peace with Japan and signed a The unprecedented humiliating treaty "Treaty of Shimonoseki" resulted in a loss of 200 million taels of silver (equivalent to 100 billion yuan today), and Cixi borrowed money everywhere. Shanxi people were very wealthy at that time and helped her a lot. Shanxi merchants began to decline from then on, which was also related to her.
The above stories are all heard from the Old Summer Palace. Some of them are true, and some may not be true. However, an old woman who held great power and privacy while alive was repeatedly teased and amused by future generations after her death, which is really sad and emotional.