Customer Reviews

Dragon of Heaven: The Memoirs of the Last Empress of China

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This is a wide-eyed irreverant look (literally!!) at one of the most enigmatic figures in Chinese 'herstory', and while fictionalized, whets your appetite for a longer, more involved recounting of Cixi's life (for example, like that found in Pearl S. Buck's "Imperial Woman")

The playfulness of the incredibly detailed paintings draws you in and the story does as well. It's sort of like a kid's picture book for adults of a world that is almost within living memory, yet seems centuries removed even from the experience of the Chinese!

I am sorry to say that Cixi was not the last empress/empress dowager/female ruler of China.

The only female ruler of China was Wu Zetian, who became Emperor in 690.

The last empress dowager was Empress Xiao Ding Jing (Longyu), the Guangxu Emperor's consort who became Empress Dowager after Puyi's accession to the throne in 1908.

The last empress was Wanrong, Puyi's consort who got married with him in the early 1920s, a decade after the fall of the dynasty.

I bought this book after reading Catherine Carl's true account of her work as a portrait painter for the last Dowager Empress of China and Pearl Buck's fictionalized-historical novel about the Empress. I was most interested in the illustrators work in this book rather than the text. The book is full of imaginative and absolutely beautiful artistic intrepretations of an idealized Empress and her world. I really love the artists style. The paintings are a supposed look into a hidden and privileged life. The text consists of the very brief poetical-like imaginings of the author as to what the Empress may have thought or said...and who can really know something like that? I'd refer everyone to Catherine Carl's book for an accurate account. I have this book on my shelf with the two books mentioned above. It adds beauty and refreshment and takes off the dull day-to-day edges of a real life story.