Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling, the first biography of one of the twentieth century's most intriguing cross-cultural personalities, traces not only the life of Princess Der Ling, in all its various transformations, but offers a fresh look at the woman she lionized and, ultimately, betrayed - the Empress Dowager Cixi, to whom, like Der Ling, many legends have been affixed over the past century.The book includes photographs, some never before seen, clarifying Der Ling's very real affection for the ruler feared before the Boxer Uprising and hated after it, and showing a side of Cixi that many who approach her with preconceived opinions may find intriguing if not revelatory. The book depicts the changing worlds of Paris, Tokyo and the other international stages of Der Ling's development as woman and as mystery, and deals with the many teachers who made her who she was: Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt, the Empress of Japan, her own broad-minded father, American society figures like Barbara Hutton, and most of all, the Empress Dowager Cixi, who knew all about being several different people at once.
Book Description
Daughter of a Manchu aristocrat, granddaughter of a Boston merchant, educated like a boy in the Confucian classics, a baptized Catholic blessed by the hand of Pope Leo XIII, a woman who donned chic Western fashions in China and her ceremonial court robes in the United States, and wife of an American soldier of fortune, Princess Der Ling was a fascinating human battleground of warring identities, a victim of the hallucinogenic effects of too much publicity, much of it prompted by Der Ling herself, and a figure whose life provides a glimpse into one Eurasian woman's experience of living not just between two cultures - that of China and the West - but among many different worlds: social, religious, moral, political.
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Editorial Reviews
Review
'Imperial Masquerade' is a well-researched and written biography.... It provides a fascinating and often entertaining peek inside the court of the Empress Dowager and her ill-fated emperor nephew, and gracefully recounts an odd and interesting life. -- Tim O'Connell, Asian Review of Books, 5 May 2008
'Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling' tells of Der Ling, who lived a life that would put the most trumped up fictional character to shame. Catholicism, Confucianism, American, Chinese are all adjectives that could describe her as a woman, in a time where woman were regarded as little more than second class. An enthralling tale from first page to last. -- Midwest Book Review, July 2008
Hayter-Menzies allows his dissembling subject to charm us with her painterly descriptions and proclamations for reform in a country as cruel as it was beautiful...Der Ling gives us final glimpses backwards, and for this we can perhaps forgive her delusions of grandeur. -- Linda Rogers, Pacific Rim Review of Books, April 2008
'Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling' tells of Der Ling, who lived a life that would put the most trumped up fictional character to shame. Catholicism, Confucianism, American, Chinese are all adjectives that could describe her as a woman, in a time where woman were regarded as little more than second class. An enthralling tale from first page to last. -- Midwest Book Review, July 2008
Hayter-Menzies allows his dissembling subject to charm us with her painterly descriptions and proclamations for reform in a country as cruel as it was beautiful...Der Ling gives us final glimpses backwards, and for this we can perhaps forgive her delusions of grandeur. -- Linda Rogers, Pacific Rim Review of Books, April 2008
From the Back Cover
"Imperial Masquerade is an ingenious rethinking of the available evidence, and presents an absorbing account of how Der Ling survived at Court, and what it must have been like to work for such a formidable ruler." -- Jonathan Spence, author of The Search for Modern China and Return to Dragon Mountain
"An intriguing, insightful portrait of a woman born at the boundary between two cultures who, in her restless yearning for celebrity, crossed and re-crossed another boundary -- that between reality and fantasy -- in an extraordinary life that took her from the Forbidden City of Beijing to the pleasure palaces of America's Jazz Age." -- Diana Preston, author of The Boxer Rebellion
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I loved this book!,
By
This review is from: Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling (Hardcover)
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Without question, I read the book to learn more about Cixi, and I was not disappointed. The book took me into the inner courts of the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City with extraordinary descriptives and details - such as Der Ling demonstrating European dancing ("jumping" in Cixi's words). Der Ling's story is unusual and interesting, and the book has a terrific collection of pictures.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Der Ling's masquerade,
By
This review is from: Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling (Hardcover)
I bought this book, like the Soong Dynasty, in Hong Kong last year, but I actually tackled it this year after coming back from Bejing, where my interest was fueled by a visit to the Summer Palace, the preferred residence of Empress Cixi. Who was Princess Der Ling? This is the question Grant Hayter Menzies, a music and art critic with a deep understanding of Chinese culture, asks himself at the beginning of the book, and why is her story so important to comprehend the discussed character of Empress Cixi? Princess Der Ling, was a young woman, daughter of a Chinese diplomat and an half American half Chinese woman, that was raised abroad by her family and acquired a way of living half way in between traditional Chinese culture and Western habits. When she went back to China, she spent two years as lady in waiting of the so called Dragon Lady, the most discussed, hated, feared Chinese emperor. Many years after this experience she wrote the story of her permanence at court with many details and this made her and her literary works object of discussion and often derision by other Authors that wanted to pass as more informed on the mysterious figure of the Last Empress. Hayter Menzies has gathered abundant and dispersed information on this intriguing woman and has written a nice biography, that amply cites the Der Ling's numerous books.
This book has many merits, aside from the fact that it is a good read, maybe a little boring in the chapters that deal with Der Ling's permanence at court (but as we can all imagine, court life in China probably wasn't very fun). First of all it is a painting of precise historical periods in all the nations Der Ling visits before and after her stay at court: Tokyo at the beginning of the 20th century, Paris in the 1910's, Shangai and Bejing and finally the USA in the 1940's, since the Hayter Menzies is exceptional at describing the moving forces of these nations and societies especially to issues pertaining to Chinese relationships abroad. Secondly, the description of secondary characters that Der Ling meets in her life is portrait like and references in bibliography are very satisfying : we meet Isadora Duncan, Sarah Bernhardt, Chiang Kai Shek, numerous Chinese politicians, that all jump out of the pages. Thirdly, the cross cultural links among this composite society of China at the beginning of the 20th Century, that was at the same time provincial and international are described in way that makes the reader really understand the forces at play behind the history. The photographic material is very good and helps to imagine the characters. Der Ling's personality alone does not satisfy. Somehow I did not manage to "feel" this intriguing and masquerading woman, but maybe, as the Author states in his last chapter, Der Ling did not really know herself. An enjoyable, historically important and mind opening book. A suggestion: read it together with the Empress Orchid by Ache Min, the Soong Dynasty by Seagrave and Hayter Menzies latest book on the epistolary between Sarah Conger and Cixi.
5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Imperial Masquerade - Grant Hayter-Menzies,
By
This review is from: Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling (Hardcover)
Engaging read from start to finish. I saw Mr. Hayter-Menzies do a book presentation and signing at the Freer Gallery at the Smithsonian, bought the book on the spot and read it immediately on the flight back to California. Hard to believe Der Ling not only survived, but thrived in this time period with such a before-her-time, women's rights attitude in Chinese society, not to mention French and American societies where women weren't supposed to be self-sufficient and bold. You could almost credit her with the popularity of compact, personally owned photo image cameras - Kodak should have paid her a commission or marketing fee. I'm also amazed that Der Ling was able to "pose" so readily as "Chinese royalty" and got away with it for so long. The fact that she did "live" the true life of a Chinese Princess within the royal court made her books, lectures and performances accurate, entertaining and believable - so I guess her audiences must have been captivated by her stories. If Bush can pose as a president, why couldn't Der Ling pose as a royal Chinese princess? Absolutely a must-read for anyone interested in Chinese culture and world history in general.
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