The Project Gutenberg EBook of Court Life in China, by Isaac Taylor Headland

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Title: Court Life in China

Author: Isaac Taylor Headland

Posting Date: September 13, 2008 [EBook #523]
Release Date: May, 1996

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK COURT LIFE IN CHINA ***

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COURT LIFE IN CHINA

THE CAPITAL

ITS OFFICIALS AND PEOPLE

By

ISAAC TAYLOR HEADLAND

Professor in the Peking University

ISAAC TAYLOR HEADLAND'S THREE BOOKS THAT "LINK EAST AND WEST"

Court Life in China: The Capital Its Officials and People.
The Chinese Boy and Girl
Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes

PREFACE

Until within the past ten years a study of Chinese court life would
have been an impossibility. The Emperor, the Empress Dowager, and the
court ladies were shut up within the Forbidden City, away from a world
they were anxious to see, and which was equally anxious to see them.
Then the Emperor instituted reform, the Empress Dowager came out from
behind the screen, and the court entered into social relations with
Europeans.

For twenty years and more Mrs. Headland has been physician to the
family of the Empress Dowager's mother, the Empress' sister, and many
of the princesses and high official ladies in Peking. She has visited
them in a social as well as a professional way, has taken with her her
friends, to whom the princesses have shown many favours, and they have
themselves been constant callers at our home. It is to my wife,
therefore, that I am indebted for much of the information contained in
this book.

There are many who have thought that the Empress Dowager has been
misrepresented. The world has based its judgment of her character upon
her greatest mistake, her participation in the Boxer movement, which
seems unjust, and has closed its eyes to the tremendous reforms which
only her mind could conceive and her hand carry out. The great Chinese
officials to a man recognized in her a mistress of every situation; the
foreigners who have come into most intimate contact with her, voice her
praise; while her hostile critics