The Making of an Empress, an excerpt from Novel in Progress
She wasn’t so much born as deposited upon the world, a messy wet screaming baby girl in a China that did not prize girls. When the future and last truly powerful empress of the Manchu dynasty was born on November 29 of 1835, her family lived in the capital city, Beijing. But not too long after, her father, Hui Zheng, was assigned to Shanxi Province. The Forbidden City was filled with intrigue and double crossings, and Mr. Zheng found himself temporarily out of favor. He hoped to work his way back in to the ranks of bureaucrats who ran the far flung provinces of the vast Chinese empire, but for the forseeable future, the family would be living in poverty.
1842 – The Making of an Empress
When the eunuch came to visit the Zheng household, he spoke very softly in court-perfect Mandarin. His silken robes and beautiful shoes were rich with gold embroidery. Real gold, so thousands of sparkles accompanied his every daylight step. He had come to the village to teach the Tai Tai’s (old wives) the art of preparing their girls to be accepted into the Imperial Palace as concubines. The very worst famine in memory was ravaging the lands all around the great Imperial City of Beijing, and the village had paid many pounds of precious rice for his advice.
“It is a science”, he began, “getting the elements of foot-binding just right. Fold the foot too far, and the neat fold of toes to sole is ruined. Start too late, and the bones shatter, instead of bending, and this leads to infection. The binding must be at a precise pressure, and changed frequently, or gangrene might set in, and the leg would have to be amputated. The emperor will not take to bed any deformed women. His highness considers only those who sway like the lotus blossom on a pond when they walk. This is what the concubine-seekers look for – unsullied girls whose petal soft, inward facing toes fit beautifully into the tiny embroidered slippers made especially for the Lotus Feet. What else are you do do with your useless girl child?”, he asked, and nodded sagely at the murmurs of assent.
“Of course there is risk. If the foot binding goes wrong, then the girl cannot even plow or plant the fields, making her impossible to sell. As she reaches puberty, I suggest letting the fingernails grow long – make small boxes to keep them from being broken off. The longer the better. Some of the concubines have twirled their long fingernails into a spiral pattern, necessitating much wider boxes for the hand, but it is an appealing twist.”
There was much more in his lecture, and the haggard wives clung to every word.
1842 – The Making of an Empress
When the eunuch came to visit the Zheng household, he spoke very softly in court-perfect Mandarin. His silken robes and beautiful shoes were rich with gold embroidery. Real gold, so thousands of sparkles accompanied his every daylight step. He had come to the village to teach the Tai Tai’s (old wives) the art of preparing their girls to be accepted into the Imperial Palace as concubines. The very worst famine in memory was ravaging the lands all around the great Imperial City of Beijing, and the village had paid many pounds of precious rice for his advice.
“It is a science”, he began, “getting the elements of foot-binding just right. Fold the foot too far, and the neat fold of toes to sole is ruined. Start too late, and the bones shatter, instead of bending, and this leads to infection. The binding must be at a precise pressure, and changed frequently, or gangrene might set in, and the leg would have to be amputated. The emperor will not take to bed any deformed women. His highness considers only those who sway like the lotus blossom on a pond when they walk. This is what the concubine-seekers look for – unsullied girls whose petal soft, inward facing toes fit beautifully into the tiny embroidered slippers made especially for the Lotus Feet. What else are you do do with your useless girl child?”, he asked, and nodded sagely at the murmurs of assent.
“Of course there is risk. If the foot binding goes wrong, then the girl cannot even plow or plant the fields, making her impossible to sell. As she reaches puberty, I suggest letting the fingernails grow long – make small boxes to keep them from being broken off. The longer the better. Some of the concubines have twirled their long fingernails into a spiral pattern, necessitating much wider boxes for the hand, but it is an appealing twist.”
There was much more in his lecture, and the haggard wives clung to every word.