Imperial Masquerade – The Legend of Princess Der Ling
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Hong Kong University Press
Published:1st Feb '08
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The extraordinary life of the Manchu author, feminist and figure of controversy, who yearned to expose the true humanity of the elderly empress dowager feared and hated by the rest of the world, but never quite shared the truth of herself.
The last years of the Qing dynasty were a time of rumors, adventures, and mysterious opportunities for the polyglot inhabitants of Beijing. The memoir written in 1911 by the self-styled 'Princess' Der Ling, lady-in-waiting to the Empress Dowager between 1903 and 1905, has always presented baffling problems concerning accuracy and interpretation. 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 The Search for Modern China and Return to Dragon Mountain
ISBN: 9789622098817
Dimensions: 235mm x 161mm x 30mm
Weight: 796g
444 pages