Among the feudal dynasties in China for thousands of years, there were also many female rulers, and Empress Dowager Cixi was one of them. She is the most powerful woman in modern China and ruled China for forty-eight years.

In the feudal dynasty that have been around for thousands of years in China, there are also many female rulers, and Empress Dowager Cixi is one of them. She is the most powerful woman in modern China and ruled China for forty-eight years. When she reached the peak of power, the Qing Dynasty was already full of holes. Under her rule, China has become more internal and external troubles, and the people's livelihood is in decline. Therefore, what Cixi left behind in history is a lot of curses.

So, what kind of woman is Cixi who put aside her identity as a politician? She is smart and rebellious, greedy for pleasure. She is also good at painting and loves Tang poetry and Song lyrics. She also wrote a poem, which was the only poem she had written in her life. One sentence in this poem is familiar to everyone and was also included in primary school textbooks. Today we will talk about what Cixi, a woman, looks like.

Cixi's original name is Yehenaralaner. She was born in November of the fifteenth year of Daoguang (1835 AD). Her family was a family of officials with the Manchu blue flag. In the first year of Xianfeng (1851), 16-year-old Yehenara participated in the royal draft and was named "Gui Ren Lan". Six years later, Cixi gave birth to the eldest prince of , Zaichun (later Emperor Tongzhi), and was promoted to , Concubine Yi, . At that time, China was suffering from internal and external troubles, and the domestic and international situation was very serious. Faced with a mess of internal and diplomacy, Emperor Xianfeng chose to escape. He was too lazy to read the memorials, and was addicted to alcohol and sex all day long, and eventually died of illness. After the death of Xianfeng , Tongzhi succeeded to the throne, and the two empress dowagers ruled behind the curtain.

Although Cixi entered the highest center of power, she was essentially a noble woman who was greedy for pleasure, not a politician. She is more concerned about her own private life. She is keen on developing cosmetics, building gardens for herself, and talking to the women in the palace about how to keep pets. She is particularly interested in Paris fashion, waltz dance . She spent a lot of time on makeup, play, feasting, and watching opera.

Although Cixi became a widow at the age of 25, she loved beauty very much, paid great attention to maintenance and dressing up herself, and lived a delicate woman. She has a famous saying: "Why can a woman live without the heart to dress herself?" The palace maid recalled: "Although the empress dowager has a lot of government affairs to deal with every day, she still has so much time to pay attention to food, clothing, decoration and fun." For more than 40 years, Cixi had to spend several hours in front of the dressing mirror every day, dressing herself up in a radiant way before going out, and before going to bed, she had to change into a brand new pink satin pajamas, embroidered with peonies. Cixi only wore each pajama once, and changed into a new pajama the next day.

Cixi also pays special attention to maintenance. She uses pearl powder and ginseng to beautify and care for her skin. The rouge lipstick she uses are made in the palace. From the hundreds of kilograms of rose petals that were paid tribute, they picked out the best ones and pounded them into raw slurry with a stone pestle to make rouge juice. The rouge lipstick made in this way is pure natural and pollution-free, and has a very good nourishing effect on the skin. She also likes to drink milk and sometimes uses it to bathe. She insists on ironing her face every morning, soaking her feet at night, and taking walks every day.

Cixi Empress Dowager Cixi was very smart. She didn't know much when she first entered the palace, but she was a little familiar with writing through self-study and could understand the memorials. She has a high appreciation of art and is quite accomplished in garden architecture. She is also good at painting and likes Tang poetry and Song lyrics. One year, Cixi's mother celebrated her 60th birthday. That day, foreign envoys came to the palace to pay their respects. Cixi could not go to celebrate her mother's birthday, so she prepared some birthday gifts and wrote a big "天" character. Under the word "天" character, she wrote four poems in Manchu and Chinese language:

In the world, parents' love is the most sincere, and tears and blood are dissolved into their children. I will work hard to be a son, and I will feel sorry for my parents in the world.

This poem is easy to understand, without any gorgeous rhetoric, expressing her gratitude and longing for her parents as a daughter. The last sentence "Pity the heart of parents in the world" has been passed down to this day and has been compiled into primary school textbooks. From this poem, we can see that Cixi has a low level of education, so she can only manage the country by managing her family.Once, Zeng Guofan went to Beijing to meet Cixi. After returning, he wrote in his diary: "I didn't expect that the empress dowager talked to him about family matters. How many people in the family have been out of Beijing for many years, and he has never talked about the government affairs at all."

Cixi is such a smart and ignorant, bold and conservative, loving power and greedy for pleasure. She lacks the sense of responsibility to strive for the country and the nation. The last sentence she said before her death was: "Don't let women interfere in politics in the future. This is contrary to the family laws of this dynasty and must be strictly restricted." She seemed to have some regrets and admitted that she had failed in her governance. She hoped that other women would not follow her. Indeed, if Cixi could put the country and nation first, observe the world more and contact Western civilization, she would have a clearer understanding of China's situation at that time, and perhaps she could find a way out for China's development, and she would not have been infamous for eternity.