Dowager Quotes

“It was a cruel world though. More than half of all children died before they could reach maturity, thanks to chronic epidemics and malnutrition. People dropped like flies from polio and tuberculosis and smallpox and measles. There probably weren't many people who lived past forty. Women bore so many children, they became toothless old hags by the time they were in their thirties. People often had to resort to violence to survive. Tiny children were forced to do such heavy labor that their bones became deformed, and little girls were forced to become prostitutes on a daily basis. Little boys too, I suspect. Most people led minimal lives in worlds that had nothing to do with richness of perception or spirit. City streets were full of cripples and beggars and criminals. Only a small fraction of the population could gaze at the moon with deep feeling or enjoy a Shakespeare play or listen to the beautiful music of Dowland.”
― Haruki Murakami, 1Q84

“In this eyewitness story, we meet Tzu-hsi in the twilight of her reign. Advanced in age, the Empress on the Dragon Throne is no longer the young beauty whose skill at seduction and aptitude for court intrigue saw her rise from a lowly Imperial concubine to the second most powerful place under the Hsien-feng Emperor.”
― Noel Marie Fletcher, Two Years in the Forbidden City

“Armed with her title as princess, the married name of Mrs. Thaddeus White, and the United States as a new frontier to conquer, Der Ling won many admirers.”
― Noel Marie Fletcher, Two Years in the Forbidden City

“While browsing through the Seattle Art Museum in 1945, a scholar discovered a 5-inch jade seal, missing from China since the Boxer Rebellion, as a priceless Imperial seal. “My spectacles fell off my nose and I started to yell,” said Hugh Alexander Matier, 62-year-old scholar and traveler.”
― Noel Marie Fletcher, Two Years in the Forbidden City