Nonfiction · 1909
Court Life in China
The Capital, Its Officials and People
Court Life in China, first published in 1909, has been pulled into the Bibliomancer archive: the complete text, carefully cleaned and typeset, free to read online. Its editorial introduction is still being prepared.
Contents
- Preface
- I — The Empress Dowager—Her Early Life
- II — The Empress Dowager—Her Years of Training
- III — The Empress Dowager—As a Ruler
- IV — The Empress Dowager—As a Reactionist
- V — The Empress Dowager—As a Reformer
- VI — The Empress Dowager—As an Artist
- VII — The Empress Dowager—As a Woman
- VII — Kuang Hsu—His Self-Development
- IX — Kuang Hsu—As Emperor and Reformer
- 1 — The abolition of the queue
- 5 — A prospective national parliament: A journey to Japan by the Emperor and Empress Dowager
- X — Kuang Hsu—As a Prisoner
- XI — Prince Chun—The Regent
- XII — The Home of the Court—The Forbidden City
- XIII — The Ladies of the Court
- XIV — The Princesses—Their Schools
- XV — The Chinese Ladies of Rank
- XVI — The Social Life of the Chinese Woman
- XVII — The Chinese Ladies—Their Ills
- XVIII — The Funeral Ceremonies of a Dowager Princess
- XIX — Chinese Princes and Officials
- XX — Peking—The City of the Court
- XXI — The Death of Kuang Hsu and the Empress Dowager
- XXII — The Court and the New Education
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About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
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About the author
1859–1942 · Modern
Isaac Taylor Headland (1859–1942) was born in Freedom, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Mount Union College in 1888 before going to Peking in 1890 as a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church, where he taught science at Peking University. In 1894 he married Marian Sinclair, a physician whose practice among the aristocratic families of the capital gave the couple entry to court circles that included relatives of the Empress Dowager Cixi. Drawing on that access, he wrote The Chinese Boy and Girl, Chinese Mother Goose Rhymes, and Court Life in China (1909), his account of the Qing court's officials, ladies, and customs. He died in 1942.
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