2026

Late Qing Dynasty Series  |  The Prince Su Family Prince Su Shanqi A Qing Prince, a Japanese Samurai’s Son, and the Dream That Outlasted an Empire In 1900, as allied Western forces threatened to shell the Forbidden City, a single Japanese man talked them out of it — in Chinese. His name was Kawashima Naniwa, and he was the son of a former samurai from a small Japanese castle town called Matsumoto. A year later, that same man became the…

The Fengshan Ritual: China’s Supreme Ceremony of Heaven and Earth Only the Son of Heaven Could Perform It — From the First Emperor to the Song Dynasty A Hierarchy of the Sacred: Who Could Worship What To a reader shaped by Christianity or other Western religious traditions, this may seem deeply strange. In those traditions, prayer is available to everyone — the poorest farmer and the most powerful king kneel before the same God, and no earthly rank determines one’s…

The boy named “joint rule” who was never let in. The Tongzhi Emperor (1856–1875) was the son of Empress Dowager Cixi and the ninth emperor of the Qing dynasty. He took the throne at five, ruled in person for less than two years, and died at 18 — of smallpox, according to his own physicians, though a darker rumor of syphilis has followed him ever since. His era name, Tongzhi (同治), means “joint rule.” The power was indeed shared —…

She has been remembered as a jealous, dull-witted, unattractive empress — the woman who lost her husband to a prettier rival and then lost a dynasty. But was that really who she was? A small glass-topped table I once saw at the Summer Palace in Beijing made me wonder. On February 12, 1912, in the name of the six-year-old emperor Puyi, an edict of abdication was issued. With it, more than two thousand years of imperial rule in China —…

The Guangxu Emperor: The Emperor Who Said He Didn’t Need Power Imprisoned by Cixi, possibly poisoned — yet Guangxu never broke. He launched 103 days of reform to save China. The emperor who chose mission over power.The Guangxu Emperor and the 103-Day Revolution That Failed Late Qing Dynasty Series “If it would save the country, I do not need to hold power.” No emperor in Chinese history was supposed to say this. Princes fought and bled for the throne. Empress…

If you know Kingdom, you know Ryo Fui — the chancellor who nearly rivaled the young king Ei Sei. He was real. Lü Buwei (Lu Buwei) began as a merchant in Handan, bought a forgotten hostage prince as a “rare asset worth hoarding,” made him king of Qin, and became the most powerful man in the state. Then the boy he had guarded grew up into the First Emperor — and destroyed him. In the article on 〔Bu coins (the…