Court Life in China: The Capital, Its Officials and People

Classic work of history, written during the rule of the last Emperor of the Ching Dynasty.. According to the preface: "Until within the past ten years a study of Chinese court life would have been an impossibility. The Emperor, the Empress Dowager, and the court ladies were shut up within the Forbidden City, away from a world they were anxious to see, and which was equally anxious to see them. Then the Emperor instituted reform, the Empress Dowager came out from behind the screen, and the court entered into social relations with Europeans.”