One of the most popular and controversial Chinese history books ever written, China under the Empress Dowager is also one of the best. Authors Bland and Backhouse take you inside the Forbidden City during the reign of Empress Dowager Cixi (1861-1908), a world of power-thirsty eunuchs, concubines and Mandarins, intrigue, bitter antagonism and ruthless reprisals. The book was unique for its time in its reliance on Chinese source materials, some of which may have been fabricated. As entertaining as it is enlightening, the book that presaged the fall of the Qing dynasty is as readable today as it ever was.

Who are J.O.P. Bland and Edmund Trelawny Backhouse?
J.O.P. Bland (1863-1945) arrived in Shanghai in 1883, and worked for the British-run Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs before going on to serve as China correspondent for the London Times from 1897 until he left China in 1910. He was once described by New York Times as the best informed Westerner on China in the world.

Sir Edmund Trelawny Backhouse (1873-1944) arrived in Peking in 1898 and quickly became the city's most respected translator, working for both the British Foreign Service and the London Times correspondent George Morrison. Considered a brilliant linguist and Chinese scholar in his day, and the subject of Hugh Trevor-Roper's book Hermit of Peking, Backhouse's reputation was posthumously tarnished when it was discovered that much of what he did was forged or fraudulent. Precisely how much and which parts of his writings were real and which faked is one of the great puzzles of the era.