The Dragon Empress: Life and Times of Tz'u-hsi 1835-1908 Empress Dowager of China

From 1861 to 1908 a woman, the Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi, born the daughter of a minor mandarin, held the supreme power in China. THE DRAGON EMPRESS also portrays a China in rapid decline as poverty, civil war and foreign exploitation and invasion brought about the fall of the Ch'ing dynasty.