Talk:Empress Dowager Cixi

Cixi was charismatic? --Menchi 05:45, 14 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 Crowned Emperor? 2 Cixi is not the second female emperor 3 Revision 4 Preserve the section on the names

Crowned Emperor?

"She was later crowned the emperor of China. Cixi made history by becoming China's second Female Emperor after Wu Zetian (Tang Dynasty)." -- Uh... this doesn't sound right. Who crowned her? Was it during the times of ROC or PRC? Or was it back in the Qing Dynasty? Colipon+(T) 18:44, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

How would she be crowned during the times of ROC or PRC? She died in 1908. I don't quite understand the logic there. unixslug 19:03, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC) (Ad.: I just realized that didn't come out quite right. I was trying to say I agree with you and that it doesn't make it clear when exactly she's crowned, by whom, and for what purpose. Was it 1949 or was the just when the excavations began? Are those sentences even related, etc.)

Cixi is not the second female emperor

It is absolute nonsense that Cixi is the second female emperor of China. She was only the regent and de facto ruler from 1861 till her death in 1908. Tomhongs 13:45, 20 June 2005 (UTC)

Revision

I am about to do a big rewrite, and was wondering if other Wikipedians think that it is really necessary to have that huge section on Cixi's names. Colipon+(T) 20:45, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

why would you want to actually delete information when the original user put so much effort into it? i thought it was interesting. Antares911 23:28, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I thought it was really interesting too, and I put it on a separate page. It seems too tedious to fit entirely on this page, which should focus on Cixi's influence in politics and how she changed history. I believe that is more important than the stories behind a myriad of names. Furthermore, some of the information on naming can be incorporated elsewhere in the article. Colipon+(T) 05:34, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think its more advisable to edit out anymore wrong information (Cixi being the second female emperor of China) and organise the remaining information so that it can be easier to be read. I agree that it should focus more more her influence on politics and her legacy rather than her tombs etc. Tomhongs 07:32, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think the information about names should definitely remain inside the article. There's this tendency on Wikipedia to break up articles into small components, but in the end it just scatters the information all over Wikipedia, and it's a mess. Why always create different articles, when all the information could be contained in just one article? If you find the naming section tedious, just skip it. That's why there's a little table at the beginning of the article, so that you can directly go to the section you are most interested in. Hardouin 00:11, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I have reverted most of user Colipon's recent edits. Not only user Colipon deleted or moved out of the article a lot of valuable information, but his/her additions are very bad. It seems user Colipon is using some bad Western biographies about the empress, the kind of biographies that can be found in most western bookstores (such as the Dragon Lady), but these biographies are total rubbish I must warn everyone. As someone who actually majored in Chinese language and history, I am appaled everytime I read one of these biographies in mass circulation in the west. First of all, you need to know that all the authors of these biographies, as incredible as it sounds, DO NOT SPEAK A WORD OF CHINESE. Therefore, the books are largely hearsays and comments on second-hand documents. These biographies are flawed with errors. I can see right away that Colipon used these bad books to make his edits. One example: Colipon wrote that the empress consort of the Xianfeng Emperor was of the Sakda clan, which is totally wrong, but this wrong info is found in most western biographies of Cixi. If Colipon had read the Ci'an article, which I wrote based on Chinese documents (Forbidden City official records), he/she would have known that she was of the Niohuru clan. It was the first wife of Xianfeng who was of the Sakda clan. Another example: Colipon changed the Rehe Palace into the Jehol Palace. "Jehol" is an extremely old transliteration that is still found in general public biographies of Cixi, but I'm sorry to say, nowadays people in the scientific community, as well as on Wikipedia, use Pinyin, and Rehe is the correct Pinyin name. And then there are plainly factually wrong things, such as: Cixi never returned to Beijing early to plan the Xinyou coup as Colipon wrongly added, she stayed all the time in Rehe. It was actually Prince Gong who left Beijing secretly to meet with Cixi in Rehe to plan the coup. Where on earth did Colipon find so bad informations? In those infamous biographies I reckon... And I say nothing of Colipon's gross gramatical mistakes ("The Concubine Yi had went a step ahead")...
The article certainly needs to be fleshed out. So far it is just a stub (a long stub, yes). All the political things need to be added. But it needs to come from serious sources (i.e. either direct Chinese sources or serious scientific western publications), and edits need to be done by people who actually know something about the subject, not by amateurs. If you don't read Chinese, and you want to edit anyway, you can look for the Cambridge History of China, and get the 1,000 pages or so volume talking about the Qing Dynasty. That's the only western source I would totally trust. Hardouin 01:02, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Preserve the section on the names

Excellent work on the names section. It should remain because it is very much related to Cixi. I must say the information is very well done up and in great detail. Kudos mate. Tomhongs 06:42, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)