Part 23 (1/2)
When Guang-hsu begged me for the third time for a chance to meet with Kang Yu-wei, he was in tears. The redness in his eyes showed that he hadn't been sleeping well. ”As you know, Mother, I'm a 'eunuch.' It is unlikely I will produce an heir, so successful reform will be my only legacy.”
I was struck by his honesty and desperation. But I had to ask: ”Do you mean you can't even make love to Pearl?”
Guang-hsu's voice was filled with sadness and shame when he murmured, ”No, Mother, I can't. I will be despised by the nation because all believe that Heaven rewards sons only to those who behave virtuously.”
”My child, I forbid you to speak like this. You are only twenty-six years old. You'll keep trying-”
”Mother, doctors have told me that it's over.”
”It doesn't mean that you are finished.”
He wept, and I opened my arms and embraced him. ”You have to help me to help you, Guang-hsu.”
”Let me meet with Kang Yu-wei, Mother. It is the only way!”
At my request, an interview of Kang Yu-wei was arranged. The interviewers I chose were Li Hung-chang, Yung Lu, Tutor Weng and Chang Yin-huan, the former amba.s.sador to England and the United States. I wanted an evaluation of the Emperor's ”like-mind.”
Kang Yu-wei was summoned to the Board of Foreign Affairs on the last day of January. The interview went on for four hours. I had a.s.sumed it would be intimidating for a provincial Cantonese, but the transcript showed that the man's audacity was inborn. Kang demonstrated his ability as a dynamic speaker and was aggressive in pressing his views. I now understood why Pearl and Guang-hsu were captivated by him. A palace lad like Guang-hsu had never before met someone so brash, a man who apparently had nothing to lose.
According to Li Hung-chang, Kang Yu-wei had a moon face and was in his late thirties. Li's evaluation read that the interviewee ”posed himself in a theatrical fas.h.i.+on” and that he ”spent the whole time lecturing on subjects of reform and the advantages of a const.i.tutional monarchy as if he were a teacher in his town's elementary cla.s.sroom.”
I had to credit the forbearance of the four powerful men who had to listen to Kang.
Li Hung-chang told Kang that his ideas were nothing original and that he was exploiting the work of others, which Kang denied. When Li asked Kang Yu-wei for his thoughts on generating revenue to repay foreign loans and to fund the national defense, Kang became abstract and vague. When Li pressed, Kang responded that the treaties ”were signed unfairly, and therefore deserved to be dishonored.” When asked how he would deal with a j.a.panese invasion, Kang Yu-wei gave a sage's dramatic laugh. ”You can't make it my job to wipe your a.s.s!”
In conclusion, Li Hung-chang found the man offensive and believed that he was an opportunist, a zealot and probably mentally ill.
Tutor Weng, in his report, for the most part agreed with Li Hung-chang, despite having initially claimed credit for the discovery of ”a true political genius.” Kang Yu-wei's arrogance offended the founding father of China's premier academic inst.i.tutions. Tutor Weng took offense when Kang criticized the Ministry of Education and called the Imperial academies ”dead ducks floating on a stagnant pond.”
”He is resentful because of his own failures,” Tutor Weng remarked in his evaluation. ”I was the chief judge when he took the national examination, although I never personally graded his paper. Kang had enough tries, and he proved himself a loser each time. He didn't oppose the system until the system booted him in the gut.
”According to Kang's own description of himself,” Tutor Weng continued, ”he was 'destined to be a great sage like Confucius.' This is rude and unacceptable. I conclude that Kang Yu-wei is a man who craves the limelight and whose main goals are notoriety and celebrity.”
Amba.s.sador Chang Yin-huan expressed less disgust in his comments, but he didn't offer a positive evaluation either. It was his job, after all, to bring interesting people together. If the mingling produced results, he would gladly take the credit.
Yung Lu, who had returned from Tientsin especially for the interview, handed me a blank piece of paper as an evaluation. I imagined him losing interest the instant Kang began evading Li Hung-chang's questions.
I trusted Li Hung-chang, Yung Lu, Tutor Weng and Amba.s.sador Chang; however, I felt that they, like me, belonged to the old society and were inescapably conservative in outlook. We weren't happy with the customs, but we were used to them. Emperor Guang-hsu's reform plan would naturally create difficulties and even suffering for the likes of us. My son had reason to remind me to expect the pain that goes along with the birth of a new system.
I had great hope in Guang-hsu, if not yet great faith. By choosing to stand by him, I believed I would be offering China a chance to survive.
30.
I have never been so inspired!” The Emperor handed me a transcript of his long discussion with Kang Yu-wei. ”He and I went to work almost immediately on my plans. Mother, please don't object, but I granted him the privilege of contacting me directly. The censors and guards cannot be allowed to stand in my way!”
Before I had a chance to respond, Guang-hsu handed me a list of high-ranking ministers he had just fired. The first was his mentor of more than fourteen years, the sixty-eight-year-old Tutor Weng, the head of the Grand Council, the Board of Revenue, the Board of Foreign Affairs and the Hanlin Academy.
My son and Kang Yu-wei didn't seem to care that without Tutor Weng's approval they would have never met in the first place.
The grand tutor had been a father figure to my son. He had been his closest confidant throughout his adolescence, and since then they had weathered many storms together. Guang-hsu had even sided with Weng in his conflict with Li Hung-chang over the prosecution of the war with j.a.pan, when the evidence so clearly weighed against him. Not until now, however, did Guang-hsu admit to me that Weng was responsible for having aggravated his nervous condition ever since he was a child. I had always wondered whether Guang-hsu's sense of self-doubt was the result of his tutor's constant correction.
I asked the Emperor the reasons he would give for firing Weng.
”His mismanagement of revenues and his faulty judgment in the war with j.a.pan,” Guang-hsu replied. ”More than anything, I want to put a stop to his interfering with my decisions.”
The proud old Confucian bureaucrat would be heartbroken. It was near his birthday, and the disgrace would shatter him. I sent Tutor Weng a silk fan as a gift that might suggest this was simply a cooling-off period.
I wasn't entirely unhappy about his dismissal. Weng had been the Emperor's money man, and I was glad he was made to bear some responsibility. I had been accused of pocketing funds intended for the navy while Tutor Weng was praised for his virtues, and his firing would help to exonerate me. It was true that he had never embezzled a penny, but the people he hired, most of them his former students and close friends, stole from the treasury shamelessly.
Tutor Weng begged for a private audience, and I refused. Li Lien-ying told me that the old man was on his knees outside my gate all day. I let the tutor know that I had to respect the Emperor's decision-”I am not in a position to help”-and that I would invite him for dinner after he calmed down. I would tell him that it was time to leave his student alone. I would quote his own famous line: ”Tea, opera and poetry should not be missed-longevity depends on one's mental cultivation.”
I sat down to review the transcript of Guang-hsu's conversation with Kang Yu-wei. In my opinion, Kang's perspective was not much different from Li Hung-chang's. I didn't want to conclude that it was the young Emperor's willing ear that made Kang Yu-wei seem larger than life, but the transcript failed to show otherwise: KANG Y YU-WEI: China is like a ruined palace, with every door broken and every window gone. It's useless to repair the doorsills and window trim and patch the walls. The palace has been hit by hurricanes, and more are coming. The only way to save the structure is to tear it down completely and build a new one. China is like a ruined palace, with every door broken and every window gone. It's useless to repair the doorsills and window trim and patch the walls. The palace has been hit by hurricanes, and more are coming. The only way to save the structure is to tear it down completely and build a new one.GUANG-HSU: It's all controlled by the conservatives. It's all controlled by the conservatives.KANG Y YU-WEI: But Your Majesty is committed to reform. But Your Majesty is committed to reform.GUANG-HSU: Yes, yes I am! Yes, yes I am!KANG Y YU-WEI: The buffoons at court are too incompetent to carry out Your Majesty's plans-a.s.suming they agree to follow you. The buffoons at court are too incompetent to carry out Your Majesty's plans-a.s.suming they agree to follow you.GUANG-HSU: You make perfect sense! You make perfect sense!KANG Y YU-WEI: The throne should learn from the Western establishment. The first thing to do is create a system of law. The throne should learn from the Western establishment. The first thing to do is create a system of law.
This went on for page after page. I wondered what made my son think of Kang Yu-wei as an original mind. Prince Kung had long preached the idea of civil law. Li Hung-chang had introduced a system of laws not only in the northern states, where he had been viceroy, but also in the south. These laws met with great resistance, but their implementation had been going forward. The treaties we had signed with the Western powers were based on the understanding of such laws.
When Li Hung-chang traveled to the Western countries, his purpose was to ”check out the real tigers”-get firsthand information on how their governments worked. So it seemed to me that what Kang Yu-wei preached to the Emperor was already being accomplished by Li. Another example was education reform. Li Hung-chang supported the funding of Western-style colleges. With Robert Hart's help, we hired foreign missionary scholars to head our schools in the capital. At Li's suggestion, I encouraged the Manchus to send their sons and daughters to study abroad. Li believed that it would make his work easier if our own elite understood what he was trying to achieve. For me, if Manchus were to maintain their position as rulers, wider knowledge and perspective were as important as power itself.
Li Hung-chang made sense when he said, ”China's hope will arrive when her citizens feel proud to have their children take up such professions as engineering. We need railroads, mines and factories.” China had been transforming itself, but slowly and painstakingly. Young people were enthusiastic about seeing the world, even if they could not yet afford to go abroad. Before Li was shot in j.a.pan, the royal families had made arrangements for their sons to go and live abroad. Afterward, some families changed their minds, fearing for their children's safety. Li himself continued to travel overseas, in part to show that such fears were unfounded, but no one followed his lead.
Kang Yu-wei emphasized the importance of establis.h.i.+ng schools in the countryside. But for years the government had been offering tax credits to provincial governors and earmarking funds to help set up schools. Our efforts had to contend with superst.i.tious peasants who protested when rundown temples were converted into cla.s.srooms. One group of angry peasants set fire to school buildings and the home of the governor of Jiangsu province.
Kang Yu-wei challenged the texts traditionally used in Chinese schools. He refused to see that in the states where Li Hung-chang governed, industrial techniques were already being taught in schools. Talented Chinese writers learned to become translators and journalists. In the newspapers Li controlled-the Canton Daily Canton Daily and the and the Shanghai Daily, Shanghai Daily, among others-China's political concerns were addressed and foreign ideas introduced. among others-China's political concerns were addressed and foreign ideas introduced.
I kept reading Kang's conversation with the Emperor in the hope of finding something surprising and valuable.
Kang Yu-wei, I came to realize, was not suggesting reform but a revolution. He asked the Emperor to set up an overarching ”Bureau of Inst.i.tutions,” which Kang would head. ”It will handle reforms in all fields of China.” When the Emperor hesitated, Kang tried to convince him that ”determination conquers all.”
Guang-hsu was uneasy and emboldened at the same time. In Kang Yu-wei my son felt an absolute force, which he had long desired for himself. A force that would stop at nothing, acknowledge no boundary. A force that could transform a weak man into a powerful one.
I began to understand why Guang-hsu thought of Kang Yu-wei as his ”like-mind.” I didn't know Kang personally, but I had raised Guang-hsu. I was responsible for cultivating his ambition. I was aware that my boy had been tortured by self-doubt, which had stayed with him like a lingering disease.
As a boy, Guang-hsu took up clock repair. Soon his room filled up with clocks. Gears and springs and escape wheels and pendulums were strewn all over his room, and the eunuchs complained that they couldn't clean the place. But taking clocks apart and putting them together again improved his concentration and problem-solving skills. Doing something he could succeed at rea.s.sured him. But his doubts always returned.
Kang Yu-wei's criticism of the ”eight-legged essay” was fair, if unoriginal. The essay was a formal composition in eight parts, required of every student who took the civil service examination. A good score was a must for anyone who applied for a government position. The few brilliant minds who did well on the essay were fluent in the arcane works of ancient Chinese literature and usually too bookish to function in daily life. Nevertheless, their high scores would earn them governors.h.i.+ps.