Etiquette Keeps Empress Off Road

As etiquette dictated that no one was permitted to sit down in the presence of a Chinese monarch, how could any one stand up straight and drive one of the many high-powered motor cars gifted to the Chinese Empress? 

Couldn't Use Motor Cars —

Etiquette Would Not Allow Driver to Sit in Presence of Chinese Dowagar Empress

When the Dowagar Empress of China died in 1908, she left 48 motor cars, among other things, to her heirs. Most of these had been made specially for her, many were gifts from her Chinese potentates and all were gorgeous, palatial, expensive cars. Her favorite was an eight-passenger French machine, with its body painted deep orange, and its seats upholstered in violet satin brocade, edged with round flat blue turquoise stones. 

But the Dowager never rode in a motor car in her life and not one of the 48 varieties ever left the Imperial garage. It was not because there were no embryo chauffeurs in China. The young Chinese who had been in England and America imbibing Occidental college educations had learned to joyride and dozens of them might have qualified as high chancellor of the wheel in the Dowagar Empress' buzz wagon. But —no one may sit down in the presence of a Chinese monarch! And how could any one stand up straight and drive in a high-powered motor car? 

In 1908 there were not more than a dozen motor cars in all China besides the collection in the Imperial garage; today there are about 400, at least 60 percent of which are driven by Occidental traders, commercial agents and members of the various Western legations. Driving is restricted to a very few of the largest coast cities, where it is rough going at best, and there is not a road in China fit for a motor ride. — Mariposa Gazette, 1918

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Moderator and Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Violating Imperial Etiquette

Imperial Chinese eunuchs carrying and attending to the Chinese Empress, circa 1900 —  No society clung more tenaciously to the long-established custom of having eunuchs at Royal and Imperial courts than the Chinese. Confucianism promoted all things ancient, chiding every dynastic Monarch to meticulously follow those precedents set not only by saintly historical Kings of old, but also by God-Kings glorified in China's legendary past. Chronicles of those courts reveal that Chinese Kings as early as the 8th Century B.C. kept castrated servitors. — Source Hidden Power: The Palace Eunuchs of Imperial China

Punished for Curiosity:

A Learned Chinese Doctor Pays Dearly for a Little Innocent Sightseeing

It is dangerous to gratify curiosity or to violate precedent at the Chinese Imperial court. The Empress dowager is a great stickler for etiquette. Recently she required the services of Dr. Li Teoh'ang, Vice President of the Imperial Academy of Physicians, at Peking, for one of the members of her suite at Eho Park Palace. 

The learned doctor had never been inside these famous palace grounds, and his curiosity was fired to see the many curious objects of which he had heard wonderful tales. So he bribed a palace eunuch to show him around the grounds. While the two were leisurely walking about and enjoying themselves, the Empress spied them. She at once dispatched servants to punish their effrontery.

The eunuch was seized, thrown on his face and accommodated with 50 blows with the bamboo on the calves of his fat legs. The doctor was docked three months' pay and received a severe reprimand, while his assistant was ordered never to venture again into the Empress' presence. 

The affair created a sensation because of the high position of the physician and of the humiliating punishment dealt out to him. —New York Sun, 1894

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia

Royal Chinese Etiquette Book of 1405

Empress Xu (徐皇后) (1362 – July 1407), was the empress consort to the Yongle Emperor and the third empress of China's Ming dynasty. “Mount Tai may crumble away or she may have to walk over sharp-edged swords, but this resolve must not pass from her.”

Royal Chinese Authoress

Wrote a Book of

Social Etiquette in the Year 1405

The Empress Consort of the Emperor Yung Lo of the Ming dynasty in A. D. 1405, committed to paper her thoughts on the behavior of women, under the title of "Instructions for the Inner Apartments," i. e. for women. These are arranged under twenty headings, with an additional chapter on the education of girls. 

The Empress lays much stress on gentleness, good temper, economy, kind treatment of the young and of relatives, but thinks that speech unrestrained is the real rock upon which most women split. "If your mouth is like a closed door, your words will become proverbial; but if it is like a running tap, no heed will be paid to what you say." In her additional chapter on education, which is really more or less a doggerel poem of about three hundred and fifty lines, our authoress will be considered very disappointing by some. 

So far from pleading for higher education for Chinese women, she urges only that a girl's governess should teach her pupil to practise filial piety, virtue, propriety, deportment, good manners and domestic duties as a preparation for her "entry into married life." Then, if she has no children, to continue the ancestral line, she is not to show jealousy, but rather satisfaction if her husband takes a subordinate wife. 

Supposing that he dies before her, she will be left like earth without its heaven, and must transfer her dependence to her son and summon up her resolution to face widowhood until death. Mount Tai may crumble away or she may have to walk over sharp-edged swords, but this resolve must not pass from her. 

Examples are given of heroines of all ages who have died by hanging or drowning themselves rather than violate their marriage vow. "Their bodies, indeed, suffered injury in life, but their names will be fragrant for ten thousand generations." — Los Angeles Herald, 1904

Etiquette Enthusiast, Maura J Graber, is the Site Editor for the Etiquipedia© Etiquette Encyclopedia