Twenty silk cultural relics that were excavated from the Eastern Tomb of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) went on display at the China Silk Museum on Friday. Among them, are silk garments worn by Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi, one of the most powerful women in China’s history.
One of the pieces is an imperial robe worn by Cixi during her funeral. The robe’s pattern was worn exclusively by emperors, reflecting the empress dowager’s statue at that time, China News Service reported. She was an important figure in Chinese imperial court for half a century.
According to historical records, Cixi was real regent who effectively controlled the government in the late Qing dynasty for 47 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. Cixi and the young Guangxu Emperor fled Beijing to Xi’an when the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded the city in 1900 where they callously pillaged and then heartlessly destroyed the beautifully opulent and expansive Imperial Summer Palace in northwest Beijing.
A silk quilt that covered Cixi’s body when she was buried, nearly three meters long is on display. The quilt is embroidered with 25,000 Chinese characters and form part of a Buddhist text. The report said that the characters were woven with thread made of gold.
Wang Shujuan, the curator of the exhibition, told the China News Service that the quilt was rotting and the threads of gold were falling and the images on the fabric fading. It took more than ten restorers half a year to repair the quilt.
The exhibition will run until November and consists of items from the Eastern Tomb of the Qing Dynasty and the Palace Museum in Beijing, including many robes, shoes and hats made of silk.
These items were restored in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang Province from 2014 to 2019.
The Eastern Tomb of the Qing Dynasty is a large and well-preserved royal cemetery of the dynasty. It was officially listed in the World Cultural Heritage List on November 30, 2000.
Empress Dowager Cixi’s imperial robe Photo: VCG
