With three of China’s most extraordinary empresses as their personal guides, visitors to this extravagant exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum can take their own tour through the secrets of the Forbidden City to the enduring heart of China.

SALEM - Like figures on a faded scroll come alive, three empresses who reigned over China’s Forbidden City reveal their secrets in an opulent exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum.

Visitors will see art and artifacts most Chinese never saw, from the grand complex of more than 900 buildings in Beijing that were home to the northeastern Asian minority known as Manchus. The Manchus ruled China’s Han majority population for 268 years until the downfall of the “last emperor” Pu Yi.

The show includes nearly 200 spectacular objects including a 237-pound golden shrine and an emperor’s mourning poem for his young wife, intricately woven imperial gowns, fabulous Buddhas and paintings that capture the grandeur of China’s last dynasty before a century of rebellion, war, revolution and eventual triumph.

There are dozens of pieces of exquisitely-crafted jewelry and ceremonial objects, like a “wish-granting scepter of gold and coral, so valuable they make the mega-wealthy characters of the popular movie “Crazy Rich Asians” look like poor relations.

Four years in the making, this sumptuous exhibit was organized by the PEM in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s Freer/Sackler galleries in Washington, D.C., and the Palace Museum of Beijing, China.

Exhibit co-organizer Daisy Yiyou Wang, PEM’s curator of Chinese and East Asian Art, said, “We are very proud to reclaim the presence and influence of these empresses about whom history has been largely silent.”

She said the exhibit focused on just three of more than two dozen Manchu empresses because they “left fabulous objects and stories” that shed light on little known chapters of Chinese history.

Beyond the wealth of rare objects, this exhibit triumphs by revealing the singular humanity of three Qing empresses unfamiliar to many Chinese and most Westerners.

“We want to make them real people so visitors can connect with them in a personal and deep way,” said Wang.

Coming from humble origins, Empress Dowager Chongqing gave birth to and raised the dynasty’s greatest ruler, the Qinglong emperor.

That emperor’s 15-year-old wife, Xiaoxian, grew into a trusting confidant and loving wife whose early death left her husband bereft.

Visitors can see the handwritten scroll from 1748 on which the heartbroken emperor wrote: “All ends here/ Summer days and winter nights spent with her/ Will never come again.”

Starting as a low-ranking consort who bore the emperor a son, the wily Cixi schemed her way into a half-century of power during a time of reform, tumult and eventual collapse.

PEM Deputy Director Linda Hartigan described the show – the first major international exhibit to examine the role of Qing empresses – as “an exceptionally timely, arriving in the midst of a great debate about gender and power.”

“This exhibit resulted from an incredible journey of research to show how these women shaped history,” she said.

Wang and co-organizer Jan Stuart, of the Freer-Sackler, have transformed several museum galleries into a journey through time where visitors encounter striking portraits of empresses, dazzling robes and jewelry they wore and even watch a brief performance of opera.

Wall text explaining the role of each object is provided in English and Chinese.

Like touring the actual Forbidden City, exhibit visitors have the opportunity to look beyond the immediate splendors to penetrate the traditions of an ancient culture that has kept the past alive in its crafts and art.

In a lavishly-illustrated catalog, Wang, Stuart and several other scholars explain the history of Qing empresses, the ritualized basis of imperial portraiture and the special roles of weddings, religion and politics in their lives.

Leading an opening-day tour, Stuart said Manchu women were not required to bind their feet like their Han counterparts, and were physically active and rode horses.

She explained the empress “essentially became mother of the empire and was expected to become a role model for the country.”

Visitors will come to see that court life with all its complex symbols, auspicious colors, times and dates and intricate rules of conduct was an earthly reflection of the Manchu cosmology then being grafted upon several millennium of Chinese life.

Many objects on display, like a 130-year-old festive silk robe once worn by Empress Xiaoding, bear multiple images of dragons and phoenixes, symbols of the royal couple.

A gilded headdress, likely given the empress by her husband as a wedding gift, featured dangling tassels meant to make the bride appear “demure yet tantalizing.”

Visitors in search of visual spectacle can observe elaborate weddings and other ceremonies in spectacularly detailed paintings that make President Trump’s inauguration look like a Rotary Club meeting.

The exhibit concludes with a monumental, elaborately-framed painting of the controversial Empress Dowager Cixi, (1861-1908) who, contrary to the traditional non-participation of royal women in politics, ruled before her son came of age.

Caricatured as the original “Dragon Lady” for her stiletto-like fingernails, the grim-faced Cixi became the most powerful woman in Chinese history, setting the precedent some would say, for Chairman Mao Zedong’s politically ruthless wife, Jiang Qing.

Stuart called the study of China’s empresses “exciting, timely and necessary.”

“(W)e hope this exhibition will prompt broader reflection on the position of women in society and fosters a sense of commonality and connection across time and culture,” she said.

With three of China’s most extraordinary empresses as their personal guides, visitors to this extravagant exhibit can take their own tour through the secrets of the Forbidden City to the enduring heart of China.


“Empresses of China's Forbidden City”

WHEN: Through Feb. 10, 2019

WHERE: Peabody Essex Museum, 161 Essex St., East India Square, Salem

ADMISSION: $20 adults, $18 seniors, $12 students. There is an additional $6 fee to visit the Yin Yu Tang house.

INFO: 866-745-1876; www.pem.org