On the morning of November 14, 1908, the Guangxu Emperor of the Qing Empire, just 37 years old, suddenly complained of stomach pains and tingling in his hands.
As his attendants noticed a darkening of his face and scrambled to fetch the imperial physician, the head eunuch, Li Lianying (李莲英), hurried to the adjacent Forbidden City to notify the Empress Dowager Cixi. She was, after all, the young man’s aunt, primary caretaker, and principal jailer.
The emperor had been under virtual house arrest for over a decade. In 1898, the emperor had tried to institute a series of sweeping reforms aimed at modernizing the empire, only to seem them suppressed by conservatives. The Empress Dowager had stepped in, and since then the emperor had been a prisoner in his own palaces.
By the time the physician arrived at the emperor’s quarters on Yingtai Island, part of the imperial garden known as Zhongnanhai, the emperor was dead. Was it natural causes? Was it poison? Officially, the emperor died of a sudden illness, but the questions persisted for nearly a century. Finally, historians in China put an end to at least part of the mystery.