ABSTRACT
The ritual Chinese expression to describe such female rule is ‘to lower the curtain and listen to matters of government’, and that is precisely what the two ladies did whenever they granted their ministers an audience, for their twin thrones were concealed by hangings through which they could hear and be heard while remaining unseen. Indeed the classical Civil Service examinations and the concomitant system of education were to be the great clog on China’s progress throughout the remainder of the nineteenth century. In spite of modern learning, and the grudging recognition by the authorities of the need for technicians, ambitious young men with influence behind them still saw the time-honoured Confucian training as the real gateway to wealth and power, and the modern field was in general abandoned to candidates handicapped in seeking more profitable careers by family poverty.
