Armed with her title as princess, the married name of Mrs. Thaddeus White, and the United States as a new frontier to conquer, Der Ling won many admirers.

While browsing through the Seattle Art Museum in 1945, a scholar discovered a 5-inch jade seal, missing from China since the Boxer Rebellion, as a priceless Imperial seal. “My spectacles fell off my nose and I started to yell,” said Hugh Alexander Matier, 62-year-old scholar and traveler.

It was breathtaking. It felt like being inside the beating heart of that pulsating, exotic nation.

Not agreeing with something that happened in history or with another person’s traditions doesn’t provide license to eradicate or vilify entire aspects of the past.

In this eyewitness story, we meet Tzu-hsi in the twilight of her reign. Advanced in age, the Empress on the Dragon Throne is no longer the young beauty whose skill at seduction and aptitude for court intrigue saw her rise from a lowly Imperial concubine to the second most powerful place under the Hsien-feng Emperor.

Much older than myself, Martin was a distinguished and handsome career journalist who worked at the same newspaper I did.

He told me about being in school in Shanghai during the 1930s and 1940s where he played a Hawaiian guitar, wore a lei with his friends and sang in nightclubs.

He found all of this very cool, jumping right in to join me as we got down to the serious business of Chinese cuisine.

Her mother was stoned to death in China. During the Cultural Revolution, she was imprisoned, faced a sham trial by community party leaders, and executed. Her crime was her profession. My friend was very bitter.