It was hard to fight Nuharoo when she had her mind set. I could only manage to have An-te-hai sneak Tung Chih to his father’s bedside, usually when Nuharoo went with the Buddhists to chant or was enjoying her teatime opera, provided by Su Shun and performed in Nuharoo’s quarters.
To my disappointment Tung Chih didn’t want to be with his father. He complained about his father’s “scary look” and “bad breath.” He was miserable when I pushed him toward the sickbed. He called his father a bore and once yelled, “You hollow man!” He pulled at Hsien Feng’s sheets and threw pillows at him. He wanted to play Ride the Horsy with the dying man. There wasn’t a single compassionate bone in his little body.
I spanked my son. For the next week, instead of leaving Tung Chih to Nuharoo I spent time observing him. I discovered the source of his poor behavior.
I had instructed Tung Chih to take riding lessons with Yung Lu, but Nuharoo made excuses for the child to be absent. Instead of practicing with real horses, Tung Chih rode the eunuchs. More than thirty eunuchs had to crawl around the courtyard to make him happy. His favorite “horse” was An-te-hai. It was the child’s way of getting revenge, for An-te-hai had been ordered by me to discipline him. Tung Chih whipped An-te-hai’s buttocks and forced him to crawl until his knees bled.
Worse than this treatment of An-te-hai was that he ordered a seventy-year-old eunuch named Old Wei to swallow his feces. When I questioned Tung Chih, he replied, “Mother, I just wanted to know if Old Wei had been telling the truth.”
“What truth?”
“That I could do anything I wanted. I only asked him to prove it.”
I looked at my son’s little face and wondered how he had become capable of such mean tricks. He was clever and knew whom to punish and whom to reward. If An-te-hai hadn’t been loyal to me, he would have yielded to Tung Chih’s every desire. Tung Chih had once claimed that he knew Nuharoo’s favorite dishes. It didn’t occur to me that this was my son’s way of rewarding her. I even praised him when he sent Nuharoo her favorite fancy moon cakes. I thought it was an appropriate gesture of piety and was pleased that my son got along with her. Then Tung Chih bragged about how Nuharoo encouraged him to neglect school. She had said to him, “There are emperors in history who never spent a day in the classroom but had no problem bringing their country to prosperity.”
I confronted Nuharoo and pointed out the danger of not disciplining Tung Chih. She told me that I was overreacting. “He’s only five years old! As soon as we get back to Peking and Tung Chih resumes his normal schooling, everything will be fine. Playing is a child’s nature, and we must not interfere with Heaven’s intent. He asked for the parrots yesterday, but An-te-hai had brought none with him. Poor Tung Chih-he only asked for a parrot!”
This time I decided not to give in. I insisted that he attend his classes. I told Nuharoo that I would check with the tutors regarding Tung Chih’s homework. But I was disappointed. The head tutor begged me to release him from Tung Chih.
“His Young Majesty threw paper balls and knocked off my glasses,” the rabbit-toothed tutor reported. “He will not listen. Yesterday he made me eat a strange-tasting cookie. Afterward he told me that he had dipped the cookie in his own waste.”
I was shocked at the way Tung Chih ruled his classroom. But what concerned me more was his interest in Nuharoo’s ghost books. He stayed up late to listen to her stories of the underworld. He got so scared that he would wet his bed at night. Yet he was so drawn to those stories that they became an addiction. When I interfered by taking the picture books away, he fought with me.
Tung Chih was willing to do anything to get away from me. First he pretended to be sick in order to avoid his classes. When I caught him, Nuharoo would come to his defense. She even secretly ordered Doctor Sun Pao-tien to lie about the “fever” that kept him out of school.
If this was the way we prepared Tung Chih to be the next emperor, the dynasty was doomed. I decided to take the matter into my own hands. In my eyes, the situation was of national significance. All I knew was that my time was running out.
Every day I escorted my son to his tutors and then waited outside until the classes were over. Nuharoo was upset that I didn’t trust her, but I was too angry to worry about her feelings. I wanted to change Tung Chih before it was too late.
Tung Chih knew how to play Nuharoo and me off each other. He knew that I couldn’t deny his visiting Nuharoo, so he went as often as he could, to make me jealous. Unfortunately I fell into his trap. And he continued to cause trouble in school. One day he pulled out the rabbit-toothed tutor’s two longest eyebrow hairs. He knew full well that the old man regarded them as his “longevity sign.” The man was so crushed, he was seized by a stroke and sent home for good. Nuharoo saw the incident as a comedy. I didn’t agree, and intended to punish my son for his cruelty.
The court replaced the old tutor with a new one, but he was fired by his student the first day on the job. Tung Chih’s stated reason was that the man farted during lessons. He charged the tutor with “disrespect for the Son of Heaven.” The man was whipped. Upon hearing this, Nuharoo praised Tung Chih for “acting like a true ruler,” while I was shattered.
The more I pressed, the worse Tung Chih rebelled. Instead of supporting me, the court asked Nuharoo to “watch over” my “outrageous behavior.” I wondered if Su Shun was behind it. Tung Chih now had no problem talking back to me in front of the eunuchs and the maids. He was good with words. Sometimes he sounded too sophisticated for a five-year-old. He would say, “How low of you to deny my nature!” or “I am an endowed animal!” or “It’s wrong for you to put me to sleep in order to play the tamer!”
I had heard the same from Nuharoo: “Allow Tung Chih to journey forth, Lady Yehonala” and “He is a traveler who understands the universe. He thinks not of himself, but of the voyage, of dreams and of the soul of the Buddha’s spirituality” and “Throw your keys to the winds, and leave his cage open!”
I began to doubt her intentions. There had always been something perverse about her approach to Tung Chih. No matter what he did, she was always the loving one. I realized that unless I stopped Nuharoo, I wouldn’t be able to stop Tung Chih. For me the struggle had turned into a battle to save my son. I spent days thinking about how to talk to her. I wanted to be firm about my intentions without injuring her pride. I wanted her to understand that I appreciated her affection for Tung Chih, but she had to learn to discipline him.
To my surprise, Nuharoo came to me before I went to her. She was dressed casually in an ivory gown. She brought fresh lotus flowers as a gift. She complained about my restrictions on Tung Chih’s diet. She insisted that he was too thin. I explained that I had no problem with his eating more, but that his diet must be balanced. I told her that Tung Chih sat for hours on the chamber pot without producing a single turd.
“I don’t see it as a problem,” Nuharoo said. “Children take their time when it comes to the potty.”
“The children of peasants never have that problem,” I argued. “They eat plenty of roughage.”
“But Tung Chih is no peasant’s child. It is insulting to make that comparison.” Nuharoo’s expression turned cold. “It is only right that Tung Chih follow the Imperial diet.”
I had personally hired a chef to prepare healthful meals, but Tung Chih complained to Nuharoo that the chef had served him rotten shrimp, giving him cramps. No one except Nuharoo believed the lie. However, to please Tung Chih, she fired the chef.
I had to restrain myself from fighting openly with Nuharoo. I made a decision to concentrate on Tung Chih’s studies first. Every morning I took a whip and escorted Tung Chih to his tutor.