This is the book I'm reading!!!

Anchee Min continues her mission to tell the truth about China and its past in her second groundbreaking work of historical fiction, Empress Orchid (Houghton Mifflin, February 3, 2004). As she did in her national bestseller Becoming Madame Mao (2000), Min offers a corrective to the traditional portrait of one of China's most hated women. In a novel based on years of research that included documents Min smuggled from the Forbidden City, Empress Orchid tells the story of Tzu Hsi, China's longest-reigning female ruler and its last Empress. For decades Chinese schoolchildren have been taught that Empress Orchid was "a mastermind of pure evil and intrigue," but Min presents a strong-willed, utterly compelling woman who used her beauty to become a concubine of the Emperor and her brains to become his confidante and lover.