Empress Cixi. Anyone interested in the history of China comes across this name. However, the general reader knows little about the details of the life of the power-hungry empress. A representative of the Manchu Qing dynasty, the last ruling dynasty of feudal China, Cixi (1835–1908) is characterized by historians as a despotic, treacherous and cruel ruler of a huge country. Her image has repeatedly attracted creators of works of art both in China and in the West. One of the most famous was the novel “The Empress,” written in 1956 by the American writer Pearl Buck, winner of the 1936 Nobel Prize in Literature. P. Buck idealizes his heroine in many ways, but, being an expert in Chinese history and traditions, he truthfully and fascinatingly talks about the morals of the imperial court, which was the embodiment of hypocrisy, betrayal and vice. The novel “The Empress” is being translated into Russian for the first time.