For historians, there is no more powerful aphrodisiac than an exciting topic buoyed by a raft of unexploited sources, raising the prospect of a revisionist look at an important figure or even an entire era. There are few leaders in modern Chinese history more layered with prejudice begging to be stripped away than Cixi, the dowager empress who ruled China for almost half a century until her death in 1908. For decades, she was condescendingly referred to in the West as “the Old Buddha,” the “She Dragon,” the usurper of a throne “over whose disintegration she presided.”