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This is the story of how two women from worlds that could not be more disparate - imperial Qing China, the
American Midwest - found common ground before and, especially, after one of the greatest diplomatic cataclysms in East/West
relations, the fifty-five day siege of the foreign legations in Beijing by the Boxers, members of an anti-foreign cult.
The
book traces these women's parallel lives and notes how they converged to alter the experiences and perspectives of each other,
towards each other and towards each other's worlds: Mrs. Conger's growing love for China through her effort to understand
the Empress Dowager, Cixi's growing understanding and appreciation, through Mrs. Conger, of the need for reform and the usefulness
of direct communication and cooperation with the West, at a time when Chinese xenophobia had nearly destroyed the country
even faster than the land-grabbing and opium-selling tactics of foreigners.
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