I Am Still Here -- Supreme Ruler -- To Please History ... -- Miss Katherine Carl -- Message From Heaven -- One Of Seventeen -- Imperial Concubine -- On Top Of The World -- The Birth Of The Son Of Heaven -- Dark Times -- Jehol -- Unwanted Destiny -- Eunuchs -- I Can Look At Myself In The Mirror -- Glorious Succession -- A Second Regency -- A Mother's Responsibility -- Death Of An Empress -- My Retirement -- Behind The Gauze Curtain -- Western Ways -- The Boxer Uprising -- In Flight, Once Again -- Returning Again -- Death Of Guangxu -- I Am Alone -- I Miss Him -- Some Notes On The Paintings From The Artist.

Over 22 centuries of imperial rule, Cixi -- best known as the Empress Dowager -- is one of only three women to ever govern China. From humble beginnings, "The Orchid" was chosen for her beauty to become a concubine to Emperor Xianfeng. She bore him a son and was soon ruling from "behind the gauze curtain" while her ailing lover, her son and finally her nephew actually sat on the throne. Her determination held the empire together for half a century, but her reactionary attitudes pushed China into poverty, civil war and foreign invasion and led to the fall of the Qing Dynasty. This is the tale of China's Cleopatra, a strong woman who managed to survive and thrive in a male-dominated world. It revolves around 25 astonishing, intimate paintings by celebrated Chinese-Canadian painter Zhong-Yang Huang, which appear alongside her life story as imagined by writer David Bouchard. Paintings and memoirs take us inside the cloistered Forbidden City to a fascinating world of concubines, eunuchs, opium, poisoning and intrigue.