Actress Jiang Shan shines as Empress Dowager in extravagant palace drama Deling And Cixi

Deling And Cixi

Huayi – Chinese Festival of Arts 2026
Esplanade Theatre
Feb 27, 7.30pm

Late into Empress Dowager Cixi’s reign – although she does not know it yet – the feared regent who, five years earlier, narrowly escaped deposition and death at the hands of reformers and her adopted son, the Guangxu Emperor, still holds a tight grip on power but is stewing in a palace of decay.

Her court confidantes have perfected an elaborate filter of self-censorship to avoid trigger words like war or the names of the reformers. In 1903, the invention of electric lightbulbs still fascinates her like science fiction. Her best dumpling chefs have been seconded to serve foreign envoys.

That is until Cixi (Jiang Shan) summons the buoyant Deling (Lang Ling) and finds her frankness a refreshing change from the usual court sycophancy and its stiff choreography of bodies.

The Western-educated 17-year-old polyglot daughter of a Chinese ambassador is quickly made lady-in-waiting then palace princess just as the Russians and Japanese are fighting on Chinese soil.

Chinese playwright He Jiping stages this encounter between two formidable women whose paths crossed just as the Qing Dynasty – indeed dynastic China – was in its death throes. The uneasy amalgamation of the modern and traditional in Deling And Cixi makes for a riveting three-hour palace drama, marvellously detailed and subtly directed by Roy Szeto and Li Ren.

Chinese actress Jiang Shan delivers a masterful performance as Cixi – imbuing the empress dowager with a chesty alto, at times droll in her delivery and at others exuding a cynical, lethargic air of regality when flippantly ordering her servants to slap themselves.

Then, in private, behind beaded curtains with lovers and with Deling, Cixi’s voice modulates to the key of petulance and even girlishness.

The opulent costume design by Liu Hongman is also worth savouring.

One loses track of the number of outfits Cixi dons – be it in her private chambers or when she dresses up to get her photograph taken for the first time. Hues of imperial yellow and the famous Manchu headdress known as liangbatou is rendered in extravagant detail such that to see them swish across the stage is itself a treat.

Deling and Cixi are not merely played as the opposition between progress and conservatism, but are given a much more nuanced treatment in He’s script. Deling is less a kind of ideology whisperer to a backward empress as she is a version of Cixi that she might not have been able to express. In turn, Cixi wields the political power that Deling does not possess.

The play runs for so long partly because it is full of subplots and a cast of more than a dozen characters, including the Emperor Guangxu (Xiao Yuliang), whose unfulfilled revolution during the Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898 has now been displaced onto Deling.

A more focused play could see the relationship between Cixi and Deling developed even more subtly in a few more intimate, smaller scenes.

Seats were not filled on opening night, but one cannot think of a better way to understand the frankly bizarre internet trend of Sinophilia called “Chinamaxxing” that has taken over much of the social media feeds. Once upon a time, a declining Qing China looked to an ascendant West for ideas of modernity – so history indeed moves in strange, unpredictable circles.

Do not let the long runtime or the complex historical backdrop scare you. Deling And Cixi throws up a nuanced story of modernity that can reveal much more about the psyche of China one century ago than any TikTok trend about drinking boiled water.

Book it/Deling And Cixi

Where: Esplanade Theatre, 1 Esplanade Drive
When: Feb 28, 7.30pm; March 1, 2.30pm
Admission: From $40
Info: str.sg/mPMg