Huayi – Chinese Festival of Arts 2026
‘I can’t rehabilitate her’: Deling And Cixi humanises Empress Dowager without making her the good guy
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Jiang Shan (seated) plays the Empress Dowager and Lang Ling (right) the lady-in-waiting in Deling And Cixi, a late-Qing court drama showing the existential clash between East and West.
PHOTO: ESPLANADE – THEATRES ON THE BAY
SINGAPORE – The figure of Empress Dowager Cixi has endlessly enthralled the imagination – a woman king in the patriarchal 19th-century Chinese court who shirked her nurturing duties to ruthlessly snatch power from her nephew Guangxu.
Yet, this caricature also neglects a playful woman who doodled cats on her maid’s faces when they fell asleep, and who was so vain she insisted she was the only person in the palace who could wear fresh flowers.
Chinese playwright He Jiping’s Deling And Cixi, which plays at the Esplanade Theatre from Feb 27 to March 1, hopes to restore some of the humanity to this traditional historical villainess.
The 74-year-old says in Mandarin: “When I write, I don’t simplify my characters. Cixi is an authoritative and cunning empress, but also a woman. She has her romance and sufferings.”
Deling And Cixi is part of the Esplanade’s Huayi – Chinese Festival of Arts 2026, starring Chinese stars Jiang Shan as the Empress Dowager and Lang Ling as the Westernised lady-in-waiting Deling.
It premiered in Hong Kong in 1998 in a production with minimal set design by the Hong Kong Repertory Theatre. All shows sold out, requiring additional standing tickets.
Since then, the push-pull dynamic between Cixi and Deling in the late-Qing court has played to packed venues in major cities in China and a total of 65 times in Hong Kong, in both Mandarin and Cantonese.
Its set has evolved into one centred on a gigantic imperial pillar, under a 280-degree curved track along which large lights move to create the illumination of a sundial.
He says: “From lighting to set design, everything is based on real history, yet reinterpreted to give a contemporary feel. The pillar is imperial authority, but also the suppression of humanity.”
For Deling And Cixi’s debut outside East Asia, He is hoping that, like Hong Kong, the civilisational clash between East and West that drives the play will resonate with Singapore.
Despite Cixi’s humanisation, he says: “I’m not trying to rehabilitate Cixi, and she cannot be rehabilitated. Whatever Deling couldn’t achieve, I want to help her complete.”
Deling And Cixi also contains the story of impotent emperor Guangxu (played by Xiao Yuliang, left.)
PHOTO: ESPLANADE – THEATRES ON THE BAY
The same sympathies inform the order of the play’s title, against suggestions that Cixi with her fame should come first. “I strongly disagree. Deling is the light and idealistic, like me, so she should be at the front. The play is about transformation. Audiences, through art, must be somewhat changed to find their more idealistic selves.”
Cixi actress Jiang, 58, shadowed the formidable Golden Horse Award-winning Lisa Lu in previous iterations and says she read lots of historical material from varied sources to piece together the puzzle that is Cixi.
She is often shown as an elderly stateswoman requiring physical support from those around her, but even at 50 and 60 years old, the reality was that Cixi walked faster than anyone around her.
Jiang, known for her performances in the films Something About Secret (1999) and First Time (2012), is empathetic towards Cixi.
“Power allowed her to rule, but also stripped her of the luxury of enjoying life as an ordinary woman. Her personality and mine are heaven and earth apart, but I’ve been toiling to get closer to her.”
In the story of the two women is also an equally complicated relationship between Cixi and her nephew Guangxu, played by former Zero-G boy band member Xiao Yuliang.
Again, He’s impulse is to reject traditional portrayals of the emperor as a cardboard weakling.
The playwright says: “He is a prodigy: studied the classics at five, rode the horse at six, mastered archery with both hands at eight. He lived with a surfeit of love from the lonely Cixi.”
The misfortunes of all three characters are personifications of the tragedy of their time, but Jiang says the play, at three hours long, also directly targets a much more contemporary tragedy.
“In this age of information overload, we are happy to get audiences seated and have them quietly enjoy a play. No matter their age, at least they will be able to have some refuge from their screens.”
Book it/ Deling And Cixi
Where: Esplanade Theatre, 1 Esplanade Drive str.sg/mPMg
When: Feb 27 and 28, 7.30pm; March 1, 2.30pm
Admission: From $40
Info:
