Mrs Thadeus White

Imperial Masquerade: The Legend of Princess Der Ling by Grant Hayter-Menzies

The 2008 biography of the enigmatic highborn Eurasian author (Two Years in the Forbidden City being the best known of her seven books) who served as translator and lady-in-waiting to China's Empress Dowager Cixi.

Der Ling was a fascinating human battleground of warring identities, a victim of the hallucinogenic effects of too much publicity, much of it prompted by Der Ling herself, and a figure whose life provides a glimpse into one woman’s experience of living not just between two cultures—that of China and the West—but among many worlds: social, religious, moral, political.
- Grant Hayter-Menzies

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