With the Empress Dowager of China by Katharine A. Carl

We arrived at the Palace in good time the next morning, as Her Majesty and suite were coming out of the Great Audience Hall. She greeted us with a charming smile and made her usual inquiry for my health. We joined her suite and went along to the Throne-room where the portrait had been begun. This Throne-room is a very spacious and lofty hall; one side of the great room is almost entirely of glass, with only the wooden columns that support the roof between the windows -- the lower half of plate-glass, the upper of latticework with Korean paper as shades. In the center of this side of windows is a huge plate-glass door, reaching from ceiling to floor. The other three sides of the hall, which separate it from the apartments at the side and back, are of the same beautiful, open woodwork carving I have mentioned as serving as partitions in my pavilion. Those in Her Majesty's Throne-room were, however, of greater delicacy of workmanship and were more beautiful as to the painted panels. The poems, written on white silk, and alternating with the painted panels, were from Her Majesty's favorite authors, original poems written by an Emperor or Empress, or laudatory verses dedicated to Her Majesty. There were satin portières at the doorways, and blue silk curtains over the plate-glass windows. Blue, being the Empress Dowager's favorite color, is used for all the hangings in the Palaces which are not intended for official purposes; where yellow is the color.

On the right of the Throne-room is a small chapel with an altar, over which presides a figure of the contemplative Buddha seated on the lotus. This altar was always sweet with offerings of fresh flowers and fruit. In front of the figure of Buddha stood the incense-burner, with perfumes constantly burning. On the left of the Throne-room are Her Majesty's sleeping apartments, and behind the openwork partition at the back of the hall is a large antechamber where the attendants and Ladies await their turn to make their entrance into the Throne-room. In the rear of the hall is a magnificent five-leaved screen of teakwood, inlaid with lapis lazuli, chalcedony, and many other semiprecious stones. In front of this screen, on a dais, stood an immense, couch-like throne, with a large footstool. These couch-like thrones, where Their Celestial Majesties may recline when holding Audiences, are not at all favored by the Empress Dowager, who always sits extremely erect, without leaning upon a cushion or the back of the throne. Except in the Great Audience Hall, where she uses the traditional throne of state of the Dynasty, she prefers a much lighter and quite modern one, which she has introduced into the Palaces. The thrones favored by Her Majesty are of open carved teakwood, circular in form, with cushions of Imperial yellow. One of these stood in the front part of this hall, on which she sat for the portrait.