The Winter Palace
The Summer Palace was always the Empress Dowager’s favorite Palace, but after the Boxer rising and the subsequent occupation of Peking by the Allies, when foreign troops were stationed in both the Peking Palaces, and so much damage done them, she would have preferred to have lived the whole year round at the Summer Palace. As it is, she occupies it from eight to nine months of the year, going out to it at the first opportunity in the spring, and leaving it only when it is so cold as to make it impracticable. There is a system of heating it by furnaces beneath the floors, but Her Majesty never used these, and the small Chinese porcelain stoves, sorts of braziers, were quite insufficient for heating the immense halls. This, however, would not have influenced her, as she never minded the cold, but it was very difficult for the officials to take the long trip to the Summer Palace during the winter, and this consideration alone caused her to move into the Winter Palace when the weather became very cold. The members of the Cabinet and the Princes had summer homes in the immediate vicinity of the Palace, but there were thousands of officials who were obliged to come out every day from Peking.
The time had now come for the Court to move in definitively to the Winter Palace, and shortly after the Birthday festivities, Their Majesties took up their residence in the Capital. Before I left the Summer Palace, the young Empress suggested that I should go to the Winter Palace the next day in time to assist in receiving Her Majesty on her arrival there, for, as usual, I left the Summer Palace the day before the Court, and went in to the United States Legation. At every change of residence of the Empress Dowager, the young Empress, Princesses, and Ladies of the Court precede her by a few hours, and stand upon the threshold of her