부산대학교 도서관

Through frequent writings on her travels to China in the late-nineteenth century, Eliza Scidmore helps “open” the country to Western tourism. She steps up her reporting there after China’s military defeat by Japan in 1895 and a palace coup in which the empress dowager Cixi wrests control from Emperor Guangxu. Scidmore’s contacts in Peking include Der Ling, a lady-in-waiting to the dowager. Helen Taft, the future first lady, is visiting Japan for the first time in the summer of 1900 when the Boxer Rebellion puts Peking under siege. Scidmore’s publisher rushes her book China: The Long-Lived Empire into print. Later that year, on a reporting trip for her book on India (1903), Scidmore socializes with British Viceroy George Curzon and his American-born wife, the former Washington debutante Mary Leiter. Scidmore strikes up a friendship with Chicago socialite Emily MacVeagh, a fellow enthusiast of Asian treasures.