The tragic Qing dynasty politician whose legacy lives on in descendant’s new novel

Few figures in Qing dynasty (1644-1912) history embody the tragedy of shifting tides quite like Duanfang, a Manchu statesman born in 1861. Duanfang rose through the imperial ranks, earned distinction for his service during the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) and went on to hold major regional posts, such as governor of China’s Hubei province and viceroy of the Liangjiang region. His career took a bizarre turn when he was stripped of his viceroyalty in 1909 for supposedly showing disrespect by photographing Empress Dowager Cixi’s funeral procession. Just two years later, while leading troops to quell an uprising in Sichuan, he met a brutal end when his own soldiers executed him in 1911. But beyond his dramatic downfall lay a deeper complexity. Duanfang lived, spoke and governed as a Manchu official, using only his given name in adherence to Manchu traditions. Yet beneath this assimilated identity, his lineage revealed a curious truth – he was ethnically Han, caught between the dominant culture and the ruling elite he faithfully served. More than a century later, a descendant of Duanfang is releasing a novel inspired by his life. E.L. Shen, a Chinese-American writer living in the US state of Connecticut, was drawn to her great-great-great-grandfather’s life and how the two could share different yet eerily similar experiences of feeling like a cultural “impostor”. Set to be released on September 22, her new novel Foreigners (2026) is a sweeping intergenerational story that follows three family members in different times who experience marginalisation in China and modern America. A story told across three periods In the modern day, Dawn is a student at a New England boarding school grappling with her burgeoning queer identity. Running parallel to Dawn’s story is that of her grandmother, Zhengyi, a new US immigrant in the 1960s. Then there is Duanfang, an ancestor of both women, as he navigates his identity among the warring communities of the Han and Manchu in late 19th century imperial China. “I wanted to know, ‘What does it mean to be an impostor?’” Shen, 30, says, explaining the inspiration behind her book. “You could be an impostor in a physical sense – pretend to be someone else. You could also have impostor syndrome. And you could also be doing this sort of subtle thing where you’re really trying to fit in with a country and an identity that is foreign to you.” Shen straddled the line between staying true to historical facts while also adding fictional flair when attempting to “get into the head” of Duanfang. His chapters are written in a “folktale-esque” voice, whose secrets affect the generations that come after him. This may not be the right book for those looking for hard historical facts, Shen warns, as she has heavily dramatised Duanfang’s life story. The book takes creative liberties with unknown information lost to time, such as the name of Duanfang’s wife. Her connection with Duanfang When Shen was in high school and first discovered her connection to Duanfang, she thought it was a joke. “But then, some of my family members went to China and started doing a family history project, and it was quite legitimate,” she explains. Struck by this lore, she sought out a professor at the University of Rochester in New York who had written her dissertation on Duanfang. She helped Shen trace her family lineage. Shen experienced this history not only through textbooks and dissertations but through family heirlooms too. “My grandma just whips out this insane 10-carat ring and asks, ‘Oh, do any of you want this?’ She was like, ‘Oh yeah, like, it’s from Duanfang but I don’t know what to do with it.’” Shen’s mother eventually remade the ring into a necklace. Today, it remains with the family. “I’m really excited that it’s part of our family and we can pass it down to future generations,” Shen says. A historical collection While working as a government official, Duanfang also collected Chinese antiquities – spanning bronzes, jades, steles, calligraphy and paintings. He fostered connections with Chinese art and history scholars and with foreign figures like American collector John Calvin Ferguson and Japanese art critic Taki Seiichi, introducing them to traditional Chinese bronze connoisseurship. When speaking with experts about her family lineage, Shen also discovered that Duanfang travelled to the United States, various European countries and even Egypt as an imperial commissioner to study constitutional government. In 1906, he bought 51 antiques in Cairo, including a limestone stela of Queen Cleopatra of Egypt, thus creating the first Egyptian collection in China and one of the earliest in East Asia. Today, some of Duanfang’s other collections can be spotted at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. The Met houses his ritual altar set – which includes three wine containers, three wine warmers, five drinking cups, a wine mixer and a rectangular table – that likely dates back to the Zhou conquest of the Shang in around 1046BC. Their varying designs suggest that they were made at different times and passed through generations in a family. According to the Met, these bronze vessels were found in the early 1900s and went into Duanfang’s collection. The story goes that Shen’s family was left destitute after Duanfang’s death, so they sold his collection to a French collector. The ritual set eventually ended up in the hands of Ferguson and was later sold to the Met in 1924. When Shen’s grandmother immigrated to New York in the 1960s – which directly inspired the character of Zhengyi in Foreigners – she was able to get her first job in the city thanks to the Met curator’s daughter. “[My grandmother] always looked at her with such fondness. I think the daughter even went to her wedding,” Shen says. It was a strange yet fascinating experience to see Duanfang’s collection at the Met, Shen recalls. “It almost felt like impostor syndrome because I feel so separate from this reality – I’m a third-generation Chinese-American,” she says. “I feel like it did bring me closer to my culture and my heritage, but it also made me feel like, ‘Oh, do I even belong in this place when I have such an important family history?’” ‘Every grandparent has something really interesting to tell’ Duanfang, a Qing dynasty official who navigated the treacherous politics of the early 20th century, probably could not have imagined that his life would one day inspire a novel about identity, queer awakening and the immigrant experience in 21st century America. But beyond being a statesman and antiques collector, Duanfang fought to abolish foot binding in China and established China’s first formal public kindergarten while serving as the governor of Hubei in 1903. At a time when female literacy was not prioritised, Duanfang sent more than 20 girls to study pedagogy in Japan. “I hope that [this book] encourages people to talk to any living grandparents [or] relatives about their own family histories, because I really do think that every grandparent has something really interesting to tell,” Shen says. She also hopes that Foreigners will prompt people to confront the same questions she had while writing the book: in what ways do you live as a foreigner or an impostor in your own land, and do you treat others as foreigners too?

The tragic Qing dynasty politician whose legacy lives on in descendant’s new novel

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The life of Duanfang inspires E.L. Shen’s novel Foreigners, about identity, queer awakening and the immigrant experience in modern America

The life of Duanfang inspires E.L. Shen’s novel Foreigners, about identity, queer awakening and the immigrant experience in modern America