In 1898 a young Englishman walked into a homosexual brothel in Peking and began a journey that, as he claims, took him all the way to the bedcahmber of imperial China's last great ruler, the Empress Dowager Tz'u Hsi. Published now for the first time, the controversial memoir of Sinologist Sir Edmund Backhouse, 'Decadence Mandchoue', provides a unique and shocking glimpse into the hidden world of China's imperial palace with its rampant corruption, grand conspiracies and uninhibited sexuality.