In the eleventh year of Xianfeng (186 1), before Empress Dowager Cixi and Prince Gong jointly launched a Xinyou coup, she personally drafted a secret order to remove Su Shun and others.
From this secret letter, we can easily see that the cultural accomplishment of Empress Dowager Cixi is actually not high. First, the handwriting is crooked, and you can't see any calligraphy skills, which is far from the big characters of Empress Dowager Cixi's imperial books. Second, her writing and cultural foundation is not good. There are 237 words in the secret Oracle, of which the typo 12 is as much as 16, and the sentence is not fluent. For example, "When I entered the city (city), I was ordered by Prince Gong to praise a positive (political) thing, yes (when) no, please consult my brothers", and there were four obvious typos in the 23 words. Third, she also knows that her cultural level is limited, so there is a sentence in the secret edict that "Seven elder brothers (referring to Yi Xuan) should be rewritten".
Four years later, at the end of March (1865), the knowledge and calligraphy of Empress Dowager Cixi did not improve much. Comparing the imperial edict of 186 1, we find that the handwriting of this imperial edict of myna Yixin is also crooked, and the writing level has not improved. The imperial edict is only 226 words, with 13 typos. In previous secret orders, she misspelled "ruling power" for many times and misspelled "returning to politics" for "returning to politics". She also knew that her writing was poor, so she made an imperial edict to wait for it. Later, she gave it to the university students of Wen Yuan Pavilion, Tijen Pavilion, Zhou Zupei and others, and said, "There are many other words in the imperial edict, so you should polish it!"
Although the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra copied by Empress Dowager Cixi in the 30th year of Guangxu (1904) is better than the above imperial edict, the font structure is still dull and loose, and the brushwork is immature. Comparing the above-mentioned original works with the big characters such as "Fu", "Shou", "Dragon" and "Tiger" written by Empress Dowager Cixi in the world, anyone can know at a glance that it was not written by one person.