Eunuchs in China

[4] Eunuchs existed in the Chinese court starting around 146 AD during the reign of Emperor Huan of Han,[5] and were common as civil servants as early as the time of the Qin dynasty.

[citation needed] It is said that the justification for the employment of eunuchs as high-ranking civil servants was that, since they were incapable of having children, they would not be tempted to seize power and start a dynasty.

[11] Men sentenced to castration were turned into eunuch slaves of the Qin dynasty state to perform forced labor for projects such as the Terracotta Army.

The Han dynasty under the reign of Emperor Wu castrated a prince of the kingdom of Loulan from Xinjiang that they were holding hostage at court because he broke a law.

Near the end of the Han dynasty in 189, a group of eunuchs known as the Ten Attendants managed to gain considerable power at the imperial court, so that several warlords decided they had to be eliminated to restore the Emperor's government.

Empress Dowager Hu (Northern Qi) was said to have initially engaged in sexual relations with her eunuchs—although, in light of their being previously castrated, the traditional historians used the term xiexia (褻狎, "immoral games") rather than "adultery" to describe her acts with them.

The Empress then ordered the castration of around 100 Chinese boys she had captured, supplementing the Khitan's supply of eunuchs to serve at her court, among them was Wang Ji'en (王继恩 (辽朝)).

He was forced to become a eunuch and was castrated as a young boy because his father and other members of the Dai family who worked as government officials were accused of crimes so he was punished as well.

[91][92][93][94] A 1499 entry in the Ming Shilu recorded that thirteen Chinese men from Wenchang including a young man named Wu Rui were captured by the Vietnamese after their ship was blown off course while traveling from Hainan to Guangdong's Qin subprefecture (Qinzhou), after which they ended up near the coast of Vietnam, in the 1460s, during the Chenghua Emperor's rule (1464–1487).

The local ethnic minority Tusi chief Wei Chen took him into custody, overruling objections from his family who wanted to send him back to Vietnam.

Wei Chen planned to sell him back to the Vietnamese but told them the amount they were offering was too little and demanded more however before they could agree on a price, Wu was rescued by the Pingxiang magistrate Li Guangning and then was sent to Beijing to work as a eunuch in the Ming palace at the Directorate of Ceremonial (silijian taijian 司禮監太監).

[102][103] An anti-pig slaughter edict led to speculation that the Ming Zhengde Emperor adopted Islam due to his use of Muslim eunuchs who commissioned the production of porcelain with Persian and Arabic inscriptions in white and blue color.

[72]: 34ff [107][108][109] In popular culture texts such as Zhang Yingyu's The Book of Swindles (c. 1617), eunuchs were often portrayed in starkly negative terms as enriching themselves through excessive taxation and indulging in cannibalism and debauched sexual practices.

Also, they had to repair and construct ponds, castle gates, and palaces in major cities like Beijing and Nanjing, and the mansions and mausolea in the living spaces of imperial relatives.

[125][126] While eunuchs were employed in all Chinese dynasties, their number decreased significantly under the Qing, and the tasks they performed were largely replaced by the Imperial Household Department.

This new policy of castrating sons of killers of 3 or more related people and rebels helped solve the supply of young eunuchs for the Qing Summer Palace.

The Imperial Household Department immediately castrated the 11-year-old Hunanese boy Fang Mingzai to become a eunuch slave in the Qing palace after his father was executed for murder.

[144] The Qing Summer palace, due to this policy of castrating sons of mass murderers and rebels received many young healthy eunuchs.

[158] Norman Kutcher noted that George Stent said young eunuchs were physically attractive and were used for "impossible to describe" duties by female imperial family members and they were considered "completely pure".

[169] Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet noted on his visit to the Qing summer palace as part of the Macartney Embassy in 1793 that there were two kinds of Chinese eunuchs.

The eunuch Zhang Delang engaged in sexual acts with a prostitute in Tianjin's Japanese concession where he lived after the fall of the Qing and he also married three women.

[178] It was also reported that the eunuch Xiao Dezhang (Hsiao Teh-chang) (Zhang Lande) was suggested by Cixi (Tsu-hsi) as a sexual partner for the Longyu empress (Lung-yu) since the Guangxi emperor (Kuang Hsu) was impotent.

A yellow bag with bamboo sticks was kept in the Forbidden City and Empress Dowager Cixi once ordered the palace servant girls and court ladies to beat the eunuchs with them.

They were the musicians, actors, taking care of the tombs and served as the Imperial Household Department's zongguan and maintained temples, altars, parks and gardens, belonging to 5 different sections.

[191] The film "The Conqueror" (征服者) starring actress Chen Hong depicts the castration of the 8–15 year old sons of rebels in the White Lotus Rebellion in 1804.

[196] The Imperial Household Department immediately castrated the 9 sons of Ma Guiyuan since they already reached age 12 and were enslave as eunuchs to Qing soldiers in Xinjiang.

[195] A man in Shaanxi had his penis cut off by his daughter in law, surnamed Xie during the Qing dynasty[203][204][205] In 1872 boy named Liu Ch'ang-yu from Henan was taken by the Imperial Household Department for castration when he grew of age to be enslaved as a eunuch in a princely establishment since his father had murdered several relatives.

He was imprisoned in the office of the district magistrate of Huaining (Hwaining) until he reached 11 years old in 1877 and was then ordered to be handed to the Imperial Household Department for castration.

[207][208][209][210] The Qing later changed its law in 1801, 1814, 1835 and 1845, saying that all the sons and grandsons of rebels who were ignorant of their father and grandfather's rebellious intents were to be sent to the Imperial Household Department for castration regardless of whether they were adults or children.

[218] Empress Dowager Longyu wanted the imperial palace to have the right to make more eunuchs during the negotiations for abdication of the Qing in 1912 in the Articles of Favourable Treatment but she was forced to concede her demand.