Posted on 03/18/2009 7:06:52 PM PDT by sinanju
"China's last eunuch was tormented and impoverished in youth, punished in revolutionary China for his role as the "Emperor's slave" but finally feted and valued, largely for outlasting his peers to become a unique relic, a piece of "living history."
He had stories of the tortuous rituals of the Forbidden City, Emperor Pu Yi's last moments there and the troubled puppet court run by the Japanese during the 1930s. He escaped back to the heart of a civil war, became a Communist official and then a target of radical leftists before being finally left in peace.
This turbulent life has been recorded in the "The Last Eunuch of China" by amateur historian Jia Yinghua, who over years of friendship drew out of Sun the secrets that were too painful or intimate to spill to prying journalists or state archivists.
He died in 1996, in an old temple that had become his home, and his biography was finally published in English this year."
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Takes a lot of balls to talk about something that personal.
According to a chinese student I worked with in grad school, chinese eunuchs were NOT castrated. The testicles were left intact, the penis was removed. They were called gong-gong, not eunuchs.
I was fortunate to visit the Forbidden City in 1998 while in Beijing on business. A truly incredible place.
This is one story you don’t want to go off half-cocked and read!
I read the book The Last Emperor in the 70s long before the movie. The same book was apparently reprinted after the movie came out and is available at Amazon. Absolutely fascinating.
As for the Last Eunuch, sounds sort of EeeeeeeUuuuuuuu.
I think you misunderstood. The entire external genitalia were removed.
That’s even WORSE! For they would still have the DESIRE, the LUSTS, from the hormones of the testicles, but no equipment with which to do anything about it!
Sounds very frustrating.
What a horrible tragedy, and a sad life. Next time I start feeling sorry for myself I will remind myself of this wretched man.
A fellow who used to work for me had a picture of himself and this eunuch guy.
The last in China, maybe. The Republican Senate is loaded with them.
I could have gone all day without reading that. Ouch!
Whoa!
I am reading Concubine by Jade Lee, concerning the process of how the 19th century emperors filled their harems, first by advertising for candidates, of which there was no shortage of willing female volunteers, then by a weeding out process which resulted in the lowest-rated females being assigned to the lowest harem - and possibly never being called to entertain the emperor.
.....he got better.
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