Yours Sincerely ( YS)'s visit to the Forbidden City was highly spiced up with tales of Eunuchs who served the royal families for 2000 over years. With the emperor having so many expresses and concubines, and to to mention palace maids, and not all eunuchs were totally incapacitated, not wonder the imperial palace had to be a forbidden place! And in spite of it being forbidden, the local tour guide spun out countless ludicrous, lurid and lewd tales from behind the walls of the Forbidden City. Naturally Y S' curiosity was aroused and this led to the purchase of " The Last Eunuch of China - the life of Sun Yaoting" by Jia Yinghua.
Brutally castrated by his own father, Sun Yaoting, cherished the dream of serving the emperor in order to upgrade his family. Before his wound fully healed, he learnt that the last Emperor Pu Yi had abdicated the throne! The Japanese had over run China.
It is also Sun Yaoting's biography and how he managed to get into the web of the eunuch in order to get closer and closer to the imperial palace. The cruelty he suffered in the hands of his fellow eunuchs and his imperial masters filled many chapters of the book.
Sun also lived through China's civil wars and the eventual victory of the Communist Party in 1949, the Cultural revolution (1966-1976) and the subsequent "opening up" policy from which China emerged as a leading economic and political power worldwide.
It is a book to read to take a peep into life in the Forbidden City before the fall of the Qing Dynasty.
8 comments:
I was thinking of reading the book also. The life of an eunuch has always been intriguing...
can lend 2 u after better half has finished it. We r now in JB.
Retired and still going places.. Cool!!
hello...u never retired from living. U only do that 6 feet underground horizontally. life is 4 the living. U have lots of time 2 b dead! Plan your retirement.Tks 4 visiting,
I like your zest for life... one of my role models... 8)
Sir, do you want to live in the palace if you have the chance?
The palace must be very very big...
Live in the palace. Oh no! Not even with all the concubines and maids. It is a "prison."
haha.... LOL
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