SlowHands
03-07-2009, 10:53 AM
Castrated at 8, Sun Yaoting hoped for an imperial life of riches. Instead, he experienced palace intrigue, war, revolution, scorn and, finally, recognition. (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-china-eunuchs6-2009mar06,0,7938113.story?track=rss)
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/500/Sun_Yacting_-_Last_Eunuch.jpgby Barbara Demick – Los Angeles Times - March 06, 2009
photo of Sun Yaoting and his biographer, Jia Yinghua. In his final years, Sun was recognized as a rare living repository of history.
The last of any kind of tradition, practice, or people is somewhat saddening, even if its not something the 'Western' mind considers 'normal' -- Ed.
Reporting from Beijing -- Sun Yaoting was 8 when his father castrated him with a single swoop of a razor.
The year was 1911, and China was in turmoil. Just a few months later rebels deposed the emperor, overturned centuries of tradition and established a republic.
"Our boy has suffered for nothing," his father said, weeping and beating his breast, when he learned that the emperor had been overthrown. "They don't need eunuchs anymore!"
Little did he know that the child nevertheless would earn a place in Chinese history. The imperial court was resuscitated long enough to give Sun a chance to serve the wife of the boy emperor Puyi -- a position that gave him the distinction of being the last eunuch to the last Chinese emperor.
After the Communists came to power in 1949, Sun and other surviving eunuchs were despised as freakish symbols of the feudal past. He was nearly killed during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, and his siblings were so fearful of persecution that they threw away his bao, or treasure: the severed genitals that eunuchs kept pickled in a jar so they could be buried as complete men....http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-china-eunuchs6-2009mar06,0,7938113.story?track=rss
http://www.cleanmpg.com/photos/data/500/Sun_Yacting_-_Last_Eunuch.jpgby Barbara Demick – Los Angeles Times - March 06, 2009
photo of Sun Yaoting and his biographer, Jia Yinghua. In his final years, Sun was recognized as a rare living repository of history.
The last of any kind of tradition, practice, or people is somewhat saddening, even if its not something the 'Western' mind considers 'normal' -- Ed.
Reporting from Beijing -- Sun Yaoting was 8 when his father castrated him with a single swoop of a razor.
The year was 1911, and China was in turmoil. Just a few months later rebels deposed the emperor, overturned centuries of tradition and established a republic.
"Our boy has suffered for nothing," his father said, weeping and beating his breast, when he learned that the emperor had been overthrown. "They don't need eunuchs anymore!"
Little did he know that the child nevertheless would earn a place in Chinese history. The imperial court was resuscitated long enough to give Sun a chance to serve the wife of the boy emperor Puyi -- a position that gave him the distinction of being the last eunuch to the last Chinese emperor.
After the Communists came to power in 1949, Sun and other surviving eunuchs were despised as freakish symbols of the feudal past. He was nearly killed during the Cultural Revolution in the late 1960s, and his siblings were so fearful of persecution that they threw away his bao, or treasure: the severed genitals that eunuchs kept pickled in a jar so they could be buried as complete men....http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fg-china-eunuchs6-2009mar06,0,7938113.story?track=rss