The History of China - #287 - Special: Caged Birds Sing

Episode Date: February 28, 2025

A look into the inner heart of the mysterious Forbidden City of Beijing, and at its most protected - and confined - denizens: the women of the Imperial palace. From Empress, to concubine, to lowly maid - women hold up half of Heaven. Please support the show!: patreon.com/thehistoryofchina Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 287, The Caged Birds Sing A free bird leaps on the back of the wind, and floats downstream to the current ends, and dips his wing in the orange sun rays, and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky but the bird that stalks down his narrow cage can seldom see through his bars of rage his wings are clipped and his feet are tied so he opens his throat to sing the caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still, and his tune is heard on the distant hill where the caged bird sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze and the trade winds soft through the sighing trees and the fat worms waiting on a dawn brightbright lawn. And he names the sky his own. But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams. His shadow shouts on a nightmare's scream. His wings are clipped and his feet are tied. So he opens his throat to sing. The caged bird sings with a fearful trill of things unknown but longed for still.

And his tune is heard on the distant hill. The caged bird sings for freedom. Caged Bird by Maya Angelou 长幽罗雁,碧月羞花 Her beauty is such that fish hide in the depths and geese plummet from the sky. The moon veils its face and blossoms bow their head in shame, then compare themselves with her. A Chinese idiom referring to the four great beauties,

戏世,王朝俊,小琛, and Yang Yuhang. When one thinks of China, there are a few indelible elements that immediately come to mind. The Great Wall, of course, but perhaps second only to that would be the Forbidden City of Beijing. For most people in the world, it is a mysterious distant place that they will never see in anything but pictures or perhaps film. For others, a place to be visited once, maybe twice in a lifetime, explored as a museum, and then committed to memory. But for a select few across time, the Forbidden City was more than that. It was, in fact, their home, and for some, the only home that they would ever know. At its height, the Forbidden City housed between 9,000 to 10,000 people at a time, and many of them were expected to never leave its high,

forbidding walls. Yet even within the inner city, there was another area inside even that, one even more restricted, one that even fewer could gain access to. And that was the inner court. Now, we've already discussed one aspect of the imperial inner court with our exploration of the imperial eunuchs last time. Today, though, we're going to be discussing the other half of that inner court equation, namely the people who those imperial eunuchs were tasked with guarding, serving, and spying on. The ladies of the imperial palace. All women living in the Forbidden City were carefully sequestered in the imperial quarters deep inside the palace. From an overhead map view, that would be the northernmost about third of the palace grounds, the inner court.

That's also where the emperor himself and his chambers were. Most women in the Forbidden City were employed as maids and servants. But within them, there was a select group of concubines, whose explicit task was to bear children for the Emperor, as many as they and he could possibly father. Those women who were lucky enough to give birth to male offspring were elevated from mere concubine to imperial consort. And at the top of that pecking order was, of course, the designated, or chosen, empress. So, let's take a look at each of those three groups, and their lives and responsibilities within the palace, in turn. First up, the concubines.

Young women were selected to become concubines. If they were selected, they were known as elegant females or xinu. This was a process that had been undertaken across Chinese dynastic history since as early as the Jin Dynasty in the 3rd and 4th centuries CE. The specific selection criteria varied from emperor to emperor. Of course it did. In the Ming Dynasty, for instance, no household was exempt from the selection.

According to status, all young unmarried women went through the xionyu process. Only girls who were already married or with certified physical disabilities or deformities were exempted. But the Qing Xunzi Emperor, reigning from 1638 to 1661, began to exclude most of the Han Chinese population by limiting selection to the Eight Banners families, who were primarily Manchurian, as well as some of them being Mongolian and the few smatterings of

others. As such, the Board of Revenue was tasked to send notices to all officials in the capital, as well as provincial garrisons, in order to enlist their help in getting the word out to the head of the clans. The banner officials then submitted a list of all available women to the commander's headquarters in Beijing and to the Board of Revenue. The board then set the date for selection. When that day arrived, the selected women were gathered and assembled at the Shenwu Gate of the Forbidden City in order to undertake their inspection. Accompanying them would be their parents, or at least their nearest living relatives, together with their clan heads and local officials. All of which to say, it was a pretty big deal.

For almost all these girls, it would have been probably the first time that they would have ever been outside of their family home. The requirements for selection were fairly straightforward and fairly simple, but that didn't make them easy. First, of course, was beauty. Social background, as was customary in China, held very little influence, if any, in the selection process. Many emperors chose concubines from the general public. The lone exception to this policy would be the empress herself. She was always selected from the family of a high-ranking official, as this was much more of a political alliance than what we'd think of as any kind of a necessarily romantic marriage. Of course, the women's physical health was of paramount importance. Less than 100 candidates

would be selected to spend several nights with women who specialized in training and managing maids. Candidates' bodies were inspected for skin infection, body hair, body odor, and anything else which could either indicate poor health or perhaps just unpleasantness. Physical beauty, however, was not enough. These women would also need to be trained. Finalists were initiated into forms of acceptable behavior such as how to speak, gesture, and even how to walk correctly. They also learned arts such as painting, reading, writing, chess, dancing, as well as conversation. The final stage of this examination test process would be for the standout candidates to spend several days each living with and serving as the emperor's mother's maids and caretakers, meeting her daily requirements and needs. They would undergo further inspections while sleeping by the mother's side to root out any of their bad nocturnal habits,

such as snoring, emitting odors, or talking or walking in their sleep, any or all of which could be disqualifying. For our purposes today, we're going to look at an overview of one particular selection process that occurred in the late Ming dynasty, specifically in the year 1621 with the Emperor Tianqi. He sent his eunuchs across the country to handpick some 5,000 young women aged 13 to 16 from whom he would select a wife. And so these 5,000 women were assembled and stood at the gate of martial virtue in 50 lines of 100 neat rows, each according to their age. Initially, 1,000 were immediately cut. This was for evident deficiencies, such as being too tall, or too short, or too fat,

or too thin. With this initial cut in place, I mean, this all feels very much like a reality show, and for them it very much is reality. The second day of the competition would begin, with the eunuchs intensively examining the bodies of the remaining 4,000 women, evaluating their voices, their general manner, the way that they comported themselves. And in the process, they managed to eliminate another 2,000 of the women. And so we were down to only 2,000 left. The third day was the day for hands and feet. Both would be observed and examined closely. They would be checking for grace of movement and of gesture because it was very, very important for these women to behave and

move in a smooth and delicate and ladylike manner. In the course of this third day, another 1,000 were eliminated, leaving just 1,000 women left. For these final thousand, day four would bring gynecological examinations, which would remove 700 of them from contention, leaving only 300. These final 300 were then housed in the palace, where they would undergo a one-month-long intensive training procedure, testing them for intelligence, merit, temperament, and moral character. From these 300, the top 50 candidates would then be subject to further examinations and interviews about subjects like mathematics, literature, art, and they were each ranked in accordance to how well they did. Of these 50, the top three ranks, so gold, silver, and bronze,

would be selected as the imperial concubines. This was, of course, the emperor's personal final decision, although he had, as we know, lots and lots of help getting there. But even then, like so many reality shows, the competition wasn't over, and it never really is. Only a few of even those selected to be concubines would ever even really be noticed by the emperor in day-to-day life, or win his favor. Most even of the concubines would spend their lives alone, bitter, and watching their youth just fade away into age and regret. Unsurprisingly, politics and jealousy were rife across the inner court. Beauty was certainly more of a curse than a blessing in China during this period of history.

Naturally, concubines were strictly forbidden from having sex with anyone other than the emperor. Their chastity and virtue was to be preserved and protected at all costs. As such, they work under constant observation and guard. Their activities were overseen and monitored by the eunuch attendants, who wielded, of course, as we've discussed, great power within the palace and over its goings-on. The concubines were required to bathe and be examined by a court doctor before any visit to the emperor's chambers or his bed. Any lady the emperor graced with a visit would be subject to the jealous rivalries of her peers, or as they probably often thought of her, her betters. Concubines had their own rooms and would

fill their days applying makeup, sewing, practicing various arts, and socializing with other concubines. They did so in the hopes of having the opportunity to impress the emperor and thus be able to elevate their station, becoming ladies of the palace. For most of these concubines though, it was a dream in vain. For all their efforts, all their application of often poisonous makeup and beauty products, and countless hours spent practicing calligraphy, poetry, and elocution, it could all be for nothing. Most of them spent their entire lives in the palace largely alone and without any contact with the emperor, and therefore, no contact with any man at all. We shift slightly forward in time now to the Qing dynasty because that is the dynasty that

we are in, in terms of our overall narrative, and since it's also the most chronologically close of the dynasties to us today, we have the most information about it. It is from the Qing imperial harem that we will draw on the hierarchies of the concubines within the imperial court. The rankings remain consistent across the period, but the specific number of consorts and concubines varied under different emperors. Some, as we've seen, preferred many thousands of women at their disposal, some only a relative few, and one in particular, I guess, just liked the one. The rankings were, of course, at the top, Huang Hou, or the Empress. She was, of course,

the Emperor's principal wife, typically the mother of the heir, or at least one of the prime candidates to the heir, the daughter of a powerful and politically connected family. Second only to the Empress would be the Empress Dowager. The Empress Dowager is the formal title given to the Emperor's mother, which consequentially typically usually makes them the widow of an Emperor as well. She had little to no actual formal authority, but tended to wield considerable informal authority within the court, owing to the fact that she was the emperor's mommy, and the emperor usually liked to listen to his mommy. However, at two times during the Qing dynasty, the Empress Dowager would in fact wield real actual political authority. One in

particular, named Cixi, would become one of the most famous and perhaps infamous women in all of Chinese history. But more on her later. Below the Empress and the Empress Dowager would be the Imperial Noble Consort, or the Huang Guifei. This second rank of consorts was a unitarily held title, meaning that only one woman at a time could hold it. It was indeed a very special rank. This could often be the woman that the emperor loved most of all. This could be sort of his wife of love a lot of the time. Whereas the Empress, again, was much more often a political or kind of negotiated affair. Below the noble consort was the imperial consorts, or the Guifei. There were up to two holders of this title at any time.

So there's one Huang Guifei and two Guifei below her. Below the imperial consorts were the regular consorts, or the Fei. Four women could hold this title. And now we are out of the consorts and into the concubines. So it's a shift down in rank and a shift down in power and prestige to the imperial concubines, or the Pin. Six imperial concubines were in the court at any given time. Below her would be the Attendants. And so we are getting into the lower ranks here.

These are the women who were essentially not selected to be even in consideration for the Imperial attention. But instead are just sort of menial palace workers in the inner palace as well although sometimes occasionally fate could change for them if they managed to attract the attention of the emperor and got knocked up and it was a boy then they could potentially become a concubine or maybe even consort but the odds were not good So these ranks in descending order are the first class female attendants, the second class female attendants, and the second class female attendants lower grade. The harem had an unlimited number of these attendants. These three ranks did not have their own palaces and instead lived communally in kind of a dorm network within the palace.

Though I've just described a limited number of consorts and concubines especially, those numerical quotas really only held true for those high, really upper-ranking positions. As we already said, there were hundreds and even thousands of these concubines living in the palace at any given time. And so they descended on down the ranks as well. So we had the, let's see, the Huanghou, the Guifeis, the Huangguifei, the Feis, the Pins, but then there's also lower ranked concubines as well. Titles such as Guiren, Changzai, and Daying, typically in unlimited numbers as well. With tons of free reality shows, you are totally free to watch what you love on Pluto TV. And for limited numbers as well. Their job is to simply exist and be at the availability, the beck and call of the imperial will. This is, I hope it's obvious by now, a highly polygamous system. We know that polygamy was common across China throughout the imperial

era. Typically, such practices of polygamy were limited to the upper caste of society, the nobility, the very rich and wealthy and powerful because you had to have the ability to financially and property-wise maintain those women who you were taking on as your concubines. There was an expectation of care there. And so this kind of lifestyle was not open to the typical farmer or urbanites or commoner in general. This was not simply licentious in nature.

This was an investment. This was a hedge against future uncertainty, especially when it came to bloodline, and specifically, as we know is terribly important in China then and now, the male bloodline. To have multiple wives was seen as an affirmation of male potency and power and prestige, of course, as well as, of course his virility. He's got to be able to satisfy that many women, so he must be very powerful indeed. The emphasis was on procreation and continuity of the father's family name. This all traces back to Confucianism, of course, the emphasized ability of a man to manage a family as part of his personal growth in great learning or da shui. In the case of the emperor, guaranteeing a successor to the throne was, of course, the most important thing that the imperial line could do for itself was make sure that it went on for one generation more.

There are four primary principles of polygamy in imperial China. First is the maintenance of a distinct and strict separation between the main wife and the concubines. There's that old joke of you've got to find a woman who can cook, you've got to find a woman who can clean, you've got to find a woman who can have a conversation with you, you've got to find a woman who likes the things that you enjoy, and finally, you've got to make sure those women never meet each other. It's a little bit like that in Imperial China. Just teasing, of course. Sort of. Now, the main wife was superior to all other wives. She was the boss of all the other women, and her word was law, at least until a man of the house spoke. She was the boss of all the other women, and her word was law at least until a man

of the house spoke. She was responsible for submitting to the higher principles of polygamy, as well as mentoring the other wives in the nature and method of harmonious behavior for the greater good of the household. The second principle, and I think I might lose a few of you here, the women must not be jealous. And I know, I know, I'm thinking it too. Good luck with that. But especially the main wife had to rise above those earthly emotions, or at least that was the expectation. The belief that they were living for a higher purpose presumably helped displace feelings of bitterness, jealousy, and rivalry. Although, let's be real here, we've all seen enough real housewives to know that that was not always the case. The third principle was that attachment could radically destabilize polygamy.

Please try to enjoy each concubine equally. A husband should not have a favorite, nor should any of the wives monopolize the man. Love had to be distributed evenly among the wives, which effectively meant that passionate attachment was not acceptable. This goes against what I earlier said about the Huang Guifei often being kind of the favorite, kind of being the one that the emperor married most for love. Well, these principles of polygamy ask anyone in a polycule today. Those principles are nice, but once they hit the pavement, they tend to fly right out the window. The fourth principle really kind of lays out the awkwardness of this whole situation, which is that polygamy could only survive by observing a strict hierarchy. Each dynasty, as we saw, had its own sets of titles and ranks for the imperial

wives, the empress at the top, with more wives filling successive echelons below her. Most of the wives, of course, occupied the lower echelons of the pyramid. The hierarchy was determined at specific times, such as when a new wife joined the imperial family andons of the pyramid. The hierarchy was determined at specific times, such as when a new wife joined the imperial family and was assigned a rank. Now again, those are like guidelines. They're not really hard and fast rules, and there's no way to really actually strictly enforce any of them to such an extent where you could call it like a hard and fast rule. They're more just like principles to try to aim toward.

So let's get to sexy time, and specifically the emperor's sexual rotation. Now as I said before, ensuring that the emperor's imperial line propagated into the next generation was the single most overridingly important function of the entire state apparatus of the empire. If that wasn't happening, all other work essentially stopped until that problem was figured out. And there were some emperors, such as our current all-time grandmaster hero, the Kangxi Emperor, who would spend years and even decades of their reign pointedly not figuring out that question, and it would cause chaos every single time. But anyways, getting back to the Emperor's sex calendar. It was important. It was in fact considered to be extremely important, so important that it was an official function of the imperial court to manage the emperor's booty calls.

That's right, organizing the emperor's sex life was essential to maintaining the well-being of the entire Chinese state. The Chinese calendars of the 10th century were not used to keep track of time, but rather, who the emperor was sleeping with today. The rotation of concubines sleeping with the emperor was kept in a regimented order. Secretaries were employed to record the emperor's sex life with brushes dipped in vermilion ink made out of cinnabar. So with that rotation already established, the emperor of course also had the ability to choose for himself. He could, as he he desired request a specific concubine when he did so what he would do is he would give his eunuch in waiting a label or tally with the name with the lady's name written on it the eunuch in waiting would deliver that summons

to the concubine in question and she would then be brought to the imperial bedchamber, carried by two litter-bearers, and dressed only in a garment made of feathers. As I've hinted at already, this wasn't exactly a romantic evening being planned, but instead this very awkward and prescribed ritual. The concubine, for instance, was not allowed to enter the emperor's bed in the conventional, hey, let's get into bed manner. Instead, she was made to climb in from the foot of the bed and crawl her way up until she came level with the imperial couple or the emperor himself already within once that coupling was underway the two eunuch litter bearers would stand guard outside the door

and afterwards would take the concubine back to her own apartment before daybreak so all this happens at night this nocturnal encounter would then be recorded in an official book with the name of the lady and the date of the visit, and then signed by the emperor. This record would serve as proof if the concubine subsequently fell pregnant and the emperor wanted her to bear the child. The legitimacy of that potential future child would be secured by the entry of that booty call in the Imperial Booty Call book. This book was therefore of the utmost importance and guarded fiercely. The moon also played a role in this whole cycle, because what's a cycle without a lunar cycle? As you may or may not know, both age and zodiac sign, star sign, are determined not by the moment of birth, but by the moment of conception,

which is often why if you ask somebody in China or Korea or even Japan their age, they will tell you a different number than what math would indicate on their driver's license, usually off by one. And the reason why is they tend to add one to their age for this reason. In Imperial China, it was believed that women were most likely to conceive during the full moon when the yin, or female energy, was strong enough to match the yang, or male force, of the emperor. The yang energy was embodied by the sun, so of course if you wanted more female energy, you would wait until the moon was at its brightest,

and the sun was apparently at its dimmest. The empress and his other primary wives slept with the emperor around the time of the full moon, because it was believed that children of strong virtue would be conceived on those nights. The lower ranking concubines were tasked with nourishing the emperor's yang with their yin, if you know what I'm saying, sleeping with him around the time of the new moon. So they could have his weaker kids or whatever. So there was a full-on 28-day calendrical cycle of women that the emperor could choose to hit up on any given occasion.

But mid-month, oh man, that's when the real heavy hitters showed up. I mentioned that in spite of the rules, there were often favorites and rivalries and jealousies within this system. The human heart is a fickle thing and no amount of rules in the world can govern its emotions, after all. But being the favorite could be a dangerous and sometimes even deadly position to occupy. So let's flash forward now to the very end of the Qing Dynasty and the imperial system altogether, with the lady Zhenfei. The year is 1899, and at the age of 13, Zhenfei entered the imperial palace during the Guangxu reign era. She was later promoted to the title of imperial concubine, second to Empress Longyu, who was

the niece of Empress Dowager Cixi, undoubtedly the most powerful person in China at that time. Zhenfei was a beautiful and intelligent woman. As a Guangxu emperor's favorite consort, she gained much influence in the imperial court. She became known even outside the palace popularly as the Pearl Consort, and was known to hate all the rules and regulations that constrained and governed her. She was prone to acts of rebellion and disobedience, which infuriated the Empress Dowager Cixi, and so she began to look for an excuse to punish her.

On June 20th, 1900, just one year after she had arrived in the Imperial Palace, the Eight Nation Alliance laid siege to Beijing, and Cixi forced the Emperor to flee with her to Xi'an. Before they left, Cixi ordered Zhenfei to commit suicide on the pretext that her youth and beauty would endanger the royal party as well as bring shame if she were raped by foreign soldiers. Zhenfei refused, asking instead for an audience with the emperor. It is believed Dao Zexi responded by ordering eunuchs to throw Zhenfei to her death down a well behind the Ningxia palace.

So even being the emperor's favorite could prove to be no protection at all. Let us turn from the fates of concubines to the lower levels of this system of women within the palace, the maids. Maids, of course, were the servants of the palace. They were ranked according to their family's social positions and would only be recruited from the eight banner families of mainly Manchurians and Mongols. Like other women of the palace, they too were selected at the age of 13 or sometimes up to 16 or so. Their role was to attend to the daily needs of the palace, they too were selected at the age of 13 or sometimes up to 16 or so. Their role was to attend to the daily needs of the empress, the consorts, and concubines. They could not leave their lady's sides day or night, seven days a week. No weekends, no vacations.

The maid-in-waiting was the highest rank. Maids of the imperial palace were not necessarily locked in for life, unlike consorts and concubines. They could elect to leave at the age of 25, but many chose to stay and were richly rewarded for their service. But from that period of time, from 13 to 25, they're very formative years, they were forbidden from any and all contact with the outside world. Even their families were banned from visiting them until that 25-year mark. They were vulnerable, often abused, especially by the very women that they were chosen to protect and serve, the concubines themselves. Severe punishment, even up to execution, was commonplace for even minor infractions.

Which sounds horrible, because of course it was, but it also sort of makes sense in a cycle of abuse way. The concubines themselves were hugely exploited, powerless, and abused by the system as well. And it is natural, however unfortunate, that they would lash out on those who had less power than them. Maids were assigned to their superiors according to rank. An Empress Dowager would receive 12 maids. An Empress, 10. Imperial and High Consorts, 8 each.

Consorts and Imperial Concubines, 6 each. Concubines, 4 each. And Low-Range Concubines, 2 maids. One common job for a maid or hand servant in the imperial palace was the task of being a wet nurse. Consorts and concubines wanted to mark their high status and of course spare themselves from the physical challenges and wear and tear that breastfeeding could take on their bodies. As a result, whenever possible, they liked to pawn off their babies onto wet nurses in order to spare themselves of that task. As a result, wet nurses came to high prominence during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The selection of these was, what else, very rigorous and involved. One of the more unusual responsibilities that the Rights and Propriety Office bestowed on eunuchs was to recruit between 20 to 40 lactating women every three months.

Whenever a baby was due in the palace, 40 wet nurses and 80 substitutes were employed. Imperial sons were breastfed by a wet nurse whose own child was a girl, and vice versa in the cases of imperial daughters. This way, the yin and yang could be matched, and the substitution of babies, accidental or otherwise, could be averted. That is to say, if the wet nurse has a baby girl and she's feeding a baby boy, she's not going to be able to switch them out. For this task, there were several requirements. First off, age. Only women between 14 and 19 were considered. And again, they had to be lactating, so they themselves were already pregnant or having recently given birth. Both the woman and husband were required to be both healthy and normal in appearance. Assuming that that was the case, a doctor would be called in and determine whether or not the

woman was free of all of the following conditions, including hairlessness, a bald woman is not going to suffice, vertigo, deafness, neck tumors, nasal congestion, watery lips, armpit smell, swollen neck, ulcers, scabies, or carbuncles, which are those nasty skin infections or like multiple clusters zits all together. They're real gross. Take my word for it. Any woman who might have been a wet nurse but had any of those conditions was eliminated from selection. When working, wet nurses received a clothing allowance, rice with about five ounces of meat a day, and coal for burning in cold weather. All right, enough about the help.

Let's get to the royal princesses, the women of the imperial family. They too were stuck inside. The emperor's unmarried female relatives were not allowed to leave the inner palace either. Daughters were ranked in according to their bloodline, to the emperor, and their mother's title. So a daughter of the empress would be the guenlun gongzhu, or the princess of the first degree. If the empress adopted a daughter, she would be a princess of the second degree. This would likewise be the rank of a concubine's daughter, both of which would be called heshuo gongzhu. That is, again, princess of the second degree. Other ladies of the palace could include girls born to the emperor's sons,

and these were grouped into five ranks determined by the blood relationship between their father and the emperor. So, in descending order, those daughters of imperial sons were the Zhen Zhu Ge Ge, Xian Zhu Ge Ge, Jun Jun Gege, Xianjun Gege, and Xiangjun Gege. You know that? That'll be on the test. And so it's now time for a little bit of good news, slightly awkward news, which is that I don't have a particularly wonderful outro for this week's episode, because this is in fact part of a larger double episode the next part will focus on the forbidden city itself and the palace within both its construction design and other details and tidbits about it so please do tune in if you are a patreon subscriber

then it should be out very shortly after this episode on the Patreon feed. If you are not a subscriber, please do consider becoming one at patreon.com slash thehistoryofchina. But if that's not available to you or not possible, I totally understand. In which case, you will still get the episode. You'll just wait another week for it. And it will be out next week in early March. But either way, thanks for listening. Thank you. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves.

And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy and I'm Rich and we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for the Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.