Last Chinese eunuch remembers court days

Press, 19 September 1985, Page 16

Last Chinese eunuch remembers court days

By

GRAHAM EARNSHAW

of Reuters (through NZPA) Peking Sun Yaoting is the last Imperial Chinese eunuch of the thousands of castrated men who once ran the Emperor’s court and through it, the whole of China. At 84, the eunuch Sun’s body is twisted from arthritis. But his mind is clear and he still remembers his father taking a knife to his genitals to make him eligible for service in the Forbidden City, home of China’s Imperial family. “I was 10 years old at the time. My father did it himself without using anaesthetic or anything. It was very painful,” Sun said.

He told his story in a simple room at the rear of an old Buddhist temple which is now his home, a far cry from the vermilionwalled Forbidden City where he lived in splendour with the last Emperor Pu Yi and his court for eight years. Sun was born into the family of a poor peasant in a village near Peking. He was one of four brothers, but luck would have it that his father chose him to become a eunuch. “The reason he decided to make me a eunuch was that Xiao Dezhang, a very rich and influential eunuch in the Imperial palace, was born in the neighbouring village,”

said Sun. The eunuch system was established very early in China’s history by emperors anxious to ensure that their concubines were not touched by any men but themselves. Over the centuries the eunuchs expanded their power. They began to dominate court life and often the emperor as well. Many became fabulously wealthy.

Sun would have been heading for great things too, except that revolution suddenly changed the rules. One year after his operation, the republican revolution of 1911 ended the Chinese Empire. The Emperor and his court were allowed to continue living in the palace and after four years of schooling, Sun entered the palace in 1916. Sun says he considers the eunuch system to have been inhumane, but his memories of the period seem to be mostly happy ones.

At the time there were about 1200 eunuchs in the palace.

The young Sun rose slowly through the ranks, for a time serving the Emperor’s uncle and later a concubine in the heart of the palace where only women, eunuchs, and the Emperor were allowed to go. He spent two years training to appear in Peking Opera performances staged for the courtiers, then

worked for a while in the palace accounts department.

For his last few years in the palace, he waited upon the Empress Wang Rong, Pu Yi’s wife.

“The Emperor had a very strange temper, but Wang Rong was very nice to us,” he said. “I wore silk clothes, lived very comfortably and had four dishes and a soup at every meal. “I received 20 yuan a month salary which was a lot of money in those days, and had to do very little for it. The Empress also used to give us extra money. I was making 1000 yuan a year.” It all ended in 1924 when the warlord, Feng Yuxiang, threw the former Emperor and his retainers out of the palace. Sun went home but soon left again because the villagers regarded him with contempt. He moved into a temple in Peking inhabited by eunuchs who lacked either the money, youth, or ability to make a new life for themselves alone. He has been there almost ever since. In 1949, the Communists took over and the shrinking band of eunuchs were given living allowances. “My life here now is very happy. I have no complaints,” Sun said. Did he have any regrets about having spent most of his life as a eunuch? He hung his head and replied: “It’s hard to say."