Liu Shishi's new drama "Yi Nian Guan Mountain" was launched, but I didn't expect the good and bad reviews to be surprisingly consistent-
Praise: The heroine is too beautiful.
Bad comment: The male protagonist is too ugly. The female protagonist is also pestering the male protagonist to give birth to a child.
In the play, the female director Ruyi is a top killer, and the screenwriter sets her two main tasks:
The first is the cause of death of Empress Zhaojie of Chaen.
The second is to listen to the queen's last wish to have a child.
Yi Nian Guan Mountain" The latter persuaded many viewers who came to the heroine.
The drama party wanted to market the new era of independent female characters of "going to the father and leaving the son", but the screenwriter asked the heroine to shout "Don't fall in love with a man easily, but you must have a child of your own", and on the other hand, she asked her to forcibly bind and promote the relationship with the male protagonist in the name of giving birth.
Yi Nian Guan Mountain".
Even the climax of the emotional drama is that the male protagonist agrees to have a child with the female protagonist.
Of course, there is an explanation for the task of giving birth to a child, saying that the queen hopes that the heroine will have a child and have concern, and she will no longer be a tool that can only kill.
This is actually the reason for the twisting of the setting - the screenwriter used the most traditional background and ideas of the times to forcibly graft an avant-garde and fashionable modern concept.
However, I don't want to discuss the separation of characters here, but in the face of a drama that can have ten sentences of "giving birth" in one episode, I really want to talk about the topic of female fertility in ancient times.
In costume dramas, female fertility is always an important tool to promote the plot.
All kinds of miscarriages, miscarriages, premature births, and difficult births take turns, but we know too little about the truly shocking reality of blood and tears behind them.
The door of life and death is closed
As the old saying goes, a woman giving birth to a child is like passing through a ghost gate.
In ancient times, when medical technology was not developed enough, this was a heavy and bloody historical experience.
The woman is free from breastfeeding (childbirth), and she dies for ten lifetimes. ”
Death due to childbirth is undoubtedly the most important cause of death among women of childbearing age in ancient China.
Taiwanese scholar Li Zhende found that the peak age of death of women in the Six Dynasties was between 20 and 30 years old through the study of the epitaphs of the Six Dynasties.
Scholar Yao Ping's research on Tang Dynasty epitaphs also shows that the peak of death of men in the Tang Dynasty was between 60 and 70 years old, but there were two peaks of death for women in the Tang Dynasty, one of which was close to the age of death of men, and the other was between the age of 22 and 27, which happened to be the peak period of women's fertility.
In the Tang Dynasty, the mortality rate for women of childbearing age was more than twice as high as that for men of the same age.
Source: "Society and Gender Culture in the Tang Dynasty".
Dystocia, postpartum infection, improper postpartum care, and sequelae of childbirth. are the leading causes of maternal mortality.
In folklore, there is also a common type of ghost called "Birth Ghost".
It refers to a woman who died in childbirth.
Although the risk of having a child is extremely high, they have no choice.
The so-called "there are three unfilial pieties, and no queen is great".
In a feudal society where men are inferior to women, women can only risk death and get pregnant and give birth again and again.
Scholar Yi Peixia pointed out in her book "Neifu: Marriage and Life of Women in the Song Dynasty" that most married women in the Song Dynasty were often pregnant.
How many times will they get pregnant in their lifetime?How many children did you have?
The answer is that the average child has six children, but there may be more than 10 pregnancies.
Because the neonatal mortality rate and miscarriage rate are also very high.
Most married women in the Song Dynasty were often pregnant. In the 25-30 years between marriage at the age of nearly 20 and the end of fertility at the age of 45, the typical wife will become pregnant multiple times. The couples I studied through epitaphs were both alive by the age of 45, with an average of 61 child grown old enough to keep a record (but children born to concubines are occasionally recorded).
In fact, there are more children alive at birth, because people often ignore the fact that young children who die young. A significant proportion of pregnancies that end in stillbirth or miscarriage may also occur. As a result, many women may have had 10 or more pregnancies. 」
When did you start giving birth?
Many dynasties advocated early marriage and early childbearing, and even forced early marriage.
Goujian, the king of Yue, once stipulated that men should not marry at 20 and women should not marry at 17, and their parents should be punished.
The Han Dynasty stipulated that women must marry on the fifteenth day, and those who marry later must pay more taxes.
In order to increase the fertility rate, the Northern Qi Dynasty even forced women to marry at the age of 14, and the parents of women who married late were sentenced to death.
For ancient women, fourteen menarche, fifteen and Lu (adulthood), after which they basically entered the childbearing age.
For example, Kangxi's biological mother, Empress Xiaokangzhang, was only 15 years old when she gave birth to Kangxi.
Shangyang Fu".It can be said that the fate of the majority of women in ancient times was closely related to the birth of children, of course, mainly the birth of sons.
If you are unlucky, you will die because of childbirth, or because you can't give birth to a son, you will be snubbed by your husband's family, or even abandoned.
Those who can give birth are not necessarily "more expensive than mothers and children".
For example, a poor woman, after giving birth to her husband's family, is likely to be sold to other men to continue to give birth.
This is the thousand-year-old "pawn wife" system, in which men who cannot afford to support their families pawn their wives to others in exchange for money.
Source: Internet
Women's fertility was used as a pawn bargaining chip, and the writer Roushi described the employer's requirements for "pawn wives" at that time in "The Mother of a Slave":
He is about thirty years old and has raised two or three sons, and he must be quiet and honest, and he is willing to do things.
* The woman in the middle was pawned by her husband to a fifty-something Xiucai for three years.
She was forced to leave her five-year-old son Chunbao, and then gave birth to her son Qiubao for Xiucai, as a slave.
At the end of the three-year period, she was swept away by Xiucai, Qiu Bao did not belong to her, and when she returned home, Chun Bao did not recognize her.
She is not a wife, not a mother.
It's just a fertility slave who keeps changing hands.
The deified Shunzi soup
I believe everyone has seen a miracle medicine in costume dramas - shunzi soup.
Yanxi Raiders" Wei Yingluo was discovered by the emperor for secretly drinking avoidance soup, the two broke up, and the plot started quickly.
In "The Legend of Zhen Huan", "Shunzi Soup" is almost regarded as an emergency contraceptive.
An Lingrong went to bed, and the queen sent her shunzi soup on time;After Zhi promised to go to bed, Concubine Hua also rewarded her with a bowl of backhand.
"The Legend of Zhen Huan" also has a variety of magical musk products, as long as you drink a bowl or smell it for a few days, you can make the concubine miscarry without leaving a trace, and even lead to lifelong infertility.
Is it really that amazing?
However, current research shows that there was no very effective and safe way to contraceptive abortion in ancient times.
Abortion drugs do exist, for example, the abortion drugs mentioned in the "Compendium of Materia Medica" include dozens of kinds of musk, cantharids, aconite, etc.
Sun Simiao's "Thousand Golden Prescriptions" mentions taking mercury.
Some scholars believe that as early as the Song and Yuan dynasties, people in the Jiangnan region have been practicing abortion, and in the Ming and Qing dynasties, abortion drugs were easily available in local cities and villages, and they were not expensive.
However, most of this statement is based on inferences generated by various ** and literati notes, and there are no verifiable examples.
Su Chengjie, a professor of history at Stanford University, also explicitly refutes this view in his article "Abortion in China in the Ming and Qing Dynasties".
He thinksFirst of all, although the pharmacopoeia states that certain drugs have the effect of abortion or contraception, no one can prove that they are safe and effective, and they are widely used.
By analyzing the Qing Dynasty's legal records on abortion cases, Su Chengjie found that abortion drugs were often very dangerous.
24 women who tried to have an abortion, using abortion pills with ingredients including musk, hyssop, camphor, etc., as a result, 17 people died, 6 people were successful, but at least 2 people were sick for several months, and the fatality rate was 70%.
There are similar examples in history:
The mother of Song Duzong of the Southern Song Dynasty, was forced to take a large number of ** drugs during pregnancy and did not have a miscarriage, but the son Song Duzong gave birth to was an imbecile.
Gui Youguang's mother gave birth to seven children, took home remedies for sterilization, but was poisoned and dumb, and died soon after, at the age of 26.
In 1922, Kawashima Yoshiko's biological mother, Zhang Jiashi, Prince Su's four-sided Fujin, died after taking an abortion pill when she was pregnant with her eleventh child.
Traditional abortion pills are not only dangerous, but also very expensive, and even money cannot buy them.
Su Chengjie found the cost of abortion in some lawsuits, and the cost of abortion is basically equivalent to the average annual income of a farmer, or the cost of a man selling his wife.
Abortion in China during the Ming and Qing dynasties
Second, modern experiments have also shown that the use of traditional raw drugs as abortion pills is not very effective.
Either it's useless.
For example, musk, the musk ketone in musk can promote uterine contractions, but there is no evidence that it can cause miscarriage.
Doctors have tried to have an abortion using two different herbs cooked with musk, hyssop, and other ingredients, but the results have failed, and the patient has to have a surgical abortion.
Either it's too toxic.
For example, mercury can cause heavy metal poisoning.
In the early years, the use of cantharids for abortion was also popular in rural areas, and poisoning deaths occurred from time to time.
Before the liberation of Taiyuan, Jinzhong also had a kind of light powder sterilization home remedies, in the 80s of the last century, some researchers used this home remedies to do experiments, the results of the rabbits used to test, all died.
It can be said that the use of such home remedies for abortion was successful"It's just the *** of the poison." ”
As for traditional contraceptives, such as those made from fish maw and sheep intestines, they were invented by the British in the 17th century and were not known to the Chinese until the second half of the 19th century.
Sheep intestines***
Other contraceptive methods, such as in vitro**, such as safe periods, are also unreliable.
In particular, the safe period believed by the ancients was three to five days after the end of menstruation, which is just the opposite of what is believed today, and it is more likely to lead to pregnancy.
It is precisely because there are no reliable contraceptive methods and abortion drugs that many physical abortion methods have emerged.
For example, violently hitting the stomach, sitting in ice water and soaking, inserting chopsticks into the uterus, scalding straw sandals with boiling water and then crushing the belly of a pregnant woman.
In the green building, the bustard would pour mercury on the pregnant prostitute, or directly find a few big men to stomp on her stomach and torture her until she had a miscarriage.
Because contraceptive methods are limited and abortion is dangerous, the most common method is probably "childless", i.e., abandonment or infanticide.
For the poor, infant abolition is an important form of population control.
And because of the preference for sons over daughters, "giving birth to children without lifting", often drowning female babies.
Xu Yongzhi's "Analysis of the Prevalence of the Spoiled Woman in Modern Times" pointed out that the serious imbalance in the national gender ratio in the Qing Dynasty was largely caused by the prevalence of the drowning of women, and the national male and female ratio in the first year of Xuantong reached 1217:100。」
Abandoned baby tower at the end of the Qing Dynasty
Forgotten tragedy
In April, an American Olympic champion named Bowie died mysteriously at home.
The autopsy report showed that what killed Bowie was a complication of childbirth - eclampsia.
She was eight months pregnant at the time and was "in labor" at the time of her death.
Because there was no one around, the body was parked at home for 10 days before it was found.
It can be seen that even today, childbirth is still a dangerous thing.
The World Health Organization (WHO) publishes Trends in Maternal Mortality:
In 2020, nearly 800 women died every day from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
Every two minutes, a woman dies due to pregnancy or childbirth.
In South Sudan, "men want women to have one child every year. ”
Women, who are seen as tools for procreation, are forced to marry from their teenage years and then have children one after the other.
Each woman gives birth to an average of 46 children.
How high is the risk of childbirth?
Data for 2020 shows that there are 1,223 deaths per 100,000 mothers, the highest mortality rate in the world.
A South Sudan** cares for a woman in labor
In addition to obstetric complications, unsafe abortion is also one of the important causes of maternal death.
Due to poverty, cultural taboos, religion, politics and other factors, women in many countries around the world still have difficulty accessing safe and reliable contraception and abortion.
They can only try all kinds of dangerous methods:
Insert ** with a sharp stick, stuff a poisonous herbal preparation into **, drink bleach.
Data from Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF)** indicates:
Every year, more than 7 million women and girls are injured or disabled by unsafe abortions.
Every year, more than 29,000 women and girls die from unsafe abortions.
Médecins Sans Frontières
And in my country, in November this year, the National Health Commission announced the maternal mortality rate in 2022 - 157 100,000.
This is an all-time low.
However, it should be noted that the decline in maternal mortality in our country has only happened in recent decades.
Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, the maternal mortality rate in China was 15 per cent, 1,500 deaths per 100,000 mothers.
This means that if a woman gives birth 5 times, her mortality rate is as high as 73%。
The above is only the lethality rate, not the disability rate.
In the era of lack of medical protection and the popularization of obstetrics and gynecology, women's reproductive damage is not visible and difficult to estimate.
Even for a long time, fertility was not seen as a source of female weakness or disease.
The podcast "Three Aunts and Six Women" mentions, "The ancients would think that the reason why women's diseases are difficult to treat is not because of the particularity of women's bodies, but because women are often in the boudoir and are prone to emotional illness. ”
It can be said that the history of female fertility in ancient times is a history of suffering.
The famous Loulan female corpse died in childbirth
However, to this day, when talking about the risks of female fertility, there are always voices like this:
In the past, it was okay for a woman to give birth to five or six children, why are you so hypocritical. ”
Behind arrogance, there is terrible ignorance.
Those women who died on straw mats in childbirth, women who gave birth to children until they died, women who tried to drink mercury to have an abortion, and women who suffered from sequelae of childbirth such as urinary leakage, hemorrhoids, uterine prolapse, etc.
What is not seen is the same as not existing?
What is forgotten is the same as disappearing?
Martial Arts It also reminds me of a story of "potato sprouting".
This potato does not grow in the soil, but in the body of a 90-year-old grandmother.
My grandmother suffered from severe bladder prolapse due to early childbirth.
To prevent her bladder from falling out, she often stuffs potatoes in **.
After a long time, the potatoes that I forgot to be replaced actually sprouted.
It wasn't until she went to the hospital for difficulty urinating that she was discovered.
* Narration In this story, the potato is not only a potato, but also a concrete embodiment of female reproductive damage.
For a long time, women live with it and endure the discomfort it brings.
It is such a real torture, yet so secretive.
And the only comforting part of this story is:
Now, we've seen that potato.
We can never forget it again.