The tragic life of the palace maid was trampled by the royal family, and there was no place to bury her after death
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At the beginning, it is mentioned that most people have a luxurious and extravagant image of life in the palace, but this kind of life is only enjoyed by a very few people. During the Ming Dynasty, ordinary families would try to avoid their daughters being elected to the palace, so what was the real life of a palace maid?
In the ancient imperial palace, the life of the palace ladies was like walking on thin ice, full of various rules and taboos. In their daily lives, there is little verbal communication, and more communication is carried out through eyes and gestures.
Because speaking could easily break the rules, the ladies formed this unique way of communication, carefully spending their days in the palace.
Qing Dynasty court maids**) court life is strict, and the many rules make the palace ladies feel pressure. According to historical records, the royal family had strict requirements for the palace ladies, and even the sleeping posture had to be strictly observed.
If you change your posture, you will be punished, not to mention snoring, grinding your teeth, etc., and the punishment will be even heavier. When serving their masters, the palace maids must be cautious, not only must they not make mistakes, but they must not even have a bad smell of their bodies, and hiccups and farts are taboo.
In film and television dramas, we can often see palace maids choosing to eat light food and strictly control their diet in order to keep the smell on their bodies from irritating.
This is not their choice, but because as palace maids, they need to be on call, and they dare not leave their master's side for a moment, and they need to ask for their master's consent in advance to go to the toilet.
In order to reduce the number of toilet trips, they have to eat less to avoid causing problems for themselves. This is undoubtedly a reluctant choice, but it is also a rule that they must abide by in court life.
Palace maid stills) The palace maids not only have to work hard during the day, but also protect their masters in the middle of the night. To prevent themselves from falling asleep, they will use their ears to stuff their shoes to keep themselves awake.
Their lives were filled with caution at every turn, in order to avoid harsh punishments. In order to manage the palace maids, many cruel punishments were devised by various dynasties and generations.
For the palace maid, if she is only punished to kneel, face the wall or copy the precepts, it is already a great luck, and the common palm mouth in the TV series is already a relatively light punishment compared to the cane.
Stills of the palace maid's punishment) Second, the heinous punishment: In addition to the common punishment, there is also a kind of torture called "dun lock" in the palace. This is to lock the erring palace maid in a small wooden box, with her hands and feet sticking out of the four holes in the wooden box, and her body is unable to stand and move.
Another punishment called "lifting the bell" is to let the palace maid who made a mistake walk back and forth in the palace with a bell of 20 catties in both hands, and she needs to sing all the time while walking.
The maid must not let the bells fall to the ground during the punishment period, let alone make them make a sound, otherwise they will be punished. These tortures made the palace ladies miserable.
Tang Dynasty Palace Ladies Murals) In the Tang Dynasty palace, palace ladies faced a cruel punishment, that is, "boarding". In this punishment, the lady who made the mistake was required to stand facing north, bend down and grasp her feet with her hands, and hold this position for at least one hour.
This process can be extremely painful for the maids, and many will become dizzy, vomit, and even die as a result. For the palace ladies who made major mistakes, they were imprisoned in a prison or even executed.
These harsh rules and punishments made the palace maids live a life of fear in the deep palace. They are under extreme stress and are prone to physical problems due to lack of diet and sleep.
In ancient times, most of the palace maids came from the people, or slaves, or prisoners of war, lost their personal freedom, isolated from the outside world, and many people could not even leave the palace gate for a lifetime.
Such a fate makes the palace maids walk like corpses until the end of their lives.
In the world of palace maids, becoming a concubine is their dream goal. However, this dream can only be fulfilled by a lucky few. In order to avoid the suspicion of their masters, most palace maids can only live a simple life, and even if they are beautiful, they are often "hidden".
Even if the palace maids are favored by the emperor, it does not mean that they can change their fate. The emperor's favor is often short-lived, and the life of the palace maid after being favored often does not change much.
Despite being favored by the emperor and giving birth to a child, it was not an easy task for ordinary court maids to improve their status through children. Emperors usually placed more emphasis on women's origins, and women from low backgrounds often found it difficult to be recognized, and even their children might feel ashamed of their motherhood and look down on their biological mothers.
Therefore, there are very few palace maids who have successfully ascended to the throne in history. However, among the various dynasties, the palace maids of the Han Dynasty were relatively lucky. At that time, the folk girl was elected to the palace and did not need to spend her life in the palace.
In the Han Dynasty, ** would select women from good families aged 13 to 20 to enter the palace as palace maids, in addition to being responsible for the daily affairs of the palace, they were also candidates for the harem.
Like the well-known Dou Yifang, he became the master of the harem step by step from a palace maid.
This history in the stills of Dou Yifang reveals the living conditions of ancient palace maids. Ladies who are not favored at the age of 25 will be sent back to their places of origin, and they will be given a generous dowry.
Although the dowry is rich, due to their age, many can only marry ordinary families, or even live a lonely life. However, compared to the court ladies of other dynasties, they can still be free after all.
From the Sui and Tang dynasties, palace ladies had to serve the royal family in the palace for the rest of their lives, and no matter how old or young, they could not leave the palace. This is the life of ancient palace maids, their fate is full of unknown and helpless.
During the Tang Dynasty, for example, elderly court ladies were assigned to royal temples or Taoist temples for unified management, including Wu Zetian. This is because these palace ladies have lived in the palace for a long time and may have some confidential content, and unified management can prevent the leakage of secrets in the palace.
This practice was borrowed and followed by subsequent dynasties. In these dynasties, only a few lucky court ladies had a chance to be free. For example, Tang Gaozu Li Yuan once released more than 3,000 palace maids in order to restore the population, so that they could marry freely.
Later, many emperors in the Tang Dynasty followed suit, and some palace maids would be released in case of disasters. During the Chenghua period of the Ming Dynasty, Ming Yingzong also released some palace maids at the suggestion of the minister.
However, such opportunities are very rare, and most palace ladies still need to spend their lives in the high walls of the deep palace.
Many palace ladies are not the most miserable, after all, they still have a home. In contrast, what is even more distressing is that many palace ladies die at a young age, and there is no place to rest.
In the past, the medical conditions were so poor that palace girls could not get sick **, and in order to avoid the spread of the disease, most of them would be sent to remote temples to wait for death. At that time, there was no burial place for palace maids, so most of those palace maids who unfortunately passed away were hastily cremated, and their ashes were scattered in dry wells.
Stills of palace maids) Historically, the burial of palace maids was generally accepted. Although this system was abolished after the Han Dynasty, it was reintroduced in the early Ming Dynasty. In order to prevent their daughters from becoming victims, many people will try their best to marry their daughters.
However, in the Qing Dynasty, the fate of the palace maid changed. Since the palace ladies of the Qing Dynasty were all from Shangsanqi and were of noble birth, they would not be oppressed in the palace, and the concubines of low status could not even order them.
Qing Dynasty palace maid stills) During the Qing Dynasty, the palace maid could get a dowry from the master to marry someone after the age of 25. In addition, their husbands and children are exempt from tax and even have the opportunity to work as errands in the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
What's more, since most of the palace maids are from good backgrounds, even if they are a little older, they don't have to worry about getting married. Therefore, it can be said that the court maids of the Qing Dynasty were the happiest group of all palace ladies in history.
However, no matter what dynasty it is, the ladies of the court have no freedom and dignity, and their lives are completely under the control of the royal family.
Historically, the fate of harem women often depended on the attitude of the ruler. If the monarch is lascivious, then the end of these women will undoubtedly be tragic.
Their existence has become a footnote to the absurd behavior of those faint kings.
Palace maid stills) Historically, Emperor Liu Hong of the Han Dynasty was absurd because of his lust, and in order to facilitate himself, he ordered that the palace maids in the palace could not wear **. However, his order was resisted by many palace maids, and as a result, many disobedient palace maids were executed, and some were even connected to the nine clans.
Eventually, these ladies had to obey his orders. During the same period, Sun Hao of Eastern Wu was also an extremely lascivious emperor. He ordered that all the fifteen-year-old daughters of the minister's family who had reached two thousand stone should be given to him for selection first, and although he had already more than a thousand women in his harem, he was still happy to do so.
In addition, Sun Hao had a very brutal personality and often whipped the palace maids, and those palace maids who angered him also died unexpectedly.
After Sun Hao surrendered to the Western Jin Dynasty, he handed over the five thousand beauties of the harem to Sima Yan, and the number of Sima Yan's harem exceeded 10,000 at that time, and he began to worry about where to live at night.
So he chose to ride the sheep cart away, the sheep cart stopped at **, and he spent the night in **. In order to attract his attention, the palace maids planted bamboo leaves or sprinkled salt water in front of their houses to stop the sheep.
This behavior became a symbol of the emperor's extravagance. Later Zhao's Shi Hu was even more excessive, and during the Wuhu Rebellion, he established Later Zhao, although the war in the Central Plains ended, but the people's lives were not improved.
Under his ** rule, people's lives were even more difficult.
Shi Hu forcibly conscripted women between the ages of thirteen and twenty from all over the country, whether married or unmarried, ready to accept his dispatch at any time. In 345 AD, more than 9,000 married women were openly snatched away, men who resisted were killed, and more than 3,000 women chose to commit suicide.
In the end, Shi Hu forcibly plundered the number of women and women who entered the palace reached 100,000, and his son's practice was even worse.
Under the scepter of the king, the palace ladies seem to have lost the value of their lives, and their fate is at the mercy of animals at will, without dignity at all. However, in the long course of history, we often only focus on the crazy acts of those emperors, but ignore the tragic experiences of the palace ladies.
They seem to be just a forgotten background, and the tragic experience of the palace maids in the past is heartbreaking.
1.Although not all emperors were absurd, their cruel treatment of court ladies was a fact. The Ming Dynasty had extremely strict requirements for palace maids, and coupled with the low status of palace maids, the daily life of palace maids was very difficult.
Emperor Jiajing was short-tempered and often scolded the palace maids with a rod, which led to the death of more than 200 palace maids, which is the origin of the "Renyin Palace Change". 2.After the death of his beloved concubine, Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, was overwhelmed with grief, so he executed hundreds of palace maids at one time on the grounds that the palace maids were poisoned.
He also executed 2,800 palace maids in one go after suspecting the collusion between the palace maids and the eunuchs, which is a shocking number. 3.Although some emperors were not absurd, their cruel treatment of court ladies was a fact.
The Ming Dynasty had extremely strict requirements for palace maids, and the low status of palace maids led to a very difficult life for palace maids. Emperor Jiajing was short-tempered and often scolded the palace maids with a rod, which led to the death of more than 200 palace maids, triggering the "Renyin Palace Change".
4.After the death of his beloved concubine, Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, was overwhelmed with grief, so he executed hundreds of palace maids at one time on the grounds that the palace maids were poisoned. He also suspected that the palace maids and eunuchs colluded, and executed 2,800 palace maids in one go, which is a shocking number.
5.Although not all emperors were absurd, their cruel treatment of court ladies was a fact. The Ming Dynasty had extremely strict requirements for palace maids, and the low status of palace maids led to a very difficult life for palace maids.
Emperor Jiajing was short-tempered and often scolded the palace maids with a rod, which led to the death of more than 200 palace maids, which is the origin of the "Renyin Palace Change".
Although many people are full of yearning for palace life, the miserable lives of palace ladies in the past are far beyond our imagination, and being elected to the palace is tantamount to a disaster for many women.
Now, with the collapse of the feudal system, the palace maid has disappeared into the long river of history, and we believe that no woman will suffer such a tragic experience in the future.