9.28.2011

Forbidden City 2 紫禁城


































The Forbidden City was the Chinese imperial palace during the Ming and Qing dynasties. You can read about it on wikipedia or a less reputable source if you want. There is something interesting people have told me about here, they are called eunuchs. Which is a guy who is castrated. Seems like the emperors of these palaces often employed eunuchs to be their servants. But "employ" is probably not the right word, I assume they were slaves or prisoners because I can't imagine many people doing this willingly. So when these slaves and prisoners were to become a servant of the emperor, they had to be castrated. According to the most reliable website ever (wikipedia), at the end of the Ming dynasty there were about 70,000 eunuchs working for the emperor. Some of which served in the imperial palace. Emperors found eunuchs to be even more reliable than other government officials, because without the ability to start a family and/or have children, they were less likely to try to seize power and start a dynasty. Intriguing...

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