The "Filthy" Secret Lives of Imperial Chinese Concubines

In the summer of 1424, when Ming Emperor Yongle passed away, 30 concubines who were living among many others in the royal harem were handed the dreaded blood-red piece of silk clothing in a square shape. This little piece of fabric meant that these 30 concubines were considered his favorite by the Yongle Emperor. It also meant they were supposed to not live after the Emperor. The life of a concubine in the Forbidden City was as dangerous as lavish, as forced as frivolous, and as punishable as pleasurable. How lonely and depressing were their lives? What cruel selection process did they have to go through? What did it take to survive as a concubine in Imperial China? Welcome to Nutty History and today, let's find out how depressing were the lives of Imperial Chinese concubines. Viewer discretion is advised for this video, as some of this video may be offensive or disturbing. We, the makers of this video, in no way support or condone the actions of the subjects featured. When a wandering monk rose to rebel against his Mongol overseers and reclaimed China for the Chinese, he named himself the Hongwu Emperor. Founder of the Ming Empire, the Hongwu Emperor laid the foundations of one of the greatest eras of orderly government and social stability in human history. The history of the Ming Dynasty has a dualistic nature. On one hand, they ushered into its golden age, making the nation a global power. On the other hand, they achieved it with tyranny and suppression of their subjects, including taking their daughters to be concubines of the Emperor if he wished so. The custom of keeping concubines seems to be as old as time in ancient China, probably starting with the Western Zhou Dynasty that was established around 1000 BCE. In those days, a man could keep as many concubines as he wanted, given he could buy them, but during the Eastern Han period, there was a restriction imposed on how many concubines a man could have. The higher the rank, the more liberty one had to have more concubines. In the context of history, the word concubine could mean many things, but in the context of Imperial China, it had two meanings. In pre-modern China, a man was not allowed to have more than one wife at a time, with the special circumstance of the first wife failing to bear a child until the man turned 40 being an exception. So, they would fulfill their polygamous urges by keeping concubines. The position of a concubine was inferior to the wife of the man but was greater than a servant. However, in the case of the Emperor, the concubines were supposed to be servants acquired for private purposes. Their main objective was to reproduce a male heir for the king, in case the Empress failed to do so. In Chinese, the word Ming means brilliant, but their attitude towards their concubine was nothing less than terrible, maybe more. The Hongwu Emperor could be considered one of the finest emperors China ever had. Though behind closed doors of his palace, he was known to subject his concubines to imprisonment and punishment. He was extremely possessive of them and thus he attempted to control every aspect of their lives and death. The Hongwu Emperor also brought back the tradition of concubines losing their lives in the event of their emperor's death. He also made it compulsory for subjects to submit their daughters to the administrators if the emperor commanded them to be his concubine. To consolidate his imperial power and for the sake of the royal family's security, the Hongwu Emperor ordered the construction of a forbidden palace in 1366. The Ming palace was completed two years later and Qu Wanchong or the Hongwu Emperor moved his seat over there in Nanjing. The forbidden city was built in Beijing under the rule of the Yongli Emperor. It served as the capital for the last two imperial dynasties of China, the Ming and Qing dynasties as well as was the home of thousands of concubines who served various emperors over the centuries. The center of power in China, the forbidden city, was home to the emperor and the empress as well as a prison for all the concubines that every emperor kept who were forbidden to leave the inner court. Concubines lived a secluded life, serving the emperor, empress, and the emperor's parents while fulfilling their sole purpose to offer their services to the emperor and produce male heirs for them. The only men allowed to enter the inner court were eunuchs, so the authenticity of the emperor's children remained undisputed. You know, that whole rooster in the henhouse thing. Some Ming emperors kept nearly 9,000 concubines. But Emperor Huan and Ling had nearly 20,000 women living in the forbidden city during their reign. Nevertheless, the hierarchy of the imperial Chinese harem always had the empress on the top. The official wife of the emperor was the most venerated and revered figurehead for women in China as the entire nation considered her the mother of the world as the emperor was considered the father of heaven. The empress was considered only lesser than the emperor and his mother, the Empress Dowager, and demanded authority over all concubines, maids, and eunuchs serving the royal family. The next rank in the harem hierarchy belonged to the consorts. However, their number differed with every ruling dynasty. These consorts were mostly daughters of the high-ranking official, either gifted to or claimed by the emperor as his partners, but they were not officially married to him. After consorts, the ranks of concubines would begin. The ranks of concubines would depend on the emperor and could vary from 3 to 5. The politics among the concubines was fierce and they would have to plot, trick, and impress to advance as well as fiercely guard their unofficial rankings. The best way to advance the ranks was to give birth to a male heir for the emperor, but the higher the number of consorts, the lesser the chance they had to actually spend a night with the emperor. Due to this, intrigue and bickering were rampant among concubines in the Forbidden City and daily life was far from a life of pleasure and leisure. During the Qing Dynasty period, things got even tougher for consorts and concubines, as their ranks would decide what sort of clothes, foods, and privileges they would be entitled to, giving them a constant reminder of where they belonged. Most of their activities were overseen and monitored by the eunuchs, who wielded great power in the palace. Concubines were required to bathe and be examined by a court doctor before the emperor visited their bedchamber. With hundreds and sometimes thousands of concubines at the emperor's disposal, any lady the emperor graced with a visit would be subject to jealous rivalries. Concubines had their own rooms and would fill their days by applying makeup, sewing, practicing various arts, and socializing with other concubines. Many of them spent their entire lives at the palace without any contact with the emperor. There were very few exceptions to the rules, but love was pretty much forbidden for the concubines, even though some of them did bond relations with eunuchs or other officials. If caught, they paid a heavy price for their transgressions. Serving at the palace, no concubine was allowed to have any kind of communication with the outside world, not even with their family. Even when they would get sick, no physicians were allowed to visit them and the treatment would be prescribed based on descriptions of illness told by a eunuch who would visit the physician instead. There were very few plausible ways to escape the forbidden city. The easiest one was to grow old enough that the emperor would lose interest in you. Easier said than done, of course. In this case, concubines were allowed to return to their families with an adequate pension. Some concubines would be gifted to other foreign kings and emperors, but in this case, it can be argued that they were merely exchanged one prisoner for another. And very few of them were daring enough to actually attempt to jailbreak out of forbidden city. However, once they escaped, there was no coming back because if caught, the only fate that waited for them was capital punishment. Many concubines would give in to the servitude and despite being relieved would choose to carry on their servitude as royal maids or chose to become a nun. Yet, through the course of Chinese history, there have been very rare exceptions. Empress Wu Zetian of the Tang Dynasty stands out the most. She began her life in royal service as a concubine at a young age to Emperor Taizong and she was only 25 when Taizong kicked the bucket. Back then, widows and concubines of the dead emperor were supposed to retire in monasteries but Wu Zetian managed to woo Taizong's successor, Gaozong. Thus began her long journey to power as she managed to promote herself to the roles of empress and finally the sovereign of entire China at the age of 66. On the other end of the same spectrum is the despot Cixi who proved instrumental in the downfall of the Qing Dynasty. Cixi was the favorite concubine of Emperor Zeng Feng but he passed away, leaving his five-year-old son to rule. Cixi was responsible for the 1861 Shenyu coup that made her the sole in charge of the young emperor. As an empress dowager, Cixi left a lavish life full of privileges but never took care of any responsibility as social upheaval and the Second Opium War destroyed China inside and out. The selection process was regulated in China for imperial concubines from the days of the Qing Dynasty. Qing ruled China between the 3rd and early 5th century. Even back then and in Ming and Qing dynasties, the criteria for selecting concubines relied on the incumbent emperor's preferences. During the Ming Dynasty, the Hongwu Emperor made sure that no household in China was an exception. The Ming emperors forced every young unmarried woman who had no physical deformity or disability to go through the Shenyu selection process. The Qing Dynasty, however, preferred to keep the selection to the Eight Banners family who were mainly Manchurian or Mongolian excluding the Han population. On the day of the selection, the girls would be brought to the gate of the forbidden city for inspection. Accompanied by their parents or guardians, these very young girls had to go through a beauty inspection from both emperor and his parents. Only less than a hundred girls would make the cut and then there would be a thorough inspection to check if they were physically healthy and had no affliction. They would be checked for skin infections, body hair, body odor, etc. before being sent to the training women. The selected girls would spend several nights with these women, specializing in training maids to learn the craft of serving the royal family. They would also be disciplined thoroughly and those who would qualify would be initiated into skills of acceptable behavior and how to speak, gesture, and walk. They would also learn art forms such as painting, reading, writing, chess, and dancing. Those who will filter through this rigorous training would serve the Empress Dowager for several days as maids. The purpose of the servitude was to please the Empress's mother and gain her favor to earn a higher rank of concubinage. They would also undergo further inspections by the Emperor's mother herself, who would root out any bad nocturnal habits such as snoring, emitting odors, or talking or walking in their sleep. Only very few of those who would make it through this demanding process would gain the favor of winning the Emperor's notice. Most concubines would spend their lives in bitter loneliness which unsurprisingly would cause hurtful politics and jealousy among concubines. In fact, it is safe to say that beauty was more of a curse than a blessing in China during this period of history. Females in Chinese society were regarded as menial entities, continually demoralized, degraded, humiliated, and ignored. Concubines had it worse and their place in the human species was at the bottom of the barrel, sadly. It took a lot of injustice to garner a reaction from them. The only woman who asked to be relieved and managed to live afterward as a free woman was Wen Shu. But she managed to divorce her Emperor, Hu Yi, the last Emperor of the Qing Dynasty only after he was already dethroned and on the run. Most of the women chose a more extreme approach of retaliation, such as one of the favorite concubines of the Yongle Emperor who decided she couldn't take it any longer because she was in love with a palace eunuch and couldn't tolerate sharing a bed with the Emperor anymore. However, some women grew too courageous. The Yongle Emperor's descendant, Jia Jing, was subject to a plot to eliminate him by 16 of his concubines known as the Renyan plot. Sick and tired of his unusual and cruel demands for their diet, these women tried to attack him in his chambers but failed. The end for these women was not pretty as the Empress ordered them to be taken out immediately. Just like life, death was insufferable for these women. Tell us in the comments if you would like to watch a video about the lives of eunuchs of Imperial China. 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