The Last Eunuch

[Gaybutton]

The following appears in the PATTAYA DAILY NEWS:

 

For photos, see: http://www.pattayadailynews.com/showfeatur...reID=0000001067

_____

 

THE AMAZING TALE OF CHINA’S LAST EUNUCH

 

In a story reminiscent of medieval torture, China’s last eunuch, described the excruciating operation to render him neuter, in a recent account by a confidante. Ironically, the operation was in vain as his father had hoped to curry favour with the emperor by castrating his son, but he had sadly abdicated the week before, unbeknown to the eunuch’s father.

 

Sun Yaoting had the dubious honour of being Imperial China’s last eunuch, a 2000-year-old tradition. Eunuchs were traditionally employed in ancient Egyptian, Arab and Persian regimes as bodyguards in the ruler’s harem, being deemed sexually inactive, or at least impotent. In Imperial China, the same held true and only the emperor and eunuchs were allowed into the Forbidden City's private quarters. Boys were emasculated in the hope of gaining exclusive access to the emperor and the remote prospect of being elevated to positions of power and influence. Here, if they were lucky enough, the privileged eunuchs became essential intermediaries between the outer bureaucratic world and the inner Imperial Court, as the emperor gradually withdrew further and further from the outside world in his self-imposed seclusion.

 

This particular castration was undertaken in the hope of Sun ingratiating himself with the emperor, gaining power and wreaking revenge on an unscrupulous landlord who had stolen their fields and burned their house.

 

Before his death in a Beijing temple in 1996, Sun Yaoting confided in the historian, Jia Yinghua, relating the account of how he was castrated, the sex life of eunuchs, how he had been tormented and impoverished in youth, punished in revolutionary China for being the "Emperor's slave", but finally celebrated as the last living relic of a bygone era. He related tales of the tortuous rituals of the Forbidden City, Emperor Pu Yi's sexual proclivities, cruelty and final moments and the court run by the Japanese in the 1930s.

 

He also described how he had rejoined society, become a Communist official and then persecuted by radical leftists, before finally being allowed to continue his life unmolested. These accounts were written up as Sun Yaoting’s biography, "The Last Eunuch of China", and published in English, this year.

 

As far as his castration went, Sun described how he was more concerned about having lost his ‘3 treasures’, the term used by eunuchs to describe their preserved genitals, which were normally held in a jar till death and then buried with the body in the hope he would reincarnate as whole a man once more. In Sun’s case, however, the jar and its contents had been thrown away long before his death during the Cultural Revolution as a means of protecting the family, when the possession of any relic of the imperial regime may have resulted in punishment and even death for the holder.

 

Apparently, his father had performed the castration without anesthetics, using an oil-soaked paper as a bandage; a procedure which in others was often lethal, and caused incontinence. The operation was performed in one swoop, using a small, curved knife. Sun was unconscious for three days and virtually incapacitated for two months.

 

When he finally recovered his mobility, he discovered to his extreme dismay that the emperor he had hoped to gain influence from had abdicated several weeks earlier. However, Sun still managed to gain employment, recruited by a middleman, to serve in the imperial palace as a eunuch, as the ex-emperor was allowed to stay in the palace.

 

Sun subsequently became an attendant to the last empress, Wan Rong, faithfully serving her for 8 years, until the Imperial Family was banished from the Forbidden City, in 1924, ending Sun's aspirations. Shortly afterwards, Sun finished his career as a palace eunuch.

[Guest fountainhall]

having lost his ‘3 treasures’

 

Some years ago there was an excellent movie which won a Golden Globe Farinelli: Il Castrato, allegedly about a famous 18th century castrato singer. In one scene he makes love to a woman who is clearly 'violated', but then his brother enters to finish off the job. So I wonder if eunochs suffered more than the singer castrati (see the 'Pope Benedict' thread) by losing three treasures whereas singers lost only two?

[Guest xiandarkthorne]

Some years ago there was an excellent movie which won a Golden Globe Farinelli: Il Castrato, allegedly about a famous 18th century castrato singer. In one scene he makes love to a woman who is clearly 'violated', but then his brother enters to finish off the job. So I wonder if eunochs suffered more than the singer castrati (see the 'Pope Benedict' thread) by losing three treasures whereas singers lost only two?

 

I understand that not all eunuchs in China lost all their treasures. Some only lost their gonads. There is some historical speculation even in China today, that the first Chin emperor (the one who built the wall) might even have been the son of his mother's favourite eunuch who was one of those that wasn't supposed to have got the full treatment. When the eunuch tried to engineer a palace coup, they found out just before they executed him that he hadn't had the operation at all.

 

Of course, there has also been speculation over the millennia that he might have been the son of the prime minister (the dowager queen was his ex-wife before she caught the Qin king's eye).

 

 

[Guest Soi10Tom]

Traditionally being a eunuch was a great honor and it was the eunuchs who were the most trusted of administrators that ran the empire. At each stage of growing up boys were given the choice to go forward to the next level of training. The boys who opted out joined the military or went into some other form of service to the Emperor. In China being a palace eunuch was to be in a position of high power. And it was the boys choice all the way up concluding is a religious celebration and ceremony when the testicles were removed at about age 18. The Emperor of China did not want to be surrounded by a bunch of unhappy guys whose nuts he had wacked off against their will.

 

Also, the eunuchs were the only males allowed in the deepest parts of the Forbidden City where the Emperor and his family lived. It has been reported that because of the dozens to hundred of wives that the Emperors of China had they were thankful to have the eunuchs around to keep the women happy with no risk of pregnancy. Evidentially if one is castrated after puberty can perform the sex act with an full erection and satisfaction on the part of both parties.

 

The eunuch's nuts were kept by him in a small box as his most prized possession, so that he could be buried and a "complete man." If you remember the scene from the movie "The Last Emperor" when the eunuchs were thrown out of the palace the small boxes that they carried had their testicles them.

[Guest fountainhall]

Interesting, but how does that square with the quote below from China's last eunoch (as posted by Gaybutton)? He seems to have been deprived of more than his nuts.

 

Sun described how he was more concerned about having lost his ‘3 treasures’, the term used by eunuchs to describe their preserved genitals

 

In fact, many texts have photos of Chinese eunochs clearly without a penis.

 

Also the timetable you put forward seems not to accord with the last eunoch's own testimony -

 

And it was the boys choice all the way up concluding is a religious celebration and ceremony when the testicles were removed at about age 18

 

Sun Yaoting was born on 29 December 1902. He says he was castrated prior to the Abdication of the Last Emperor. which was in 1912. So he is likely to have been only 9 years old.

 

It's my understanding that boys castrated in Europe to preserve their voices did get away with the "two treasures" decoupling and were allowed to keep their manhood.

[Guest Soi10Tom]

My reporting was based on much older information. By the early 20th Century China was in collapse and with the end of empire and the chaos that came with that everyone was participating in one form or CYA or the other, so it is not surprising that this boy's father broke with thousands of years of tradition and made his son a eunuch in some desperate hope for something.

 

As to the issue of if a eunuch lost two (nuts) or all three (penis included) of his treasures that once again would be dependant on the status of the eunuch (family, training, job to be preformed, etc.) and/or the historical times it which he lived. Keep in mind that cameras have only been around a couple of hundred years, and eunuchs have been around a couple of thousand years. Traditions and practices change over time.

 

Keep in mind that the history of China, Chinese Emperors, and the traditions of eunuchs goes back thousands of years, not a hundred years.

[Guest fountainhall]

the status of the eunuch (family, training, job to be preformed, etc.)

 

Ha! I think you earlier gave us an idea of one of the jobs to be 'performed' But it's interesting that the name comes from the Greek, meaning literally "keeper of the bed". In that position they were unable to influence the course of royal succession nor interfere with the royal perks!

 

Keep in mind that the history of China, Chinese Emperors, and the traditions of eunuchs goes back thousands of years, not a hundred years

 

Agreed. I believe they even go way back to courts of Xerxes and Alexander the Great.