The Forbidden City - Emperors, Concubines and Eunuchs

This morning we took the metro to visit the Forbidden City.  It's a huge, palatial complex that was built in 1420 by some emperor of the Ming dynasty.  (Carol, wasn't Kathleen's crazy cat named Ming?)

This is Aaron, Tatiana, Rik and I in the outer courtyard. It’s massive and there are no trees - to make sure some rogue couldn’t climb a tree and assassinate the emperor. 

It's called "The Forbidden City" because the emperor didn't want anyone outside of the royal family to get in.  Typical.  

There were 800+ buildings and 9999.5 rooms built in it and there were all kinds of emperors who lived in there.  Plus their concubines.  Plus their eunuchs.  The emperor had 3000-5000 concubines whose sole purpose was to sit around waiting to be picked - then to bring physical pleasure to the emperor.  Gag.

When the emperor died, the concubines were killed off too. (So the emperor could continue to have sexy time in the next life, I presume? Burning them alive seems a bit much, though.)  The Eunuchs were around to take care of the concubines’ schedule and make sure they were ready if chosen by the emperor that day. 

Everything you need to know about the Eunuchs, including diagrams, can be found here.  You're welcome.

Inside this area is the inner courtyard.  

And finally, inside that are the buildings where all the concubines and eunuchs lived. It’s filled with lovely trees, flowers and marble structures.

Lots of young women and children were dressed in traditional costumes. Beats the heck out of me why anyone would want to rush to become a concubine, so glorifying them now seems bizarre to me, but whatever.  I met this cute little lad who must have been dressed to portray “The Last Emporer”.

There are several old trees (some up to 500 years old) in the Forbidden City.  Unfortunately the signs were all in Chinese so I can’t point out which are the oldest.

There were some other weird things, too. All the buildings had carvings of mythical creatures. They are to protect the structures. And are for good luck and to protect the people.

After a few hours of walking and climbing stairs, my ankle was killing me so I didn’t absorb everything the tour guide told us. That’s okay. I can fill in the blanks.  Like this cauldron, for example.  Maybe it was used to boil up concubines who didn’t please the emperor 🤷🏻‍♀️  

We are on a bullet train right now between Beijing and Xi’an.  It goes pretty fast.

I’m starting to fall asleep right now so I’ll sign off. Goodbye Beijing!

- Ruth