The Origins of China’s Eunuch System

For over two millennia, China’s imperial courts relied on a unique and disturbing institution: the eunuch. These castrated men served as palace administrators, guards, and personal attendants to emperors and their families. The practice dates back to at least the Zhou Dynasty (1046–256 BCE), but reached its peak during the Ming (1368–1644) and Qing (1644–1912) dynasties.

The system emerged from a paradox of imperial rule. Emperors needed trustworthy servants to manage the palace’s inner quarters, where royal women lived in seclusion. Yet they also feared male servants might compromise the purity of the imperial bloodline. The solution was castration—creating a class of men who could navigate both the male-dominated bureaucracy and the forbidden female spaces of the palace.

By the Qing era, the selection process had become more regulated compared to the Ming Dynasty’s mass recruitment from impoverished regions like Fujian and Shaanxi. Qing eunuchs primarily came from Hejian in southern Zhili (modern Hebei), where generations of poverty made families desperate enough to sacrifice sons for potential advancement.

The Brutal Business of Castration

Beijing housed two infamous castration families who operated under imperial license. The Bi family in South Chang Street’s Accounting Office Lane and “Little Knife Liu” near Di’anmen’s Brick Lane both held official sixth-rank positions—higher than county magistrates. Each quarter, they supplied 40 freshly castrated boys to the Imperial Household Department.

The castration process was a carefully guarded family trade. As one elderly eunuch recalled:

“Castration masters were hereditary professionals, each claiming secret techniques passed only to sons. The relationship between cutter and cut was lifelong—like a monk and his ordination master. Families signed contracts absolving the cutter of responsibility if the boy died.”

Preparation was meticulous:
– 30 pounds of millet for recovery meals
– Corn cobs and sesame stalks for heating and wound care
– Thick window paper to seal the operating room against drafts
– Two fresh pig gallbladders for antiseptic poultices

The operation occurred in spring or early summer to avoid flies. Boys fasted for a day beforehand and drank anesthetic tea brewed from stinky hemp (Cannabis sativa). They were strapped naked to a narrow board with legs spread, a hole beneath for waste.

First, the testicles were removed through lateral incisions. An egg forced into the mouth prevented screaming during the excruciating “squeezing” step. Next, the penis was amputated at the root—cut too shallow risked regrowth requiring repeat surgery; too deep caused lifelong urinary problems. A barley straw catheter was inserted, wounds dressed with split pig bladders, and the boy left to recover on a heated kang bed.

The Economics of Human Mutilation

Castration was both a medical procedure and financial transaction. Cutters kept the severed organs as collateral—preserved in lime, wrapped in red cloth, and hung from rafters as “rising fortune” charms. Successful eunuchs later paid exorbitant sums to reclaim these “treasures” for burial, a ritual called “bones and flesh returning home.”

As one aged eunuch described:

“We Chinese believe souls can’t rest without complete bodies. Even if poor all our lives, we saved to buy back what was taken. Otherwise, we couldn’t enter family graves or face our ancestors in the afterlife.”

The redemption ceremony mirrored weddings—processions with firecrackers, musicians, and an adopted son carrying the organs on red silk. At the ancestral grave, eunuchs would collapse weeping: “Father’s bones, mother’s flesh—I’ve brought them back at last!”

Life After the Knife

Survivors faced months of agony. Legs were stretched daily to prevent contractures. Urination through the barley straw burned like fire. Many developed chronic incontinence—”nine of ten eunuchs wet their pants,” noted one observer.

Those who healed joined a strict hierarchy. Novices started cleaning chamber pots. The fortunate might rise to manage imperial kitchens or warehouses. A tiny fraction, like the notorious Li Lianying, became powerful confidants of emperors or dowagers.

Yet most endured lives of humiliation. Qing Dynasty reforms reduced eunuch numbers from the Ming’s bloated 70,000 to about 3,000, but couldn’t eliminate the mockery they faced. As Lu Xun sarcastically noted, eunuchs—along with concubines and opium—represented “China’s quintessential cultural achievements.”

The System’s Bitter End

The castration families’ monopoly collapsed in 1900 when the Eight-Nation联军 sacked Beijing. By then, modernization pressures were eroding the system. The last imperial eunuchs served Puyi, the final Qing emperor, until his 1924 expulsion from the Forbidden City.

A former palace maid recalled:

“Beijing once swarmed with eunuchs. Now perhaps one or two remain, so senile they can’t dress themselves. This畸形 human tragedy has passed into history.”

Their legacy lingers in surprising ways. The臭大麻 (stinky hemp) used as anesthetic is now studied for potential medical applications. The Huanghua Gate inspection office became a胡同 (hutong) alley. And the Bi and Liu families’ operating rooms—once scenes of unimaginable pain—stand as silent witnesses to an extinguished practice.

In the end, these men were both victims and perpetrators of a system that sacrificed individual bodies for imperial control. Their stories, preserved in fragments like the old宫女’s memories, serve as haunting reminders of power’s human cost. As the eunuch Zhang福 poignantly concluded: “Ours was a life between heaven and earth, yet belonging to neither.”