The Taiping Rebellion, which swept through most of China at the end of the Qing Dynasty, ultimately failed, and in addition to the internal struggle for power and profit, the "hedonism" of Hong Xiuquan and others was also an important factor.
After Hong Xiuquan occupied Nanjing, he thought that he could establish a state and put enjoyment and privilege in the first place. The corruption of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom also arose at this time, fundamentally shaking the foundation of the regime. Hong Xiuquan changed the Liangjiang Governor's Palace into the Heavenly King's Mansion and used his luxury to create the Heavenly King's Palace. More than ten miles around his mansion, the walls are several inches high, and the inside and outside are double. The forest garden has been carefully carved, and the Heavenly King's Mansion is full of rare treasures.
Before the uprising was fully successful, the leaders of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom began to spend huge sums of money to build a royal palace and elect a wide range of concubines. Among them, Hong Xiuquan had the most concubines. According to the Qing Dynasty book "Notes on the Spring Dream Temple of Jiangnan", Hong Xiuquan set up more than a thousand titles in his harem, and the ranks of concubines were queen, ai niang, frolicking, miaonu, jiaonu, concubine, and yuannu.
The harem was so numerous that Hong Xiuquan had no way of remembering everyone's names. So he numbered these concubines one by one, from the beginning. Every time he needed to be served to sleep, Hong Xiuquan only needed to say the number of the number represented by the beauty to the people. Therefore, there is such a funny title as "the first wife". In addition, there were no eunuchs in the Heavenly King's Palace, and all those who served him were "female officials". Nominally a female official, she was actually a member of Hong Xiuquan's harem. Together with the empresses, the total number of female dependents in the Heavenly King's Mansion was as high as more than 2,300. This figure is surprising and unacceptable. However, some experts have expressed doubts about the record of the "Notes on the Spring Dream Temple of Jiangnan", because it is far from the historical record.
Hong Xiuquan's harem is not only a large number of people, but also beautiful women. In the matter of choosing concubines, he strictly followed the style of the ancient emperors. These women must not only be beautiful, but also have to be born into a famous family in order to be favored by Hong Xiuquan. Because only the daughters of large families have baby-like skin and a feminine body. Farm women work all year round, and they will not skin tender meat, let alone maintain the skin.
Another requirement is that these women must be complete, have not been married before, and Hong Xiuquan will personally examine them. If he found out that the beauty sent to the Heavenly King's Mansion was not the Yellow Flower Maiden, he would reduce her to slavery and even order the woman to be killed. In the years when Hong Xiuquan stayed in Nanjing, many beautiful women in Nanjing were harmed, and his behavior was heinous.
At the beginning of the uprising, Hong Xiuquan used the slogan of "building a fair world without bullying the weak, deceiving and oppressing the strong", claiming that his thinking was "the idea of equality that all men in the world are brothers, and all women in the world are sisters." For the people who had been oppressed by the imperial court, Hong Xiuquan's behavior was the savior, so in response to his call to oppose the rule of the Qing government, the ranks of the rebel army would become larger and larger.
However, Hong Xiuquan's behavior in Nanjing was far from the slogan he had previously premised. The people saw his true face, which was the same as the rule of the Qing government, and naturally would not support him. Coupled with the contradictions within the leaders of the uprising, and the Qing government's collusion with Western forces to fight against the rebel army, it was inevitable that the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Games would end in failure.