How hard is it to be Puyi's grandmother? There are actually two rules, one is inhumane and the other is difficult to accept
In ancient times, the wives of rich and noble families did not have so much energy to feed their children after giving birth, and in order to ensure that their children had adequate nutrition, they specially hired some poor women who had just given birth to children to feed these children, and they were called nursing mothers. Especially in the Qing Dynasty, wives and wives generally did not feed their children themselves and would look for nurses. And the imperial family of the Qing Dynasty is naturally no exception.
Ai Xinjueluo Puyi was the last emperor and the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, born in 1906 and ascended the throne in 1909. In 1908, the Guangxu Emperor was seriously ill, and Empress Dowager Cixi was also ill, but she suddenly ordered the son of the regent Zaifeng to be raised in the palace, which caught everyone in the palace by surprise. Although Puyi's grandmother and birth mother were very reluctant, they could not resist the will, so they had to endure the pain and let the internal prison take Puyi away. Puyi, who left home and entered the palace, had only one milkmaid around him, and this milkmaid was Wang Lianshou.
Wang Jiao was originally just a woman from a poor family, not even having her own name, but later Puyi rewarded her with a name, Wang Lianshou. When Wang Lianshou was 19 years old, she had just given birth to a daughter, her husband died unfortunately, and she just happened to encounter a natural disaster, in order not to let her family starve to death, she could only choose to enter the palace as a nurse. Like most peasants in the feudal period, she could not read a single character, was generous and honest, and had plenty of milk, so she was favored by the imperial court. Because the grandmother, as the closest person to the emperor, often has great power, in order to prevent this from happening, successive dynasties have had relevant countermeasures. In the Qing Dynasty, the rules for the nurses were endless, and some of them did not regard the nurses as people at all.
According to the description of "The First Half of My Life", the palace set 2 rules for Puyi's nursing mother. The first is that Puyi must be fed, which is also the basic duty of every nursing mother. In order to induce milk, the nursing mother must eat a pork knuckle every day, but not a little salt! Pork knuckles without salt taste like chewing wax, but Wang Jiaoshi must eat it every day. The second is very inhumane, because the nursing mother can never go home, and it is strictly forbidden to meet her own children.
Rule 2 is to prevent the nursing mother from sneaking home to feed her child. Parents in the world who do not hurt their children, in order not to let the nursing mother bring the royal milk to the untouchables to drink, the Qing Dynasty harem is also doing everything to the extreme. And just when Wang Jiaoshi was desperately eating elbows for the Qing Dynasty and milking milk like crazy, something big happened! According to Puyi, in the third year of Wang Jiao's entry into the palace as a nursing mother, her own daughter died of malnutrition. What is even more inhumane is that in order to prevent the nursing mother's mood from being affected by the fluctuation of milk production, the royal palace has blocked this news.
Wang Jiao's family did their best to feed Puyi every day, but his children did not have a drop of milk to eat, and even their daughter died prematurely. Wang Jiao's family relies on 2 taels a month to send money to his family regularly every month, still thinking as before, "The family finally has a mouthful of food to eat"!
Until Puyi was nine years old, there was no longer a need for a nursing mother, Wang Jiaoshi was expelled from the palace by the imperial concubine, until Puyi was able to govern after the big wedding, he often took her into the palace to live for a period of time, after the establishment of the Republic of China, Puyi was controlled, established a puppet Manchu government, and then took Wang Jiao's clan to Changchun to be raised.
It was not until 1946, after the surrender of the Japanese army, that Wang Jiaoshi silently passed away at the age of 59.