When it comes to grandmas, I'm sure everyone thinks of the past. In ancient times, only the magnates and the royal family usually wanted a grandmother. Thus, over time, the grandmother became the standard for the rich. From the superficial meaning, it can be seen that the job of the nurse is to feed the child. However, this is only one of its tasks. Another task was to provide breast milk to adults, because people at that time believed that breast milk could prolong people's lives and keep them young. In the Han Dynasty, there was a minister who drank the breast milk of his concubine every day in his later years, and finally he lived for more than 100 years.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, Empress Dowager Cixi also raised a group of nurses in the palace to provide him with breast milk. In the past, the grandmother's family was generally very poor, and usually when they gave birth, they would go to the magnate or the palace to work. Maybe when you read this, a lot of people will be skeptical. Just after giving birth, I became a nurse. So, who will raise her children? And here we have to talk about a rule of being a nurse: when a nurse can only feed the children of the master's family. As a result, many children throughout history have died prematurely due to congenital undernutrition.
As a nursing mother who is a member of the royal family, especially a nursing mother for a young emperor such as Puyi, the requirements are very strict. Since Puyi ascended the throne entirely because Cixi was in power and needed an "obedient" emperor, to a certain extent, puyi was not only isolated in the palace, but even the nursing mother who lived with him day and night had to be subject to certain surveillance. Puyi, as the eldest son of the Prince of the Late Qing Dynasty, naturally had to find a nursing mother for Puyi according to the regulations. Although the late Qing Dynasty fell at that time, the people did not have a good life, but as a member of the royal family, prince Alcohol's conditions for Puyi to recruit nursing mothers were still very rich: 2 silver per month, including food and housing. For a time, many young mothers who had just given birth to children signed up, and the Prince Of Alcohol's Mansion was in full swing. After preliminary screening, 20 conditions were finally left behind that were relatively good.
Among them, a Hebei woman surnamed Jiao stood out from these 20 better nursing mother candidates and became Puyi's nursing mother, because Jiao's late husband was surnamed Wang, so Jiao was later given the name Wang Lianshou by Puyi. Since nursing mothers have to feed their babies on the one hand, and on the other hand, they also assume part of the responsibility of education, so the two biggest requirements for nursing mothers are thick and healthy milk, dignified and elegant. After officially becoming Puyi's nursing mother, Wang Lianshou also had to accept two cruel conditions, one was not to go home, and the other was to be restricted from visiting his own daughter. As a mother who has just given birth to a daughter, Wang Lianshou does not even have the right to visit her daughter, and you can imagine what kind of pain she will have to endure. But even so, Wang Lianshou was still very responsible, took good care of Puyi, and later accompanied Puyi into the palace, relying on the young Puyi for his life.
In history, there are many people who have been glorious and rich because they have been the emperor's nursing mother, but it is a pity that Wang Lianshou's late Qing Dynasty has long had no such conditions, after all, even the emperor himself is difficult to protect, who cares about a nursing mother? In Puyi's recollection, in order to ensure the purity of the milk of the nursing mother, it is strictly forbidden to have salt and soy sauce in the meals of the nursing mother, which is a very humiliating provision, and Puyi believes that this is to use 2 taels of silver per month to turn people into a cow. At that time, Puyi was still young and did not understand what Wang Lianshou had endured, so although he had a sense of dependence on her, he still inevitably had some contempt. Perhaps it is precisely because of Puyi's attitude that after he was weaned at the age of 9, Wang Lianshou was secretly driven out of the palace by some concubines.
Wang Lianshou, who has been a nursing mother for the emperor for 9 years, has long been out of touch with society, has almost no other skills except feeding babies, and is no longer young, whether it is easy to remarry or to be a nursing mother to someone else. The saddest thing is that Wang Lianshou was expelled from the palace only to learn that her only daughter died prematurely because she could not be fed by her biological mother. In 1932, Puyi was coerced by the Japanese army to become the emperor of the puppet state of Manchukuo, and Puyi, who was already sensible, took Wang Lianshou to his side, respected her very much, and tried his best to take care of her. Unfortunately, under the iron hooves of the Japanese, Puyi himself was unable to protect himself, and although he tried his best, he still could not protect Wang Lianshou. In 1945, Japan surrendered, and Wang Lianshou failed to follow Puyi to the Soviet Union, but was killed by The Japanese prisoners, thus ending his tragic life at the age of 59.
Jiao Wangshi, Wang Lianshou, is the grandmother of Emperor Puyi, and her life is also very hard, it can be said that she is a poor nurse. In his early years, Wang Lianshou suffered the pain of bereavement after giving birth to his daughter, had no husband to rely on, and left his family to support his family. In desperation, she relied on her own breast milk to enter the palace as a nurse. Unexpectedly, this went for nine years, until Puyi was weaned when he was nine years old, and then resigned and went home. But when she got home, her daughter starved to death as early as three. By this time, she had already regretted it. I think if she had been given another chance to come back, she wouldn't have chosen to be a wet nurse.