Li Lianying was born on November 12, 1848 in Dacheng County, Hebei Province. Due to the poverty of the family, in 1856 (at the age of 8), Li Lianying was taken to the capital by her grandfather for castration. The following year, he was sent to the imperial palace as a eunuch and named Li Jinxi.
In 1908 (at the age of 60), Empress Dowager Cixi, whom Li Lianying had served all her life, died. In the past few decades, the slaves around Cixi have changed stubble after stubble, but Li Lianying has always stayed by her side.
Li Lianying completed Cixi's funeral and kept filial piety for her for 100 days before she left the imperial palace where she had lived for half a century.
On February 4, 1911, Li Lianying was assassinated on the road and died violently at the age of 63. Folklore has it that it was the hand of the great hero "Big Sword King V" at the end of the Qing Dynasty.
Li Lianying, who had just entered the palace, had nothing to rely on, and in order to climb up, he had to make some changes. Li Lianying heard that Cixi wanted to comb a popular bun, but the eunuchs in the palace could not comb it well. So Li Lianying painstakingly studied the new hairstyle combing method. At the recommendation of a fellow eunuch, 16-year-old Li Lianying became Cixi's hair-combing eunuch. In addition, Li Lianying was good at speculating about Cixi's thoughts and was very popular, Empress Dowager Cixi often sought out Li Lianying to relieve her boredom and please Cixi, so at the age of 19, Li Lianying was appointed as the second director of the palace.
At this time, Li Lianying was only under the grand chancellor Andehai, and was given the name "Lianying" by Cixi, and later called Lianying by the people. I already knew that Li Lianying had only been in the palace for 10 years at this time, and such a promotion speed could be said to be a fight with the rocket.
What is even more unexpected is that two years after Li Lianying became the second governor, An Dehai went out to play in the palace, and as a result, He Dehai was beheaded by Ding Baozhen, the inspector of Shandong, on the charge of "violating the ancestral system and leaving the Beijing Division without permission". Therefore, Empress Dowager Cixi put Li Lianying in charge and became the new grand chancellor. At this time, Li Lianying was only 21 years old, and as Li Lianying became a popular person around Empress Dowager Cixi, he also became the main object of everyone's attention. Of course, far more than that, Cixi later broke the ancestral system and crowned Li Lianying as a zhengerpin.
After the Eight-Nation Alliance conquered Beijing, Cixi fled west, and Li Lianying obeyed Cixi's service along the way, but the Guangxu Emperor was not so well treated, living in tatters and did not even have a quilt to make the bed, or Li Lianying secretly took his quilt to the Guangxu Emperor after Cixi fell asleep, and served Guangxu to sleep. This is also why the Guangxu Emperor would sigh afterwards: "Without Li Anda, I am afraid that I would not live today."
We can also see from here that Li Lianying is different from other eunuchs.
Li Lianying never bought property for herself, let alone countless "wives and concubines" like other eunuchs, but married a room or a widow, although nominally a wife, in fact Li Lianying gave her to rely on. In addition, the palace eunuchs in the palace were punished for making mistakes, and Li Lianying would intercede for them in her life, so the eunuch palace women in the harem, and even the concubines, respected Li Lianying very much. As the Japanese epitaph reads: "Respect in matters, leniency in things, if there is a year, do not try to slacken off."
On November 15, 1908, with the death of Cixi, the 60-year-old Li Lianying had no master, and he was no longer reused, as the history books said, "a son of heaven and a courtier." In the end, Li Lianying handed over all the rewards of Cixi to Empress Dowager Longyu, in exchange for the "grace" of leaving the palace after a hundred days of filial piety for Cixi and keeping filial piety for Cixi for three more years.
In 1909, at the age of 61, Li Lianying left the Forbidden City, perhaps Li Lianying was afraid of being assassinated by the enemy, so she found a remote and hidden place to live, but Li Lianying was assassinated and died on February 4, 1911.
Li Lianying was buried in Enjizhuang outside Fucheng Gate after his death, and in 1966, the excavation of Li Lianying's tomb found that there was only one head in his tomb, which confirmed that Li Lianying, a "slave" who had not done anything bad, died of death. As for who killed him, we can't verify it, but we can be sure that in the three years after he left the Forbidden City, he was far less beautiful than before, but in the end he was only a bitter person under the feudal social system.