On March 4, 1911, Li Lianying died. He is a native of Dacheng, Hebei Province, and the mainstream theory is that he entered the palace at the age of 9, and according to this age, he stayed in the Forbidden City for 52 years. There are many stories between Li Lianying and Cixi, the master and servant, for example, in the "Late Qing Court Observations", there is such a story recorded: Every morning and evening and three meals a day, Cixi and Li Lianying would send eunuchs to greet each other. Delicious? ”
When Cixi stayed in the Summer Palace, she would always take Li Lianying with her, and Cixi, who was idle, would often go to Li Lianying's residence to look for him. At this moment, Cixi would come up with such a sentence: "Lian Ying, let's walk around the bend!"!
After Li Lianying heard it, she would respond first, and then come out to accompany Cixi for a walk. Li Lianying usually walked in the front with Cixi, and the retinue would follow far behind. The authors of "Late Qing Court Insights" are all eunuchs of the late Qing court, or quite valuable for research.
Before Li Lianying, the most favored eunuch was An Dehai (who was killed by Ding Baozhen, the governor of Shandong, outside the palace). After An Dehai's death, Li Lianying gained cixi's trust step by step by virtue of her outstanding skills, and finally became the most famous eunuch in the late Qing Dynasty. Perhaps It is that An Dehai's encounter is too tragic, Li Lianying is very low-key, and she is always cautious in her dealings with the world.
There has always been a saying that Li Lianying did not pay attention to Guangxu at all by virtue of her favor with Cixi, and even more that Guangxu was poisoned by Li Lianying, and after careful analysis, these are actually nonsense. After Tongzhi's death (Cixi's son), Cixi chose her sister's son Zai Xiang (Guangxu) to succeed him, who was only 4 years old at the time.
At that time, Li Lianying was already a red person around Cixi, and it can be said that Guangxu was raised by Li Lianying. In the long-term contact between the two must have feelings, from the historical records we found that the relationship between Guangxu and Li Lianying is very good, and he has always called Li Lianying "Zhida" (meaning old man and friend). Coupled with Li Lianying's timid and cautious, shrewd and sleek personality, how could he "bully" a heavenly son?
On October 22, 1908, Cixi died in Xiyuan, Beijing. Cixi died, Li Lianying lost his patron, and coupled with age problems, he finally chose to leave the Forbidden City. After a hundred days of filial piety with Cixi, he offered his resignation to Empress Dowager Longyu (Cixi's niece).
Empress Longyu approved it, and also specially approved that Li Lianying could receive 60 taels of silver per month after "retirement" as a living expense. In the records of the Qing Palace, the little eunuch and the low-level eunuch who just joined the company only had 2 silver per month, which shows how high Li Lianying's retirement salary is.
Three years after Cixi's death, Li Lianying also died in March 1911. After his death, the Qing Palace allocated special funds (1,000 taels of silver) for his funeral. Buried outside the Fucheng Gate in Beijing, Enjizhuang is also called Enji Temple, which was specially set aside for hundreds of acres of land in the Yongzheng period for burying eunuchs. Decades ago, Li Lianying's cemetery was destroyed, and it is said that the body is incomplete.
There are various legends about li Lianying's death: one theory is that he died of dysentery (lock throat disease), abdominal pain and water and rice; another theory is that he was killed, suspected of being the revolutionary party and enemies; the most bizarre is that he died on the way to collect debts in Shandong.
Which of these claims do you think is more credible and reliable?
When Li Lianying was still called Li Jinxi, perhaps Cixi felt that the name was not in his ears, so she re-named Li Lianying for him. Giving only one name, Cixi, felt that it was not too addictive, and she did not hesitate to break the ancestral system of the Qing Dynasty for Li Lianying, and specially gave him the official title of Erpin. As early as the Yongzheng Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty had stipulated that the eunuch rank should not be higher than the five pins, and Li Lianying was actually a second-pin eunuch.
On March 4, 1911, with the death of Li Lianying, the era belonging to Cixi finally came to an end.