Eunuchs, a special profession under the feudal dynasty, are many slaves and charming, and only the master's wishes are obedient, but there are exceptions. The small eunuch Kou Liancai in the late Qing Dynasty is one of the special cases.
Kou Liancai was a native of Changping Prefecture, who was castrated into the palace at the age of fifteen due to his poor family, and served as a eunuch in the combing room, serving Empress Dowager Cixi, who was deeply loved by Cixi, and later promoted to eunuch of the Office of Music and Eunuch of the Accounting Room.
Living around Cixi all day, Kou Liancai was very disdainful of Cixi's extravagance and lavishness, such as beating Concubine Jin and Concubine Zhen with a staff, letting Emperor Dezong smoke opium, and building a large number of civil engineering to build the Yuanmingyuan.
In particular, Cixi's treatment of Emperor Dezong made Kou Liancai very angry, and he wrote in his diary:
Of China's 400 million people, the most miserable situation is the emperor, who has not been loved since he was five years old. Every day to the Western Empress dowager to ask for peace, there is no order is not afraid to get up, slightly inferior to the Western Empress's will, you will be punished by the long kneeling, so the emperor sees the Western Empress, always trembling.
Three meals a day, although there are dozens of dishes, can be placed in the distance is more perishable, near the long cooked dry and cold, whenever the imperial dining room for a little delicious meal, the eunuch in charge will play Cixi, Cixi will punish him with frugal virtue. In fact, the money was embezzled by the eunuch who was in charge of the imperial dining room.
To this end, Guan Liancai thought twice, handed Cixi a fold, knelt down in front of Cixi with a drooling face, and put forward ten requests, such as returning the emperor, suspending the construction of the Summer Palace, exempting the railway from repairing, deposing Li Hongzhang, and strengthening war readiness to start a war with Japan.
Empress Dowager Cixi was very angry when she saw the fold, and originally thought that Kou Liancai had been instructed to write it by someone, but when she saw that some of the writing was unreasonable and there were many typos, she believed that Kou Liancai had written it herself.
Cixi personally interrogated Kou Liancai: Don't you know that there is a rule in the ancestral system that eunuchs are not allowed to participate in politics?
Kou Liancai replied: I know. However, there are priorities in the matter, so I dare not stick to the clichés.
Cixi: Don't you know that it is a capital offense to do so?
Kou Liancai: I know. I'm desperate.
Cixi sighed and paused for half a day before saying: Since this is the case, then hand it over to the Punishment Department and handle it according to the old practice.
On February 16, 1896, the twenty-second year of Guangxu, Kou Liancai was beheaded at Caishikou and died at the age of eighteen.
Man, inherently dead, is either heavier than Tarzan or lighter than Hong Mao. Kou Liancai was a eunuch, but for the sake of the country, he sacrificed his life for righteousness, killed himself to become a benevolent, and left a name in the history of Qingqing.