The Qing Dynasty was the last dynasty in Chinese feudal history, Pu Yi ascended the throne at the age of 3 and abdicated at the age of 6, becoming the king of the Great Qing Dynasty, fortunately, the Republic of China government did not kill everything, so that Pu Yi could continue to live in the Forbidden City, in order to save expenses, he could only send some palace eunuchs out of the palace.
It is said that once you enter the palace gate is as deep as the sea, these palace maids who have been bullied in the Forbidden City, after leaving the palace to regain their freedom, but they are not satisfied, and even can't get married, what is going on? It was not until Pu Yi later wrote her memoir "My First Half of Life" that everyone knew about the tragic experience of these palace maids after leaving the palace.
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According to the "Preferential Conditions for Qing Dynasty" signed between the Republic of China government and Pu Yi, Pu Yi could still live in the Forbidden City after his abdication, enjoying the honorific title of "monarch", and the government would also pay a huge amount of 4 million taels of silver yuan every year as the expenses of the Qing Dynasty.
But after Yuan Shikai's death, it entered a 12-year period of warlord chaos, and the military expenses of all warlords were not enough, and who was willing to pay the emperor's huge expenses.
So in order to reduce expenses, Pu Yi could only dismiss some palace maids and eunuchs, and gave them a severance pay of one hundred oceans each, which was also a huge amount of money at that time, and Pu Yi felt that the palace eunuchs could go out with this money and live well.
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Until 1959, Puyi, who was more than half a hundred years old, was amnestied, left the Fushun War Criminals Institute, and returned to Beijing, where he still had a stable job. He remembered the eunuchs and palace maids who had grown up with him, and although they were different from each other, they were also the closest people to him. So Puyi went to visit them after hearing their addresses, but he did not expect that the life of these palace eunuchs after leaving the Forbidden City would be so difficult.
Although they left with a severance pay of one hundred oceans, if they were naturally able to have food and clothing in peacetime, they had no choice but to live in troubled times and warlords chaotic wars, resulting in soaring prices, and this money could not be spent for long.
The eunuchs lived outside as "geldings", suffered a lot of white eyes, and could not marry wives and have children, and could only rely on selling their physical strength to find a livelihood to make a living.
The palace maids who have no ability to survive have a more difficult life, they entered the palace at the age of twelve or thirteen, and all they did in the palace were to take care of the daily living, clothing and food of their masters, and they had no skills after they were exiled to the people, they could only sit on the mountain, and when the severance pay of a hundred oceans was spent, their life was difficult.
And most of them can't get married, live in poverty, and only end up lonely. Pu Yi was very sad when he heard this, he didn't expect that these people's lives would be so sad after leaving the palace.
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Many people think that when the palace maids enter the palace, they are selected by thousands of choices, how can they not marry? Pu Yi gave the answer in his memoir "My First Half of Life", there are three main reasons, very realistic!
The first reason is that although the palace maids were only twelve or thirteen years old when they entered the palace, most of them were twenty-five or six years old when they left the palace, and for those people of that era, they were already older leftover women, and these palace maids have been in the palace for many years, who knows whether they have been favored by the emperor, or have been a nominal husband and wife with eunuchs, no one knows. In the hearts of ordinary people, they are naturally more willing to marry a girl of fifteen or sixteen years old, at least with a clean net worth, and young and fertile.
The second reason is that palace maids have a low status in the harem, often become the punching bag of the masters, beating, scolding, punishing and kneeling are common, and the palace maids are also divided into three, six and nine, and the number of palace maids with the lowest status is also the largest, and they are often bullied by other palace maids and eunuchs. Living in this oppressive environment for a long time, many palace maids have suffered from blood depression, and if they are not treated in time, they will leave infertility. Ordinary people marry daughters-in-law mainly for the sake of inheriting the lineage, so they naturally do not want to marry palace women, for fear that they will not be able to bear children.
The third reason is that the palace maids are accustomed to seeing brocade clothes and jade food in the palace, and they are also contaminated with some bad habits of climbing high and stepping low in the palace, and when they first leave the palace, they have a huge severance pay, naturally they can't look at the coarse tea and light rice of ordinary people's homes, so ordinary people can't look at them, and high-ranking households can't climb. In the end, the severance pay was spent, and no one was willing to marry them, so they could only end up alone.
Pu Yi was distressed by the tragic experience of the eunuch palace maids after they were exiled to the people, so he wrote these things in his memoir "My First Half of Life", after the publication of this book, the tragic situation of the eunuch palace maids attracted the attention of the government, through various channels to find those eunuch palace maids who are still alive, arrange for them to do their best to ensure their basic life, they can also be regarded as old age.