In today's society, people like to wear colored glasses to see historical figures, for example, when it comes to the Sui Dynasty Emperor Yang Guang, everyone will think of the words "tyrant" and "emperor", completely forgetting that he also has the merits of digging canals, opening up Taiwan, and improving the imperial examination system.
Image: Stills of Yang Guang
For another example, when talking about Qianlong, everyone knows that he is a relatively powerful emperor, but now people's impression of Qianlong is stereotyped.
For example, lustful, often go out to find beautiful women; for example, I like to stamp on the famous poems in the collection, resulting in those words and paintings being miserable; and for example, I like to write poetry, the number of poems he writes is more than the poetry of dozens of famous poets combined, but the quality is not good, no poem is included in the necessary ancient poems for primary and secondary school students, and the students have to thank the Qianlong Emperor for this!
Photo: Stills of Qianlong who loves to write poetry
In short, to understand historical figures, we should not only analyze from one side, but should analyze comprehensively, not only to see the good aspects, but also to see the flawed side, because people are complex, and so are historical figures.
Back to the point, today we come to talk about a person who has been an emperor for thirteen years, has been crowned more than 2,700 kings in thirteen years, and has not stepped out of his own Heavenly King's Mansion for eleven years - Hong Xiuquan.
I hope that everyone will not look at him with colored glasses, but to understand and analyze him objectively and fairly, and know some small secrets related to him.
Hong Xiuquan has loved to read since he was a child, completely without the pressure of his parents, is to love learning, he entered a private school at the age of seven, and then he took the examination like ordinary people, preparing for the exam, but no matter how hard he tried, he did not win, just after the third exam failed, he began to get sick, and a disease was more than forty days.
During his illness, he had a dream in which he was taken to a palace in heaven, and on the throne of the palace sat an old man, and this old man said to him, "All the people in this world are eating me, wearing me, and using me, but they don't know how to be grateful, they don't worship me, you don't want to learn from them."
Later, Hong Xiuquan saw a book at the missionary in Guangzhou, "Persuasion to the World", the main content of which was somewhat similar to the dream.
Image from the network: Hong Xiuquan
Therefore, he began to imitate Christianity, created his own "worship of God", and has always preached the idea of "one family under the heavens, sharing peace". Later, guangxi suffered a drought for many years, the people could not afford to eat, and they saw that they would not be able to support it, so Hong Xiuquan seized the opportunity to lead the masses to launch the Jintian Uprising on January 11, 1851, establishing the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and proclaiming himself king.
On March 19, 1953, the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom captured Nanjing, and Hong Xiuquan changed the city of Nanjing to "Tokyo" and set the capital here.
But what is puzzling is that Hong Xiuquan's old problems began to be committed, and he began to live in his mansion every day, not dealing with the mass soldiers outside, but began to enjoy life.
In the final analysis, his deep-rooted feudal ideas and hierarchical concepts have not changed, although he has repeatedly emphasized the equality of men and women, but in fact, he still looks down on women in his heart, and he demands that all men in heaven should not take concubines, but he and a prince are exceptional.
Photo: Stills of the Jintian Uprising organized by Hong Xiuquan
After arriving in Nanjing, he issued a strange rule, as long as the official title is larger, the number of wives he marries will be greater. Therefore, Hong Xiuquan's previous stipulation that "no concubines" was only used to bind the common people, but he and his "kings" were far outside the system.
It is said that in Hong Xiuquan's mansion in Nanjing, he had to let female officials serve him and his concubines every day, and there were more than a thousand of these female officials! Because there are no eunuchs in the Heavenly King's Palace, there can only be one man, and he practices absolute patriarchy.
Every year on his birthday, his subordinates would present him with 6 beautiful women, and when spring came, his men would post notices at the city gate, requiring all young women and beautiful women to be owned by the king as long as their faces were decent.
In short, Hong Xiuquan's channel to get beautiful women is not one or two! So after arriving in Nanjing, how many Nanjing beauties did Hong Xiuquan "waste"? Let's find out.
Photo: Hong Xiuquan and female officials stills
According to rough statistics, in the later period, the number of concubines in Hong Xiuquan's harem plus female officials serving them was as high as more than 2300. Moreover, Hong Xiuquan's concubines were as high as 88, and the number of concubines in the three palaces and six courtyards of the emperors of various dynasties in history was only 72, while the Xianfeng Emperor, who was in the same period as Hong Xiuquan, had only 18 concubines.
Usually, especially in the Qing Dynasty, the harem concubine management system was very strict, and each concubine had her own title, so that the emperor could turn the green head card at night and match the face and the title.
Photo: Qing Emperor flips the green head card stills
However, Hong Xiuquan was really a master who could manipulate the gods, and he felt that it was too troublesome for so many concubines to take the title one by one, but it was also very troublesome to call their names one by one, so how could they be called to come and serve themselves?
He had a stroke of genius and came up with a good idea: it could be numbered with numbers! This can definitely be called a major invention unprecedented in ancient and modern China and abroad, we can imagine such a scene, the female official asked Hong Xiuquan which lady to invite tonight to accompany the driver, Hong Xiuquan waved his sleeve, casually said: 25th!
Or when a certain concubine gave birth, the female official hurried to announce the good news: congratulations to the emperor, Congratulations to the emperor, the 76th lady successfully gave birth to a white and fat little prince! It's a bit awkward to hear!
Photo: Stills of Hong Xiuquan's concubines
So, in addition to these 88 concubines, what about the two thousand palace maidens? These good-looking palace girls can also be pampered by Hong Xiuquan at any time, always summoning concubines is a little tired, Hong Xiuquan will be lucky to three or five palace girls at a time, like to give some benefits to give some status, dislike to leave behind.
In short, whether he liked it or not, his more than two thousand palace ladies had no names, not even numerical numbers!
Hong Xiuquan has not been out of the Heavenly Palace for eleven years since he set the capital in Nanjing, so what is he busy with day by day? In the overall planning situation? Or is something politically important planned? Or is it a daily affairs process?
Neither! He put almost all his energy into the management of the rear officials, and he also personally formulated the "ten should be beaten" for women, such as: looking up at the husband three times should be beaten, speaking loudly six should be beaten, and so on. He also asked all the women in the palace to recite it and check it out from time to time.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that Hong Xiuquan also created 500 "poems", of which 478 capitals were used to restrain concubines. For example: Psalm 237: "Look at the Lord's single accurately see the shoulder, and the best reason is to look at the chest." "If you are interested in carefully studying the level of these poems, you should be able to understand why Hong Xiuquan failed to participate in the four examinations."
Photo: Hong Xiuquan dingdu Nanjing stills
In the end, Hong Xiuquan spent eleven years in the company of more than two thousand beautiful women, and in 1864, when he was 52 years old, under the fire of the Xiang Army, he left those beautiful women and hanged himself. The Taiping Rebellion, led by him, also ended in failure.
Hong Xiuquan led the popular uprising to resist the oppression and exploitation of the government, and when his uprising was successful, he became another authoritarian ruler, Hong Xiuquan initially advocated equality between men and women, fairness and justice, and when he sat in a whole harem, he formulated hundreds of precepts to restrain concubines, and even used numbers to summon them, indicating that Hong Xiuquan despised women from the bottom of his heart.
Photo: Stills of Hong Xiuquan's death
In the final analysis, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement was doomed to failure from the very beginning, because its leader, Hong Xiuquan, was not really for the common people, just to make himself an addicted child of being the emperor.
Article author: Zi Haojun
The whole picture and text was originally produced by Zihao Film and Television Production Studio!