Author: Cold Weapon Bar Spinous Back Dragon
<h1>Happy households and maids</h1>
There was a profession in ancient China called a female trickster, which looked a lot like the prostitute we know it, but it wasn't exactly the same. If you want to explain what a female trick is, you must first start with Lehu.
There has been music in China for a long time. Originally used to entertain the populace, music was later given political and educational significance. To the Zhou metric system of ritual music, the ritual system and the indoctrination of dance music are integrated into one, forming what we call "ritual music". "Liturgy" is solemn and solemn, and is played on all kinds of serious occasions.
As a result, the status of entertaining dance music serving the public has always been lower than that of ceremonial dance music that serves the politics of the country, and as a result, the status of entertaining dancers is also very low and despised by the world. In the context of the ancient identity society, these people who manipulated entertaining dance music formed a "music household" that was inferior to ordinary households.
【Female music in the mural of Tang Lishou Tomb】
In the past, Tang was not too strict with the household registration management of Lehu, and Lehu still had room to turn around. For example, in the Western Han Dynasty, there was a dancer like Zhao Feiyan, but he became an empress.
But by the time of the Tang Dynasty, the management of Lehu was already very strict. The status of the Tang Dynasty lehu was higher than that of officials and slaves, but lower than that of commoners, and generally did not intermarry with people outside their own household registration, even if they intermarried, they could only be concubines, and if they wanted to be wives, the state law would not tolerate it. The most fatal thing is that identity is forced to be hereditary, and it is almost impossible to turn over.
The women in the music household are called female musicians, that is, the female trick of the queen.
In the entertainment dance music, the most attractive is not necessarily the song and dance itself, beautiful dancers and musicians can often add a lot of points to the song and dance. The song and dance performed by a charming beauty brings men sensual enjoyment far more than the performance of male musicians. As a result, female grooms are often more popular.
The prosperity of tang society, cultural pluralism, and open folk customs further promoted the prosperity of women's music in the Tang Dynasty.
Tang Dynasty female tricks can be divided into palace tricks, official tricks, family tricks, camp tricks, city tricks, private tricks and so on.
【Tang Dynasty famous prostitutes in the Republic of China famous prostitute poker burning】
The Palace Trick, or Imperial Palace Trick, belongs to the Emperor and is administered by the Inner Court to serve the Royal Family. The most famous of these is the "Pear Garden" during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang. Tang Xuanzong was fond of dance music and personally presided over the song and dance activities in Pear Garden. In fact, the pear garden is dominated by female tricks, and it is a misuse for later generations of opera practitioners to call themselves disciples of the pear garden.
Both the official and the camp belong to the official government and serve the official banquet. The difference is that the former is "official support", which has a great personal attachment to the official government and will not serve the outside world. The Tang Dynasty was mostly of this kind. The camp trick is the "official camp", the personal dependence relationship with the official government is relatively weak, not only serve the official government, but also receive orders for private business under the premise of obtaining the approval of the official government and accepting the management of the official government. The Song Dynasty was mostly of this type.
The family trick is very similar to the private trick, the former is a female maid raised within the family, which is the collective property of the family. The latter is a private maid raised by a high-ranking official or a rich merchant.
The Ichijing trick is similar to the so-called Qinglou woman we often see on TV, attracting individual customers in the "kiln".
[Xue Tao, a famous prostitute of the Tang Dynasty in the famous prostitute poker of the Republic of China, the women of the Qinglou of the Tang Dynasty must also cultivate poetry to attract the favor of customers, and Xue Tao is one of the best]
<h1>Wind Flower Snow Moon: Chang'an Pingkangfang North Trick</h1>
The open social atmosphere of the Tang Dynasty, coupled with the fact that there was no prohibition by law, made the folk customs industry very prosperous. As the capital city, Chang'an not only has a huge population, but also is mostly a high-ranking official and nobleman, and the economy is rich. There are also a large number of talented people from other places who went to Chang'an to take the exam. All this has made Chang'an's entertainment industry develop rapidly and highly. "Color-eating sex also", especially for men.
As a result, the number of female servants in Chang'an in the middle and late Tang Dynasty increased rapidly, gradually weakening the control of the government over them, and there was a kind of ichijing trick that although it still belonged to the lehu household and belonged to the management of the church, the official government still had to obey when it was recruited, to provide waiters for the official government, but on weekdays, it could independently receive guests and make a living.
Pingkangfang, in the southeast corner of the Imperial City of Chang'an City, has been a famous entertainment place in Chang'an since the early Tang Dynasty. It is wider than the general square area, and there are four square gates (the general square area has only two doors). There is a cross street, east of the south gate, and there is Bodhi Temple. North of Cross Avenue, there are Yanghua Temple, Wan'an Temple, and Jiaxian Temple. There are many residences of high-ranking officials and nobles, and there are many local feudal towns in Chang'an, and the flow of people attracted by the temple Taoist temple has formed a huge popularity and provided convenience for the maids to make a living. PingkangFang gradually became a gathering place for Ichijing tricksters, and was called "Kitasato" by the people of the time.
[Map of Tang Chang'an, the red frame is Pingkang Fang, chang'an's most famous "red light district"]
In the north of Pingkang Fang, the city's well trick is based on the "home" as a unit, independently receiving customers to make a living, and is directly managed by the "false mother". Its main source is the daughter of Rakuto, but there are also many biological daughters from false mothers, such as the "Living, Mother's Belly Daughter" recorded in the "Kitasato Chronicle". There are also girls from fake mothers who have sold themselves out of poverty or have simply been trafficked into the industry. The Yizhi recorded in the Northern Chronicles is an example:
Ben Xie Liang people also, home and a music worker neighbor, young children often according to their home to learn needlework, chanting songs and poems... At first, it was a family (the home of a false mother) to receive even with affection, but after many months, it was forced to learn the song order, and gradually sent to see the guests...
In the Tang Dynasty, where the system of music households was strict, only musicians could easily master the main song and dance skills, which was the basis for their livelihood. But the city tricks are by no means limited to singing and dancing. According to the Kitasato Chronicle, "(Ichijing Trick) is sold at the same time, and many guests stay overnight or for a few days, and there are countless people who exhaust their assets for a long time." Women who make a living from song and dance usually have their posture, coupled with their low status, for the men of the Tang Dynasty, as long as they have money, it is easy to have a physical relationship with these female beauties who show female beauty in front of them through song and dance. For the already inferior market trick, it is not necessary to sell your body to get more money. Playing with prostitutes was an important part of the life of the Tang Dynasty scholars, and it was even rarer to only travel without having a relationship.
[Tang Dynasty Daogu famous prostitute Fish Xuanji in the Famous Prostitute Poker of the Republic of China, it is worth mentioning that the ancient Daogu and nuns were also prostitutes, which is not uncommon]
The "Northern Chronicle" records that during the Reign of Emperor Tang, there was a man named Ling Hujiao, who almost directly turned the Ichijing Trickster's house in PingkangFang into his own home, and often when it was inconvenient to stay in the Jujuguan where he often stayed, he directly slept in the bed of another Ichijing Juju in another Juguan.
And there is such a story in "Tang Yan", saying that there is a person named Zheng Yin, who only plays tricks on weekdays, but rarely has a relationship with them, because of this, he was actually sued by the people around him! The trial official Cui Xun asked him, only to learn that Zheng Yin had no money and could not afford to sleep. As a result, Cui Xun directly and generously donated money to help Zheng Yin pay for prostitution.
In addition to making money by receiving individual customers, those with higher posture and song and dance skills can also choose to be taken care of for a long time by rich and powerful nobles, and the nobles only need to pay regularly according to the negotiated price. Note that this is not as a concubine, but as a foster lover equivalent to the present, and there is no legally recognized marriage.
The main customers of Ichii are the rich and the bearers. "The prostitute of Kitasato (note that it is a 'prostitute' here), then the secretary of state and the juzi, their own oneness. Those who are in the imperial court have always had a ceremony ("Northern Chronicles")." Although the relationship between the fox and the maid is so close, the two sides are nothing more than an exchange of money and sex, and there are few truly infatuated people.
It is recorded in the "Northern Chronicle" that a fox named Zheng Guangye turned a blind eye to a female maid who suffered from heart disease and unfortunately died suddenly at a banquet, and the author here even applauded him, believing that it reflected the manhood of men who were not fascinated by women. From this we can see how despicable the lives of the women were seen by men at that time.
[Bai Lotte lamented the tragic suffering of the singer in the poem "Pipa Line", but he himself raised a large number of domestic prostitutes, and also wrote many poems for this purpose, saying in "Chasing Joy and Puppet Works": "Ten listen to the spring cry and change the warbler's tongue, and the three suspects are old and ugly for the moth's eyebrows." "That is, three times in ten years, the prostitute is rejected for aging and the domestic prostitute is resold for a new one."
<h1>Maids and prostitutes</h1>
It is not difficult to find that although the female tricksters make a living from singing and dancing, they are inseparable from sex from the beginning. The boundaries between selling art and selling one's body are not clear, and they are often integrated. As early as the beginning of the Tang Dynasty, some people mixed "trick" with "prostitute", and the city trick became the predecessor of the brothel prostitutes in the Later Qinglou Brothel, and its operation mode was the originator of the business model of many brothels in later generations. With the development of history, the maid has become a prostitute, the false mother has become a bustard mother, and the entertainment song and dance are inseparable from the erotic trade.
After all, which man spends so much money just to listen to a tune?