Zhang Lander, the chief eunuch of the Qing Palace, recalls Wang Yaoqing The eunuch XiaoDe Zhang of the Qing Palace recalls his past with Wang Yaoqing

<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Qing Palace eunuch Xiao Dezhang reminisced about his past with Wang Yaoqing</h1>

Zhang Zhongchen (son of Xiaode Zhang's adopted son)

[Note: Zhang Rand (1876-1957), formerly known as Zhang Xiangzhai (张祥斋), was a native of Nanluguantun, Jinghai County, Tianjin. The last eunuch of the Qing Dynasty was born in the second year of Qing Guangxu (1876). Born into poverty. In the fourteenth year of Guangxu (1888), he was ridiculed by the rich and risked his own purification in the palace. In the seventeenth year of Guangxu (1891), he entered the "Tea House" of the Qing Palace as a eunuch and worshiped the eunuch "Haha Li" as a teacher. In the eunuchs of the inner palace, the serial number is Zhang Rand, and the empress dowager Cixi gives the name "Hengtai", and the palace number is XiaoDezhang. It was unbearable to be in the palace -- I had pretended to be crazy and stupid.

　　In the eighteenth year of Guangxu (1892), he was sent to the drama class of the Shengping Bureau of Nanfu in the palace to study Peking Opera Wu Xiaosheng. Xiao Dezhang had good facial features and exquisite skills, at the age of 19, he became a well-known Wu Xiaosheng in the palace, and repeatedly played with Yang Xiaolou, Wang Yaoqing, Yang Xiaoduo and other famous Peking opera artists, deeply favored by Cixi, so Qingyun went straight up, and was promoted to the 5th level in 3 years: the little eunuch of the Empress Palace, the palace official who played the palace in the respect room, the matter, the close attendant before the imperial court, the former head of the imperial court and the general manager of the Nanfu opera class.

　　In the twenty-fourth year of Guangxu (1898), after the failure of the "Penghu Reform Law", the Guangxu Emperor was placed under house arrest in Yingtai, Zhongnanhai. Xiao Dezhang evaded Cixi's interrogation many times, exchanged delicious dishes for the Guangxu Emperor, and secretly made a beautiful appearance for the meeting between Guangxu and Zhenfei.

　　In the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu (1900), during the Gengzi Incident, he fled to Xi'an with Empress Dowager Cixi, serving meticulously all the way, and was given the reward of "serving diligently and diligently" by Cixi.

　　In the twenty-seventh year of Guangxu (1901), after returning to Beijing, he was promoted to the head of the imperial dining room, and the three pins were worn. In order to be loyal to the empress, Xiao Dezhang personally cooked and was favored by Cixi. When Xiao Dezhang fell ill, Cixi personally saw it and became an anecdote in the palace.

　　In the first year of Xuanun (1909), Empress Longyu followed Cixi's will and appointed her as the chief governor of the four divisions and eight departments, and gave her 100,000 taels of silver to build the governor's mansion inside the Anding Gate in Beijing. In order to eliminate dissent, Xiao Dezhang put forward the idea of "Qing Jun's side", and more than a thousand eunuchs were expelled from the palace, all of which were replaced by their confidants. In the same year, Yijin returned to his hometown, and Song Gongdi of Jinghai Zhi County personally pulled the fiber for his back rope. When Xiao Dezhang was in charge, the princes and nobles, and the imperial court ministers jin saw Empress Longyu, and they had to get the approval of Xiao Dezhang, and the power was tilted for a while, and Longyu and Xuantong Emperor were also afraid of him. Rebuilding the Guangxu Mausoleum and promulgating the Emperor's Abdication Edict and other major palace events, Longyu passed on the instructions according to Xiao Dezhang's wishes. Zhang Xun, Ma Fuxiang, Feng Guozhang, duan qi, etc. are all his brothers, and Zaitao and Yuan Shikai have deep friendships with him.

　　In the second year of the Republic of China (1913), after the death of Empress Longyu, she left the Forbidden City and moved to the British Concession of Tianjin, where she lived in simplicity and did not care about political affairs.

　　He died in Tianjin on April 19, 1957, at the age of 81. 】

Because his grandfather was the chief eunuch of the Qing Palace, in 1952, Ah Ying, director of the Tianjin Municipal Bureau of Culture and a famous literary artist, and Zhang Minzhi, then the mayor of Heping District, visited the house, hoping that his grandfather could record some anecdotes and dictations in the Qing court. Unfortunately, my grandfather only said one sentence: "I am a slave of the Imperial Family of the Qing Dynasty, and I have been blessed by the two old ancestors for two generations, and I will never betray the old ancestors." Then, he changed the subject and politely declined the visiting guests.

On October 11, 1955, my grandfather's 79th birthday, when celebrating the birthday of Qingjiu, he paid tribute to the Yingmen, such as the Yuan family, the Wu family, the Shi family, etc. all came to celebrate the birthday, of which the Yuan and Wu families and the Zhang family were decades of family friends. Wei Ziqing and Zhang Ziguang, the elders of the eunuch temple and the "masters" of the 1930s and 1940s, also made a special trip from the capital to Tianjin to wish their grandfather a happy birthday, and recounted in detail the details of the eunuchs who recently fell to their heads in the Beijing temple, and the grandfather said with deep feeling: "Very few of the old masters in the temple have lived to be 80 years old, only the old master of Shunwang has lived to the age of 81, most of them have died of heart disease failure, and the lack of longevity after years of strain is mainly due to lack of exercise." After saying that, he performed the stirrups without hand moving in public, and his body was as soft as cotton, not reducing the year, and my grandfather was very proud of it.

Wang Yaoqing Thorn Soup Audio: 00:00/09:18

【Two yellow guide plate】

The upstairs fights to the end of the first more

【Huilong】

I took off my plain clothes and changed into a new man

【Two yellow slow plate】

I hated only the soup thief in my heart

It caused my family to be separated twice

My brother-in-law went to Hubei to bury his name in anonymity

A large and small family with a charge of the army

Ji zhou tang lost his life for the old man

Thanks to the loyal servant Little Mo Cheng

Tonight I will kill the thief and I will take revenge on snow

Ended up with a green historical name in the eternal existence

The drums on the upper floors were silent

Waited for the thief to be good

Lyric reference

In 1954, when my grandfather learned from the newspaper that Mr. Wang Yaoqing, a famous resident of the Pear Garden Circle in Beijing and the leader of the Tongtian Sect, had died of illness, he was extremely sad in his heart, saying, "I didn't expect Yaoqing to be three years younger than me (at the age of 75) and actually came ahead of me!" I think that at the beginning, when the Dalai Lama came to Beijing to meet the old ancestor (Empress Dowager Cixi), the old ancestor ordered me to sing a full set of "Yanmen Guan" as Yang Balang, I was now drilling the barrel (no time to rehearse, the first performance) The rehearsal back words were only two days and one night, and I could not make a mistake, I did not sleep all night to recite the lyrics, and I went to the play on the third day.

If it weren't for Wang Yaoqing and Dejunru helping me, I wouldn't have smashed the pot, and I wouldn't have been given the python that the old ancestor gave me. Wang Yaoqing is kind, there is no habit of inferiority and self-inferiority in the pear garden industry, there is no play in Danjiao that he will not play, on the stage his movements are free, the white mouth is neat, it is really second to none, even the old ancestors praised him: 'Singing the flag head girl, no one in Beijing white opera can compare with him'.

The next day, at the same time that I was rewarded, the old ancestor's reward for Wang Yaoqing was raised from 30 to 50 taels, and the reward list of Tan Mingtian and Yang Xiaolou was flattened, thus opening the ban that Danjiao could only sing the finale and could not sing the big axis, and increased the value of Danjiao. Grandfather finished speaking and opened a photo album that he had carefully kept for decades. Use a magnifying glass to carefully examine the multi-frame photos he took when he was acting for Empress Dowager Cixi in the palace: "Hongni Guan" and "Deyi Yuan" with Wang Yaoqing; "Breaking Hongzhou" with Yang Xiaoduo, "Mu Kezhai" and "Xiangjiang Hui" with Sun Yiyun, "Falling Horse Lake" with Li Shunting and Fu Xiaoshan, and so on... Closing the photo album, my grandfather was silent for a long time, caught in deep thoughts and memories. Unfortunately, these precious photos were burned during the Cultural Revolution. (Excerpt from Zhang Zhongchen's "My Grandfather Xiao DeZhang" Note: The author of this article is the son of Xiao Dezhang's adopted son)