If I get the chance to visit I will. Anyone been there?

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... uelest-cut

jjayman3 (imported) wrote: Wed Jan 12, 2011 8:24 pm If I get the chance to visit I will. Anyone been there?

http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/20 ... uelest-cut

A museum dedicated to China's cruelest cut

By NBC News’ Bo Gu

BEIJING – It’s a small museum in a quiet and grubby village, and few people pay attention to it. Yet, despite its low profile, any man who walks into the little exhibition hall will no doubt feel a chill down his spine: it’s a museum dedicated to China’s 2,000-year history of eunuchs.

Built in 1998 and recently refurbished, the museum sits next to a tomb for the high-ranking eunuch Tian Yi from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). In a space the size of a 2,000 square foot apartment, five exhibit rooms give visitors a brief but complete account of how the system of castrating men came into being, how the eunuchs' institution grew to become powerful political cliques and how the system finally ended with the death of the last eunuch in China, Sun Yaoting, in 1996.

The museum dedicated to China's 2,000-year history of eunuchs displays a knife that was used in castration.

The etymology of “eunuch” is the Greek word for “bed keeper.” Young boys’ penises and testicles were castrated before they were sent to serve in royal and aristocratic families as slaves – the practice was meant to ensure there was no chance of them sleeping with female members of the household or concubines.

Records of eunuchs have been found in ancient Greece, Egypt, Rome, Turkey and Persia, but none of the other countries maintained the system for long. But the practice lasted for thousands of years in China.

It’s hard to trace when exactly the first eunuch appeared in China, but the museum shows a picture of an oracle bone inscribed with the hieroglyphic word that means "eunuch" – a penis-shaped character with a blade right next to it. Hieroglyphics evolved during the Shang and Zhou dynasties (17th century B.C.-256 B.C.), but it wasn’t until the Eastern Han Dynasty (25 A.D-220 A.D.) that only castrated men were allowed to serve in royal families.

The system of eunuchs reached its zenith in China’s Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) when eunuchs became the de facto rulers who controlled the imperial power and founded their own political parties and secret police. In the late Ming-era court officials even had to bribe the sterilized men to get access to the emperor.

Zhu Youjian, the 16th and the last emperor of Ming Dynasty, had more than 100,000 eunuchs during his rule. The eunuch clique was so powerful, yet corrupt, that when Li Zicheng, the leader of an uprising during the late Ming dynasty, finally conquered the capital city, he kicked out all the eunuchs.

The museum lists all of the best-known eunuchs in one exhibit room, of which the most famous is probably Zheng He (1371-1433), the mariner, explorer, diplomat and fleet admiral, who commanded voyages to Southeast Asia, South Asia, and East Africa. His travels were later remembered outside China as “Eunuch Sanbao to the Western Ocean.” The list of luminary eunuchs also includes Cai Lun (60-121), who is revered in China as the inventor of paper.

Cruelest cut

The most chilling and vivid display room shows the actual process of castration. A life-size diorama shows a young boy lying on a bed with his limbs tied down while three other men – one holding a simple apparatus like a knife, the other holding the boy’s legs, and one performing the surgery – conduct the operation without any anesthesia.

The patients would stay in bed for months after the surgery until they could finally move again, others simply died in pain.

The penis and testicles, after being removed, were usually carefully wrapped up, put in a fine case and hung up on a roof beam in the boy’s house. They would eventually be buried together with the body when the man died, following the Chinese tradition of “dying a full-body death.”

Some of the other museum displays show nicely sculptured tombstones, silk outfits senior eunuchs used to wear and a mummy excavated from nearby.

One corner is devoted to Sun Yaoting, who served the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty and his concubines. Sun died at 94 years old in 1996; “The Last Eunuch of China” is a book about his life.

Losing a man’s most important organ was never easy, which may explain why so many eunuchs donated the bulk of their money to Buddhist or Taoist temples in order to secure a different – and complete – afterlife.

A much better article about the Eunuch Culture Museum is to be found on the travel site China.org. I’ve posted the text of the article below, but there are 20 photographs and links to 4 additional articles about Chinese eunuchs on the original site.

China's Eunuch Museum

Chinese history has witnessed a group of sexually impotent males who were forced to act as royal servants their entire lives. These men were deprived of the right to marry and have descendants. Some even lost their ability to control their urine.

Sometimes they were treated like dirt; sometimes they stood at the apex and wielded immense power. Their tragedy and pomposity were brought about by a sole reason: they served the supreme sovereigns – the emperors and their family.

When the last eunuch, Sun Yaoting, passed away in 1996, a unique group of people dating from China's feudal dynasties finally disappeared.

Now the revision of a Beijing museum has again focused public attention on eunuchs. This museum concentrates on eunuch culture and even contains the tomb of a eunuch, which is scheduled for renovation. The museum will reopen next July. Museum authorities explained that this is China's only Eunuch Culture Museum, located at the Tian Yi Tomb. The tomb, containing the remains of a Ming Dynasty eunuch, is the best-preserved eunuch mausoleum in China.

Why has the tomb been so well preserved? What kind of eunuch culture will this museum present to the public? With the help of constant in-depth interviews by the Weekend reporters, the mysteries of the eunuchs gradually unveiled themselves, revealing periods of history full of treachery, absurdity, humiliation and bitterness.

8 yuan entrance ticket

Deeply affected by traditional culture, when mentioning eunuchs, people tend to angrily picture in their mind treacherous court officials performing in whiteface on the stage, such as Zhao Gao of the Qin Dynasty (221 BC – 206 BC) and Wei Zhongxian of the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1644). What is the function of this Eunuch Culture Museum – to seek redress for these perfidious eunuchs or to continuously denounce them?

"The primary function of the museum is to record the lives of eunuchs," said Pang Xianhui, Curator of the Beijing Eunuch Culture Museum. "Some of eunuchs caused many calamities to the nation and the people in the history but most of them were not that powerful. Since the moment their external genitals were removed, they were branded with the mark of 'lowly servants.' They were inferior to others. We neither seek rectification for them nor do we condemn them. We just want to help people understand how these eunuchs lived."

The Eunuch Culture Museum first opened to the public in 1998. Only about several thousand people came to visit it each year. "Most of the visitors are foreigners." 

The entrance ticket only costs 8 yuan.

From eunuch tomb to kindergarten

In Chinese history, two big tomb groups were built for the Ming Dynasty eunuchs in Beijing West Mountain area: one is the Biyunsi tombs, with the tomb of Wei Zhongxian as the most magnificent. But Wei's tomb was destroyed upon the order of Qing Emperor Qian Long. Another tomb group is the West Mountain Eunuch tombs; it witnessed various scourges, with most of the tombs demolished. The only well-preserved crypt is the Tian Yi Tomb; it remains the last completely preserved eunuch tomb in Beijing.

According to Pang Xianhui, Tian Yi, the tomb's owner, had a very good reputation. Ming history contains many positive records about Tian Yi so he didn't go experiencing the same fate as other eunuchs -- their bodies were dug out after their deaths even though they lived powerfully when alive.

Pang said that the museum was once the Cixiang Nunnery, inhabited by monks and nuns and the eunuchs who guarded Tian Yi's tomb. After the fall of Ming Dynasty, many Qing Dynasty eunuchs donated money to improve the Cixiang Nunnery out of their admiration for Tian Yi. Some eunuchs went to the nunnery to become monks after they were driven out of the palace due to their advanced age. They came to protect Tian Yi's tomb and end their lives in the nunnery. 
"This is why Tian Yi's tomb was soundly preserved despite changes in dynasties," said Pang.

The tomb was greatly damaged during the era of the Republic of China. "During that chaotic era, several warlords pillaged Tian Yi's tomb and stole many treasures to raise troop funds. Luckily, the overall bearing of the tomb was not destroyed and the structure of the tomb was well preserved," Pang noted.

"The mausoleum was turned into a kindergarten by the Beijing Municipal Commission of Education (BMCE) in the 1950s. To protect the children's safety, the back entrance of the mausoleum was sealed off and no one was allowed to enter," Pang remarked smiling. "This rule consequently protected it from several rampages."

"The cultural heritage administration requisitioned the Tian Yi Tomb from the BMCE in 1998. Then the Eunuch Culture Museum was built at the Tian Yi Tomb; it was opened to the public on September 10 of that year."

Working staff with the Shijingshan Cultural Heritage Administration of Beijing stated that the museum is now under renovation, financed by a budget of 860,000 yuan. The renovations will be completed by the end of this year. During the renovations, the Tian Yi Tomb remains open to the public.

Since it is the only Eunuch Culture Museum, then what does the collection consist of? And how will these collections demonstrate the eunuchs' real lives to the public?

"We'll try to restore an authentic scene regarding the castration room," Pang said. "Castration was the greatest agony each eunuch had to suffer -- not just being wrecked physically but also losing their basic functions as a man. For the eunuchs, the castration room was even more important than the emperor's bedroom.

As the museum is still under renovation, relics destined for the castration room have not been fully assembled.

Besides the castration room, the main section of the 400 square meter museum contains exhibition boards that introduce the history of China's ancient eunuchs. Pang also expressed his wish to collect more eunuch relics from society at large.

"The current collections are mainly articles donated by Sun Yaoting, the last eunuch, before he died, with the most precious item being a yellow jacket granted to him by Emperor Fu Yi," Pang remarked.

(China.org.cn December 7, 2007)

http://www.china.org.cn/english/travel/234805.htm

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What's interesting is that they would have a museum about eunuchs at all. Can't imagine that happening here. But eunuchs were important to China's history. They were in high positions at the imperial court. I suppose the modern government wants to explore China's past, but not with an eye toward continuing it.