Chinese Eunuchs (G. Carter Stent)

[JesusA (imported)]

A new book, Transgender China edited by Howard Chiang, has just arrived on my desk. Chiang wrote the opening chapter, How China Became a “Castrated Civilization” and Eunuchs a “Third Sex.” A large section of the chapter revolves around G. Carter Stent’s article “Chinese Eunuchs,” published in 1877 in the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Stent’s description of the actual castration procedure has been widely quoted (or plagiarized) ever since. Even Chinese scholars seem to rely on Stent’s English language description of a surgery taking place in 19th century Beijing. The diorama of a castration in progress in the Eunuch Museum in northern Beijing is taken directly from Stent, not from any earlier Chinese language source.

Chiang takes issue with Stent for a number of reasons, and I will add to Chiang’s reservations with one of my own about Stent’s ubiquitous description.

Let’s start with the beginning paragraphs of Stent’s description:

The place where men or boys are made eunuchs is just outside the inner Hsi-‘hua gate (内西華門) of the palace, and within the imperial city. It is a mean-looking building, and is known as the Chang-tzu, 廠子, the shed. Within this building reside several men recognized by government, yet drawing no pay from it – whose duty consists in emasculating those who are desirous of becoming, or are sent to become – eunuchs.

These men are called tao-tzu-chiang, 刀子匠, “knifers,” and depend entirely for their living on making eunuchs. They get a fixed sum – six taels – for every operation they perform on boys sent or brought to them, and for keep and attendance till the patients are properly recovered....

The detailed description goes on for several paragraphs. Chiang points out problems right from the beginning of this description. First, there are two locations that are well known as places in the capital where castrations were performed for palace service. Both are quite distant from the location that Stent mentions. The building that Stent describes where the castrations took place does not seem to have ever even existed. Second, the term “knifers” appears to have been created by Stent. With the increasing computerization of Chinese texts, a search turns up his use as its very first appearance in Chinese.

Other problems include that the two families that had hereditary positions to castrate for the palace were very secretive about their techniques, allowing only family members to learn their trade secrets. There is little (more likely NO) chance that a foreigner would be allowed the observations that Stent claims. The first step for a family wishing to have a boy castrated for palace service was to “register” them with either the Bi or the Liu families that ran the two castration establishments. The boys were then examined for personal appearance, conversational skills and intelligence before either of the families was willing to castrate him.

Both Stent and Matignon, whose 1896 photograph of a castrated Chinese boy, emphasize that castration in China involved removal of penis and testicles in a “clean sweep.” The American physician Robert Coltman, who served as professor of anatomy at the Imperial School of Combined Learning in Beijing and who later became personal physician to the imperial family, wrote that “the majority of the eunuchs here have penis and testicles removed entire.” He did not indicate that they ALL did.

In the same time period as Stent, Matignon, and Coltman, a Chinese lithograph was produced with extensive text on it describing a castration that involved only removal of the ruandai (卵袋 – “egg bag”). Interviews of palace eunuchs after the Revolution had some from rural areas relating that they had been castrated in the countryside by local animal practitioners and that ONLY their testicles were removed in a surgery so minor that full recovery took only four or five days.

There is no reason to suppose that however castration was practiced in China in the late 19th century, that it had always been the same. The surgery is a topic that seldom appears in the Chinese record. However, there are some famous statues from the tomb of Emperor Wang Jingdi (王景帝) of the Western Han Dynasty (reigned 157-141 BCE) that depict male, eunuch and female attendants to the emperor. The original clothing of the statues has disintegrated, so we are left with nudes. The genitals are clearly portrayed for all three and the eunuch was obviously castrated before puberty and retained his penis. The Western Han was a period when the Chinese state was in close contact with the Near East and Near Eastern eunuchs probably visited the Han capital as traders and diplomats.

To quote Chiang, as he compiles two quotations from Stent:

In his words, “Eunuchs are only to be found in eastern despotic countries, the enlightening influence of Christianity preventing such unnatural proceedings being practice in the countries of those who profess it.” For Stent, the “unnatural proceedings” of castration in China reveal “at least one beneficial result of the spread of Christianity; for while we [Christian Westerners] are free from the baneful practice, it is a vile blot on less fortunate countries.”

Stent seems to have conveniently forgotten the Italian castrati. Pergetti last performed on the London stage when Stent was eleven years old, but Christian choirboys were still being castrated in Italy at the time that Stent wrote his article. He also seems to have completely erased the Byzantine Empire from all memory.

A final point that Chiang does not make, but which I think possibly relevant, is that Stent’s description of castration in China reads remarkably similar to the descriptions of the castration of slave boys in East Africa that were to be found in the anti-slavery tracts with which Stent should have been familiar. How much of his “description” is a borrowing from Africa and how much is derived from his experience in China?