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The Last Eunuch of China by Jia Yinghua
Sun Yaoting became a eunuch at exactly the wrong moment. He’d volunteered for castration as a boy, desperate to get a powerful position to help his humiliated and poverty stricken family. Unable to afford proper doctors, the description of the operation itself is truly wince inducing, performed by his father at home with nothing more than a sharp razor and some sesame oil and ash. Even before he’d reached Beijing, however, the Qing dynasty had fallen, and the eunuchs were reduced to mere imperial servants, with a shadow of their past power. This biography, just translated into English and written by a respected Chinese historian and friend of Sun’s in his old age, tells his story. The translation is good, despite occasional idiomatic slips (‘bosom buddies’ on a tombstone), and the material is deeply interesting.
Sun ended up as a eunuch servant to the deposed Pu Yi, the ‘Last Emperor,’ and his unfortunate wife Wan Rong. His memories vividly evoke the corrupt, run-down atmosphere in the palace, including sexual and physical abuse both by and towards the eunuchs. Pu Yi himself, we learn, preferred ‘the land-way of eunuchs to the water-way of the Empress.’ We see the various political intrigues around the deposed emperor, familiar to many from Bernardo Bertolucci’s movie The Last Emperor, from a new ground’s eye perspective.
Eventually, after Liberation in 1949, Sun Yaoting found himself packed off, along with the other eunuchs, to a Daoist temple, where he became a respected figure, despite, during the 1960s and ’70s, enduring the usual torments of any survivor of the old system – during which he even threw away his own severed ‘treasure’ (his preserved testicles), carefully preserved for decades beforehand. His strange and long life makes for fascinating and melancholy reading.
James Palmer
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I can't find it on Amazon. Please tell me where the book is being sold.
I am interested to know how could I buy the book.
http://www.bookzines.com/php/books_detail.php?bid=1868#%E6%B7%BB%E5%8A%A0%E5%88%B0%E8%B4%AD%E7%89%A9%E8%BD%A6
http://www.bookzines.com/php/books_detail.php?bid=1868#%E6%B7%BB%E5%8A%A0%E5%88%B0%E8%B4%AD%E7%89%A9%E8%BD%A6
i cant purchase the book, adding to cart doesn't do anything.
i cant purchase the book, adding to cart doesn't do anything.
You can download the book at the ipod store for $2.99
I found it here: http://www.purpleculture.net/vpro.asp?id=4597
I purchased it from purpleculture and received it in a week.
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