by Jeremy Han
Yang growled through gritted teeth. “Your damned Jinyi Wei took my father to safety, and left my mother and us to die! If not for Kong we would have perished long ago!”
“Not a day passed without every one of us, your bodyguards, grieving over our failure to rescue all of you. We could only take your father with us.” Zhao took a deep breath. “I am sorry, your Highness, we did what we could.”
Yang rebutted him bitterly. “Kong may have done horrible things, but he did it for me. In fact, his death was because of me. He might have been only a eunuch but he had shown more honour and kindness to me than my own father!”
Zhao found it hard to believe that once upon a time he had guarded the innocent child who had turned into this fearsome assassin. Guilt filled him like a river, for it was his failure on that fateful night to rescue them that turned this person into a monster.
“That’s why Li Jing and I promised your father we would get you back this time,” he added softly.
Yang cupped his face and started to weep. “I did not ask to become a castrate, and you did not ask to lose every single one of your comrades in the service of my father. My father did not ask to lose his family and Kong Wei did not ask to go against the throne, if not for saving my life. What are we that we should be so unfortunate that we cannot live simple, painless lives?”
Zhao laid a comforting hand on the crown prince’s heaving shoulder.
“The Jian Wen Emperor, Kong Wei, all of us,” he paused as the faces of everyone flashed before him. Jian Wen, Li Jing, Fu Zhen, Long and Yula, the grand admiral Zheng He, the eunuch chamberlain Wen Xuan, all who had risked everything.
“We are all prisoners of fate.”
The End
Historical Notes to the Story
1. The mysterious fate of Zhu Wenkui – Like his father, the crown prince’s fate remains unknown. He did indeed have a younger brother who died after the civil war, but the older brother’s fate was more elusive. It is commonly accepted that the crown prince died in the palace fire with his father, but two rumours still persist. The first says he survived the civil war and was imprisoned, only to be released as a commoner when he was an old man. Another legend states that the crown prince fled south together with the Jian Wen Emperor. Like the rumour that the Grand Admiral Zheng He had secret orders to find Jian Wen, the grand admiral was also said to have received secret orders to find Zhu Wenkui as well. Both were never found, and hence their mysterious disappearance from history led to this novel.
However, during the Southern Ming era (1644-1662), when the Manchus were occupying the empire the remnant Ming royalty posthumously restored Zhu Wenkui and gave him the title ‘Crown Prince Hejian’ more than two hundred years after his disappearance.
2. The origins of the eunuch Wang Zhen and the Tumu Crisis – Wang Zhen is the first of the eunuch dictators who exercised great power over emperors during the Ming. He was the imperial tutor and had a very close relationship with the Zheng Tong Emperor. He had so much influence that he convinced the emperor to launch an ill-fated military campaign against the Oirat Mongols in 1449, when the emperor was in his twenties. The defeat is hailed up to today as one of imperial China’s greatest military defeats, as the 500,000 strong Ming force was defeated by the smaller Mongol army. Little is known about his origins and rise to power as he is more famous for the way that he died. The battle at Tumu became a crisis when the emperor was captured by the Mongols, and he lost his throne to his brother who refused to pay a ransom to the Oirats for his release. Wang Zhen, who had urged the emperor to undertake the campaign against the advice of his generals and also knew the odds were against the Ming, died during the disastrous war. However, it was not clear if the eunuch was killed by Ming generals, or by the Mongols who overran the emperor’s camp. Given the fact that he was much hated for his hold over the emperor, it is not a far-fetched theory that he was executed by his own side.
3. The establishment of the Xi Chang – Fact is indeed stranger than fiction. In 1477, the Ming emperor Cheng Hua ordered his eunuchs to establish the Western Depot to fight against sorcery. It was because a transvestite sorcerer was said to have infiltrated the Forbidden City and was bewitching his concubines. The Western Depot did get into a rivalry against its more conventional rival the Eastern Depot, and developed a reputation that was even more fearsome than the secret police. However, the Western Depot did not fight ghosts all the time. It also ruthlessly wiped out criminal syndicates.
Although the Xi Chang was established much later after the timeline of the book, I thought it was fun to blend them into the story, especially since it was this tale of a transvestite sorcerer that inspired the creation of the asexual killer Yin.
4. The Flying Fire Crow – This weapon was indeed mentioned in the Ming firearms manual Huolongjing ‘The Fire Dragon Manual’. This 14th century treatise indicates that the Flying Fire Crow was used against two types of targets: fortifications and ships. The explosives it carried could blow through walls and set ship sails on fire. The description of how the weapon looks like and how it was used in the novel is accurate up to the use of sheep gut to prevent the fuse from getting wet, if contemporary accounts and drawings are to be trusted.
5. The ‘Shooting Ghost Arrows’ or ‘Killing the Ghost’ ritual – The ritual described in the book is an actual practice of the Mongols, especially by the Tanguts. The scene where Baldy kills Yong Ju is accurately depicted, as spies or POWs were often used as the sacrifice. This ritual stemmed from the belief that archery can drive away bad luck, and the Mongols used archery not just against the ill-fortune that could overturn a military campaign but also against droughts, as they believed that the arrow ritual could bring rain. Sometimes, an animal like a white horse was also sacrificed after the killing of the prisoner.
For a detailed description of this ritual I recommend Chinese Martial Arts: From Antiquity to the 21st Century by Peter A Lorge. The chapter on the Yuan Dynasty describes this ritual and its significance to the Tanguts.
6. The Yinshu flower – Opium was introduced into China approximately in 400 A.D. It was known as Buddha’s Tea for reasons described in the book. Besides the use of opium as medicine and aphrodisiac, opium was indeed used for the recreation of nobility and the rich before it reached the masses in late imperial China. The first recorded use of opium as a recreational drug for the emperor and his clan was in 1483. It stated that opium was “mainly used to aid masculinity, strengthen sperm, and regain vigor", and that it "enhances the art of alchemists, sex, and court ladies.” The emperor was said to have paid for the opium in gold, ordering vast quantities from suppliers in the south and eastern provinces. However, it was only in the late Qing era when the ill-effects of opium were widely felt as British traders flooded the masses with the mind and body weakening drug.
7. The fear of assassination in the Hall of Abstinence – The Qing emperor Yong Zhen (1722-1735) did indeed shorten the period of meditation in the Hall of Abstinence from three days to one. He did it because he feared a possible assassination attempt while he was alone in meditation. He was thus the first emperor in history to break the tradition of meditating three days in the temple compound. Thus, the notion of being assassinated even in the most holy and guarded place was not far-fetched in the paranoid minds of emperors.
8. The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest and the Pit of Hair and Blood – The Hall of Prayer for Good Harvest that we see today is not the original one built during the Ming dynasty. The original one was burnt down in 1889 after it was struck by lightning. During the time of the Ming, the three eaves were painted differently from what one will see today: today’s eaves are all in blue, whereas the original was built in three different colours as depicted in the book to represent the relationship between heaven and earth.
The Pit of Hair and Blood is a real pit where the remains of sacrificial animals were dumped in. However, there is speculation that the pit holds the remains of a more sinister type of sacrifice than that depicted in the
story – human sacrifice. While the sacrifice of a calf is documented the sacrifice of human beings during the Winter Solstice ceremony was suspected because it was common for concubines and slaves to be entombed with the emperor as sacrificial companions.
9. The rise of eunuch power – The first Ming emperor forbade the education of eunuchs because he foresaw the day when eunuchs would dominate the court. However, his descendants disobeyed his edict and established an academy for eunuchs because the castrates were proving to be very useful. Armed with the ability to read and write, the castrates could rise through the ranks of administration, effectively becoming advisors to emperors due to their closer physical proximity to the ruler than his ministers and generals.
In the case of the Zheng Tong Emperor, eunuch Wang Zheng practically brought him up, especially after the empress dowager died. Having a taste of power, the eunuch leaders started to see themselves as rivals to the civil service and the military and started to build an institution that replicated the services of both traditional arms of governance. Hence, the eunuchs had their own administrative directorates, internal security organs, and military structures. The eunuchs effectively became a ‘third arm’ of the emperor, one that reported directly to him and was not subjected to the traditional protocols of honour and morality that guided the emperor’s relationship with his ministers. This led to the rise of the eunuchs as an institutionalised power within the Ming court.
Emperors allowed this because it was to their favour for the following reasons: things that could not be done by the military or civil service were carried out by the eunuchs. The eunuchs were essentially slaves, so they did not subscribe to traditional notions of rank and social position. They basically obeyed the emperor without question or reservations because they depended on the Son of Heaven for everything. In return it gave the emperor a check against a military or civil service that could sometimes scheme against him. This system worked when there was a strong emperor, but when a weak man sat on the throne the close relationship between the eunuch and the emperor often allowed the eunuch to dominate court affairs, leading to corruption and decline.
For an excellent read on the eunuchs of the Ming dynasty, I recommend The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty by Henry Tsai Shih-shan.
10. Eunuch castration in China differs from the more commonly known practices of Middle Eastern eunuchs. To enter imperial service, boys had both their penis and testicles removed. This contrasted with the removal of only the testicles in the Middle East. The process of castration as described in this book, and the subsequent test for recovery by getting the boy to urinate after the plug was removed, are true. Thousands did not recover from the mutilation and died from infection, and it was said that almost as many as half of those who were castrated throughout the history of imperial China did not survive.
Coming Next:
Swords of Freedom: A Wing Chun story set in China just before the 1911Revolution
Historical Note
On 14 November 1908, the emperor Guangxu died. His aunt, the empress dowager Cixi, died one day later on 15 November 1908. Imperial records cite natural causes and poor health, but the sheer coincidence of the two deaths one day after the other sparked rumors of murder. Their well-known animosity towards each other did not help assure historians that sickness was indeed the cause of death. Instead, it gave birth to various suggestions that the two deaths were not coincidental.
A century later, in November 2008, the ill-fated emperor’s tomb was opened and scientists were finally able to conduct tests on his body. They found traces of arsenic that were 2000 times more than was normal for a human being – sheer evidence that the young emperor was indeed poisoned at the age of thirty seven years. Who killed the young man? More importantly, who hated him enough, and had the power to order the death of the Son of Heaven? His murderer must have had the means to kill the most guarded man in the empire, and not many people then had that authority.
Historians believing that somehow, the deaths of the two royals are linked. One theory being Cixi ordered her nephew’s death before she died because she was afraid he would revive the political reforms she hated after her death. Another theory states that Cixi wanted Guangxu to die before her, because the real reason why he was placed under house arrest was not because of the 100-Day Reform he launched, which threatened her rule, but because Guangxu had plotted Cixi’s assassination with the reformist minister Kang Youwei, who hated Cixi. Did Cixi order the death of the puppet emperor she installed? Was she callous enough to kill the boy whom she raised since he was four years old? Did Guangxu hate his aunt enough to plot her death? And if he did, why? What made him turn against the person who raised him and gave him his throne?
Are their deaths really linked? Or was it sheer coincidence?
Until today, nobody knows. And when history fails to provide an answer, fiction attempts….
1900 AD
The might of the combined armies of the Eight Nation Alliance converge upon Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion. As they approach the Forbidden City in fury, a murder is committed.
1907 AD
The Guangxu Emperor discovers who murdered the love of his life. If he could avenge his lover, he will do anything, including betraying his clan.
The Chinese revolution falters. Sun Yat-sen, leader of the rebellion realizes the painful truth – unless he does something drastic, the dream of freedom for millions of Chinese will be crushed under the cruel heel of the Qing Dynasty. He must do the unthinkable.
1908 AD
A team of assassins gathers for an impossible mission. The imperial court unleashes its hounds to hunt for its enemies. A daring mission is conceived and executed. The fate of an empire will be decided.
And the Empress Dowager Cixi must die.
