Why the Palace Maids of the Forbidden City Married Eunuchs

During the fourteenth year of the Wanli Emperor's reign, in a servants' corridor of the Forbidden City that few visitors were ever shown, a eunuch and a palace maid shared a bowl of rice, and no rule yet stopped them. He could never take a wife under Ming law. She could not leave the walls that employed her. Twice a day, in a kitchen barely big enough to turn around in, they built something the court never named. That plain arrangement, duishi, eating together, and its closest cousin caihu, grew within decades to help run the Ming state itself, and a century later got a man beheaded on a canal boat for practising it too openly. Almost nobody outside the palace records ever learns how far that quiet custom actually reached. This is the rise and reckoning of duishi and caihu inside the Forbidden City. This documentary traces the whole story, drawn from the court record. 0:00 The world behind the walls 9:00 The rules that made loneliness certain 18:00 The shared table: duishi and caihu 28:00 Madam Ke and the household that reached the throne 38:00 An Dehai and the limits of protection 47:00 The decline of the eunuch corps and what remains #MingDynasty #ForbiddenCity #ChineseHistory #ImperialChina #ChineseHistoryDocumentary