Research In Eunuchs’ Everyday Life During The Ming Dynasty

Research of the Ming dynasty eunuch, has always been an important topic in the study of Ming. But most of research focus on the political behavior of the eunuch.So it still exists a lot of space to expore them from the perspective of social. The study of eunuchs’ daily life during the Ming dynasty is helpful to explore the eunuchs with more comprehensive and objective view.This paper is divided into four parts:The first part explores the daily consumption activities of the eunuch of Ming.In the Ming dynasty, eunuchs’ clothing, food, housing, transportation is an important part of their daily consumption life. As the eunuch works in the imperial palace, their daily consumption activities dilute in historical records.This chapter Mainly explore their daily consumption activities, daily expenditure and its characteristics.The second part explores the eunuch’ daily communication activities of Ming dynasty. There are three kinds of daily communication object of eunuch. The one is the upper communication object, namely the The emperor, scholar-bureaucrat,and the monk.The other one is the eunuch themself, including the recreation in their leisure time and daily communication.Finally, the eunuch communicate with their family members, including the eunuchs’ wife and their adopted child.The third part explores the eunuch nondaily activities. In the Ming dynasty, the eunuch education and their faith in Buddhism and Taoism is the main content of the nondaily life. With the setting of education institutions which locates in the imperial palace,more and more eunuch get a lot of knowledge from it. Through analysing the eunuchs’ epitaph,the chapter means to reason the proportion of knowledge-based eunuch, as well as the level of culture. In the Ming dynasty,most of eunuch are belife in Buddhism and Taoism during their lifetime.And they also choose to be buried in the temple and Taoist temple after death. The main content of the eunuch’ faith life include the belief in Buddhism and Taoism everyday and the life which they spend in the temple when they were old.Finally,it summarizes the characteristics of daily life of the eunuch. As an special social group, the eunuch daily life have a lot of common to the mass. But there are difference between them. By contrast, there is a deeper understanding of the daily life of eunuch during Ming dynasty.