Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Ming dynasty analysis
Ming dynasty analysis
Gender roles in ancient china
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Ming dynasty analysis
Eunuchs, a group of castrated people served in the palace, were initially hired to take care of the personal life of the emperors. However, because of their accessibility to the rulers, they sometimes could be so powerful that can control the government. Shi, Yi, a historian in Qing Dynasty, had ever said that”There were three periods in Chinese History, in which eunuchs actually took control of the country. Among those three periods, Ming dynasty was the most severe one.” Compare to their predecessors in late Tang dynasty, eunuchs in Ming dynasty possessed less power as they could not control the military and were not instrumental in selecting the next emperor. However, eunuchs in Ming dynasty was famous because they built their own culture. Based on this background, my question raised—what factors exclusively belonged to Ming dynasty that contribute to the formation of this uncommon culture.
The first unique character of Ming dynasty is the booming supply of castrated people. Before Ming dynasty, castration was a kind of heavy penalty intend to humiliate male criminals. However, after the establishment of Ming, a practice of self-castration became a popular path for peasants to change their miserable life. According to the History of Ming,the most Wei, Zhongxian, the most powerful eunuch in Ming dynasty, castrated himself to avoid the gambling debts. Others peasants, risking of being executed, viewed this practice as a replacement of the civil service examination and emasculated themselves to serve in the court. During the reign of Emperor Hongwu, only a few hundreds of eunuchs served in the palace, and by 1644, almost the end of Ming dynasty, there were 70,000 in the palace and more than 100,000 eunuchs spread nation-wid...
... middle of paper ...
...icious nature of emperors, and the provision of education, together formed this rarely seen culture.
Reference:
Zhang, Tingyu, “Biography of Eunuchs” in “The History of Ming” (Zhonghua Book Company,1974)
Shi, Yi, “Eunuchs in Ming Dynasty” in “The Notebook of Twenty-two Histories” (Chinese Bookstore, 1987) Chapter 35
Xia, Xie, Ming Tong Jian (Zhonghua Book Company, 1959)
Pan, Chengzhang, Guo Shi Kao Yi (Shanghai Ancient Books Press,2002)
Tsai, Shih-shan Henry, The Eunuchs in the Ming Dynasty (State University of New Youk Press, 1996)
Robinson, David, Bandits, Eunuchs and the Son of Heaven (University of Hawai’i Press, 2001)
Crawford, Robert B. , “Eunuch Power in the Ming Dynasty” in T’oung Pao, Second Series, Vol.49 , Livr 3 (1961), p.p115-148
Chen, Yi, “The formation and its reasons of Ming Eunuchs” in Journal of Chuzhou University, Vol.10, No.5, Oct, 2008.
(1800)Topic 2: A Literary Analysis of the Historical Differentiation of Patriarchal Culture and Female Gender Identity in the Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong and the Tale of Genji
Ban Zhao wrote Lessons for a Woman around the end of the first century C.E. as social guide for (her daughters and other) women of Han society (Bulliet 167). Because Zhao aimed to educate women on their responsibilities and required attributes, one is left questioning what the existing attitudes and roles of women were to start with. Surprisingly, their positions were not automatically fixed at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Ban Zhao’s own status as an educated woman of high social rank exemplifies the “reality [that] a woman’s status depended on her “location” within various social institutions’ (167). This meant that women had different privileges and opportunities depending on their economic, social, or political background. Wealthier noble women would likely have access to an education and may have even been able to wield certain political power (167). Nevertheless, women relinquished this power within the family hierarchy to their fathers, husbands, and sons. Despite her own elevated social status, Ban Zhao still considered herself an “unworthy writer”, “unsophisticated”, “unenlightened’, “unintelligent”, and a frequent disgrace to her and her husband’s family (Zhao). Social custom was not, however, the only driving force behind Zhao’s desire to guide women towards proper behavior.
The title of Ray Huang’s book 1587: A Year of No Significance: The Ming Dynasty Decline suggests that this book is a work based on a single year in which little occurred. But in reality, Huang’s look at the events of 1587 demonstrates the complex workings of the leadership during the decline of the Ming dynasty, giving the reader an insight into the societal structure, the governmental process, and the mistakes that occurred systematically to enhance the progression towards the seemingly inevitable downfall. Though nothing of historical significance occurred during the year 1587, Huang is able to demonstrate the way in which the existing culture and the smaller, more systematic elements of political leadership can be understood within the context of a seemingly unimportant period of time. Chapter 1: The Wan-Li Emperor, begins by explaining the major premise of the work: The concept of looking at a single year in the history of the leadership of China and evaluating the implications for understanding other aspects of history, including the decline of the Ming Dynasty.
In the patriarchal, Confucian influenced, Han dynasty, a woman’s role and social status was far from equal to that of a man. In Ban Zhao’s work Lessons for a woman she depicted the role of a woman, as a lower-class member of society. Hidden beneath the stereotypes of what a woman was supposed to be, Ban Zhao was a rarity of her time as she excelled as a historian and teacher.
Chen, Jo-shui. "Empress Wu and Proto-feminist Sentiments in T'ang China." In Imperial Rulership and Cultural Change in Traditional China, edited by Frederick P. Brandauer and Chün-chieh Huang. 77-116. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994.
No other woman in the Early Han held the same amount of influence as Empress Lü throughout her various titles as Empress, Empress Dowager, and then Grand Empress Dowager. Stories recounting her manipulative nature paint a picture of a scheming empress using her imperial power to bestow favors and political positions to her own clan. This essay argues that Empress Lü used the lack of precedence for her position as Empress Dowager to manipulate court officials into granting power to her clan, which caused political unrest late in her life and resulted in the destruction of the Lü clan. To support this claim, this essay will discuss the exceptional nature of Empress Lü's power and the extent of her ability to manipulate the court, and then this paper will provide evidence of a Lü clan extermination after the death of the empress that held power for fifteen years after her husband died – in a nation with no precedence for this kind of rule.
Chang, Kwang-chih 1968 The Archeology of Ancient China Yale University Press, New Haven & London
Lessons for Women was written by Ban Zhao, the leading female Confucian scholar of classical China, in 100 C.E. It was written to apply Confucian principles to the moral instruction of women, and was particularly addressed to Ban Zhao’s own daughters. As her best remembered work, it allows the reader insight into the common role of a woman during this fascinating time-period. The work starts off by Ban Zhao unconvincingly berating herself, and claiming how she once lived with the constant fear of disgracing her family. This argument is rather implausible, for the reader already knows the credibility of Ban Zhao, and how important her role was in ancient China.
3.) The Ming restoration brought about the rebirth of powerful Neo-Confucians. The scholar-gentry once again held much power in the empire. Along with this came the reinstating of the examination...
I also found it somewhat interesting that those who were in command of fleets and armies in China were mostly eunuchs. These eunuchs were fiercely loyal to the emperor. Levathes describes in depth how prisoners would be castrated and become eunuchs. Zheng He was the commander for Zhu Di fleet of treasure ships. Despite him being a eunuch he was not the stereotypical one; he had a big, booming voice and was about six feet tall. Zheng He died on the returning trip to China and is now renowned as one of the greatest real-life legends of all time.
Examples of cultural constructions can be seen throughout history in several forms such as gender, relationships, and marriage. “Cultural construction of gender emphasizes that different cultures have distinctive ideas about males and females and use these ideas to define manhood/masculinity and womanhood/femininity.” (Humanity, 239) In many cultures gender roles are a great way to gain an understanding of just how different the construction of gender can be amongst individual cultures. The video The Women’s Kingdom provides an example of an uncommon gender role, which is seen in the Wujiao Village where the Mosuo women are the last matriarchy in the country and have been around for over one thousand years. Unlike other rural Chinese villages where many girls are degraded and abandoned at birth, Mosuo woman are proud and run the households where the men simply assist in what they need. The view of gender as a cultural construct ...
In her article "The body as attire," Dorothy Ko (1997) reviewed the history about foot binding in seventeenth-century China, and expressed a creative viewpoint. Foot binding began in Song Dynasty, and was just popular in upper social society. With the gradually popularization of foot binding, in the end of Song Dynasty, it became generally popular. In Qing Dynasty, foot binding was endowed deeper meaning that was termed into a tool to against Manchu rule. The author, Dorothy Ko, studied from another aspect which was women themselves to understand and explained her shifting meaning of foot binding. Dorothy Ko contends that “Chinese Elite males in the seventeenth century regarded foot binding in three ways: as an expression of Chinese wen civility,
At the center of Japanese and Chinese politics and gender roles lies the teachings of Confucius. The five relationships (五倫) of Confucius permeated the lives of all within the Heian and Tang societies.4 However, the focus here will be on the lives of the courtesans. The Genji Monogatari provides us with an unrivalled look into the inner-workings of Confucianism and court life in the Heian period. Song Geng, in his discourse on power and masculinity in Ch...
Sit, Tony. "The Life of Empress Cixi” (from Issue 10 of the China in Focus Magazine). Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU), 2001. .
The purpose of this paper is to tell the history of the Ming Dynasty’s impact on the Chinese Empire, and to explain why the Chinese Empire was in fact an empire.