China's last eunuch Sun Yaoting reveals secrets in book

TABOO subjects including the sex life of eunuchs, and the agonising castrations they endured, have finally been revealed.

The turbulent life of Sun Yaoting, China's last eunuch, has been recorded in the book The Last Eunuch of China, by amateur historian Jia Yinghua.

It unveils an arcane society, lifting the lid on taboos like the sex life of eunuchs and the macau tour emperor they served, often lethal castrations that were frequently done at home, and the incontinence and shame that came with the promise of great power.

For centuries in China, the only men from outside the imperial family who were allowed into the china tour Forbidden City's private quarters were castrated ones. They swapped their reproductive organs for a hope of exclusive access to the emperor.


Sun's impoverished family made him a eunuch in the hope he would become a powerful political player.

His desperate father performed the castration on the bed of their mudwalled home, with no anesthetic and only oilsoaked paper as a bandage. A goose quill was inserted in Sun's urethra to prevent it getting blocked as the wound healed.

Sun was unconscious for three days and could barely move for two months.

When he finally rose from his bed, history played the first of a series of cruel tricks on him  he discovered the emperor he hoped to serve had abdicated several weeks earlier.

Sun became an attendant to the empress when the imperial family were booted out of the Forbidden City.

"He was castrated, then the emperor abdicated. He made it into the Forbidden City, then Pu Yi was evicted. He followed him north and then the puppet regime collapsed. He felt life had played a joke at his expense," Jia said.

China's last eunuch was ultimately feted and valued, largely for outlasting his peers to become a unique relic and a piece of "living history.

"He was conflicted over whether to tell the secrets of the emperor," said Jia.

"I was the only person he trusted. He did not even confide in his family, after they threw away his 'treasure' (eunuch slang for their preserved genitals)," Jia said.