How did the Chinese emperors treat their concubines?

 

You’re asking about thousands of women over thousands of years. There is no answer. But first let me give a couple examples.

The founder of the Sui, 隋文帝 (541 — 604ce) the Wen Emperor of the Sui, who unified China after centuries of chaos, was, in the first half of his reign, a brilliant leader and strategist. He was also deeply in love with his wife, and rightly afraid of her. She was also brilliant, but possessive. She was fourteen when they got married, he was a few years older. She made him swear never to have any other women. He had concubines, but did not sleep with them…. but he got itchy. There was one young lady who excited him so much that he did the deed with her. A few days later the Mrs found out, and when the Emperor was elsewhere, she had the young lady murdered. When the Emperor found out, he was so distraught that he leapt onto his horse and galloped out the gates. A couple officials got on their horses and chased after him. When they found him, he was sulking under a tree. He said, “I quit. I’m the Emperor and I don’t have the freedom that your typical man in the street has. I quit, find someone else to be Emperor.” This, BTW, was the first recorded use of the word ‘freedom’ in Chinese. Anyway, they persuaded him to go back to the palace and kiss and make up.

But the Mrs still hated anybody to have concubines, like the Heir Apparent did, so their second son hid his pretty concubines and let his parents see only the old washerlady types. This pleased his mother. When she died, the Wen Emperor went to town, and when he died, the second son, who had become the Heir Apparent, took the throne and brought out the concubines.

But the Wen Emperor was the exception. The founder of the Chin/Jin dynasty, around 250ce, had so many concubines that he didn’t know who to choose. So he hitched a goat to a cart and let the goat decide whose room to go to. The concubines got smart and started putting fragrant grasses by the door to attract the goat and bring the old goat.

A Tang emperor had literally thousands of concubines. He would release a butterfly and let the butterfly choose, so the concubines put fragrant flowers in their hair to attract the butterfly.

The life of a concubine was not easy. The best possible luck they could have would be to attract the Emperor and have a son. Then they would play a deadly game to maneuver their son to become Heir Apparent; if they became an Emperor’s mother, they had it made. (The exception was the Northern Wei. To avoid the Emperor’s mother giving all the power to her relatives, when an Heir Apparent was chosen, his mother had to drink poison to commit suicide, thereby traumatizing her son.)

To keep the influence of concubines to the minimum, during the Ch’ing/Qing, when an Emperor visited a concubine, a eunuch would stand outside the door and chase him out after fifteen minutes. He could not spend the night with her. Isn’t that awful?

If a concubine was sort of lucky, she could gain the emperor’s favor and fight to protect herself from the other concubines. If she was not lucky, she would just spend her days plotting and scheming and doing embroidery and maybe painting and singing and just passing the days. She’d have a roof over her head and plenty to eat and wear, but it must have been dreary. They could not leave the palace.

It was 唐玄宗 the Hsuan/Xuan Emperor of the Tang, I think? (685 — 782ce) I’m pretty sure it was him and I’m too lazy to check. Anyway, his concubines sewed uniforms and whatnot for the army; there were thousands of concubines anyway. So some soldier on the frontier was horrified to find a note in the pocket of his new uniform saying, Hi, I’m a palace concubine and terribly lonely. To keep his head on his shoulders, the soldier immediately reported it to his superior and so on up the line all the way to the Emperor. Fortunately for her, the Hsuan Emperor was quite a romantic; he summoned the concubine to him and married her off to the soldier with plenty of nice gifts. He didn’t know who she was, anyway.

There are tv shows about concubines. My favorite is 延禧攻略 The Story of Yanxi Palace. It’s not historical at all, but it’s great fun. The acting is superb and it is beautiful to watch. But also frightening to think of their lives.