Did Li Lianying really have an improper relationship with Cixi? Why did Cixi leave the palace as soon as he died?
Li Lianying (李连英; 12 November 1848 (170– 4 March 1911) was a native of Lijia Village, Dacheng County, Hejian Province, Hebei Province, and a famous eunuch of the late Qing Dynasty. His real name was Li Yingtai, and after entering the palace, he changed it to Li Jinxi. Empress Dowager Cixi gave her the name Lianying, commonly known as Lotus Ying.
During Lian Ying's stay in the palace, she was deeply respected by Empress Dowager Cixi, and the empress dowager even broke the royal ancestral system of "the eunuch rank is limited to four products" and was appointed as the chief eunuch of Zheng Erpin and commanded all the eunuchs in the palace.
Li Lianying was born on November 12, 1848, in The Twenty-eighth Year of Daoguang (1848), to a poor family in Zhili Province (present-day Hebei Province). In 1853, at the age of 6, he became a eunuch and entered the Duanhua Mansion of Prince Zheng, and in 1856 he entered the Forbidden City, originally known as Li Yingtai, later changed to Li Jinxi. In 1867, he was made the second governor.
In 1869, when he was 21 years old, the grand chancellor An Dehai went out to play in the palace, and was beheaded by Ding Baozhen, the governor of Shandong, in Jinan, and Li was re-employed by Cixi after his death due to his neutral contributions in the Xin You coup d'état, and soon after he was transferred to the inner palace to serve and was promoted to the position of grand chancellor.
In 1871, Empress Dowager Cixi gave her the name Lianying, and the folk blackmailed Lianying. When Lian Ying was favored by Empress Dowager Cixi's side, she was known for her caution and caution, and the imperial court ministers also competed to bribe Li Lianying with silver and two bribes; for the concubines in the palace who angered Cixi, Lian Ying always tried his best to cover up for people's kind words, and protected many people from punishment, so the palace left and right had positive evaluations of him, called "respectful", not the style of making a fortune in drama and fiction. However, Lian Ying accepted the money of many officials, and his greed for money was also a fact, which was recorded by many officials in the late Qing Dynasty. Generally speaking, Lian Ying is a person, respecting things in things, leniency in things, and being cautious and cautious. In Cixi's later years, he was more like a companion of Cixi than a slave, and it was rumored that he and Cixi had an improper relationship.
On October 22, 34, Cixi died at the Yiluan Hall in Xiyuan, Beijing. After handling Cixi's funeral, Li Lianying left the imperial palace where she had lived for 51 years on the second day of the first month of February in the first year of Xuan reunification. Empress Longyu, who was in charge of the inner palace at that time, in order to thank him for serving in the palace for many years, allowed him to "retire from the original product", that is, to retire with the original salary of sixty taels of silver per month.
There are many legends surrounding Li Lianying's exit from the palace and his posthumous events. Some people say that he saw Guangxu's younger brother Zaifeng overseeing the regency of the state and was afraid of retaliation and retired to the palace; others said that after Li Lianying's death, the eunuchs in the palace snatched his inheritance one after another, and Empress Longyu confiscated all his property; others said that Li Lianying offended many people before his death, and after leaving the palace, he lived in seclusion, but was eventually assassinated near Houhai.
Although similar legends are very popular, from the perspective of the Arrangement of the Qing Palace for Li Lianying's departure from the palace and after his death, these legends are unbelievable.
As a eunuch, Li Lianying's status was extremely humble. The difference was that due to the appreciation and favor of Empress Dowager Cixi, he enjoyed unprecedented power and status as a palace eunuch, and money and wealth also rolled in. But because of this special relationship with Cixi, he became one of the most notorious figures in modern Chinese history.
When Li Lianying died, she received 1,000 taels of silver from the Qing court and built a luxurious tomb in the eunuch cemetery in Enjizhuang, Beijing. Li Lianying's tomb was destroyed 30 years ago, and only the rubbings of the epitaph have survived.