Speaking of the favorite concubines of the Qianlong harem, the first thing that comes to mind is definitely Concubine Ling, who once gave birth to six children in ten years, and her son Jiaqing also inherited the throne, and was eventually posthumously honored as Empress Xiaoyi. However, there was a woman who suppressed Concubine Ling for ten years and almost stole Concubine Ling's title as empress, and she was The Noble Concubine of The Shujia Emperor.
Shujia Emperor Guifei's original surname was Jin, was a woman from the Ministry of Internal Affairs Zhenghuangqi, ancestral is a Korean Uiju, according to the "Eight Banners Manchurian Clan Genealogy" record, Shujia Emperor Guifei's great-grandfather named Jin Sandali, in the first year of Tiancong led the clan to the Imperial Court, was incorporated into the Zhenghuang Banner Wrapping Collar, after which most of the members of the Jin family served in the dynasty, for example, Shujia Emperor Guifei's father Jin Sanbao did the Shangsi Yuanqing, Shujia Emperor Guifei also had a brother, named Jin Jian, who was deeply valued by the Qianlong Emperor. The degree of favor is second only to that of Hezhen, and the official is shangshu.
Around the beginning of the Yongzheng Dynasty, Shujia participated in the palace women's draft as a woman in the Inner Ministry of Internal Affairs, and then accepted the yongzheng Emperor's commission and came to serve by the fourth son of the emperor, Hongli (Qianlong). According to the records, Hongli already had eight or nine official women around him before he got married, and Shujia was probably one of them.
Before Hongli succeeded to the throne, Shujia was just an ordinary lady, but after Hongli succeeded to the throne as emperor, she ushered in spring.
In the second year of Qianlong, Qianlong issued an edict and named Shujia as a concubine, which means "praiseworthy", which shows that in Qianlong's heart, Shujia is a woman worthy of praise.
Indeed, Shu jia did not live up to Qianlong's favor, and in the fourth year of Qianlong, Shu Jia gave birth to the first prince after succeeding to the throne for Qianlong, that is, the fourth son of the emperor, Yong Jun. Since then, for more than ten years, Shujia has been constantly favored, and has given birth to three sons in succession, namely the eighth son of the emperor, Yongxuan, the ninth son of the emperor, and the eleventh son of the emperor, Yongxuan. In particular, the eleventh son of the Emperor, Yong Yao, was extremely intelligent since he was a child, deeply loved by Qianlong, and was one of the heirs of Qianlong's heart.
With the birth of the four princes, Shu Jia's status in the harem also soared, and she was successively promoted to Jia Concubine and Jia Guifei, becoming one of the senior leaders of the Qianlong Harem. In the seventeenth year of Qianlong, Empress Xiaoxian, Emperor Huixian's concubines and Emperor Zhe's concubines were buried, and Qianlong took her and Shujia to visit the Yuling Underground Palace, which showed that Shujia was also one of the concubines buried in the imperial tomb in Qianlong's heart.
However, what I did not expect was that this moment came too quickly. After only three years, Shu jia died of illness in the palace at the age of 42, and Qianlong Nian posthumously honored her as a noble concubine of the Shujia Emperor for the merits of giving birth to four princes, and then buried her in the Yuling Underground Palace.
In addition to Shujia's personal honor of being crowned imperial concubine and entering the imperial mausoleum, her family also received all kinds of graces, such as the family of Shujia Emperor Guifei who was carried into the Manchurian Zhenghuang Banner in the sixteenth year of Qianlong, and her brother Jin Jian was highly valued by Qianlong and was a very popular subject, and after Jiaqing succeeded to the throne, he gave the family of Shujia Emperor Guifei as Jin Jia.
However, the end of this imperial concubine was not very good, everyone knows that Qianlong Yuling was stolen and excavated by the warlord Sun Dianying during the Republic of China, and the Shujia Emperor's noble concubine was not spared, and finally the bones were incomplete, and qianlong and other concubines were put into the same coffin.
References: Draft History of the Qing Dynasty, Four Genealogies of the Qing Imperial Family, Records of Emperor Gaozong of the Qing Dynasty