Source: CNKI
Chinese culture has a history of 5,000 years, of which feudal dynasties account for a large proportion.
There have been several wise and martial monarchs in Chinese history, such as Qin Shi Huang who unified the six kingdoms, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty who drove out the Xiongnu, and later Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty and Emperor Hongwu.
But among the many emperors of many dynasties, there are also some strange ones, and they even have many strange habits.
Today, let's take a look at the five monarchs who have strange habits in history.
The king of Chu has a thin waist
There is such a sentence in "The Book of the Later Han Dynasty: The Biography of Ma Liao": King Wu is a good swordsman, and the people have many wounds; The king of Chu has a thin waist, and he starves to death in the palace.
This phrase is used to satirize some phenomena of upward and downward effects, and the preferences of the monarch tend to affect the entire country, causing huge effects.
And the king of Chu mentioned in this sentence is King Chu Ling, the monarch of Chu during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period.
In many historical books, King Chu Ling has always been a debaucherous and tyrannical image, which is inseparable from his quirk of liking "thin waist".
King Chu Ling rebelled and usurped the throne during the heyday of the Spring and Autumn Period of the Chu State, and his name was not right, but he was still very obsessed with a woman's thin waist.
As stated in the Book of the Later Han Dynasty, because King Chu Ling likes a thin waist, from the concubine to the palace maid to the minister and guard, almost everyone who wants to please King Chu Ling is frantically pursuing a slender waist.
The sentence "starvation in the palace" is not an exaggeration, in the period of King Chu Ling, there were many women in the palace who only ate a few grains of rice every day for the sake of their slender figures, and finally they could only die in despair.
But in the face of such a tragic situation, King Chu Ling turned a deaf ear, and still favored those women and ministers with slender waists, no wonder that when King Chu Ling died, the state of Chu was no longer the glory of the past.
The fetish of broken sleeves and the Emperor of Han Wai
We can often see people in some literary works or film and television works using allusions such as "the goodness of Longyang" and "the fetish of broken sleeves" to describe the love between men.
In fact, these two allusions are from ancient China, in which the protagonist of "Broken Sleeves" is even a king, that is, the Han Emperor of the Han Dynasty.
Emperor Han Ai was not originally the crown prince, his uncle Emperor Han Cheng had no children, and finally selected Liu Xin, the Han Ai Emperor who was not close to women, in the clan, but no one thought that Emperor Han Ai was not close to women because he liked not women at all.
After Emperor Han Ai ascended the throne, he met a man named Dong Xian, who was born delicate and charming, and his appearance was even better than that of many women.
Emperor Han Ai was deeply attracted to him, not only promoted him to a knighthood, but also canonized Dong Xian's sister as Zhaoyi, and the Dong family was infinitely favored for a while.
It is rumored that in the early morning, Emperor Han Ai was about to get up and go to court, but unexpectedly his sleeves were pressed under Dong Xian, and in order not to wake up Dong Xian, he only cut off his sleeves with a knife, which is the origin of the "broken sleeve fetish".
It's just that the servants of Israel can't last long after all, even if Emperor Han Ai favored Dong Xian to the point of wanting a Zen position, but the early death of Emperor Han Ai still shattered Dong Xian's ambitions, and finally in order to avoid Wang Mang's persecution, Dong Xian committed suicide, but the story of him and Emperor Han Ai continued.
The founding emperor who ran naked
In most people's impressions, the founding emperors such as Han Gaozu, Tang Taizong, Yuan Taizu, etc. are all heroes.
But there is such a founding emperor, although he founded the country, but he is extravagant, and even has a habit of running naked, he is Gao Yang, the founding emperor of the Northern Qi Dynasty.
Gao Yang is the second son of Gao Huan, a powerful minister of the Eastern Wei Dynasty, who has been alert and steady since he was a child, and has always been feared by his brother Gao Cheng because of his excellent political ability.
At that time, the imperial family of the Eastern Wei Dynasty was weak, and the Gao family monopolized power, and after Gao Huan's death, Gao Cheng took over his father's position, and wanted to emulate Cao Cao and seek the throne.
It is a pity that Gao Cheng was assassinated during the seizure of the throne, Gao Yang hibernated for many years and finally began to show his talents, he became a powerful minister soon after abolishing the Eastern Wei royal family, established himself as the emperor, and changed the name of the country to Northern Qi.
According to normal historical logic, Gao Yang, the founding emperor, should have created a great cause, but he began a life of extravagance, he did his best to enjoy himself, his favorite thing was to take off his clothes and run naked, and even wore women's clothes to grease and powder for fun.
This is not Gao Yang's most crazy move, Gao Yang's methods are cruel, not only killed his younger brother and noble concubine with his own hands, but also made the skull of that noble concubine into a wine vessel and put it on a feast.
When later generations commented on the country of Northern Qi, they always inevitably mentioned the madness of the emperors of Northern Qi, and even speculated that it was because of Gao Yang's madness that the emperors with his blood also inherited this trait.
Emperor Jiajing who cultivated immortals
In recent years, a TV series called "Daming Dynasty 1566" has become popular, and people are attracted by the characters in the play while feeling the excellent script story of this drama.
The most discussed in this play, in addition to the upright protagonist Hai Rui, is the sanctimonious Emperor Jiajing played by Chen Baoguo.
Emperor Jiajing in the play did not go to court for thirty years, and hid in the palace all day long to pursue the way of cultivating immortals and immortals, people who do not know history may doubt the authenticity of the image of this emperor, but in history, the image of Emperor Jiajing is almost the same as that played in film and television.
Emperor Jiajing is not the first emperor's own son, because the first emperor had no children to make him the emperor, the early Jiajing Emperor was very diligent in political affairs, and his means as an emperor are also clever.
But after he entered middle age and was almost assassinated by the palace maid, he no longer went to court, but focused more on cultivation.
When it comes to Emperor Jiajing, in fact, many people feel sorry, because when he first ascended the throne, his political achievements were very good.
Many people feel that if he hadn't indulged in monasticism, maybe the Ming Dynasty would have ushered in a turning point for him, from decline to resurgence.
The emperor who loves cosplay
Compared with Emperor Jiajing, who has not been in court for thirty years, the emperor we are going to talk about next can be said to be the other extreme, he is the Yongzheng Emperor of the Qing Dynasty.
Emperor Yongzheng is a well-known diligent emperor in history, and it is said that he personally reviewed hundreds of excerpts every day, and the annotations alone contained thousands of words.
Moreover, during his reign, the Qing Dynasty implemented measures such as returning fire consumption to the public, apportioning the land into the mu, and integrating the officials and gentry into errands, so that the Qing Dynasty's financial revenue reached a new high, and the accumulated disadvantages were eliminated, laying the foundation for the later Qianlong prosperous era.
is such an emperor who looks upright and upright, and he actually has a strange habit, that is, he likes to dress up as a foreigner in the painting.
In the existing historical records, when Emperor Yongzheng was still Prince Yong, he often communicated with foreign painters, and dressed up as a foreigner, so that the painters could paint him doing various things.
After ascending the throne, Yongzheng would occasionally wear a wig in addition to his diligence and let foreign painters paint.
In the TV series "Yongzheng Dynasty", the plot of Yongzheng wearing a yellow wig on his head and wearing a red scarf into the painting is very historical.
Compared with the emperor's strange habits we talked about earlier, this habit of Emperor Yongzheng is more like a harmless little hobby, from a modern point of view, this kind of pursuit of fashion behavior, I don't know how advanced it is.
It's just that we can also see from the examples of other emperors what kind of impact the indecent behavior of the superior will have on the development of the country, even in modern society, it is enough to make people think deeply.
Reference: CNKI "The Emperor's Alternative Hobbies" - Lan Yan