alibb
With such a long history, spanning over 20 dynasties, and involving many people, there bound to be one or two weirdos or absurd stories …
While I do not know how true these version of “histories” were but they were being spread around within the peasants.
So now, I’m going to share a few of them with you guys.
1. Yang Guo Zhong Wife Mysterious Pregnancy
Yang is always away for work and his wife misses him badly, to the point that she fall sick. One day she dream of consummating with Yang in her dream and became pregnant. She gave birth to a son.
When Yang was back from work, she told him what happened and Yang was so moved by her love for him.
“In your dreams…”, Good excuse, huh?
2. Lazy Emperors
Many of the Ming Dynasty emperors rarely or never attended any official meeting with his officials, that included:
The 9th, 10th and 12th Emperor
The 14th Emperor only appeared ONCE during his 49 years reign.
I bet the officials are pretty happy too…
3. Elixir of Life or …
Guang Zhong Emperor (of Ming) died because of the “Magical” pill he ate. The pills was said to contain woman’s menses. YUUCCK!! But the most ironic thing is that these elixir usually contains some sort of poisonous metal like Mercury! Elixir of life or Poison of life?
Images by your truly, Alibb!! hehe!!
Sorry about reading these amusing “anecdotes” of past Chinese times. I knew that Chinese were superstitious and had “weird” types of medicine but “menses”. Yuckkk is right. Still, it remains a very interested and entertaining post.
Haha… well, menses aren’t really the worst …
Think about bugs and placenta…
It’s a good read, and learning about the mythology and legends of other cultures is a great way to learn about the underlying assumptions of their culture…
Yes, I’ve to agree …
Chinese tend to be superstitious and hence many traditions linked to that
I am pretty sure they invented superstition. If not, they found a way to be better at it than every other culture I’ve ever heard of
If you like this sort of story, might I recommend The Strange Tales of Liao Zhai?
I know about that book, and there are TV serial based on it. There stories are interesting and mythical!!
Thanks for the recommendation, Alex.