Liu Jin

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
In this Chinese name, the family name is Liu.

Liu Jin (

eunuch during the reign of the Zhengde Emperor
.

Liu was famous for being one of the most influential officials in Chinese history. For some time, Liu was the emperor in all but name. He was the leader of the "Eight Tigers", a powerful group of eunuchs who controlled the imperial court. Liu was from the area of Xingping, a county in Shaanxi province, approximately 30 miles west of Xi'an prefecture.

Liu Jin's original surname was Tan (談). When he became a eunuch under the aegis of a eunuch official named Liu, he changed his surname to Liu.

Plotting against the emperor

The Zhengde Emperor's dissolute lifestyle placed a heavy burden on the people of the empire. He would refuse to receive all his ministers and ignored all their petitions whilst sanctioning[

Anhui Province
. Zhang's discovery of many weapons in Liu's houses sealed his fate.

Death

The emperor ordered Liu executed in

death by a thousand cuts over a period of three days, a process that resulted in Liu being cut 3,357 times. According to witnesses, angry onlookers bought a piece of his flesh for one qian (the smallest available currency at the time) and consumed it accompanied with rice wine. Liu died on the second day of his punishment after three to four hundred cuts.[2][3]

Personal wealth

According to one report, shortly before Liu was executed, 12,057,800

Asian Wall Street Journal placed Liu on its list of the fifty wealthiest persons in the past 1,000 years[5] although the actual amount may in fact have been lower.[6]

References

  1. ^ (In Chinese) Remarriage of widows to alleviate the burden on the peasantry : a rarely known eunuch reform in ancient China (寡妇再嫁农民减负：中国古代鲜为人知的太监变法) Archived 2011-07-07 at the Wayback Machine
  2. ^ Chen Zhang (陳璋) Bibu Zhaoyi (比部招議)
  3. ^ (In Chinese) The glorious Chen family (辉煌闽台温的陈璋家族) Archived 2008-03-02 at the Wayback Machine
  4. ^ (In Chinese) Discussion of the origins of Qing Dynasty ministerial corruption (谈谈中国清朝腐败的深层次原因) Archived 2012-05-27 at archive.today
  5. ^ Asian Wall Street Journal article that mentions Liu Jin
  6. ISBN 978-7-5008-3087-0
    .

Further reading

  • The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 7: The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644
  • Frederick W. Mote & Denis Twitchett The Prince of Anhua Uprising
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