Eunuchly Chinese

Or uniquely Chinese? I thought female castration in Africa was atrocious--I can't imagine having a penis cut off (insert Bobbit joke here)! OUCH! I have more conversations about politics,religion, and the world before 6am than a lot of people (*coughs* Lindsay Lohan) have in an entire day or lifetime! I was chatting with my Ph.D. in psychology friend, Wanda, (that's right, I'm a little pretentious---I even introduce her that way--"My Ph.D. in psychology friend Wanda not to be confused with the Fish of the same name") when the topic of ancient China popped up (OK--I purposely introduced it). She recently returned from a jaunt to China and I wanted her to regale me with tales. Regale she did! She explained that the toilets in China are for squatting---not many urinals there. Why? Because the Emperial Chinese kept castrated men in their palaces to guard the concubines and NOT procreate with them. The removal of the genitals is a sure-fire way to eliminate the competition from testosterone laden lads!

I "borrowed" the above picture from a website reference about an Englishman named George Stent (during the 1880's) http://takaoclub.com/personalities/Stent/index.htm:

"In Stent's time there were around 2,000 eunuchs in the Forbidden Palace at Beijing. This number was far fewer than in earlier Ming times, as the Manchu rulers were anyway wary of the eunuchs' power but also since China had been ruled by the Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi [慈禧] on behalf of boy emperors who had little need of concubines."

The last Chinese eunuch died in 1996 at the age of 94. The following quote is from a New York times article: "In one corner of the outer square of the palace, a granite block still,, marks the spot where some of Mr. Sun's fellow eunuchs were said to have lost their "three precious," as the organs were called in court parlance of the day. Traditionally, a eunuch preserved his genitals In a jar to Insure that they would eventually be buried with him, in the belief that this would guarantee his reincarnation as a "full" man."http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/eunuchs2.html. If it wasn't so sad, I could think of a bunch of one-liners about this condition:

Gollum Eunuch: We wants it, we needs it. Must have the three precious. They stole it from us. Sneaky little Chineses. Wicked, tricksy, false!

Perverted eunuch flashes genitals by lifting jar instead of jacket!?

Pickled penis anyone?

Frustrated eunuch can't get off---the lid that is--can't "get off" the lid.

Perverted eunuch---"Touch my penis,I mean jar, it is hard like glass not diamond"

I got nothin'