[snowybeagle]

One of the most infamous concubine of a ruler from an Age of Fragmentations Era was a military prostitute. Will check my books tonight. The ruler was toppled and she was executed as the usurper feared being ensnared by her beauty.

....

Found it, she was Pan YüNu 潘玉奴, favoured by Xiao Baojuan 萧宝卷 of Southern Qi 南齐.

[Yun]

I've gone to check the sources, and can't find anything on Pan Yunu's background or fate. In fact, Xiao Yan took two of Xiao Baojuan's concubines for himself (Concubines She and Wu), so it's unlikely he would have killed Concubine Pan.

Where did you read that she was originally a military prostitute?

[snowybeagle]

Yun, on Jun 22 2006, 10:37 PM, said:

Where did you read that she was originally a military prostitute?

中国典故故事 : 连环画 / [上海人民美术出版社编]. Volume 2, pg 2250-
Actually, it said it was 潘妃, not 潘玉奴 ... who was a former camp follower, favoured by Xiao Baojuan, and killed at advice of Wang Mao.

[Yun]

OK - according to the Liang Shu reign chronicle of Xiao Yan (Liang Wudi), after Xiao Baojuan was defeated and assassinated, Xiao Yan executed Concubine Pan (潘妃) and 41 other close followers of Xiao Baojuan. There is no mention of Wang Mao having advised Xiao Yan to do so.

In Fan Yun's biography, Fan Yun and Wang Mao urge Xiao Yan to send Xiao Baojuan's Concubine She out of his harem, because they feel she is distracting him from court matters (he is, at this point, preparing to usurp the Southern Qi throne, and failure in this could cost them all their lives). Xiao is forced to agree, and Fan Yun then persuades him to give Concubine She to Wang Mao as a concubine.

Nowhere is it mentioned that Concubine Pan was a camp follower. I believe 中国典故故事 invented this detail, and then 'modified' Wang Mao's involvement in the Concubine She incident to fit him into a story about the more infamous Concubine Pan. This story, in turn, was based on the famous one about Gao Jiong forcing Yang Guang (the future Sui Yangdi) to execute Zhang Lihua after the conquest of the Chen dynasty.

[snowybeagle]

Yun, I found the source of Wang Mao's involvement as narrated by 中国典故故事.

《资治通鉴·卷第一百四十四【齐纪十】》

Quote

潘妃有国色，衍欲留之，以问侍中、领军将军王茂，茂曰：“亡齐者此物，留之恐贻外议。”乃缢杀于狱，并诛嬖臣茹法珍等。以宫女二千赉将士。乙酉，以辅国将军萧宏为中护军。

Translation: Concubine Pan was very beautiful, and Xiao Yan desired to retain her (after launching a successful coup against Xiao Baojuan. His general Wang Mao advised him, "This is the entity which caused the downfall of the (Southern) Qi, sparing her would be detrimental to you and cause harmful gossip." And hence, Pan Fei was executed by strangulation/hanging.

The part about her being a former camp follower was harder to find, and I could not find any direct historical account on the web.

There's quite a few websites which described her origins as being one though:
http://www.new-youth.com/model/luntan/view...&ismaster=0
"(萧宝卷)后来看到一个“罪臣”的潘姓营妓体态轻盈，美艳动人，魂一下子被勾住了。不久册封她为贵妃，呼之为玉儿。"
Translation: Xiao Baojuan became besotted with a convict and former camp follower by the surname of Pan.

http://www.tianya.cn/publicforum/Content/f.../1/159219.shtml
"潘玉儿　　
　　萧梁之前，萧齐皇帝萧宝卷...的爱妃，市井出身，喜欢在宫里开集市搞贸易。她似乎早期当过营妓。总之媚力一流，把萧宝卷迷得昏头转向，萧宝卷让人在地板上画莲花，看她在上面跳舞，美其名曰“步步莲花”。"
Translation: "Concubine Pan was of unrefined background, and like to play "shop" in the palace. She seemed to have been a former camp follower ..."

http://www.hebeidail...07/ca418467.htm
"有一个妓女姓潘，玩男人很有一套，原是军妓，后来跑到都城建康(南京)，玩起了官员和富商。齐国皇帝萧宝卷原是个玩家，有一群玩女人的狗朋猫友，自然知道了潘女士床上的功夫，就问他的忠实宦官茹法珍、悔虫儿，他们二人虽不能玩女人却常在妓院里泡，就向皇帝爷说：“一个妓字说明了她床上的十八般武艺，万岁爷如果想试试，我们可以把她秘密的带进宫来。”

茹、悔两宦官摸准了皇帝爷的心思，一天夜里，把潘女打扮成太监送到了皇帝身边，萧宝卷没有来得及让她换上女人装就拥她上床了。"
Brief Translation: "Xiao Baojuan heard of a street walker named Pan who was skilled in bedroom arts. His eunuchs Ru Fazhen and Hui Chong'er had her disguised as a eunuch and smuggled into the palace for a rendezvous with Xiao Baojuan."

It might have originated from a folklore such as 南北史演义.

This post has been edited by snowybeagle: 22 June 2006 - 10:41 PM

[Yun]

I've found the source of the Zizhi Tongjian account. It's the Nanshi 《南史》 (Southern History) by Li Yanshou of the Tang dynasty - a history of the Southern Dynasties that is also included among the 24 Dynastic Histories but differs from the Song Shu, Nanqi Shu, Liang Shu and Chen Shu on some points.

In Wang Mao's Nanshi biography, Xiao Yan intends to keep Pan Yu'er (潘玉儿) for himself because she is a great beauty. He asks Wang Mao about it, and Wang says, "亡齐者此物，留之恐贻外议。" (It was this woman who caused the downfall of the Qi dynasty. If Your Majesty keeps her, I fear people will say things against Your Majesty.") Xiao Yan then sends her out of his harem. A colonel in Xiao's army named Tian An asks for Pan Yu'er as a wife. Yu'er weeps and says, "Back then I was favoured by the emperor of the time; now how can I lower myself to be married to a mere boor? Death is the only road left to me; honour forbids that I let myself be humiliated this way." So she hanged herself, and after her death she still looked as beautiful as when she was alive. Her body was carried out of the palace in a carriage, and the junior officials and guards at the palace gates all committed necrophilia with the corpse (i.e. they had sex with it).

Wang Mao's Nanshi biography also mentions Xiao Yan giving Concubine She (who was "second in beauty to Concubine Pan") to Wang Mao, while Wang's Liang Shu biography leaves it out. However, Fan Yun's biography in both Liang Shu and Nanshi contains the full account of Fan Yun and Wang Mao urging Xiao Yan to give Concubine She up, and Xiao agreeing to give She to Wang Mao as a concubine.

The likely reason why the Liang Shu omits mention of Wang Mao urging Xiao Yan not to keep Pan Yu'er, and of Pan Yu'er's suicide, is because it was too embarassing for the Liang court to include in its own official history. After all:

1) Xiao Yan has to be persuaded not to keep such a notorious woman for himself

2) Wang Mao looks rather hypocritical because after causing Concubine Pan's death, he goes on to insist that Xiao Yan give Concubine She up too, only to take her for himself.

3) Pan Yu'er's suicide and last words actually make her look like a heroine.

So the Liang Shu simply says that Xiao Yan had Pan Yu'er executed, implying he never thought of keeping her. Sima Guang's Zizhi Tongjian opts for a halfway point: Xiao Yan does think of keeping Pan Yu'er, but the conservative Sima Guang, afraid that the moral message (about bad women being bad for the state) would be lost in the midst of Pan Yu'er's heroic suicide and the juicy details of necrophilia, simply states that Pan was strangled to death in prison.

The Nanshi is also the origin of a famous story associated with Pan Yu'er, which doesn't appear in the Nanqi Shu: 又凿金为莲华（花）以贴地，令潘妃行其上， 曰："此步步生莲华（花）也。" Here, Xiao Baojuan makes lotus flowers out of gold and sticks them on the floor, and then asks Pan Yu'er to walk on them. He then alludes to the story of the Buddha's birth, in which right after he is born he takes a few steps and from each footstep a lotus flower sprouts from the ground. Many Chinese later interpreted this as the origin of foot-binding, because bound feet were called 'golden lotus flowers' in late imperial times. But there is nothing here to suggest that the golden lotus flowers made by Xiao Baojuan were so small that Pan Yu'er's feet had to be bound small in order to walk on them.

As for the name Pan Yunu 潘玉奴, and her having once been a prostitute, I think both originated from popular novels of the Ming dynasty or later.

Thanks for bringing Pan Yu'er up, Snowybeagle - I learned a lot from this research that I didn't know before.

[Yun]

BTW, there is one very embarassing story about Xiao Yan's dalliance with Concubine Wu, even though his interest in Pan Yu'er was excised from the text and his face was partly saved by Wang Mao taking Concubine She away from him.

Xiao Yan did keep Concubine Wu, from Xiao Baojuan's harem, as his own concubine. The Nanshi describes Concubine Wu as ranking third in Xiao Baojuan's favour after Pan Yu'er and Concubine She. She quickly became pregnant and gave birth to a son seven months later. Many in the palace suspected that Concubine Wu had already been pregnant when Xiao Yan took her, and that the son (whom Xiao Yan named Xiao Cong) was really Xiao Baojuan's child. Later, Concubine Wu lost favour with Xiao Yan, and in her bitterness she told the young Xiao Cong that she suspected his father was really Xiao Baojuan.

Xiao Cong thus grew up believing he might not really be Xiao Yan's son, and Xiao Yan made it worse by neglecting him while treating other sons very well. Xiao Cong began making ancestral sacrifices to the Southern Qi emperors in secret, but he still had doubts about his parentage. So he conducted an experiment based on an old wives' tale he had heard. It was said that if the blood of a living person was dripped on the bone of a dead person, it would seep into the bone completely if the two were father and son. Xiao Cong exhumed Xiao Baojuan's tomb in secret and obtained a bone. He dripped his own blood on it, and it seeped through. Xiao Cong also killed an infant son of his who was only just over a month old, took a bone from the body, and dripped his blood on it. Again it seeped through.


Xiao Cong, having proven his suspicions to be true, made contact with Xiao Baoyin, a brother of Baojuan who had fled to the Northern Wei after the fall of Southern Qi and become a general there. They began making arrangements for Xiao Cong to defect. In 525, Xiao Yan put Xiao Cong in command of a northern expedition against the Northern Wei. Cong's base would be at Pengcheng (present-day Xuzhou), where the Wei general and prince Yuan Faseng had just defected to the Liang. When the campaign entered a stalemate and Xiao Yan ordered Xiao Cong to withdraw, Cong feared losing his best chance to defect to the Northern Wei. That night he escaped to the Northern Wei camp with a small force of cavalry. As a result, the Northern Wei recaptured Pengcheng.

Xiao Cong's defection was one of Xiao Yan's biggest family embarassments, although there were many of these.

[snowybeagle]

Yun, on Jun 23 2006, 12:55 PM, said:

Xiao Cong's defection was one of Xiao Yan's biggest family embarassments, although there were many of these.

And I thought Xiāo ZhèngDé's (萧正德) defection to Northern Wei was unusual. Must be some family trait ...
I posted about it in the thread http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...5697&st=15#

Isn't it odd that Xian Yan was without a son for a long time and even had to adopt one from his younger brother Xiao Hong, and then right after his successful coup against Xiao Baojuan, he had so many sons who ironically were more interested in fighting each other than rescuing him during Hou Jing's uprising?

Makes one wonder about the sudden increase in the "productivity" of his concubines ...

[Yun]

Quote

Isn't it odd that Xian Yan was without a son for a long time and even had to adopt one from his younger brother Xiao Hong, and then right after his successful coup against Xiao Baojuan, he had so many sons who ironically were more interested in fighting each other than rescuing him during Hou Jing's uprising?

Xiao Yan's first wife, Lady Xi Wei, bore him only three daughters before she died at the age of 31 in 499. The next year, Xiao Yan rebelled against Xiao Baojuan at Xiangyang. The year after that (501), his concubine Ding Lingguang (whom he had taken as a 13-year-old girl when garrisoning Xiangyang) bore him a son, Xiao Tong. Xiao Tong was born in the 9th lunar month of 501, while Xiao Yan left Xiangyang to begin his expedition against Xiao Baojuan in the 2nd lunar month. This means Xiao Yan made her pregnant shortly before he left.

Xiao Cong was Xiao Yan's second son, born in 502. His third son, Xiao Gang, was born to Ding Lingguang in 503. By this time, Lady Ding was living with Xiao Yan in the imperial palace at Jiankang, although she was never made empress before she died in 526 (the title of empress was held by Xi Wei even though she had died). Only in 550, when Xiao Gang was made emperor by Hou Jing, did he declare Ding Lingguang an Empress Dowager posthumously.

Xiao Tong died young in 531, and Xiao Gang replaced him as Crown Prince. That's how Xiao Gang came to be the second Liang emperor, though he was always only a puppet of Hou Jing and got murdered by him in the end.

Xiao Yan had five other sons: Xiao Ji (1) (504-529), borne by Concubine Dong; Xiao Xu (504-547), borne by Ding Lingguang; Xiao Lun (c. 506-551), borne by Concubine Ding (different from Ding Lingguang); Xiao Yi (508-554), borne by Concubine Ruan; and Xiao Ji (2) (508-553), borne by Concubine Ge.

So he did have a brief spurt of productivity in 502-504, but two out of the four sons during this period were borne by Ding Lingguang. We know nothing about where Concubines Dong, Ding and Ge came from. We do know a bit about Concubine Ruan, since she got a biography in the Liang Shu by virtue of being Emperor Yuan's (Xiao Yi) mother. She was originally a concubine of Xiao Yaoguang, the Southern Qi Prince of Shi'an. Xiao Yaoguang attempted a coup against Xiao Baojuan in 499, but was defeated and killed. Xiao Baojuan then took Concubine Ruan into his harem. When Xiao Yan overthrew Xiao Baojuan and took Jiankang, he also took Concubine Ruan into his harem. Fortunately, she took six years to bear Xiao Yi, so Xiao Yi's parentage didn't come into question.

[Yun]

Quote

And I thought Xiāo ZhèngDé's (萧正德) defection to Northern Wei was unusual. Must be some family trait ...

Xiao Zhengde defected a few years before Xiao Cong did, in 522. He claimed to be the Liang Crown Prince who had been stripped of his position. Xiao Baoyin and the Northern Wei suspected him of being a false defector (i.e. a spy), and treated him coldly, even wanting to kill him. Zhengde then fled back to Liang and begged Xiao Yan's forgiveness. Xiao Yan relented and restored his fief. In 525, Zhengde took part in Xiao Cong's northern expedition, and somewhere along the way (probably even before Xiao Cong's defection) he abandoned his troops and came back south. Xiao Yan berated him for this and other misdemeanours he had committed (such as murder, robbery and rape), and sent him into exile. But even before he reached his place of exile, Xiao Yan recalled and pardoned him.

[This is based on the Nanshi account. The Liang Shu dates Xiao Zhengde's defection to 525, the same year as Xiao Cong, and says he returned to Liang in 526. It also does not mention his incompetence during the 525 northern expedition, and his sentence to exile. All this is probably a cover-up by the Liang official historian, because the list of crimes in Xiao Yan's edict sentencing Zhengde was much too shocking. The Liang Shu also omits mention of the evil deeds of random violence committed by Zhengde and three other young aristocrats, known collectively as the Four Murderers. In the Nanshi, these details appear in the paragraph between Zhengde's 522 defection and his 525 dereliction of duty. The Liang Shu, by 'fast-forwarding' the defection to 525, avoids having to talk about princes and aristocrats behaving like gangsters and psychopaths.]

[snowybeagle]

http://zh.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=...p;variant=zh-cn

The above wikipedia article claimed instead that Pan Yünu (潘玉奴) was the daughter of Concubine Pan (潘妃) who raised Xiao Baojuan who lost his mother at a young age.

Is there any support for this in the historical texts?

[Yun]

No, the actual story in the Nanshi is that Xiao Baojuan's crown prince's mother (Concubine Wang) died, and Pan Yu'er's mother was assigned to take care of the crown prince.

[Sephodwyrm]

I thought Zheng Yingtao was pretty...evil...

[Yun]

You are referring to Shi Hu's concubine Zheng Yingtao, the former singer/performer? There is actually some disagreement whether Zheng was male or female, since 'youtong' could also mean 'a boy servant who was trained to sing'. What we do know is that Zheng Yingtao was responsible for Shi Hu killing his first two wives Ladies Guo and Cui.

Whether Zheng Yingtao was male or female would depend on whether the later mentioned "Lady Zheng", who was made Empress by Shi Hu, was the same as Zheng Yingtao. Lady Zheng was the mother of Shi Hu's first Crown Prince Shi Sui, who was a serial rapist-murderer who preyed on nuns and the wives of ministers. After Shi Hu got angry with Shi Sui over some of his misdeeds and executed him, Lady Zheng was also demoted back to concubine. Nothing more is said about her.

[Sephodwyrm]

Hmm...steppe culture seems to be pretty bisexual when it comes to young performers...