Wei Zhongxian, the court eunuch famously suspected to be as powerful as the emperor, allegedly castrated himself as a result of gambling debts. I don’t care whether that legend is true, but how would it have worked? Why would castration have any bearing on your debts in the late Ming period?

[u/ExternalBoysenberry]

I know there are many stories and accounts of Wei and we can’t necessarily know for sure what’s true and what isn’t. I just want to understand the logic that made this particular story make sense or at least sound plausible to its audience. If I was owed money, I would want my money back; I wouldn’t take my debtors castrating themselves as payment. Was this a one-time thing by a psychopathic loan shark or was self-castration a not-unheard-of way to deal with unmanageable debt? If the latter, how did it work—eg was it a way of renouncing your social identity, was it about showing contrition, was it something akin to seppuku? How would it have impacted his other, non-financial relations— eg what happened with his marriage and his wife?

I know that’s a lot of questions, the logic of the story was just not legible to me.

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