Besides Fengxian Xiao, the famous Sai Jinhua spent some time in Xiangyi Courtyard in Shaanxi. At present, the only ancient building preserved in the eight hutongs is the Xiangyi Courtyard where Sai Jinhua lived.
"Flower Street, more delicate and charming name; Chu Qin Guan Lou, an infinite romantic singer. " In film and television dramas, romantic places are mostly off the table. The eight hutongs in Beijing were synonymous with Huajie Liuxiang in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, and they were famous at home and abroad. During the Qing dynasty, many officials often came and went here.
Women in the world of mortals appeared earlier, starting from the Western Zhou Dynasty. At that time, there was a general trend of storing female slaves, and later it gradually developed into four levels. The first class is called "Yin Qing Small Class", where "young girls" (the elegant name of ancient special occupations) are proficient in piano, chess, calligraphy, painting and poetry, all of whom are versatile and outstanding in appearance.
Their age is no more than fifteen or sixteen. Fengxian Xiao was only 13 years old when she entered Shaanxi Lane, but she can read and write, play the erhu, play the pipa, sing Beijing opera and write lyrics, and the comings and goings are usually princes and nobles.
The second-class "tea room" is a relatively noble place with exquisite interior decoration, carved flowers and dyed colors. The "female tourists" here are also good at painting and singing, and usually receive wealthy businessmen and dignitaries; The third class is the "inferior place", the interior decoration is simple, the fireworks women are generally talented, and the rouge powder is mostly; The fourth category is "kiln workers".
Eight hutongs are basically first-class and second-class. In the Qing dynasty, many women who were born in poverty but had good looks thought they could live here. In fact, Fengxian Xiao and Sai Jinhua were both tragic figures of that era. If they had a choice, their situation would certainly be very different and their lives would be innocent.
This place has witnessed historical changes and is inextricably linked with the formation and development of Beijing Opera. In the twenty-first year of Qing Qianlong, Emperor Qianlong banned the establishment of romantic places in the inner city of Beijing, so the land for finding flowers moved to Dashilan outside the front door.
At that time, there were no eight hutongs, but since 55 years of Qianlong, four Huizhou classes (Sanqing, Sixi, Chuntai and Hechun) that used to perform only in the south have successively entered Beijing, and the troupe has lived in the eight hutongs.
In the Qing Dynasty, it was forbidden that "the spring breeze was proud of horseshoe disease (the name of whoring in the Tang Dynasty, and the slut was called a geisha in the Tang Dynasty, meaning an artist)", while the scholar-bureaucrat class has been good since the Ming Dynasty, and the scholar-bureaucrat class has also turned around, gradually forming the embryonic form of "romantic field".
At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the imperial court continued to pay reparations, which increased the taxes of the people, making it popular to sell women everywhere. They were sold to these places when they were six or seven years old. If you are out of shape, you have to practice your talents when you enter the eight hutongs. They are trained to smile, know how to please the powerful, but rarely choose their own lives. In the end, they are just a "cash cow".
Especially when foreign powers invaded and Eight-Nation Alliance entered Beijing, their fate was even more bumpy.
Today's eight hutongs are not what they used to be, and because of their particularity, even though Beijing is under construction everywhere, there have been disputes about whether to tear them down, but they have not yet become high-rise buildings.