The Tang dynasty poet Li Bai had once written the Rhapsody on the Grand Hunt. In those days, emperors often had the custom of hunting in winter.
It was the slack season for farming, so there was no need to worry about horses trampling the crops. Winter was also the season for training the militia, and since ascending the throne, Emperor Xuanzong of Tang had gone hunting many times.
During one such hunt, Li Bai seized the opportunity to present this poem to the emperor, hoping to win Xuanzong's favor.
The emperor had been forty-eight at the time, still considered in his prime. And what did men in their prime like?
The Tang dynasty court regularly dispatched envoys known as "Flower and Bird Envoys" to select beauties from across All Under Heaven. These women all came from respectable families. Yet the vast majority served in the palace as ordinary maidservants for the rest of their lives, while only a very few could become prospective wives for the crown prince or the various princes.
To avoid this fate, whenever word spread that the palace was sending out envoys again, every household would hasten to marry off their sons and daughters. Later on, the Flower and Bird Envoys stopped caring about family background or status, noble or lowly. They looked only at beauty. Any woman of striking looks, regardless of her origins or whether she was already married, would be seized and taken into the inner palace.
In the Shuowen Jiezi, the Zhou dynasty word for prison was written as "yu." It referred to confining a criminal within an enclosure sealed on all four sides—in other words, four walls. Criminals in those days not only lost their freedom, but were also forced to perform grueling labor.
The Rites of Zhou also mentioned