"Ali, a great figure in the Liaodong Garrison, would be very cordial when he met me? Who is he? Is he the legion commander who controls Great Ming's Liaodong army corps, or the Chief Priest in charge of administration, finance, and taxation? Mm? Could he be the Cihuacoatl who oversees military and civil affairs and answers directly to the Great Emperor?..."
"Exactly! The ancestors bless us! Ancestral Shaman, he is the Great Emperor's 'Eunuch Cihuacoatl,' the Liaodong guarding eunuch stationed over a region! The Great Emperor's eunuchs are all like you, heroic and fierce, and have no beards!..."
"!...A heroic Eunuch Cihuacoatl?..."
"Yes! A heroic Eunuch Cihuacoatl..."
Harman chieftain Ali nodded heavily, his face full of certainty. In this era—or rather, from Yongle all the way to the Chenghua years—the image of Great Ming's eunuchs was still not that sort of fair-faced, beardless, effeminate petty man. Instead, according to the demands of Ming Taizong Zhu Di, they were selected as imperial attendants who "possessed courage and strength, and could ride horses and fight," and among them those who were "brave and skilled in battle" were chosen as guarding eunuchs stationed over a region. These "eunuchs" represented the emperor in "supervising a region," going to the localities to control military and civil affairs and contend for tax revenues and financial power. In terms of personal image, they were nowhere near as unbearable as the civil officials who controlled public opinion described them to be.
"The Main God bears witness! Emperor Taizong rose from the Yan lands, seized power in the Jingnan campaign, and ascended the throne. He trusted and valued the warriors of the northern tribes even more than the civil officials of the Han lands, and vigorously employed heroic eunuchs of every ethnicity. At his side gathered a great many