[Karen]
Today we’re going to a intro to the movie episode for the Ming Dynasty movie Piercing Heart Sword or 刿心剑. If you’re interested in watching this movie, it is available on Jubao TV which is available on several platforms in the US. You can watch it for free and with english subtitles.
We’ll go over at a high level the plot for the movie, discuss the historical setting for the movie and some key historical counterparts. This won’t be a review of the movie, but rather an introduction to the history portrayed! I’m very excited because the ming dynasty is certainly an era where I feel like I have not done a lot of research on it.
[Cathy]
Let’s do a brief plot overview of this movie.
The movie is set during the reign of Emperor Hong Wu so the 30 years from 1368 to 1398. The corrupt minister 郭廉 has amassed significant wealth as well as power at court. He keeps a secret list of individuals, detailing their business details with him. This list serves as insurance so that no one rats the other out. He keeps this list well hidden and can only be decoded with a special decoder.
The Embroidered Uniform Guards were sent to to investigate a huge corruption scandal which would lead them closer to the corrupt minister 郭廉. Two friends, the young 蒋瑍 and older 丁武 are tasked with finding any leads. In one such mission at a brothel, 蒋瑍 rescues a young courtesan and gradually falls in love with her. The two of them report back to their boss 徐述 of their findings. In that mission, they also recover a peculiar sword 刿心剑 or the Piercing Heart Sword. Their next mission is to rendezvous with a covert operative who has been undercover for many years. Before doing so, the older of the pair, 丁武, returns home to his beautiful wife 田慧 and is ecstatic to find that she’s pregnant.
The two brothers 蒋瑍, wishing to buy off his beloved’s deed at the brothel, and and 丁武, wishing to save money for his wife and unborn child vow to quickly solve the case. But as they uncover more secrets, they always seem one step behind. Even though they want to solve the case, the two need to face the realities of life. 蒋瑍 in desperate need of money must choose the path to take and whether or not he will betray his brothers.
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The movie was a surprisingly pleasant watch. I personally enjoyed the martial arts and setting of the movie. It definitely feels more lived in than some other dramas / movies.
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[Karen]
Let’s talk about this powerful and a bit mysterious 锦衣卫 or Embroidered Uniform Guard that is the subject of many stories and dramas. They’re renowned for their ruthlessness and capabilities and I haven’t really learned much about them so hey, lets go down the rabbit hole and learn something new!
Funnily enough, I’m looking on TaoBao and you can actually buy the uniforms as costumes! Why do I find that absolutely hilarious? Hey, if you want to be an Embroidered Uniform Guard for halloween, that is totally an option.
These Embroidered Uniform Guards, which is what the main characters Jiang Huan and Ding Wu are part of, was established by the first Ming Dynasty Emperor 朱元璋 in 1382 after he ascended the throne and served first as his personal police before becoming a more powerful military entity. So for this movie, we should be set in the later years of the Emperor’s reign.
[Cathy]
Zhu Yuan Zhang originally created this group because he was extremely nervous of the power court officials might have over him. Well, one guy 胡惟庸 in particular. Basically, he wanted to have power to act against his court officials that was above all law because he was extremely paranoid that everyone wanted to kill him. I mean, fair.
胡惟庸 himself was executed as part of the Four Major Cases of the early Ming dynasty. I’ll talk more about that later.
The Embroidered Uniform Guards were extremely powerful as they reported directly to the Emperor. Under their remit was investigation, arresting, interrogating and throwing in jail pretty much anyone. No noble, court official or member of the imperial family was above the power of the Embroidered Uniform Guards. That’s why you could say people were very scared of the 锦衣卫 or these Embroidered Uniform Guards whenever they walked around. In many of the on screen portrayals, these guards were super badass and extremely skilled fighters as well. The selection process to be chosen into the Embroidered Uniform Guards, as you can imagine, was also extremely stringent and they underwent intense training in order to serve.
[Karen]
These guards served for pretty much the entirety of the Ming dynasty and, this was surprising to me, the Qing dynasty kept a version of the organization after entering the mainland. It wanted to mirror what was established in the Ming dynasty. Only during Shun Zhi’s rule in 1645 did the name change and 锦衣卫 was officially disbanded. That’s almost 300 years for this organization! Of course, it’s not like the Qing or manchu leaders kept the same people in Jin Yi Wei from the Ming dynasty but more of keeping the idea of the organization.
As you can imagine, the 锦衣卫 didn’t stay the same during its entirety. As with many of these incredibly powerful organizations, their power ebbed and flowed with the times but overall remained quite elevated.
For example, the Embroidered Uniform Guard when they were established also had a special and horrifying prison called 诏狱 or the Imperial Edict Prison. This place housed special prisoners. There were different iterations of this prison throughout Chinese history but the 锦衣卫 version requires special mention for just how horrific and cruel it was. Have any of you visited medieval castles or towns in Europe and seen torture chambers? Well, apparently the 锦衣卫 prison had all the bells and whistles of the most horrifying torture devices available in order to help the Emperor solve crimes and enforce order. And when I say solve crimes, that’s a very loose way of saying getting the answer you want through torture. Luckily, the Emperor 朱元璋 recognized that this was not a lasting solution and ordered all of these torture devices be destroyed and prisoners sent to another organization for the judiciary process. But then this prison came back in later years when it was needed by the Emperor.
Because this type of organization amassed so much power, many of the stories we read or hear about for this entity are ones of injustice or framed victims and prisoners. So many movies or dramas are about spies or those in the organization that have betrayed the brotherhood if you will. That makes for a messy but fun treasure trove of stories to tell.
[Cathy]
One of the challenges with watching dramas about the Embroidered Uniform Guards is understanding all of the titles of people within the organization because they are quite distinct. At least for me, after watching Pledge of Allegiance and Piercing Heart Sword, I was like, who’s the higher authority here? I have not paid attention to these titles so what’s going on? Or it was like, this character is fighting for promotion to XYZ title and I had absolutely no context for what it meant.
So, the lowest level is a 小旗 at a lower 从七品 and then the ranks move up. The two leads in the movie, started out as a 小旗 at the seventh rank level. Then, there’s the 百户 which is a 正六品， then 千户 is 正五品. You work your way up to the head of the organization as a 指挥使, 正三品, a confidante of the Emperor himself。I’m a little surprised at the 正三品. For some reason I thought the position would be higher given how much power this organization has.
[Karen]
We can’t talk about the Embroidered Uniform Guard without talking about their uniforms. .The guards could be given a 蟒服 or serpent outfit, the flying fish outfit 飞鱼服 or the fighting bull outfit斗牛服。 The 蟒服 was a special outfit specifically gifted by the Emperor so any individual wearing these robes had high standing in front of the Emperor. Similarly, the 斗牛服 is for officials of the first rank. There’s the 飞鱼服 or the flying fish outfit. This outfit is in my opinion one of the most often presented outfits on screen. Why flying fish? This is not just any flying fish. This flying fish originates from Shan He Jing or the Classic of Mountains and Seas and is a mythical creature that has a dragon-like head, fish body and then birdlike feathers. The body of the animal has serpentine scales. This is a uniform of sorts for the Embroidered Uniform Guards. While 飞鱼服 has different iterations and can be worn by more than just the Embroidered Uniform Guards, it is most often associated with them. Color wise, in Piercing Heart Sword and many other on screen adaptations, the outfits are dark blue but there are other dramas or movies that show them in varying shades of red and also dark yellow.
The other major accessory for a 锦衣卫 that is part of the uniform is the 绣春刀。This beautifully ornate broadsword is slightly curved and tied around the waist. It is considered a short weapon. Many badass fight scenes involve guards fighting with these 绣春刀.
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[Cathy]
This movie draws heavily from a real life case from the Hong Wu reign during the Ming Dynasty. This is one of the Four Major Cases of the early Ming dynasty, specifically the the Guo Huan case (Chinese: 郭桓案; pinyin: Guō Huán àn). In the movie, the big bad is named Guo Lian but both are officials in the ministry of revenue sooo close enough.
In history, this case occurred in 1385. 郭桓 and several other officials were caught for tax fraud, embezzlement of grain and then selling the grain for profit, and levying illegal taxes to fill up their own coffers. The amount they embezzled was staggering. There’s some conflicting accounts but 郭桓 and his accomplices embezzled either 7 million piculs or 24 million piculs of grain.
When the fraud was discovered, this set off a firestorm throughout the empire. The Emperor decided that, in order to quell the outrage from the populace, he executed essentially all of the vice ministers of the six ministries. I’ll put it this way Emperor Hong Wu was a rather bloodthirsty emperor and in his later years killed a LOT of people.
Now, I don’t know if the Embroidered Uniform Guards were directly involved in solving the case. We don’t really have that from historical records but this case and the other 3 cases that make up the 4 major cases in the Ming Dynasty did contribute to Emperor Hong Wu’s desire to set up the Embroidered Uniform Guards.
[Karen]
Another interesting outcome from this particular case – according to Baike; after this case, the Emperor ordered the use of writing numbers in a more complicated way to minimize fraud. In english we use the arabic numbers of 1 2 3 but we can also write out one two three like o n e. It’s much harder to change the numbers when you write out o n e.
That was the similar thought in chinese. The number one is usually written as a straight horizontal line, two is 2 horizontal lines, 3 is 3 horizontal lines. 10 is essentially a cross. You can imagine, it’s pretty easy to make a 1 into a 2 and 1 into a 10 and so forth.
Instead, what people had to use for book keeping is a very different and difficult character altogether for the numbers. The word one now has 12 brush strokes to it instead of 1! So yea – you can’t easily change that two a 2.
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[Cathy]
Lastly – I actually want to talk about the title of this movie
刿xin jian – specifically the first word gui. It’s not one we normally see and it’s comprised of two parts. 岁 which means year and the the radical for sword. This word is not normally used in chinese vocabulary. Another word is more commonly used for Pierce which is 刺. 刿 is definitely
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