To visit Sun Yaoting, the last living imperial eunuch, is to feel humbled by the journey traversed by the Chinese within the confines of a single lifetime.
Mr Sun was born in 1902, just two years before Deng Xiaoping , when thousands of eunuchs still controlled the life of the emperor just as they had done for three millennia.
Mr Sun has lived to see a China which is unlikely ever again to be dominated by the life and thoughts of a single emperor-like figure. Mr Sun's death, when it comes, will sever that last living thread to a custom integral not just to the imperial way of government of China, but the civilisations of Rome and Constantinople.
As many before him, Mr Sun entered the Forbidden City in the hope of winning great riches and power. His final days are now spent in obscurity, lying on a bed in a small room at the back of the Guang Hua temple.
Few foreigners are allowed inside and its entrance lies hidden in a back lane, or hutong, in central Beijing.
The temple is the headquarters of the Chinese Buddhist Association, but ever since it was founded in the Ming dynasty, it has been patronised by the imperial eunuchs.
'Let me see, I suppose I am now 96 years old,' Mr Sun said. He speaks in a low piping voice and admits that his memory is no longer reliable (he was in fact born on December 29, 1902). The resident monks have appointed an old peasant to look after him who sleeps outside his room.