Why did some concubines in ancient times have to be slapped or slapped once a month after being relegated to the cold palace?

Because the concubines who enter the cold palace are all guilty concubines, their treatment is not even as good as that of a slave. Some slaves will be ordered to slap them, slap them, etc. In short, no one will care about them.

The Cold Palace was the place where ancient kings placed their deposed concubines. Once a concubine fell out of favor, she had to wait for death in a forbidden room in the palace. Generally, for the sake of the dignity of the royal family, the chances of concubines committing crimes to be directly punished with death are not high, so they need a place to house them, so there is a cold palace, in which concubines will be tortured a lot.

Concubines who were relegated to the cold palace in ancient times were not necessarily punished every month, nor were they necessarily spanked or slapped. There may also be other punishments, such as kneeling, copying, whipping, and beating. Punishment etc.

Extended information

In ancient palaces, the emperor had a saying of "three palaces, six courtyards and seventy-two concubines". Once a woman chosen to be in the palace falls out of favor, she will wait for death in a forbidden room in the palace, which is very miserable. The forbidden room in the palace where women lived after falling out of favor was the so-called "cold palace". So, where is the "cold palace" in the Forbidden City?

To talk about the cold palaces in the palace, we need to first talk about the "three palaces and six courtyards" in the palace. Among the imperial palaces of the Ming and Qing dynasties, Qianqing Palace, Jiaotai Palace, and Kunning Palace were called the "Three Palaces".

The "Six Courtyards" refer to the Zhai Palace, Jingren Palace, Chengqian Palace, Zhongcui Palace, Jingyang Palace and Yonghe Palace on the East Road respectively. The emperor had many wives and concubines, and it was said that he had "seventy-two concubines" or "three thousand beauties". "Book of Rites" records that the system of the Zhou Dynasty was "six palaces after the emperor, three wives, nine concubines, twenty-seven wives, and eighty-one royal wives."

As for where the Cold Palace is in the Forbidden City, some scholars believe that the Cold Palace actually has no fixed place. Any place where princesses and princes are imprisoned is commonly known as the "Leng Palace". Looking through the historical materials of the Ming and Qing Dynasties, we found that there is no clear plaque for "Leng Palace" in the Forbidden City. It can be seen that the Cold Palace is not the official name of a palace in the palace. According to historical records, there were several places that were used as cold palaces in the Ming and Qing dynasties.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Tianqi's concubine Li Shi offended the powerful eunuch Wei Zhongxian and was driven from Changchun Palace to Qianxi Palace to the west of the Imperial Garden, where she stayed for four years. Moreover, there were three other people who lived in Qianxi Palace successively, including Concubine Ding and Concubine Ke. This Qianxi Palace was the "cold palace" at that time.

During the Guangxu period of the Qing Dynasty, before Emperor Guangxu’s concubine Zhen was thrown into a well by Cixi, an eunuch later said that Concubine Zhen was placed under house arrest by Cixi in Beisansuo (now collapsed) to the north of Jingqi Pavilion. It is in the mountain gate to the west of Zhenfei Well today. If what the eunuch said later is true, then Beisan Institute can be regarded as a "cold palace" in the Qing Dynasty.

Reference material: People's Daily Online? Women in the palace live in the "cold palace" after falling out of favor