The Qing Dynasty stipulated from the time of Shunzhi that all women from the Manchu Eight Banners who had reached the age of 13 to 16 must participate in the emperor's draft every three years. When reading the selection, according to the order of the eight flags, generally seven or eight people stand in a row, selected by the emperor and the queen mother. The names of the selected women, write a list in each row, and keep it in the palace for archiving, this kind of list is called "show girl platoon list" in the archive.

The harem of the Qing Dynasty, from the queen to the palace maid, was selected from the banner women. The flag man is unique to the Qing Dynasty. Therefore, the system of selecting harem fandel from the banner women was also unique to the Qing Dynasty.

After the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, the flag people had the difference between the eight banners and the three banners of the Internal Affairs Bureau. The Eight Banners included the Eight Banners of Manchuria, the Eight Banners of Mongolia and the Eight Banners of the Han Army, a total of 24 banners, which were the main pillars of the Qing regime's rule, and the Three Banners of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were the slaves of the Qing imperial family, and the two had different political statuses. Therefore, although the women of the Eight Banners and the Three Banners of Baoyi were called show girls in the early Qing Dynasty, the methods of selection and their status in the palace were also different. The Eight Banners Show Girl, selected once every three years, presided over by the household department, can be prepared for the queen's concubine selection, or given to the marriage close branch (that is, within three generations, the blood relationship is relatively close) clan; In the late Qing Dynasty, the women who should be selected for the three banners of Baoyi were no longer called show girls, and when selecting palace maids, it was clearly said that "the maids of the three banners of Baoyi were introduced". Therefore, those who can become concubines of the Qing court are mainly the Eight Banners Show Girl.

The purpose of selecting show girls is to enrich the emperor's harem, that is, to marry the descendants of the imperial family, or to marry the prince, the prince of the county and their sons, and the importance of self-evident. If the show girls want to enter the high palace wall of the Forbidden City, it is not so simple, and they must go through one investigation after another.

First of all, it is necessary to strictly examine the flag and age, and those who are not in the flag want to participate in the draft, and those who are in the flag want to avoid the draft, and they are also asking for hardship. The Shunzhi Dynasty stipulated that all officials of the Eight Banners of the Manchu, Mongolian, and Han armies, sergeants from another household, and women aged 14 to 16 from the families of idle and strong men must participate in the triennial draft of women, and women over the age of 17 will no longer participate.

It is added again that if a show girl who should be read and marries a prince of the clan without permission before being read and selected, her mother's family will be punished for concealing the show girl. As for the age of the draft girls, according to the Qing court archives, by the end of the Qing Dynasty, during the Guangxu period, the youngest was eleven years old, and the oldest could reach twenty years old.

Every time it is time to prepare for the selection of show girls, the household department will first report to the emperor, and after the order is approved, the eight banners will be immediately written by the yamen, and the grassroots governors at all levels of the eight banners will report the roster of women of appropriate age layer by layer, and the eight banners will be summarized by the yamen, and finally the household department will report to the emperor, and the emperor will decide the date of selection. Those who are really unable to be selected because of illness, disability, or ugliness must also go through the guarantee layer by layer, state the reasons, and the Metropolitan Commander will consult the household department, and the household department will play the emperor, and only after obtaining permission can they be exempted from the obligation to be elected, and they can be allowed to marry on their own.

The show girls selected by each flag should be sent to the capital in advance by mule cart. Due to the different family backgrounds of many show girls, the official eunuchs still have vehicles, and the soldiers' families can only hire cars to ride.

After the show girls arrived in the capital, on the day before entering the palace to be elected, they sat on the mule cart, and the order was arranged by the leaders and leaders of the banner, which was called "row of cars", according to the order of Manchu, Mongolian, and Han people. The front is the relatives of the concubine in the palace, followed by the woman who was selected to leave the brand and this re-election, and finally the new selection of the show girls, arranged in order of age, the fish runs through the tail, the car tree has double lights, and there is a logo of "the daughter of a certain flag and a certain leader". At sunset, the car is distributed, and at night it enters the Di'an Gate, and after waiting for the palace gate to open outside the Shenwu Gate, it gets off the car, and under the guidance of the eunuchs in the palace, it enters the Shunzhen Gate in order. The mule cart taken by the show girls went east and south from the Shenwu Gate Road, out of Donghua Gate, from Chongwenmen Street to the north, through the North Market, and then through Di'anmen to Shenwu Gate, at this time, it was noon the next day. The show girls who had completed the primary selection boarded the mule cart they had ridden when they came outside the Shenwu Gate and returned to their homes.

When the selected show girls stepped off the mule cart outside the Shenwu Gate, the officials of the household department were first kept in order, and then the eunuchs were introduced into the palace. The Imperial Garden, the Tiyuan Palace, Jingyixuan and other places were once places for reading draft girls. Generally, only two flags are read every day, and they are matched according to the number of women participating in the draft of each flag. Usually five or six people in a row, for the emperor or the queen mother to choose, but sometimes there are three or four people in a row, or even one person in a row. If there is a person who is favored, she will leave her name tag, which is called leaving a sign, and if she is not selected, she will leave a sign. Then, the show girl who left the sign was re-selected regularly, and those who did not stay were re-selected, also known as the brand. The show girls who are re-selected after the re-election have two fates: one is to give them to the royal family or the family of the clan, and the other is to stay in the palace and serve the emperor and become a candidate for the concubine. If you become a candidate for the concubine, the procedures will be more complicated, after the first "introduction", repeatedly "re-see", there are "named", which is selected to keep the brand, and there is "name", which is selected by the emperor himself to keep the brand. Finally, it is necessary to go through the "stay in the palace" to investigate, and select a few people among the show girls who stay in the palace, and the rest are all signs.

When the word "show girl" comes into people's eyes, people's intuition is that the show girl should have the appearance of a sinking fish and a goose, however, is the beautiful appearance the main criterion for being elected as a show girl? Here is a photo of a show girl who should be drafted in the late Qing Dynasty, it seems that it is difficult to associate these faces with any word that expresses beauty, not only that, but the nature of the girls to love beauty has also become a non-distinguishing thought. The Qing Dynasty clearly stipulated that when the Eight Banners show girls read it, they must wear flag costumes, and fashion is strictly prohibited. Moreover, according to the traditional concept of China, "lust" is also extremely dishonorable, and "beautiful women and bad countries" have always been the talisman of emperors and their ministers, so this standard is always in the confusion of imminent separation and secrecy.

From Shunzhi to the Ninth Dynasty of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty, there were more than 80 draft girls, according to the statistics of the concubines who were buried in the mausoleum later, a total of 214 people, and their fates were different.