Puyi

Puyi
The Xuantong Emperor (7 February 1906 – 17 October 1967), better known

by his personal name Puyi,[g] courtesy name Yaozhi (曜之), was the last
emperor of China as the eleventh and final monarch of the Qing dynasty. He
was later ruler of the puppet state of Manchukuo under the Empire of Japan
from 1934 to 1945. He became emperor at the age of two in 1908, but was
forced to abdicate at the age of six in 1912 during the Xinhai Revolution. His
era name as Qing emperor, "Xuantong" (Hsuan-t'ung, 宣統), means
"proclamation of unity".
Xuantong Emperor
宣統帝
Huangdi (皇帝)
Portrait of Puyi by an unknown photographer, c. 1930s–1940s

Emperor of the Qing dynasty
First reign 2 December 1908 – 12 February 1912
Predecessor Guangxu Emperor
Successor Monarchy abolished
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puyi 10/22/23, 5 09 PM
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Successor Monarchy abolished
Yuan Shikai as President of the Republic
of China
Regents Zaifeng, Prince Chun (1908–11)

Empress Dowager Longyu (1911–12)
Prime Ministers Yikuang, Prince Qing

Yuan Shikai
Second reign 1 July 1917 – 12 July 1917[a]
Prime minister Zhang Xun

Emperor of Manchukuo
Reign 1 March 1934 – 17 August 1945
Predecessor Himself as Chief Executive of Manchukuo
Successor Position abolished
Prime Minister Zheng Xiaoxu

Zhang Jinghui
Chief Executive of Manchukuo
In office 18 February 1932 – 28 February 1934
Predecessor Position established
Successor Himself as Emperor
Prime Minister Zheng Xiaoxu
Born 7 February 1906

Prince Chun Mansion, Beijing, Qing
dynasty
Died 17 October 1967 (aged 61)

Peking Union Medical College Hospital,
Beijing, People's Republic of China
Burial Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, later
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reburied in the Hualong Imperial
Cemetery, Yi County, Hebei
Consorts Empress Xiaokemin of the Gobulo clan
(m. 1922; died 1946)
Consort Shu
(m. 1922; div. 1931)
Noble Consort Mingxian
(m. 1937; died 1942)
Noble Lady Fu
(m. 1943; div. 1957)
Li Shuxian (m. 1962)
Names
Aisin-Gioro Puyi[b] (愛新覺羅溥儀)

Manchu: Aisin-Gioro Pu I[c]
Era dates
Qing Empire
Xuantong (宣統): 22 January 1909 – 12 February 1912, 1 July 1917 – 12 July
1917
Manchu: Gehungge Yoso[d]

Mongolian: Хэвт ёс[e]
Manchukuo
Datong (大同): 1 March 1932 – 28 February 1934

Kangde (康德): 1 March 1934 – 17 August 1945
House Aisin Gioro
Dynasty Qing (1908–1912, 1917)

Manchukuo (1932–1945)
Father Zaifeng, Prince Chun of the First Rank
Mother Gūwalgiya Youlan
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Mother Gūwalgiya Youlan
Seal[f]
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese 溥儀
Simplified Chinese 溥仪
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin Pǔyí
Wade–Giles P'u-i
IPA [pʰù.ǐ]
Xuantong Emperor
Traditional Chinese 宣統帝
Simplified Chinese 宣统帝
Transcriptions
Standard Mandarin
Hanyu Pinyin Xuāntǒng Dì
Wade–Giles Hsuan1-t'ung3 Ti4
IPA [ɕwántʰʊ̀ŋ tî]
Yue: Cantonese
Jyutping Syun1tung2 Dai3
This article contains Manchu text. Without proper rendering support, you may
see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Manchu alphabet.
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Puyi was briefly restored to the throne as Qing emperor by the loyalist General
Zhang Xun from 1 July to 12 July 1917. He was first wed to Empress Wanrong
in 1922 in an arranged marriage. In 1924, he was expelled from the Forbidden
City and found refuge in Tianjin, where he began to court both the warlords
fighting for hegemony over China and the Japanese who had long desired
control of China. In 1932, after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the puppet
state of Manchukuo was established by Japan, and he was chosen to become
the chief executive of the new state using the era name of "Datong" (Ta-tung,
大同).
In 1934, he was declared emperor of Manchukuo with the era name "Kangde"
(K'ang-te, 康德) and reigned over his new empire until the end of the Second
Sino-Japanese War in 1945. This third stint as emperor saw him as a puppet
of Japan; he signed most edicts the Japanese gave him. During this period, he
largely resided in the Salt Tax Palace, where he regularly ordered his servants
beaten. His first wife's opium addiction consumed her during these years, and
they were generally distant. He took on numerous concubines, as well as male
lovers. With the fall of Japan (and thus Manchukuo) in 1945, Puyi fled the
capital and was eventually captured by the Soviets; he was extradited to the
People's Republic of China in 1950. After his capture, he never saw his first
wife again; she died of starvation in a Chinese prison in 1946.
Puyi was a defendant at the Tokyo Trials and was later imprisoned and
reeducated as a war criminal for 10 years. After his release in 1959, he wrote
his memoirs (with the help of a ghost writer) and became a titular member of
the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the National
People's Congress of the People's Republic of China. His time in prison greatly
changed him, and he expressed deep regret for his actions while he was an
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emperor. He died in 1967 and was ultimately buried near the Western Qing
tombs in a commercial cemetery.
Emperor of China (1908–1912)
Painting portrait of Puyi, 1908
Chosen by Empress Dowager Cixi,[1] Puyi became emperor at the age of

2 years and 10 months in December 1908 after the Guangxu Emperor, Puyi's
half-uncle, died childless on 14 November. Titled the Xuantong Emperor
(Wade-Giles: Hsuan-t'ung Emperor), Puyi's introduction to the life of an
emperor began when palace officials arrived at his family residence to take
him. On the evening of 13 November, without any advance notice, a procession
of eunuchs and guardsmen led by the palace chamberlain left the Forbidden
City for the Northern Mansion to inform Prince Chun that they were taking
away his two-year-old son Puyi to be the new emperor.[2] The toddler Puyi
screamed and resisted as the officials ordered the eunuch attendants to pick
him up.[3] Puyi's parents said nothing when they learned that they were losing
their son.[4] As Puyi wept, screaming that he did not want to leave his parents,
he was forced into a palanquin that took him back to the Forbidden City.[4]
Puyi's wet nurse Wang Lianshou was the only person from the Northern
Mansion allowed to go with him.[4] Upon arriving at the Forbidden City, Puyi
was taken to see Cixi.[5] Puyi later wrote:
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I still have a dim recollection of this meeting, the shock of
which left a deep impression on my memory. I remember
suddenly finding myself surrounded by strangers, while
before me was hung a drab curtain through which I could see
an emaciated and terrifying hideous face. This was Cixi. It is
said that I burst out into loud howls at the sight and started to
tremble uncontrollably. Cixi told someone to give me some
sweets, but I threw them on the floor and yelled "I want
nanny, I want nanny", to her great displeasure. "What a
naughty child", she said. "Take him away to play."[5]
A 2 years old Puyi, 1908
Cixi died on 15 November, less than two days after the meeting. Puyi's father,
Prince Chun, became Prince Regent (攝政王). During Puyi's coronation in the
Hall of Supreme Harmony on 2 December 1908, the young emperor was
carried onto the Dragon Throne by his father.[5] Puyi was frightened by the
scene before him and the deafening sounds of ceremonial drums and music,
and started crying. His father could do nothing except quietly comfort him:
"Don't cry, it'll be over soon."[6] Puyi wrote in his autobiography:
Two days after I entered the palace, Cixi died and on 2

December the “Great Enthronement Ceremony” took place, a
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ceremony that I ruined with my tears.[7]
Puyi did not see his biological mother, Princess Consort Chun, for the next
seven years. He developed a special bond with Wang and credited her as the
only person who could control him. She was sent away when he was eight
years old. After Puyi married, he would occasionally bring her to the Forbidden
City, and later Manchukuo, to visit him. After his special government pardon in
1959, she visited her adopted son and only then did he learn of her personal
sacrifices to be his nurse.[8]
Growing up with scarcely any memory of a time when he was not indulged and
revered, Puyi quickly became spoiled. The adults in his life, except for Wang,
were all strangers, remote, distant, and unable to discipline him.[9] Wherever he
went, grown men would kneel down in a ritual kowtow, averting their eyes until
he passed. Soon he discovered the absolute power he wielded over the
eunuchs, and he frequently had them beaten for small transgressions.[3] As an
emperor, Puyi's every whim was catered to while no one ever said no to him,
making him into a sadistic boy who loved to have his eunuchs flogged.[10] The
Anglo-French journalist Edward Behr wrote about Puyi's power as emperor of
China, which allowed him to fire his air-gun at anyone he liked:
The Emperor was Divine. He could not be remonstrated with,

or punished. He could only be deferentially advised against
ill-treating innocent eunuchs, and if he chose to fire air-gun
pellets at them, that was his prerogative.
— Edward Behr[10]
Puyi later said, "Flogging eunuchs was part of my daily routine. My cruelty and
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love of wielding power were already too firmly set for persuasion to have any
effect on me."[9]
Emperor Puyi 1908
Wang was the only person capable of controlling Puyi; once, Puyi decided to
"reward" a eunuch for a well-done puppet show by having a cake baked for
him with iron filings in it, saying, "I want to see what he looks like when he eats
it".[9] With much difficulty, Wang talked Puyi out of this plan.[9]
Every day, Puyi had to visit five former imperial concubines, called his
"mothers", to report on his progress. He hated his "mothers", not least because
they prevented him from seeing his real mother until he was 13.[11] Their leader
was the autocratic Empress Dowager Longyu, who successfully conspired to
have Puyi's beloved wet nurse Wang expelled from the Forbidden City when
he was 8 on the grounds that Puyi was too old to be breast-fed.[12] Puyi
especially hated Longyu for that.[12] Puyi later wrote, "Although I had many
mothers, I never knew any motherly love."[12] Empress dowager Longyu ruled
with paramount authority over the Qing imperial court, and though she was not
the de jure "regent", she was the de facto ruler of the Qing empire.
Silver coin: 1 yuan/dollar Xuantong 3rd

year – 1911 Chopmark
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Puyi had a standard Confucian education, being taught the various Chinese
classics and nothing else.[13] He later wrote: "I learnt nothing of mathematics,
let alone science, and for a long time I had no idea where Peking was
situated".[13] When Puyi was 13, he met his parents and siblings, all of whom
had to kowtow before him as he sat upon the Dragon Throne.[14] By this time,
he had forgotten what his mother looked like.[14] Such was the awe in which
the emperor was held that his younger brother Pujie never heard his parents
refer to Puyi as "your elder brother" but only as the emperor.[14] Pujie told Behr
his image of Puyi prior to meeting him was that of "a venerable old man with a
beard. I couldn't believe it when I saw this boy in yellow robes sitting solemnly
on the throne".[14] Although Puyi could see his family, this happened rarely, and
always under the stifling rules of imperial etiquette. The consequence was that
the relationship of the emperor with his parents was distant and he found
himself more attached to his nurse, Miss Wang (who had accompanied him to
the Forbidden City). Later, Puyi began to receive visits from his brothers and
cousins, who provided a certain air of normality to his unique childhood.[7]
Eunuchs and the Household Department
Separated from his family, Puyi lived his childhood in a regime of virtual
seclusion in the Forbidden City, surrounded by guards, eunuchs and other
servants who treated him like a divinity. The emperor's upbringing was a
mixture of pampering and mistreatment, as he was required to follow all the
rules of rigid Chinese imperial protocol and was unable to behave like a normal
child.[15]
The eunuchs were virtual slaves who did all the work in the Forbidden City,
such as cooking, gardening, cleaning, entertaining guests, and the
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bureaucratic work needed to govern a vast empire. They also served as the
emperor's advisers.[16] The Forbidden City was full of treasures that the
eunuchs constantly stole and sold on the black market.[17] The business of
government and of providing for the emperor created further opportunities for
corruption, in which virtually all the eunuchs engaged.[17]
Puyi never had any privacy and had all his needs attended to at all times,
having eunuchs open doors for him, dress him, wash him, and even blow air
into his soup to cool it.[18] At his meals, Puyi was always presented with a huge
buffet containing every conceivable dish, the vast majority of which he did not
eat, and every day he wore new clothing, as Chinese emperors never reused
their clothing.[19]
After his wedding, Puyi began to take control of the palace. He described "an
orgy of looting" taking place that involved "everyone from the highest to the
lowest". According to Puyi, by the end of his wedding ceremony, the pearls and
jade in the empress's crown had been stolen.[20] Locks were broken, areas
ransacked. Puyi's next plan of action was to reform the Household
Department. In this period, he brought in more outsiders to replace the
traditional aristocratic officers to improve accountability. He appointed Zheng
Xiaoxu as minister of Household Department, and Zheng Xiaoxu hired Tong
Jixu, a former Air Force officer from the Beiyang Army, as his chief of staff to
help with the reforms. But on 27 June 1923, a fire destroyed the area around
the Palace of Established Happiness, just at the moment when the emperor
had ordered to carry out the inventory of one of the imperial warehouses. Puyi
suspected it was arson to cover theft. The emperor overheard conversations
among the eunuchs that made him fear for his life. In response, a month after
the fire, he evicted the eunuchs from the palace with the support of the
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Republican military.[21] The reform efforts did not last long before Puyi was
forced out of the Forbidden City by Feng Yuxiang.[22]
Abdication
On 10 October 1911, the army garrison in Wuhan mutinied, sparking a

widespread revolt in the Yangtze river valley and beyond, demanding the
overthrow of the Qing dynasty that had ruled China since 1644.[23] The
strongman of late imperial China, General Yuan Shikai, was dispatched by the
court to crush the revolution, but was unable to, as by 1911 public opinion had
turned decisively against the Qing, and many Chinese had no wish to fight for
a dynasty that was seen as having lost the Mandate of Heaven.[23] Puyi's
father, Prince Chun, served as a regent until 6 December, when Empress
Dowager Longyu took over following the Xinhai Revolution.[24]
Empress Dowager Longyu endorsed the "Imperial Edict of the Abdication of

the Qing Emperor" (清帝退位詔書) on 12 February 1912 under a deal brokered
by Yuan, now Prime Minister, with the imperial court in Peking and the
Republicans in southern China.[25] Puyi recalled in his autobiography the
meeting between Longyu and Yuan:
The Dowager Empress was sitting on a kang [platform] in a

side room of the Mind Nature Palace, wiping her eyes with a
handkerchief as a fat old man [Yuan] knelt before her on a
red cushion, tears streaming down his face. I was sitting to
the right of the widow and wondering why both adults were
crying. There was no one in the room other than the three of
us and everything was very quiet; the fat man snorted as he
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spoke and I couldn't understand what he was saying... This
was the time when Yuan directly raised the question of
abdication.[26]
Life in the Forbidden City (1912–1924)

Under the "Articles of Favourable Treatment of the Great Qing Emperor after
His Abdication" (清帝退位優待條件), signed with the new Republic of China,
Puyi was to retain his imperial title and be treated by the government of the
Republic with the protocol attached to a foreign monarch. Puyi and the imperial
court were allowed to remain in the northern half of the Forbidden City (the
Private Apartments) as well as in the Summer Palace. A hefty annual subsidy
of four million silver taels was granted by the Republic to the imperial
household, although it was never fully paid and was abolished after just a few
years. Puyi was not informed in February 1912 that his reign had ended and
China was now a republic, and continued to believe that he was still emperor
for some time.[27] In 1913, when the Empress Dowager Longyu died, President
Yuan arrived at the Forbidden City to pay his respects, which Puyi's tutors told
him meant that major changes were afoot.[28]
Puyi soon learned that the real reasons for the Articles of Favourable
Settlement was that President Yuan was planning on restoring the monarchy
with himself as the emperor of a new dynasty, and wanted to have Puyi as a
sort of custodian of the Forbidden City until he could move in.[29] Puyi first
learned of Yuan's plans to become emperor when he brought in army bands to
serenade him whenever he had a meal, and he started on a decidedly imperial
take on the presidency.[28] Puyi spent hours staring at the Presidential Palace
across from the Forbidden City and cursed Yuan whenever he saw him come
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and go in his automobile.[28] Puyi loathed Yuan as a "traitor" and decided to
sabotage his plans to become emperor by hiding the Imperial Seals, only to be
told by his tutors that he would just make new ones.[29] In 1915, Yuan
proclaimed himself as emperor, and he was planning to marry his daughter to
Puyi, but had to abdicate in the face of popular opposition.[30]
Brief restoration (1917)
In 1917, the warlord Zhang Xun restored Puyi to the throne from 1 July to 12
July.[31] Zhang Xun ordered his army to keep their queues to display loyalty to
the emperor. However, then-Premier of the Republic of China Duan Qirui
ordered a Caudron Type D plane, piloted by Pan Shizhong (潘世忠) with
bombardier Du Yuyuan (杜裕源) from Nanyuan airfield, to drop three bombs
over the Forbidden City as a show of force against Zhang Xun, causing the
death of a eunuch, but otherwise inflicting minor damage.[32][33] This is the
first aerial bombardment recorded by a Chinese Air Force, and the restoration
failed due to extensive opposition across China.[34]
Meeting Sir Reginald Johnston
… In the time when China was called a republic and humanity

had advanced to the 20th century, I was still living as an
emperor, breathing the dust of the 19th century.[35]
Sir Reginald Johnston, a respected British scholar and diplomat from

Edinburgh, Scotland, arrived in the Forbidden City as Puyi's tutor on 3 March
1919.[36] President Xu Shichang believed the monarchy would eventually be
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restored, and to prepare Puyi for the challenges of the modern world had hired
Johnston to teach Puyi "subjects such as political science, constitutional
history and English".[37] Johnston was allowed only five texts in English to give
Puyi to read: Alice in Wonderland and translations into English of the "Four
Great Books" of Confucianism; the Analects, the Mencius, the Great Learning
and the Doctrine of the Mean.[37] But he disregarded the rules, and taught
Puyi about world history with a special focus on British history.[38] Besides
history, Johnston taught Puyi philosophy and about what he saw as the
superiority of monarchies to republics.[38] Puyi remembered that his tutor's
piercing blue eyes "made me feel uneasy ... I found him very intimidating and
studied English with him like a good boy, not daring to talk about other things
when I got bored ... as I did with my other Chinese tutors".[39]
Titular emperor Puyi in the

Forbidden City
Puyi's tutor, Sir Reginald Johnston
As the only person capable of controlling Puyi, Johnston had much more
influence than his title of English tutor would suggest, as the eunuchs began to
rely on him to steer Puyi away from his more capricious moods.[36] Under the
Scotsman's influence, Puyi started to insist that his eunuchs address him as
"Henry" and later his wife Wanrong as "Elizabeth" as Puyi began to speak
"Chinglish", a mixture of Mandarin and English that became his preferred
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mode of speech.[40] Puyi recalled of Johnston: "I thought everything about him
was first-rate. He made me feel that Westerners were the most intelligent and
civilised people in the world and that he was the most learned of Westerners"
and that "Johnston had become the major part of my soul".[41] In May 1919,
Puyi noticed the protests in Peking generated by the May 4th movement as
thousands of Chinese university students protested against the decision by
the great powers at the Paris peace conference to award the former German
concessions in Shandong province together with the former German colony of
Qingdao to Japan.[42] For Puyi, the May 4th movement, which he asked
Johnston about, was a revelation as it marked the first time in his life that he
noticed that people outside the Forbidden City had concerns that were not
about him.[42] After his first interview with the emperor, the British academic
recorded his impressions in a report addressed to the British authorities; in this
document Johnston mentions:
He appears to be physically robust and well developed for his

age. He is a very "human" boy, with liveliness, intelligence
and an enthusiastic sense of humour. Furthermore, he has
excellent manners and is totally free from arrogance […]
Although the emperor does not seem to have been spoiled yet,
from the nonsense and futility that surrounds him, I am
afraid there is no hope that he will emerge unscathed from the
moral dangers through of the next few years of his life (very
critical years necessarily for a boy in his early adolescence),
unless he can be removed from the influence of the hordes of
eunuchs and other useless officials who are now almost his
only companions. I am inclined to think that the best course of
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action to take in the interest of the boy himself would be to
remove him from the harmful atmosphere of the "Forbidden
City" and send him to the Summer Palace. There it would be
possible for him to live a much less artificial and happier life
than he can under the present conditions...[43]
Puyi in the Zhang Garden with

Wanrong and Johnston
Puyi could not speak Manchu; he only knew a single word in the language, yili
("arise"). Despite studying Manchu for years, he admitted that it was his
"worst" subject among everything he studied.[44][45][46][47] According to the
journalist S. M. Ali, Puyi spoke Mandarin when interviewed, but Ali believed he
could understand English.[48] Johnston also introduced Puyi to the new
technology of cinema, and Puyi was so delighted with the movies, especially
Harold Lloyd films, that he had a film projector installed in the Forbidden City
despite the opposition of the eunuchs.[49] Johnston was also the first to argue
that Puyi needed glasses since he had developed myopia, as he was extremely
near-sighted, and after much argument with Prince Chun, who thought it was
undignified for an emperor, finally prevailed.[50] Johnston, who spoke fluent
Mandarin, closely followed the intellectual scene in China, and introduced Puyi
to the "new-style" Chinese books and magazines, which so inspired Puyi that
he wrote several poems that were published anonymously in "New China"
publications.[51] In 1922, Johnston had his friend, the writer Hu Shih, visit the
Forbidden City to teach Puyi about recent developments in Chinese
literature.[52] Under Johnston's influence, Puyi embraced the bicycle as a way
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to exercise, cut his queue and grew a full head of hair, and wanted to go to
study at Oxford, Johnston's alma mater.[53] Johnston also introduced Puyi to
the telephone, which Puyi soon became addicted to, phoning people in Peking
at random just to hear their voices on the other end.[54] Johnston also
pressured Puyi to cut down on the waste and extravagance in the Forbidden
City[55] and encouraged him to be more self-sufficient.[56]
Marriage
Gobulo Wanrong, Puyi's wife and

Empress of China
Secondary consort Wenxiu
In March 1922, the Dowager Consorts decided that Puyi should be married,
and gave him a selection of photographs of aristocratic teenage girls to
choose from.[57] Puyi first chose Erdet Wenxiu as his wife, but was told that
she was acceptable only as a concubine, so he would have to choose
again.[58] Puyi later claimed that the faces were too small to distinguish
between.[59] Puyi then chose Gobulo Wanrong, the daughter of one of
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Manchuria's richest aristocrats, who had been educated in English by
American missionaries in Tianjin, who was considered to be an acceptable
empress by the Dowager Consorts.[60] On 15 March 1922, the betrothal of
Puyi and Wanrong was announced in the newspapers. On 17 March, Wanrong
took the train to Peking, and on 6 April, Puyi went to the Qing family shrine to
inform his ancestors that he would be married to her later that year.[60] Puyi did
not meet Wanrong until their wedding.[60]
In an interview in 1986, Prince Pujie told Behr: "Puyi constantly talked about
going to England and becoming an Oxford student, like Johnston."[61] On
4 June 1922, Puyi attempted to escape from the Forbidden City and planned
to issue an open letter to "the people of China" renouncing the title of Emperor
before leaving for Oxford.[62] The escape attempt failed when Johnston vetoed
it and refused to call a taxi, and Puyi was too frightened to live on the streets of
Peking on his own.[63] Pujie said of Puyi's escape attempt: "Puyi's decision
had nothing to do with the impending marriage. He felt cooped up, and wanted
out."[62] Johnston later recounted his time as Puyi's tutor between 1919 and
1924 in his 1934 book Twilight in the Forbidden City, one of the main sources
of information about Puyi's life in this period. Though Behr cautioned that
Johnston painted an idealised picture of Puyi, avoiding all mention of Puyi's
sexuality, merely average academic ability, erratic mood swings, and eunuch-
flogging. Pujie told Behr of Puyi's moods: "When he was in a good mood,
everything was fine, and he was a charming companion. If something upset
him, his dark side would emerge.''[64] On 21 October 1922, Puyi's wedding to
Princess Wanrong began with the "betrothal presents" of 18 sheep, 2 horses,
40 pieces of satin, and 80 rolls of cloth, marched from the Forbidden City to
Wanrong's house, accompanied by court musicians and cavalry.[65] Following
Manchu traditions where weddings were conducted under moonlight for good
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luck, an enormous procession of palace guardsmen, eunuchs, and musicians
carried the Princess Wanrong in a red sedan chair called the Phoenix Chair[66]
within the Forbidden City, where Puyi sat upon the Dragon Throne. Later
Wanrong kowtowed to him six times in her living quarters to symbolize her
submission to her husband as the decree of their marriage was read out.[66]
Wanrong wore a mask in accordance with Chinese tradition and Puyi, who
knew nothing of women, remembered: "I hardly thought about marriage and
family. It was only when the Empress came into my field of vision with a
crimson satin cloth embroidered with a dragon and a phoenix over her head
that I felt at all curious about what she looked like."[67] After the wedding was
complete, Puyi, Wanrong, and his secondary consort Wenxiu (whom he
married the same night) went to the Palace of Earthly Tranquility, where
everything was red – the colour of love and sex in China – and where emperors
had traditionally consummated their marriages.[67] Puyi, who was sexually
inexperienced and timid, fled from the bridal chamber, leaving his wives to
sleep in the Dragon Bed by themselves.[68] Of Puyi's failure to consummate
his marriage on his wedding night, Behr wrote:
It was perhaps too much to expect an adolescent,

permanently surrounded by eunuchs, to show the sexual
maturity of a normal seventeen-year-old. Neither the
Dowager consorts nor Johnston himself had given him any
advice on sexual matters – this sort of thing simply was not
done, where emperors were concerned: it would have been an
appalling breach of protocol. But the fact remains that a
totally inexperienced, over-sheltered adolescent, if normal,
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could hardly have failed to be aroused by Wan Jung's
[Wanrong's] unusual, sensual beauty. The inference is, of
course, that Pu Yi was either impotent, extraordinarily
immature sexually, or already aware of his homosexual
tendencies.[68]
Wanrong's younger brother Rong Qi remembered how Puyi and Wanrong, both
teenagers, loved to race their bicycles through the Forbidden City, forcing
eunuchs to get out of the way, and told Behr in an interview: "There was a lot of
laughter, she and Puyi seemed to get on well, they were like kids together."[69]
In 1986, Behr interviewed one of Puyi's two surviving eunuchs, an 85-year-old
who was reluctant to answer the questions asked of him, but finally said of
Puyi's relationship with Wanrong: "The Emperor would come over to the
nuptial apartments once every three months and spend the night there ... He
left early in the morning on the following day and for the rest of that day he
would invariably be in a very filthy temper indeed."[70] A eunuch who served in
the Forbidden City as Wanrong's personal servant later wrote in his memoir
that there was a rumour among the eunuchs that Puyi was gay, noting a
strange situation where he was asked by Puyi to stand inside Wanrong's room
while Puyi groped her.[71] Another eunuch claimed that Puyi preferred the
''land-way'' of the eunuchs to the ''water-way'' of the Empress, implying he
was gay.[72]
Puyi rarely left the Forbidden City, knew nothing of the lives of ordinary
Chinese people, and was somewhat misled by Johnston, who told him that the
vast majority of the Chinese wanted a Qing restoration.[53] Johnston, a
Sinophile scholar and a romantic conservative with an instinctive preference
for monarchies, believed that China needed a benevolent autocrat to guide the
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:
country forward.[53] He was enough of a traditionalist to respect that all major
events in the Forbidden City were determined by the court astrologers.[73]
Johnston disparaged the superficially Westernised Chinese republican elite
who dressed in top hats, frock coats, and business suits as inauthentically
Chinese, and praised to Puyi the Confucian scholars with their traditional robes
as the ones who were authentically Chinese.[53]
As part of an effort to crack down on corruption by the eunuchs, inspired by

Johnston, Puyi ordered an inventory of the Forbidden City's treasures. The Hall
of Established Happiness was burned on the night of 26 June 1923, as the
eunuchs tried to cover up the extent of their theft.[74] Johnston reported that
the next day, he "found the Emperor and Empress standing on a heap of
charred wood, sadly contemplating the spectacle".[75] The treasures reported
lost in the fire included 2,685 golden statues of Buddha, 1,675 golden altar
ornaments, 435 porcelain antiques, and 31 boxes of sable furs, though it is
likely that most if not all of these had been sold on the black market before the
fire.[76]
Puyi finally decided to expel all of the eunuchs from the Forbidden City to end
the problem of theft, only agreeing to keep 50 after the Dowager Consorts
complained that they could not function without them.[77] Puyi turned the
grounds where the Hall of Supreme Harmony had once stood into a tennis
court, as he and Wanrong loved to play.[78] Wanrong's brother Rong Qi
recalled: "But after the eunuchs went, many of the palaces inside the
Forbidden City were closed down, and the place took on a desolate,
abandoned air."[78] After the Great Kantō earthquake on 1 September 1923
destroyed the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, Puyi donated jade antiques worth
some £33,000 to pay for disaster relief, which led a delegation of Japanese
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:
diplomats to visit the Forbidden City to express their thanks.[79] In their report
about the visit, the diplomats noted that Puyi was highly vain and malleable,
and could be used by Japan, which marked the beginning of Japanese interest
in Puyi.[80]
Expulsion from the Forbidden City (1924)
Video footage of Wanrong and

Puyi, 30 November 1924 (source:
NHK)
A photo taken of Puyi's bedroom

in the Forbidden City shortly after
being expelled
On 23 October 1924, a coup led by the warlord Feng Yuxiang took control of
Peking. Feng, the latest of the warlords to take Peking, was seeking legitimacy
and decided that abolishing the unpopular Articles of Favourable Settlement
was an easy way to win the crowd's approval.[81] Feng unilaterally revised the
"Articles of Favourable Treatment" on 5 November 1924, abolishing Puyi's
imperial title and privileges and reducing him to a private citizen of the
Republic of China. Puyi was expelled from the Forbidden City the same day.[82]
He was given three hours to leave.[81] He spent a few days at the house of his
father Prince Chun, and then temporarily resided in the Japanese embassy in
Peking.[83] Puyi left his father's house together with Johnston and his chief
servant Big Li without informing Prince Chun's servants, slipped his followers,
and went to the Japanese legation.[84] Puyi had originally wanted to go to the
British Legation, but the Japanophile Johnston had insisted that he would be
Page 23 of 86
:
safer with the Japanese.[85] For Johnston, the system where the Japanese
people worshipped their emperor as a living god was much closer to his ideal
than the British constitutional monarchy, and he constantly steered Puyi in a
pro-Japanese direction.[85] However, Johnston tried to get the British
diplomatic legation in Peking to host Puyi, and although the British authorities
were not very interested in welcoming the former emperor, the British
representative eventually gave Johnston his consent. However, Johnston later
discovered that Puyi – in view of the situation and that Johnston was not
returning from his efforts – had taken refuge in the Japanese legation after
being advised by Zheng Xiaoxu.[86] Yoshizawa, a Japanese diplomat, gave the
regards of the Japanese government to Puyi, saying, ''Our government has
formally acknowledged Your Majesty's taking refuge in our legation and will
provide protection for you.''[87] Puyi's adviser Lu Zongyu, who was secretly
working for the Japanese, suggested that Puyi move to Tianjin, which he
argued was safer than Peking, though the real reason was that the Japanese
felt that Puyi would be easier to control in Tianjin without the embarrassment
of having him live in the Japanese Legation, which was straining relations with
China.[88] On 23 February 1925, Puyi left Peking for Tianjin wearing a simple
Chinese gown and skullcap as he was afraid of being robbed on the train.[89]
Puyi described his train journey to Tianjin, saying, ''At every stop between
Peking and Tianjin several Japanese policeman and special agents in black
suits would get on the train so that, by the time we reached Tianjin, my special
car was almost half occupied by them.''[90]
Residence in Tianjin (1925–1931)

In February 1925, Puyi moved to the Japanese Concession of Tianjin, first into
the Chang Garden (張園),[91] and in 1929[92] into the former residence of Lu
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:
Zongyu known as the Garden of Serenity (traditional Chinese: 靜園; simplified
Chinese: 静园; pinyin: jìng yuán).[93] A British journalist, Henry Woodhead,
called Puyi's court a "doggy paradise" as both Puyi and Wanrong were dog
lovers who owned several very spoiled dogs while Puyi's courtiers spent an
inordinate amount of time feuding with one another.[94] Woodhead stated that
the only people who seemed to get along at Puyi's court were Wanrong and
Wenxiu, who were "like sisters".[95] Tianjin was, after Shanghai, the most
cosmopolitan Chinese city, with large British, French, German, Russian and
Japanese communities. As an emperor, Puyi was allowed to join several social
clubs that normally only admitted whites.[96] During this period, Puyi and his
advisers Chen Baochen, Zheng Xiaoxu, and Luo Zhenyu discussed plans to
restore Puyi as Emperor. Zheng and Luo favoured enlisting assistance from
external parties, while Chen opposed the idea. In June 1925, the warlord
Zhang Zuolin visited Tianjin to meet Puyi.[97] "Old Marshal" Zhang, an illiterate
former bandit, ruled Manchuria, a region equal in size to Germany and France
combined, which had a population of 30 million and was the most
industrialised region in China. Zhang kowtowed to Puyi at their meeting and
promised to restore the House of Qing if Puyi made a large financial donation
to his army.[97] Zhang warned Puyi in a "roundabout way" not to trust his
Japanese friends.[98] Zhang fought in the pay of the Japanese, but by this time
his relations with the Kwantung Army were becoming strained. In June 1927,
Zhang captured Peking and Behr observed that if Puyi had had more courage
and returned to Peking, he might have been restored to the Dragon Throne.[98]
Puyi was noted to have said in a 1927 article in The Illustrated London News,
that ''I never wish to be Emperor again''.[99]
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:
Puyi in the Garden of Serenity (靜
園), as it looked in the late 1920s
and early 1930s
Puyi's court was prone to factionalism and his advisers were urging him to
back different warlords, which gave him a reputation for duplicity as he
negotiated with various warlords, which strained his relations with Marshal
Zhang.[100] At various times, Puyi met General Zhang Zongchang, the
"Dogmeat General", and the Russian émigré General Grigory Semyonov at his
Tianjin house; both of them promised to restore him to the Dragon Throne if he
gave them enough money, and both of them kept all the money he gave them
for themselves.[101] Puyi remembered Zhang as "a universally detested
monster" with a face bloated and "tinged with the livid hue induced by opium
smoking".[102] Semyonov in particular proved himself to be a talented con man,
claiming as an ataman to have several Cossack Hosts under his command, to
have 300 million roubles in the bank, and to be supported by American, British,
and Japanese banks in his plans to restore both the House of Qing in China
and the House of Romanov in Russia.[101] Puyi gave Semyonov a loan of 5,000
British pounds, which Semyonov never repaid.[101] Another visitor to the
Garden of Serenity was General Kenji Doihara, a Japanese Army officer who
was fluent in Mandarin and a man of great charm who manipulated Puyi via
flattery, telling him that a great man such as himself should go conquer
Manchuria and then, just as his Qing ancestors did in the 17th century, use
Manchuria as a base for conquering China.[103]
Page 26 of 86
:
Puyi, pictured with
Wanrong
In 1928, during the Great Northern Expedition to reunify China, troops sacked
the Qing tombs outside of Peking after the Kuomintang and its allies took
Peking from Zhang's army who retreated back to Manchuria.[104] The news
that the Qing tombs had been plundered and the corpse of the Dowager
Empress Cixi had been desecrated greatly offended Puyi, who never forgave
the Kuomintang and held Chiang Kai-shek personally responsible; the sacking
also showed his powerlessness.[104] During his time in Tianjin, Puyi was
besieged with visitors asking him for money, including various members of the
vast Qing family, old Manchu bannermen, journalists prepared to write articles
calling for a Qing restoration for the right price, and eunuchs who had once
lived in the Forbidden City and were now living in poverty.[105] Puyi was often
bored with his life, and engaged in maniacal shopping to compensate, recalling
that he was addicted to "buying pianos, watches, clocks, radios, Western
clothes, leather shoes, and spectacles".[106]
Puyi's first wife, Wanrong, continued to smoke opium recreationally during this
period.[107] Their marriage began to fall apart as they spent more and more
time apart, meeting only at mealtimes.[107] Puyi wrote in his memoir:
Even if I had had only one wife she would not have found life
with me interesting since my preoccupation was my
restoration. Frankly, I did not know anything about love. In
other marriages husband and wife were equal, but to me wife
Page 27 of 86
:
and consort were both the slaves and tools of their
master.''[108]
Wanrong complained that her life as an "empress" was extremely dull as the
rules for an empress forbade her from going out dancing as she wanted,
instead forcing her to spend her days in traditional rituals that she found to be
meaningless, all the more so as China was a republic and her title of empress
was symbolic only.[107] The westernised Wanrong loved to go out dancing, play
tennis, wear western clothes and make-up, listen to jazz music, and to socialize
with her friends, which the more conservative courtiers all objected to.[107] She
resented having to play the traditional role of a Chinese empress, but was
unwilling to break with Puyi.[107] Puyi's butler was secretly a Japanese spy, and
in a report to his masters, he described Puyi and Wanrong one day spending
hours screaming at one another in the gardens with Wanrong repeatedly
calling Puyi a "eunuch"; whether she meant that as a reference to sexual
inadequacy is unclear.[109] Puyi's sister, Yunhe, noted in her diary in September
1930, that Puyi had told her that "yesterday the Empress flew into rage saying
that she had been bullied by me and she poured out terrible and absurd
words".[110] In 1931, Puyi's concubine Wenxiu declared that she had had
enough of him and his court and simply walked out, filing for divorce.[111]
Captive in Manchuria (1931–1932)

In September 1931, Puyi sent a letter to Jirō Minami, the Japanese Minister of
War, expressing his desire to be restored to the throne.[112] On the night of
18 September 1931, the Mukden Incident began when the Japanese
Kwantung Army blew up a section of railroad belonging to the Japanese-
owned South Manchurian Railroad company and blamed the warlord Marshal
Page 28 of 86
:
Zhang Xueliang.[113] On this pretext the Kwantung Army began a general
offensive with the aim of conquering all of Manchuria.[114] Puyi was visited by
Kenji Doihara, head of the espionage office of the Japanese Kwantung Army,
who proposed establishing Puyi as head of a Manchurian state. The Japanese
further bribed a cafe worker to tell Puyi that a contract was out on his life in an
attempt to frighten Puyi into moving.[115]
The Empress Wanrong was firmly against Puyi's plans to go to Manchuria,

which she called treason, and for a moment Puyi hesitated, leading Doihara to
send for Puyi's cousin, the very pro-Japanese Yoshiko Kawashima (also known
as "Eastern Jewel", Dongzhen), to visit him to change his mind.[116] Yoshiko, a
strong-willed, flamboyant, openly bisexual woman noted for her habit of
wearing male clothing and uniforms, had much influence on Puyi.[116] In the
Tientsin Incident during November 1931, Puyi and Zheng Xiaoxu traveled to
Manchuria to complete plans for the puppet state of Manchukuo. Puyi left his
house in Tianjin by hiding in the trunk of a car.[117] The Chinese government
ordered his arrest for treason, but was unable to breach the Japanese
protection.[83] Puyi boarded a Japanese ship that took him across Bohai Sea,
and when he landed in Port Arthur (modern Lüshun), he was greeted by the
man who was to become his minder, General Masahiko Amakasu, who took
them to a resort owned by the South Manchurian Railroad company.[118]
Amakasu was a fearsome man who told Puyi how in the Amakasu Incident of
1923 he had the feminist Noe Itō, her lover the anarchist Sakae Ōsugi, and a
six-year-old boy strangled as they were "enemies of the Emperor", and he
likewise would kill Puyi if he should prove to be an "enemy of the Emperor".[118]
Chen Baochen returned to Peking, where he died in 1935.[119]
Once he arrived in Manchuria, Puyi discovered that he was a prisoner and was
Page 29 of 86
:
not allowed outside the Yamato Hotel, ostensibly to protect him from
assassination.[120] Wanrong had stayed in Tianjin, and remained opposed to
Puyi's decision to work with the Japanese, requiring her friend Eastern Jewel
to visit numerous times to convince her to go to Manchuria.[121] Behr
commented that if Wanrong had been a stronger woman, she might have
remained in Tianjin and filed for divorce, but ultimately she accepted Eastern
Jewel's argument that it was her duty as a wife to follow her husband, and six
weeks after the Tientsin incident, she too crossed the East China Sea to Port
Arthur with Eastern Jewel to keep her company.[122]
In early 1932, General Seishirō Itagaki informed Puyi that the new state was to
be a republic with him as Chief Executive; the capital was to be Changchun;
his form of address was to be "Your Excellency", not "Your Imperial Majesty";
and there were to be no references to Puyi ruling with the "Mandate of
Heaven", all of which displeased Puyi.[123] The suggestion that Manchukuo
was to be based on popular sovereignty with the 34 million people of
Manchuria "asking" that Puyi rule over them was completely contrary to Puyi's
ideas about his right to rule by the Mandate of Heaven.[123]
Itagaki suggested to Puyi that in a few years Manchukuo might become a

monarchy and that Manchuria was just the beginning, as Japan had ambitions
to take all of China; the obvious implication was that Puyi would become the
Great Qing Emperor again.[123] When Puyi objected to Itagaki's plans, he was
told that he was in no position to negotiate as Itagaki had no interest in his
opinions on these issues.[124] Unlike Doihara, who was always very polite and
constantly stroked Puyi's ego, Itagaki was brutally rude and brusque, barking
out orders as if to a particularly dim-witted common soldier.[124] Itagaki had
promised Puyi's chief advisor Zheng Xiaoxu that he would be the Manchukuo
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:
prime minister, an offer that appealed to his vanity enough that he persuaded
Puyi to accept the Japanese terms, telling him that Manchukuo would soon
become a monarchy and history would repeat itself as Puyi would conquer the
rest of China from his Manchurian base just as the Qing did in 1644.[124] In
Japanese propaganda, Puyi was always celebrated both in traditionalist terms
as a Confucian "Sage King" out to restore virtue and as a revolutionary who
would end the oppression of the common people by a program of wholesale
modernization.[125]
Puppet ruler of Manchukuo (1932–1945)
Puyi as emperor of Manchukuo.
Puyi accepted the Japanese offer and on 1 March 1932 was installed as the
Chief Executive of Manchukuo, a puppet state of the Empire of Japan, under
the reign title Datong.[126] One contemporary commentator, Wen Yuan-ning,
quipped that Puyi had now achieved the dubious distinction of having been
"made emperor three times without knowing why and apparently without
relishing it."[127]
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:
Puyi and Wanrong leaving their
hotel on 8 March 1932 before
travelling to the official
Manchukuo founding ceremony in
Changchun
A New York Times article from 1933 declared: "There is probably no more
democratic or friendlier ruler in the world than Henry Pu-yi, former Emperor of
China and now Chief Executive of the new State of Manchukuo."[128]
Puyi believed Manchukuo was just the beginning, and that within a few years
he would again reign as Emperor of China, having the yellow imperial dragon
robes used for coronation of Qing emperors brought from Peking to
Changchun.[129] At the time, Japanese propaganda depicted the birth of
Manchukuo as a triumph of Pan-Asianism, with the "five races" of Japanese,
Chinese, Koreans, Manchus, and Mongols coming together, which marked
nothing less than the birth of a new civilization and a turning point in world
history.[130] A press statement issued on 1 March 1932 stated: "The glorious
advent of Manchukuo with the eyes of the world turned on it was an epochal
event of far-reaching consequence in world history, marking the birth of a new
era in government, racial relations, and other affairs of general interest. Never in
the chronicles of the human race was any State born with such high ideals,
and never has any State accomplished so much in such a brief space of its
existence as Manchukuo".[130]
On 8 March 1932, Puyi made his ceremonial entry into Changchun, sharing his
car with Zheng, who was beaming with joy, Amakasu, whose expression was
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:
stern as usual, and Wanrong, who looked miserable.[131] Puyi also noted he
was "too preoccupied with my hopes and hates" to realize the "cold comfort
that the Changchun citizens, silent from terror and hatred, were giving me".[132]
Puyi's friend, the British journalist Woodhead wrote, "outside official circles, I
met no Chinese who felt any enthusiasm for the new regime", and that the city
of Harbin was being terrorised by Chinese and Russian gangsters working for
the Japanese, making Harbin "lawless ... even its main street unsafe after
dark".[133] In an interview with Woodhead, Puyi said he planned to govern
Manchukuo "in the Confucian spirit" and that he was "perfectly happy" with
his new position.[134]
Puyi and Wanrong travelling to

Changchun in March 1932
On 20 April 1932, the Lytton Commission arrived in Manchuria to begin its

investigation of whether Japan had committed aggression.[130] Puyi was
interviewed by Lord Lytton, and recalled thinking that he desperately wanted to
ask him for political asylum in Britain, but as General Itagaki was sitting right
next to him at the meeting, he told Lytton that "the masses of the people had
begged me to come, that my stay here was absolutely voluntary and free".[135]
After the interview, Itagaki told Puyi: "Your Excellency's manner was perfect;
you spoke beautifully".[136] The diplomat Wellington Koo, who was attached to
the commission as its Chinese assessor, received a secret message saying
"... a representative of the imperial household in Changchun wanted to see me
and had a confidential message for me".[137] The representative, posing as an
antique dealer, "... told me he was sent by the Empress: She wanted me to help
her escape from Changchun. He said she found life miserable there because
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:
she was surrounded in her house by Japanese maids. Every movement of hers
was watched and reported".[138] Koo said he was "touched" but could do
nothing to help Wanrong escape, which her brother Rong Qi said was the "final
blow" to her, leading her into a downward spiral.[138] Right from the start, the
Japanese occupation had sparked much resistance by guerrillas, whom the
Kwantung Army called "bandits". General Doihara was able in exchange for a
multi-million bribe to get one of the more prominent guerrilla leaders, the Hui
Muslim general Ma Zhanshan, to accept Japanese rule, and had Puyi appoint
him Defense Minister.[139] Much to the intense chagrin of Puyi and his
Japanese masters, Ma's defection turned to be a ruse, and only months after
Puyi appointed him Defense Minister, Ma took his troops over the border to the
Soviet Union to continue the struggle against the Japanese.[139]
Pu Yi's edict of ascending the

throne
The Emperor of Japan wanted to see if Puyi was reliable before giving him an
imperial title, and it was not until October 1933 that General Doihara told him
he was to be an emperor again, causing Puyi to go, in his own words, "wild with
joy", though he was disappointed that he was not given back his old title of
"Great Qing Emperor".[140] At the same time, Doihara informed Puyi that "the
Emperor [of Japan] is your father and is represented in Manchukuo as the
Kwantung army which must be obeyed like a father".[141] Right from the start,
Manchukuo was infamous for its high crime rate, as Japanese-sponsored
gangs of Chinese, Korean, and Russian gangsters fought one another for the
control of opium houses, brothels, and gambling dens.[142] There were nine
different Japanese or Japanese-sponsored police/intelligence agencies
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:
operating in Manchukuo, who were all told by Tokyo that Japan was a poor
country and that they were to pay for their own operations by engaging in
organised crime.[143] The Italian adventurer Amleto Vespa remembered that
General Kenji Doihara told him Manchuria was going to have to pay for its own
exploitation.[144] In 1933, Simon Kaspé, a French Jewish pianist visiting his
father in Manchukuo, who owned a hotel in Harbin, was kidnapped, tortured,
and murdered by an anti-Semitic gang from the Russian Fascists. The Kaspé
case became an international cause célèbre, attracting much media attention
around the world, ultimately leading to two trials in Harbin in 1935 and 1936,
as the evidence that the Russian fascist gang who had killed Kaspé was
working for the Kenpeitai, the military police of the Imperial Japanese Army,
had become too strong for even Tokyo to ignore.[145] Puyi was portrayed as
having (with a little help from the Kwantung Army) saved the people from the
chaos of rule by the Zhang family.[146] Manchukuo's high crime rate, and the
much publicised Kaspé case, made a mockery of the claim that Puyi had saved
the people of Manchuria from a lawless and violent regime.[146]
Emperor of Manchukuo
Manchukuo
Enthronement
Commemorative Medal
On 1 March 1934, he was crowned Emperor of Manchukuo, under the reign

title Kangde (Wade–Giles: Kang-te; 康德) in Changchun. A sign of the true
rulers of Manchukuo was the presence of General Masahiko Amakasu during
the coronation; ostensibly there as the film director to record the coronation,
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:
Amakasu served as Puyi's minder, keeping a careful watch on him to prevent
him from going off script.[147] Wanrong was excluded from the coronation: her
addiction to opium, anti-Japanese feelings, dislike of Puyi, and growing
reputation for being "difficult" and unpredictable led Amakasu to the
conclusion that she could not be trusted to stay on script.[148] Though
submissive in public to the Japanese, Puyi was constantly at odds with them in
private. He resented being "Head of State" and then "Emperor of Manchukuo"
rather than being fully restored as a Qing Emperor. At his enthronement, he
clashed with Japan over dress; they wanted him to wear a Manchukuo-style
uniform whereas he considered it an insult to wear anything but traditional
Manchu robes. In a typical compromise, he wore a Western military uniform to
his enthronement[149] (the only Chinese emperor ever to do so) and a dragon
robe to the announcement of his accession at the Temple of Heaven.[150] Puyi
was driven to his coronation in a Lincoln limousine with bulletproof windows
followed by nine Packards, and during his coronation scrolls were read out
while sacred wine bottles were opened for the guests to celebrate the
beginning of a "Reign of Tranquility and Virtue".[151] The invitations for the
coronation were issued by the Kwantung Army and 70% of those who
attended Puyi's coronation were Japanese.[148] Time magazine published an
article about Puyi's coronation in March 1934.[152]
The Japanese chose as the capital of Manchukuo the industrial city of

Changchun, which was renamed Hsinking. Puyi had wanted the capital to be
Mukden (modern Shenyang), which had been the Qing capital before the Qing
conquered China in 1644, but was overruled by his Japanese masters.[153]
Puyi hated Hsinking, which he regarded as an undistinguished industrial city
that lacked the historical connections with the Qing that Mukden had.[153] As
there was no palace in Changchun, Puyi moved into what had once been the
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:
office of the Salt Tax Administration during the Russian period, and as result,
the building was known as Salt Tax Palace, which is now the Museum of the
Imperial Palace of Manchukuo.[153] Puyi lived there as a virtual prisoner and
could not leave without permission.[154] Shortly after Puyi's coronation, his
father arrived at the Hsinking railroad station for a visit,[148] Prince Chun told
his son that he was an idiot if he really believed that the Japanese were going
to restore him to the Dragon Throne, and warned him that he was just being
used.[155] The Japanese embassy issued a note of diplomatic protest at the
welcome extended to Prince Chun, stating that the Hsinking railroad station
was under the Kwantung Army's control, that only Japanese soldiers were
allowed there, and that they would not tolerate the Manchukuo imperial guard
being used to welcome visitors at the Hsinking railroad station again.[155]
Cover of Time with

individual photos of
Hirohito, Puyi, Stalin
and Chiang Kai-shek.
In this period, Puyi frequently visited the provinces of Manchukuo to open

factories and mines, took part in the birthday celebrations for the Showa
Emperor at Kwantung Army headquarters and, on the Japanese holiday of
Memorial Day, formally paid his respects with Japanese rituals to the souls of
the Japanese soldiers killed fighting the "bandits" (as the Japanese called all
the guerrillas fighting against their rule of Manchuria).[155] Following the
example in Japan, schoolchildren in Manchukuo at the beginning of every
school day kowtowed first in the direction of Tokyo and then to a portrait of
Puyi in the classroom.[155] Puyi found this "intoxicating".[155] He visited a coal
mine and in his rudimentary Japanese thanked the Japanese foreman for his
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:
good work, who burst into tears as he thanked the emperor; Puyi later wrote
that "The treatment I received really went to my head."[156]
Whenever the Japanese wanted a law passed, the relevant decree was
dropped off at Salt Tax Palace for Puyi to sign, which he always did.[157] Puyi
signed decrees expropriating vast tracts of farmland to Japanese colonists
and a law declaring certain thoughts to be "thought crimes", leading Behr to
note: "In theory, as 'Supreme Commander', he thus bore full responsibility for
Japanese atrocities committed in his name on anti-Japanese 'bandits' and
patriotic Chinese citizens."[157] Behr further noted the "Empire of Manchukuo",
billed as an idealistic state where the "five races" of the Chinese, Japanese,
Koreans, Manchus, and Mongols had come together in Pan-Asian
brotherhood, was in fact "one of the most brutally run countries in the world – a
textbook example of colonialism, albeit of the Oriental kind".[158] Manchukuo
was a sham, and was a Japanese colony run entirely for Japan's benefit.[159]
American historian Carter J. Eckert wrote that the differences in power could
be seen in that the Kwantung Army had a "massive" headquarters in
downtown Hsinking while Puyi had to live in the "small and shabby" Salt Tax
Palace close to the main railroad station in a part of Hsinking with numerous
small factories, warehouses, and slaughterhouses, the chief prison, and the
red-light district.[160]
Behr commented that Puyi knew from his talks in Tianjin with General Kenji
Doihara and General Seishirō Itagaki that he was dealing with "ruthless men
and that this might be the regime to expect".[161] Puyi later recalled that: "I had
put my head in the tiger's mouth" by going to Manchuria in 1931.[161]
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Puyi (right) as Emperor of
Manchukuo. On the left is Chū
Kudō.
From 1935 to 1945, Kwantung Army senior staff officer Yoshioka Yasunori (吉
岡安則)[162] was assigned to Puyi as Attaché to the Imperial Household in
Manchukuo. He acted as a spy for the Japanese government, controlling Puyi
through fear, intimidation, and direct orders.[163] There were many attempts on
Puyi's life during this period, including a 1937 stabbing by a palace servant.[83]
In 1935, Puyi visited Japan.[164] The Second Secretary of the Japanese

Embassy in Hsinking, Kenjiro Hayashide, served as Puyi's interpreter during
this trip, and later wrote what Behr called a very absurd book, The Epochal
Journey to Japan, chronicling this visit, where he managed to present every
banal statement made by Puyi as profound wisdom, and claimed that he wrote
an average of two poems per day on his trip to Japan, despite being busy with
attending all sorts of official functions.[165] Hayashide had also written a
booklet promoting the trip in Japan, which claimed that Puyi was a great reader
who was "hardly ever seen without a book in his hand", a skilled calligrapher, a
talented painter, and an excellent horseman and archer, able to shoot arrows
while riding, just like his Qing ancestors.[166] The Shōwa Emperor took this
claim that Puyi was a hippophile too seriously and presented him with a gift of
a horse for him to review the Imperial Japanese Army with; in fact, Puyi was a
hippophobe who adamantly refused to get on the horse, forcing the Japanese
to hurriedly bring out a carriage for the two emperors to review the troops.[167]
After his return to Hsinking, Puyi hired an American public relations executive,
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George Bronson Rea, to lobby the U.S. government to recognize
Manchukuo.[168] In late 1935, Rea published a book, The Case for Manchukuo,
in which Rea castigated China under the Kuomintang as hopelessly corrupt,
and praised Puyi's wise leadership of Manchukuo, writing Manchukuo was
"... the one step that the people of the East have taken towards escape from
the misery and misgovernment that have become theirs. Japan's protection
is its only chance of happiness".[169] Rea continued to work for Puyi until the
bombing of Pearl Harbor, but he ultimately failed in lobbying Washington to
recognize Hsinking. At the second trial relating to the long-running Kaspé case
in Harbin in March–June 1936, the Japanese prosecutor argued in favour of
the six defendants, calling them "Russian patriots who raised the flag against a
world danger – communism".[145] Much to everyone's surprise, the Chinese
judges convicted and sentenced the six Russian fascists who had tortured and
killed Kaspé to death, which led to a storm as the Russian Fascist Party called
the six men "martyrs for Holy Russia", and presented to Puyi a petition with
thousands of signatures asking him to pardon the six men.[145] Puyi refused to
pardon the Russian fascists, but the verdict was appealed to the Hsinking
Supreme Court, where the Japanese judges quashed the verdict, ordering the
six men to be freed, a decision that Puyi accepted without complaint.[170] The
handling of the Kaspé case, which attracted much attention in the Western
media, did much to tarnish the image of Manchukuo and further weakened
Puyi's already weak hand as he sought to have the rest of the world recognize
Manchukuo.[145]
In 1936, Ling Sheng, an aristocrat who was serving as governor of one of

Manchukuo's provinces and whose son was engaged to marry one of Puyi's
younger sisters, was arrested after complaining about "intolerable" Japanese
interference in his work, which led Puyi to ask Yoshioka if something could be
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done to help him out.[167] The Kwantung Army's commander General Kenkichi
Ueda visited Puyi to tell him the matter was resolved as Ling had already been
convicted by a Japanese court-martial of "plotting rebellion" and had been
executed by beheading, which led Puyi to cancel the marriage between his
sister and Ling's son.[171] During these years, Puyi began taking a greater
interest in traditional Chinese law and religion[172] (such as Confucianism and
Buddhism), but this was disallowed by the Japanese. Gradually his old
supporters were eliminated and pro-Japanese ministers put in their place.[173]
During this period Puyi's life consisted mostly of signing laws prepared by
Japan, reciting prayers, consulting oracles, and making formal visits
throughout his state.[83]
Puyi was extremely unhappy with his life as a virtual prisoner in the Salt Tax
Palace, and his moods became erratic, swinging from hours of passivity staring
into space to indulging his sadism by having his servants beaten.[174] Puyi later
wrote that his orphaned page boy servants, most of whom had had their
parents killed by the Japanese, experienced such ''wretched'' lives in the
palace they were the size of 10-year-olds at the age of eighteen.[175] Puyi was
obsessed by the fact that the vast majority of Puyi's "loving subjects" hated
him, and as Behr observed, it was "the knowledge that he was an object of
hatred and derision that drove Puyi to the brink of madness".[176] Puyi always
had a strong cruel streak, and he imposed harsh "house rules" on his staff;
servants were flogged in the basement for such offenses as "irresponsible
conversations".[177] The phrase "Take him downstairs" was much feared by
Puyi's servants as he had at least one flogging performed a day, and everyone
in the Salt Tax Palace was caned at one point or another except the Empress
and Puyi's siblings and their spouses.[176] Puyi's experience of widespread
theft during his time in the Forbidden City led him to distrust his servants and
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he obsessively went over the account books for signs of fraud.[178] To further
torment his staff of about 100, Puyi drastically cut back on the food allocated
for his staff, who suffered from hunger; Big Li told Behr that Puyi was
attempting to make everyone as miserable as he was.[179] Besides tormenting
his staff, Puyi's life as Emperor was one of lethargy and passivity, which his
ghostwriter Li Wenda called "a kind of living death" for him.[180]
Puyi became a devoted Buddhist, a mystic and a vegetarian, having statues of

the Buddha put up all over the Salt Tax Palace for him to pray to while banning
his staff from eating meat.[178] His Buddhism led him to ban his staff from
killing insects or mice, but if he found any insects in his food, the cooks were
flogged.[178] One day, when out for a stroll in the gardens, Puyi found that a
servant had written in chalk on one of the rocks: "Haven't the Japanese
humiliated you enough?"[181] When Puyi received guests at the Salt Tax
Palace, he gave them long lectures on the "glorious" history of the Qing as a
form of masochism, comparing the great Qing Emperors with himself, a
miserable man living as a prisoner in his own palace.[182] Wanrong, who
detested her husband, liked to mock him behind his back by performing skits
before the servants by putting on dark glasses and imitating Puyi's jerky
movements.[183] During his time in Tianjin, Puyi had started wearing dark
glasses at all times. During the interwar period, dark glasses were worn by
Tianjin's homosexual "tiny minority" to signify their orientation. Although Puyi
likely knew this, surviving members of his court said that he "really was subject
to eye strain and headaches from the sun's glare".[183]
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Tan Yuling, Puyi's concubine
On 3 April 1937, Puyi's younger full brother Prince Pujie was proclaimed heir
apparent after marrying Lady Hiro Saga, a distant cousin of the Japanese
Emperor Hirohito. The Kwantung Army general Shigeru Honjō had politically
arranged the marriage. Puyi thereafter would not speak candidly in front of his
brother and refused to eat any food Lady Saga provided, believing she was out
to poison him.[184] Puyi was forced to sign an agreement that if he himself had
a male heir, the child would be sent to Japan to be raised by the Japanese.[185]
Puyi initially thought Lady Saga was a Japanese spy, but came to trust her
after the Sinophile Saga discarded her kimono for cheongsams and repeatedly
assured him that she came to the Salt Tax Palace because she was Pujie's
wife, not as a spy.[186] Behr described Lady Saga as "intelligent" and "level-
headed", and noted the irony of Puyi snubbing the one Japanese who really
wanted to be his friend.[186] Later in April 1937, the 16-year-old Manchu
aristocrat Tan Yuling moved into the Salt Tax Palace to become Puyi's
concubine.[187] Lady Saga tried to improve relations between Puyi and
Wanrong by having them eat dinner together, which was the first time they had
shared a meal in three years.[186]
Based on his interviews with Puyi's family and staff at the Salt Tax Palace, Behr
wrote that it appeared Puyi had an "attraction towards very young girls" that
"bordered on pedophilia" and "that Pu Yi was bisexual, and – by his own
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:
admission – something of a sadist in his relationships with women".[188] Puyi
was very fond of having handsome teenage boys serve as his pageboys and
Lady Saga noted he was also very fond of sodomizing them.[189] Lady Saga
wrote in her 1957 autobiography Memoirs of A Wandering Princess:
Of course I had heard rumours concerning such great men in

our history, but I never knew such things existed in the living
world. Now, however, I learnt that the Emperor had an
unnatural love for a pageboy. He was referred to as "the male
concubine". Could these perverted habits, I wondered, have
driven his wife to opium smoking?
— Lady Hiro Saga[190]
When Behr questioned him about Puyi's sexuality, Prince Pujie said he was
"biologically incapable of reproduction", a polite way of saying someone is gay
in China.[191] When one of Puyi's pageboys fled the Salt Tax Palace to escape
his homosexual advances, Puyi ordered that he be given an especially harsh
flogging, which caused the boy's death and led Puyi to have the floggers
flogged in turn as punishment.[179]
In July 1937, when the Second Sino-Japanese war began, Puyi issued a
declaration of support for Japan.[192] In August 1937, Kishi wrote up a decree
for Puyi to sign calling for the use of corvée labour to be conscripted both in
Manchukuo and in northern China, stating that in these "times of emergency"
(i.e. war with China), industry needed to grow at all costs, and slavery was
necessary to save money.[193] Driscoll wrote that just as African slaves were
taken to the New World on the "Middle Passage", it would be right to speak of
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the "Manchurian Passage" as vast numbers of Chinese peasants were
rounded up to be slaves in Manchukuo's factories and mines.[194] From 1938
until the end of the war, every year about a million Chinese were taken from the
Manchukuo countryside and northern China to be slaves in Manchukuo's
factories and mines.[195]
All that Puyi knew of the outside world was what General Yoshioka told him in
daily briefings.[192] When Behr asked Prince Pujie how the news of the Rape of
Nanking in December 1937 affected Puyi, his brother replied: "We didn't hear
about it until much later. At the time, it made no real impact."[196] On 4
February 1938, the strongly pro-Japanese and anti-Chinese Joachim von
Ribbentrop became the German foreign minister, and under his influence
German foreign policy swung in an anti-Chinese and pro-Japanese
direction.[197] On 20 February 1938, Adolf Hitler announced that Germany was
recognizing Manchukuo.[197] In one of his last acts, the outgoing German
ambassador to Japan Herbert von Dirksen visited Puyi in the Salt Tax Palace to
tell him that a German embassy would be established in Hsinking later that
year to join the embassies of Japan, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic,
Costa Rica, Italy and Nationalist Spain, the only other countries that had
recognised Manchukuo. In 1934, Puyi had been excited when he learned that
El Salvador had become the first nation other than Japan to recognize
Manchukuo, but by 1938, he did not care much about Germany's recognition
of Manchukuo.
In May 1938, Puyi was declared a god by the Religions Law, and a cult of
emperor-worship very similar to Japan's began with schoolchildren starting
their classes by praying to a portrait of the god-emperor while imperial
rescripts and the imperial regalia became sacred relics imbued with magical
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powers by being associated with the god-emperor.[198] Puyi's elevation to a
god was due to the Sino-Japanese war, which caused the Japanese state to
begin a program of totalitarian mobilization of society for total war in Japan and
places ruled by Japan.[198] His Japanese handlers felt that ordinary people in
Japan, Korea, and Taiwan were more willing to bear the sacrifices for total war
because of their devotion to their god-emperor, and it was decided that
making Puyi a god-emperor would have the same effect in Manchukuo.[198]
After 1938, Puyi was hardly ever allowed to leave the Salt Tax Palace, while the
creation of the puppet regime of President Wang Jingwei in November 1938
crushed Puyi's spirits, as it ended his hope of one day being restored as the
Great Qing Emperor.[180] Puyi became a hypochondriac, taking all sorts of pills
for various imagined ailments and hormones to improve his sex drive and allow
him to father a boy, as Puyi was convinced that the Japanese were poisoning
his food to make him sterile.[199] He believed the Japanese wanted one of the
children Pujie had fathered with Lady Saga to be the next emperor, and it was a
great relief to him that their children were both girls (Manchukuo law forbade
female succession to the throne).[186]
In 1935, Wanrong engaged in an affair with Puyi's chauffeur Li Tiyu that left her
pregnant.[200] To punish her, Wanrong's baby was killed.[201] It is unclear what
happened, but there are two accounts of what happened to Wanrong after her
baby's murder. One account said that Puyi lied to Wanrong and that her
daughter was being raised by a nanny, and she never knew about her
daughter's death.[202][203] The other account said that Wanrong had found out
or knew about her daughter's infanticide[204][205] and lived in a constant daze
of opium consumption thereafter. Puyi had known of what was being planned
for Wanrong's baby, and in what Behr called a supreme act of "cowardice" on
his part, "did nothing".[201] Puyi's ghostwriter for Emperor to Citizen, Li Wenda,
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:
told Behr that when interviewing Puyi for the book that he could not get Puyi to
talk about the killing of Wanrong's child, as he was too ashamed to speak of
his own cowardice.[201]
Emperor Puyi shakes hands with

Emperor Hirohito at Tokyo Station
on 26 June 1940
In December 1941, Puyi followed Japan in declaring war on the United States
and Great Britain, but as neither nation had recognised Manchukuo, there were
no reciprocal declarations of war in return.[206] During the war, Puyi was an
example and role model for at least some in Asia who believed in the Japanese
Pan-Asian propaganda. U Saw, the Prime Minister of Burma, was secretly in
communication with the Japanese, declaring that as an Asian his sympathies
were completely with Japan against the West.[207] U Saw further added that
he hoped that when Japan won the war that he would enjoy exactly the same
status in Burma that Puyi enjoyed in Manchukuo as part of the Greater East
Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.[207] During the war, Puyi became estranged from
his father, as his half-brother Pu Ren stated in an interview:
... after 1941 Puyi's father had written him off. He never
visited Puyi after 1934. They rarely corresponded. All the
news he got was through intermediaries, or occasional
reports from Puyi's younger sisters, some of whom were
allowed to see him.
— Pu Ren[208]
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Puyi complained that he had issued so many "slavish" pro-Japanese
statements during the war that nobody on the Allied side would take him in if
he did escape from Manchukuo.[209] In June 1942, Puyi made a rare visit
outside of the Salt Tax Palace when he conferred with the graduating class at
the Manchukuo Military Academy, and awarded the star student Takagi Masao
a gold watch for his outstanding performance; despite his Japanese name, the
star student was actually Korean and under his original Korean name of Park
Chung Hee became the dictator of South Korea in 1961.[210] In August 1942,
Puyi's concubine Tan Yuling fell ill and died after being treated by the same
Japanese doctors who murdered Wanrong's baby.[201] Puyi testified at the
Tokyo war crimes trial of his belief that she was murdered.[201] Puyi kept a lock
of Tan's hair and her nail clippings for the rest of his life as he expressed much
sadness over her loss.[211] He refused to take a Japanese concubine to replace
Tan and, in 1943, took a Chinese concubine, Li Yuqin, the 16-year-old
daughter of a waiter.[212] Puyi liked Li, but his main interest continued to be his
pageboys, as he later wrote: "These actions of mine go to show how cruel,
mad, violent and unstable I was."[212]
For much of World War II, Puyi, confined to the Salt Tax Palace, believed that
Japan was winning the war, and it was not until 1944 that he started to doubt
this after the Japanese press began to report "heroic sacrifices" in Burma and
on Pacific islands while air raid shelters started to be built in Manchukuo.[213]
Puyi's nephew Jui Lon told Behr: "He desperately wanted America to win the
war."[154] Big Li said: "When he thought it was safe, he would sit at the piano
and do a one-finger version of the Stars and Stripes."[154] In mid-1944, Puyi
finally acquired the courage to start occasionally tuning in his radio to Chinese
broadcasts and to Chinese-language broadcasts by the Americans, where he
was shocked to learn that Japan had suffered so many defeats since
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:
1942.[214]
Puyi had to give a speech before a group of Japanese infantrymen who had
volunteered to be "human bullets", promising to strap explosives on their
bodies and to stage suicide attacks in order to die for the Showa Emperor.[213]
Puyi commented as he read out his speech praising the glories of dying for the
Emperor: "Only then did I see the ashen grey of their faces and the tears
flowing down their cheeks and hear their sobbing."[213] Puyi commented that
he felt at that moment utterly "terrified" at the death cult fanaticism of Bushido
("the way of the warrior") which reduced the value of human life down to
nothing, as to die for the Emperor was the only thing that mattered.[215]
Collapse of Manchukuo
On 9 August 1945, the Kwantung Army's commander General Otozō Yamada

told Puyi that the Soviet Union had declared war on Japan and the Red Army
had entered Manchukuo.[215] Yamada was assuring Puyi that the Kwantung
Army would easily defeat the Red Army, when the air raid sirens sounded and
the Red Air Force began a bombing raid, forcing all to hide in the
basement.[216] While Puyi prayed to the Buddha, Yamada fell silent as the
bombs fell, destroying Japanese barracks next to the Salt Tax Palace.[216] In
the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation, 1,577,725 Soviet and Mongol
troops stormed into Manchuria in a combined arms offensive with tanks,
artillery, cavalry, aircraft and infantry working closely together that
overwhelmed the Kwantung Army, who had not expected a Soviet invasion
until 1946 and were short of both tanks and anti-tank guns.[217]
Puyi was terrified to hear that the Mongolian People's Army had joined
Operation August Storm, as he believed that the Mongols would torture him to
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death if they captured him.[218] The next day, Yamada told Puyi that the
Soviets had already broken through the defense lines in northern Manchukuo,
but the Kwantung Army would "hold the line" in southern Manchukuo and Puyi
must leave at once.[216] The staff of the Salt Tax Palace were thrown into panic
as Puyi ordered all of his treasures to be boxed up and shipped out; in the
meantime Puyi observed from his window that soldiers of the Manchukuo
Imperial Army were taking off their uniforms and deserting.[216] To test the
reaction of his Japanese masters, Puyi put on his uniform of Commander-in-
Chief of the Manchukuo Army and announced "We must support the holy war
of our Parental Country with all our strength, and must resist the Soviet armies
to the end, to the very end".[216] With that, Yoshioka fled the room, which
showed Puyi that the war was lost.[216] At one point, a group of Japanese
soldiers arrived at the Salt Tax Palace, and Puyi believed they had come to kill
him, but they merely went away after seeing him stand at the top of the
staircase.[219] Most of the staff at the Salt Tax Palace had already fled,[220] and
Puyi found that his phone calls to the Kwantung Army HQ went unanswered as
most of the officers had already left for Korea, his minder Amakasu killed
himself by swallowing a cyanide pill, and the people of Changchun booed him
when his car, flying imperial standards, took him to the railroad station.[220]
The site of Puyi's abdication in a

small mining office complex in
Dalizi[221]
Late on the night of 11 August 1945, a train carrying Puyi, his court, his
ministers and the Qing treasures left Changchun.[222] Puyi saw thousands of
panic-stricken Japanese settlers fleeing south in vast columns across the
roads of the countryside.[222] At every railroad station, hundreds of Japanese
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colonists attempted to board his train; Puyi remembered them weeping and
begging Japanese gendarmes to let them pass,[222] and at several stations,
Japanese soldiers and gendarmes fought one another.[222] General Yamada
boarded the train as it meandered south and told Puyi "the Japanese Army
was winning and had destroyed large numbers of tanks and aircraft", a claim
that nobody aboard the train believed.[222] On 15 August 1945, Puyi heard on
the radio the address of the Showa Emperor announcing that Japan had
surrendered.[223] In his address, the Showa Emperor described the Americans
as having used a "most unusual and cruel bomb" that had just destroyed the
cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; this was the first time that Puyi heard of the
atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which the Japanese had not
seen fit to tell him about until then.[223]
The next day, Puyi abdicated as Emperor of Manchukuo and declared in his
last decree that Manchukuo was once again part of China.[223] Puyi's party
split up in a panic, with former Manchukuo Premier Zhang Jinghui going back
to Changchun.[224] Puyi planned to take a plane to escape from Tonghua,
taking with him his brother Pujie, his servant Big Li, Yoshioka, and his doctor
while leaving Wanrong, his concubine Li Yuqin, Lady Hiro Saga and Lady
Saga's two children behind.[224] The decision to leave behind the women and
children was in part made by Yoshioka who thought the women were in no
such danger, and vetoed Puyi's attempts to take them on the plane to
Japan.[224]
Puyi asked for Lady Saga, the most mature and responsible of the three
women, to take care of Wanrong, and he gave Lady Saga precious antiques
and cash to pay for their way south to Korea.[225] On 16 August, Puyi took a
small plane to Mukden, where another larger plane was supposed to arrive to
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take them to Japan, but instead a Soviet Air Force plane landed.[226] Puyi and
his party were all promptly taken prisoner by the Red Army, who initially did not
know who Puyi was.[226][227] The opium-addled Wanrong together with Lady
Saga and Li were captured by Chinese Communist guerrillas on their way to
Korea, after one of Puyi's brothers-in-law informed the Communists who the
women were.[228] Wanrong, the former empress, was put on display in a local
jail and people came from miles around to watch her.[229] In a delirious state of
mind, she demanded more opium, asked for imaginary servants to bring her
clothing, food, and a bath, hallucinated that she was back in the Forbidden City
or the Salt Tax Palace. The general hatred for Puyi meant that none had any
sympathy for Wanrong, who was seen as another Japanese collaborator, and a
guard told Lady Saga that "this one won't last", making it a waste of time
feeding her.[230] In June 1946, Wanrong starved to death in her jail cell.[230] In
his 1964 book From Emperor to Citizen, Puyi merely stated that he learned in
1951 that Wanrong "died a long time ago" without mentioning how she
died.[231]
Later life (1945–1967)
Puyi (right) and a Soviet military

officer
The Soviets took Puyi to the Siberian town of Chita. He lived in a sanatorium,
then later in Khabarovsk near the Chinese border, where he was treated well
and allowed to keep some of his servants.[232] As a prisoner, Puyi spent his
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days praying and expected the prisoners to treat him as an emperor and
slapped the faces of his servants when they displeased him.[233] He knew
about the civil war in China from Chinese-language broadcasts on Soviet radio
but seemed not to care.[234] The Soviet government refused the Republic of
China's repeated requests to extradite Puyi; the Kuomintang government had
indicted him on charges of high treason, and the Soviet refusal to extradite him
almost certainly saved his life, as Chiang Kai-shek had often spoken of his
desire to have Puyi shot.[235] The Kuomintang captured Puyi's cousin
Dongzhen and publicly executed her in Peking in 1948 after she was
convicted of high treason.[236] Not wishing to return to China, Puyi wrote to
Joseph Stalin several times asking for asylum in the Soviet Union, and that he
be given one of the former tsarist palaces to live out his days.[237]
In 1946, Puyi testified at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in
Tokyo,[238] detailing his resentment at how he had been treated by the
Japanese. At the Tokyo trial, he had a long exchange with defense counsel
Major Ben Bruce Blakeney about whether he had been kidnapped in 1931, in
which Puyi perjured himself by saying that the statements in Johnston's 1934
book Twilight in the Forbidden City about how he had willingly become
Emperor of Manchukuo were all lies.[239] When Blakeney mentioned that the
introduction to the book described how Puyi had told Johnston that he had
willingly gone to Manchuria in 1931, Puyi denied being in contact with
Johnston in 1931, and that Johnston made things up for "commercial
advantage".[240] Puyi had a strong interest in minimizing his own role in history,
because any admission of active control would have led to his execution. The
Australian judge Sir William Webb, the President of the Tribunal, was often
frustrated with Puyi's testimony, and chided him numerous times.[241] Behr
described Puyi on the stand as a "consistent, self-assured liar, prepared to go
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to any lengths to save his skin", and as a combative witness more than able to
hold his own against the defense lawyers.[242] Since no one at the trial but
Blakeney had actually read Twilight in the Forbidden City or the interviews
Woodhead had conducted with him in 1932, Puyi had room to distort what had
been written about him or said by him.[243] Puyi greatly respected Johnston,
who was a surrogate father to him, and felt guilty about portraying him as a
dishonest man.[244]
Puyi's letters to Joseph Stalin
After his return to the Soviet Union, Puyi was held at Detention Center No. 45,
where his servants continued to make his bed, dress him and do other work for
him.[245] Puyi did not speak Russian and had limited contacts with his Soviet
guards, using a few Manchukuo prisoners as translators.[246] One prisoner told
Puyi that the Soviets would keep him in Siberia forever because "this is the
part of the world you come from".[246] The Soviets had promised the Chinese
Communists that they would hand over the high value prisoners when the
CCP won the civil war, and wanted to keep Puyi alive.[247] Puyi's brother-in-
law Rong Qi and some of his servants were not considered high value, and
were sent to work at a Siberian rehabilitation camp.[248]
When the Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong came to power in
1949, Puyi was repatriated to China after negotiations between the Soviet
Union and China.[249][250] Puyi was of considerable value to Mao, as Behr
noted: "In the eyes of Mao and other Chinese Communist leaders, Pu Yi, the
last Emperor, was the epitome of all that had been evil in old Chinese society. If
he could be shown to have undergone sincere, permanent change, what hope
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was there for the most diehard counter-revolutionary? The more overwhelming
the guilt, the more spectacular the redemption-and the greater glory of the
Chinese Communist Party".[251] Puyi was to be subjected to "remodeling" to
make him into a Communist.[252]
Fushun War Criminals Prison
Puyi testifying in the 1950s.
In 1950, the Soviets loaded Puyi and the rest of the Manchukuo and Japanese
prisoners onto a train that took them to China with Puyi convinced he would be
executed when he arrived.[253] Puyi was surprised at the kindness of his
Chinese guards, who told him this was the beginning of a new life for him.[254]
In attempt to ingratiate himself, Puyi for the first time in his life addressed
commoners with 你, the informal word for "you" instead of 您, the formal word
for "you".[254] Except for a period during the Korean War, when he was moved
to Harbin, Puyi spent ten years in the Fushun War Criminals Prison in Liaoning
province until he was declared reformed. The prisoners at Fushun were senior
Japanese, Manchukuo and Kuomintang officials and officers.[255] Puyi was the
weakest and most hapless of the prisoners, and was often bullied by the
others, who liked to humiliate the emperor; he might not have survived his
imprisonment had the warden Jin Yuan not gone out of his way to protect
him.[256] In 1951, Puyi learned for the first time that Wanrong had died in
1946.[231]
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:
Puyi being prisoner in Fushun.
Puyi had never brushed his teeth or tied his own shoelaces once in his life and
had to do these basic tasks in prison, subjecting him to the ridicule of other
prisoners.[257] Much of Puyi's "remodeling" consisted of attending "Marxism–
Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought discussion groups" where the prisoners
would discuss their lives before being imprisoned.[258] When Puyi protested to
Jin that it had been impossible to resist Japan and there was nothing he could
have done, Jin confronted him with people who had fought in the resistance
and had been tortured, and asked him why ordinary people in Manchukuo
resisted while an emperor did nothing.[259] Puyi had to attend lectures where a
former Japanese civil servant spoke about the exploitation of Manchukuo
while a former officer in the Kenpeitai talked about how he rounded up people
for slave labour and ordered mass executions.[260] At one point, Puyi was
taken to Harbin and Pingfang to see where the infamous Unit 731, the
chemical and biological warfare unit in the Japanese Army, had conducted
gruesome experiments on people. Puyi noted in shame and horror: "All the
atrocities had been carried out in my name".[260] Puyi by the mid-1950s was
overwhelmed with guilt and often told Jin that he felt utterly worthless to the
point that he considered suicide.[259] Jin told Puyi to express his guilt in
writing. Puyi later recalled he felt "that I was up against an irresistible force that
would not rest until it found out everything".[261] Sometimes Puyi was taken out
for tours of the countryside of Manchuria. On one, he met a farmer's wife
whose family had been evicted to make way for Japanese settlers and had
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:
almost starved to death while working as a slave in one of Manchukuo's
factories.[262] When Puyi asked for her forgiveness, she told him "It's all over
now, let's not talk about it", causing him to break down in tears.[262] At another
meeting, a woman described the mass execution of people from her village by
the Japanese Army, and then declared that she did not hate the Japanese and
those who had served them as she retained her faith in humanity, which
greatly moved Puyi.[262] On another occasion, Jin confronted Puyi with his
former concubine Li in meetings in his office, where she attacked him for
seeing her only as a sex object, and saying she was now pregnant by a man
who loved her.[262]
In late 1956, Puyi acted in a play, The Defeat of the Aggressors, about the
Suez Crisis, playing the role of a left-wing Labour MP who challenges in the
House of Commons a former Manchukuo minister playing the Foreign
Secretary Selwyn Lloyd.[263] Puyi enjoyed the role[264] and continued acting in
plays about his life and Manchukuo; in one he played a Manchukuo
functionary and kowtowed to a portrait of himself as Emperor of
Manchukuo.[264] During the Great Leap Forward, when millions of people
starved to death in China, Jin chose to cancel Puyi's visits to the countryside
lest the scenes of famine undo his growing faith in communism.[265] Behr
wrote that many are surprised that Puyi's "remodeling" worked, with an
Emperor brought up as almost a god becoming content to be just an ordinary
man, but he noted that "... it is essential to remember that Puyi was not alone in
undergoing such successful 'remolding'. Tough KMT generals, and even
tougher Japanese generals, brought up in the samurai tradition and the
Bushido cult which glorifies death in battle and sacrifice to martial Japan,
became, in Fushun, just as devout in their support of communist ideals as
Puyi".[266]
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:
Puyi came to Peking on 9 December 1959 with special permission from Mao
and lived for the next six months in an ordinary Peking residence with his sister
before being transferred to a government-sponsored hotel.[267] He had the job
of sweeping the streets, and got lost on his first day of work, which led him to
tell astonished passers-by: "I'm Puyi, the last Emperor of the Qing dynasty. I'm
staying with relatives and can't find my way home".[268] One of Puyi's first acts
upon returning to Peking was to visit the Forbidden City as a tourist; he pointed
out to other tourists that many of the exhibits were the things he had used in
his youth.[269] He voiced his support for the Communists and worked as a
gardener at the Peking Botanical Gardens. The role brought Puyi a degree of
happiness he had never known as an emperor, though he was notably
clumsy.[270] Behr noted that in Europe, people who played roles analogous to
the role Puyi played in Manchukuo were generally executed; for example, the
British hanged William Joyce ("Lord Haw-haw") for being the announcer on
the English-language broadcasts of Radio Berlin, the Italians shot Benito
Mussolini, and the French executed Pierre Laval, so many Westerners are
surprised that Puyi was released from prison after only nine years to start a
new life.[271] Behr wrote that the Communist ideology explained this difference,
writing: "In a society where all landlord and 'capitalist-roaders' were evil
incarnate, it did not matter so much that Puyi was also a traitor to his country:
he was, in the eyes of the Communist ideologues, only behaving true to type. If
all capitalists and landlords were, by their very nature, traitors, it was only
logical that Puyi, the biggest landlord, should also be the biggest traitor. And, in
the last resort, Puyi was far more valuable alive than dead".[271] In early 1960,
Puyi met Premier Zhou Enlai, who told him: "You weren't responsible for
becoming Emperor at the age of three or the 1917 attempted restoration coup.
But you were fully to blame for what happened later. You knew perfectly well
what you were doing when you took refuge in the Legation Quarter, when you
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:
traveled under Japanese protection to Tianjin, and when you agreed to
become Manchukuo Chief Executive."[270] Puyi responded by merely saying
that though he did not choose to be an emperor, he had behaved with savage
cruelty as boy-emperor and wished he could apologize to all the eunuchs he
had flogged during his youth.[270]
At the age of 56, he married Li Shuxian, a hospital nurse, on 30 April 1962, in a

ceremony held at the Banquet Hall of the Consultative Conference. From 1964
until his death, he worked as an editor for the literary department of the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, where his monthly salary
was around 100 yuan.[272] Li recalled in a 1995 interview that: "I found Pu Yi a
honest man, a man who desperately needed my love and was ready to give me
as much love as he could. When I was having even a slight case of flu, he was
so worried I would die, that he refused to sleep at night and sat by my bedside
until dawn so he could attend to my needs".[273] Li also noted like everybody
else who knew him that Puyi was an incredibly clumsy man, leading her to say:
"Once in a boiling rage at his clumsiness, I threatened to divorce him. On
hearing this, he got down on his knees and, with tears in his eyes, he begged
me to forgive him. I shall never forget what he said to me: 'I have nothing in this
world except you, and you are my life. If you go, I will die'. But apart from him,
what did I ever have in the world?".[273] Puyi showed remorse for his past
actions, often telling her, ''Yesterday's Puyi is the enemy of today's Puyi.''[274]
Puyi in 1961, flanked by Xiong

Bingkun, a commander in the
Wuchang Uprising, and Lu
Zhonglin, who took part in Puyi's

expulsion from the Forbidden City
in 1924.
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:
In the spring of 1967, Pujie and
Saga Hiro visited Puyi, who was
by then seriously ill.
In the 1960s, with encouragement from Chairman Mao Zedong and Premier
Zhou Enlai, and the public endorsement of the Chinese government, Puyi
wrote his autobiography From Emperor to Citizen (Chinese: 我的前半⽣;
pinyin: Wǒdè Qián Bànshēng; Wade–Giles: Wo Te Ch'ien Pan-Sheng; lit. 'The
First Half of My Life') together with Li Wenda, an editor at the People's
Publishing Bureau. The ghostwriter Li had initially planned to use Puyi's
"autocritique" written in Fushun as the basis of the book, expecting the job to
take only a few months, but it used such wooden language as Puyi confessed
to a career of abject cowardice, that Li was forced to start anew. It took four
years to write the book.[275] Puyi said of his testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes
Tribunal:[276]
I now feel very ashamed of my testimony, as I withheld some

of what I knew to protect myself from being punished by my
country. I said nothing about my secret collaboration with the
Japanese imperialists over a long period, an association to
which my open capitulation after 18 September 1931 was but
the conclusion. Instead, I spoke only of the way the Japanese
had put pressure on me and forced me to do their will. I
maintained that I had not betrayed my country but had been
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:
kidnapped; denied all my collaboration with the Japanese;
and even claimed that the letter I had written to Jirō Minami
was a fake.[112] I covered up my crimes in order to protect
myself.
Puyi objected to Pujie's attempt to reunite with Lady Saga, who had returned
to Japan, writing to Zhou asking him to block Lady Saga from coming back to
China, which led Zhou to reply: "The war's over, you know. You don't have to
carry this national hatred into your own family."[277] Behr concluded: "It is
difficult to avoid the impression that Puyi, in an effort prove himself a 'remolded
man', displayed the same craven attitude towards the power-holders of the
new China that he had shown in Manchukuo towards the Japanese."[277]
Many of the claims in From Emperor to Citizen, like the statement that it was
the Kuomintang who stripped Manchuria bare of industrial equipment in
1945–46 rather than the Soviets, together with an "unreservedly rosy picture
of prison life", are widely known to be false, but the book was translated into
foreign languages and sold well. Behr wrote: "The more fulsome, cliché-ridden
chapters in From Emperor to Citizen, dealing with Puyi's prison experiences,
and written at the height of the Mao personality cult, give the impression of
well-learned, regurgitated lessons."[278]
Puyi in the 1960s with Li Shuxian

and Pujie in Beijing.
From 1963 onward, Puyi regularly gave press conferences praising life in the
People's Republic of China, and foreign diplomats often sought him out,
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:
curious to meet the famous "Last Emperor" of China.[279] In an interview with
Behr, Li Wenda told him that Puyi was a very clumsy man who "invariably
forgot to close doors behind him, forgot to flush the toilet, forgot to turn the tap
off after washing his hands, had a genius for creating an instant, disorderly
mess around him".[280] Puyi had been so used to having his needs catered to
that he never entirely learned how to function on his own.[280] He tried very
hard to be modest and humble, always being the last person to board a bus,
which meant that on one occasion he missed the ride, mistaking the bus
conductor for a passenger. In restaurants he would tell waitresses, "You should
not be serving me. I should be serving you."[280] During this period, Puyi was
known for his kindness, and once after he accidentally knocked down an
elderly lady with his bicycle, he visited her every day in the hospital to bring her
flowers to make amends until she was released.[281]
Death and burial

Mao Zedong started the Cultural Revolution in 1966, and the youth militia
known as the Maoist Red Guards saw Puyi, who symbolised Imperial China, as
an easy target. Puyi was placed under protection by the local public security
bureau and, although his food rations, salary, and various luxuries, including his
sofa and desk, were removed, he was not publicly humiliated as was common
at the time. The Red Guards attacked Puyi for his book From Emperor to
Citizen because it had been translated into English and French, which
displeased the Red Guards and led to copies of the book being burned in the
streets.[282] Various members of the Qing family, including Pujie, had their
homes raided and burned by the Red Guards, but Zhou Enlai used his
influence to protect Puyi and the rest of the Qing from the worst abuses
inflicted by the Red Guard.[283] Jin Yuan, the man who had "remodelled" Puyi
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:
in the 1950s, fell victim to the Red Guard and became a prisoner in Fushun for
several years, while Li Wenda, who had ghostwritten From Emperor to Citizen,
spent seven years in solitary confinement.[284] However, Puyi's health began
to decline. He died in Peking of complications arising from kidney cancer and
heart disease on 17 October 1967 at the age of 61.[285]
In accordance with the laws of the People's Republic of China at the time,
Puyi's body was cremated. His ashes were first placed at the Babaoshan
Revolutionary Cemetery, alongside those of other party and state dignitaries.
(This was the burial ground of imperial concubines and eunuchs prior to the
establishment of the People's Republic of China.) In 1995, as a part of a
commercial arrangement, Puyi's ashes were transferred by his widow Li
Shuxian to a new commercial cemetery named Hualong Imperial Cemetery (华
龙皇家陵园)[286] in return for monetary support. The cemetery is near the
Western Qing Tombs, 120 km (75 mi) southwest of Peking, where four of the
nine Qing emperors preceding him are interred, along with three empresses
and 69 princes, princesses, and imperial concubines. In 2015, some
descendants of the Aisin-Gioro clan bestowed posthumous names upon Puyi
and his wives. Wenxiu and Li Yuqin were not given posthumous names as their
imperial status was removed upon divorce.[287]
Titles, honors, and decorations
Titles
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:
Styles of
Xuantong Emperor
Reference style His Imperial Majesty
Spoken style Your Imperial Majesty
Alternative style Son of Heaven (天子)
When he ruled as emperor of the Qing dynasty (and therefore emperor of

China) from 1908 to 1912 and during his brief restoration in 1917, Puyi's era
name was "Xuantong", so he was known as the "Xuantong Emperor"
(simplified Chinese: 宣统皇帝; traditional Chinese: 宣統皇帝; pinyin: Xuāntǒng
Huángdì; Wade–Giles: Hsüan1-t'ung3 Huang2-ti4) during those two periods.
Puyi was also allowed to retain his title as Emperor of the Great Qing, being
treated like a foreign monarch by the Republic of China until 5 November
1924.
As Puyi was also the last ruling emperor of China, he is widely known as "the
last emperor" (Chinese: 末代皇帝; pinyin: Mòdài Huángdì; Wade–Giles: Mo4-
tai4 Huang2-ti4) in China and throughout the rest of the world. Some refer to
him as "the last emperor of the Qing dynasty" (Chinese: 清末帝; pinyin: Qīng
Mò Dì; Wade–Giles: Ch'ing1 Mo4-ti4).
Due to his abdication, Puyi is also known as the "yielded emperor" (Chinese:
遜帝; pinyin: Xùn Dì) or "abrogated emperor" (simplified Chinese: 废帝;
traditional Chinese: 廢帝; pinyin: Fèi Dì). Sometimes, the character "Qing"
(Chinese: 清; pinyin: Qīng) is added in front of the two titles to indicate his
Page 64 of 86
:
affiliation with the Qing dynasty.
When Puyi ruled the puppet state of Manchukuo and assumed the title of
Chief Executive of the new state, his era name was "Datong" (Ta-tung). As
emperor of Manchukuo from 1934 to 1945, his era name was "Kangde"
(Kang-te), so he was known as the "Kangde emperor" (Chinese: 康德皇帝;
pinyin: Kāngdé Huángdì, Japanese: Kōtoku Kōtei) during that period of time.
Honours and decorations
Qing Dynasty
Order of the Peacock Feather

Order of the Blue Feather
Order of the Double Dragon
Order of the Imperial Throne
Order of the Yellow Dragon
Order of the Red Dragon
Order of the Blue Dragon
Order of the Black Dragon
Manchukuo
Grand Order of the Orchid Blossom

Order of the Illustrious Dragon
Order of the Auspicious Clouds
Order of the Pillars of State
Foreign
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:
Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation (Italy)
Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus, 1st Class (Italy)
Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown of Italy (Italy)
Grand Cordon of the Order of the Chrysanthemum (Japan)
Order of the Paulownia Flowers (Japan)
Order of Carol I (Romania)
Family
Portrayal in media
Film
The Last Emperor, a 1986 Hong Kong film (Chinese title 火龍, literally means
Fire Dragon) directed by Li Han-hsiang. Tony Leung Ka-fai played Puyi.
The Last Emperor, a 1987 film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci. John Lone
played the adult Puyi.
Aisin-Gioro Puyi (愛新覺羅·溥儀), a 2005 Chinese documentary film on the
life of Puyi. Produced by CCTV, it was part of a series of ten documentary
films about ten historical persons.
The Founding of a Party, a 2011 Chinese film directed by Huang Jianxin and
Han Sanping. Child actor Yan Ruihan played Puyi.
1911, a 2011 historical film directed by Jackie Chan and Zhang Li. The film
tells of the founding of the Republic of China when Sun Yat-sen led the
Xinhai Revolution to overthrow the Qing dynasty. The five-year-old Puyi is
played by child actor Su Hanye. Although Puyi's time on screen is short,
there are significant scenes showing how the emperor was treated at court
before his abdication at the age of six.[288]
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:
Television
The Misadventure of Zoo, a 1981 Hong Kong television series produced by

TVB. Adam Cheng played an adult Puyi.
Modai Huangdi (末代皇帝; literally means The Last Emperor), a 1988
Chinese television series based on Puyi's autobiography From Emperor to
Citizen, with Puyi's brother Pujie as a consultant for the series. Chen
Daoming starred as Puyi.
Feichang Gongmin (非常公民; literally means Unusual Citizen), a 2002
Chinese television series directed by Cheng Hao. Dayo Wong starred as
Puyi.
Ruten no Ōhi – Saigo no Kōtei (流転の王妃·最後の皇弟; Chinese title 流轉的王
妃), a 2003 Japanese television series about Pujie and Hiro Saga. Wang
Bozhao played Puyi.
Modai Huangfei (末代皇妃; literally means The Last Imperial Consort), a
2003 Chinese television series. Li Yapeng played Puyi.
Modai Huangdi Chuanqi (末代皇帝传奇; literally means The Legend of the
Last Emperor), a 2015 Hong Kong/China television collaboration (59
episodes, each 45 minutes), starring Winston Chao
Bibliography
By Puyi
我的前半生- The autobiography of Puyi (https://archive.org/details/wodeqian

bansheng) – ghost-written by Li Wenda. The title of the Chinese book is
usually rendered in English as From Emperor to Citizen. The book was re-
released in China in 2007 in a new corrected and revised version. Many
Page 67 of 86
:
sentences which had been deleted from the 1964 version prior to its
publication were now included.
Aisin-Gioro, Puyi (2002) [1964]. 我的前半⽣ (https://archive.org/details/fro
memperortocit00puyi) [The First Half of My Life; From Emperor to Citizen:
The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Puyi] (in Chinese). Foreign Languages
Press. ISBN 978-7119007724. – original
Pu Yi, Henry; Kramer, Paul (2010) [1967]. The Last Manchu: The
Autobiography of Henry Pu Yi, Last Emperor of China (https://archive.org/d
etails/lastmanchuautobi00puyi) . Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 978-
1602397323.
By others
Behr, Edward (1987). The Last Emperor. Toronto: Futura. ISBN 978-
0708834398.
Inspired by Bernardo Bertolucci's film of the same name.
Driscoll, Mark (2010). Absolute Erotic, Absolute Grotesque: The Living, The
Dead, and The Undead in Japan's Imperialism, 1895–1945. Durham: Duke
University Press. ISBN 978-0822347613. JSTOR j.ctv11cw7mv (https://ww
w.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv11cw7mv) .
Fenby, Jonathan (2004). Chiang Kai-shek China's Generalissimo and the
Nation He Lost (https://books.google.com/books?id=s2NKutuUlA8C) . New
York: Carroll & Graf. ISBN 9780786739844.
Headland, Isaac Taylor (1909). Court Life in China (https://web.archive.org/
web/20230611180627/https://romanization.com/books/courtlifeinchina/ind
ex.html) . F.H. Revell. ISBN 978-0585150291. Archived from the original (ht
tps://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100329657) on 11 June 2023.
Johnston, Reginald Fleming (2008) [1934]. Twilight in the Forbidden City (
Page 68 of 86
:
https://archive.org/details/twilightinforbid0000john_h7f9) . Soul Care
Publishing. ISBN 978-0968045954.
Li Shuxian (2006) [1984]. My Husband Puyi: Puyi yu wo / [Li Shuxian kou
shu; Wang Qingxiang zheng li; Changchun shi zheng xie wen shi zi liao
yan jiu wei yuan hui bian]. Chuan guo xin hua shu dian jing xiao. ISBN 978-
7208001671.
By Puyi's fifth wife Li Shuxian. Memories of their life together were ghost
written by Wang Qingxian. An English version translated by Ni Na was
published by China Travel and Tourism Press.
Weinberg, Gerhard (2005). A World In Arms: a Global History of World War

II (https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/world-at-arms/122A2C377C452
8D26382982044F8E9DC) . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 978-0521618267.
Young, Louise (1998). Japan's Total Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of
Wartime Imperialism. Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 978-
0520219342. JSTOR j.ctt1png7c (https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1png7c) .
See also
China
portal
History
portal
World
War II
portal
Biography
portal
Chinese emperors family tree (late)

Dynasties in Chinese history
Page 69 of 86
:
List of heads of regimes who were later imprisoned
List of monarchs who lost their thrones in the 20th century
Puyi Wikimedia photos
Notes
a. Between 1 July 1917 and 12 July 1917, during the Manchu Restoration, Puyi
retook the throne and proclaimed himself the restored emperor of the Qing
dynasty, supported by Zhang Xun, the self-proclaimed prime minister of the
Imperial Cabinet. However, Puyi and Zhang Xun's proclamations in July 1917
were never recognised by the Republic of China (at the time, the sole legitimate
government of China), most Chinese people or any foreign countries.
b. House of Aisin-Gioro is the clan's name in Manchu, pronounced Àixīnjuéluó in
Mandarin; Pǔyí is the Chinese given name as pronounced in Mandarin.
ᠠᡳᠰᡳᠨ
ᡤᠣᠷᠣᠶᠣᠰᠣ
ᡦ
ᡞ
c. Manchu: .
ᡤᡥᠩᡤ
d. Manchu: .
ᠬᠪᠲᠦ
ᠶᠣᠰᠣ
e. Mongolian: .
f. Imperial seal, as the Kangde Emperor.

g. Chinese: 溥儀
References
Citations
1. Joseph, William A. (2010). Politics in China: An Introduction. Oxford University

Press. p. 45. ISBN 978-0195335316.
2. Behr (1987), pp. 62–63
3. Behr, Edward (1998). The Last Emperor. Futura. pp. 63, 80. ISBN 978-
0708834398.
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4. Behr, 1987 p. 63
5. Behr (1987), p. 65
6. Behr, 1987 p. 66
7. Aisin-Gioro, 2007 p. 32
8. Pu Yi 1988, pp. 70–76
9. Behr (1987), p. 74
10. Behr (1987), pp. 74–75
11. Behr, 1987 pp. 75–76
12. Behr, (1987), p. 76
13. Behr (1987), p. 78
14. Behr (1987), p. 79
15. Aisin-Gioro, 2007, pp. 29–74
16. Behr, 1987 pp. 72–73
17. Behr, 1987 p. 73
18. Behr (1987), pp. 72–75
19. Behr (1987), pp. 77–78
20. Pu Yi 1988, p. 132
21. Pu Yi 1988, p. 136
22. Pu Yi 1978, pp. 137–142
23. Behr 1987 p. 68
24. Rawski, Evelyn S (2001). The Last Emperors: A Social History of Qing Imperial
Institutions. University of California Press. pp. 136, 287. ISBN 978-
0520228375.
25. Rhoads, Edward J M (2001). Manchus & Han: Ethnic Relations and Political
Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861–1928. University of
Washington Press. pp. 226–227. ISBN 978-0295980409.
26. Behr, 1987 p. 69
27. Behr, 1987 pp. 81–82
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27. Behr, 1987 pp. 81–82
28. Behr p. 84
29. Behr pp. 84–85
30. Behr p. 85
31. Hutchings, Graham (2003). Modern China: A Guide to a Century of Change.
Harvard University Press. p. 346. ISBN 978-0674012400.
32. Stone of Heaven, Levy, Scott-Clark p. 184
33. "段祺瑞轰炸故宫，让溥仪成为中国历史上唯一挨过轰炸的皇帝_张勋" (https://www.s
ohu.com/a/363336978_120497496) . Sohu.
34. Bangsbo, Jens; Reilly, Thomas; Williams, A. Mark (1996). Science and Football
III. pp. 755–756. doi:10.1080/026404199365489 (https://doi.org/10.1080%2F
026404199365489) . ISBN 978-0419221609. PMID 10573330 (https://pub
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(help)
35. Puyi's From emperor to citizen (1987), p. 38
36. Behr 1987 p. 97
37. Li 2009 p. 113
38. Li 2009 p. 114
39. Behr 1987 p. 97.
40. Behr 1987 p. 98
41. Behr 1987 pp. 98–99
42. Behr 1987 p. 105
43. Fleming Johnston, 2007, pp. 165–167
44. Elliott 2001 (https://books.google.com/books?id=_qtgoTIAiKUC&dq=arise+yili+
puyi&pg=PA484) , p. 484.
45. Puyi & Jenner 1987 (https://books.google.com/books?id=RZNxAAAAMAAJ&q=
arise+yili+puyi) , p. 56.
46. Yi, Henry Pu (2010). The Last Manchu (https://books.google.com/books?id=ivY
sAgAAQBAJ&q=arise+yili+puyi&pg=PT69) . Skyhorse. ISBN 978-
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sAgAAQBAJ&q=arise+yili+puyi&pg=PT69) . Skyhorse. ISBN 978-
1626367258.
47. Elliott 1009 (https://books.google.com/books?id=WpsMAQAAMAAJ&q=The+la
st+Qing+emperor+claimed+that+the+only+Manchu+phrase+he+ever+learned
+to+speak+was+Hi,+%22+Arise!) , p. 66.
48. Ali & Ally & Islam 1997 (https://books.google.com/books?id=0AJlAAAAMAAJ&
q=puyi+spoke+mandarin) , p. 392.
49. Behr, 1987 p. 102
50. Behr, 1987 pp. 101–102
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External links
Puyi
at Wikipedia's sister projects
Media from
Commons
Quotations
from
Wikiquote
Texts from
Wikisource
Data from
Wikidata
"Five Wives of The Last Emperor Puyi" (https://web.archive.org/web/20091

215215941/http://history.cultural-china.com/en/48History6760.html) .
Cultural China. Archived from the original (http://history.cultural-china.com/e
n/48History6760.html) on 15 December 2009. Retrieved 9 August 2010.
Royalty.nu: Extended Bio (http://www.royalty.nu/Asia/China/PuYi.html)
Time: Last Emperor's Humble Occupation (https://web.archive.org/web/200
10129020200/http://www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/99/0927/gardens.
html)
Li Xin, Pu Yi's Widow Reveals Last Emperor's Soft Side (https://web.archive.
org/web/20051210051247/http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55/045.
Page 85 of 86
:
html)
Pu Ru (溥儒), Pu Yi's cousin, accomplished Chinese brush painter and
calligrapher (http://www.art-virtue.com/painting/history/ching/PuRu/bio-Pu
Ru.htm)
Newspaper clippings about Puyi (http://purl.org/pressemappe20/folder/pe/
003237) in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW
Puyi
House of Aisin-Gioro
Born: 7 February 1906 Died: 17 October 1967
Regnal titles
Emperor of China
Position
Preceded by Emperor of the Qing
abolished
Guangxu dynasty
Qing dynasty was
Emperor 2 December 1908 –
ended in 1912
12 February 1912
Position
Chief Executive of
New title abolished
Manchukuo
Manchukuo was Manchukuo
9 March 1932 – 28
created in 1932 became an empire
February 1934
in 1934
New title Emperor of Position

Manchukuo Manchukuo abolished
became an 1 March 1934 – 15 Manchukuo was
empire in 1934 August 1945 ended in 1945
Head of the House

Preceded by
of Aisin-Gioro Succeeded by
Guangxu
2 December 1908 – Prince Pujie
Emperor
17 October 1967
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Puyi&oldid=1181132177"
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The Xuantong Emperor (7 February 1906 – 17 October 1967), better known

Portrait of Puyi by an unknown photographer, c. 1930s–1940s

Predecessor Guangxu Emperor

Successor Monarchy abolished

Regents Zaifeng, Prince Chun (1908–11)

Prime Ministers Yikuang, Prince Qing

Second reign 1 July 1917 – 12 July 1917[a]

Prime minister Zhang Xun

Predecessor Himself as Chief Executive of Manchukuo

Successor Position abolished

Prime Minister Zheng Xiaoxu

Predecessor Position established

Successor Himself as Emperor

Prime Minister Zheng Xiaoxu

Born 7 February 1906

Died 17 October 1967 (aged 61)

Burial Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, later

Aisin-Gioro Puyi[b] (愛新覺羅 溥儀)

Manchu: Gehungge Yoso[d]

Datong (大同): 1 March 1932 – 28 February 1934

House Aisin Gioro

Dynasty Qing (1908–1912, 1917)

Father Zaifeng, Prince Chun of the First Rank

Mother Gūwalgiya Youlan

Hanyu Pinyin Pǔyí

Traditional Chinese 宣統帝

Simplified Chinese 宣统帝

Hanyu Pinyin Xuāntǒng Dì

Wade–Giles Hsuan1-t'ung3 Ti4

IPA [ɕwántʰʊ̀ŋ tî]

Jyutping Syun1tung2 Dai3

Emperor of China (1908–1912)

Painting portrait of Puyi, 1908

Chosen by Empress Dowager Cixi,[1] Puyi became emperor at the age of

A 2 years old Puyi, 1908

Two days after I entered the palace, Cixi died and on 2

The Emperor was Divine. He could not be remonstrated with,

Emperor Puyi 1908

Silver coin: 1 yuan/dollar Xuantong 3rd

Eunuchs and the Household Department

On 10 October 1911, the army garrison in Wuhan mutinied, sparking a

Empress Dowager Longyu endorsed the "Imperial Edict of the Abdication of

The Dowager Empress was sitting on a kang [platform] in a

Life in the Forbidden City (1912–1924)

Brief restoration (1917)

Meeting Sir Reginald Johnston

… In the time when China was called a republic and humanity

Sir Reginald Johnston, a respected British scholar and diplomat from

Titular emperor Puyi in the

Puyi's tutor, Sir Reginald Johnston

He appears to be physically robust and well developed for his

Puyi in the Zhang Garden with

Gobulo Wanrong, Puyi's wife and

Secondary consort Wenxiu

It was perhaps too much to expect an adolescent,

As part of an effort to crack down on corruption by the eunuchs, inspired by

Expulsion from the Forbidden City (1924)

Video footage of Wanrong and

A photo taken of Puyi's bedroom

Residence in Tianjin (1925–1931)

Captive in Manchuria (1931–1932)

The Empress Wanrong was firmly against Puyi's plans to go to Manchuria,

Aisin-Gioro Puyi[b] (愛新覺羅溥儀)