158 Facts About Puyi

The Xuantong Emperor, born Aisin-Gioro Puyi, commonly known as Puyi, courtesy name Yaozhi, was the last emperor of China as the eleventh and final Qing dynasty monarch.

Puyi became emperor at the age of two in 1908, but was forced to abdicate on 12 February 1912 during the Xinhai Revolution.

Puyi later became the ruler of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in the 1930s until its collapse in 1945 with the regnal name of Kangde.

Puyi was briefly restored to the throne as Qing emperor by the loyalist General Zhang Xun from 1 July to 12 July 1917.

Puyi was first wed to Empress Wanrong in 1922 in an arranged marriage.

Puyi took on numerous concubines, as well as male lovers.

Puyi's time in prison greatly changed him, and he expressed deep regret for his actions while he was an emperor.

Puyi died in 1967 and was ultimately buried near the Western Qing tombs in a commercial cemetery.

The toddler Puyi screamed and resisted as the officials ordered the eunuch attendants to pick him up.

Puyi's parents said nothing when they learned that they were losing their son.

Puyi was frightened by the scene before him and the deafening sounds of ceremonial drums and music, and started crying.

Puyi did not see his biological mother, Princess Consort Chun, for the next seven years.

Puyi developed a special bond with Wang and credited her as the only person who could control him.

Every day, Puyi had to visit five former imperial concubines, called his "mothers", to report on his progress.

Puyi hated his "mothers", not least because they prevented him from seeing his real mother until he was 13.

Puyi had a standard Confucian education, being taught the various Chinese classics and nothing else.

Puyi later wrote: "I learnt nothing of mathematics, let alone science, and for a long time I had no idea where Peking was situated".

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.

Later, Puyi began to receive visits from his brothers and cousins, who provided a certain air of normality to his unique childhood.

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.

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.

Puyi 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.

The reform efforts did not last long before Puyi was forced out of the Forbidden City by Feng Yuxiang.

Puyi recalled in his autobiography the meeting between Longyu and Yuan:.

Under the "Articles of Favourable Treatment of the Great Qing Emperor after His Abdication", 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Puyi spent hours staring at the Presidential Palace across from the Forbidden City and cursed Yuan whenever he saw him come and go in his automobile.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Puyi appears to be physically robust and well developed for his age.

Puyi is a very "human" boy, with liveliness, intelligence and an enthusiastic sense of humour.

Johnston was 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.

Under Johnston's influence, Puyi embraced the bicycle as a way to exercise, cut his queue and grew a full head of hair, and wanted to go to study at Oxford, Johnston's alma mater.

Johnston pressured Puyi to cut down on the waste and extravagance in the Forbidden City and encouraged him to be more self-sufficient.

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.

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.

Puyi later claimed that the faces were too small to distinguish between.

Puyi then chose Gobulo Wanrong, the daughter of one of 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.

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.

Puyi 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.

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.

Puyi was enough of a traditionalist to respect that all major events in the Forbidden City were determined by the court astrologers.

Puyi turned the grounds where the Hall of Supreme Harmony had once stood into a tennis court, as he and Wanrong loved to play.

Puyi was expelled from the Forbidden City the same day.

Puyi spent a few days at the house of his father Prince Chun, and then temporarily resided in the Japanese embassy in Peking.

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.

Puyi had originally wanted to go to the British Legation, but the Japanophile Johnston had insisted that he would be safer with the Japanese.

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.

In February 1925, Puyi moved to the Japanese Concession of Tianjin, first into the Chang Garden, and in 1929 into the former residence of Lu Zongyu known as the Garden of Serenity.

Woodhead stated that the only people who seemed to get along at Puyi's court were Wanrong and Wenxiu, who were "like sisters".

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.

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.

Puyi remembered Zhang as "a universally detested monster" with a face bloated and "tinged with the livid hue induced by opium smoking".

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".

Puyi resented having to play the traditional role of a Chinese empress, but was unwilling to break with Puyi.

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.

Puyi left his house in Tianjin by hiding in the trunk of a car.

Puyi boarded a Japanese ship that took him across Bohai Sea, and when he landed in Port Arthur, 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.

Once he arrived in Manchuria, Puyi discovered that he was a prisoner and was not allowed outside the Yamato Hotel, ostensibly to protect him from assassination.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 stern as usual, and Wanrong, who looked miserable.

Puyi 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".

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".

Puyi said she found life miserable there because she was surrounded in her house by Japanese maids.

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.

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".

Puyi was portrayed as having saved the people from the chaos of rule by the Zhang family.

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.

Puyi resented being "Head of State" and then "Emperor of Manchukuo" rather than being fully restored as a Qing Emperor.

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".

Puyi had wanted the capital to be Mukden, which had been the Qing capital before the Qing conquered China in 1644, but was overruled by his Japanese masters.

Puyi hated Hsinking, which he regarded as an undistinguished industrial city that lacked the historical connections with the Qing that Mukden had.

Puyi lived there as a virtual prisoner and could not leave without permission.

Shortly after Puyi's coronation, his father arrived at the Hsinking railroad station for a visit, 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.

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.

Behr commented that Puyi knew from his talks in Tianjin with General Kenji Doihara and General Seishiro Itagaki that he was dealing with "ruthless men and that this might be the regime to expect".

Puyi later recalled that: "I had put my head in the tiger's mouth" by going to Manchuria in 1931.

Puyi acted as a spy for the Japanese government, controlling Puyi through fear, intimidation, and direct orders.

Hayashide had 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.

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.

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.

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.

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".

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.

Puyi's 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.

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.

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.

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.

Puyi was very fond of having handsome teenage boys serve as his pageboys and Lady Saga noted he was very fond of sodomizing them.

All that Puyi knew of the outside world was what General Yoshioka told him in daily briefings.

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.

Puyi 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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

Puyi testified at the Tokyo war crimes trial of his belief that she was murdered.

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.

Puyi 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.

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.

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.

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.

Puyi saw thousands of panic-stricken Japanese settlers fleeing south in vast columns across the roads of the countryside.

At every railroad station, hundreds of Japanese colonists attempted to board his train; Puyi remembered them weeping and begging Japanese gendarmes to let them pass, and at several stations, Japanese soldiers and gendarmes fought one another.

On 15 August 1945, Puyi heard on the radio the address of the Showa Emperor announcing that Japan had surrendered.

The next day, Puyi abdicated as Emperor of Manchukuo and declared in his last decree that Manchukuo was part of China.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Puyi 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.

Puyi knew about the civil war in China from Chinese-language broadcasts on Soviet radio but seemed not to care.

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.

In 1946, Puyi testified at the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo, 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.

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".

Puyi had a strong interest in minimizing his own role in history, because any admission of active control would have led to his execution.

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.

Puyi greatly respected Johnston, who was a surrogate father to him, and felt guilty about portraying him as a dishonest man.

Puyi did not speak Russian and had limited contacts with his Soviet guards, using a few Manchukuo prisoners as translators.

Puyi was to be subjected to "remodeling" to make him into a Communist.

Puyi was surprised at the kindness of his Chinese guards, who told him this was the beginning of a new life for him.

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.

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.

In 1951, Puyi learned for the first time that Wanrong had died in 1946.

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.

Much of Puyi's "remodeling" consisted of attending "Marxist-Leninist-Maoist discussion groups" where the prisoners would discuss their lives before being imprisoned.

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.

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.

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".

Puyi later recalled he felt "that I was up against an irresistible force that would not rest until it found out everything".

Sometimes Puyi was taken out for tours of the countryside of Manchuria.

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.

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.

Puyi enjoyed the role 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.

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.

Puyi voiced his support for the Communists and worked as a gardener at the Peking Botanical Gardens.

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 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.

The ghostwriter Li 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.

Puyi said of his testimony at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal:.

From 1963 onward, Puyi regularly gave press conferences praising life in the People's Republic of China, and foreign diplomats often sought him out, curious to meet the famous "Last Emperor" of China.

Puyi had been so used to having his needs catered to that he never entirely learned how to function on his own.

Puyi 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.

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.

Puyi died in Peking of complications arising from kidney cancer and heart disease on 17 October 1967 at the age of 61.

Puyi's ashes were first placed at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, alongside those of other party and state dignitaries.

Puyi was 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.

When Puyi ruled the puppet state of Manchukuo and assumed the title of Chief Executive of the new state, his era name was "Datong".