(1964)
PUYI (1906–1967)
Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), only reigned for about three years, from late 1908 to the beginning of 1912. He ascended the Dragon Throne as a little boy, as a result of a long series of political maneuvers by the Dowager Empress Cixi (1835–1908). The Qing emperors, who were Manchus from the northeast of China, only married other Manchu or Mongolian women; Cixi was a Manchu who entered the court as a low-ranking concubine of the Xianfeng emperor (1831–1861), who came to the throne in 1850. She was raised in status when she bore the emperor’s only surviving son, the future Tongzhi emperor (1856–1875). By the middle of the nineteenth century, the Qing emperors seemed almost incapable of producing sons, despite having a number of consorts. The Tongzhi emperor and the succeeding Guangxu emperor (1871–1908) had no sons at all, which facilitated the Dowager Empress’s machinations. When the Xianfeng emperor died, Cixi’s son was only six years old (by Chinese calculation); she got rid of the courtiers appointed as regents and proclaimed herself and Cian (1837–1881), who was the senior consort of the Xianfeng emperor, as joint regents—although it was well known that Cixi herself held all power.
When Cixi’s son, the Tongzhi emperor, died in 1875, she chose her sister’s son (one of the Tongzhi emperor’s cousins) as the Guangxu emperor, breaking with the tradition that held that a new emperor should be of the next generation. The Guangxu emperor, despite attempts to break free and begin some of the modernization and reform that China desperately needed, remained a virtual prisoner of his aunt until he died in November 1908. Although she herself died the next day, Cixi had already nominated his successor, Puyi, a son of Prince Chun. (Puyi’s father, Prince Chun, was the fifth son of the first Prince Chun, seventh son of the Daoguang emperor [1782–1850].)
Despite his relative closeness to imperial power, the child Puyi howled his way through his enthronement in the Forbidden City. In February 1912, after the Wuhan uprising by imperial soldiers that set off the ultimate fall of the Qing dynasty, his parents signed the act of abdication and China became a republic. Puyi was allowed to live on in the Forbidden City as the republican central government broke down and regional warlords fought for power, but his position was problematic—as could be seen in 1917, when Zhang Xun, a general, led a short-lived coup to try and restore him to the throne. When the “Christian warlord” Feng Yuxiang (1882–1948) seized Beijing in 1924, he ordered Puyi’s expulsion from the Forbidden City. Assisted by his Scottish tutor Reginald Johnston (1874–1938), Puyi fled first to his father’s house but then moved to the Japanese Legation, embarking on closeness to Japan that was to lead to disaster. He moved to the nearby city of Tianjin, regarded as much safer than Beijing, and for several years lived in the Japanese concession there. In 1932 he unwisely agreed to become head, and later “emperor,” of Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state on Chinese soil that marked one of the first steps toward Japan’s full-scale invasion of China in 1937. When Japan was defeated at the end of World War II, Soviet troops moved into northeastern China and Puyi was taken prisoner and held in the Soviet Union. He was handed over to the Chinese authorities in 1950 and imprisoned to be “remolded” (“reeducated”) until 1959. In 1960 he became a worker in the Beijing Botanical Gardens. He died in 1967, which was probably fortunate as the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) would almost certainly have been a very difficult period for him.
Puyi had no children despite having five wives. He married both Wanrong (1906–1946) and Wenxiu (1909–1953) in 1922, seemingly because he was shown an album of suitable girls and lacked interest in choosing. Wanrong was apparently addicted to opium, and Wenxiu left him in 1931. In 1937 he married Tan Yuling (1920–1942), who died in slightly suspicious circumstances, and in 1943 he married Li Yuqin (1928–2001); she divorced him in 1958 but suffered during the Cultural Revolution for her association with him. His last wife was a nurse, Li Shuxian (1925–1997), who seems to have been appointed to look after him.
Puyi’s autobiography was published in Chinese in 1964, in an edition that was very restricted in circulation, which was a common practice in China. However, the “official” English edition, in a fine translation, was published soon after (in two parts, in 1964 and 1965). The text must have been based upon many “self-criticisms” that Puyi would have written while in prison, because rhetorical self-criticism is a major part of the Chinese political process. There have been many arguments about the veracity of the text and the question of whether Puyi wrote it himself, which are discussed in the translator’s introduction to the English-language edition published in 1985.
As it stands, the book has much to offer. It describes the conditions in which this special prisoner was held in prisons in the Soviet Union and China and the attempts to “remold” him through study and through practical work. For those interested in the dying days of the Qing dynasty and life in the Forbidden City, it is fascinating. The accounts of his education at the hands of Reginald Johnston as of 1919, seconded from the British Colonial Service to guide the young ex-emperor in British ways, are amusing. Puyi and his fellow pupils, his brother Pujie (1907–1994) and cousin Pujia, chose English names (Henry, William, and Arthur) and wanted to assume European dress, which Johnston—who was delighted with his own flowery Chinese titles and great sable-lined silk robes—rather discouraged. However, he taught the boys how to take tea the English way, which included not greedily stuffing themselves with cakes, and diagnosed Puyi’s nearsightedness; this resulted (much against the wishes of the palace eunuchs) in Puyi wearing glasses for the rest of his life.
Puyi’s memory of his early childhood was of “a yellow mist,” since yellow, associated with “earth” (one of the Five Elements), was chosen as the imperial color by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and seen most obviously in the yellow roofs of the Ming Forbidden City. (The Qing should have chosen an alternative color on taking power but they continued to use the Ming yellow.) “The glazed tiles were yellow, my sedan chair was yellow, my chair cushions were yellow, the lining of my hats and clothes were yellow, the girdle round my waist was yellow, the dishes and bowls from which I ate were yellow, the padded cover of the rice-gruel saucepan, the material in which my books were wrapped, the window curtains, the bridle of my horse . . . everything was yellow.”
In late 1922, the dominant color in Puyi’s life changed briefly. “According to tradition, the emperor and empress spent their wedding night in the Palace of Earthly Peace . . . This was a rather peculiar room; it was unfurnished except for the bed-platform which filled a quarter of it and everything about it except the floor was red. When we had drunk the nuptial cup and eaten sons-and-grandsons cakes and entered this dark red room I felt stifled. I looked around me and saw that everything was red: red bed-curtains, red pillows, a red dress, a red skirt, red flowers, and a red face . . . it all looked like a melted red wax candle.” Puyi decided that he preferred the Mind Nurture Palace and went back there, abandoning his bride.
There are also interesting descriptions of the food in the palace and how it was served, and of Puyi’s attempts to cut down the number of eunuchs and control their stealing, and smuggling out, palace treasures.
However, in the end, the author remains an enigma: he confesses to considerable cruelty, to a complete lack of interest in his wives, while he himself seems, in part, to be a victim of his large and complex family. Despite the difficulty of his character, Puyi’s account of his life reveals the extraordinary circumstances of the end of imperial rule in China and the advent of republicanism and, eventually, Communism.