Ancient china children
On 23 February , Puyi left Beijing for Tianjin wearing a simple Chinese gown and skullcap as he was afraid of being robbed on the train. In February , Puyi moved to the Japanese concession of Tianjin , first into the Zhang Garden , and in [ 70 ] 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". As an emperor, Puyi was allowed to join several social clubs that normally only admitted whites. Zheng and Luo favoured enlisting assistance from external parties, while Chen opposed the idea. 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.
Zhang warned Puyi in a "roundabout way" not to trust his Japanese friends. Zhang fought in the pay of the Japanese, but by this time his relations with the Kwantung Army were becoming strained. In June , Zhang captured Beijing and Behr observed that if Puyi had had more courage and returned to Beijing, 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 gave Semyonov a loan of 5, British pounds, which Semyonov never repaid. In , during the Northern Expedition to reunify China, troops sacked the Qing tombs outside Beijing after the Kuomintang and its allies took Beijing from Zhang's army who retreated back to Manchuria.
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. 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's first wife, Wanrong, continued to smoke opium recreationally during this period. 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 and consort were both the slaves and tools of their master.
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. The westernised Wanrong loved to go out dancing, play tennis, wear western clothes and make-up, listen to jazz music, and to socialise with her friends, which the more conservative courtiers all objected to.
She resented having to play the traditional role of a Chinese empress, but was unwilling to break with Puyi. 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.
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. Yoshiko, a strong-willed, flamboyant, openly bisexual woman noted for her habit of wearing male clothing and uniforms, had much influence on Puyi.
Puyi left his house in Tianjin by hiding in the trunk of a car. 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. 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.
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.
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. 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.
Puyi accepted the Japanese offer and on 1 March was installed as the Chief Executive of Manchukuo , a puppet state of the Empire of Japan , under the era name Datong. 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.
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 Beijing to Changchun. A press statement issued on 1 March 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". On 8 March , 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 also noted he was "too preoccupied with my hopes and hates" to realise the "cold comfort that the Changchun citizens, silent from terror and hatred, were giving me". On 20 April , the Lytton Commission arrived in Manchuria to begin its investigation of whether Japan had committed aggression. He said she found life miserable there because she was surrounded in her house by Japanese maids.
Every movement of hers was watched and reported". General Doihara was able in exchange for a multi-million dollar 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 Defence Minister. 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 Defence Minister, Ma took his troops over the border to the Soviet Union to continue the struggle against the Japanese.
Japanese emperor Hirohito wanted to see if Puyi was reliable before giving him an imperial title, and it was not until October 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". 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".
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, Amakasu served as Puyi's minder, keeping a careful watch on him to prevent him from going off script. At his enthronement, he clashed with Japan over dress; they wanted him to wear a military uniform like those used by the Manchukuo military, 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 [ ] the only Chinese emperor ever to do so and a dragon robe to the announcement of his accession at the Temple of Heaven. The Japanese chose Changchun as Manchukuo's capital, which was renamed Xinjing. Puyi had wanted the capital to be Mukden modern Shenyang , which had been the Qing capital before the conquest of the Ming in , but was overruled by his Japanese masters.
Puyi hated Xinjing, which he regarded as an undistinguished industrial city that lacked the historical connections with the Qing that Mukden had. As there was no palace in Changchun, Puyi moved into what had once been the 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.
The Japanese embassy issued a note of diplomatic protest at the welcome extended to Prince Chun, stating that the Xinjing 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 Xinjing railroad station again.
In this period, Puyi frequently visited the provinces of Manchukuo to open factories and mines, took part in the birthday celebrations for Hirohito 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.
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. Puyi found this "intoxicating". He visited a coal mine and in his rudimentary Japanese thanked the Japanese foreman for his good work, who burst into tears as he thanked the emperor; Puyi later wrote that "The treatment I received really went to my head.
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. 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.
Puyi later recalled that: "I had put my head in the tiger's mouth" by going to Manchuria in He acted as a spy for the Japanese government, controlling Puyi through fear, intimidation, and direct orders. In , Puyi visited Japan. The Second Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in Xinjing, 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.
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.
Puyi autobiography for kids pdf
Hirohito took this claim that Puyi was a hippophile 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. In late , 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 " Japan's protection is its only chance of happiness".
In , 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 done to help him out. The Kwantung Army's commander 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.
Gradually his old supporters were eliminated and pro-Japanese ministers put in their place. 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's experience of widespread theft during his time in the Forbidden City led him to distrust his servants and he obsessively went over the account books for signs of fraud. To further torment his staff of about , 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.
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 autobiography for kids
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. 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". 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. 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.
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. 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 paedophilia" and "that Pu Yi was bisexual, and — by his own admission — something of a sadist in his relationships with women".
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.
Puyi autobiography for kids free
He was referred to as "the male concubine". Could these perverted habits, I wondered, have driven his wife to opium smoking? 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. All that Puyi knew of the outside world was what General Yoshioka told him in daily briefings.
When Behr asked Prince Pujie how the news of the Nanjing Massacre in December affected Puyi, his brother replied: "We didn't hear about it until much later. At the time, it made no real impact. In , Puyi had been excited when he learned that El Salvador had become the first nation other than Japan to recognise Manchukuo, but by , he did not care much about Germany's recognition of Manchukuo.
In May , 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 powers by being associated with the god-emperor.
Puyi's elevation to a god was due to the war, which caused the Japanese state to begin a program of totalitarian mobilisation of society for total war in Japan and places ruled by Japan. 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.
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. In , Wanrong engaged in an affair with Puyi's chauffeur Li Tiyu that left her pregnant. 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". In December , 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.
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. He never visited Puyi after 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.
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 , Puyi made a rare visit outside 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 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. He refused to take a Japanese concubine to replace Tan and, in , took a Chinese concubine, Li Yuqin , the year-old daughter of a waiter. 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 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.
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 to die for Hirohito. 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.
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. 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 death if they captured him.
The next day, Yamada told Puyi that the Soviets had already broken through the defence lines in northern Manchukuo, but the Kwantung Army would "hold the line" in southern Manchukuo and Puyi must leave at once. 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.
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". 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.
Most of the staff at the Salt Tax Palace had already fled, 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.
Late on the night of 11 August , a train carrying Puyi, his court, his ministers and the Qing treasures left Changchun. 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.
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. On 15 August , Puyi heard on the radio the address of Hirohito announcing that Japan had surrendered. 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.
The next day, Puyi abdicated as Emperor of Manchukuo and declared in his last decree that Manchukuo was once again part of China. Puyi's party split up in a panic, with former Manchukuo Premier Zhang Jinghui going back to Changchun. 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.
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. On 16 August, Puyi took a small plane to Mukden , where another larger plane was supposed to arrive to take them to Japan, but instead a Soviet Air Force plane landed.
He had to be "reformed" under the "Communist re-education programme" for political prisoners. Puyi was pardoned in After being released from prison, he became a citizen of the People's Republic of China with special permission from Chairman Mao Zedong. At first, he worked as a gardener at the Beijing Botanical Gardens from In , his second wife Wenxiu, the consort Shu, divorced him due to 'emptiness of life for nine years'.
Puyi vented on his anger at Wenxiu's divorce on Wanrong. Puyi's ignorance and hatred and the atrocities of the Japanese left Wanrong addicted to opium and her mental faculties gradually became abnormal. Finally, she died in in a prison in Yanji, Jilin after being arrested by Chinese Communist soldiers. Puyi lost his fertility. Puyi's autobiography recorded that eunuchs didn't want to take care of him at night, so they arranged maids to accompany Puyi when he slept.
Constant sex with maids in his early years, it is most strongly theorized, led to the loss of his sexual function and fertility, whether due to psychological damage or through a sexually transmitted disease, it is not known. Indulging in sex in his early years, it is theorized, made Puyi lose the ability to bear children, and more seriously, TCM theorists say, caused damage to his kidneys, stating depletion of kidney qi as the cause.
Though, possibly, his gradually failing kidneys caused his impotence.
Autobiography for kids to read
It artistically told the story of Aisin Gioro Puyi, the last emperor of China, who lived a tumultuous life spanning 60 years from the emperor to an ordinary citizen, though it glossed over some of the worst parts. This British-Italian epic biographical film produced in won nine Oscars at the 60th Academy Awards. In Puyi's later years, he visited the Forbidden City with several good friends.
Even though it was once his home, he needed to buy a ticket to visit it. When Puyi went to the palace where Emperor Guangxu lived, he found that the picture hanging on the wall was not Guangxu, so he reminded the staff: "This is not Emperor Guangxu, but Prince Chun — Zaifeng. Then the staff called the experts.
But these experts did not agree with Puyi's opinion, and said: "We are specialists in the study of history. Do you know better than we do? 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.
This third stint as emperor saw him as a puppet of Japan; his life consisted mostly of signing laws prepared by Japan, reciting prayers, consulting oracles, and making formal visits throughout his state. During this period, he largely resided in the Salt Tax Palace. 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.
In May , 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 powers by being associated with the god-emperor.
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. 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.
After , Puyi was hardly ever allowed to leave the Salt Tax Palace, while the creation of the puppet regime of President Wang Jingwei in November crushed Puyi's spirits, as it ended his hope of one day being restored as the Great Qing Emperor. With the fall of Japan and thus Manchukuo in , Puyi fled the capital and was eventually captured by the Soviets; he was extradited to the People's Republic of China in 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. He knew about the civil war in China from Chinese-language broadcasts on Soviet radio but seemed not to care. 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.
The Kuomintang captured Puyi's cousin Eastern Jewel and publicly executed her in Peking in after she was convicted of high treason. 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.
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 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".
Puyi was to be subjected to "remodeling" to make him into a Communist. In , 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.
Historical fiction for kids: Aisin-Gioro Puyi (Chinese: 溥 儀; 7 February – 17 October ), courtesy name Yaozhi (曜之), was the last emperor of China as the eleventh and final Qing dynasty monarch. Puyi became emperor at the age of two in Growing up with scarcely any memory of a time when he was not indulged and revered, Puyi quickly became spoiled.
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. The prisoners at Fushun were senior Japanese, Manchukuo and Kuomintang officials and officers.
Puyi was the weakest and most hapless of the prisoners, and was often bullied by the others; he might not have survived his imprisonment had the warden Jin Yuan not gone out of his way to protect him. In , Puyi learned for the first time that Wanrong had died in 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. 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 , 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 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.
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. 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 " 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".
Puyi came to Peking on 9 December 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. He was childless. In , his widow was allowed to transfer his ashes to the West Qing Tombs where five of the ten Manchu rulers are interred.
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