Henry pu yi biography of alberta

Puyi, also known as Henry Pu Yi, was the last emperor of China who ascended the throne at the age of two and was deposed by the Chinese Republic in He is most famous for his association with the Qing dynasty and his later life as a puppet emperor under the Japanese occupation of Manchuria during World War II. Among politicians, Puyi ranks out of 19, Among people born inPuyi ranks 7.

Among people deceased inPuyi ranks 6. Before him are Che GuevaraJ. Puyi was the last emperor three times, but was not in power even for a day! Puyi was "the puppet emperor". His father Zaifeng was actually in power as Prince Regent. Puyi was the youngest emperor at only 2. He was appointed by the dying Empress Dowager Cixi. Emperor Guangxu had no heirs, and Puyi was Guangxu's nephew.

The reason Puyi was chosen by Cixi was that it would be easy for her to continue to rule China behind the screensas he was just a toddler. She never thought that she'd die the day before Puyi's enthronement. The Revolution of established a republic, and Puyi announced his abdication inending the imperial era. Although Puyi was no longer the emperor any more, he was allowed to live in the Forbidden City.

The restoration of the Qing Dynasty lasted only 12 days. InPuyi fled from the Forbidden City to the Tianjin concession where he enjoyed special treatment. Foreign consuls and generals still called him emperor there, celebrated his birthday, and invited him to participate in a variety of celebrations. This feeling of being treated regally made Puyi more eager to become emperor again.

Meanwhile, the Japanese wanted to build a puppet Manchukuo regime after occupying northeast China. Puyi was their best choice. When they offered Puyi the chance to be emperor of Manchukuo —he immediately agreed. Empress Dowager Longyu endorsed the abdication on 12 Februaryhanding over power to Yuan Shikai's Republican army. Puyi had an English tutor.

InScotsman Johnston was invited to the Forbidden City as Puyi's teacher of English, mathematics, geography, world history, etc. Puyi's English name Henry was chosen by Johnston. Johnston's arrival opened Puyi's eyes to the world. He then started to wear suits and glasses, cut off his Manchurian queue, used a phonograph, had Western meals, installed a telephone, and rode a bike in the Forbidden City.

Inthe Soviet Union attacked Manchukuo and captured Puyi at the airport as he tried to flee to Japan. Puyi was taken to the Soviet Union and detained.

Henry pu yi biography of alberta

During his detention, Puyi still enjoyed different treatment from other prisoners, such as having meals alone and not having to participate in forced labor. In Puyi was extradited back to China. He had to be "reformed" under the "Communist re-education programme" for political prisoners. Puyi was pardoned in 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", Dongzhento 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 Manchukuoa puppet state of the Empire of Japanunder the era name Datong. One contemporary commentator, Wen Yuan-ningquipped 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 MarchPuyi 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 Aprilthe 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 Zhanshanto 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 Shenyangwhich had been the Qing capital before the conquest of the Ming inbut 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. InPuyi 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 Japanchronicling 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. 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 lateRea published a book, The Case for Manchukuoin 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". InLing 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 aboutPuyi drastically cut henry pu yi biography of alberta 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.

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. 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. InPuyi had been excited when he learned that El Salvador had become the first nation other than Japan to recognise Manchukuo, but byhe did not care much about Germany's recognition of Manchukuo.

In MayPuyi 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. InWanrong 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 DecemberPuyi 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 Sawthe 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 JunePuyi 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, intook a Chinese concubine, Li Yuqinthe 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 Augusta 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 AugustPuyi 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 Nagasakiwhich 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 Mukdenwhere another larger plane was supposed to arrive to take them to Japan, but instead a Soviet Air Force plane landed.

Puyi and his party were all promptly taken prisoner by the Red Army, who initially did not know who Puyi was. Wanrong, the former empress, was put on display in a local jail and people came from miles around to watch her. 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. The Soviets took Puyi to the Siberian town of Chita. He lived in a sanatoriumthen later in Khabarovsk near the Chinese borderwhere he was treated well and allowed to keep some of his servants.

As a prisoner, Puyi spent his days praying and expected the prisoners to treat him as an emperor and slapped the faces of his servants when they displeased him. He knew about the civil war in China from Chinese-language broadcasts on Radio Moscowbut seemed not to care. InPuyi 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 defence counsel Major Ben Bruce Blakeney about whether he had been kidnapped inin which Puyi perjured himself by saying that the statements in Johnston's 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 inPuyi denied being in contact with Johnston inand that Johnston made things up for "commercial advantage".

Puyi had a strong interest in minimising his own role in history, because any admission of active control would have led to his execution. The Australian judge Sir William Webbthe President of the Tribunal, was often frustrated with Puyi's testimony, and chided him numerous times. Behr described Puyi on the stand as a "consistent, self-assured liar, prepared to go to any lengths to save his skin", and as a combative witness more than able to hold his own against the defence lawyers.

Since no one at the trial but Blakeney had actually read Twilight in the Forbidden City or the interviews Woodhead had conducted with him inPuyi 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.

One prisoner told Puyi that the Soviets would keep him in Siberia forever because "this is the part of the world you come from". 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. 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.

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. Inthe 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.

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 HarbinPuyi spent ten years in the Fushun War Criminals Prison in Liaoning 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, 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. 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 "remodelling" consisted of attending " Marxism—Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought 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 Unitthe 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. On one, he met a farmer's wife whose family had been evicted to make way for Japanese settlers and had almost starved to death while working as a slave in one of Manchukuo's henries pu yi biography of alberta. 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.

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. 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 Forwardwhen 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. 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 Beijing on 9 December henry pu yi biography of alberta special henry pu yi biography of alberta from Mao and lived for the next six months in an ordinary Beijing residence with his sister before being transferred to a government-sponsored hotel. 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". He voiced his support for the Communists and worked as a gardener at the Beijing Botanical Gardens. The role brought Puyi a degree of happiness he had never known as an emperor, though he was notably clumsy. 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 Berlinthe Italians shot Benito Mussoliniand the French executed Pierre Lavalso many Westerners are surprised that Puyi was released from prison after only nine years to start a new life.

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". In earlyPuyi met Premier Zhou Enlaiwho told him: "You weren't responsible for becoming Emperor at the age of three or the 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 travelled under Japanese protection to Tianjin, and when you agreed to become Manchukuo Chief Executive.

At the age of 56, he married Li Shuxiana hospital nurse, on 30 Aprilin a ceremony held at the Banquet Hall of the Consultative Conference. From until his death, he worked as an editor for the literary department of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conferencewhere his monthly salary was around yuan. 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".

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? 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. 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 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. 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.