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| Photo: Wikimedia |
This impression stuck in my mind until I met Pu Yi for a
conversation at the Salt Tax Palace, his exile in Manchuria. When I met him as
an adult the impression I got about the boy depicted by the movie suddenly disappeared.
Off course, his childhood history is only a beautiful memory of his past which
is a small part of his dramatic life.
His face pale, looked tired dan didn’t like to talk. He had
a fixed stare behind his black-framed glasses. When we were introduced, he
responded with a friendly nod. But his smile lasted only a second.
I opened the conversation:
“Surely you still
remember that day when you were picked-up from your home by the palace
officials at 3 years old to be carried to the Palace.”
Pu Yi:
“On the evening of 13th November 1908, without
any advance notice, a procession of eunuchs and guardsmen led by the palace
chamberlain left the Forbidden City for our home to inform my father that they were taking away his three-year-old
son Pu Yi to be the new emperor. I screamed and resisted as the officials
ordered the eunuch attendants to pick me up. My parents said nothing when they
learned that they were losing their son. As I cried, screaming that I did not
want to leave my parents, I was forced into a palanquin that took me back to
the Forbidden City. My nanny Wang Wen-Chao was the only person to go with me,
and she calmed me down by allowing him to suckle one of her breasts; this was
the only reason she was taken along.”
I said:
“And then how was the your coronation ceremony to be the
Emperor on 2nd December 1908?”
Pu Yi:
“The ceremony was
very long and tiresome, it was moreover a very cold day, so when they carried
me into the Hall of Supreme Harmony and put me up on the high and enormous
throne I could bear it no longer. My father who was kneeling below the throne
and supporting me, told me not to fidget, but I struggled and cried, “I don’t
like it here. I want to go home.” My father grew so desperate that he was
puring with sweat. As the officials went on kowtowing me my cries grew louder
and louder. My father tried to sooth me by saying, “Don’t cry, don’t cry; it’ll
be soon finished, it’ll be soon finished.”
When the ceremony was over the officials ask each other
surreptiously, “How could he say ‘It’ll be soon finshed’? What does it mean,
his saying that he wanted to go home?” All these discussions took place in a
very gloomy atmosphere as if these words had been a bad omen. Some books said that these words were
prophetic as within three years the Qing dynasty was in fact “finished” and the
boy who wanted to go home did go home, and claimed that the officials had a
presentiment of this.”
I said:
“ And then how was the situation of your abdication from
throne?”
Pu Yi:
“ After making a very
poor show as emperor for three years I made a very poor show of abdicating. One
incident of those last days stands out clearly in my mind. My foster
mother Empress Lung Yu was sitting on a
paltform in the Mind Nurture Palace wiping her tears with a handkerchief while
a fat old man knelt on a red cushion before her, tears rolling down his face. I
was sitting to the right of my foster mother feeling rather bewildered and
wondering why the two adults were crying. There was nobody in the room besides
us three and it was very quite; the fat man was sniffing loudly while he talked
and I could not understand what he was saying. If what I had been told is
right, this was the occasion on which General Yuan Shi Kay directly brought up
the question of abdication and to end the Qing dyansty.”
I said:
“On the 12th of February 9012 your forster mother
formally proclaimed your abdication as the Empreror of China, and then China
became a Repubic, and you were exclied in the Forbidden City. How did you
feel?”
Pu Yi:
“It was this tiny world where I was to spent the most absurd
childhood possible until I was driven out by the National Army in 1924. I
called it absurd because at a time when China was called a republic and when
time that mankind had advanced into the 20th century I was still
living the life of an emperor, breathing the dust of the 19th
century.
Whenever I think of my childhood my head fills with a yellow
mist. The glaced tiles were yellow, my sedna-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 and drank were
yellow, the padded cover of the rice-gruel sauce pan, the material in which by
books were covered, the window curtains, the bridle of my horse.. everything
was yellow. This color, the so called “briliant yellow”, was used exclusively
by the imperial household and made me feel from my earliest years that I was
unique and had a “heavenly” nature different from that of everybody else.
I said:
“ That was probably why you got angry when you saw him
wearing a robe with yellow inner lining, the color of Qing Dynasty, in the
palace.”
Pu Yi:
“He thought the color was apricot. I said that the color was
the imperial bright yellow. My brother then apologized ‘Yes Sir.. Yes Sir…’ and
stood away from me with his hands on his sides. I said ‘The color is bright
color, you have no right to wear it.’ ….. ‘Yes Sir…..’ he answered. With the
‘Yes Sir…” he answered me like how my servants answer me. The sound ‘Yes Sir..’
has disappeared for long time and sounds funny if I think about it.”
I said:
“A sweet memory but also bitter for you. But your chilhood wasn’t
always funny and innocent as depicted in the movie ‘The Last Emperor’, I heard
that since childhood you like to order flogging your eunuchs, is that true?”
Pu Yi:
“Wherever I went, grown men would kneel down in a ritual
kowtow, averting their eyes until I passed. The Emperor was Divine. I could not
be remonstrated with, or punished. Flogging
eunuchs was part of my daily routine. My cruelty and love of wielding power
were already too firmly set for persuasion to have any effect on me.
But no account of my childhood would be complete without
mentioning the eunuchs. They waited on me when I ate, dressed and slept; they
accompanied me on my walks and to my lessons; they told me stories; and had
rewards and beatings from me, but they never left my presence. They were my
slaves; and they were my earliest teachers.”
I said:
“ But till you are an adult you treat the eunuchs as you
like. You don’t trust them dan consider all of them are thieves. You
obsessively went over the account books for signs of fraud. You also
drastically cut back on the food allocated for your staff, who suffered from
hunger.”
Pu Yi:
“They are basically all thieves, everyone, from the highest
to the lowest. I found that by the end of my wedding ceremony, the pearls and
jade in the empress's crown had been stolen. Locks were broken, areas
ransacked, and on 27 June 1923, a fire destroyed the area around the Palace of
Established Happiness. I suspected that the arson were caused by the eunuchs as
they tried to cover up the extent of their theft.
I heard that all the
time the eunuchs smuggled treasures out of the palace and sold them in antique
shops. I ordered an audit of the palace's collections. But before it began, the
fire consumed the place.”
I said:
“Your wife, Empress Wan Rong, Western educated, is known as
a woman who loved to go out dancing, play tennis, wear western clothes and
make-up, listen to jazz music, play
piano , ride horses, read debauch foreign novels, write petty verses, and to
socialize with her friends.”
Pu Yi:
“ I admit that I also like to buy Western goods, especially
Wrigley's chewing gum, Bayer aspirin, cars, gramophone and movies. I like the
new technology of cinema, I was so delighted with the movies, especially Harold
Lloyd films, that I had a film projector installed in the Forbidden City
despite the opposition of the eunuchs who disliked foreign technology in the
Forbidden City.
Wanrong liked to go shopping with her friends, to the
Central Plains, strolling the streets,
to Shunde Shihlin Ji to drink, eat, also
to Asgard saloon which had popular hair style, to the theatre to see a Mei
Lanfang's "Shi Ming". She was spending money like water like she was
still the empress.”
I said:
“But people say that Wan Rong 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. Then she began to smoke
opium during the exile period. Is it true?”
Pu Yi:
“I encouraged her to
do so as I found her more ‘manageable’ when she was in an opium daze. My arriage
to Wanrong began to fall apart as they spent more and more time apart, meeting
only at mealtimes.”
I said:
“In your autobigography “From Emperor to Citizen” you said that one time her brother introduced
her to a Japanese military officer. She subsequently had an affair with the
man. And in 1935 you found out that she was when she was close to giving birth.
How did you feel?”
Pu Yi:
“My feelings at that time were hard to describe, I was angry
but did not want the Japanese man to know. All I could do was express this
anger against her in person.“
I said:
“In the original edition of the autobiography, you wrte that
after Wan Rong gave birth o a baby girl, you told her that his brother had
adopted the child and insisted she make monthly payments for his upkeep. How
did Wan Rong feel that time?”
Pu Yi:
“'Until her death,
she kept having the same dream, in which her child was living next to her.
After the end of the war and our separation, her opium addiction worsened and
her body became weaker. She died of illness in 1946.”
I said:
“And how is her baby girl?”
Pu Yi:
“The baby actually died shortly after birth………”
This is an imaginary interview in memory of Pu Yi, The Last
Emperor.
Source: Authobiography “From Emperor to Citizen”, South
China Morning Post, Wikipedia.
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