Emperor K'ang Teh
By the early 1920s the British hoped that the Japanese would make P'u Yi the emperor of Manchuria, thereby causing trouble between Japan and Manchuria. The British Colonial Office had designated Reginald Johnston to act as ago-between for P'u Yi and the British government. Johnston helped him escape to the Japanese legation. Apparently, P'u Yi's wives and staff joined him at the Japanese compound in Peking. Later they moved to Tientsin, on the coast of China, where the Japanese already had considerable power.
P'u Yi rented a mansion called Chang Garden and set up his court there. He remained there for years, plotting to regain his throne. Tientsin was a cosmopolitan city and P'u Yi and his wife Elizabeth had busy social lives. Their private relationship was very cold. Elizabeth called her husband "eunuch." P'u Yi got along better with his consort, Wen Hsiu. But Wen Hsiu eventually demanded a divorce, possibly because she was jealous of Elizabeth's position as empress. Divorce was unprecedented in the history of the imperial family, but P'u Yi didn't want a public scandal, so he agreed. Wen Hsui returned to Peking. She lived until 1950, and never remarried.
In 1928 the tombs of some of P'u Yi's ancestors, including Dowager Empress Tzu Hsi, were looted by revolutionaries. P'u Yi, who worshipped his ancestors, was extremely upset. From then on he hated the Chinese.
In 1931 the Japanese army invaded Manchuria. At that time the Japanese military and the Japanese government were at odds. The government had never been happy about P'uYi's association with the Japanese military, and it wasn't too happy about the invasion of Manchuria, either. But P'u Yi was delighted. He accepted the army's offer to smuggle him into Manchuria. One night he put on a Japanese military uniform and hid in thetrunk of a car. He was taken to a river where he boarded a boat which, unknown to him, was rigged to explode if attacked by the Chinese. But he safely reached the open sea and boarded a Japanese ship which took him to Manchuria.
Elizabeth joined him there later, but she and P'u Yi spent little time together. She had an affair with a guard and P'u Yi punished her by confining her to her rooms. Eventually the empress became an opium addict. She deteriorated mentally and physically. Once, at a banquet, she grabbed a piece of turkey and tore into it like a wild animal. Her brother tried to cover up the guests' embarrassment by laughing and doing the same thing. But it was obvious that Elizabeth was losing her mind.
The Japanese set up a new country in Manchuria called Manchukuo. They made P'u Yi the chief executive, which angered him - he wanted to be emperor. The Chinese government called Manchukuo a fake country and P'u Yi a traitor to China. The only major countries to recognize Manchukuo's existence were Japan, Italy and Germany. In 1934 the Japanese agreed to make P'u Yi the Emperor of Manchukuo. He took the reign title K'ang Teh, or "Tranquility and Virtue."
The Japanese provided him with a palace and money, and also made all the decisions for him. The emperor was a figurehead with very little say even over his personal life. The Japanese pressured him and his brother to marry Japanese women, which, of course, would put Japanese spies inside P'u Yi's family. P'u Yi resisted by taking a new Manchu consort named Yu-ling, or "Jade Years." But his brother, P'u Chieh, gave in and married Hiro Saga, the daughter of a Japanese nobleman. They had two daughters. Six years after her marriage to P'u Yi, Yu-ling died. P'u Yi believed that the Japanese had poisoned her. Once again he was asked to take a Japanese wife. Finally he agreed to marry a Manchurian girl from a Japanese-run school. Once more he was given photographs and told to choose a bride. He picked a 15-year old, thinking that she mightbe less indoctrinated by the Japanese than an older girl. Her name was Li Yuqin or Yu-Ch'in, "Jade Lute."
The Japanese also ordered P'u Yi to convert to Shintoism. Again he quietly rebelled. Publicly he embraced the Japanese religion, but secretly he became such a devout Buddhist that he refused to let his servants kill flies. During World War II Japan developed Manchukuo as a military-industrial base. At the end of the war Soviet forces invaded Manchuria. Again P'u Yi fled his palace with only a suitcase of jewels and an imperial seal. He retreated to a small town with his family and entourage. When he learned of Japan's surrender he abdicated the throne of Manchukuo. Manchuria was eventually returned to Chinese control.
After his abdication the Soviets told P'u Yi that he would be flown to Japan, and could select eight people to accompany him. He picked his brother, three nephews, two brothers-in-law, a doctor, and a servant. He left his wives behind, and never saw Elizabeth again. The beautiful drug-addicted empress died in a Chinese prison at the age of 40. Jade Lute eventually went to work in a library in her hometown of Changchun. In 1958 she divorced P'u Yi and remarried. She died in Changchun in 2001 of cirrhosis of the liver. P'u Yi and his attendants were not taken to Japan, as they had been promised. Instead they were flown to the USSR and kept under house arrest. P'u Yi was treated very well; apparently Stalin thought that the former emperor might be useful to the Soviets later.
In 1946 P'u Yi was taken to Tokyo to testify against Japanese war criminals who had been his allies. He insisted that he had not acted freely in Manchukuo, but as a helpless puppet of the Japanese. After the trial he spent another four years in the custody of the Soviets. He took up gardening at this time.
At last, in 1950, the Soviets relinquished control of P'u Yi. He was forced to leave his comfortable Russian villa and return to China, where he was sent at once to a prison camp. He remained there for nine years. He slept in a cell with other prisoners, made his own bed, did menial labor, and endured constant brainwashing. The Communists made him betray his Buddhist beliefs by killing flies and mice. P'u Yi went along with his captors' demands, knowing that he must do what he was told if he hoped to ever be freed. After a while he voluntarily surrendered his imperial seal to the Communist government.
In December of 1959 he was finally released. He was in his 50s. He went to live withhis family in his father's house in Peking. The Forbidden City was now open to the public and the former emperor visited it as an ordinary citizen. But P'u Yi was still a puppet. The Chinese government assigned him to work in the gardens of the Academy of Sciences' Institute of Botany. He was kept busy making public appearances on the government's behalf, and was given government posts. With the government's encouragement he wrote his autobiography.
In 1962 Chairman Mao arranged for P'u Yi to marry a Communist Party member, Li Shu-hsien (or Li Shuxian), who had been a nurse in a hospital where Pu Yi was treated during his imprisonment bythe communists. It was the first time in history that a Manchu emperor married a Chinese woman. (She died of lung cancer in 1997 at the age of 72.) In 1965 Chairman Mao called for a Cultural Revolution in China. He wanted to get rid of those who opposed him. When P'u Yi died in 1967 it was rumored that he had been murdered by revolutionaries. But in fact he probably died of cancer. The official report of his death said that he had suffered from cancer of the kidney, uremia, and heart disease.
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