A horribly boring read that I had to force myself to finish. I am a fan and student of Chinese history, particularly this era, but found Pu Yi's translated writing style boring, and his personal account filled with too many petty details. ( )

https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3600842.html

I generally enjoy biographies and autobiographies, and this was no exception. Obviously we lack the visual texture of the film, but we get a lot more political analysis and also some more interesting characters - Puyi's father is a major if ineffectual presence in the earlier part, for instance, and Yasunori Yoshioka, Puyi's Japanese minder during the Manchuria period, is devastatingly depicted. (They communicated in English, as Puyi spoke no Japanese and Yoshioka's Chinese was poor.) Interesting to note that Reginald Johnston was not yet 40 when hired by the imperial household; Peter O'Toole was 55 in 1987.

One really important point that is left out of the film entirely: Puyi and his family were Manchu rather than Han. This is a major source of tension between the imperial court and the rest of China for the first half of the twentieth century, and then weirdly provides Mao with a good reason to keep the former emperor and his family around rather than eliminate them, in order to keep the border tribes happy.

It's also interesting that Puyi is a much less pleasant character in his own book than in the film. (Though even the book omits his worst behaviour.) Of course, this is partly because as a result of his process of reorientation (what we might now call brainwashing), he felt the need to admit to his former faults as a human being. The film needs to portray him as an innocent to whom things happen; the book makes it clear that to the extent that this was true, he found it deeply frustrating.

You don't get many autobiographies by former emperors. It's not clear to me if this was ghost-written - I've seen attributions to Puyi's brother Pujie, and also to Lao She, author of Cat Country; but actually I have little difficulty in accepting that he probably wrote most of it himself - he writes a lot about writing, which suggests that it was an activity he enjoyed and was possibly good at. Edited to add: I really did not dig very far on this point; it's fairly well recorded that the ghostwriter was Li Wenda of the People's Publishing Bureau, although Puyi's widow successfully sued him for the full copyright on the book (it had originally been split between ex-emperor and ghostwriter). Pujie (who lived to 1994) and Li Wenda were brought in as advisers for the film. ( )

Ghost-written "autobiography" of the Last Emperor is basically a work of propaganda, but is still interesting. ( )

Exceptionally good. Enjoyed the movie years ago (Last Emperor), but appreciate it even more after having read this auto-biography. ( )

Last Emperor of China by Pu Yi (Author) (1964)

Last Emperor of China 1 July 1917 – 12 July 1917 he was a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 1964 until his death in 1967. Those 12 days, one small bomb was dropped over the Forbidden City by a republican plane, causing minor damage the first aerial bombardment ever in Eastern Asia.

Aisin-Gioro Puyi (simplified Chinese: 溥仪; traditional Chinese: 溥儀; pinyin: Pǔ yí) (7 February 1906 – 17 October 1967)
Emperor Pu Yi is the last Emperor of the Dynasty before the Chinese Republic. The first President of the Republic of China Yuan Shikai,claimed the title of "Emperor of China"

The most interesting people living in China, never using an individual's clan name on complete contravention with the old Chinese and Manchu rule, a way to desecrate the old order quite young at that time see what all this people perceive by sight or have the power to perceive, that December 2, 1908 Pu-Yi became Emperor of a country of China, under the reign name Hsuan T'ung. Puyi succeeded to the Manchu throne at the age of three, when his uncle, the Guangxu emperor, died on Nov. 14, 1908,become the 12th emperor of Qin. The Forbidden City in Beijing. It is a complex composed of several buildings in a variety of styles, including the architectures of Chinese, Japanese, and European.

Was courted by the Japanese who had acquired the former German concessions in Manchuria In order to bring the region under their control the Imperial Japanese Army for China's last emperor Puyi to live in as part of his role as Emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo 1945. After the fall of Manchukuo, the palace was damaged when Soviet troops looted Xinjing ( )