1957 Article and 1967 Article / Obituary

The Milwaukee Journal-Monday, January 21, 1957
Gerald Kloss

Brainwashed Henry-Last of the Manchus
Great Chinese Dynasties Surviving Emperor, Held in Red Prison, Recalls Powerful Sovereigns Who Ruled Cathay For Centuries; Some Slew Women Merely to Express Their Grief

… The last of the Manchu emperors of China-thoroughly brainwashed specimen named Henry Pu-Yi-was interviewed a few weeks ago in a Chinese Communist prison. He has been in communist hands since 1945 and he speaks the party line by rote.
… "I consider this the most fortunate, the most enriching period of my life," he told the interviewer. "I am grateful to the people's government for revealing to me the seriousness of my crimes. They have treated me very well."
… So ends the once mighty dynasty of the Manchu emperors, which began three centuries ago and produced sovereigns who held utter control over life and death in China. The slim, bespectacled Pu-yi, who once held the grand title of Son of Heaven, Lord of 10,000 Years, Grand Khan of Tatary and Emperor of the Great Pure Realm of China, now sits behind bars in a blue cotton prison suit, absorbing and reciting communist doctrine.
… The Manchus were not native Chinese when they took over the Dragon throne at Peking and 1644. They came from the North-Manchuria is named after them-and defeated the army of the last Ming dynasty emperor in a tremendous battle at the Great Wall of China.

CHOSE THIRD SON TO SUCCEED HIM
… The first Manchu sovereign, enthroned at the age of six, was Shun Chih, who died 18 years later, either of smallpox or grief over the death of his favorite wife. According to the latter story, he had coveted the woman when she was married to another Manchu. With the malice afore-thought, he summoned the man to court and boxed his ears for some pretended offense. The insulted subject chose the only course open to a man of honor in that situation-he committed suicide. The Emperor then married the widow.
… When she died years later, Shun Chih was so grief stricken that he almost committed suicide. To display his sorrow, he had 30 women killed, again according to the custom of the time. Finally, he shaved his head and wandered from pagoda to pagoda until he died.
… Chinese practice permitted emperors to choose their own heirs to the throne instead of automatically conferring the title on the eldest son, as was the custom in Europe. Before his demise, Shun Chih chose his third son to succeed him.

HE WAS WARY OF IMPULSIVE ACTS
… He chose well, for Emperor K'ang Hsi reigned over one of the longest, most prosperous periods in China's history. K'ang Hsi initiated many reforms, solidified the Manchu rule and became a generous patron of literature. He reigned more than 60 years-54 years of which were contemporary with France's great Sun King, Louis XIV.
…K'ang Hsi tried to end the cruel practice of foot binding among women. The Manchus had never practiced the custom, but the native Chinese refused to follow their example.
… He was more successful in stamping out the custom of sacrificing any number of slave women to express grief after a death in the royal family. He also abolished the head tax, built roads and canals and popularized an improved strain of rice.
… This great Emperor, who died on a leopard hunt in 1722, waited until the last day of his life before naming his successor-Yung Cheng, his fourth son. He followed his father's example in reform and encouraging literature, though his reign lasted only 13 years.
…Yung Cheng was much more careful than most Chinese emperors in the matter of deciding whether men should be executed. He insisted that only he, as Emperor, should sign death sentences. Furthermore, to prevent an impulsive act on his own part, he imposed a rule on himself that he must hear such cases three times before deciding the issue of life or death.
… His successor, Ch'ien Lung, matched K'ang Hsi's tenure on the throne, abdicating after a 60 year reign because he didn't want to exceed his grandfather's long record. He lived three years after his abdication, dying in 1796.
…Ch'ien Lung's reign was, according to one authority, "unquestionably one of the greatest in Chinese history." His soldiers won half a dozen major wars, and his interest in scholarship and literature resulted in the "golden age" of Manchu Dynasty literature.
… The Emperor knew well the value of observing ceremonials. He decided to pay a visit to one of his victorious generals as a gesture of appreciation. The general, unfortunately, died before the visit could be made. That didn't stop Ch'ien Lung, however. He had the corpse dressed and placed in a chair and then made a call, conversing politely with the body and wishing it a speedy recovery.

Ch'ien Lung, Literary Patron
… Throughout the Manchu Dynasty, European nations had attempted to establish friendly relations with China. The Emperors usually snubbed the foreigners or, at best, merely tolerated them. Ch'ien Lung carried on this tradition.
… When an English envoy arrived in 1792, for example, he was brought to Peking on a vessel with the words "Tribute Bearers From the Country of England" painted on the sail. This was to prove to all Chinese who saw the boat that England was just another part of the Emperor's domain.
… As a literary patron, however, Ch'ien Lung was without equal. Every well-known work of authors and poets of antiquity was collected, revised and reprinted at government expense and placed in public libraries. He was a poet himself, penning some 34,000 poems which were dutifully collected in 24 volumes.
… After this great reign, the Manchu dynasty started a slow decline which ended with the revolution of 1911. A succession of week, indecisive emperors could not withstand the onslaught of the West, despite picturesque attempts to impress European envoys with the power and glory of the realm.
… One letter, written to an English ambassador in 1833, is typical of the Chinese attitude of the time:
… "Even England has its laws," the writer admitted. "How much more the Celestial Empire! How flaming bright are it's great laws and ordinances! More terrible than the awful thunderbolts! Under the whole bright heaven none dares to disobey them. Under its shelter of the four seas. Subject to its soothing care are 10,000 kingdoms."

The Emperor As Weatherman
… However, a series of insurrections in the 19th century belied this stalemate, and even the forces of nature seem to go against the Manchus. When a drought hit the Peking area in 1817, a board of punishments was called to decide whether the Chinese had done something wrong to bring on the dry spell.
… Even the Emperor thought deeply about it. Finally, he came up with the answer:
"I have meditated upon the drought," he reported, "and am persuaded that the reason why the azure heavens above manifested disapprobation by withholding rain for a few hundred miles only around the capital, is that the 50 and more rebels who escaped are secreted somewhere near Peking. Hence it is that fertile vapors are fastbound and the feliticous harmony of the seasons interrupted."
… The trouble with this diagnosis was that an equally disastrous series of storms and floods soon followed.
… When Henry Pu-yi, the last of the Manchu emperors, ascended the throne in 1908, he was faced with problems that would have taxed the wisdom and fortitude of any of his illustrious ancestors. He knew nothing about them, of course, for he was only 2 when he became emperor.
… He didn't get much of a chance to prove his mettle. The Republican revolution swept over China three years later, and, in 1912, the young Emperor was brought out of the nursery to sign his decree of abdication. He was "restored" in 1917, but only for a week.
… When the Japanese took over Manchuria in the 1930's, Pu-yi was set up as Emperor. He hoped to be a real ruler in the ancient lands of the Manchus, but the Japanese soon disabused him of this viewpoint. He was strictly a puppet, repeating Japanese orders, for 14 years until the invading Russians captured him at the end of World War II.
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THE MILWAUKEE JOURNAL-Saturday, November 4, 1967

Pu Yi's Life in Never Never Land

Reported Death of Last Manchu Recalls His Confused Years As Chinese Emperor, Japanese Puppet, Soviet Captive and Red Chinese Loyalist

(Stanley Karnow in a Hong Kong dispatch to the Washington Post.)
… Since the turn-of-the-century, China has lurched from Imperial decay through periods of shaky Republicanism, chaotic warlordism, foreign invasion, Civil War and finally, communist rule as traumatic as turbulent as the years before it. And probably no individual reflected this confused, convulsive era so dramatically as a myopic little man who reportedly died in Peking last week.
… For Pu Yi, virtually a forgotten figure, had in his 61 years been a Manchu Emperor, Republican hostage, Japanese puppet ruler, Soviet captive, red Chinese prisoner and, after brainwashing, a rubberstamp representative in Peking's powerless legislature.
… Over three decades, moreover, he experienced the obscure intrigues of the crumbling Ch'ing: court and the exotic influence of a British tutor, the duplicity of the Japanese and the rigors of communist indoctrination.
… In many ways, therefore, Pu Yi personified modern China. Like China, too, he somehow endured – perhaps because his inherently weak character sharpened in him a crafty skill for survival.

Vices Saved Him from Firing Squad
… As the American China expert Paul Kramer, who edited his clandestine
autobiography, described him, Pu Yi was an avowed liar, hypocrite and maybe homosexual. If these characteristics help Pu Yi to navigate through China's stormy years they may have also saved him from a firing squad when the communists found his defects worthy of their ambitious "thought reform" program.
… One of the fascinations of Pu Yi's life was how, in only a brief moment by Chinese historical measure, it spanned the vast gap between a society immersed in ancient tradition and a regime that currently claims to augur the future. To a degree, Pu Yi's was a bridge between then and now.
… The disintegration of the Ming Dynasty in the mid-17th century opened China to the alien Manchus who came from the north to found the Ch'ing dynasty. But within 200 years, the Ch'ings themselves declined. Their decadence was exemplified by the empress dowager Tzu His, a former Royal concubine notorious for her cunning and cruelty. It was through maneuvers, even after she lost real power, that her grandnephew Pu Yi was selected to ascend the throne when she died in 1908. He was two years old.
… Pu Yi's reign was short. In 1911, Sun Yat-Sen established the Chinese republic, forcing the child Emperor to abdicate. Pu Yi was permitted, however, to retain his title, his courtiers and, in theory, was accorded an annual allowance of $4 million. He thus became a monarch with everything but a country.

He Was Never Alone on Palace Grounds
… The next 13 years, Pu Yi recalled later, he lived "a most aimless and purposeless life," bound by the confines of his rank. He could not stroll around his palace grounds, for example, without Eunuchs surrounding him to warn away people or carry umbrellas, chairs, chamber pots, cakes, tea and other items he might need. One eunuch from the Imperial pharmacy carried such medicines as six Harmony Pills and three Immortal Beverages in case of possible indigestion or other ills.
… Eunuchs also tasted his food - breakfast, usually included more than 25 courses - and rival palace factions fought so hotly to control him that, when time for his marriage arrived, Pu Yi compromised by taking both the child brides offered him. His education was based entirely on Confucian classics, with one appropriate exception: he was allowed to read "Alice in Wonderland."
… At 13, Pu Yi received his first Western impact. Reginald Fleming Johnston, a British far east veteran, became his tutor, and soon the throneless young Emperor was wearing English style suits and German-made spectacles. He also began calling himself Henry, and he installed a palace telephone, enjoying himself usually by anonymously ringing up famous Pekingese actors and philosophers.
… Outside Pu Yi's gilded cage, meanwhile, the Chinese Republic floundered as warlords rampaged around the country. In 1924, the celebrated "Christian general" Fen Yu-Hsiang captured Peking. Pu Yi fled to the nearby port of Tientsin, where he remained for several years while his impoverished "court" plotted ways to restore his monarchy. They eventually advised Pu Yi to seek the aid of the Japanese, then probing into northern China.
… When the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931, Pu Yi was precisely the kind of man they wanted. He was a Manchu and hopelessly naïve, and he fell for their promise to make him full-fledged Emperor of an independent Manchurian state. In fact, as he later found, Pu Yi was nothing more than the quisling "chief executive" of Manchukuo, with a Japanese "advisor" constantly on hand to remind him that he was merely a puppet.
… During his Manchurian days, Pu Yi related afterward, he sometimes boarded on insanity. He cursed and flogged his servants then spent hours in Buddhist meditation. He also took to hypochondria, squandering thousands of dollars on Chinese and Western medicines to cure his imaginary illnesses. In a sense, therefore, Pu Yi was saved in 1945 when Japan collapsed and Soviet troops captured him.
… Held in Siberia, he initially thought he might be permitted to emigrate to England or the United States. After that he petitioned Moscow to remain in the Soviet Union. Finally, he was extradited to China, where the Communists branded him a "war criminal" and placed him in a "labor reform" camp near the Northeast city of Fushun. There, he was told, he would be reoriented and re-educated, just as the Communists aimed to remold all humanity.

He Was a Star in Political Drama
By his own account, Pu Yi was awkward at menial jobs. He excelled, however, in a political drama, "The failure of the Aggressors," staged at the camp to condemn Britain's attack against Egypt in 1956. Assigned to play a left-wing member of Parliament opposed to British policy, Pu Yi donned his old English suit and a white Arrow shirt and shouted his lines in English.
… Since he had so many "crimes" to confess, Pu Yi also scored high in his admissions of guilt. In 1959, consequently, he was given a "special pardon" testifying that he had "genuinely reformed." After an absence of 35 years, he returned Peking.
… There is a poignant note in Pu Yi's autobiography as he recounts how, as a temporary guide, he was instructed to lead a group of former prisoners on a tour of the palace he had occupied in his childhood. The "old and desolate atmosphere" of the palace was gone, he wrote, but the fragrance of the cypress trees in the Imperial Garden "brought back to me memories of my youth."
… As a test of his nine years of "thought reform," Pu Yi was put to work at the Peking botanical garden, spending half his time studying the works of Mao Tse Tung, drilling with a militia group and participating in demonstrations.

Autobiography Smuggled Out Of Peking
… He proved his loyalty, and the Communist, apparently to display their prize catch, appointed him to both the "people's all-China political counsultative conference" and the "national people's congress," a pair of prestigious but impotent organizations.
… While quietly writing his autobiography, which was smuggled out of Peking and published in the United States early this year, Pu Yi simultaneously produced two volumes of official memoirs for the Communists.
… Taking the official line, Pu Yi asserted that he was no longer an Emperor but "one of 650 million emperors and empresses who together ruled China on the glorious leadership of the Communist Party and its chairman, Mao Tse Tung."
… In his private autobiography, Pu Yi conceded that his life was a series of allusions. Whether he ever found reality will probably never be known