The Last Manchu Read online

  3

  ″Mothers″ and Son

  WHEN I ENTERED THE FORBIDDEN CITY AS THE ADOPTED son of the preceding Emperors Tung Chih and Kuang Hsu, all their wives became my “mothers.” Although I was primarily the “son” of Tung Chih, and only secondarily the “son” of Kuang Hsu, the latter’s Empress chose to ignore this distinction and used her authority as Empress Dowager to push the wives of Tung Chih into the background. As a result, they were not really treated as my “mothers.” Thus, for example, when we all ate together, Lung Yu as Empress Dowager and I sat, while the others had to stand. After Lung Yu’s death, however, the three consorts of Tung Chih combined with Kuang Hsu’s consort to put their case before the princes and nobles, and succeeded in obtaining the title of High Consort. From then on, I addressed all of them as “august mother.”

  But even though I had so many “mothers” I never knew any motherly love. One day when I was five I ate too many chestnuts and developed stomach trouble. For over a month, Lung Yu allowed me to eat only a thick congee soup. Even though I cried for more solid food and said I was hungry, no one paid any attention.

  Shortly after this I was walking beside one of the lakes at the Winter Palace, and Lung Yu asked someone to give me some stale bread rolls with which to feed the fish. I couldn’t help but stuff one of them into my mouth, but the evidence that I gave of my hunger did not make Lung Yu change her mind about what I should eat.

  Later, after I was restored to a regular diet, there were still times when I had to suffer. One day I ate six cakes at one sitting and the Chief Eunuch of the Presence found out about it. Afraid that I might have another attack of indigestion, he asked two eunuchs to pick me up by the arms, turn me upside down and bounce my head on the brick floor as if I were a sort of human pile driver.

  Although this may seem unreasonable, there were many other things that were far more unreasonable. Before I was seven or eight, whenever I became angry or lost my temper and caused other people trouble, the chief eunuchs would seek to cure me by saying: “The Lord of Ten Thousand Years has fire in his heart. The best solution is for him to sing for a while to disperse the flames.”

  While saying this they would shove me into a small room and lock the door. No matter how much I kicked and banged and shouted no one would pay any attention until I stopped, or, as the eunuchs would say, until I “had dispersed the flames.” Only then would they release me. This peculiar cure was not an invention of the eunuchs or of the Empress Dowager Lung Yu. It was a tradition in the royal family and my brothers and sisters also received similar treatment in my father’s mansion.

  The Empress Dowager Lung Yu died when I was seven years old, so that I actually lived longer with the remaining four High Consorts. I saw them very infrequently, however, and I never sat with them or talked with them in a family way. Each morning I would go to them to pay my respects. At this time of day the consorts were having their hair dressed and, while this was being done, they would ask: “Did the Emperor sleep well? How far have you read in your book?” It was always the same banal talk. Sometimes they would give me clay toys to play with, but they never failed to end the audience with the same final phrase: “Emperor, please go out now and play.” This would be the end of the meeting and we would never see one another again for the whole day.

  The High Consorts all addressed me as Emperor, as did my own parents and real grandmother. Everyone else called me “Your Majesty.” Even though I had a name, as well as a childhood nickname, none of my mothers—real or by adoption—used them. I have heard others say that when they think of their childhood names they recall their youth and maternal love, but I have never felt such an association. Some people have told me that when they left their homes to go away to school and fell ill they would think of their mothers and of the times when they had been nursed by them through a sickness. I have often been ill as an adult and have, at these times, recalled illness as a child and the visits to my sickbed of the High Consorts. But these recollections have never aroused any feelings of maternal love in me.

  As a child, whenever I was sick, the High Consorts would indeed come to see me one by one. But all they would do would be to say: “Is the Emperor getting better? Have you had a good sweat?” In two or three minutes they would be off, and, what was worse than their stilted and distant questions, was the swarm of eunuchs who accompanied each of them on their visits and packed themselves into my bedroom. Within several minutes, after one High Consort had left with her retinue, another would arrive and the room would be packed again. Every day there would be four entrances and four exits and the air in my room would be disturbed four times.

  Whenever I was ill, the Imperial Dispensary in the palace of the High Consort Tuan Kang would prepare my herb medicines. This dispensary was better equipped than the others in the Forbidden City. She had inherited it from the Dowager Empress Lung Yu. In fact, Tuan Kang had more control over me than the other High Consorts. This was not in accordance with Ch’ing Dynasty precedent and it precipitated a tragic conflict within the family that had dire consequences for my real mother.

  Tuan Kang’s special position was derived from the interference of Yuan Shih-kai, for when Lung Yu died, Yuan had recommended to the Household Department that she should become the head of the High Consorts. I don’t know why Yuan recommended this. Some people said that Tuan Kang’s brother persuaded Yuan to make this recommendation; whether this was true or not I do not know. But at any rate, Than Kang became my “mother” of the first rank.

  It was under such an arrangement that I reached the age of twelve or thirteen under the care of my four “mothers.” At that time, like any other child, I loved to play with new things and some of the Eunuchs of the Presence, in order to please me, bought me amusing things outside the Forbidden City. Once a eunuch bought me a uniform of an army officer of the Republic complete with a plume on the cap like a feather duster, and a sword and leather belt. When I put them on, I was pleased with myself and didn’t anticipate that Tuan Kang would become enraged when she found out about it. But as a result of an investigation, she not only found out about the uniform but also that I was wearing some foreign socks that a eunuch had bought for me. She regarded this as intolerable and ordered the two eunuchs responsible to her palace and had each of them given 200 strokes of the heavy rod and sent to the cleaning department for hard labor. After she had punished them, she sent for me.

  “The Emperor of the Great Ch’ing Dynasty has sought to wear the uniform of the Republic and foreign socks,” she raged. “Where will this lead to?”

  I thus had no alternative but to pack up the uniform and sword which I loved, take off my foreign socks and put on again my court clothes with the dragon designs.

  If the High Consort Tuan Kang had limited her control of me to uniforms and socks, I would not later on have indulged in the disrespectful conduct I showed her. But Than Kang had set her heart on imitating the Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi even though it had been her own sister, the “Pearl Concubine,” whom Tzu Hsi had ordered thrown down a well in the Forbidden City after the Boxer Rebellion. Still she wished to imitate her and thus she not only had the eunuchs severely beaten but she also sent a eunuch to the Mind Nurture Palace to spy on me. He would report to her in detail every day about me just as the Empress Dowager Tzu Hsi’s eunuchs had reported on Emperor Kuang Hsu. All this hurt my self-respect. Also my tutor, Chen Pao-shen, was both indignant and disturbed about it and lectured me on the distinctions between the first wife and the secondary wives, which was the category into which Than Kang fell. As a result, I boiled with anger.

  After this had been going on for a while, one of the physicians of the Imperial Medical Department was fired by Than Kang. It became the occasion for a big explosion. This particular doctor was one of those attendant upon Tuan Kang so that his dismissal had really nothing to do with me. Nevertheless, I discussed it in detail with my tutors, one of whom explained that “this kind of monopolizing of influence is really too much for a per
son who is only an imperial consort.” Unexpectedly, too, the eunuch who had been the informer involved in the affair of the uniform and the socks now turned out to be on my side in the dispute over the physician. He adopted a similar point of view as my tutor.

  “My Lord of Ten Thousand Years,” he said, “aren’t you becoming another Kuang Hsu? This affair of the Imperial College of Physicians requires a final word from you. Even your slave cannot bear to see such things happen.”

  These insinuations enraged me to the point where I rushed over to the palace of Tuan Kang and shouted at her: “For what reasons did you dismiss the physician? You are too dictatorial! Am I not the Emperor? Who has the final say around here, me or you? This is really too much!”

  Tuan Kang’s face turned white with anger but I did not wait for her answer. Instead, with a flick of my sleeve, I ran out of her palace.

  The furious Tuan Kang did not call me back. Instead, she sent for my father and the other princes. With cries and shouts she asked them to support her decision. When I heard of this meeting, I asked all of them to come to the Imperial Study.

  “Who is she?” I said. “She’s only a consort. In all the generations of the Ch‘ing Dynasty we have never had an emperor who had to call a consort of the previous generation ‘august mother.’ Are we to maintain no distinctions between the first wife and the secondary wives? If not, why does not my brother call his father’s secondary wives ‘mother’? Why should I have to listen to her at all?”

  The princes, even after listening to my ranting, had nothing to say, but one of the other High Consorts who was also not on good terms with Tuan Kang came to see me after they had gone. “Take heed, Your Majesty,” she warned. “I hear it said that Than Kang is planning to invite your real mother and grandmother to the palace to see her.”

  It was true! They were sent for by Than Kang, and although she had in fact got nothing by appealing to the princes, her shouting had an effect on my mother and grandmother. My grandmother, especially, became frightened and finally they both knelt before Than Kang and begged her to calm herself and promised to persuade me to say I was sorry.

  When I reached the Lasting Peace Palace I found I could not resist the persuasion of my mother and grandmother, both of whom had tears in their eyes. I finally agreed to apologize to Than Kang.

  But I resented having to make that apology. I walked up to her but did not look at her face. “Imperial August Mother,” I mumbled, “I was wrong.” Then I left. Although this saved Than Kang’s face and she stopped her crying and shouting, it precipitated my real mother’s suicide two days later.

  In her whole life my mother had never been scolded by anyone. She had a strong personality and could not stand any form of correction, for she had been a favorite in her mother’s house and continually indulged by my father. The terrible scene she had been through was too much for her. And so, after she had returned to my father’s mansion from the Palace of Lasting Peace, she took an overdose of raw opium.

  Than Kang, fearful lest I should order an official investigation of the circumstances of my mother’s death, changed her attitude toward me completely. She not only stopped restricting my activities but also became very agreeable. As a result, the family in the Forbidden City was restored to the quiet of former days, and the mother-son relationship with all the High Consorts was restored. But for this, my own real mother had been sacrificed.

  4

  My Wet Nurse

  IN THE JOURNAL OF MY LIFE, WRITTEN BY MY TUTOR, there is an entry dated February 21, 1913:

  His Majesty frequently quarrels with the eunuchs. He has already had about seventeen of them flogged for very minor offenses. His obedient servant, Chen Pao-shen, and others have tried to persuade him to stop but he will not listen to them.

  Often, when I became out of sorts, the eunuchs would receive punishment. And if I suddenly became happy and high-spirited, they would also be in for trouble. When I was a child, I not only enjoyed watching camels, feeding ants and worms and observing fights between dogs and cattle, I was also especially fond of practical jokes. Many of the eunuchs suffered as a result. One day, at the age of eight or nine, it suddenly dawned on me to find out if the eunuchs would really carry out an order of the “divine Son of Heaven” without question. And so I pointed to a lump of dirt on the floor. “Eat it up for me,” I ordered. A eunuch knelt down and ate it without question. Once I was playing with a fire pump and, just then, an aged eunuch walked in front of me. I was seized with an irresistible urge to spray water on him. Instead of running away, he knelt down under the water and, as a result, received such a shock from the cold, for it was wintertime, that we later had to revive him with massage and artificial respiration.

  The difficulty, of course, was that with everyone trying to please me and cater to my every wish, my propensity for practical jokes was increased rather than diminished. My tutors tried to use philosophy as a curb and talked to me about such abstract ideas as benevolence, humanity and forgiveness while, at the same time, they recognized my authority. But no matter how many times they reasoned with me in this way and told me of the heroic deeds and benevolence of the Emperors of the past, this sort of persuasion had no effect.

  The only person, in the palace, who could control my practical jokes was my wet nurse, Mrs. Wang Chiao. She knew nothing of Chinese history and the heroic deeds of the great Ch’ing Emperors, but she could always persuade me and I felt I could not refuse her. Once there was a young eunuch who put on a special puppet show for me. I loved it and I decided to give him a piece of pound cake to eat. Then, all of a sudden, my fondness for practical jokes came over me. I decided to play a trick on him. I tore open the bag of little iron pellets that I used for my Chinese boxing lessons and put some of them in the cake. When my wet nurse saw what I was doing, she said:

  “My own Master and Lord. How can you put pellets in that cake and let him eat it?”

  “I just want to see his face after he bites into it,” I said.

  “But won’t it break his teeth?” she asked. “If his teeth are broken he won’t be able to eat.”

  I thought over what she had said for a minute. “Well,” I explained, “I just want to see what he looks like after he cracks his teeth this once. I won’t do it again.”

  “How about using green lentils instead? Biting on the lentils will be just as much fun for you to see as biting on the pellets.”

  In this way the little eunuch who played so well with the marionettes avoided disaster, and in the end I was happy for him.

  Another time, I was playing with my air gun and pointing it at the windows of the eunuchs’ rooms. I thought it fun to shoot little holes in their paper windows. Someone sent for my nurse.

  “Oh Master,” she said. “There are people in those rooms. You may hurt them.”

  Only then did I think that there were people behind the windows whom I could not see and that they might be injured by my shooting. My nurse was the only one who ever explained to me that other people were human beings as I was; not only did I have teeth, but other people had teeth as well; not only could I not bite into iron pellets without being injured, but other people could not as well; not only did I have to eat, but other people had to eat as well, otherwise they would go hungry. Other people also had feelings and could be hurt by the pellets from my air gun. Much of this was simply common sense which I knew as well as anyone. But in my peculiar environment, it was difficult to keep in mind because I tended not to think of other people and not to put myself in their shoes. In the Forbidden City in which I grew up, other people were all slaves—my subjects. In the palace, from my infancy until the time I grew up, only my wet nurse, because of her simple language, was able to make me grasp the idea that I was like other people.

  I was fed on Mrs. Wang’s milk until the age of eight. In these eight years we were inseparable. When I Was eight, the High Consorts had her sent away without telling me. At that time I would rather have seen all of my four mothers expelled from
the palace instead. I still wanted to keep my wet nurse, but no matter how I cried the High Consorts would not allow me to have her back.

  After my marriage, I sent people to search for Mrs. Wang and sometimes I had her stay with me in the palace. During my Emperorship of Manchuria, I welcomed her to Changchun and supported her until I left the Northeast. She never sought anything for her own benefit because of her special position. She was, by nature, calm and mild and never quarreled with anyone. Her face always wore a smile. She did not talk much, and if no one took the initiative in conversation, she would remain silent, smiling quietly. When I was young I used to find her charming little smile rather strange. Her eyes seemed to be fixed on some fardistant place and often I wondered whether she had seen something in the sky outside the window or was looking at the scrolls on the wall. She never spoke about her own life or background.

  In later years, I talked about her with her adopted son and for the first time I learned about the life of this person whose milk had fed me. She was born in 1887 to a poor farm family by the name of Chiao in a small village of Jenchiu County in what is now Hopei Province. She was one of a family of four, which included, besides herself, her mother, father and brother, who was six years older than she.

  The father, who was about fifty, had a few acres of poor lowland which was parched when it did not rain and flooded when it did. Even in a good year there was not enough to feed them. When my nurse was about three, there was a severe flood and her whole family had to flee to avoid disaster. While en route, her father wanted to abandon her several times, but he always put her back into one of the broken baskets slung from his carrying pole. The other basket contained some tattered clothes and bedding which was all the property they had in the world. They did not have a single grain of rice to eat. When she later talked to her adopted son about how she had almost been abandoned as an infant, she had no word to say against her father. She only pitied him and thought of the hunger that had made him so weak he could hardly carry her along the road.