The Last Manchu Read online

  Just as with my other tutors, he felt honored when I bestowed titles on him. After he had received the hat button of the highest grade, he had a full set of court clothes and headgear made. He posed for a photo in these in front of his summer home outside of Peking in the Western Hills and sent prints of it to many of his friends and relatives. The Household Department rented a house for him in the city and he had it decorated as a court official would have done. Upon entering the gate one could see four red tablets on which were written in black ink: Companion of the Yu Ching Palace; Privileged to Be Carried in a Sedan Chair with Two Bearers; Awarded the Hat Button and Robes of the First Rank; Endowed with the Right to Wear a Sable Jacket Whenever he received a special honor he would have a formal memorial written to thank me.

  He was very fond of Chinese tea and peonies and liked to talk with the veteran Ch’ing Dynasty officials. When he retired to England he set aside a room in his house for displaying the things I had given him and also his formal Ch’ing robes. He also flew the flag of Manchukuo over a small island he had purchased in order to show his loyalty to the Emperor. When I think back, I realize that the cordial relationship that developed between us was due to his patience. It could not have been an easy task for such an easily aroused Scot to adopt the attitude he did toward me. Once he showed me some foreign magazines filled with World War I pictures of aircraft, tanks and artillery and explained them to me: the functions of the tanks, which country’s airplanes were the best, the bravery of the Allied soldiers, etc. Although fascinated at first, I eventually became bored as usual and emptied the contents of a snuff bottle on the table and started drawing flowers in the powder. Without a word, Johnston put away the magazine and waited patiently while I played, until it was time to close the class.

  On another occasion he brought me some foreign candies, and I was delighted with the tin box, the foil wrapping paper and the different fruit flavors of the candies themselves. He then told me that the different flavors were derived from chemicals and explained how the candy box had been shaped by machine. I didn’t understand anything of what he told me and I did not want to understand. After I had eaten two pieces, I thought only of the ants in the pine trees outside and I wanted them to taste the chemicals contained in the machine-made box. I therefore went out to the courtyard while Johnston waited patiently until the time for the class to end had come.

  As I gradually came to understand his patience I became interested and obedient. He not only taught me English; he also sought to educate me to be a gentleman in the British tradition. When I was fifteen years old, I decided to follow his advice about being an English gentleman and sent some eunuchs out to buy a complete foreign outfit for me. Later I put on the suit, which was too big for me, and then tied my necktie in a knot, as if it were a piece of rope, outside my collar. When Johnston saw me he became so furious he nearly burst. He told me to take off my foreign clothes immediately and, the following day, he came back with a tailor to take my measurements and had a suit made for me. “If you cannot wear foreign suits made to order,” he explained, “it would be better for you to wear Chinese gowns. A person who wears a ready-made suit bought in a shop is not a gentleman. You’ll be . . .” But what I would be he did not go on to say.

  “If Your Majesty ever visits London,” he told me, “you will be invited to tea parties which, although comparatively casual, can be important occasions. The time will usually be on Wednesdays. At these teas, you will be required to meet many of the aristocrats, scholars, philosophers and other prominent people. Your clothes need not be too formal but your manners will be very important. It would be a disaster for you to drink your tea as if it were hot water, to eat the refreshments as if they were a real meal, and to make too much noise with your fork or spoon. In England tea and cakes are refreshment [he used the English word] to restore your spirits, not a meal.”

  Even though I could not remember all of Johnston’s tea party instructions and threw the caution with which I had eaten the first cake to the winds by the time I ate the second, Western civilization as represented by airplanes in the magazines, candies produced by chemistry, and the etiquette of tea parties made a deep impression on my mind. From the time I first saw the World War I magazines I became interested in foreign periodicals. I was especially struck by the advertisements and immediately ordered the Household Department to order foreign-bred dogs and diamonds from abroad like the ones in the magazines. I also bought some foreign-style furniture and had the red sandalwood table with brass fittings used on the kang for the support of the elbows changed for a small painted desk with porcelain fittings. Imitating Johnston, I also ordered a pocket watch with chain, rings, tie pins, cuff links, neckties, etc., etc. I also asked him to give me a foreign name as well as ones for my younger brothers and sisters and “empress,” and “consort.” I was called “Henry” and my “empress,” “Elizabeth.” I even imitated his way of talking in a mixture of Chinese and English with my fellow students:

  “William [Pu Chieh], hurry up and give me a pencil [pencil in English], sharpen it and put it on the desk [in English].”

  “Joseph [Pu Chia], ask Lily [my third sister] to come around this afternoon to hear some foreign military music.”

  I felt very proud when I talked like this, but when Chen Pao-shen heard this jargon he would lift his eyebrows and close his eyes as if he had a toothache.

  In my eyes, everything Johnston did was the best. He made me feel that foreigners were the wisest and most civilized people and he the most learned man of all Westerners. I don’t think he fully realized how deep his influence was; that the woolen cloth of his suit made me question the value of Chinese silks and brocades; and that the fountain pen in his pocket made me ashamed of my writing brushes and Chinese writing paper.

  Because Johnston spoke disparagingly of Chinese queues and said they looked like pigtails, I had mine cut off. Since 1913, the second year of the Republic, the Minister of Interior of the Republic had sent several letters to the Household Department requesting that the Ch’ing officials persuade the Manchu bannermen to cut off their queues. They also had expressed the hope that the queues in the Forbidden City would go. The tone of these letters was very polite and they never referred to the queues on my own head or those of the high officials. The Household Department used many reasons to defend the use of queues and even went so far as to say that queues were a useful way of distinguishing who should be allowed in and out of the palace. Several years after the matter was first brought up the Forbidden City was still a world of queues. But now, after Johnston’s remark, and within a few days of cutting off my own queue, at least 1,000 disappeared. Only my three Chinese tutors and a few senior functionaries kept theirs.

  The High Consorts wept over the loss of my queue and my tutors wore gloomy expressions on their faces. Later Pu Chieh and Yu Chung had theirs cut off.

  The people who disliked Johnston the most were the staff of the Household Department. At that time, expenditures in the palace were still enormous yet the payments under the Articles of Favorable Treatment from the Republic had been in arrears year after year. In order to meet operating expenses, the Household Department had to sell or mortgage antiques, paintings, calligraphy, gold and silver objects and porcelain from the palace every year. I learned from what Johnston said that there were some questionable practices involved in all this. On one occasion the Household Department wished to sell a golden pagoda as tall as a man, and I recalled that Johnston had told me that the Household Department, when it wished to sell gold and silver objects, should treat them as art objects, and thus receive much more money for them. According to what Johnston had said, only a fool would sell these objects by weight. I then called in a Household official and asked him how he planned to sell the golden pagoda. When he said he planned to sell it by weight, I blew up.

  “Only fools would do such a thing,” I said. “Haven’t you any sense?”

  The Household officials realized that Johnston was really cal
ling their hand so they thought up a new method to forestall him. They had the golden pagoda sent to Johnston’s house and asked him to sell it, saying that I had requested this. Johnston saw through the trick right away and exploded with anger. “If you don’t take it away,” he ordered, “I’ll report this to the Emperor immediately.” The result was that the officials dutifully removed the golden pagoda and made no more trouble for Johnston because they came to appreciate his position within the royal family and knew that he had my full trust.

  In the last year of my studying in the Yu Ching Palace, Johnston had become the most important part of my soul. Our discussion of extracurricular topics occupied more and more of my class time and the area of our discussions broadened. He told me about the life of the British royal family, about the conditions and political systems of the various countries, the strength of the powers after World War I, about conditions all over the world, about the customs of the British Empire “on which the sun never set,” about China’s civil wars, about the vernacular language movement in China (the May 4th, 1919, New Civilization Movement, as he called it) and the relationships of the various Western civilizations with one another. He even talked about the possibility of my restoration and the unreliable attitude of the war lords.

  “Judging from the newspapers,” he said one day, “the Chinese people are longing for the Great Ch’ing Dynasty, They are tired of the Republic. I do not think Your Majesty need worry about the war lords; nor need Your Imperial Majesty try to find out their position by spending so much time reading the newspapers, nor by concerning yourself with their varying attitudes about supporting your restoration or defending the Republic. What Tutor Chen says is true. The most important thing is for Your Majesty to improve himself. But in order to develop your sage virtue you should not always stay in the Forbidden City. Your Majesty can broaden your horizons in Europe, especially in Britain at Oxford University where the Prince of Wales is studying.”

  At times, my intoxication with Western life and my imitation of Johnston did not give him complete satisfaction. For instance, our ideas on Western clothes differed. On my wedding day, after I had appeared at a reception for foreign guests and drank a toast, I returned to the Mind Nurture Palace and took off my dragon robe and changed into a Chinese long gown on top of which I put on a Western-style jacket. Also I put a peaked tweed cap on my head. Just then Johnston came in with some friends. A sharp-eyed foreign lady noticed me standing in the corridor and asked, “Who is that young man?”

  Johnston looked at me and when he saw what I had on his face turned red. His appearance frightened me and the expression on the faces of the foreigners further mystified me. I did not understand what was wrong.

  After they had left, Johnston was still in a temper. In fact he was so worked up, he looked as if he would explode with anger.

  “What kind of style is that?” he asked furiously. “Your Majesty the Emperor—for the Emperor of China to wear a hunting cap! Good God!”

  II

  MY YOUTH

  8

  A Brief Restoration

  IT WAS A PECULIARITY OF EARLY MORNING IN THE FORBIDDEN City that sometimes, even in the heart of the palace, one could hear city noises from afar. There were clear cries of the peddlers, rumbling sounds of the wooden wheels of the heavy Peking carts, and occasionally, soldiers singing. The eunuchs called this phenomenon the “city of sounds.” After I left the palace, I often recalled this “city of sounds” which has so frequently stirred in me many strange dreams and visions.

  But there was another “city of sounds” which aroused in me very deep interest while I still lived in the Forbidden City. This was derived from the talk of my tutors and consisted of rumors regarding my restoration.

  Restoration, in the language of the court, was also called “recovery of the ancestral heritage” and “the glorious return of the old order” or “returning the government to the Ch’ing.” Activity toward this end did not begin with my brief restoration in 1917 and did not stop with my flight to the Japanese Legation in 1924. It would be safe to say that it did not cease from the day of my abdication in 1912 until the establishment of the Manchu Imperial Regime in Manchuria (Manchukuo) in 1934 under the “protection” of the Japanese.

  At first I acted out my part under the direction of my tutors. Behind them in the background were the officials of the Household Department and behind them, in turn, was my father, the former Prince Regent. Eventually I came to understand that real power, from the standpoint of achieving a restoration, was not vested in them. And in fairness to them, it must be admitted that they understood this. Comical as it may now seem, the hopes of the Forbidden City were based on the new politicians and officials who ruled in place of the great Ch’ing. The first object of these illusions was President Yuan Shih-kai himself.

  The death of the Dowager Empress Lung Yu in 1913 was an occasion when the splendor of the good old days was fully restored. Yuan Shih-kai put a black band on his sleeve and ordered flags at half-mast throughout the country. He also decreed a period of mourning for 27 days for all military and civil officials and even sent the members of the National Assembly to attend the funeral. Within the Forbidden City and amidst the wailing of the eunuchs, the black court robes of the Ch’ing Dynasty and the Western formal dress of the Republic were intermingled.

  Soon after this, Yuan Shih-kai surrounded the National Assembly with military and police forces and compelled it to elect him President in place of his previous position as acting president. He then wrote me a most deferential memorial in which he spoke of the gratitude of the five races of China13 for my virtues which, as he explained, compared with “the sun and moon, and also the mountains and the rivers that nurture all life in the country.”

  Later, however, there was a slight change in the political wind. An official of the Republic’s Inspectorate General proposed an investigation of reports of a Ch’ing restoration and Yuan ordered this investigation referred to the Home Ministry for handling. As a result, a high Republican official, who had once lectured on the subject of returning government to the Ch’ing, was sent back to his home town under army escort. But even this could not be regarded as completely definitive in so far as Yuan’s views were concerned since he gave the exiled official 3,000 Mexican dollars14 as a farewell gift and permitted the various government departments to tend the official innumerable farewell parties.

  This vague situation continued until 1916 when Frank J. Goodnow, an ex-Columbia University professor and American adviser to President Yuan, published an article saying that a republican form of government was not suitable for China. At the same time, a Society for the Preservation of Peace was organized which recommended that Yuan Shih-kai himself be elected Emperor. It was not until these two events that people began to understand what kind of restoration Yuan Shih-kai really had in mind. As a result, the atmosphere in the Forbidden City changed markedly.

  One day, soon after this, Chen Pao-shen looked furtively out of the window of the Yu Ching Palace to make sure that there was no one listening. Then he pulled a note out of his sleeve and said to me: “This is a divination made according to the Book of Changes.15 Please look at it, Your Majesty.”

  When I took it, I saw the following words: “Since my enemy is ill, he is not able to approach me. Auspicious!”

  Chen explained that it meant that my enemy’s future was evil and unlucky and that he would be unable to endanger me. He also told me that besides consulting the Book of Changes he had scorched a tortoiseshell and consulted the milfoil16 and they had both given favorable indications too. As a result, Chen concluded, he was sure Yuan Shih-kai could not escape his fate and “would come to a bad end.”

  However, activity by my tutors, as well as my father and the Household Department, to protect my position under the Articles of Favorable Treatment was not confined to consulting the oracles and making divinations. Although I was told nothing about it officially, I was not completely in the dark. To put it crudely, the
y made a deal with Yuan Shih-kai by which the Ch’ing House would support Yuan as Emperor if he would observe the Articles. Documents to this effect were exchanged, including an assurance in Yuan’s handwriting that he would incorporate the Articles of Favorable Treatment in his new constitution. It was even arranged that I would take one of his daughters as my Empress, but before any of these arrangements could be put into effect, Yuan died in June, 1916, after only 83 days as Emperor.

  The news of Yuan Shih-kai’s death was received with great rejoicing in the Forbidden City. The eunuchs rushed about spreading the news, the High Consorts burned incense before the tutelary god, there were no lessons that day in the Yu Ching Palace, and new voices could be heard in the “city of sounds.”

  “Yuan Shih-kai failed because he wanted to usurp the throne.”

  “It’s not that monarchy cannot be restored; the fact is the people want their old sovereign.”

  “Yuan Shih-kai was not like Napoleon III; he had no ancestry to rely upon.”

  “Instead of having a Mr. Yuan as Emperor, it would be better to return to the old master.”

  After Yuan’s death, Li Yuan-hung, who had previously been Vice-President, succeeded him as President with General Than Chi-jui17 as Premier. The palace sent a representative to congratulate President Li and he, in turn, returned to the palace some imperial processional weapons that Yuan had taken. Some of the Ch’ing princes and senior officials who, during the Yuan Shih-kai period, had tried to hide away were now given Republican decorations which they wore at social functions. At New Year and my birthday, the President even dispatched high officials to greet me and my father sent special foods to President Li Yuan-hung. The Household Department became very busy preparing rescripts that bestowed posthumous titles, the right to be transported in a sedan chair carried by two persons and the right to wear peacock feathers and ruby buttons.