Remembering China’s last emperor, Puyi, 50 years after his death

Oct 17 , 2017

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the death of China’s last emperor – Puyi. The archives of Beijing’s Palace Museum reveal his forgotten treasures, from playthings during his childhood to his iconic round spectacles

On a sunny day in 1960 in the Beijing Botanical Garden, a bespectacled man in a Mao jacket nurtured a small bed of flowers. Many had forgotten that this gardener had once been responsible for more than just a patch of land. This workman, commonly known as Puyi, had once owned the entire empire.

Born in 1906, the last Chinese emperor, Aisin Gioro Puyi, started his reign when he was only two. He was chosen to be the emperor by Empress Dowager Cixi. Throughout his tumultuous life, Puyi was crowned and deposed three times.

In 1950, after the Chinese Communist Party came to power under Mao Zedong , he was imprisoned as a war criminal for betraying his country during the second world war. He spent his life at a prison cell in Fushun for almost a decade until being pardoned in 1959. The last monarch was then appointed as a gardener and lived his life as an ordinary citizen until he passed away in 1967.

Puyi (top right) on the cover of ‘Time’ magazine in 1936, alongside Japanese Emperor Hirohito (top left), Soviet political leader Joseph Stalin (bottom left) and the leader of the Republic of China, Chiang Kai-shek.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Puyi’s death, we browsed through the archives of the Palace Museum – the place where Puyi had once called home – to find some of Puyi’s possessions. The relics reflect the imperial life of the last Chinese emperor, and the fading glory of the Qing dynasty. After Puyi became a regular citizen, he too had to buy a ticket to enter his old home.

The Forbidden City turned into a national museum in 1925.

The gold eyeglasses