Puyi, China’s last emperor

I missed the first half but I managed to see the second hour of the History Channel’s documentary on “Puyi’s unorthodox life through the use of rare archival footage.” Puyi, of course, is the last emperor of China and the subject of Bernardo Bertolluci’s 1987 Oscar award winning film, The Last Emperor. When I first saw the film, I had no idea how much of it was factual and how much was usual Hollywood embellishment. What I didn’t notice was the missing years in the film. Wikipedia says, “Any reference to or mention of the period from 1945 to 1950 is completely absent from the film. It was during this time that Puyi was held as a gulag prisoner by Stalin’s Soviet Union. It was also during this time that he gave testimony and was indicted as a war criminal at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.” I had no idea either that the film was actually based on Puyi’s own autobiography where he lamented the lies he told at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, an important factor in illustrating his transformation from a once imperial ruler to a common member of the proletariat under Mao. Whatever the film lacked in characterization and historical accuracy, the documentary was able to fill in.

There are more interesting details in the documentary, however, that caught my attention. When Puyi was captured by the Russians and was taken prisoner, he was not treated like any other prisoner. He was billeted in a villa and had three good meals a day. Later, when he was repatriated to China, he underwent reformation for ten years in a Fushun War Criminals Management Center where he was treated well too. It was tempting to ask whether it was anti-Communist propaganda that makes it sound incredible that a former emperor, the ultimate personification of the evil that Communism sought to eradicate, could be given such decent treatment. It’s just such a stark contrast from the treatment that Czar Nicholas and his family got some half a century earlier.

Note to self: dig into the possible motives of Stalin and Mao.