by Henry Pu Yi
On March 10, three days after our trip to Taishanpao, a guard told me, Pu Chieh, my two brothers-in-law and my three nephews to go to the Center Chief’s office. When we entered, to our astonishment we saw my uncle, Prince Tsai Tao, and my third and fifth sister from whom we had been separated for over ten years.
When I saw my uncle looking as healthy as ever and my sisters in their cotton-padded uniforms, I felt as if I were entering dreamland. Tsai Tao was the only surviving close relation of mine of the previous generation. In 1954 he had been elected to the National People’s Congress as the representative of China’s two million Manchus. He was concurrently a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. He told me that he had met Chairman Mao a few days previously at the second meeting of the Congress. Premier Chou En-lai had introduced him as Mr. Tsai Tao, the uncle of Pu Yi. Chairman Mao had shaken hands with him and said, “I have heard that Pu Yi’s studies are going well; why don’t you go visit him . . . ?”
As my uncle told us this, we had to wipe away our tears, and my nephew Little Jui sobbed out loud. From this meeting I learned the fate of the Manchu nation and my own Aisin-Gioro clan. As Tsai Tao explained it, before liberation there had been only 80,000 Manchus officially registered, but now the number was thirty times as high. After 1911, the Manchus had encountered increasing difficulty in surviving under the Peiyang war lords and the Kuomintang which had been anti-Manchu and thus they had assumed Han nationality and taken surnames like Chin, Chao and Lo. My father’s family in Tientsin, for example, had taken the name of Chin. But after the Communists took over, more and more Manchus acknowledged their true minority nationality and, upon the proclamation of the new Constitution, all the Manchus had registered as actual Manchus and thus the number reached 2,400,000.
This change in government policy toward Manchus had not only affected the Aisin-Gioros and their careers, but also Prince Tsai Tao and the various royal princesses. My uncle was sixty-nine years old, and in such good health and physical vigor that I could see little of an old man about him. When he talked it was as he used to. He explained that after the Communist take-over, he had worked for a department of the Liberation Army that was in charge of horses (a field in which he was an expert) and had spent some time on the steppes of the Northwest. He also explained that he was planning to go back to the border area in order to inspect the work of the national minorities as part of his duties as a member of the National People’s Congress.
Right after the entry of the Liberation Army into Peking many of the retired Manchu statesmen had felt very uncomfortable. Although the majority of them had not become members of the new Manchukuo nobility, they had not forgotten their status as descendants of the royal family and their respect for my person. When they learned I had been imprisoned they felt even more worried than before. The combination of this, the diminishing number of Manchus and their difficulties in earning a living all added to their uncertainty. Thus, when they learned of the opening of a special school for Manchu children, they were surprised. Later, when cadres from the People’s Government visited many of them and invited them to be delegates to local consultative conferences and asked them to express opinions on Manchu problems they were even more surprised. It was clear that the new government was pursuing a different policy than the Kuomintang with the respect to the border peoples.
In Peking, all the descendants of my great-grandfather the Emperor Tao Kuang and of his brothers Prince Tun, Prince Kung and Prince Chun were over sixty except for a few cousins of mine who were a little younger. My second cousin Pu Chin (also known as Pu Hsueh-chai), an outstanding painter, calligrapher and player of the ku chin (an ancient Chinese stringed instrument), was over sixty and had never expected that he would once again be able to take his ku chin down from the wall and be allowed to carry it once a week to play on the banks of Peihai Lake in Peking. He had also been elected Vice-President of the Ku Chin Research Association and President of the Calligraphy Research Association and had become a teacher at the Academy of Chinese Painting. His cousin Pu Hsiu, who was Little Jui’s uncle, had been at one time a “Companion of the Chien Ching Gate” in the Forbidden City and had looked after my property in Tientsin while I was in Manchukuo. Subsequently he had gone blind, but after the take-over, his experiences and the historical materials he carried in his mind were regarded as invaluable and he was employed as a member of the Institute for Classical and Historical Studies. Pu Hsiu recounted for others to write down what he remembered about Ch’ing history.
I once made a calculation on the basis of the “Jade Register” of the imperial family compiled in 1937 and the information provided by my younger brothers and sisters about the rate of infant mortality in my branch of the Aisin-Gioro clan. The death rate of children before reaching majority was 34 percent during the last part of the Ch’ing Dynasty, 10 percent during the Republic, and none during the ten years since the take-over. The figures of the whole Aisin-Gioro clan were even more staggering and something like 45 percent of the boys and girls of my own and my father’s generation dying before reaching majority, and most of the deaths occurring before reaching the age of two.
When I met my uncle and sisters I had not compiled these statistics, but when I listened to my sisters talking about their children, I couldn’t help but think of all the children who had died in my own and my father’s generation as well as the “Jade Register” which contained blank spaces for the children who had died before they had been given names. And in the previous generation, if they had reached maturity, besides airing their birds in cages early in the morning on the streets of Peking, they had nothing to do except to drink tea until lunchtime. They had no future under the Republic. Few of them learned anything and once they had used up their money they could not find employment or jobs since they were unskilled.
But now things had changed. In Peking, a younger brother and my six sisters had a total of twenty-seven children and, with the exception of those not yet of school age, the rest were in school or in college. My uncle Tsai Tao had sixteen grandchildren and great-grandchildren of whom the eldest was a technician at a hydroelectric plant, one granddaughter was a student at the Military Medical College, one had joined the People’s Volunteers in Korea and had returned and was in college, another was an army literary and art worker, and others were, with the exception of the very young or those in school, all working. The past life of going to the races, hunting with eagles or strolling in the streets with lanterns was a joke.
From the time of this first visit of Tsai Tao, family members came to see me often at the Control Center.
The New Year of 1957 was celebrated with more festivity than the previous ones. The authorities told our Committee that if we thought we could manage a large-scale party, we could get the Number 3 and Number 4 Center Chiang Kai-shek detainees to fill the auditorium as an audience for our show.
The reason the Center authorities had given us their support was because they felt these shows enabled the detainees to educate themselves. In the past they had been very successfully used by the Japanese war prisoners, who wrote educational plays on the basis of what they read in the Japanese press. These had a great remolding effect on the writers, performers and audience alike. Our own Study Committee therefore decided to include plays of this sort in our own show. Two plays were decided upon: one was called The Failure of the Aggressors and dealt with the collapse of the British invasion of Egypt, and the other dealt with the transformation of a Manchukuo traitor and was titled From Darkness to Glory. These were written by my brother Pu Chieh and a former official of Wang Ching-wei’s40 government, named Mu.
As the work on the plays went ahead all kinds of other performances were also under preparation. Old Lung, our magician, whose tricks were always welcome, indicated that he would get up a large-scale act because he was tired of the small tricks he had previously performed of swallowing pingpong balls and obtaining eggs from a hat. Old Cheng, two Mongol brother
s and Old Kuo were busy preparing a Mongolian song-and-dance act. My cell chief who was fond of music was active rehearsing choral singing and others were busy with many of the traditional items. During these few days, the busiest man was Old Wan, the head of the study committee who was in charge of the program. Little Jui was responsible for the decorations since he was so skillful in making paper flowers and lanterns. Big Li was in charge of the lighting. Each and everyone of us were involved in the preparations.
In the past, I had not performed in the New Year shows and had not been asked to help out with the decorations. Even when I had offered to hold thumbtacks or paper streamers people had felt that I was so clumsy I would only be in their way. But this time, to my astonishment, Old Chu, our cell chief, discovered that my singing was passable and signed me up for the choir. I was grateful and practiced with gusto. But just when I had learned my songs, Old Wan, my brother-in-law, who was chief of the Study Committee came to see me.
“Pu Yi,” he said. “There’s a part for you in the first show. It’s not too difficult and there aren’t any lines. Besides, you can make up your own lines as well. This is a significant task and part of your self-education. . . .”
“You don’t need to persuade me,” I interrupted. “As long as you think I’m all right, I’ll do it.”
“Of course, of course you will do it.” Old Wan grinned. “You can do it; besides you have a loud voice and . . .”
“You flatter me! Tell me, what do you want me to play in?”
“The Failure of the Aggressors,” Wan answered. “It’s about the displeasure of heaven that the British incurred when they invaded Egypt. It’s based on news items. Old Jun is playing the leading role—the Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd. You will be a left-wing Labour Member of Parliament.”
I went to see Pu Chieh to read the script and to copy down my lines. Then I went to choose a costume. Since I was playing a foreigner, I, of course, had to wear Western-style clothing of which there was no shortage since many of the prisoners had arrived in them and they had been stored in the custodial section. I thus chose the suit I had worn at the International Tribunal in Tokyo, a shirt, a tie, etc., and then returned to my cell. Since nobody else was in the cell, I started dressing. As soon as I had put on a white Arrow shirt, Old Yuan happened to walk in and was dumfounded at what he saw.
“What are you doing?” he asked. Since I was excited and my shirt collar was too tight, I could not answer at first. “I’m going to take part in the play,” I finally panted. “Please come here and help loosen the belt at the back of my vest.”
Even though he did this, I still could not button it, and I thus realized I had put on weight. Even my leather shoes from England were too tight for me, and I asked Old Yuan in irritation if I would need to wear leather shoes to play a British M.P.
“Of course you must,” Old Yuan answered. “The British Labour Party M.P.s even wear perfume. So how could you think of not wearing shoes? Don’t worry about it; your shoes won’t be too tight after you wear them for a while and the vest can be altered. Go learn your lines. It’s really a strange thing that you will be acting.”
As I walked down the corridor I could still hear his laugh, but I was really very happy and, from that moment on, I used all my time to memorize my lines. What Old Wan had said was correct. They were very short; perhaps I was the actor with the fewest lines. According to the story of the play, at the very end Selwyn Lloyd made a speech in the House of Commons defending the invasion of Egypt and some of the opposition members started to question him and then joined in an attack on him. At this point, I was to stand up in their midst and challenge him and say: “Mr. Lloyd, please don’t try to defend your actions. They are a shambles, a shambles, a shambles!” The Parliament was then supposed to be filled with a hubbub of angry shouting and demands for Lloyd’s resignation, during which I was to shout “Get out.” This play had a very simple plot in which the most important element was the parliamentary debate that only lasted fifteen minutes. But I spent dozens of fifteen minutes preparing my part fearful that I would forget my lines or make a mistake and thus disappoint the hopes that had been placed in me.
When New Year came and I went into the hall for the party, I was attracted by the atmosphere of festivity and the beautifully decorated stage and I forgot my nerves. The colorful decorations and the handmade paper flowers deserved the praise of all of us. It was all quite professional. Old Wan had written a beautiful sign in Sung Dynasty style calligraphy: Evening Party to Celebrate the New Year. When we saw how impressed the Chiang Kai-shek detainees were we couldn’t help but feel happy.
The other acts went off successfully, drawing lots of applause. When our act got underway, Old Jun, who was dressed up to look just like Selwyn Lloyd, was very lively. Since he had a big nose, he was really the only M.P. who looked like an Englishman. His acting was outstanding in showing the anger, fear and desperation of a defeated Foreign Secretary. After the play had gone on for ten minutes, Old Yuan, who was sitting next to me on the stage, and was playing the part of a member of Parliament, said to me (this was in the play), “Don’t be so wooden, put some movement into it.” At this point I looked forward and watched the audience and got the feeling that it was paying more attention to me, the left-wing M.P., than to the Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd. All of a sudden, I became very tense. No one had noticed me when I was singing in the choir, but now I had become the focal point of the audience. Before I could recover my composure, Old Yuan nudged me. “Say it, it’s about time for you to refute him,” he whispered. I stood up immediately, turned toward Old Jun who was still talking, and forgot my lines! Finally, inspiration came to me and, using English, I shouted at him, “No! No! No!” My shout interrupted Old Jun’s speech and then I remembered my lines and continued, “Mr. Lloyd, please don’t continue your tricky defense.” Putting one hand on my waist, I pointed with the other, “In fact, this is a shambles, a shambles, a shambles!” Immediately, I heard a burst of applause from the audience, while on the stage we repeated in chorus, “SCRAM! SCRAM!” At this, the Foreign Secretary scuttled off the stage.
“You played very well.” Old Yuan was the first to congratulate me as he descended from the stage. “Although you were a little excited, you were really good!” Later, others also indicated their approval and they laughed at the line I had improvised. Some even recalled the time when I had refused to meet a Swedish prince because he had his photo taken with a famous actor. I couldn’t help but join in the laughter.
In 1958, the importance attached to labor and the enthusiasm for it made a deep impression on us. When we learned that Chairman Mao himself and Premier Chou had taken part in building the Ming Tombs Reservoir, we immediately asked the Center authorities and the study committee to organize us for productive labor.
The authorities met our request by allowing us to set up a workshop to manufacture miniature electric motors, but as we were short of manpower this task was given to Section 3 and Section 4 of the Chiang Kai-shek detainees and we were then organized into five specialized groups: animal raising, food processing, horticulture, hothouse vegetable raising and medicine. Four others and I were assigned to the medical group. Our job was to clean up the clinic daily and do various odd jobs and help with auxiliary medical work. We also spent two hours a day studying medicine under the direction of Dr. Wen of the Center staff, and also held group discussions. My four colleagues had all been doctors before; three of them reviewed their Western medicine and one his Chinese medicine. In addition we all took a course on acupuncture41 and moxibustion.42 This period of working and studying with a small group gave me new confidence.
When I first joined the medical group my proficiency was much below that of my associates. The surgical cotton pads I made looked like lumps of worn clothing padding and when I took blood pressure, I would either forget to listen to the stethoscope or else forget to look at my watch. When I was learning to use the electrical equipment for treating blood pressure, I was alw
ays in a state of confusion and could do nothing right. But I was determined to master my job and after the doctor or nurse had taught me something, I would ask my classmates for further explanation and then I would practice by myself. Thus I gradually learned to master my job as a medical assistant. At that time one of the Japanese detainees used to come for electrical treatment every day and he would always bow nearly to the ground afterward and say, “Thank you, Doctor,” and I couldn’t help but be delighted by this. I came to think that although my white coat and spectacles gave me the appearance of a doctor, the bowing also showed that my skillful technique had gained the patient’s confidence. At the end of the first course, Dr. Wen gave us a test and I got full marks with the others. I thus became confident that I was not so stupid and had been able to master a trade so that I would no longer need my 468 pieces of jewelry to support myself.
But I had rated myself too highly, as I found out when I was faced with a test. At the time when the Great Leap Forward was taking place throughout the country, the Center Director explained to us that in order to let our thoughts keep pace with the new situation we needed to step up our remolding studies and have thought reviews in order to eliminate ideological obstructions to our progress. The method used was for each of us to discuss in our study meetings the changes that had taken place in our thinking during the past few years and the issues which were not yet clarified.
When my turn came, a big problem developed. I talked about my past thinking and the changes in many of my thoughts. When I asked for comments, someone said: “People of your experience must have had deep and long emotional attachment to Japanese imperialism. Perhaps you still have links and connections with it. Your relationship with the Japanese was no less than ours, and since everyone else has talked about this, why is it that you have not even mentioned it? Do you mean to say that you don’t have such feelings?”