“ The topics vary widely: childbirth in traditional China, the remarriage of widows, the etiquette of hosting guests, the burning of incense, and even regional cuisines.”

An Emperor's Eye-View of China

The lot includes a notebook in which Puyi discusses numerous aspects of Chinese culture, from childbirth to old legends. It is a fascinating window into Puyi’s thought, as if the emperor were peeking out a fortress arrow slot at what he knows or imagines to be the daily life of his realm. 

View Full Manuscript Notebook
English Translation of Manuscript Notebook
 

Puyi began putting pen to paper from the time he arrived in the Soviet Union. He and his entourage landed in Chita and were driven to a nearby resort called Molokovka. At first he was afraid the Soviets would execute him, Permyakov writes in the Vladivostok-based journal Rubezh. Instead, the prisoner was surprised to find himself well-treated.

According to Permyakov, Puyi wrote in a different notebook, ‘Japanese generals ... had been scaring me about Russian communism. “In Russia they will rob you; they will kill you or hang you.” But in Molokovka they treat me and feed me well, and even cherish me. I take walks. There’s a forest and clean air. Russians are kind and laugh a lot.’ ⁱ

 

Later, in Khabarovsk, Permyakov assigned the prisoner to write about China, in part to distract Puyi from his obsessive melancholy. He filled a school-style notebook with musings on the materials he read and Chinese life as he knew it. The content, diverse and jumbled, covers the customs and habits of his homeland, as well as general knowledge of daily life. The topics vary widely: childbirth in traditional China, the remarriage of widows, the etiquette of hosting guests, the burning of incense, and even regional cuisines.
 

Puyi also passes along rumours about rare regional cuisines, such as eating live mice dipped in honey, or cooking a cat and a snake together—a dish called ‘fight of a dragon and a tiger.’ He admits these dishes are ‘not necessarily true.’
 

Some of Puyi’s most touching remarks—given his unhappy marriages and early separation from his loved ones—concern family life and matrimony. Both parents love their child, he states, but fathers tend to express that love in sternness, he writes. By contrast, he paints an idealized vision of maternal love.
 

“[T]he mother is always seen as tender, kind, and considerate,’ he writes in the notebook. ‘She never stops concerning her daughters and sons, including their day-to-day living, diet, travel, and all sorts of activities. The mother hugs and kisses her children, sings and reads poems to them, pats them to sleep and plays with them.’’
 

These are affecting words from a man who was separated from his mother at age 2, and who would muse in his autobiography, ‘Although I had so m any mothers I never knew any motherly love.’ ⁱⁱ

His words about marriage take on a similar poignancy, given that both the imperial court and

his Japanese masters repeatedly pressured him to marry women he didn’t know or love.

He writes: ‘In the old days of China, marriage between a man and a woman was arranged by their parents through a matchmaker. When a couple first meet, they are unaware of the physical outlook and personality of each other, and their feelings towards each other change over the course of marriage. In some cases, love at first sight happens. In other cases, it takes a long time for affection to develop. In the worse cases, disappointment occurs from the first day, or good feelings never accumulate. In these worst, quarrelsome, cases, an ill-fated relationship results. The human relationship is highly tied to and bothered by the rigid society and many rules of old China.’

 

One also can hear echoes from Puyi’s personal life in a tale he tells from the Song dynasty. It is the story of Xianzhu, a feudal prince’s daughter who falls in love with a poor young man. When her father imprisons her lover and tries to force her to marry a rich man who is ‘ugly, stupid and jobless,’ she commits suicide rather than forsake her lover.

Puyi laments a time ‘where arranged marriage was a custom, [and] a parent must resort to dictate the child’s marriage with absolutely no concession.’

 

In the section on Jizijin—the collection of blended characters—Puyi offered examples of auspicious words and phrases such as zhaocai jinbao (ushering in wealth and prosperity), huangjin wanliang (10,000 taels of gold), xiqi mantang (the house full of joy), and rijin doujin (receiving ten litres of gold every day).
‘‘There are plenty of such hybrid characters in China…I hereby record what I know, mainly the popular ones.’’
—Aisin-Gioro Puyi

Beyond this notebook, Puyi was known to do other writing in Soviet Union. During language lessons, he jotted about the fate of Russian monarchs. ‘I found interesting data about Russian rulers starting with ancient times in a history manual,’ Permyakov writes. ‘Puyi wrote it down with a wonderful American Parker pen in his notebook.’ ⁱⁱⁱ

 

But everything he wrote in Russia remained in that country when Puyi left, his nephew Aisin-Gioro Yuzhan recalls. When authorities announced Puyi repatriation in 1950, the prisoners had to surrender their writing. ‘Even a faint note had to stay in the room,’ he recalls.^iv

 

The interpreter took Puyi’s manuscripts home and preserved them there until his death, when they passed on to his heirs.
 

A leather bound Confucius’s Analects

 

 

The Analects (論語) meaning "Selected Sayings" also known as the Analects of Confucius, the Sayings of Confucius, or the Lun Yu, is an ancient Chinese book composed of a collection of sayings and ideas attributed to the famed Chinese philosopher and politician of the Spring and Autumn period (770 to 481 BCA). The fact that Puyi kept this pocket edition close to him through his peripatetic life bears witness to the attachment that he held for the traditional values and teachings of Confucius who was, and still is, hailed as the paragon of Chinese sages.

 

 

ⁱ Permyakov, Georgy, Император пуи: пять лет вместе [‘Imperator Puyi. Pyat let vmeste’; ‘Emperor Puyi: Five Years Together’], Rubezh, No. 4

(2003), 291.

ⁱⁱ Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi, From Emperor to Citizen. Translated by W.J.F. Jenner, Oxford University Press, 1987, 48.
ⁱⁱⁱ Permyakov, Georgy, Император пуи: пять лет вместе [‘Imperator Puyi. Pyat let vmeste’; ‘Emperor Puyi: Five Years Together’], Rubezh, No. 4

(2003), 293.

^iv Wang Wenfeng, ‘A brief biography of Puyi,’ internal report for Phillips, 2023, 7.