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I take it you have seen the film "The last emperor directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and brought to you by Columbia Tristar Pictures? If you have, you know who I am talking about: China's last ruling emperor.
As you will have seen in the film, he lived in the Forbidden city situated at the Tianenmen Square (aka Tianamen Square) in Beijing. The square is said to be the largest in the world with its 440.000 square meters (880m X 500m).
Nowadays the square is more famous because of the massacre on June 4th, 1989. Factmonster features the most famous of the pictures taken during the protest: the lone student challenging the tanks.
I am getting a bit off track.... back to Henry Pu Yi! He was born in Beijing some time during Februay 1906. You see, some sources say he was born on February 7th, others say February 17th. I am not sure which sources to believe, so let's leave it at February 1906. His reign started in 1908, and ended in 1912. In October 1911, China was declared a republic by rebels. Few months later, many of the provinces joined the rebels, and in February 1912, Pu Yi abdicated.
He was allowed to stay in the Forbidden city, but could not walk through the gates to see what was happening outside. He was allowed to keep on living like he was used to within the imperial court. In 1922, he married his first official wife while his consort became secondary wife. A few years of happiness passed by, and Chiang Kai-Shek made his entrance.
To make a long story short, Pu Yi was made to give up his rights and had to leave the Forbidden city together with his family. They sought asylum from the Japanese embassy, and were received with open arms; at least so it seemed. From this point on I find the events to be quite unclear, and would like to refer to official Chinese websites (search Google to see if you can find any) as well as this very nice site about Pu Yi.
Read more about Pu Yi at http://www.royalty.nu, and find a lot of interesting links at Chinese Dragons. I am going to have to explore the latter link at a later time. It seems to be very interesting indeed!
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