P'u-i

/pooh"ee"/, n.

Pu-yi.

* * *

▪ emperor of Ch’ing dynasty

Pinyin  Puyi,  also called  Henry P'u-i,  reign title (Wade-Giles romanization)  Hsüan-t'ung  

born Feb. 7, 1906, Peking

died Oct.17, 1967, Peking

      last emperor of the Ch'ing (Manchu) dynasty in China and Japan's puppet emperor of Manchoukuo ( Manchuria) from 1934 to 1945. P'u-i succeeded to the Manchu throne at the age of three, when his uncle, the Kuang-hsü emperor, died on Nov. 14, 1908. He reigned under a regency for three years, and then on Feb. 12, 1912, in response to the Republican Revolution of the previous year, he was forced to abdicate, ending the 267-year Manchu rule of China and the 2,000-year-old Imperial system. He was permitted to continue living in the palace in Peking. P'u-i chose Henry as a given name and was thereafter known as Henry P'u-i in the West. In 1924 he secretly left Peking to reside in the Japanese concession (colony) at Tientsin. On March 9, 1932, he was installed as president, and from 1934 to 1945 was emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchoukuo under the reign title of K'ang-te. At the end of World War II he was taken prisoner by the Russians (August 1945) and returned to China for trial as a war criminal in 1950. He was pardoned in 1959 and went again to live in Peking, where he worked in the mechanical repair shop of a botanical garden. His autobiography, From Emperor to Citizen, was published in English in 1964–65.

* * *