China's imperial past slipped further into history Monday with the death of Aisin Giorro Pu Jie, the younger brother of China's last emperor. Pu Jie, 87, died in Beijing.
Pu Jie, whose older brother Pu Yi reigned as the Qing dynasty's final emperor from 1908 to 1911 and died 27 years ago, served as a prince and was an accused traitor, a prisoner of war and finally a Chinese government representative.He lived out his final years in retirement in a quiet Beijing courtyard not far from Tiananmen Square, enjoying his reputation as a scholar and acclaimed calligrapher.
After the fall of the Qing, Pu Jie followed his older brother to Manchuria to join the imperial household in the newly established Japanese puppet regime of Manchukuo in 1935.
He was sent to Japan to study, and married a member of Japan's aristocracy. Had Japan won World War II, his children would have been in line to succeed the childless Pu Yi as holders of the Mandate of Heaven.
The designers of communist China "reeducated" Pu Jie and other members of the former imperial court, a process vividly described in Pu Yi's autobiography "From Emperor to Citizen," which Bernardo Bertolucci later made into the film "The Last Emperor."
Following his release from a reeducation program in 1959, Pu Jie was named a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a powerless branch of the government. He was also named to other minor government posts.