In February 1912, Empress Longyu announced the abdication of the Qing Emperor. At this point, the era of more than two thousand years of imperial system came to an end. In exchange, the government of the Republic of China and the Qing imperial family signed the "Preferential Conditions for the Qing Dynasty", stipulating that the Republic of China allocated 4 million taels of living expenses to the former Qing imperial family every year, allowing the little emperor to temporarily live in the palace, and the guards, etc., were retained as usual. It was with this paper ordinance that the young Ai XinJue Luo Puyi was able to live in the Forbidden City.
After the failure of Zhang Xun's restoration, Li Jing, the son of Li Hongzhang, proposed to Zaitao: Let the little emperor learn English, and in the future, the political situation will deteriorate, and it is better to go abroad to avoid disasters. Zaitao was deeply impressed and persuaded his younger brother Zaifeng. In this way, Johnston entered the Forbidden City and became Puyi's foreign emperor.
Under his influence, Puyi learned English, put on a suit, ate Western food, played tennis, put on myopic glasses, cut off his braids, and gradually had the idea of studying in Britain. Later, Puyi analyzed his motives in "The First Half of My Life": "At that time, I believed that studying abroad not only avoided possible dangers, but also won an enlightened person; when I went to a foreign country, I could always get some new knowledge, and I could also use this new political capital of studying abroad in the future to serve as an opportunity to change; at the same time, when necessary, I could also rely on foreign countries, on the one hand, to correct the old people and restore the ancestral inheritance of the past. ''
Reputation
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Unexpectedly, when Puyi revealed this idea to those who left the old and the young, except for his younger brother Pujie, almost everyone was strongly opposing him going abroad. The ostensible reason is that as soon as the emperor went abroad, he unilaterally abolished the "Preferential Conditions for the Qing Dynasty", and the emperor could not get the money of the Republic of China government. In fact, all they protect is their own glory and wealth.
Although the old and the young have spoken out against it, Puyi has not dispelled the idea of studying abroad. In order to raise funds for studying abroad, he began to smuggle the Palace Chinese treasure.
The Conditions of Preferential Treatment for the Qing Dynasty clearly stipulates that "after the resignation of the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, his original private property shall be specially protected by the Republic of China". However, according to legal theory, the cultural relics of the Forbidden City should have been inherited by the Republic of China. However, because Puyi has been living in the Forbidden City, the collection here, which should belong to the whole people, has in fact become the private property of the former Qing royal family. Taking advantage of this loophole, Puyi repeatedly smuggled the national treasure out of the palace in the name of rewarding Pu Jie and Pu Jia. For this past, Pu Jia recalled:
Since 1922, we have secretly smuggled the ancient books and famous calligraphy and paintings of the past dynasties collected in the palace out of the palace in batches. These books, calligraphy and paintings are many, and when they are transported out of the palace, they also take considerable trouble. At that time, we thought of a very clever way, that is, to reward this large number of antiquities in the name of Pu jie, and sometimes in the name of rewarding me, taking advantage of the opportunity for Pu Jie and me to go out of the palace every day, and take them out of the palace one by one. In this way, in just over five months, they stole a total of 210 ancient books, of which 199 were precious Song editions; 1285 calligraphy and painting fa-ti, including "You Chun Tu", "Lady Of the Hairpin Flower", "Portrait of the Emperors of the Past Dynasties", "Map of the Upper River of the Qingming Dynasty", "Bu Yuan Tu", "Autumn Color Map of Jiangshan", and "Langyuan Female Immortal Picture Scroll" and other famous works. As for gold and silver utensils, fine furs, jade antiques, there are countless more. Puyi's behavior has led to the loss of a large number of treasures, and some national treasures, such as the "Portrait of Emperors of Past Dynasties", have even been lost overseas.
Of course, Puyi was not the only one who stole the cultural relics of the Forbidden City. The eunuchs and guards in the palace also began to guard themselves and steal, taking the treasures of the palace to the antique shops around the Liuli factory for money. Jianfu Palace is located in the north-west of the Forbidden City, which houses a large number of antique treasures that the Qianlong Emperor liked, and is a veritable "royal collection treasure trove". The eunuchs stole no less of the treasures.
In order to eliminate the evidence of the crime, they deliberately burned the Jianfu Palace. The fire burned for more than ten hours before it was extinguished, and when the fire was put out, people came and went, boiling over, and many people were openly fighting the fire, but in fact they were taking advantage of the fire to rob and rob all the palace treasures that could be snatched.
After the fire, they cleaned up the fire, and although they could not find calligraphy, paintings, and porcelain from the ashes, they still picked out seventeen thousand taels of gold from the ashes. According to incomplete statistics from the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the fire burned 2665 golden Buddhas, 1157 calligraphy and paintings, 435 antiques, and tens of thousands of ancient books.
The fire in Jianfu Palace made Puyi out of anger. In his opinion, he was the master of the Forbidden City, and those slaves were insatiable and stealing, which he could not tolerate. So he made an important decision: to dismiss all the eunuchs, and at the same time to go to them out of the palace, not to bring any belongings, and to disobey the order to sneak back to the palace. For a moment, the sound of cursing and crying filled the entire Forbidden City. The eunuch system that had existed in China for thousands of years came to an end.
At the same time, the influence of the Jianfu Palace fire was still expanding, and eventually they became the fuse for Puyi to be expelled from the palace. The Shengjing Times once published a comment to the effect that since Puyi abdicated, he had become a commoner, but he had always lived in the Forbidden City. This is all bad for the Republic of China. The fire in Jianfu Palace was a warning from heaven to the Qing Dynasty that it was necessary to quickly move out of the Forbidden City in order to ensure peace.
In November 1924, in order to eliminate the hidden dangers of restoration, Feng Yuxiang expelled Puyi and other former Qing royal families from the Forbidden City. Before leaving, Puyi took away a number of carefully selected cultural relics. After leaving the palace, Puyi first hid in the Japanese legation, and then secretly sneaked to Tianjin in February of the following year. In 1932, Puyi embarked on a northbound train and embarked on a road of no return...