After the Qing Dynasty, what did the royal family and nobles do? The imperial concubine divorced and married a soldier and lived by selling cigarettes
After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, what did the nobles who once belonged to the imperial family do? These two men may be very telling.
Today, in the New Culture Street of Xicheng District, Beijing, you will see a well-preserved royal palace of the Qing Dynasty, which is the KeqinJun Wangfu, although it has been renovated, it also contains historical information about the Qing Dynasty from its peak to its decline. King Keqinjun was one of the eight hereditary Iron Hat Kings who were crowned in the early Qing Dynasty, and the first King of Keqin County, Yue Tuo, was the eldest son of Daishan the Prince of Li.
According to reports, the south shadow wall of Wangfu Road still exists, and only the east wing is stored in the front part of the house; the inner door, the back bedroom, the east and west rooms, and the rear cover room are all well preserved; and most of the original buildings in the western courtyard are also preserved. Although the royal palace was announced as a national cultural relics protection unit in 2013, it is also part of a primary school campus, but it is not known whether the children on campus also understand this history.
The king of Keqin County passed down a total of 13 generations of 18 county kings, the last prince was called Manson, who was only 14 years old when he inherited the throne, took two "salaries" and died in the Qing Dynasty, and the royal palace could no longer receive the silver allocated by the Qing court. Manson began to sell some valuable things in the house, from the calligraphy and paintings in the house to the stone lion in front of the door, and sold everything that could be sold. The servants looked hopeless and left, and the former lively bustle unconsciously became cold and cold.
Manson was spoiled and spoiled from a young age, and he did not have any skills, watching the palace being sold out day by day, he actually thought of the tomb of his ancestors. Ancestors are powerful people, and there must be many treasures buried in the graves. When he made this idea a reality, he hit a wall because the graves of his ancestors, though nominally still belonging to them, had been protected and guarded.
Unable to pass, Manson gritted his teeth and sold the palace to Xiong Xiling, the fourth prime minister of the Beiyang government. It was a lot of income, Manson was thinking about how to use it to do some business or something, to maintain his life later, unfortunately, he was deceived, coupled with his bad habits such as smoking opium, the money in his hands was quickly exhausted.
The family didn't even have the rice under the pot, so Yan Sen had to start a business of pulling foreign cars, pulling rickshaws all day long and running on the streets of Beijing. In the past, the Iron Hat King became a foreign coachman, which soon became a strange story in the Republic of China period, and people jokingly called him "Car King". It is said that people will be bullied more when they fall, and this is also the case. It is said that when one of the servants of the royal palace heard that Yan Sen was pulling a car, he specially came to sit in his car and kicked him in the back to make him run faster, while other people always liked to let Wang Ye be a "horse" for himself and specially picked his car to sit on.
Although Wang Ye's identity made Yan Sen suffer a lot of bullying, it also brought him good business. What he could not bear was that after the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the flames of war were raging, and people basically forgot about him as a prince, and no one came to "take care of" his business for this purpose. Unable to make money, Yan Sen eventually starved to death on the streets.
Although Manson's experience is a bit tragic, he always keeps smiling happily in the photo, as if to tell people that no matter what the ending is, a smile will pass. But as the "Imperial Princess" Wen Xiu (Fu Yufang), it is difficult for people to see this kind of laughter in the photos she left behind before her death. In 1931, in order to fight for the right to personal freedom, Wen Xiu decided to divorce Puyi. Later, she worked as a teacher in a school, because her identity was exposed, many people went to her school to see the style of the former imperial princess, so that she could no longer live a normal life and had to choose to "live in seclusion".
At first, Wen Xiu still had some living expenses paid by Puyi in his hands, and began to immerse himself in painting, but the world was originally an airtight wall, and soon some people such as traders, soldiers, and bureaucrats stared at her paintings, believing that the "Imperial Princess" was a rare commodity, and her works would be able to sell for a good price in the future, and they kept coming to the door to ask for cheap in the name of marriage proposals. All of these were turned away by Wen Xiu. After the "July 7" incident, the Japanese shamelessly forced Wen Xiu to pay a lot of money for the war of aggression against China, and within a few days, Wen Xiu became a penniless person, who could only earn money by selling cigarettes and pasting paper boxes.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Wen Xiujing was introduced to a proofreader at a newspaper in Beijing (Beiping), because of her good performance, she was cared for by the president, and after the president's mediation, she met Liu Zhendong, a major in the Nationalist Army who was born poorly, and the two married in 1947 and rented a house in Baimi Xie Street in Xicheng. It is said that Wen Xiu's life after marriage is not bad, although he lives in a small room of only 10 square meters, but he is still quite happy.
On September 18, 1953, Wen Xiu died at home due to a sudden myocardial infarction, at the age of 44, and had no children in his life. At that time, only Liu Zhendong was at her side. Liu Zhendong's cleaning team helped Wen embroidery nail a thin wooden coffin and buried her in a cemetery outside Anding Gate in Beijing. Although the photos she left behind for posterity did not smile like Yan Sen, she had the life she wanted after all, and this was the reason why she and Puyi divorced in the first place.
Laughing or not smiling, maybe can only hang on the face, the taste of life only the heart knows. In this world, not everyone can finally get what they want like Wen Xiu, and it is not that having a noble identity means that they can live well later. The experience of Wen Embroidery tells people that sometimes, identity can also be a kind of trouble and a burden. Yan Sen's experience can more show that the so-called identity is all over the clouds, living, you must have a skill, as the ancients said: it is better to teach people to fish than to teach people to fish. Fishing is the last word to survive, not fish. The reality is so harsh that identity is sometimes not even a fish.