The last empress, Puyi's empress Guo Buluo Wanrong
Guo Buluo Wanrong (November 13, 1906 – June 20, 1946), courtesy name Muhong, was a Manchurian Zhengbai banner (Daur). The wife of Puyi, the Sun Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, the last empress of the Qing Dynasty and China, and later the puppet empress of Manchukuo. The word "Wanrong" and her word "Mu Hong" come from the "Roselle Endowment": "Fei Ruo Is amazing, Wan Ru is a dragon." ”
Guo Buluo Wanrong, of the Daur ethnic group, was born on November 13, 1906 in the Rongyuan Province, minister of the Ministry of internal affairs. WanRong's father, Kwok Boro Rongyuan, was an enlightened man who was then minister of the Interior and had always advocated equality between men and women, believing that girls should be educated on the same level as boys.
In addition to teaching her to read and write, play the piano and draw, she also hired Miss Isabel Ingram, an American born in China, as an English teacher. As a lady of the Daur Banner family, Wanrong's rich living environment, prominent family status, national culture and traditional culture education have had a profound impact on her. Wanrong's birth mother, Ai Xinjue Luoshi, was the granddaughter of Puxu, the king of Dingjun, and the fourth daughter of Yuchang, known as "Si Ge Ge", who died of puerperal fever when she gave birth to Wanrong.
Wanrong's stepmother Hengxiang (字"Zhongxin", later renamed "Jin Zhongxin"), was also the granddaughter of Puxu, the king of Dingjun, and the second daughter of Yulang, known as "Ergege", which had a profound impact on Wanrong's life. Heng Xiang not only takes good care of WanRong, but even pampers her, and the mother and daughter get along very harmoniously. Other members of the family include Chang Wanrong's two-year-old half-brother Runliang (who married Puyi's eldest sister Yun), and her half-brother Runqi, who was six years younger (married to Puyi's third sister Yunying). WanRong's family lives in Hat Er Hutong, Di'anmenWai Street, Dongcheng District, Beijing.
In 1922, WanRong, who had reached the age of 16, was famous among the nobility for not only her dignified and beautiful appearance, freshness and vulgarity, but also her omniscient knowledge of piano, chess, calligraphy and painting. In the same year, she was elected to the palace and became the last empress in the history of the Qing Dynasty.
However, Wanrong's election was not because of her beauty and versatility, but at the insistence of Emperor Jin's concubine (Duankang Emperor Guifei), Puyi reluctantly circled. Because emperor Puyi's first circle was WenXiu instead of Wanrong, but Wenxiu looked ordinary, and Wanrong, who was seventeen years old at the time, was beautiful and noble, and her family was prominent, and finally Puyi chose Wanrong as empress. Wen Xiu was not only encircled by the emperor, but could not marry anyone else, so she became a concubine. In 1911, China's imperial system, which had lasted for more than 2,000 years, came to an end, and the country moved from a monarchy to a republic. At that time, the government of the Republic of China gave preferential treatment to the Qing Dynasty on the condition that "after the resignation of the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, the honorific title is still not abolished, and the Republic of China treats each other with the courtesy of foreign monarchs." To this end, the wedding of Emperor Puyi of the Sun Emperor was still completely copied from the ceremony of the emperor's big wedding, and the "Fengyu" of the Republic of China government specially approved the empress was carried from the Donghua Gate into the second half of the Forbidden City. On November 30, 1922, Wanrong became the titular empress.
WanRong was born in Manchuria, knew how to read and etiquette, and also wrote a good poem. Many of her letters with Puyi were written in English and signed "Elizabeth". Puyi was very fond of her when she first entered the palace, and hired an English teacher for her. Graceful and delicate, elegant in conversation, dignified in demeanor, extraordinary in manners, soft on the inside and soft on the outside and full of kindness, she is a noblewoman who combines the advantages of Chinese and Western cultures. However, due to Puyi's physical reasons, the two have been childless since marriage.
In 1924, Feng Yuxiang launched the "Beijing Coup". On November 5, Puyi was expelled from the Forbidden City, and Wanrong also left the palace. After living with Puyi in Tianjin, Wanrong became addicted to opium. After leaving the palace, she changed her palace attire, changed into a fashion cheongsam and high-heeled leather shoes, and permed her hair, becoming a "modern woman" in the concession. The biggest attraction to her is to go shopping in major department stores, anyway, with Puyi paying, she can splurge without scruples, and the useful useless must be bought back, resulting in the later development of a means of competing for favors between Wanrong and Wenxiu.
Over time, Puyi's weakness in personality was gradually exposed, and his physical defects eventually led to Wenxiu filing for divorce. However, Puyi pushed all the faults of this "knife concubine revolution" that brought him great shame and humiliation on Wanrong's body.
In December 1923, WanRong donated 600 yuan to the "Temporary Wowotou Association" in Beijing to help the victims of the disaster, which was praised by all walks of life.
In 1931, the abnormal climate caused "the overflow of large and small rivers from 100 Guangdong in the south to the outside of Guanwai in the north", and a nationwide flood. At that time, the disaster area in the country reached 16 provinces, of which the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the Huai River basin of Xiang, Hubei, Gansu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Suzhou, Luzhou, Henan 8 provinces were extremely serious, and it was the most extensive and severe flood in the last century. Wan Rong, who had been out of the palace for a long time, saw such a flood disaster and immediately donated his pearl necklace and the ocean. In the middle of summer in 1931, when serious floods occurred in several provinces on both sides of the Yangtze River, Puyi donated a building and WanRong donated a string of pearls to sell the victims. This incident caused a sensation in the society at that time, and newspapers in Beijing, Tianjin and Shanghai also published the jade photos of the "empress" and the pearl necklace she donated.
At the end of 1931, Kawashima Yoshiko was ordered by the Kwantung Army to take Wanrong to Manchuria and live in the executive government of Xinjing (present-day Changchun). In January 1932, wanrong was seduced by the Japanese to transfer from Tianjin to Dalian and then to Lushun to reunite with Puyi, but at this time Puyi did become a puppet at the mercy of the Japanese Kwantung Army, and she herself fell into the trap of conspiracy. In Changchun, Wanrong obeyed the Japanese arrangements for everything, and her every move was secretly monitored, and she could not even take a step out of the gate. Wanrong could not bear the humiliation of the Japanese and decided to flee.
Wan Rong recorded this in the memoirs of Gu Weijun, the first foreign minister of the National Government in Nanjing, the Republic of China: "We stayed overnight in Dalian, and an interesting thing happened. One of my entourage had worked as a police officer in Beijing in the past and was one of my four guards. Due to the bombing of 1925, he stayed with me as a bodyguard. He's from Beijing and knows a lot of people in Beijing. When I was having lunch in a hotel in Dalian, he came in and said that a representative of the Manchurian Lifu from Changchun was going to see me and had confidential information to tell me. I hesitated at first because the name he said was unfamiliar to me. But my retinue said that he knew this man in Beijing and could he meet him? He told me that the man was disguised as an antique dealer to keep the Japanese from noticing (perhaps he had been an antique dealer). I went out onto the porch and we stopped around the corner. This person told me that he was sent by the empress (the wife of Emperor Xuantong of Changchun). He said that because she knew I was going to Manchuria, she asked me to help her escape from Changchun; he said that she felt that life was miserable because she was surrounded in the palace by Japanese maids (there were no Chinese maids there). Her every move there was monitored and whistleblowed. She knew that the Emperor could not escape, and if she could, she might help him escape. I was touched by this story. But I told him that I couldn't do anything for her in my situation, because I was a Chinese adviser in Manchuria and there was no effective way to help her. Nevertheless, I got a clear idea of what the Japanese were doing, and this story confirmed Japan's intentions. ”
Since this incident, Wanrong has not been discouraged and has given up the opportunity to escape again. In August and September 1933, when zhao Xinbo's wife was preparing to go to Japan, Wanrong asked her to help Dongdu. Wanrong believes that as long as she can escape, she will definitely help Puyi escape, but this matter was unexpected, and was found by the three grids that were in Japan at the time, she wrote a letter to inform Puyi, and the escape became a bubble again. Since then, Wanrong has never found a chance to escape, and she chose to self-destruct if she was better off alive than dead.
On 1 March 1934, she was crowned Empress of the Manchurian Empire. WanRong was disgusted by Puyi and smoked opium to survive. Although Wanrong is mentally morbid and shows a blue-gray smoke, she is still a beautiful woman, and when her body is better, she still dresses up carefully or enjoys the courtyard of the executive government in other ways.
Guo Buluo Wanrong was abridged according to the "First Half of My Life", Wanrong became infected with the addiction of opium, and committed adultery with the guards, secretly married a beaded fetus, gave birth to a daughter, and later the child died, Wanrong Yizi became crazy, and smoked opium to live.
According to Puyi, Wanrong squeezed Wen Xiu away, making Puyi resentful of her. Wan Rong, who was treated coldly by Puyi for a long time, on the one hand, had normal physiological needs, on the other hand, she could not abandon the empress's honorific title and divorce Puyi, so she had a warm and ambiguous act, and she successively became pregnant with two of Puyi's attendants Li Tiyu and Qi Jizhong, which angered Puyi. On the issue of drug use and adultery, WanRong was encouraged by her brother. In fact, as early as her way to Dalian, her brother had already sold his sister to a Japanese officer in exchange for some kind of benefit.
In 1935, until Wanrong was pregnant and about to give birth, Puyi did not know that Wanrong had an affair with someone else, and then Wanrong gave birth to a baby girl. Puyi decided to throw Wanrong's daughter into the boiler, but then told Wanrong to give her daughter to her brother to raise. WanRong did not know that the child was already dead until she died. Another rumor is that Wanrong's daughter died when she was born and was thrown into the boiler by Puyi, although this poor baby girl had only been born for half an hour and died, puyi still thought that this was Wanrong's unforgivable fault, and since then she has been beaten into the cold palace, and she has suffered from mental illness due to excessive stimulation.
After this blow, in just two years, the former flower-like Wanrong became a madman who could not control herself at all, she no longer knew how to freshen up and dress, and she was moody all day. The only habit that remains is to smoke opium every day. Wanrong was locked in a house and isolated from the outside world, and Puyi sent two eunuchs and two maids to serve her, and when she was most seriously ill, her legs could not walk on the ground. Because he has been locked in the house for a long time, he already has a graceful appearance, and his eyes are even more unable to see the light, and he must use a fan to cover the gap in the fan bone to see people. But she occasionally had waking moments, and whenever she cried and scolded her father, Rongyuan, for ruining her daughter's life in order to become the abbot of the country.
In August 1945, the Soviet Union quickly captured Manchuria during operation "August Storm", and Wanrong withdrew with the palace personnel from Xinjing to Tonghua Dalizigou on the 11th, and was later captured by the communist guerrillas occupying the local area, transported to Tonghua, Changchun, Yongji, Dunhua, Yanji, and finally died in a prison in Yanji, Jilin Province, around June 10, 1946 (see Saga Hao's memoirs) or in late August (then newspaper records). The burial place is unknown, some say that it was "swept away and thrown on the north mountain with the old kang", and some said that it was "buried in the South Mountain of Yanji City", and the bones were nowhere to be found. Three years later, Puyi, who lived in a prison at the Boli Asylum, learned of Wanrong's death from Saga Hao's home letter to Pujie, and seemed indifferent.
On October 23, 2006, with the consent of his brother Runqi, he was buried with Puyi in the Form of a Soul Summoner in the Hualong Royal Cemetery outside the Qingxi Mausoleum in Hebei Province, and Puyi's tomb was QingXian Mausoleum, with the nickname "Empress Xiaoke".