For the last emperor, Ai Xinjueluo Puyi, December 4, 1959 was a day of great significance.
Because on this day, he received a letter of amnesty from the Supreme People's Court of the Republic of China at the Fushun War Criminals Management Center, which meant that he was no longer a criminal, but an ordinary citizen of New China.
After being pardoned, Puyi returned to Beijing, where he had been away for 35 years, and began a new life as a citizen.
Puyi was pardoned
Puyi got his first official job: as a gardener at the Beijing Botanical Garden
In the first two months after returning to Beijing, Puyi has been visiting relatives and friends and visiting and studying under the organization of relevant departments, and after these two activities, it is time to consider his follow-up work - even if he was once a high-ranking emperor, but now it is the era of the people's mastery, he must also rely on labor to support himself.
What kind of work is appropriate for Puyi? This issue is of great concern even to Premier Zhou.
At the beginning, Puyi said that it was okay to engage in light industry or work in the commune -- no matter which line of work he did, he needed to learn from scratch.
However, Premier Zhou considered that it was not appropriate to let Puyi's production workshop engage in industrial labor, because the assembly line operation of the workshop required a full 8 hours of work a day, and Puyi was 54 years old at this time, and his eyes had more than 700 degrees of myopia.
Some people also suggested that Puyi had read a lot of medical books and it was not bad to be a Chinese medicine doctor. But then Premier Zhou also vetoed: Puyi has a special status, treating others, in case the cure is broken, it will definitely cause gossip.
Later, after considering a large circle in various research institutes, agricultural mechanization, experimental farms and other departments, Puyi's first formal job was finally decided: to work in the Beijing Botanical Garden of the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences!
Therefore, in February 1960, Puyi came to the Beijing Botanical Garden with a letter of introduction from the Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau to report.
Puyi's gardener work: watering flowers, hygiene, cuttings, pruning, grafting, etc
Due to the instructions of the superior department, Puyi mainly studied after arriving at the botanical garden, and the daily working hours could not exceed half a day, so the first task arranged by Director Yu Dejun of the botanical garden was: first familiar with the environment of the botanical garden, and officially start work two days later.
After receiving the work arrangement, Puyi came to the various gardens and greenhouses in the botanical garden, asked the workers who were working about this, asked about that, learned about the situation, and then came to the office of the botanical garden to carefully look at the management regulations and statistical reports hanging on the wall. In the afternoon, he began to study various books about plants and took careful notes.
Two days later, Puyi officially began his work as a gardener.
At first, Puyi was arranged to work in the large greenhouse on the east side of the botanical garden. His job is relatively simple, that is, to water the flowers and do hygiene in the greenhouse. However, for the "emperor" Puyi, who once stretched out his hands and opened his mouth with clothes, this simple work was always clumsily wrong.
Puyi is watering the flowers
Fortunately, the colleagues in the greenhouse are very friendly, even if Puyi asks some funny common sense questions, everyone does not laugh at him, but patiently explains to him.
With the help of everyone, Puyi's flowering work is getting better and better. A month later, he was transferred to the cuttings breeding greenhouse, where the work requirements for the technical level are higher, Puyi also learned harder, and soon he can skillfully engage in sowing, transplanting, potting, loosening soil and other work with a certain technical content.
After another three months, Puyi's work was once again "on the next level", and he was assigned to work in the observation greenhouse and the breeding greenhouse. Here he learned the technique of pruning flowers, and he was able to do even the more difficult technical work of grafting.
In addition to working hard into business, Puyi also produced a lot of plant specimens during his work in the botanical garden, and his thick herbarium notebook contained specimens of many flowers and leaves, such as hyacinth leaves, eucalyptus leaves, fuso, olive leaves, kapok, white orchids, and Yangling xiaohua, and detailed the family, origin, nature and characteristics of various plants.
Puyi himself was very satisfied with his days during his labor work in the botanical garden, and he said of this life in his later summary, "My happiness and pride are by no means describable by ink and words."
The collective life of the "emperor": his roommates had opinions about him and often could not catch up with the meals in the canteen
After more than ten years of living as an emperor in the Forbidden City, and being the "Emperor Kant" in the puppet state of Manchukuo for more than ten years, Puyi developed a solipsistic and obstinate disposition in the first half of his life, so can he adapt to the collective life of socialism when he works in the botanical garden?
During puyi's work at the Beijing Botanical Garden, he lived in a three-person collective dormitory, and he lived with two young people, one named Liu Baoshan and the other Liu Baoan. The dormitory is not very large, 18 square meters, in addition to the three single beds, only a table and a few stools.
The two young men who live with Puyi are diligent and friendly, every morning after getting up, the two take the initiative to clean the room, clean up, usually also often help Puyi to lay bedding, open the water, Puyi if the body is uncomfortable, they will also accompany him to the infirmary to see a doctor.
Although they still get along more happily, the two roommates sometimes have opinions about Puyi, the reason is that Puyi's work and rest time is irregular, often very late and does not turn off the lights to sleep, seriously disturbing the rest of the two.
In fact, it is no wonder that Puyi has always been unrestrained and unrestrained during his time as emperor and pseudo-emperor: the time to get up is noon, eat "breakfast" at one or two o'clock in the afternoon, "take a nap" at six or seven o'clock in the evening, and eat dinner until midnight, and it is usually two or three o'clock in the morning when he goes to bed.
Because he slept late at night, Puyi often couldn't catch up with the canteen during his work at the botanical garden. When the canteen opened for breakfast, Puyi just got up, and he had to hurry to fold the quilt and wash his face, and when he rushed to the canteen, the food was sold out, and he had to go to work hungry. Because he was hungry, it was often not time for lunch, and he thought about going to the canteen to eat.
In addition to being often late for dinner, Puyi is always unclear about food stamps and money tickets, often grabbing a large number of money and food stamps out of his pocket and putting them in the canteen window, letting the cooks take them themselves. Sometimes, after the cooker has cooked for him, he first takes the dish away, puts it on a table, and turns around to cook again, only to find no dish after the meal...
The years when he was emperor not only made Puyi's life lazy, but also made him develop the problem of luxury and waste.
During the work in the botanical garden, Puyi can get 60 yuan of living expenses every month, don't look at 60 yuan now seems not much, at that time it was completely able to meet the life of an ordinary family of four for a month, but for Puyi who is accustomed to a luxurious life, 60 yuan is not enough for him to spend alone.
What is all this money for? Puyi often couldn't say it himself. However, it was recorded in his posthumous manuscript that he always bought all kinds of snacks to eat in his dormitory, but he was afraid that others would say that he lacked the hard and simple life style of the working people, so he secretly ate them behind others' backs.
Puyi, who demanded progress: donated cloth tickets to the state and participated in militia training
Since the second half of 1960, due to the impact of natural disasters for three consecutive years, There was a difficult situation of shortage of living materials in China.
One day, at the staff meeting of the botanical garden, the leaders conveyed a central document calling for the implementation of production increase and economy throughout the country. After the meeting, Puyi walked to the director's office and handed the director a small paper bag.
"This is my cloth ticket, because my clothes are enough to wear, and there is no need to buy them, so these cloth tickets will be given to the state and distributed to those who need them more!" Puyi said sincerely.
The director did not agree at first: "This is something within the quantitative limit, you can keep it for yourself." ”
But Puyi was very determined: "The country currently has difficulties, and it should be sent to the place where they are needed more, please ask the leadership for approval." Seeing puyi who was so sincere and resolute, the leader had to accept the cloth ticket donated by Puyi.
In September 1960, at the age of 55, Puyi submitted an application to the leaders of the Botanical Garden for militia training, in which he wrote: "In order to defend the great motherland and the cause of socialist construction, I volunteered to join the glorious militia division. ”
Originally, according to the relevant regulations, cadres over the age of 45 no longer participated in militia training, not to mention that Puyi's physical fitness has always been not very good, so the leaders of the botanical garden intended to persuade Puyi.
However, Puyi repeatedly asked to participate in the training, and said that his health was good, and on the day when the militia began to exercise training, he stubbornly ran to the director's office, neither sitting nor leaving, waiting for the leader to agree to his participation in the training.
Later, the leader could not resist Puyi, so he had to agree to his request and make an exception to allow him to participate in militia training in the botanical garden. After getting the permission of the leader, Puyi was overjoyed and joined the training team with excitement.
In late February 1961, Puyi ended his first job after being pardoned, after which he entered the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference as a commissioner and became a literary and historical worker.
Premier Zhou received Puyi and his wife
During his work at the Beijing Botanical Garden, Puyi not only cultivated his ability to work and enhanced his physical fitness, but also made great progress in his thinking, he felt the hard-won fruits of labor from his work, felt the hardships of ordinary people, and also realized how shameful it was to eat and drink like parasites in his years as emperor.
Fortunately, the party and the people gave him a new life, so that the last emperor could also have the opportunity to create a happy life on his own hands in the new socialist life.