In November 1924, emperor Ai Xinjueluo Puyi of the Qing Dynasty was expelled from the Forbidden City by the warlord Feng Yuxiang and left the imperial palace where he had lived for 16 years.
Long before Puyi was expelled from the palace, in the name of "reward", he smuggled many treasures and paintings of the Forbidden City out of the palace through his younger brother Pujie. When he was expelled from the palace, although he fled in a hurry, he still took away many treasures in the palace.
According to incomplete statistics, Puyi took thousands of treasures from the Forbidden City through various methods, and there were more than a thousand celebrity calligraphy and paintings alone.
These calligraphy, paintings and treasures treasured by the Qing Palace can be said to be of great value, so where did these treasures that were taken out of the palace by Puyi go in the end?
1. Splurge when he was a Yugong in Tianjin
When Puyi was emperor, he lived a life of fine clothes and jade food. After the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution, although he abdicated, he still lived in the palace, and the Republic of China government also retained many preferential conditions for the imperial family. Therefore, after his abdication, Puyi was no less than when he was emperor in terms of eating and wearing and pomp.
After being expelled from the palace, Puyi moved to the Tianjin Concession and lived in Zhangyuan and Jingyuan successively.
While living in the palace, Puyi was bound by various royal rituals, and now that his personal freedom has been restored, he has begun to let go of his hands and feet and squander it. These treasures he brought out of the palace became the capital he squandered.
On the one hand, he sold these treasures, obtained a lot of money, bought a lot of high-end clothes, and went in and out of various places with the "empress" and "lady concubine" embroidery...
On the other hand, he had frequent contacts with the qing dynasty's widows and warlords of various factions, and he often rewarded his "subordinates" with treasures, which allowed him to regain the feeling of being an emperor.
Puyi in Tianjin
From 1925 to 1932, Puyi lived in Tianjin for 7 years, and it was the treasures he brought out of the Forbidden City that sustained his luxurious life for 7 years.
When he left Tianjin for the northeast, Puyi did not take all his treasures with him. When the Nationalist government later seized the Jingyuan Garden in Tianjin, it counted nineteen boxes and two leather bags of fine porcelain. Later, these treasures were transported back to Beiping and kept by the Palace Museum.
2. A large number of treasures were brought to the northeast
In 1932, Puyi left Tianjin for the northeast, and then the Japanese supported Puyi to establish a puppet manchukuo in the northeast region. While traveling to the northeast, Puyi transferred a large amount of precious treasures to the puppet state of Manchukuo.
During his time as a pseudo-emperor, although Puyi had the title of "emperor", he was actually not free, and everything had to look at the faces of the Japanese, but his life was still luxurious.
To maintain Puyi's luxurious life, there is money provided by the Japanese, and some of it needs to be paid for by himself.
After Japan's defeat in the war, the puppet Manchukuo regime collapsed, and Puyi, his officials and their families fled to The Great Chestnut Ditch in Tonghua, Jilin Province.
Puyi fled in a hurry, and some cultural relics that were inconvenient to carry and of relatively low value were left in the pseudo-imperial palace. When the Nationalist army entered Changchun, more than ten boxes of precious calligraphy and painting books from the Song, Yuan and Ming dynasties were seized in the pseudo-imperial palace. Later, these calligraphy and paintings were taken to Shenyang and deposited with the central bank.
There are still a large number of precious cultural relics taken away by Puyi, such as Wang Xizhi's "Cao'e Monument", Wang Xianzhi's "Er Xie Ti", Song Huizong's flower and bird paintings, Zhang Zeduan's "Qingming River Map", etc., and any piece of it is worth a lot.
Some of these precious treasures were lost when Puyi fled, but fortunately most of the treasures were taken over by the Northeast Democratic Coalition Army.
Puyi spent less than ten days in Tonghua, and just as he was preparing to flee to Japan by plane, he was arrested by the Soviet Red Army and then taken to the Soviet prison in Boli in the Far East, where he still carried several boxes of treasures with him.
During his time in the Soviet Union, Puyi once donated two boxes of treasures in the name of "supporting the economic construction of the Soviet Union" in order to bribe the Soviets.
In 1950, Puyi was handed over to the Chinese government by the Soviet government and underwent about ten years of ideological re-education and labor reform at the Fushun War Criminals Management Center in Liaoning Province.
At this time, the valuables left by Puyi's side can still fill two or three large suitcases.
3. After being pardoned, the treasure was handed over to the state, and Puyi left a pocket watch of extraordinary significance
On December 4, 1959, Puyi received a notice of amnesty issued by the Supreme People's Court at the Fushun War Criminals Management Center. At this point, the last emperor of China began his life as a citizen of new China.
During the period of labor reform at the Fushun War Criminals Management Center, the leaders of the management center specially vacated a room in the office area of the correctional section and ordered some exhibition cabinets to display Puyi's few boxes of rare treasures for leaders at all levels and important guests who came to the institute to visit.
According to statistics, among these treasures of Puyi, as many as 468 items can reach the national treasure level.
After being pardoned, Puyi will also leave the Fushun War Criminals Management Center, and of course these treasures must also be dealt with. Puyi once said that these treasures are the property of the people and should be handed over to the state.
Later, with the approval of the superior leaders, the management office decided on a plan for the disposal of these treasures: in view of the fact that Puyi's valuables were smuggled from the Forbidden City in Beijing, they should be returned to the people, but considering the convenience of his future work and life, he was allowed to choose one of the precious items of the clock and watch category for private use.
After Puyi entered the valuables storage room, he carefully looked at these treasures that he had brought out of the Forbidden City and accompanied him for decades, but did not select those valuable treasures, but chose a pocket watch that was old but still shining.
Why would Puyi choose such an old nostalgia watch that is not high in price? It turned out that this pocket watch meant a lot to him.
This pocket watch was a French gold watch bought in Ulivan when he thought of an idea after Puyi was expelled from the Forbidden City by Feng Yuxiang in 1924 and fled from the Prince of Beijing to the Japanese Embassy in Dongjiaomin Lane, in order to get rid of Zhang Wenzhi, who was sent by his father to follow him. This watch later spent a long time with him in Tianjin, Changchun and the Soviet Union.
Perhaps, Puyi hopes that this pocket watch that has accompanied him through the dark and sinful years will witness his new and glorious second half of life.
After Puyi returned to Beijing, the treasures handed over to the state remained in the Fushun War Criminals Management Center and continued to be visited by visitors. It was not until 1964, after personal instructions from Premier Zhou, that the treasures were handed over to Beijing.
Finally, still under the instructions of Premier Zhou, the treasures handed over by Puyi had a clear destination: most of the items with major cultural relics value were handed over to the Palace Museum, some cultural relics with little value were handed over to the Ministry of Finance, and some handicrafts were handed over to the Beijing Special Crafts Company.
At this point, the last treasures that Puyi smuggled out of the palace in various ways can also be regarded as having a complete destination.
Follow-up: After Puyi's death, he left a huge amount of property for his wife Li Shuxian. Some people believe that Puyi, as a former emperor, must have secretly hidden some treasures. But in fact, in addition to the old nostalgia watch, Puyi's treasures have indeed been handed over to the state.
Most of Puyi's legacy comes from the cost of his published memoir, "The First Half of My Life". You know, the book "The First Half of My Life" has been a bestseller since its publication. The book has also been translated into more than a dozen languages and distributed in Hong Kong, Taiwan and many countries overseas. Therefore, the fee is quite substantial.