In the Spring Festival of 1962, Mao Zedong set up a banquet to entertain guests, jokingly calling the visitor his boss. After a while, a tall, thin man came over, shook hands with Mao Zedong, and cried bitterly: "I have committed deep sins in history..."
Puyi
The person who came was the last emperor Puyi, who after nearly 10 years of transformation in the Fushun War Criminals Management Center, removed from his bones the influence of feudal imperial power he had been subjected to since childhood, and reopened a new life with the appearance of an ordinary person.
Mao Zedong was 13 years older than Puyi, and in his youth, his attitude toward Puyi was hateful.
In 1919, there was a severe famine in Hunan, but officials in Changsha sat idly by. The angry victims rushed into the gate to drive away the inspectors, and a sympathetic envoy planned to open a warehouse for relief, but he was dismissed by the emperor.
The 26-year-old Mao Zedong was extremely dissatisfied with the emperor's bloody suppression of the common people instead of helping the victims, and in the Xiangjiang Review, Puyi, who was overthrown but still retained his honorific title, was called the "bane" and called on everyone to do everything possible to eliminate evil, and even Puyi himself had to be eradicated.
Young Mao Zedong
In 1936, Mao Zedong sent a telegram to Fu Zuoyi, commander of the Kuomintang 35th Army, to discuss the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists in forming an anti-Japanese coalition army. In the letter, when mentioning the invasion of the Suiyuan region by the puppet Mongol army, Mao Zedong also mentioned Puyi, who was serving as a puppet emperor to the Japanese, and identified him as a vicious enemy of the Chinese people.
In February 1940, Mao Zedong's thinking toward Puyi underwent a profound change. In a speech, he once believed that the Xinhai Revolution "revolutionized" the emperor, but yuan shikai, Li Yuanhong, Feng Guozhang, and others who replaced him were no different from the feudal emperors and practiced "cannibalism." It can be seen that it is useless to simply remove an emperor.
By 1945, with Japan's unconditional surrender, Puyi's puppet regime collapsed. Just as everyone was preparing to make a calculation with Puyi, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai issued an order to the army to properly protect the Ai Xin Jue Luo family.
This matter was highly confidential, and it was not until 16 years later when Zhou Enlai met Puyi and Pujie that he personally said it.
Zhou Enlai and Puyi
Why protect a puppet Manchukuo's number one war criminal and his relatives? Mao Zedong, who had a brilliant vision, thought that physical annihilation was easy, but useless, and the most effective way was to ideologically reform this group of war criminals, so that they could change their appearance and become useful members of society.
In the chaotic situation at that time, it was necessary to issue such a protective order. When Puyi's puppet rule had just ended, he and his relatives had to face resentful soldiers and people, and if they lacked strong protection, the consequences would be unimaginable.
When the Japanese Kwantung Army was defeated, it originally planned to take Puyi hostage to japan, who knew that he was captured by the Soviet Far East troops at Shenyang Airport, and since then, Puyi has started a life of detention in the Soviet Union.
The Kuomintang government had planned to extradite Puyi to China for trial "so that he could be brought to justice", and there were as many as 5 times before and after, but Stalin refused.
Puyi himself was well aware of what would happen if he fell into the hands of the Kuomintang, and wrote to Stalin as early as December 1945, hoping to live in the Soviet Union for a long time and become the first emperor civilian among Soviet citizens.
After the founding of New China in 1949, Mao Zedong visited the Soviet Union and solemnly requested Puyi's extradition. His reasoning is resounding: our country has just been established and is facing a blockade. In order to enhance its international status and safeguard our legitimate rights, it is necessary to transfer all the Japanese war criminals and puppet Manchu war criminals who committed war crimes in China by the Soviet Union and deal with them by ourselves as sovereign states, so as to force the Western countries to finally recognize our government.
In the summer of 1950, Puyi, who had been stranded in the Soviet Union for five years, returned to China by train and was reformed at the Fushun War Criminals Management Center. At first, his attitude was negative, because he read the words "the first evil must be done" from the newspaper, and he decided that he would soon have to see the old ancestor.
However, whether it was Gao Gang, chairman of the Northeast Provincial Government, or the director of the management office, the task given to Puyi was to "study well and transform well", and he understood that the government did not want to kill him, the former emperor.
After realizing Mao Zedong's good intentions, Puyi made great progress and profound changes in his thoughts and feelings.
In the first 5 years of Puyi's return to China, Mao Zedong did not mention Puyi's name in a single conversation, but he was very concerned about Puyi and arranged work for several of his closest relatives.
Puyi's seventh uncle, Zaitao, attended the second session of the First National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, was also appointed as an adviser to the Ma Political Bureau of the Artillery Command, became a senior state cadre at the thirteenth level of administration, and was elected as a deputy to the People's Congress four years later. Puyi's third sister, Yun Ying, became a cadre of the CPPCC organs in Beijing's East Fourth District under the personal care of Mao Zedong.
At a banquet, Zhou Enlai met Zaitao and enthusiastically introduced him to Mao Zedong, introducing him as Puyi's uncle.
Mao Zedong suggested that Zaitao take his family to visit Puyi, and also assigned the task of visiting relatives to Peng Zhen, the mayor of Beijing. In the end, Zaitao took Puyi's third sister Yun Ying and fifth sister Yun Xin to Fushun, and each of them received 100 yuan in installation fees, and Peng Zhen also told them that if they wanted to buy some food and drink, they would be paid by the government.
Yun Ying
This visit touched Puyi badly, he originally thought that he was a prisoner in custody, but he did not expect that Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai were still thinking about himself when he was in Japan.
After Puyi was pardoned, he faced a dilemma of work and life.
When Zhou Enlai met Puyi in 1961, he asked him what kind of work he was willing to do, and Puyi replied that he wanted to be a worker. But he had never studied mathematics since he was a child, and he could not read drawings or do calculations, and his desire to be a worker could only be disappointed.
Seeing that he could not be a worker, Puyi retreated to the second place and wanted to get involved in the medical field.
Puyi was weak and sick from a young age, and he saw the imperial doctor prescribe medicine all day long, which was also considered a long-term illness. As an adult, he worked under the Hands of the Japanese, trembling all the time for fear of being poisoned, and had to look at each prescription carefully. He also studied acupuncture for a while at the War Criminals Management Institute, and thought he would be able to do the work of a doctor.
But his idea was rejected by Zhou Enlai. He humorously said to Puyi: "Of course, it is good that you are willing to work in the hospital, but you treat others, and it is okay to cure them, if you cure people badly, what can you do?" ”
This is actually a disguised protection of Puyi. Zhou Enlai suggested that Puyi become a librarian of literature and history, because he was a living history himself, and Puyi happily accepted the arrangement, and at the same time went to the Beijing Botanical Garden once a week to participate in labor in order to contact the masses and understand society.
Mao Zedong and Puyi
Both Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai were very concerned about Puyi's work and life and health. Zhou Enlai once jokingly said: "You are the 'emperor', you can't live without the 'empress'! ”
Mao Zedong, on the other hand, gave Puyi two tasks at the banquet for Puyi. One is to find a suitable partner to start a family, and the other is to write a memoir.
Puyi remembered Mao Zedong's words, he was very cautious in marriage matters, rejected the "most beautiful character" Wang Mintong, who had repeatedly shown kindness to himself, and only wanted to find an ordinary civilian woman.
Eventually, Li Shuxian, a nurse at Guanxiang Hospital in Chaoyang District, entered Puyi's life, and on April 30, 1962, the two held a simple wedding.
Puyi Li Shuxian
At the same time, Puyi's memoirs are also in intensive preparation. In May 1962, the article "The Various Forms of Restoration" in "The First Half of My Life" was first published, and Mao Zedong carefully read the article and asked the relevant leaders of the CPPCC how much remuneration was paid to Puyi.
When he learned that it was only 150 yuan, he said that it was too little, half jokingly and half seriously: "People are emperors, how can they give this money?" Can give more points. ”
When meeting foreign friends, Mao Zedong also mentioned Puyi and "The First Half of My Life", when the book was not publicly available, but Mao Zedong thought that the book was not very well written, because Puyi wrote himself too badly, as if all the responsibility was his own.
Hearing that Puyi only had a monthly salary of 180 yuan (which was already a high salary in the 1960s), Mao Zedong sent him a few thousand yuan to improve his life through the famous scholar Zhang Shizhao.
Zhang Shizhao Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong's own salary was 400 yuan, and his life was not rich, so he took money from his own writing fees and allocated it to Puyi. Puyi was very touched after receiving the money, saying that he was gracious and acceptable, the money was not necessary, his book had been published, and he would immediately have a manuscript fee to collect. Under the repeated persuasion of Zhang Shizhao, Puyi accepted the money and recited two poems to express his excitement: "Happy spring rain to gain a new life, the sea is shipwrecked to fulfill the party's heavy favor." ”
On October 3, 1966, Puyi's last national day commemoration event, after watching the performance, he wrote a long diary: "Seeing all this, I miss your old man too much, hate to grow wings, and immediately fly to your side." ”
In 1967, Puyi died of cancer, and Mao Zedong did not forget him. In 1971, when the Ethiopian head of state, Haile Selassie I, came to visit and mentioned that he wanted to meet the last emperor, Puyi, Mao Zedong regrettably told him that Puyi had died four years earlier.
After speaking, he was silent for a long time.