The Last Manchu – The Autobiography of Henry Pu Li, Last Emperor of China

The Last Manchu – The Autobiography of Henry Pu Li, Last Emperor of China by Henry Pu Li and Paul Kramer

When I clicked “buy” on this one, I didn’t read the description as carefully as I should have.  I was wanting a biography. This is an AUTObiography. Big difference.  Fortunately, although not what I was wanting, this was a very satisfying read.  The last emperor of China has a lot of potent, powerful history surrounding his reign, his removal, his imprisonment, and his eventual freedom.  I never saw the popular (1988?) movie, but heard it was very good.  After reading this, I definitely want to watch it at some point.

Since this book is an autobiography, most of the historical turmoil surrounding the life of Henry Pu Li is not really dwelled upon within the pages. The emperor, as you might imagine, lives in his own isolated world; surrounded by ivory carvings, expensive jewelry, and hundreds (if not thousands) of servants to cater to his every need and whim. Why should such an individual care about what happens beyond the palace walls as long as he’s allowed to live as tradition dictates? Especially when he’s basically still a child.

So we read about his whole life, yet most of the early episodes deal with things most others could never dream.  We read about how meals are prepared, how the young emperor is fascinated with watching ants climb trees, how he picks his empress bride (and concubines) from photographs, and how the entire nation is subjugated towards him when they’re in his presence.  It’s incredibly difficult if you’re one of the young emperor’s tutors when he would rather watch ants than study.  God help you if you’re his tutor and you say something like “you must focus on your studies, your highness, instead of watching insects”.  This leads me to point out that we also see a cruel side to the young ruler. We constantly read about how he has his eunuch servants flogged if they show the slightest bit of discourtesy towards him.  If the floggers aren’t flogging hard enough, they themselves run the risk of being flogged as well.

Because of the political turmoil within China, the eventual invasion of Japan (leading to his imprisonment in the USSR), and the Communist takeover of China, we do read an awful lot of internal strife and conflict, yet strangely, the emperor’s ‘captivity’ never really seems that severe.  We read nothing at all about things such as gulag-like tortures that communist prisons are known for throughout history.  His imprisonment (both in Russia and China) seems rather mild. Of course, being that this is an autobiography, you have to wonder if many of his reflections in this autobiography were heavily censored.  That, or the fact that maybe he really was ‘brainwashed’ during his captivity.  He seems to concede awfully easily how his reign and history is a farcical sham, and he seems to praise the new communist leaders of his country rather liberally.

On a negative note, there’s an awful lot of Sino names within this autobiography, and it was awfully difficult for my Western brain to assimilate and keep track of the different people.  It seemed there were at least a dozen different individuals named either ‘Chan’ or ‘Chen’.  Then, as other reviewers have pointed out, there’s quite a bit of punctuation errors and misspellings here as well.  My guess is that this is probably due to the transition of this book to electronic format. Still, though, it only makes a complicated endeavor that much worse.

Although I still wish I would have read something more geared towards the actual history of the particular time and places, I still felt that this book was very well written, and a quite different change of pace.  I mean, how many autobiographies have you read where the person telling the story doesn’t know what a hair dryer is?  Or how to get on a public bus? Or how to even open a door?