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Consort Wenxiu: The Woman the Last Emperor Chose—and Was Forced to Give Up Aisin-Gioro Puyi Series | Late Qing Dynasty Erdet Wenxiu (December 20, 1909 – September 17, 1953) From the blog 還暦散歩 (Kanreki Sanpo) by Saorin The 1987 film The Last Emperor is widely celebrated as a masterpiece—but it left out one remarkable story. Puyi, China’s last emperor, actually chose his own empress. And the people around him refused to let that choice stand. Wenxiu was the woman Puyi…

Why “winning without fighting” turned out to be a matter of arithmetic If you’ve read one book of Chinese military strategy, it’s almost certainly Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. It sits on the recommended reading list at West Point and is studied at Sandhurst. What far fewer Western readers know is that Sun Tzu’s book is only the most famous of seven — the Seven Military Classics of Ancient China, the canon formalized in 1080 under the Song dynasty.…

Wanrong — The Last Empress of China, Part I From the Glory of the Gūwalgiya Clan to the Forbidden City by Satoe  |  還暦散歩 (Kanreki Sanpo) — Late Qing Dynasty Series I. The Glory of the Gūwalgiya Clan A Family Among the Eight Banners The Gūwalgiya clan — the family into which Wanrong was born — was a distinguished Manchu family that had earned its place among the Eight Banners through military service during the Qing conquest of China. The…

Late Qing Dynasty Series  |  The Prince Su Family Prince Su Shanqi A Qing Prince, a Japanese Samurai’s Son, and the Dream That Outlasted an Empire In 1900, as allied Western forces threatened to shell the Forbidden City, a single Japanese man talked them out of it — in Chinese. His name was Kawashima Naniwa, and he was the son of a former samurai from a small Japanese castle town called Matsumoto. A year later, that same man became the…

The Fengshan Ritual: China’s Supreme Ceremony of Heaven and Earth Only the Son of Heaven Could Perform It — From the First Emperor to the Song Dynasty A Hierarchy of the Sacred: Who Could Worship What To a reader shaped by Christianity or other Western religious traditions, this may seem deeply strange. In those traditions, prayer is available to everyone — the poorest farmer and the most powerful king kneel before the same God, and no earthly rank determines one’s…

The boy named “joint rule” who was never let in. — The Tongzhi Emperor was given a name that promised him everything and handed him nothing. Tongzhi (同治) means “joint rule.” Yet the boy who carried it was kept outside that rule from before he could even speak. The power was shared, just never with him — it was shared between his mother, Empress Dowager Cixi, and the thin screen she sat behind while the empire was governed in her…

LATE QING DYNASTY SERIES February 12, 1912: The Day Two Thousand Years of Imperial China Came to an End Empress Dowager Longyu, Yuan Shikai, and the Last Act of the Qing Dynasty On February 12, 1912, a six-year-old boy named Puyi signed away the throne his family had held for nearly three centuries. With that act, more than two thousand years of continuous imperial rule in China — a system that traced its origins to the First Emperor of Qin…

The Guangxu Emperor: The Emperor Who Said He Didn’t Need Power Imprisoned by Cixi, possibly poisoned — yet Guangxu never broke. He launched 103 days of reform to save China. The emperor who chose mission over power.The Guangxu Emperor and the 103-Day Revolution That Failed Late Qing Dynasty Series “If it would save the country, I do not need to hold power.” No emperor in Chinese history was supposed to say this. Princes fought and bled for the throne. Empress…

Lü Buwei: The Merchant Who Bought a King In the article on [Bu coins (the price of a person in ancient China)], we saw that in antiquity a human being could carry a price tag. One man pushed that idea to its absolute limit. Grain, pearls, talent — and finally a single prince — he cornered them all as qihuo — literally “rare huo,” rare value worth hoarding. His name was Lü Buwei: the central figure of the drama The…

The Light and Shadow of History History is often told from the perspective of the victors. In modern Chinese history after the Xinhai Revolution, while Miyazaki Toten, who supported Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary movement, is widely known, the stories of those who remained loyal to the Qing Dynasty are rarely told. Today, we introduce the life of Kodaira Soji, a figure hidden in the “shadows of history.” Devotion to the Qing Dynasty Born in 1876 in Hotaka Village (present-day Azumino City),…

Organizing the Facts On the night of November 10, 1931, Puyi escaped from Tianjin and arrived in Yingkou on the 13th, heading toward Manchukuo. Sixteen days after Puyi’s departure, on November 26, an escape operation for Empress Wanrong was executed. The Operation Team – Planner: Yoshida Chutaro, translator for the Tianjin Garrison – Accompanying members: – Kawashima Yoshiko – Mrs. Yoshida Chutaro – Wanrong’s brother – Imperial eunuch – Lady-in-waiting – Japanese Army Colonel The Moment of Decision About ten…

Why was Puyi given special protection? After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the privileges of the imperial family and aristocracy during the Qing Dynasty were supposed to have been completely denied, restoration of honor and special protection were given to Emperor Puyi and the mellow imperial family. Why is that? Sun Yat-sen’s “Republic of the Five Tribes” In the early stages, the revolutionaries adopted an extreme Manchurianism that regarded the entire Manchu tribe as the enemy and…