Show Notes
China’s last emperor (Puyi), his empress (Wanrong), and concubine (Wenxiu) spent two years sequestered in the Forbidden City before their expulsion in 1924. Around them were holdover dowagers, scheming eunuchs, corrupt officials, and two foreign teachers of English. Many people know Puyi’s tutor, Reginald Johnston, either from Johnston’s memoir, Twilight in the Forbidden City, or from Peter O’Toole’s portrayal in Bernardo Bertolucci’s Puyi biopic, The Last Emperor. But it is Wanrong’s tutor, the young American Isabel Ingram, and her letters that are at the heart of our guest’s new book about these pivotal two years in Chinese history.
Author Paul French has made a career of evocative stories of old China, including the New York Times bestseller Midnight in Peking and City of Devils: A Shanghai Noir. The Economist has called him “a champion storyteller.”
His new book, The Last Emperor of China: Twilight of the Forbidden City (out today in the UK), is built around the unpublished letters of Ingram and Johnston. They describe the trials and tribulations (but also the small pleasures and moments of joy) shared by three remarkable young people: Puyi, Wanrong, and Wenxiu. They longed to escape, but when they were finally expelled from the courtyards of Beijing’s imperial palace, they found only despair and tragedy.
Paul joins Jeremiah to discuss the origins of this book, his use of previously unpublished sources, including memoirs, diaries, and letters, and whether the more lurid rumors of the relationship between Puyi and his empress have any basis in fact.
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Mao Zedong died on September 9, 1976. Fifty years later, Jeremiah and David compare notes on a mostly quiet anniversary. Jeremiah reports that there were enough tributes to beat the over/under, but David argues that the Party would still prefer to keep things as ritualistic as possible. Mao is still dead. We will all bow. And moving on.
In this Barbarians at the Gate x China Books Review crossover, Jeremiah Jenne is joined by CBR Associate Editor Alexander Boyd to discuss the latest addition to the China Archives: W. Somerset Maugham's On a Chinese Screen (1922), a collection of vignettes from Maugham's trip through China in the winter of 1919–1920.