Chinese Tutor in ‘Last Emperor’ Has Family Ties on Peninsula

A striking image in the Academy Award-sweeping epic “The Last Emperor” occurs amid the fairy-tale pomp of the Forbidden City, when a bespectacled Chinese tutor gives a cricket in a jar to Henry Pu Yi, boy emperor without an empire.

Helen Ho Bottorff of Rancho Palos Verdes watched that scene with special attention. Chen Bao Shen, the royal tutor portrayed by actor Victor Wong, was her grandfather.

The film depicting Pu Yi’s odyssey from pampered puppet emperor to “re-educated” gardener in the People’s Republic of China emphasized the role of British royal tutor Sir Reginald Johnston, played by Peter O’Toole. But Pu Yi’s autobiography makes clear the importance to the emperor of Chen Bao Shen, a prodigious scholar chosen from the ranks of China’s intellectual class to oversee the emperor’s education.

In a recent interview, Ho, 62, read from the emperor’s memoirs: “With Chen Bao Shen, I had one spirit. When Johnston came, I had two spirits.”

Ho and her husband, John Bottorff own the Golden Lotus restaurant in Rancho Palos Verdes with her brother Shelton Ho, 53.

Of her grandfather, Ho said: “He is the family legend. The greatest man in my life.”

Ho’s mother was one of the tutor’s 16 children. Her uncle Leo Chen, the tutor’s youngest son, is a professor of Chinese literature at San Francisco State University who recalls being brought to the palace to play with the emperor as a child. Director Bernardo Bertolucci interviewed him while making the film.

Chen Bao Shen was born in the 1850s in the Fuzhou region, which has produced a “remarkable number of scholars over the centuries,” Bottorff said. An extremely bright student of classics, philosophy and history, Chen Bao Shen became a high-ranking court official while he was still in his 20s.

“But he offended the Empress Dowager because he was outspoken,” Ho said. “He was sent back to Fuzhou. He was a teacher for nearly 30 years.”

Shortly before her death, the Empress Dowager decided that Chen Bao Shen was the man best qualified to tutor the boy emperor, Ho said. Chen Bao Shen was brought back from exile.

Remained for 21 Years

The Empress Dowager’s death and the 3-year-old emperor’s arrival in the Forbidden City in 1908 open the film of “The Last Emperor.” The tutor remained with Pu Yi for more than two decades.

“The education he gave the emperor was based on the Chinese classics and how to interpret them,” Bottorff said. “He had a tremendous influence on the boy and the man.”

Emperor Pu Yi was forced from the Forbidden City, the century-old royal domain, to the city of Tianjing in 1925. The tutor and his family accompanied him. It was there that Ho’s mother met a brash young journalist and eloped with him.

“There was some friction in the family over the marriage,” Bottorff said, as his wife laughed.

Shortly after Ho was born, her grandfather and Emperor Pu Yi parted company. As depicted in the movie, the Japanese installed the melancholy playboy as the puppet ruler of Manchukuo.

Chen Bao Shen counseled against the Japanese offer, Ho said, and refused to accompany Pu Yi to Manchukuo.

The tutor died at 88 in 1935. His family was dispersed by time and conflict. Some fled the Communists and some remained. Ho’s eldest uncle, who inherited much of the family’s considerable estate, was killed.

Ho was reared in Shanghai and moved to Taiwan, where she worked as a radio reporter. She met and married Bottorff, a U.S. foreign service officer stationed in Taipei. They came to the United States in the 1970s.

Hordes of Sightseers

“The Last Emperor” has provided a curious intersection of art, history and personal experience for Ho’s family. Her account of her first visit to the Forbidden City in 1979 evokes the final scenes of the movie, when the former emperor-turned-gardener watches hordes of sightseers file through his palace, an anachronistic tourist attraction amid communist austerity.

“It was very strange,” Ho said of her trip to the palace. “I said to myself: ‘My grandfather used to work here.’ ”

When Ho went to the nearby Fishing Pavilion, an estate that had belonged to her grandfather, she found it had been turned into a residence for visiting dignitaries. She was denied entry because she did not have an appointment.

Ho tells this story without bitterness. She has made several subsequent trips to mainland China. Two years ago, she saw her grandfather’s elaborate burial ground in Fuzhou for the first time.

Some of Chen Bao Shen’s writings are in the Library of Congress. His tradition of scholarly endeavor is preserved by Leo Chen in academia; Ho and her brother Shelton still practice the art of calligraphy. Shelton is also an accomplished horticulturist.

The on-screen character in the movie does not bear much physical resemblance to her grandfather, Ho said, and the film makers’ artistic choice diminished his historical role.

Nonetheless, Ho said her family found the movie well made and generally accurate. “The Last Emperor” has spurred a new celebration of the spirit of Chen Bao Shen among his descendants.