A Visit to the Last Emperor

Anyone entertaining dreams of living the life of an Oriental potentate can make the fantasy come true by spending a night in one of the haunts of China’s last emperor . . . his prison cell!

The offer is part of a bid by China to cash in on the success of Bernardo Bertolucci’s Oscar-winning film, “The Last Emperor.” Tours retrace the life of Pu Yi, the country’s last imperial ruler.

“The film ‘The Last Emperor’ was a great promotion for tourism in China,” Lu Bing, deputy director of the Beijing Tourist Administration, said. “Now we will make it become real.”

“Tour of the Last Emperor” starts in Beijing, Pu Yi’s birthplace, and moves through the northern Chinese cities of Tianjin, Fushun and Changchun, where he lived during various years of his turbulent life. He returned to the capital in 1960 to spend his remaining years as a gardener.

Tianjin Residence

Visits include Pu Yi’s 1920s Tianjin residence, his 1930s palace in Changchun and the Fushun War Criminals Prison--now housing ordinary convicts--where he was interned through the 1950s to undergo “re-education.”

Tourists who wish to experience the ultimate imperial sensation can pay extra to spend the night in the cell where Pu Yi slept for nearly 10 years. Chinese travel officials, however, so far refuse to say how much foreign dreamers will have to pay for the tour, saying only that it will cost more than others.

In Beijing the first stop is within the massive red walls of the 15th-Century Forbidden City, the seat of imperial power until a popular revolution in 1911 dethroned Pu Yi and ushered in a republic.

Despite the revolution, Pu Yi continued his sumptuous young life inside the courtyards that formed his palace home, attended by thousands of eunuchs, until 1924 when he was driven out at age 18 by an ambitious warlord.

For latter-day, would-be courtiers, open for the first time is the emperor’s bedroom and a display of more than 200 of his personal possessions--photographs, samples of his calligraphy, a bicycle, a movie projector and cricket cages.

Also on display is Pu Yi’s queue, or pigtail, worn symbolically by upper crust Chinese before 1949. The teen-age emperor slashed it off to emulate the appearance of his British tutor.

“The High Consorts wept several times at the loss of my plait and my tutors went round with long faces for days,” Pu Yi recalled in his memoirs.

Next is a trip to the former mansion and gardens of one of Pu Yi’s uncles, a Qing dynasty prince. For 100 yuan ($27 U.S.), visitors can spend an evening sitting in a poolside pagoda listeni1852252276sipping tea and nibbling on imperial-style cakes.

Restored Garden

The garden, Gong Wang Fu, which once bustled with princes, concubines and attendants, was restored recently. It suffered a series of incarnations after the 1949 Communist takeover, first as home to Soviet engineers, then as a police station and later as an air-conditioner factory.

No one is more aware of the changes than Yu Huan, Pu Yi’s nephew, who was born in the compound and spent his childhood there. Now on hand to conduct tours through the tranquil garden, Yu recently was allowed access to a book room in his ancestral home.

“I’m only a consultant,” he said wistfully. “I can’t live here any more, you understand.”

The traveler then pursues Pu Yi in exile to the nearby coastal city of Tianjin, where he lived out the 1920s as a self-professed bon vivant--dressed in Western suits, frequenting British clubs and squandering his fortune on diamonds.

In 1934, at the prompting of Japan, he re-ascended the throne as emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in northeast China. After Japan’s defeat in World War II he was captured by the Soviet army and returned to China in 1950 to be jailed as a war criminal by Mao Tse-tung’s communist government.

An exhibit within the Fushun prison walls, titled “From Emperor to Citizen” from the namesake title of his memoirs, shows Pu Yi’s prison uniform and daily utensils, the dining room, the greenhouse where he cultivated his green thumb and his cell.

But the tour does not include a visit to the graceful courtyard house in Beijing where the last emperor lived his last years quietly with his third wife until his death from cancer in 1967. That now is home to Pu Yi’s younger brother, Pu Jie.

For more information on the “Tour of the Last Emperor” or other travel to China, contact the China National Tourist Office, 333 W. Broadway, Suite 201, Glendale 91204, phone (818) 545-7505.