Li Yuqin; Fourth Wife of China’s Last Emperor

Li Yuqin, who was plucked from a girls school at the age of 15 to become the fourth wife of China’s last emperor, has died at the age of 73, a state-run newspaper reported Friday.

Li, who had cirrhosis for six years, died in the northeastern city of Changchun, the Beijing Youth Daily said in a report attributed to the official New China News Agency. The report said she died recently but did not give a date.

Born in Shandong province in northeastern China, Li was a member of the Manchu minority that ruled China for more than 300 years.

In 1942, she came to Beijing to attend a school run by the Manchukuo regime, set up by Japanese occupiers and headed by Henry Pu Yi, the last emperor of China.

Pu Yi, who was deposed as emperor in the 1911 Chinese revolution, picked Li as his wife but abandoned her after World War II, when Manchukuo fell amid Japan’s defeat.

Li remained in Beijing after Pu Yi was taken to Russia by Soviet troops. After the Communist Party seized power in China in 1949, she became a librarian in Changchun. In 1958, she formally divorced Pu Yi and later married an engineering technician.

In the 1980s, Li was appointed to an advisory council for the Changchun municipal government, the newspaper said.

It did not provide any information about survivors.

Pu Yi, who became emperor as a child in 1908, was interned in the Soviet Union and China for 14 years after World War II. He later worked as a gardener. He died in 1967.