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179-608: Puyi (7 February 1906 – 17 October 1967) was the last emperor of China , reigning as the eleventh and final monarch of the Qing dynasty . In 1908, when the Guangxu Emperor died without an heir, Empress Dowager Cixi picked his nephew Puyi, aged two, to succeed him as the Xuantong Emperor . Puyi's father, Zaifeng, Prince Chun , served as regent for his son before Puyi was forced to abdicate in 1912 as

358-582: A concubine , so he would have to choose again. Puyi later claimed that the faces were too small to distinguish between. Puyi then chose Gobulo Wanrong , the daughter of one of Manchuria's richest aristocrats, who had been educated in English by American missionaries in Tianjin, who was considered to be an acceptable empress by the Dowager Consorts. On 15 March 1922, the betrothal of Puyi and Wanrong

537-531: A dynasty , and succession in most cases theoretically followed agnatic primogeniture . The emperor of China was an absolute monarch . During the Han dynasty , Confucianism gained sanction as the official political theory. The absolute authority of the emperor came with a variety of governing duties and moral obligations; failure to uphold these was thought to remove the dynasty's Mandate of Heaven and to justify its overthrow. In practice, emperors sometimes avoided

716-736: A "roundabout way" not to trust his Japanese friends. Zhang fought in the pay of the Japanese, but by this time his relations with the Kwantung Army were becoming strained. In June 1927, Zhang captured Beijing and Behr observed that if Puyi had had more courage and returned to Beijing, he might have been restored to the Dragon Throne. Puyi was noted to have said in a 1927 article in The Illustrated London News , that "I never wish to be Emperor again". Puyi's court

895-552: A Sinophile scholar and a romantic conservative with an instinctive preference for monarchies, believed that China needed a benevolent autocrat to guide the country forward. He was enough of a traditionalist to respect that all major events in the Forbidden City were determined by the court astrologers . Johnston disparaged the superficially Westernised Chinese republican elite who dressed in top hats, frock coats, and business suits as not authentically Chinese, and praised to Puyi

1074-490: A baby's life. There are many reasons why a mother is unable to produce sufficient breast milk, or in some cases to lactate at all. For example, she may have a chronic or acute illness, and either the illness itself, or the treatment for it, reduces or stops her milk. This absence of lactation may be temporary or permanent. There was a greater need for wet nurses when the rates of infant abandonment and maternal death , during and shortly after childbirth , were high. There

1253-572: A ceremony that I ruined with my tears. Puyi did not see his biological mother, Princess Consort Chun , for the next seven years. He developed a special bond with Wang and credited her as the only person who could control him. She was sent away when he was eight years old. After Puyi married, he would occasionally bring her to the Forbidden City, and later Manchukuo , to visit him. After his special government pardon in 1959, she visited her adopted son and only then did he learn of her personal sacrifices to be his nurse. Growing up with scarcely any memory of

1432-416: A certain air of normality to his unique childhood. Separated from his family, Puyi lived his childhood in a regime of virtual seclusion in the Forbidden City, surrounded by guards, eunuchs and other servants who treated him like a god. The emperor's upbringing was a mixture of pampering and mistreatment, as he was required to follow all the rules of rigid Chinese imperial protocol and was unable to behave like

1611-562: A child and leave the infant to the care of relatives or a hired wet nurse, while they returned to Egypt to seek new employment and a new charge to nurse. This constitutes the origin of the archetype of the aleksandrinka as a wet nurse, which came to overpower any other representation of the aleksandrinstvo , despite the fact that empirical evidence demonstrates that only a tiny fraction of aleksandrinke at any time worked as wet nurses. The majority of aleksandrinke were working as nannies or chamber maids, they were not breastfeeding

1790-774: A coup in 1917 but was overthrown again shortly after. Although permitted to remain in the palace, he absconded to the Japanese concession in Tianjin in 1924. In 1934 he was installed as emperor of Manchukuo , a Japanese puppet state. In 1945, he was captured by the Red Army as a prisoner of war, where he was held in the Siberian city of Chita . In 1950, he was extradited to China and imprisoned in Fushun War Criminals Management Centre . He would be formally pardoned and released in 1959, working in

1969-415: A fat old man [Yuan] knelt before her on a red cushion, tears streaming down his face. I was sitting to the right of the widow and wondering why both adults were crying. There was no one in the room other than the three of us and everything was very quiet; the fat man snorted as he spoke and I couldn't understand what he was saying... This was the time when Yuan directly raised the question of abdication. Under

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2148-637: A few places, eunuchs wielded vast power; one of the most powerful eunuchs in Chinese history was Wei Zhongxian during the Ming. Occasionally, other nobles seized power as regents. The actual area ruled by the emperor of China varied from dynasty to dynasty. In some cases, such as during the Southern Song dynasty , political power in East Asia was effectively split among several governments; nonetheless,

2327-562: A former Air Force officer from the Beiyang Army , as his chief of staff to help with the reforms. But on 27 June 1923, a fire destroyed the area around the Palace of Established Happiness, just at the moment when the emperor had ordered to carry out the inventory of one of the imperial warehouses. Puyi suspected it was arson to cover theft. The emperor overheard conversations among the eunuchs that made him fear for his life. In response,

2506-560: A good boy, not daring to talk about other things when I got bored ... as I did with my other Chinese tutors". As the only person capable of controlling Puyi, Johnston had much more influence than his title of English tutor would suggest, as the eunuchs began to rely on him to steer Puyi away from his more capricious moods. Under the Scotsman's influence, Puyi started to insist that his eunuchs address him as "Henry" and later his wife Wanrong as "Elizabeth" as Puyi began to speak " Chinglish ",

2685-468: A hungry baby in a village. Wet nurses are still common in many developing countries , although the practice poses a risk of infections, such as HIV. In China, Indonesia, and the Philippines, a wet nurse may be employed in addition to a nanny as a mark of aristocracy, wealth, and high status. Following the 2008 Chinese milk scandal , in which contaminated infant formula poisoned thousands of babies,

2864-791: A letter to Jirō Minami , the Japanese Minister of War, expressing his desire to be restored to the throne. On the night of 18 September 1931, the Mukden Incident began when the Japanese Kwantung Army blew up a section of railroad belonging to the Japanese-owned South Manchurian Railroad company and blamed the warlord Marshal Zhang Xueliang . On this pretext the Kwantung Army began a general offensive with

3043-448: A male emperor). The given names of all the emperor's deceased male ancestors were forbidden from being written, and were avoided ( 避諱 ) by the use of synonyms, homophones, or leaving out the final stroke of the taboo character. This linguistic feature can sometimes be used to date historical texts, by noting which words in parallel texts are altered. The emperor was never to be addressed as you . Instead, one used Bixia ( 陛下 'bottom of

3222-581: A meal, and he started on a decidedly imperial take on the presidency. Puyi spent hours staring at the Presidential Palace across from the Forbidden City and cursed Yuan whenever he saw him come and go in his car. Puyi loathed Yuan as a "traitor" and decided to sabotage his plans to become emperor by hiding the Imperial Seals, only to be told by his tutors that he would just make new ones. In 1915, Yuan proclaimed himself as emperor , and he

3401-408: A medical journalist writing in the late 1850s, listed the evils of wet nursing, such as the abandonment of the wet nurses' own children, higher infant mortality, and an increased physical and moral risk to a nursed child. While this argument was not founded in any sort of proof, the emotional arguments of medical researchers, coupled with the protests of other critics, slowly increased public knowledge;

3580-570: A member of the household all her days. (Genesis 35:8.) Midrashic commentaries on the Torah hold that the Egyptian princess Bithiah (Pharaoh's wife Asiya in the Islamic Hadith and Qur'an ) attempted to wet-nurse Moses , but he would take only his biological mother's milk. ( Exodus 2:6–9 ) In Greek mythology , Eurycleia is the wet nurse of Odysseus . In Roman mythology , Caieta

3759-468: A mixture of Mandarin and English that became his preferred mode of speech. Puyi recalled of Johnston: "I thought everything about him was first-rate. He made me feel that Westerners were the most intelligent and civilised people in the world and that he was the most learned of Westerners" and that "Johnston had become the major part of my soul". In May 1919, Puyi noticed the protests in Beijing generated by

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3938-513: A moment Puyi hesitated, leading Doihara to send for Puyi's cousin, the very pro-Japanese Yoshiko Kawashima (also known as "Eastern Jewel", Dongzhen ), to visit him to change his mind. Yoshiko, a strong-willed, flamboyant, openly bisexual woman noted for her habit of wearing male clothing and uniforms, had much influence on Puyi. In the Tientsin Incident of November 1931, Puyi and Zheng Xiaoxu travelled to Manchuria to complete plans for

4117-666: A month after the fire, he evicted the eunuchs from the palace with the support of the Beiyang Army. The reform efforts did not last long before Puyi was forced out of the Forbidden City by Feng Yuxiang . On 10 October 1911, the army garrison in Wuhan mutinied , sparking a widespread revolt in the Yangtze river valley and beyond, demanding the overthrow of the Qing dynasty that had ruled China since 1644. The strongman general Yuan Shikai

4296-407: A normal child. The eunuchs were virtual slaves who did all the work in the Forbidden City, such as cooking, gardening, cleaning, entertaining guests, and the bureaucratic work needed to govern a vast empire. They also served as the emperor's advisers. The Forbidden City was full of treasures that the eunuchs constantly stole and sold on the black market. The business of government and of providing for

4475-477: A private citizen of the Republic of China. Puyi was expelled from the Forbidden City the same day. He was given three hours to leave. He spent a few days at the house of his father Prince Chun , and then temporarily resided in the Japanese embassy in Beijing. Puyi left his father's house together with Johnston and his chief servant Big Li without informing Prince Chun's servants, slipped his followers, and went to

4654-558: A reciprocal act known as cross-nursing or co-nursing . In contemporary affluent Western societies such as the United States, the act of nursing a baby other than one's own often provokes cultural discomfort. When a mother is unable to nurse her own infant, an acceptable mediated substitute is expressed milk (or especially colostrum ), which is donated to milk banks , analogous to blood banks , and processed there by being screened, pasteurized, and usually frozen. Infant formula

4833-469: A relatively far distance away. The Bureau of Wet Nurses was created in Paris in 1769 to serve two main purposes: it supplied parents with wet nurses, as well as helping lessen the neglect of babies by controlling monthly salary payments. In order to become a wet nurse, women had to meet a few qualifications, including physical fitness and good moral character; they were often judged on their age, their health,

5012-533: A repair shop and as a researcher of literature and history until his death in 1967. The current head of the House of Aisin-Gioro and hypothetical claimant to the throne is Jin Yuzhang . He has worked for various local councils on China, and has no interest in the restoration of monarchy. Traditional political theory holds that there can only be one legitimate Son of Heaven at any given time. However, identifying

5191-731: A resort owned by the South Manchurian Railroad company. Amakasu was a fearsome man who told Puyi how in the Amakasu Incident of 1923 he had the feminist Noe Itō , her lover the anarchist Sakae Ōsugi , and a six-year-old boy strangled as they were "enemies of the Emperor", and he likewise would kill Puyi if he should prove to be an "enemy of the Emperor". Chen Baochen returned to Beijing, where he died in 1935. Once he arrived in Manchuria, Puyi discovered that he

5370-865: A result of the Xinhai Revolution , which ended two millennia of imperial rule and established the Republic of China . The Empress Dowager Longyu signed the Imperial Edict of the Abdication of the Qing Emperor on Puyi's behalf, and in return the royal family was offered the Articles of Favorable Treatment , which allowed him to retain his imperial title and continue to live in the Forbidden City . From 1 to 12 July 1917, Puyi

5549-714: A stereotype of a "Mammy" character. From the mid-1800s to the mid-1900s, and especially after World War I , thousands of Slovene peasant women migrated via Trieste to the cosmopolitan port city of Alexandria . There, these aleksandrinke  [ sl ] undertook various sorts of domestic work for elite Levantine households—"the highly mobile upper strata of Ottoman millets, Jewish, Maronites, Melkite active in international commerce". Enough served as wet nurses that this occupation became almost synonymous with Slovene domestic workers, which resulted in some stigma back home. Married women could leave Alexandria and return to their home village, where they would conceive and bear

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5728-445: A time when he was not indulged and revered, Puyi quickly became spoiled. The adults in his life, except for Wang, were all strangers, remote, distant, and unable to discipline him. Wherever he went, grown men would kneel down in a ritual kowtow , averting their eyes until he passed. Soon he discovered the absolute power he wielded over the eunuchs, and he frequently had them beaten for small transgressions. As an emperor, Puyi's every whim

5907-512: A treatment; however, it could not be safely administered to infants. In 1780, it began the process of giving mercury to wet nurses, who could then transmit the treatment in their milk to infected infants. The practice of wet-nursing was still widespread during World War I, according to the American Red Cross . Working-class women would leave their babies with wet nurses so they could get jobs in factories. British colonists brought

6086-416: A wet nurse for a few months at a time since it was believed that the quality of a woman's breast milk would lessen over time. Child-minding, different from wet-nursing, was also commonly an additional job on top of child rearing and nursery tending. Employed wet nurses were typically paid low wages and worked long hours. Workers in the 1900s demanded work contracts to provide stable wages. Wet nursing work

6265-462: Is also widely available, which its makers claim can be a reliable source of infant nutrition when prepared properly. Dr. Rhonda Shaw notes that Western objections to wet nurses are cultural: The exchange of body fluids between different women and children, and the exposure of intimate bodily parts make some people uncomfortable. The hidden subtext of these debates has to do with perceptions of moral decency. Societies with breast fetishes tend to conflate

6444-411: Is an ancient practice, common to many societies. It has been linked to social class, where monarchies, the aristocracy , nobility , or upper classes had their children wet-nursed for the benefit of the child's health, and sometimes in the hope of becoming pregnant again quickly. Exclusive breastfeeding inhibits ovulation in some women ( lactational amenorrhea ). Poor women, especially those who suffered

6623-610: Is found in the " help wanted " ads of newspapers, through complaints about wet nurses in magazines, and through medical journals that acted as employment agencies. In the Southern United States before the Civil War , it was common practice for enslaved black women to be forced to be wet nurses to their owners' children. In some instances, the enslaved child and the white child would be raised together in their younger years. (Sometimes both babies would be fathered by

6802-484: Is threatened by the presence of a wet nurse. In pre-modern times, it was incorrectly believed that wet nurses could pass on personality traits to infants, such as acquired characteristics . Many cultures feature stories, historical or mythological, involving superhuman, supernatural, human, and in some instances, animal wet nurses . The Bible refers to Deborah , a nurse to Rebekah , wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob (Israel) and Esau , who appears to have lived as

6981-505: Is totally free from arrogance […] Although the emperor does not seem to have been spoiled yet, from the nonsense and futility that surrounds him, I am afraid there is no hope that he will emerge unscathed from the moral dangers through of the next few years of his life (very critical years necessarily for a boy in his early adolescence), unless he can be removed from the influence of the hordes of eunuchs and other useless officials who are now almost his only companions. I am inclined to think that

7160-613: The Digest of Roman law even refers to a wage dispute for wet-nursing services ( nutricia ). The landmark known as the Columna Lactaria ("Milk Column") may have been a place where wet nurses could be hired. It was considered admirable for upperclass women to breastfeed their own children , but unusual and old-fashioned in the Imperial era . Even women of the working classes or slaves might have their babies nursed, and

7339-589: The Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean . But he disregarded the rules, and taught Puyi about world history with a special focus on British history. Besides history, Johnston taught Puyi philosophy and about what he saw as the superiority of monarchies to republics. Puyi remembered that his tutor's piercing blue eyes "made me feel uneasy ... I found him very intimidating and studied English with him like

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7518-770: The Jurchens of the Jin dynasty (1115–1234) , who later ruled the Qing dynasty as the Manchus , and the Mongols of the Yuan dynasty. The orthodox historical view sees these as dynasties as sinicized polities as they adopted Han culture, claimed the Mandate of Heaven , and performed the traditional imperial obligations such as annual sacrifices to Heaven for rain and prosperity. The revisionist New Qing History school, however, argues that

7697-574: The May 4th movement as thousands of Chinese university students protested against the decision by the great powers at the Paris peace conference to award the former German concessions in Shandong together with the former German colony of Qingdao to Japan. For Puyi, the 4 May movement, which he asked Johnston about, was a revelation as it marked the first time in his life that he noticed that people outside

7876-669: The Ming-era Huang-Ming Zuxun ( Ancestral Instructions ). During the Western Zhou dynasty ( c.  1046 BC  – 771 BC), Chinese vassal rulers with power over their particular fiefdoms served a strong central monarch. Following a brutal succession crisis and relocation of the royal capital, the power of the Zhou kings ( 王 ; wàng ) waned, and during the Eastern Zhou period,

8055-636: The Nine Ding or the Heirloom Seal of the Realm . As with the First Emperor, it remained very common to grant posthumous titles to the ancestors of the victors. The Yuan and Qing dynasties were founded by successful invaders of different ethnic groups. As part of their rule over China, they also went through the culturally appropriate rituals of formally declaring a new dynasty and taking on

8234-636: The Nurse empress dowager . Wet nurses were also common during the Mughal period , with almost every Mughal prince having one. Some prominent ones are Maham Anga for Akbar and Dai Anga for Shah Jahan . Shin Myo Myat was the mother of King Bayinnaung of the Toungoo dynasty of Burma (Myanmar), and the wet nurse of King Tabinshwehti . The last Emperor of China , Puyi , described Wang Lianshou as being

8413-551: The Summer Palace . A hefty annual subsidy of four million silver taels was granted by the Republic to the imperial household, although it was never fully paid and was abolished after just a few years. Puyi was not informed in February 1912 that his reign had ended and China was now a republic, and continued to believe that he was still emperor for some time. In 1913, when Empress Dowager Longyu died, President Yuan arrived at

8592-533: The Victorian era , women took in babies for money and nursed them themselves or fed them with whatever was cheapest. This was known as baby-farming ; poor care sometimes resulted in high infant death rates . The wet nurse at this period was most likely a single woman who previously had given birth to an illegitimate child. There were two types of wet nurses by this time: those on poor relief , who struggled to provide sufficiently for themselves or their charges, and

8771-717: The Yuan dynasty . The Qing view, reported to Europe by the Jesuits, was that there had been 150 emperors from the First Emperor to the Kangxi Emperor . Adding the eight uncontroversial emperors that followed the Kangxi Emperor would give a grand total of 158 emperors from the First Emperor to Puyi. By one count, from the Qin dynasty to the Qing dynasty , there were a total 557 individuals who at one point or another claimed

8950-400: The censorate . Paranoid emperors, like Emperor Wu of Han and the Ming's Hongwu Emperor , would cycle through high government officials rapidly, or simply leave top-ranking posts vacant, such that no one could threaten their power. During other reigns, certain officials in the civil bureaucracy wielded more power than the emperor himself. The emperor's position, unless deposed in a rebellion,

9129-456: The political fiction that there was but one ruler was maintained. The title of emperor was hereditary, traditionally passed on from father to son in each dynasty. There are also instances where the throne is assumed by a younger brother, should the deceased emperor have no male offspring. By convention in most dynasties, the eldest son born to the Empress consort ( 嫡长子 ; 嫡長子 ) succeeded to

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9308-444: The stigma of giving birth to an illegitimate child, sometimes had to give their baby up temporarily to a wet nurse, or permanently to another family. The woman herself might in turn become wet nurse to a wealthier family, while using part of her wages to pay her own child's wet nurse. From Roman times and into the present day, philosophers and thinkers alike have held the view that the important emotional bond between mother and child

9487-538: The " Articles of Favourable Treatment of the Great Qing Emperor after His Abdication ", signed with the new Republic of China , Puyi was to retain his imperial title and be treated by the government of the Republic with the protocol attached to a foreign monarch. Puyi and the imperial court were allowed to remain in the northern half of the Forbidden City (the Private Apartments) as well as in

9666-545: The " Imperial Edict of the Abdication of the Qing Emperor " on 12 February 1912, under a deal brokered by Yuan, now Prime Minister , with the imperial court in Beijing and the Republicans in southern China. Puyi recalled in his autobiography the meeting between Longyu and Yuan: The Dowager Empress was sitting on a kang [platform] in a side room of the Mind Nature Palace, wiping her eyes with a handkerchief as

9845-472: The " Mandate of Heaven ", all of which displeased Puyi. The suggestion that Manchukuo was to be based on popular sovereignty with the 34 million people of Manchuria "asking" that Puyi rule over them was completely contrary to Puyi's ideas about his right to rule by the Mandate of Heaven. Emperor of China Throughout Chinese history , " Emperor " ( Chinese : 皇帝 ; pinyin : Huángdì )

10024-499: The "Mandate of Heaven". There has been only one lawful queen regnant in Chinese history, Wu Zetian , who briefly replaced the Tang dynasty with her own Wu Zhou dynasty . Many women, however, did become de facto leaders, usually as Empress Dowager . Prominent examples include Empress Dowager Lü of the Han, Empress Liu of the Song , and Empress Dowager Cixi of the Qing. As the emperor had, by law, an absolute position not to be challenged by anyone else, his subjects were to show

10203-419: The "betrothal presents" of 18 sheep, 2 horses, 40 pieces of satin, and 80 rolls of cloth, marched from the Forbidden City to Wanrong's house, accompanied by court musicians and cavalry. Following Manchu traditions where weddings were conducted under moonlight for good luck, an enormous procession of palace guardsmen, eunuchs, and musicians carried the Princess Wanrong in a red sedan chair called

10382-402: The "legitimate" emperor during times of division is not always uncontroversial, and therefore the exact number of legitimate emperors depends on where one stands on a number of succession disputes. The two most notable such controversies are whether Cao Wei or Shu Han had legitimacy during the Three Kingdoms , and at what point the Song dynasty ceased to be the legitimate dynasty in favor of

10561-426: The 17th century, use Manchuria as a base for conquering China. In 1928, during the Northern Expedition to reunify China, troops sacked the Qing tombs outside Beijing after the Kuomintang and its allies took Beijing from Zhang's army who retreated back to Manchuria. The news that the Qing tombs had been plundered and the corpse of the Dowager Empress Cixi had been desecrated greatly offended Puyi, who never forgave

10740-475: The British diplomatic legation in Beijing to host Puyi, and although the British authorities were not very interested in welcoming the former emperor, the British representative eventually gave Johnston his consent. However, Johnston later discovered that Puyi – in view of the situation and that Johnston was not returning from his efforts – had taken refuge in the Japanese legation after being advised by Zheng Xiaoxu. The Japanese diplomat Kenkichi Yoshizawa gave Puyi

10919-423: The Chinese title of Huangdi , in addition to the titles of their respective people, especially in the case of the Yuan dynasty. Thus, Kublai Khan was simultaneously khagan of the Mongols and emperor of China. In 1911, the title of Prime Minister of the Imperial Cabinet was created to rule alongside the emperor, as part of an attempt to turn China into a constitutional monarchy . Puyi , who had reigned as

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11098-403: The Confucian scholars with their traditional robes as the ones who were authentically Chinese. As part of an effort to crack down on corruption by the eunuchs, inspired by Johnston, Puyi ordered an inventory of the Forbidden City's treasures. The Hall of Established Happiness was burned on the night of 26 June 1923, as the eunuchs tried to cover up the extent of their theft. Johnston reported that

11277-427: The Dragon Throne. By this time, he had forgotten what his mother looked like. Such was the awe in which the emperor was held that his younger brother Pujie never heard his parents refer to Puyi as "your elder brother" but only as "The Emperor". Pujie told Behr his image of Puyi prior to meeting him was that of "a venerable old man with a beard. I couldn't believe it when I saw this boy in yellow robes sitting solemnly on

11456-476: The Empress came into my field of vision with a crimson satin cloth embroidered with a dragon and a phoenix over her head that I felt at all curious about what she looked like." After the wedding was complete, Puyi, Wanrong, and his secondary consort Wenxiu (whom he married the same night) went to the Palace of Earthly Tranquility , where everything was red – the colour of love and sex in China – and where emperors had traditionally consummated their marriages. Puyi, who

11635-525: The Forbidden City , one of the main sources of information about Puyi's life in this period, though Behr cautioned that Johnston painted an idealised picture of Puyi, avoiding all mention of Puyi's sexuality, merely average academic ability, erratic mood swings, and eunuch-flogging. Pujie told Behr of Puyi's moods: "When he was in a good mood, everything was fine, and he was a charming companion. If something upset him, his dark side would emerge." On 21 October 1922, Puyi's wedding to Princess Wanrong began with

11814-530: The Forbidden City and planned to issue an open letter to "the people of China" renouncing the title of Emperor before leaving for Oxford. The escape attempt failed when Johnston vetoed it and refused to call a taxi, and Puyi was too frightened to live on the streets of Beijing on his own. Pujie said of Puyi's escape attempt: "Puyi's decision had nothing to do with the impending marriage. He felt cooped up, and wanted out." Johnston later recounted his time as Puyi's tutor between 1919 and 1924 in his 1934 book Twilight in

11993-429: The Forbidden City as a show of force against Zhang Xun, causing the death of a eunuch, but otherwise inflicting minor damage. This is the first aerial bombardment recorded by a Chinese Air Force , and the restoration failed due to extensive opposition across China. On 3 March 1919, the Scottish scholar and diplomat Reginald Johnston arrived in the Forbidden City to serve as Puyi's tutor. President Xu Shichang believed

12172-436: The Forbidden City had concerns that were not about him. After his first interview with the emperor, the British academic recorded his impressions in a report addressed to the British authorities; in this document Johnston mentions: He appears to be physically robust and well developed for his age. He is a very "human" boy, with liveliness, intelligence and an enthusiastic sense of humour. Furthermore, he has excellent manners and

12351-506: The Forbidden City to pay his respects, which Puyi's tutors told him meant that major changes were afoot. Puyi soon learned that the real reasons for the Articles of Favourable Settlement was that President Yuan was planning on restoring the monarchy with himself as the emperor of a new dynasty, and wanted to have Puyi as a sort of custodian of the Forbidden City until he could move in. Puyi first learned of Yuan's plans to become emperor when he brought in army bands to serenade him whenever he had

12530-402: The Forbidden City, Puyi was taken to see Cixi. Puyi later wrote: I still have a dim recollection of this meeting, the shock of which left a deep impression on my memory. I remember suddenly finding myself surrounded by strangers, while before me was hung a drab curtain through which I could see an emaciated and terrifying hideous face. This was Cixi. It is said that I burst out into loud howls at

12709-406: The Forbidden City, forcing eunuchs to get out of the way, and told Behr in an interview: "There was a lot of laughter, she and Puyi seemed to get on well, they were like kids together." In 1986, Behr interviewed one of Puyi's two surviving eunuchs, an 85-year-old who was reluctant to answer the questions asked of him, but finally said of Puyi's relationship with Wanrong: "The Emperor would come over to

12888-574: The Han, Emperor Taizong of Tang of the Tang, the Hongwu Emperor and Yongle Emperor of the Ming, and the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing. The emperor's words were considered sacred edicts ( 圣旨 ; 聖旨 ), and his written proclamations were called 'directives from above' ( 上谕 ; 上諭 ). In theory, the emperor's orders were to be obeyed immediately. He was elevated above all commoners, nobility and members of

13067-420: The Han, as well as the empress dowagers Cixi and Ci'an during the Qing, who for a time ruled jointly as co-regents. Where Empresses Dowager were too weak to assume power, or her family too strongly opposed, court officials often seized control. Court eunuchs had a significant role in the power structure, as emperors often relied on a few of them as confidants, which gave them access to many court documents. In

13246-707: The House of Qing in China and the House of Romanov in Russia. Puyi gave Semyonov a loan of 5,000 British pounds, which Semyonov never repaid. Another visitor to the Garden of Serenity was General Kenji Doihara , a Japanese Army officer who was fluent in Mandarin and a man of great charm who manipulated Puyi via flattery, telling him that a great man such as himself should go conquer Manchuria and then, just as his Qing ancestors did in

13425-599: The Imperial family. Addresses to the emperor were always to be formal and self-deprecatory, even by the closest of family members. In practice, however, the power of the emperor varied between different emperors and different dynasties . Generally, in the Chinese dynastic cycle , emperors founding a dynasty usually consolidated the empire through comparative autocracy —examples include Qin Shi Huang, emperors Gaozu and Guangwu of Han, Emperor Taizong of Tang, Kublai Khan of

13604-526: The Japanese legation. Puyi had originally wanted to go to the British Legation, but Johnston had insisted that he would be safer with the Japanese. For Johnston, the system where the Japanese people worshipped their emperor as a living god was much closer to his ideal than the British constitutional monarchy, and he constantly steered Puyi in a pro-Japanese direction. However, Johnston tried to get

13783-480: The Japanese monarchy, Chinese political theory allowed for a change in the ruling house. This was based on the concept of the " Mandate of Heaven ". The theory behind this was that the Chinese emperor acted as the "Son of Heaven" and held a mandate to rule over everyone else in the world; but only as long as he served the people well. If the quality of rule became questionable because of repeated natural disasters such as flood or famine, or for other reasons, then rebellion

13962-503: The Kuomintang and held Chiang Kai-shek personally responsible; the sacking also showed his powerlessness. During his time in Tianjin, Puyi was besieged with visitors asking him for money, including various members of the vast Qing family, old Manchu bannermen, journalists prepared to write articles calling for a Qing restoration for the right price, and eunuchs who had once lived in the Forbidden City and were now living in poverty. Puyi

14141-470: The Phoenix Chair within the Forbidden City, where Puyi sat upon the Dragon Throne. Later Wanrong kowtowed to him six times in her living quarters to symbolize her submission to her husband as the decree of their marriage was read out. Wanrong wore a mask in accordance with Chinese tradition and Puyi, who knew nothing of women, remembered: "I hardly thought about marriage and family. It was only when

14320-457: The Qing imperial court, and though she was not the de jure "regent", she was the de facto ruler of the Qing empire. Puyi had a standard Confucian education, being taught the various Chinese classics and nothing else. He later wrote: "I learnt nothing of mathematics, let alone science, and for a long time I had no idea where Peking was situated". When Puyi was 13, he met his parents and siblings, all of whom had to kowtow before him as he sat upon

14499-542: The Roman-era Greek gynecologist Soranus offers detailed advice on how to choose a wet nurse. Inscriptions such as religious dedications and epitaphs indicate that a nutrix would be proud of her profession. One even records a nutritor lactaneus , a male "milk nurse" who presumably used a bottle. Greek nurses were preferred, and the Romans believed that a baby who had a Greek nutrix could imbibe

14678-536: The Xuantong Emperor, abdicated on 12 February 1912, ending the Qing dynasty as well as the imperial tradition altogether, after more than 2100 years. Yuan Shikai , former President of the Republic of China , attempted to restore dynastic rule with himself as the Hongxian Emperor, however he abdicated the throne on 22 March 1916 after only 83 days. Puyi was briefly restored for 12 days during

14857-437: The Yuan, and the Kangxi Emperor of the Qing. The usual method for widespread geographic power consolidation was to involve the whole family. From generation to generation, the bonds weakened between the branches of family established as local rulers in different areas. After a sufficient period of time, their loyalty could no longer be assured, and the taxes they collected sapped the imperial coffers. This led to situations like

15036-514: The aim of conquering all of Manchuria. Puyi was visited by Kenji Doihara, head of the espionage office of the Japanese Kwantung Army, who proposed establishing Puyi as head of a Manchurian state. The Japanese further bribed a café worker to tell Puyi that a contract was out on his life in an attempt to frighten Puyi into moving. The Empress Wanrong was firmly against Puyi's plans to go to Manchuria, which she called treason, and for

15215-431: The ancient nature of this practice. Sometimes, the wet nurse came to live with the infant's family, filling a position between the monthly nurse (for the immediate post-partum period ) and the nanny . In some societies, the wet nurse was simply hired as any other employee. In others, however, she had a special relationship with the family, which could incur kinship rights. In Vietnamese family structure , for example,

15394-531: The beginning of Japanese interest in Puyi. On 23 October 1924, a coup led by the warlord Feng Yuxiang took control of Beijing. Feng, the latest of the warlords to take Beijing, was seeking legitimacy and decided that abolishing the unpopular Articles of Favourable Settlement was an easy way to win the crowd's approval. Feng unilaterally revised the "Articles of Favourable Treatment" on 5 November 1924, abolishing Puyi's imperial title and privileges and reducing him to

15573-517: The best course of action to take in the interest of the boy himself would be to remove him from the harmful atmosphere of the "Forbidden City" and send him to the Summer Palace. There it would be possible for him to live a much less artificial and happier life than he can under the present conditions... Puyi could not speak Manchu ; he only knew a single word in the language, yili ("arise"). Despite studying Manchu for years, he admitted that it

15752-526: The case, as regular breast stimulation can elicit lactation via a neural reflex of prolactin production and secretion. Some women have been able to establish lactation using a breast pump , in order to feed an infant. Gabrielle Palmer , author of The Politics of Breastfeeding , states: There is no medical reason why women should not lactate indefinitely or feed more than one child simultaneously (known as 'tandem feeding')...some women could theoretically be able to feed up to five babies. Wet nursing

15931-434: The centuries, it has not been uncommon to have numerous claimants to the title of "Son of Heaven". The Chinese political concept of the Mandate of Heaven essentially legitimized those claimants who emerged victorious. The proper list was considered those made by the official dynastic histories ; the compilation of a history of the preceding dynasty was considered one of the hallmarks of legitimacy, along with symbols such as

16110-464: The children they were taking care of. The emphasis on lactaction, which marks the hypersexualization of the aleksandrinstvo , was part of the rhetorical stigma surrounding this phenomenon in Slovenia. Sometimes, the infant was placed in the home of the wet nurse for several months, as was the case for Jane Austen and her siblings. The Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 91 , a receipt from AD 187, attests to

16289-483: The embarrassment of having him live in the Japanese Legation, which was straining relations with China. On 23 February 1925, Puyi left Beijing for Tianjin wearing a simple Chinese gown and skullcap as he was afraid of being robbed on the train. Puyi described his train journey to Tianjin, saying, "At every stop between Beijing and Tianjin several Japanese policeman and special agents in black suits would get on

16468-551: The emperor created further opportunities for corruption, in which virtually all the eunuchs engaged. Puyi never had any privacy and had all his needs attended to at all times, having eunuchs open doors for him, dress him, wash him, and even blow air into his soup to cool it. At his meals, Puyi was always presented with a huge buffet containing every conceivable dish, the vast majority of which he did not eat, and every day he wore new clothing, as Chinese emperors never reused their clothing. After his wedding, Puyi began to take control of

16647-533: The emperor was referred to in the third person simply as Huangdi Bixia ( 皇帝陛下 'His Majesty the Emperor') or Dangjin Huangshang ( 当今皇上 ; 當今皇上 'present emperor above'). Under the Qing, the emperor was usually styled 'His Imperial Majesty the Emperor of the Great Qing Dynasty, Son of Heaven , Lord of Ten Thousand Years ', though this varied considerably. In historical texts, the present emperor

16826-538: The emperor, while still living, often designated a crown prince ( 太子 ). Even such a clear designation, however, was often thwarted by jealousy and distrust, whether it was the crown prince plotting against the emperor, or brothers plotting against each other. Some emperors, like the Yongzheng Emperor , after abolishing the position of Crown Prince, placed the succession papers in a sealed box, only to be opened and announced after his death. Unlike, for example,

17005-500: The emperors were known with a temple name given after their death. Most emperors were also given a posthumous name which was sometimes combined with the temple name (e.g. Emperor Shengzu Ren 圣祖仁皇帝 ; 聖祖仁皇帝 for the Kangxi Emperor). The passing of an emperor was referred to as Jiabeng ( 驾崩 ; 駕崩 'collapse of the imperial chariot') and an emperor that had just died was referred to as Daixing Huangdi ( 大行皇帝 'the emperor of

17184-481: The eunuchs from the Forbidden City to end the problem of theft, only agreeing to keep 50 after the Dowager Consorts complained that they could not function without them. Puyi turned the grounds where the Hall of Supreme Harmony had once stood into a tennis court, as he and Wanrong loved to play. Wanrong's brother Rong Qi recalled: "But after the eunuchs went, many of the palaces inside the Forbidden City were closed down, and

17363-550: The eunuchs. Johnston was also the first to argue that Puyi needed glasses since he had developed myopia , as he was extremely near-sighted, and after much argument with Prince Chun, who thought it was undignified for an emperor, finally prevailed. Johnston, who spoke fluent Mandarin, closely followed the intellectual scene in China, and introduced Puyi to the "new-style" Chinese books and magazines, which so inspired Puyi that he wrote several poems that were published anonymously in "New China" publications. In 1922, Johnston had his friend,

17542-417: The families are linked by a special relationship of milk kinship . Wet-nursing existed in societies around the world until the invention of reliable formula milk in the 20th century. The practice has made a small comeback in the 21st century. A wet nurse can help when a mother is unable or unwilling to breastfeed her baby. Before the development of infant formula in the 20th century, wet-nursing could save

17721-401: The family business and/or take care of the family household duties in their place. Some women chose to hire wet nurses purely to escape from the confining and time-consuming chore of breastfeeding. A woman can only act as a wet nurse if she is lactating (producing milk). It was once believed that a wet nurse must have recently undergone childbirth in order to lactate. This is not necessarily

17900-637: The flow of breast milk. By the 1500s, a wealthy mother who did not use a wet nurse was worthy of remark in India. The child was not "put out" of the household; rather, the wet nurse was included within it. The imperial wet nurses of the Mughal court were given honours in the Turco-Mongol tradition. Wet nursing used to be commonplace in the United Kingdom. Working-class women both provided and received wet-nursing services. Taking care of babies

18079-508: The great journey'). The imperial family was made up of the emperor and the empress ( 皇后 ) as the primary consort and Mother of the Nation ( 国母 ; 國母 ). In addition, the emperor would typically have several other consorts and concubines ( 嫔妃 ; 嬪妃 ), ranked by importance into a harem , in which the Empress was supreme. Every dynasty had its set of rules regarding the numerical composition of

18258-526: The greatest respect in the palace and was the decision maker in most family affairs. At times, especially when a young emperor was on the throne, she was the de facto ruler. The emperor's children, the princes ( 皇子 ) and princesses ( 公主 ), were often referred to by their order of birth—e.g. Eldest Prince or Third Princess. Princes were often given titles of peerage once they reached adulthood. The emperor's brothers and uncles served in court by law, and held equal status with other court officials ( 子 ). The emperor

18437-441: The harem. During the Qing dynasty, for example, imperial convention dictated that at any given time there should be one Empress , one Imperial Noble Consort , two Noble Consort , four Consort and six Concubine , plus an unlimited number of Noble Lady , First Class Attendant and Second Class Attendant . Although the emperor had the highest status by law, by tradition and precedent the empress dowager ( 皇太后 ) usually received

18616-444: The idea. In June 1925, the warlord Zhang Zuolin visited Tianjin to meet Puyi. "Old Marshal" Zhang, an illiterate former bandit, ruled Manchuria, a region equal in size to Germany and France combined, which had a population of 30 million and was the most industrialised region in China. Zhang kowtowed to Puyi at their meeting and promised to restore the House of Qing if Puyi made a large financial donation to his army. Zhang warned Puyi in

18795-402: The inscription wr šdt nfrw nswt In , meaning Great Royal Wet Nurse In . In Asia, Lady Kasuga was the wet nurse of the third Tokugawa shōgun , Iemitsu . Lu Lingxuan was a lady in waiting who served as wet nurse to the emperor Gao Wei . She became exceedingly powerful during his reign and was often criticized by historians for her corruption and treachery. Chinese emperors honoured

18974-483: The interaction between politics and ethnicity was far more complex and that elements of these dynasties differed from and altered "native Chinese" traditions concerning imperial rule. Wet nurse A wet nurse is a woman who breastfeeds and cares for another's child. Wet nurses are employed if the mother dies, if she is unable to nurse the child herself sufficiently or chooses not to do so. Wet-nursed children may be known as "milk-siblings", and in some societies,

19153-404: The language and grow up speaking Greek as fluently as Latin. The importance of the wet nurse to ancient Roman culture is indicated by the founding myth of Romulus and Remus , who were abandoned as infants but nursed by the she-wolf , as portrayed in the famous Capitoline Wolf bronze sculpture. The goddess Rumina was invoked among other birth and child development deities to promote

19332-488: The life of an emperor began when palace officials arrived at his family residence to take him. On the evening of 13 November, without any advance notice, a procession of eunuchs and guardsmen led by the palace chamberlain left the Forbidden City for the Northern Mansion to inform Prince Chun that they were taking away his two-year-old son Puyi to be the new emperor. The toddler Puyi screamed and resisted as

19511-438: The life of their infant for the life of another." Wet nursing decreased in popularity during the mid-19th century, as medical journalists wrote about its previously undocumented dangers. Fildes argued that "Britain has been lumped together with the rest of Europe in any discussion of the qualities, terms of employment and conditions of the wet nurse, and particularly the abuses of which she was supposedly guilty." C. H. F. Routh,

19690-717: The low wages and high rent prices of this era, which forced many women to have to work soon after childbirth. This meant that many mothers had to send their infants away to be breastfed and cared for by wet nurses even poorer than themselves. With the high demand for wet nurses, the price to hire one increased as the standard of care decreased. This led to many infant deaths. In response, rather than nursing their own children, upper-class women turned to hiring wet nurses to come live with them instead. In entering into their employer's home to care for their charges, these wet nurses had to leave their own infants to be nursed and cared for by women far worse off than themselves, and who likely lived at

19869-580: The monarchy would eventually be restored, and to prepare Puyi for the challenges of the modern world had hired Johnston to teach Puyi "subjects such as political science, constitutional history and English". Johnston was allowed only five texts in English to give Puyi to read: Alice in Wonderland and translations into English of the " Four Great Books " of Confucianism ; the Analects , the Mencius ,

20048-442: The money he gave them for themselves. Puyi remembered Zhang as "a universally detested monster" with a face bloated and "tinged with the livid hue induced by opium smoking". Semyonov in particular proved himself to be a talented con man, claiming as an ataman to have several Cossack Hosts under his command, to have 300 million roubles in the bank, and to be supported by American, British, and Japanese banks in his plans to restore both

20227-410: The more so as China was a republic and her title of empress was symbolic only. The westernised Wanrong loved to go out dancing, play tennis, wear western clothes and make-up, listen to jazz music, and to socialize with her friends, which the more conservative courtiers all objected to. She resented having to play the traditional role of a Chinese empress, but was unwilling to break with Puyi. Puyi's butler

20406-442: The next day, he "found the Emperor and Empress standing on a heap of charred wood, sadly contemplating the spectacle". The treasures reported lost in the fire included 2,685 golden statues of Buddha, 1,675 golden altar ornaments, 435 porcelain antiques, and 31 boxes of sable furs, though it is likely that most if not all of these had been sold on the black market before the fire. Puyi finally decided to expel all of

20585-466: The number of children they had, as well as their breast shape, breast size, breast texture, nipple shape, and nipple size, since all these aspects were believed to affect the quality of a woman's milk. In 1874, the French government introduced a law named after Théophile Roussel  [ fr ] , which "mandated that every infant placed with a paid guardian outside the parents' home be registered with

20764-406: The nuptial apartments once every three months and spend the night there ... He left early in the morning on the following day and for the rest of that day he would invariably be in a very filthy temper indeed." A eunuch who served in the Forbidden City as Wanrong's personal servant later wrote in his memoir that there was a rumour among the eunuchs that Puyi was gay, noting a strange situation where he

20943-466: The officials ordered the eunuch attendants to pick him up. Puyi's parents said nothing when they learned that they were losing their son. As Puyi wept, screaming that he did not want to leave his parents, he was forced into a palanquin that took him to the Forbidden City. Wang Lianshou , Puyi's wet nurse , was the only person from the Northern Mansion allowed to go with him. Upon arriving at

21122-556: The only people who seemed to get along at Puyi's court were Wanrong and Wenxiu, who were "like sisters". Tianjin was, after Shanghai, the most cosmopolitan Chinese city, with large British, French, German, Russian and Japanese communities. As an emperor, Puyi was allowed to join several social clubs that normally only admitted whites. During this period, Puyi and his advisers Chen Baochen , Zheng Xiaoxu, and Luo Zhenyu discussed plans to restore Puyi as Emperor. Zheng and Luo favoured enlisting assistance from external parties, while Chen opposed

21301-417: The only person who was able to control him: "from my infancy until the time I grew up, only my wet nurse, because of her simple language, was able to make me grasp the idea that I was like other people." In Europe, Hodierna of St Albans was the mother of Alexander Neckam and wet nurse of Richard I of England , and Mrs. Pack was a wet nurse to William, Duke of Gloucester (1689–1700). Geneviève Poitrine

21480-456: The original Chinese first-person singular pronoun arrogated by Qin Shi Huang, functioning as an equivalent to the royal we . In front of subjects, the emperor may also refer to themselves self-deprecatingly as Guaren ( 寡人 'the morally-deficient one') or Gu ( 孤 'lonely one'). In contrast to the Western convention of using a regnal or personal name (e.g. George V) to refer to a sovereign,

21659-405: The other end. Johnston also pressured Puyi to cut down on the waste and extravagance in the Forbidden City and encouraged him to be more self-sufficient. In March 1922, the Dowager Consorts decided that Puyi should be married, and gave him a selection of photographs of aristocratic teenage girls to choose from. Puyi first chose Erdet Wenxiu as his wife, but was told that she was acceptable only as

21838-627: The palace. He described "an orgy of looting" taking place that involved "everyone from the highest to the lowest". According to Puyi, by the end of his wedding ceremony, the pearls and jade in the empress's crown had been stolen. Locks were broken, areas ransacked. Puyi's next plan of action was to reform the Household Department. In this period, he brought in more outsiders to replace the traditional aristocratic officers to improve accountability. He appointed Zheng Xiaoxu as minister of Household Department, and Zheng Xiaoxu hired Tong Jixu ,

22017-514: The place took on a desolate, abandoned air." After the Great Kantō earthquake on 1 September 1923 destroyed the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, Puyi donated jade antiques worth some £33,000 to pay for disaster relief, which led a delegation of Japanese diplomats to visit the Forbidden City to express their thanks. In their report about the visit, the diplomats noted that Puyi was highly vain and malleable, and could be used by Japan, which marked

22196-470: The practice declined, replaced by maternal breastfeeding and bottle-feeding. Wet-nursing was reported in France in the time of Louis XIV , the mid-17th century. By the 18th century, approximately 90% of infants were wet-nursed, mostly sent away to live with their wet nurses. In Paris, only 1,000 of the 21,000 babies born in 1780 were nursed by their own mothers. The high demand for wet nurses coincided with

22375-432: The practice of wet-nursing with them to North America. Since the arrangement of sending infants away to live with wet nurses was the cause of so many infant deaths, by the 19th century, Americans adopted the practice of having wet nurses live with the employers in order to nurse and care for their charges. This practice had the effect of increasing the death rate for wet nurses' own babies. Many employers would have only kept

22554-518: The professionals, who were well paid and respected. Upper-class women tended to hire wet nurses to work within their own homes, as part of a large household of servants. Wet nurses also worked at foundling hospitals , establishments for abandoned children . Their own children would likely be sent away, normally brought up by the bottle rather than being breastfed. Valerie Fildes, author of Breasts, Bottle and Babies: A History of Infant Feeding , argues that "In effect, wealthy parents frequently 'bought'

22733-524: The puppet state of Manchukuo. Puyi left his house in Tianjin by hiding in the trunk of a car. The Chinese government ordered his arrest for treason, but was unable to breach the Japanese protection. Puyi boarded a Japanese ship that took him across the Bohai, and when he landed in Port Arthur (modern Lüshun), he was greeted by the man who was to become his minder, General Masahiko Amakasu , who took them to

22912-426: The regards of the Japanese government, saying, "Our government has formally acknowledged Your Majesty's taking refuge in our legation and will provide protection for you." Puyi's adviser Lu Zongyu , who was secretly working for the Japanese, suggested that Puyi move to Tianjin, which he argued was safer than Beijing, though the real reason was that the Japanese felt that Puyi would be easier to control in Tianjin without

23091-521: The regional lords overshadowed the king and began to usurp that title for themselves. In 221 BC, after the King of Qin completed the conquest of the various kingdoms of the Warring States period , he adopted a new title to reflect his prestige as a ruler greater than the rulers before him. He called himself "Shi Huangdi", or the 'First Emperor'. Before this, Huang ( 皇 'august', 'sovereign' )

23270-479: The reign of Emperor Wu of Han , who disenfranchised and annihilated the nobilities of virtually all imperial relatives whose forebears had been enfeoffed by his own ancestor, Gaozu. Apart from a few very energetic monarchs, the emperor usually delegated the majority of decision making to the civil bureaucracy (chiefly the chancellery and the Central Secretariat ), the military, and in some periods

23449-509: The salaries of wet nurses there increased dramatically. Royal wet nurses are more likely than most to reach the historical record. In Ancient Egypt , Maia was the wet nurse of King Tutankhamun . Sitre In , the nurse of Hatshepsut , was not a member of the royal family but received the honour of a burial in the royal necropolis in the Valley of the Kings , in tomb KV60 . Her coffin has

23628-480: The same man, the slave-owner; see Children of the plantation .) Visual representations of wet-nursing practices in enslaved communities are most prevalent in representations of the Mammy archetype caricature. Images such as the one in this section represent both a historically accurate practice of enslaved black women wet-nursing their owner's white children, as well as sometimes an exaggerated racist caricaturization of

23807-574: The sexual and erotic breast with the functional and lactating breast. For some Americans, the subject of wet-nursing is becoming increasingly open for discussion. During a UNICEF goodwill tour to Sierra Leone in 2008, American Mexican actress Salma Hayek decided to breastfeed a local infant in front of the accompanying film crew. The sick one-week-old baby had been born the same day but a year later than Hayek's daughter, who had not yet been weaned. The actress later discussed on camera an anecdote of her Mexican great-grandmother spontaneously breastfeeding

23986-499: The sight and started to tremble uncontrollably. Cixi told someone to give me some sweets, but I threw them on the floor and yelled "I want nanny, I want nanny", to her great displeasure. "What a naughty child", she said. "Take him away to play." Cixi died on 15 November, less than two days after the meeting. Puyi's father, Prince Chun, became Prince Regent. During Puyi's coronation in the Hall of Supreme Harmony on 2 December 1908,

24165-405: The state so that the French government is able to monitor how many children are placed with wet nurses and how many wet-nursed children have died". Wet nurses were hired to work in hospitals to nurse babies who were premature, ill, or abandoned. During the 18th and 19th centuries, congenital syphilis was a common cause of infant mortality. The Vaugirard hospital in Paris began to use mercury as

24344-623: The state's chief executive. In 1934, Puyi was declared emperor of Manchukuo and crowned under the era name "Kangde". He largely resided in the Manchukuo Imperial Palace in Changchun , where his personal life was closely watched by the Japanese. He never held any real power, only able to sign edicts that the Japanese gave him. At the end of the Second Sino-Japanese War in 1945, Puyi fled the capital and

24523-462: The steps'), corresponding to "Your Imperial Majesty" and originally referring to his attendents, Huangshang ( 皇上 'imperial highness', Shengshang ( 圣上 ; 聖上 'holy highness') or Tianzi ( 天子 'Son of Heaven'). The emperor was also alluded to indirectly through reference to the imperial dragon symbology . Servants often addressed the emperor as Wansuiye ( 万岁爷 ; 萬歲爺 'lord of ten thousand years '). The emperor referred to himself as zhen ( 朕 ),

24702-462: The strict rules of succession and dynasties' purported "failures" were detailed in official histories written by their successful replacements or even later dynasties. The power of the emperor was also limited by the imperial bureaucracy , which was staffed by scholar-officials , and eunuchs during some dynasties. An emperor was also constrained by filial obligations to his ancestors' policies and dynastic traditions, such as those first detailed in

24881-467: The throne". Although Puyi could see his family, this happened rarely, and always under the stifling rules of imperial etiquette. The consequence was that the relationship of the emperor with his parents was distant and he found himself more attached to his nurse, Miss Wang (who had accompanied him to the Forbidden City). Later, Puyi began to receive visits from his brothers and cousins, who provided

25060-466: The throne. In some cases when the empress did not bear any children, the emperor would have a child with another of his many wives (all children of the emperor were said also to be the children of the empress, regardless of birth mother). In some dynasties the succession of the empress' eldest son was disputed, and because many emperors had large numbers of progeny, there were wars of succession between rival sons. In an attempt to resolve after-death disputes,

25239-435: The title of Emperor, including several simultaneous claimants at various times. Some, such as Li Zicheng , Huang Chao , and Yuan Shu , declared themselves the emperors, Son of Heaven and founded their own empires as a rival government to challenge the legitimacy of and overthrow the existing emperor. Among the most famous emperors were Qin Shi Huang of the Qin dynasty , emperors Gaozu , Han Wudi as well as Guangwu of

25418-719: The train so that, by the time we reached Tianjin, my special car was almost half occupied by them." In February 1925, Puyi moved to the Japanese concession of Tianjin , first into the Zhang Garden , and in 1929 into the former residence of Lu Zongyu known as the Garden of Serenity . A British journalist, Henry Woodhead, called Puyi's court a "doggy paradise" as both Puyi and Wanrong were dog lovers who owned several very spoiled dogs while Puyi's courtiers spent an inordinate amount of time feuding with one another. Woodhead stated that

25597-446: The utmost respect in his presence, whether in direct conversation or otherwise. When approaching the imperial throne, one was expected to kowtow before the emperor. In a conversation with the emperor, it was considered a crime to compare oneself to the emperor in any way. It was taboo to refer to the emperor by his given name, even for the emperor's own mother, who instead was to use Huangdi ( 皇帝 ), or simply Er ( 儿 ; 兒 'son', for

25776-483: The wet nurse is known as Nhũ mẫu , mẫu meaning "mother". Islam has a highly codified system of milk kinship known as rada . George III of the United Kingdom , born two months premature, had a wet nurse whom he so valued all his life, that her daughter was appointed laundress to the Royal Household, "a sinecure place of great emolument ". Mothers who nurse each other's babies are engaging in

25955-568: The writer Hu Shih , visit the Forbidden City to teach Puyi about recent developments in Chinese literature . Under Johnston's influence, Puyi embraced the bicycle as a way to exercise, cut his queue and grew a full head of hair, and wanted to study at the University of Oxford , Johnston's alma mater . Johnston also introduced Puyi to the telephone, which Puyi soon became addicted to, phoning people in Beijing at random just to hear their voices on

26134-486: The young emperor was carried onto the Dragon Throne by his father. Puyi was frightened by the scene before him and the deafening sounds of ceremonial drums and music, and started crying. His father could do nothing except quietly comfort him: "Don't cry, it'll be over soon." Puyi wrote in his autobiography: Two days after I entered the palace, Cixi died and on 2 December the "Great Enthronement Ceremony" took place,

26313-503: Was divinely appointed to rule. The appellation Huangdi carried similar shades of meaning. Alternate English translations of the word include "The August Ancestor", "The Holy Ruler", or "The Divine Lord". On that account, some modern scholars translate the title as " thearch ". On occasion, the father of the ascended emperor was still alive. Such an emperor was titled as the Taishang Huang ('grand imperial sire'). The practice

26492-411: Was 13. Their leader was the autocratic Empress Dowager Longyu , who successfully conspired to have Puyi's beloved wet nurse Wang expelled from the Forbidden City when he was 8 on the grounds that Puyi was too old to be breast-fed. Puyi especially hated Longyu for that. Puyi later wrote, "Although I had many mothers, I never knew any motherly love." Empress dowager Longyu ruled with paramount authority over

26671-442: Was a concurrent availability of lactating women whose own babies had died . Some women chose not to breastfeed for social reasons. For upper-class women, breastfeeding was considered unfashionable, in the sense that it not only prevented them from being able to wear the fashionable clothing of their time, but it was also thought to ruin their figures. Hiring a wet nurse was less expensive than having to hire someone else to help run

26850-537: Was a prisoner and was not allowed outside the Yamato Hotel, ostensibly to protect him from assassination. Wanrong had stayed in Tianjin, and remained opposed to Puyi's decision to work with the Japanese, requiring her friend Eastern Jewel to visit numerous times to convince her to go to Manchuria. Behr commented that if Wanrong had been a stronger woman, she might have remained in Tianjin and filed for divorce, but ultimately she accepted Eastern Jewel's argument that it

27029-435: Was a well-paid, respectable, and popular job for many working-class women. In the 18th century, a woman would earn more money as a wet nurse than an average man could as a labourer. Up until the 19th century, most wet-nursed infants were sent far from their families to live with their new caregiver for up to the first three years of their life. As many as 80% of wet-nursed babies who lived like this died during infancy. During

27208-554: Was a wet nurse of the Dauphin of France , Louis Joseph , son of King Louis XVI of France and Queen Marie Antoinette . Poitrine was accused of transmitting tuberculosis to the Dauphin and triggering his infant death when aged seven, although since very few pre-adolescent children die from TB, this accusation may have been the result of a misdiagnosis. Some non-royal wet nurses have also been written about. Halimah bint Abi Dhuayb

27387-517: Was almost universally referred to as Shang ( 上 ). Generally, emperors also ruled with an era name ( 年号 ; 年號 ). Since the adoption of era names by Emperor Wu of Han and up until the Ming dynasty , the sovereign conventionally changed the era name semi-regularly during his reign. During the Ming and Qing dynasties, emperors simply chose one era name for their entire reign, and people often referred to past emperors with that title. In earlier dynasties,

27566-518: Was always elevated above all others despite any chronological or generational superiority. Recent scholarship is wary of applying present-day ethnic categories to historical situations. Most Chinese emperors have been considered members of the Han ethnicity , but there were also many Chinese emperors who were of non-Han ethnic origins. The most successful of these were the Khitans of the Liao dynasty ,

27745-553: Was always hereditary, usually by agnatic primogeniture . As a result, many emperors ascended the throne while still children. During minority reigns , the Empress Dowager , the emperor's mother, would usually possess significant political power, along with the male members of her birth family . In fact, the vast majority of female rulers throughout Chinese Imperial history came to power by ruling as regents on behalf of their sons; prominent examples include Empress Lü Zhi of

27924-449: Was announced in the newspapers. On 17 March, Wanrong took the train to Beijing, and on 6 April, Puyi went to the Qing family shrine to inform his ancestors that he would be married to her later that year. Puyi did not meet Wanrong until their wedding. In an interview in 1986, Prince Pujie told Behr: "Puyi constantly talked about going to England and becoming an Oxford student, like Johnston." On 4 June 1922, Puyi attempted to escape from

28103-418: Was asked by Puyi to stand inside Wanrong's room while Puyi groped her. Another eunuch claimed that Puyi preferred the "land-way" of the eunuchs to the "water-way" of the Empress, implying he was gay. Puyi rarely left the Forbidden City, knew nothing of the lives of ordinary Chinese people, and was somewhat misled by Johnston, who told him that the vast majority of the Chinese wanted a Qing restoration. Johnston,

28282-419: Was briefly restored to the Qing throne by the loyalist general Zhang Xun , and in 1924 he was expelled from the capital by warlord Feng Yuxiang after a coup . Puyi found refuge in Tianjin , where he began to court both various warlords and the Japanese, who had long desired control of China. After the Japanese invaded Manchuria and established the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932, they installed Puyi as

28461-769: Was captured by the Soviet Red Army . In 1946, he testified at the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal , and in 1950, was repatriated to the People's Republic of China . Puyi was then imprisoned and re-educated as a war criminal until his release in 1959. After his release, Puyi wrote an autobiography (with the help of a ghostwriter ) and became a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference . His time in prison greatly changed him, and he expressed deep regret for his actions while he

28640-492: Was catered to while no one ever said no to him, making him into a sadistic boy who loved to have his eunuchs flogged or forced to eat dirt. The Anglo-French journalist Edward Behr wrote about Puyi's power as emperor of China, which allowed him to fire his air-gun at anyone he liked: The Emperor was Divine. He could not be remonstrated with, or punished. He could only be deferentially advised against ill-treating innocent eunuchs, and if he chose to fire air-gun pellets at them, that

28819-419: Was dispatched by the court to crush the revolution, but was unable to, as by 1911 public opinion had turned decisively against the Qing, and many Chinese had no wish to fight for a dynasty that was seen as having lost the mandate of heaven . Puyi's father, Prince Chun , served as a regent until 6 December, when Empress Dowager Longyu took over following the Xinhai Revolution . Empress Dowager Longyu endorsed

28998-539: Was emperor. He died in 1967 and was ultimately buried near the Western Qing tombs in a commercial cemetery. Puyi married five times, but had no children. Chosen by Empress Dowager Cixi , Puyi became emperor at the age of 2 years and 10 months in December ;1908 after the Guangxu Emperor , Puyi's half-uncle, died childless on 14 November. Titled the Xuantong Emperor, Puyi's introduction to

29177-591: Was her duty as a wife to follow her husband, and six weeks after the Tientsin incident, she too crossed the East China Sea to Port Arthur with Eastern Jewel to keep her company. In early 1932, General Seishirō Itagaki informed Puyi that the new state was to be a republic with him as Chief Executive; the capital was to be Changchun; his form of address was to be "Your Excellency", not "Your Imperial Majesty"; and there were to be no references to Puyi ruling with

29356-411: Was his "worst" subject among everything he studied. According to the journalist Syed Mohammad Ali , Puyi spoke Mandarin when interviewed, but Ali believed he could understand English. Johnston also introduced Puyi to the new technology of cinema, and Puyi was so delighted with the movies, especially Harold Lloyd films, that he had a film projector installed in the Forbidden City despite the opposition of

29535-702: Was his prerogative. Puyi later said, "Flogging eunuchs was part of my daily routine. My cruelty and love of wielding power were already too firmly set for persuasion to have any effect on me." Wang was the only person capable of controlling Puyi; once, Puyi decided to "reward" a eunuch for a well-done puppet show by having a cake baked for him with iron filings in it, saying, "I want to see what he looks like when he eats it". With much difficulty, Wang talked Puyi out of this plan. Every day, Puyi had to visit five former imperial concubines, called his "mothers", to report on his progress. He hated his "mothers", not least because they prevented him from seeing his real mother until he

29714-433: Was initiated by Qin Shi Huang, who gave the title as a posthumous name to his own father, as was already common for monarchs of any stratum of power. Liu Bang , who established the Han dynasty , was the first to become emperor while his father yet lived. It was said he granted the title during his father's life because he would not be done obeisance to by his own father, a commoner. Owing to political fragmentation, over

29893-474: Was justified. This important concept legitimized the dynastic cycle or the change of dynasties. This principle made it possible even for peasants to found new dynasties, as happened with the Han and Ming dynasties, and for the establishment of conquest dynasties such as the Mongol-led Yuan dynasty and Manchu-led Qing dynasty. It was moral integrity and benevolent leadership that determined the holder of

30072-608: Was most commonly seen as a reverential epithet for a deceased ancestor, and Di ( 帝 , OC : * ‍ tˤeks ) was an apical ancestor, originally referring to the deified ancestors of the Shang kings. In the 3rd century BC, the two titles had not previously been used together. The emperor of China, like the Zhou kings before him, and the Shang kings before them, was most commonly referred to as Tianzi ( 天子 'Son of Heaven'), who

30251-434: Was my restoration. Frankly, I did not know anything about love. In other marriages husband and wife were equal, but to me wife and consort were both the slaves and tools of their master." Wanrong complained that her life as an "empress" was extremely dull as the rules for an empress forbade her from going out dancing as she wanted, instead forcing her to spend her days in traditional rituals that she found to be meaningless, all

30430-539: Was not done, where emperors were concerned: it would have been an appalling breach of protocol. But the fact remains that a totally inexperienced, over-sheltered adolescent, if normal, could hardly have failed to be aroused by Wan Jung's [Wanrong's] unusual, sensual beauty. The inference is, of course, that Pu Yi was either impotent, extraordinarily immature sexually, or already aware of his homosexual tendencies. Wanrong's younger brother Rong Qi remembered how Puyi and Wanrong, both teenagers, loved to race their bicycles through

30609-527: Was often bored with his life, and engaged in maniacal shopping to compensate, recalling that he was addicted to "buying pianos, watches, clocks, radios, Western clothes, leather shoes, and spectacles". Puyi's first wife, Wanrong, continued to smoke opium recreationally during this period. Their marriage began to fall apart as they spent more and more time apart, meeting only at mealtimes. Puyi wrote in his memoir: Even if I had had only one wife she would not have found life with me interesting since my preoccupation

30788-471: Was planning to marry his daughter to Puyi, but had to abdicate in the face of popular opposition. In 1917, the warlord Zhang Xun restored Puyi to the throne from 1 to 12 July. Zhang Xun ordered his army to keep their queues to display loyalty to the emperor. However, then-Premier of the Republic of China Duan Qirui ordered a Caudron Type D plane, piloted by Pan Shizhong (潘世忠) with bombardier Du Yuyuan (杜裕源) from Nanyuan airfield , to drop three bombs over

30967-527: Was prone to factionalism and his advisers were urging him to back different warlords, which gave him a reputation for duplicity as he negotiated with various warlords, which strained his relations with Marshal Zhang. At various times, Puyi met Zhang Zongchang , the "Dogmeat General", and the Russian émigré general Grigory Semyonov at his Tianjin house; both of them promised to restore him to the Dragon Throne if he gave them enough money, and both of them kept all

31146-404: Was rarely consistent, wet nurses were stereotypically poor ladies from rural areas who offered their services for fees. Since there were no official records kept pertaining to wet nurses or wet-nursed babies, historians lack the knowledge of precisely how many infants were wet-nursed and for how long, whether they lived at home or elsewhere, and how many lived or died. The best source of evidence

31325-706: Was secretly a Japanese spy, and in a report to his masters, he described Puyi and Wanrong one day spending hours screaming at one another in the gardens with Wanrong repeatedly calling Puyi a "eunuch"; whether she meant that as a reference to sexual inadequacy is unclear. Puyi's sister Yunhe noted in her diary in September 1930, that Puyi had told her that "yesterday the Empress flew into rage saying that she had been bullied by me and she poured out terrible and absurd words". In 1931, Puyi's concubine Wenxiu declared that she had had enough of him and his court and simply walked out, filing for divorce. In September 1931, Puyi sent

31504-587: Was sexually inexperienced and timid, fled from the bridal chamber, leaving his wives to sleep in the Dragon Bed by themselves. Of Puyi's failure to consummate his marriage on his wedding night, Behr wrote: It was perhaps too much to expect an adolescent, permanently surrounded by eunuchs, to show the sexual maturity of a normal seventeen-year-old. Neither the Dowager consorts nor Johnston himself had given him any advice on sexual matters – this sort of thing simply

31683-479: Was the foster mother and wet nurse of the Islamic prophet Muhammad . Petronella Muns was, with her employer, the first Western woman to visit Japan. Naomi Baumslag, author of Milk, Money and Madness , described the legendary capacity of Judith Waterford : "In 1831, on her 81st birthday, she could still produce breast milk. In her prime she unfailingly produced two quarts (four pints or 1.9 litres) of breast milk

31862-400: Was the superlative title held by the monarchs who ruled various imperial dynasties or Chinese empires . In traditional Chinese political theory, the emperor was the " Son of Heaven ", an autocrat with the divine mandate right to rule all under Heaven . Emperors were worshiped posthumously under an imperial cult . The lineage of emperors descended from a paternal family line constituted

32041-516: Was the wet nurse of Aeneas . In Burmese mythology , Myaukhpet Shinma is the nat (spirit) representation of the wet nurse of King Tabinshwehti . In Hawaiian mythology , Nuakea is a beneficent goddess of lactation; her name became the title for a royal wet nurse, according to David Malo . In ancient Rome , well-to-do households would have had wet nurses ( Latin nutrices , singular nutrix ) among their slaves and freedwomen, but some Roman women were wet nurses by profession, and

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