On January 31, 1962, Chairman Mao invited Zhang Shizhao, Wang Jifan, , , Qiu Ao, , , and Cheng Qian and others at the Yinian Hall of Zhongnanhai. There was also a person with a special identity during the meal - the last emperor Puyi.
While chatting, Chairman Mao asked Puyi: "Where is the imperial seal ?"
The imperial seal is a symbol of power in feudal society, and emperors of all dynasties have valued it very much. After the demise of the Qing Dynasty, feudal society no longer exists, but the outside world's attention and rumors about the imperial seal have never stopped.
Puyi was the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty, so many people think that he must know where the imperial seal was.
However, Puyi's answer caused an uproar in the audience.
Feng Yuxiang The troops entered Beijing, and Puyi was driven out of the palace
In October 1924, the Second Zhi-Feng War broke out.
According to military deployment, Feng Yuxiang was going to the front line to fight, but halfway through, he suddenly returned to Beijing, the location of the Beiyang government , and launched the "Beijing Coup".
He led his army to surround the Presidential Palace, captured the then President Cao Kun , removed Wu Peifu from his post, and announced the establishment of " National Army ".
After the coup, Feng Yuxiang's comments on him were mixed. Some people thought he wanted to take the opportunity to seize power, while others believed that he was resisting the Beiyang government was too kind to the feudal dynasty.
In Feng Yuxiang's autobiography "My Life", he explained that the main reason for launching the "Beijing coup" was because the revolution was incomplete and he could not tolerate the existence of the former Qing court. Therefore, he ordered Puyi and others to be driven out of the palace.
From a historical perspective, his move did dig out the foundation for the feudal old and young people to restore the restoration, and cut off the "braided army" like Zhang Xun appeared again.
1 On November 5, Feng Yuxiang ordered Lu Zhonglin and Zhangbi to lead 20 capable generals to take a car to the palace and clean up all the royal personnel, eunuchs, palace maids, etc.
At the same time, Lu Zhonglin and others replaced all the more than 1,200 people originally affiliated with the Capital Garrison Command with the National Army led by Feng Yuxiang.
After the important defense inside and outside the Forbidden City is settled, Lu Zhonglin ordered people to cut off the telephone line in the Forbidden City to cut off the communication inside and outside the palace.
Around 9 a.m., Lu Zhonglin led Li Yuying and others to Puyi's residence. On the way, he met at the time of the Qing Dynasty's Minister of Internal Affairs Shao Ying and others.
Shao Ying saw that they were aggressive and guessed that the situation was not good. As an old minister who had experienced countless ups and downs, he quickly adjusted his condition and accepted the arrangement.
He guessed many bad things, but he didn't expect that Feng Yuxiang ordered Puyi and others to move out of the palace today.
For hundreds of years of the Qing Dynasty, the royal family had been living in the Forbidden City, and it was not easy to suddenly order them to move out.
Lu Zhonglin is a member of the late Grand Secretary of the Xuantong period, Lu Chuanlin, and Li Yuying's father Li Hongzao, was the Minister of Personnel during the Guangxu period.
Shao Ying decided to move out of his personal relationship, hoping to open the Internet, and questioned them: "How can you do this?"
Lu Zhonglin didn't want to make things difficult for Shao Ying, a minister, couldn't help but handed him the "Revising the Preferential Conditions for the Qing Dynasty" that the Beiyang government had just revised and handed it over to Puyi.
After Puyi saw the document, he immediately convened a "Imperial Front Meeting" in the palace.
Jingyi and Rong Hui, the two concubines, did not agree to move out of the palace. Shao Ying proposed to negotiate with Lu Zhonglin to delay the time of leaving the palace.
, and Lu Zhonglin immediately told Shao Ying that when the time comes, if you haven’t left the palace, we will use guns and cannons to invite you out of the palace.
Shao Ying saw rows of cannons aiming at the palace not far away, and no longer dared to bargain, so he had to report to Puyi truthfully.
After about three hours of negotiation, the two sides finally decided that Puyi and others would leave the palace today, and the items left in the palace should be temporarily labeled and sealed.
Lu Zhonglin saw Puyi's figure in the crowd and immediately stepped forward to stop him:
"You want to take your treasure away, I won't stop you, but you must hand over the imperial seal."
Puyi signaled Lu Zhonglin to search, he and his family did not bring jade seal out of the palace.
Lu Zhonglin asked, "Where did the imperial seal be placed?"
Puyi answered calmly: "When I ascended the throne, I heard that the jade seal was placed in Jiaotai Hall . You can definitely find it."
The imperial seal is priceless for an emperor. Lu Zhonglin believes that it must be Puyi who hid it privately:
"We are ordered to ask you The Republic of China has been out of the palace for thirteen years, and he still fantasized about sitting on the dragon throne and calling himself a widow? "
Lu Zhonglin saw that Puyi did not intend to hand over the imperial seal, and reminded him again:
"What I want is engraved with the eight words " received the order from heaven, and I will live forever' '' is not the one at the time of your ascension to the throne."
Puyi has fallen to the point of having nothing, and he knows that he cannot compete with Lu Zhonglin and the forces behind him.
Therefore, I confessed to Lu Zhonglin: "The imperial seal you mentioned was made by Qin Shihuang in the legend. I really haven't seen it."
Not only did Puyi not see it, but even his ancestors Huang Taiji , Kangxi and Emperor Qianlong had never seen what the imperial seal looked like.
The imperial seal has been lost, and it has disappeared so far
0 Puyi has not lie. The jade seal of the Kingdom was not exclusive to Puyi, nor was it only available to the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty.
Jade seal symbolizes supreme power, specifically refers to the seal used by the emperor, and originated from Qin Shihuang.
Qin Shihuang ordered Li Si carved on the Heshi Bi "Received from heaven, live forever" eight words, and the imperial seal was born from this, and it also became a token of "divine power, orthodox and legality".
In 219 BC, when Qin Shihuang was visiting Dongting Lake, dragon boat was almost overturned by the wind and waves. Qin Shihuang threw the imperial seal he carried with him into the lake to worship the gods and conquer the waves.
8 years later, someone got the jade seal again and handed it over to Qin Shihuang. From then on, Qin Shihuang regarded it as a treasure.
By Han Dynasty , the jade seal had a deeper meaning. Getting this jade seal means "being obliged by the sky", and losing means "the energy has been exhausted".
Liu Bang got this jade seal and ascended the throne. It was within the world and was expected to be returned.
When the Han Dynasty emperor ascended the throne, he would take out this jade seal to prove his identity. jade seal is therefore called the "Han Dynasty Jade Seal", which is what we later called the "National Jade Seal".
Cao Wei dynasty Han Dynasty, the jade seal of the kingdom, as a symbol of "the divine gift from the monarch", fell into the hands of Cao Pi .
After Cao Pi obtained the imperial seal, he asked someone to engrave the seal "The seal of the Great Wei Dynasty received the Han Dynasty" on the seal to show his authority.
Emperors of all dynasties, especially the founding emperors, took the imperial seal and announced to the world, proving that they were in accordance with the will of heaven and were reasonable.
As a symbol of imperial power, the jade seal passed down from generation to generation, and it also floated and continued in the long river of time with the rise and fall of dynasties.
According to records, during the " Jingkang disaster ", the Jin soldiers went south and abducted the two emperors Hui and Qin of the Northern Song Dynasty. The jade seal of the imperial edict was also snatched away by the Jin people, and since then, they disappeared.
Until Yuan Dynasty period, the imperial seal suddenly appeared in the market of Yuan Dadu , and the late Yuan Dynasty option minister Boyan ordered people to buy it. For a time, there were many imperial seals on the market, but he didn't know which one was the real imperial seal.
Therefore, all the words on these imperial seals were ground off and distributed to ministers in the court and engraved into private seals.
After the establishment of in the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang as Han . He really hoped to find the imperial seal, so he specially sent Xu Da to Mobei to chasing the Mongolian leader, but in the end he returned in vain.
Therefore, no one knows where the imperial seal, which has been replaced by more than a thousand years of dynasties, went.
During the Qing Dynasty, in order to further establish the prestige of Manchus among the Han people, the rulers also looked for the imperial seal.
And in the Jiaotai Hall of the Forbidden City, there is indeed a jade seal engraved with "According to the sky, one will live forever"; However, when Emperor Qianlong appointed the imperial seal, he thought it was a fake, so he excluded it.
traces the traces of the imperial seal. According to the records of the imperial seal in existing official historical records, historians found that it last appeared in the eyes of the world during the Post-Tang period.
In 936 AD, Shi Jingtang rebelled, ceded the Sixteen Prefectures of Youyun in exchange for reinforcements from Khitan .
With the help of the Khitan, Shi Jingtang surrounded the Later Tang emperor Li Congke on the Xuanwu Tower in Luoyang .
Li Congke ordered people to set fire under the city tower to prevent Shi Jingtang and Khitan's soldiers from besieging the city tower, but they were outnumbered.
Li Congke saw that the situation was going to jump from Xuanwu Tower with the imperial seal in his arms and burned himself into the sea of fire.
The Later Tang Dynasty was destroyed, and the imperial seal disappeared, which added a mysterious color from then on.
The imperial seal is missing, and the imperial seal is handed over to Qianlong Tianhuang Three consecutive seals
No matter when the imperial seal was lost, it is certain that the emperors of the Qing Dynasty had never seen the real imperial seal.
In the "Records of Emperor Taizong of Qing Dynasty", the "treasure of edicts" used by Huang Taiji was brought to Mongolia during the period when Emperor Shun of Yuan Dynasty fled north.
After the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, the "treasure of edicts" lost its meaning of commanding the world.
Two hundred years later, Mongolian Lin Danhan handed the jade seal to Empress Dowager Su Tai for safekeeping before the temporary period.
Later, Dorgon expeditioned Chahar , intercepted the jade seal, and then handed the jade seal to Huang Taiji.
Under the pleading of some Han officials, the jade seal engraved with the "Treasure of Edicts" is the real jade seal of the imperial edict in Huang Taiji's view.
Since Shunzhi Historical emperor ascended the throne, there have been more and more Han officials in the dynasty. It was only then that he realized that the "treasure of edicts" was not the imperial seal passed down during the Qin Shihuang period. It was identified as a jade product that appeared only in the Ming Dynasty, so it was no longer used.
During the Qianlong period, Emperor Qianlong criticized the Qing Huidian for the "Treasure of Edicts" as the imperial seal, believing that this jade seal "although the treasure is heavy, one utensil" is just an object.
In addition, Emperor Qianlong directly removed the "Treasure of Edicts" from the jade seal and demoted it to an antique left over from the Yuan Dynasty.
In order to avoid being laughed at by everyone, Emperor Qianlong began to publicize to the outside world, " monarchs are virtue but not treasure ".
In other words, they were able to become emperors mainly because they had the ability, not because of the protection of the imperial seal.
What a great honor to be Emperor Qianlong never expected that he would slap himself in the face more than ten years later. He began to pay attention to the jade seal, and for this purpose he specially made a seal that symbolizes his supreme power - Qianlong Tianhuang Sanlian Seal.
Of course, he would not have thought that in more than a hundred years, this seal would be taken out of the palace by his descendant Puyi.
He would not have thought that after the victory of Anti-Japanese War , Puyi would hide the seal in the mezzanine of his suitcase. When he was about to escape to Japan, he was caught by Soviet soldiers and stayed in the Soviet Boli Prison for 5 years.
On July 30, 1950, Puyi was extradited from the Soviet Union and detained in Fushun War Criminals Management Office, and received transformation.
At that time, during the War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea, he learned in prison that all walks of life were donating money to buy planes and cannons, and wanted to contribute his own strength, so he handed over the three consecutive seals of Qianlong Tianhuang to the country.
He knew that the country would not sell the seals he handed over to buy airplanes and cannons. He just wanted to take this opportunity to express to the organization that he was indeed reforming.
In his autobiography "My First Half of Life", he did not hesitate to hand over the seal, and he used it when he was imprisoned in the Soviet Union. Back then, he gave some treasures to the Soviet prison, and then his treatment in the prison was greatly improved, so this time he used the same trick again.
After he handed over the treasure, the prison did not release him immediately. He still had to continue to accept ideological transformation and learn how to support himself so that he could become a qualified new citizen of society as soon as possible.
And after the Qianlong Tianhuang Sanlian seal he donated returned to the Forbidden City, it was exhibited in Palace Museum .
pardons to restore freedom, and Puyi, a citizen of New China, was transformed in the Fushun War Criminals Management Office, was not as dark as he had expected and did not know where his future destiny was.
In fact, Chairman Mao, Premier Zhou and other national leaders are very concerned about Puyi's living conditions and the degree of ideological progress.
In November 1956, Chairman Mao published "On the Ten Major Relationships" at the Second Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee. clearly stated that Puyi and others should not be directly executed, but should continue to be implemented with gradual transformation.
Renovation of Puyi, in addition to renovating the bad habits he developed when he was an emperor, such as dressing and eating, such as needing help from others, he also taught him how to contact society, so that he could help the infirmary clean or take him out to see the outside world.
1959 marks the tenth anniversary of the founding of New China, and Chairman Mao proposed a special amnesty decision. Subsequently, Liu Shaoqi issued the "People's Republic of China" in accordance with the resolution passed by the Standing Committee.
Everyone wants to be pardoned, but when they chat in private, they all believe that this pardon will only release those people with small official positions and minor crimes.
Puyi knew that he was guilty, after all, he acted as a traitor during the War of Resistance Against Japan.
When he learned the news of being pardoned, he said bluntly: "I don't have enough pardon conditions. You all performed better than me when you transformed."
Although he made slower than others, he still worked hard to master basic life skills.
February 16, 2019, Beijing Civil Affairs Bureau issued him an introduction letter and assigned him to work at the Botanical Garden of the Institute of Botanical Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences .
Considering that Puyi hadn't worked much in most of his life, the institute initially only asked him to be responsible for watering and cleaning. After these things were done very well, he was arranged to go to the greenhouse to handle some simple work.
In addition, everyone is also paying attention to his personal life. Under the introduction of his colleagues, he met the hospital nurse Li Shuxian and got married on April 30, 1962.
Chairman Mao invited him to a banquet at Zhongnanhai three months before his marriage.
At that time, Chairman Mao already knew that Puyi had made great progress in both work and life. The banquet for him was nothing more than to understand what he felt about his own changes.
Everyone has already arrived and Puyi is the last person to attend. Chairman Mao introduced to everyone that the thin, glasses-wearing person in front of him was the last emperor Puyi .
Puyi is not good at socializing, and when he heard Chairman Mao introduce him to everyone like this, he became even more nervous.
The people present saw his situation and had to change the topic and talk about some relaxed things.
Then, the waiter brought the dishes to vegetarian dishes such as fried peppers, fried bitter melon and fermented black beans . The main food is rice and steamed buns, and the wine is drunk.
learned from the waiter that Chairman Mao’s usual meals are also simple.
Puyi has been an emperor and eaten delicacies from mountains and seas. He did not expect Chairman Mao to live so simple.
Although New China has been established for more than ten years, it was still in a particularly difficult period at that time. Chairman Mao was able to lead a simple life like the people, which is very admirable. Chairman Mao hopes that everyone will not mind and chat with everyone while eating.
Others talked to Chairman Mao, but Puyi never spoke.
Even if he eats the chili peppers that he is not used to, and is so spicy that he sweats heavily, he doesn't speak, but eats rice or drinks water to calm the chili flavor.
Seeing this, Chairman Mao deliberately joked and asked him where the imperial seal was.
"I don't know where the imperial seal is."
Puyi said this, and the seat was filled with an uproar. And Puyi also seemed to be even more nervous.
In order to divert Puyi's tension, Chairman Mao no longer asked about the matter of the imperial seal:
"New China also has a 'jade seal', but it is not like the jade seal made by the emperors of feudal society, but the pure copper 'jade seal' made by folk craftsmen."
After, Chairman Mao introduced to Puyi that the new China was following the socialist path of the people being the masters of the country, which is very different from the feudal society. After
, Chairman Mao learned from Zhang Shizhao that Puyi’s monthly salary was 180 yuan. Chairman Mao not only proposed to raise Puyi's salary, but also personally sent someone to give him 2,000 yuan.
Some people think that 180 yuan per month is enough for daily consumption, but Chairman Mao still insists on giving money to Puyi.
Someone asked about the reason, and Chairman Mao joked: "He is the emperor!"
By 1964, with the recommendation of Premier Zhou and other national leaders, Puyi was transferred to the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference's Cultural and Historical Material Research Committee.
There are also Du Yuming , Lu Zhonglin, Song Xilian , Shen Zui , etc., like Puyi, they are all witnesses or witnesses of history.
When they talk about history, there are always endless things to say. Among them, Puyi and Du Yuming have the best relationship. The two have made an appointment to visit the Forbidden City, Jinggangshan and other places together.
Time has passed, and Puyi also drank with Lu Zhonglin who once drove him out of the palace.
ending
From the emperor of the feudal dynasty to the citizens who do it themselves and have enough food and clothing in the new China, Puyi's life experience is very rich, and his personal growth and changes are also very great.
Puyi was able to live a happy and stable life in his later years. In addition to Puyi's personal efforts, it also had a lot to do with the country's policies and the help of national leaders.
