The Last Emperor | |
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Directed by | Bernardo Bertolucci |
Screenplay by |
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Based on | From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Puyi 1960 autobiography by Puyi |
Produced by | Jeremy Thomas |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro |
Edited by | Gabriella Cristiani |
Music by |
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Production companies | |
Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
Release dates |
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Running time | 163 minutes [1] |
Countries |
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Languages |
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Budget | $23.8 million [2] |
Box office | $44 million [3] |
The Last Emperor (Italian : L'ultimo imperatore) is a 1987 epic biographical drama film about the life of Puyi, the final Emperor of China. It is directed by Bernardo Bertolucci from a screenplay he co-wrote with Mark Peploe, which was adapted from Puyi's 1964 autobiography, and independently produced by Jeremy Thomas. [4]
The film depicts Puyi's life from his ascent to the throne as a small boy to his imprisonment and political rehabilitation by the Chinese Communist Party. It stars John Lone in the eponymous role, with Peter O'Toole, Joan Chen, Ruocheng Ying, Victor Wong, Dennis Dun, Vivian Wu, Lisa Lu, and Ryuichi Sakamoto (who also composed the film score with David Byrne and Cong Su). It was the first Western feature film authorised by the People's Republic of China to film in the Forbidden City in Beijing. [2]
The Last Emperor premiered at the 1987 Tokyo International Film Festival, and was released in the United States by Columbia Pictures on November 18. It earned widespread positive reviews from critics and was also a commercial success. At the 60th Academy Awards, it won all nine Oscars it was nominated for, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. It also won several other accolades, including three BAFTA Awards, four Golden Globe Awards, nine David di Donatello Awards, and a Grammy Award for its musical score. The film was converted into 3D and shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. [5]
By 1950, the 44-year old Puyi, former Emperor of China, has been in custody for five years since his capture by the Red Army during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria. In the recently established People's Republic of China, Puyi arrives as a political prisoner and war criminal at the Fushun Prison. Soon after his arrival, Puyi attempts suicide, but is quickly rescued and told he must stand trial.
42 years earlier, in 1908, a toddler Puyi is summoned to the Forbidden City by the dying Empress Dowager Cixi. After telling him that the previous emperor had died earlier that day, Cixi tells Puyi that he is to be the next emperor. After his coronation, Puyi, frightened by his new surroundings, repeatedly expresses his wish to go home, but is denied. Despite having scores of palace eunuchs and maids to wait on him, his only real friend is his wet nurse, Ar Mo.
As he grows up, his upbringing is confined entirely to the imperial palace and he is prohibited from leaving. One day, he is visited by his younger brother, Pujie, who tells him he is no longer Emperor and that China has become a republic; that same day, Ar Mo is forced to leave. In 1919, Reginald Johnston is appointed as Puyi's tutor and gives him a Western-style education, and Puyi becomes increasingly desirous to leave the Forbidden City. Johnston, wary of the courtiers' expensive lifestyle, convinces Puyi that the best way of achieving this is through marriage; Puyi subsequently weds Wanrong, with Wenxiu as a secondary consort.
Puyi then sets about reforming the Forbidden City, including expelling the palace eunuchs. However, in 1924, he himself is expelled from the palace and exiled to Tientsin following the Beijing Coup. He leads a decadent life as a playboy and Anglophile, and sides with Japan after the Mukden Incident. During this time, Wenxiu divorces him, but Wanrong remains and eventually succumbs to opium addiction. In 1934, the Japanese crown him "Emperor" of their puppet state of Manchukuo, though his supposed political supremacy is undermined at every turn. Wanrong gives birth to a child, but the baby is murdered at birth by the Japanese and proclaimed stillborn. He remains the nominal ruler of the region until his capture by the Soviet Red Army.
Under the Communist re-education program for political prisoners, Puyi is coerced by his interrogators to formally renounce his forced collaboration with the Japanese invaders during the Second Sino-Japanese War. After heated discussions with Jin Yuan, the warden of the Fushun Prison, and watching a film detailing the wartime atrocities committed by the Japanese, Puyi eventually recants and is considered rehabilitated by the government; he is subsequently released in 1959.
Several years later in 1967, Puyi has become a simple gardener who lives a peasant proletarian existence following the rise of Mao Zedong's cult of personality and the Cultural Revolution. On his way home from work, he happens upon a Red Guard parade, celebrating the rejection of landlordism by the communists. He sees Jin Yuan, now one of the political prisoners punished as an anti-revolutionary in the parade, forced to wear a dunce cap and a sandwich board bearing punitive slogans.
Puyi later visits the Forbidden City where he meets an assertive young boy wearing the red scarf of the Pioneer Movement. The boy orders Puyi to step away from the throne, but Puyi proves that he was indeed the Son of Heaven before approaching the throne. Behind it, Puyi finds a 60-year-old pet cricket that he was given by palace official Chen Baochen on his coronation day and gives it to the child. Amazed by the gift, the boy turns to talk to Puyi, but finds that he has disappeared.
In 1987, a tour guide leads a group through the palace. Stopping in front of the throne, the guide sums up Puyi's life in a few, brief sentences, before concluding that he died in 1967.
Other cast members include Chen Kaige as the Captain of the Imperial Guard, Hideo Takamatsu as General Takashi Hishikari, Hajime Tachibana as the General's translator, Zhang Liangbin as the eunuch Big Foot, Huang Wenjie as the eunuch Hunchback, Chen Shu as Zhang Jinghui, Cheng Shuyan as Hiro Saga, Li Fusheng as Xie Jieshi, and Constantine Gregory as the Emperor's oculist.
Bernardo Bertolucci proposed the film to the Chinese government as one of two possible projects – the other was an adaptation of La Condition humaine (Man's Fate) by André Malraux. The Chinese preferred The Last Emperor. Producer Jeremy Thomas managed to raise the $25 million budget for his ambitious independent production single-handedly. [6] At one stage, he scoured the phone book for potential financiers. [7] Bertolucci was given complete freedom by the authorities to shoot in The Forbidden City, which had never before been opened up for use in a Western film. For the first ninety minutes of the film, Bertolucci and Storaro made full use of its visual splendour. [6]
19,000 extras were needed over the course of the film. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) was drafted in to accommodate. [8]
In a 2010 interview with Bilge Ebiri for Vulture.com, Bertolucci recounted the shooting of the Cultural Revolution scene:
Before shooting the parade scene, I put together four or five young directors whom I had met, [including] Chen Kaige — who also plays a part in the film, he’s the captain of the guard — and Zhang Yimou. I asked them about the Cultural Revolution. And suddenly it was like I was watching a psychodrama: They started to act out and cry, it was extraordinary. I think there is a relationship between these scenes in The Last Emperor and in 1900 . But many things changed between those two films, for me and for the world. [9]
British historian Alex von Tunzelmann wrote that the movie considerably downplays and misrepresents the Emperor's cruelty, especially during his youth. [10] As stated by Tunzelmann and Behr (author of the 1987 book The Last Emperor), Puyi engaged in sadistic abuse of palace servants and subordinates during his initial reign well in excess of what Bertolucci's movie portrays, frequently having eunuchs beaten for mild transgressions or no reason at all; in a demonstrative example, the young Emperor once conspired to force a eunuch to eat a cake full of iron filings simply to see the eunuch's reaction, which he was talked out of by his beloved wet nurse with some difficulty. [11] [10] Tunzelmann states that most people worldwide who have heard of Puyi are likely to have an incorrect understanding of this aspect of the Emperor's reign, as the movie is much more popular globally than more accurate biographies. [10]
The film contains several other historical inaccuracies: in real life, Puyi left the Forbidden City when his mother died; as he recounts in his memoirs, he did not have sex with his wives; Puyi actually stopped the Japanese from killing the Empress's lover rather than let him be murdered; although the film mentions the Beijing Coup, it erroneously claims that the president fled the capital instead of being put under house arrest; the testimonies that Puyi gives to his Chinese interrogators were in fact given at the Tokyo Trials. [12] [13] [14]
Jeremy Thomas recalled the approval process for the screenplay with the Chinese government: "It was less difficult than working with the studio system. They made script notes and made references to change some of the names, then the stamp went on and the door opened and we came." [8]
While not included on the album soundtrack, the following music was played in the film: "Am I Blue?" (1929), "Auld Lang Syne" (uncredited), and "China Boy" (1922) (uncredited). The Northeastern Cradle Song was sung by Ar Mo twice in the film.
Hemdale Film Corporation acquired all North American distribution rights to the film on behalf of producer Thomas, [15] who raised a large sum of the budget himself. Hemdale, in turn, licensed theatrical rights to Columbia Pictures, who were initially reluctant to release it, and only after shooting was completed did the head of Columbia agree to distribute The Last Emperor in North America. [2]
The Last Emperor opened in 19 theatres in Italy and grossed $265,000 in its first weekend. It expanded to 65 theatres in its second weekend and 93 in its third, increasing its weekend gross to $763,000 and grossing $2 million in its first 16 days. Six days after its Italian opening, it opened in Germany and grossed $473,000 in its first weekend from 50 theatres and $1.1 million in its first 10 days. [16] The film had an unusual run in US theatres. It did not enter the weekend box office top 10 until its twelfth week in which the film reached number 7 after increasing its gross by 168% from the previous week and more than tripling its theatre count (this was the weekend before it was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture). Following that week, the film lingered around the top 10 for 8 weeks before peaking at number 4 in its 22nd week (the weekend after winning the Oscar) (increasing its weekend gross by 306% and nearly doubling its theatre count from 460 to 877) and spending 6 more weeks in the weekend box office top 10. [17] Were it not for this late push, The Last Emperor would have joined The English Patient , Amadeus , and The Hurt Locker as the only Best Picture winners to not enter the weekend box office top 5 since these numbers were first recorded in 1982.
The film was converted into 3D and shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. [5]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 87% based on 119 reviews, with an average rating of 8.10/10. The site's critics consensus states: "While Bernardo Bertolucci's decadent epic never quite identifies the dramatic pulse of its protagonist, stupendous visuals and John Lone's ability to make passivity riveting give The Last Emperor a rarified grandeur." [18] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 76 out of 100 based on 15 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". [19]
Roger Ebert was notably enthusiastic in his praise of the film, awarding it four out of four:
"Bertolucci is able to make Pu Yi's imprisonment seem all the more ironic because this entire film was shot on location inside the People's Republic of China, and he was even given permission to film inside the Forbidden City — a vast, medieval complex covering some 250 acres (100 ha) and containing 9,999 rooms (only heaven, the Chinese believed, had 10,000 rooms). It probably is unforgivably bourgeois to admire a film because of its locations, but in the case of The Last Emperor the narrative cannot be separated from the awesome presence of the Forbidden City, and from Bertolucci's astonishing use of locations, authentic costumes, and thousands of extras to create the everyday reality of this strange little boy." [20]
Jonathan Rosenbaum compared The Last Emperor favorably to Steven Spielberg's Empire of the Sun :
"At best, apart from a few snapshots, Empire of the Sun teaches us something about the inside of one director's brain. The Last Emperor incidentally and secondarily does that too; but it also teaches us something about the lives of a billion people with whom we share this planet—and better yet, makes us want to learn still more about them." [21]
The Shochiku Fuji Company edited out a thirty-second sequence depicting the Rape of Nanjing before distributing it to Japanese theatres. Bertolucci had not given his consent for the cut, and was furious at the interference with his film, which he called "revolting". The company quickly restored the scene, blaming "confusion and misunderstanding" for the edit while opining that the Rape sequence was "too sensational" for Japanese moviegoers. [22]
Hemdale licensed its video rights to Nelson Entertainment, which released the film on VHS and Laserdisc. [15] The film also received a Laserdisc release in Australia in 1992, through Columbia Tri-Star Video. Years later, Artisan Entertainment acquired the rights to the film and released both the theatrical and extended versions on home video. In February 2008 The Criterion Collection (under license from now-rights-holder Thomas) released a four disc Director-Approved edition, again containing both theatrical and extended versions. [23] Criterion released a Blu-ray version on 6 January 2009. [23]
Award | Category | Nominee(s) | Result | Ref. |
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Academy Awards | Best Picture | Jeremy Thomas | Won | [24] |
Best Director | Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | ||
Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium | Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | ||
Best Art Direction | Art Direction: Ferdinando Scarfiotti; Set Decoration: Bruno Cesari and Osvaldo Desideri | Won | ||
Best Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro | Won | ||
Best Costume Design | James Acheson | Won | ||
Best Film Editing | Gabriella Cristiani | Won | ||
Best Original Score | Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne, and Cong Su | Won | ||
Best Sound | Bill Rowe and Ivan Sharrock | Won | ||
American Cinema Editors Awards | Best Edited Feature Film | Gabriella Cristiani | Won | |
American Society of Cinematographers Awards | Outstanding Achievement in Cinematography in Theatrical Releases | Vittorio Storaro | Nominated | [25] |
Artios Awards | Best Casting for Feature Film – Drama | Joanna Merlin | Won | [26] |
ASECAN Awards | Best Foreign Film | Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | |
Association of Polish Filmmakers Critics Awards | Best Foreign Film | Won | ||
Boston Society of Film Critics Awards | Best Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro | Won | [27] |
British Academy Film Awards | Best Film | Jeremy Thomas and Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | [28] |
Best Direction | Bernardo Bertolucci | Nominated | ||
Best Actor in a Supporting Role | Peter O'Toole | Nominated | ||
Best Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro | Nominated | ||
Best Costume Design | James Acheson | Won | ||
Best Editing | Gabriella Cristiani | Nominated | ||
Best Make Up Artist | Fabrizio Sforza | Won | ||
Best Original Score | Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne, and Cong Su | Nominated | ||
Best Production Design | Ferdinando Scarfiotti | Nominated | ||
Best Sound | Ivan Sharrock, Bill Rowe, and Les Wiggins | Nominated | ||
Best Special Effects | Giannetto De Rossi and Fabrizio Martinelli | Nominated | ||
British Society of Cinematographers | Best Cinematography in a Theatrical Feature Film | Vittorio Storaro | Won | [29] |
Cahiers du Cinéma | Best Film | Bernardo Bertolucci | 5th Place | |
César Awards | Best Foreign Film | Won | [30] | |
Best Poster | Philippe Lemoine | Nominated | ||
David di Donatello Awards | Best Film | Won | [31] | |
Best Director | Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | ||
Best Producer | Jeremy Thomas, Franco Giovale, and Joyce Herlihy | Won | ||
Best Supporting Actor | Peter O'Toole | Won | ||
Best Supporting Actress | Vivian Wu | Nominated | ||
Best Screenplay | Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | ||
Best Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro | Won | ||
Best Costume Design | James Acheson and Ugo Pericoli | Won | ||
Best Editing | Gabriella Cristiani | Won | ||
Best Production Design | Ferdinando Scarfiotti, Bruno Cesari, and Osvaldo Desideri | Won | ||
Directors Guild of America Awards | Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Motion Pictures | Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | [32] |
European Film Awards | Special Jury Award | Won | ||
Golden Ciak Awards | Best Film | Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | |
Best Director | Won | |||
Best Screenplay | Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci | Nominated | ||
Best Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro | Won | ||
Best Production Design | Ferdinando Scarfiotti, Bruno Cesari, and Osvaldo Desideri | Won | ||
Golden Globe Awards | Best Motion Picture – Drama | Won | [33] | |
Best Actor in a Motion Picture – Drama | John Lone | Nominated | ||
Best Director – Motion Picture | Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | ||
Best Screenplay – Motion Picture | Bernardo Bertolucci, Mark Peploe and Enzo Ungari | Won | ||
Best Original Score – Motion Picture | Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne, and Cong Su | Won | ||
Golden Rooster Awards | Best Property | Yang Guozhi/Cui Tian | Nominated | |
Goldene Kamera | Golden Screen | Nominated | ||
Grammy Awards | Best Album of Original Instrumental Background Score Written for a Motion Picture or Television | The Last Emperor Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne, and Cong Su | Won | [34] |
Guild of German Art House Cinemas | Best Foreign Film | Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | |
Hochi Film Awards | Best Foreign Language Film | Won | ||
Japan Academy Film Prize | Outstanding Foreign Language Film | Won | ||
Joseph Plateau Awards | Best Foreign Film | Won | ||
Kinema Junpo Awards | Best Foreign Language Film | Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | |
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards | Best Film | Runner-up | [35] | |
Best Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro | Won | ||
Best Music | Ryuichi Sakamoto, David Byrne, and Cong Su | Won | ||
Nastro d'Argento | Best Director | Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | |
Best Cinematography | Vittorio Storaro | Won | ||
Best Production Design | Ferdinando Scarfiotti | Won | ||
Best Technical Qualities | Gabriella Cristiani | Won | ||
Best Male Dubbing | Giuseppe Rinaldi (for dubbing Peter O'Toole) | Won | ||
National Board of Review Awards (1987) | Top Ten Films | 2nd Place | [36] | |
National Board of Review Awards (1998) | Freedom of Expression | Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | [37] |
National Society of Film Critics Awards | Best Film | 3rd Place | [38] | |
New York Film Critics Circle Awards | Best Cinematographer | Vittorio Storaro | Won | [39] |
Nikkan Sports Film Awards | Best Foreign Film | Won | ||
Sant Jordi Awards | Best Foreign Film | Bernardo Bertolucci | Won | |
SESC Film Festival | Best Foreign Film | Won | ||
Turkish Film Critics Association Awards | Best Foreign Film | 4th Place | ||
Writers Guild of America Awards | Best Screenplay – Written Directly for the Screen | Mark Peploe and Bernardo Bertolucci | Nominated | [40] |
The film's theatrical release ran 160 minutes. Deemed too long to show in a single three-hour block on television but too short to spread out over two nights, an extended version was created which runs 218 minutes. Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and director Bernardo Bertolucci have confirmed that this extended version was indeed created as a television miniseries and does not represent a true "director's cut". [41]
The Criterion Collection 2008 version of four DVDs adds commentary by Ian Buruma, composer David Byrne, and the Director's interview with Jeremy Isaacs ( ISBN 978-1-60465-014-3). It includes a booklet featuring an essay by David Thomson, interviews with production designer Ferdinando Scarfiotti and actor Ying Ruocheng, a reminiscence by Bertolucci, and an essay and production-diary extracts from Fabien S. Gerard.
The film was for quite some time unavailable on DVD or Blu-Ray in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, as cinematographer Vittorio Storaro had insisted on a cropped 2:1 version that retroactively conforms the film to his Univisium standard. Copies of the film in its original ratio were then rare and sought after by fans of the film.
The film has since been restored in 4K and in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and has been released on Blu-ray and UHD in 2023 in several countries using this 4K restoration. [42]
Bernardo BertolucciOMRI was an Italian film director and screenwriter with a career that spanned 50 years. Considered one of the greatest directors in Italian cinema, Bertolucci's work achieved international acclaim. With The Last Emperor (1987) he became the first Italian filmmaker to win the Academy Award for Best Director, and he received many other accolades including a BAFTA Award, a César Award, two Golden Globes, a Golden Lion in 2007, and an Honorary Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2011.
Puyi was the final emperor of China, reigning as the eleventh and final monarch of the Qing dynasty. He was later ruler of the puppet state of Manchukuo under the Empire of Japan from 1934 to 1945. He became emperor at the age of two in 1908, but was forced to abdicate in 1912 as a result of Xinhai Revolution at the age of six. During his first reign, he was known as the Xuantong Emperor, with his era name meaning "proclamation of unity".
John Lone is a Chinese-American actor. He starred as Puyi in the Academy Award-winning film The Last Emperor (1987), for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor.
Vittorio Storaro, A.S.C., A.I.C., is an Italian cinematographer widely recognized as one of the best and most influential in cinema history, for his work on numerous classic films including The Conformist (1970), Apocalypse Now (1979), and The Last Emperor (1987). In the course of over fifty years, he has collaborated with directors such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Francis Ford Coppola, Warren Beatty, Woody Allen and Carlos Saura.
Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston was a Scottish diplomat and colonial official who served as the tutor and advisor to Puyi, the last emperor of China. He was also the last British Commissioner of Weihaiwei. Johnston's book Twilight in the Forbidden City (1934) was used as a source for Bernardo Bertolucci's film dramatization of Puyi's life The Last Emperor.
Little Buddha is a 1993 drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci, written by Rudy Wurlitzer and Mark Peploe, and produced by usual Bertolucci collaborator Jeremy Thomas. An international co-production of Italy, France and the United Kingdom, the film stars Chris Isaak, Bridget Fonda and Keanu Reeves as Prince Siddhartha.
Wenxiu, also known as Consort Shu (淑妃) and Ailian (愛蓮), was a consort of Puyi, the last Emperor of China and final ruler of the Qing dynasty. She was from the Mongol Erdet (額爾德特) Clan and her family was under the Bordered Yellow Banner of the Eight Banners.
Pujie was a Qing dynasty imperial prince of the Aisin-Gioro. Pujie was the younger brother of Puyi, the last Emperor of China. After the fall of the Qing dynasty, Pujie went to Japan, where he was educated and married to Hiro Saga, a Japanese noblewoman. In 1937, he moved to Manchukuo, where his brother ruled as Emperor under varying degrees of Japanese control during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). After the war ended, Pujie was captured by Soviet forces, held in Soviet prison camps for five years, and then extradited back to the People's Republic of China, where he was incarcerated for about 10 years in the Fushun War Criminals Management Centre. He was later pardoned and released from prison by the Chinese government, after which he remained in Beijing where he joined the Communist Party and served in a number of positions in the party until his death in 1994.
Hiro Saga was a Japanese noblewoman and memoir writer. She was the daughter of Marquis Saneto Saga and a distant relative of Emperor Shōwa. She was married in 1937 to Pujie, the younger brother of Puyi, the last monarch of the Qing dynasty of China between 1908 and 1912 and the ruler of Japanese-backed Manchukuo between 1932 and 1945. After her marriage to Pujie, she was known as, and identified herself as, Aishinkakura Hiro (愛新覺羅•浩) or Aixinjueluo Hao in Chinese.
Imperial Noble Consort Wenjing, also known as Dowager Imperial Noble Consort Duankang, of the Manchu Bordered Red Banner Tatara clan, was a consort of the Guangxu Emperor.
The Museum of the Imperial Palace of Manchukuo is a museum in the northeastern corner of Changchun, Jilin province, northeast China. The palace was the official residence created by the Imperial Japanese Army for China's last emperor Puyi to live in as part of his role as Emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. In the People's Republic of China the structures are generally referred to as the Puppet Emperor's Palace & Exhibition Hall. It is classified as a AAAAA scenic area by the China National Tourism Administration.
Wanrong, of the Manchu Plain White Banner Gobulo clan, was the wife and empress consort of Puyi, the last emperor of China. She is sometimes anachronistically called the Xuantong Empress, referring to Puyi's era name. She was the titular empress consort of the former Qing dynasty from their marriage in 1922 until the exile of the imperial family in November 1924. She later became the empress consort of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in northeastern China from 1934 until the abolition of the monarchy in August 1945, at the conclusive part of the Second World War. She was posthumously honored with the title Empress Xiaokemin.
Ying Ruocheng was a Chinese actor, director, playwright and vice minister of culture from 1986 to 1990. He first came to the attention of Western audiences for his portrayal of Kublai Khan in the 1982 miniseries Marco Polo. He is best known for playing the part of the governor of the detention camp in the Bernardo Bertolucci's film The Last Emperor, and the role of the Tibetan Buddhist Lama Norbu in Little Buddha. He also worked as a theater translator, director, and actor for the Beijing People's Art Theatre, particularly for his role as Pockmark Liu in Lao She's Teahouse and as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman in 1983, directed by Arthur Miller.
Vittorio Storaro is an Italian cinematographer and a member of both the Italian Society of Cinematographers (AIC) and the American Society of Cinematographers (ASC). Storaro's early films were made in his homeland of Italy, where he began early collaborations with Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci, with whom he has continued to collaborate with throughout his career. Storaro and Bertolucci's first major project was the 1970 film The Conformist, based on the Italian novel of the same name.
Yunying (1913–1992), better known as Jin Yunying, was a Chinese princess of Manchu descent. She was the daughter of Zaifeng and Youlan, and a younger sister of Puyi, the Last Emperor of China. She was married to Runqi, the younger brother of Puyi's first wife, Wanrong.
Jia Yinghua was a Chinese writer and researcher who focused on the late Qing dynasty. He served as Vice President of the Biography Society of China, commissioner of National Commission of the Chinese Writers’ Association, President of China's Electrical Power Writers' Association. Representative works of his include The Later Half of the Last Emperor's Life, The Last Eunuch of China: The Life of Sun Yaoting, The Last Emperor’s Brother: The Life of Pujie. The Japanese version of The Later Half of the Last Emperor's Life is a bestseller in Japan, attracting great attention and garnering enormous popularity. According to authoritative media and press organizations in more than 100 countries and regions, including China, the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Japan, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan this book is a successful continuation of From Emperor to Citizen : The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi written by Puyi himself. The Chinese version of The Later Half of the Last Emperor’s Life is always a domestic bestseller and has been published nine times in total, and also won the Gold Key Award in the 5th Chinese Books Fair. His calligraphic works were also incorporated into First Exhibition of Chinese Celebrities’ Calligraphic Works, Exhibition of Contemporary Celebrities’ Paintings and Calligraphies, etc.
His book The Extraordinary Life of The Last Emperor of China was awarded the country's top prize for biographies in 2013.
From Emperor to Citizen: The Autobiography of Aisin-Gioro Pu Yi is the autobiography of Puyi, the last emperor of China. The Bernardo Bertolucci film The Last Emperor is based on this book.
Puyi, the last emperor of China, came from a long noble ancestry. During the course of his three terms as emperor, and during post war life, he had five wives and numerous consorts.
Wang Lianshou was a Chinese court lady. She was the imperial wet nurse of Puyi, the last Emperor of China and final ruler of the Qing dynasty. Wang played a prominent role in the nurture of Puyi. Puyi long regarded Wang Lianshou as his mother because of her dedication to him.
The Garden of Serenity or Jingyuan (靜園) is a museum and former residence of Puyi, the last emperor of China in Tianjin, China.