**The Last Emperor (English Version)**
The grand halls of the Forbidden City stood silent, their gilded beams and vermilion pillars bearing witness to the slow unraveling of an empire. At its heart sat a boy—Puyi, the last Son of Heaven, crowned before he could walk, ruling a realm already slipping through his fingers.
His earliest memories were of cold marble beneath his knees, the weight of the imperial robes pressing down as eunuchs whispered instructions. The world beyond the palace walls was a distant murmur, a place of revolution and change, while within, time seemed suspended. Tutors drilled him in Confucian classics, ministers bowed with practiced deference, yet none dared speak the truth: the Dragon Throne was crumbling.
In 1912, the Republic rose. Puyi, barely six, was permitted to remain within the Forbidden City, a relic of a bygone era. For years, he lived in gilded isolation, until a Scottish tutor, Reginald Johnston, arrived. Through Johnston’s eyes, Puyi glimpsed modernity—gramophones, bicycles, the idea of a life beyond the throne. He traded his queue for a Western haircut, donned a tailored suit, and dreamed of Oxford. But history had other plans.
Expelled from the palace in 1924, Puyi drifted—a pawn for warlords, then a puppet emperor of Manchuria under the Japanese. The war ended in disgrace; captured by the Soviets, he spent years in a bleak Siberian cell, finally repatriated to a China that had no place for emperors.
In his final years, Puyi worked as a gardener in Beijing’s botanical gardens. Tourists would sometimes point, whispering, "That’s the last emperor." He never corrected them. The past was a shadow; the present, a quiet penance. When he died in 1967, the newspapers buried the news in a footnote. The dynasty had ended long ago.
