Last Qing Emperor Puyi

The Hall of Supreme Harmony is the place where the last Qing Emperor Puyiascended the throne in 1908 at the age of three. He was so scared at the complicated procedures that he kept crying and shouting: "I don't want to stay here, I want to go home." His father tried to soothe him and said, "It will soon be over." The civil and military officials got stunned when they heard of this saying, for they thought it suggested that the dynasty would soon be over. Three years later, the Qing Dynasty that had lasted 267 years did collapse.

The last Emperor Puyiand the royal family still stayed in the inner court of the palace until 1924. Then he left for Tianjin and disguised himself as a Japanese merchant. Supported by the Japanese, Puyiwas made a puppet emperor of "Manchuria" in 1931, with Changchun as its capital. He was captured by Soviet Red Army at the end to the Second World War in 1945 and was sent back to China after the founding of the People's Republic of China. Puyiwas imprisoned until 1959 when he and some other war criminals were given amnesty. After that, he was assigned a job in Beijing in the Institute of Botanical Garden under the Chinese Academy of Sciences and started a new life. He wrote a book about his first half-life, entitled From Emperor to Citizen. He died of kidney cancer in 1967 at the age of 61.