From Emperor to CCP Success Story

I do not wish to make fun of the dead, the unfortunate, the confused or the misguided, but "Henry" Puyi Aisin-Gioro was all of the above and reading his autobiography gave me some very memorable and very well-appreciated laugh out loud moments.

From Emperor to Citizen was penned by the Last Qing Emperor himself during the 1960s, under the thoughtful guidance of the the CCP Politburo in the wake of his release from imprisonment at a re-education detention centre. Puyi lived the last decade of his life as a protected and respected citizen of the People's Republic of China--he definitely came a long way from his original emperor days, his reinstated emperor days and his puppet emperor days.

This autobiography is absolutely genius. Now, after that grand exclamation of approval, let me explain my use of the word 'genius'. I do not wish to suggest that the former emperor had more than an average IQ, but rather, that the existence of this book in the first place is a genius ploy on the part of the Chinese Communist Party. Puyi would be forever known not as that poor kid who had been thrown onto the throne (win for my language skills) aged three, but the best success story in the CCP's re-education movements for counterrevolutionaries.

Puyi's story reads a little like Forrest Gump, but with none of the casual charm and marvel that the latter provides the bemused audience. Instead, Puyi is a figure shadowed with tones of political overbearing and an obvious communist spin on the book's tone.

The most significant factor of Puyi's autobiography can be summed up in its title, From Emperor to Citizen. That is, the significance lies in that the book isn't called From Emperor to Outcast or From Emperor to Exile--at the end of his life, Puyi is no more than the regular, communised Chinese subject.

Check out this picture of the poor man sewing something for himself:


No throne, no servants, no colourful clothing -- but despite all this, he is fulfilled with this real sense of purpose as a citizen of the People's Republic.

Professor, Doctor and Empress

Okay. So I've been absent, I've been lazy and I've been trying to get my future on track. It is, after all, the last half year in which I'd be a student out of necessity--and not out of choice (or a lack of better things to do).

Building up my academic credence has definitely been a large part of my last 4 months. This means, above all, churning out pages upon pages of academic writing, both based on original research and just plain regurgitation.

I've also been trying to get my name out there as someone who can potentially write with plenty of style, so that I can be proud of calling myself a 'columnist' and not cringe with embarrassment when a particularly arrogant peer asks me what I generally write about and I'd have to reply "once I wrote about how students should mop up their own mustard puddles".

Let's cue for a shameless self-promotion plug here: this is the link for my recent column on Amy Chua and her new parenting book http://www.browndailyherald.com/yu-11-tiger-mother-dragon-lady-1.2459388

In this column, I alluded Chua's commercial success to Dowager Empress Cixi, who remains tied in first place as the most hated woman in Chinese history (her contender is, of course, Jiang Qing, also known as Madame Mao).

I had a lot of trouble deciding whether or not to include this comparison. There's no doubt a lot of sensitivity involved in bringing up an infamous figure from one of modern China's more difficult times, and evoking the term "Dragon Lady" is sure to set a few f-word-ists into a loud frenzy. By nature, I'm a pretty iffy columnist--I always have this nagging tendency to be paranoid about potential hate mail. However, when the chance came up to associate current affairs with Chinese history, of course I was going to take it.

What bothers me most about the Chua phenomenon is the astounding commercial success possible from presupposing a clash of civilisations. It just doesn't seem to me that we've progressed very far from the mistakenly bygone days of this guy:

I also chose to embed this Fu Manchu video so as not to seem sexist by just picking on the female villains. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Dr Fu Manchu was the earliest archetype of the evil villian... with an 'Asian' face. A series of movies and books were made in the early 20th century about this very infamous character who is, at best, evilly ingenious, and at worst, overtly racist.

What do Amy Chua, Fu Manchu and Cixi all have in common? They are all characterised as anti-Western, all in positions of considerable power, and all provide means for the perceived and manufactured gap and conflict between East and West to remain grounded in society and culture.

Amy Chua could do better than to follow in the footsteps of a woman who had no defined cheekbones and a fictional character with an impossibly inconvenient moustache.