Cover-up over death of adulteress empress' baby detailed

The new edition of last emperor Puyi's autobiography - which includes an account of the cover-up surrounding the death of his adulteress empress' baby - hit mainland bookshelves this weekend.

The book, an updated version of From Emperor to Citizen, has an additional 160,000 words. It begins with Puyi's imperial family and his early years and ends when he receives an official pardon and settles down in Beijing as an ordinary citizen.

He started preparing the book when he was in jail as a war criminal, and there is a tone of remorse for his past as an emperor.

In 1960, then premier Zhou Enlai told Puyi the book was valuable as it reflected the Communist Party's success in reforming the last emperor. The book was not published until 1964 after undergoing three drafts. Historians and famous writers, such as Lao She , fine-tuned the book.

The 1964 version was translated into a dozen languages and 1.87 million copies were printed.

In 2004, publisher Qunzhong Publishing House found the misplaced drafts that are now included in the complete version.

In the chapter about Empress Wan Rong , Puyi discloses that her brother, for his own personal benefit, introduced her to a Japanese military officer. She subsequently had an affair with the man.