If the Qing dynasty had not fallen in 1911, Aisin-Gioro Shoukun would still be an aristocrat, enjoying the honorary rank of general.
The 60-year-old retired teacher is a 13th-generation descendant of Nurhaci, the warrior founder of the House of Qing that ruled China for more than 250 years. His uncle would have inherited the title of a prince, but his family kept that secret hidden for decades.
Having an aristocratic pedigree might be impressive nowadays, but that has not always been the case in China. The Manchus, descendents of nomadic Jurchen tribes that settled in the northeast for centuries before their warrior emperor overthrew the Ming dynasty in 1644, were resented by the majority Han Chinese population for incompetent and corrupt governance in the later days of Qing rule, resulting in the country being divided up by foreign powers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
When revolutionary Sun Yat-sen founded the Revive China Society to garner support for a revolution to topple the Qing dynasty, its slogan was 'Expel the Manchus and revive China'.
According to missionaries' accounts, massacres of ethnic Manchus started with the onset of the 1911 revolution in Wuchang, Hubei province, followed by violence in other cities including Xian, Guangzhou and Nanjing, where hundreds of thousands of Manchus were believed to have been killed.
Like most Manchu families, Aisin-Gioro's family changed their name in official records and abandoned their Manchu dress and traditions to escape discrimination and political repression in the decades after the imperial regime fell.