She divorced China’s last emperor and died a pauper: the story of Wenxiu, unloved wife who became a teacher and an editor

The 1987 film The Last Emperor sees Wenxiu, Aisin Gioro Puyi’s secondary wife, walk off into the rain, never to be seen again. What happened to her after that?
The scorned consort of the last representative of Chinese royalty became a teacher, sold cigarettes on the street, died and was buried in a pauper’s grave

Wee Kek Koon

Published: 7:45am, 23 Nov 2023

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Watching The Last Emperor again was an uncomfortable experience. This confection of a film about China’s last hereditary ruler is served in grand, Hollywood style, with an overwhelming attention to ahistorical detail, fistfuls of exotic, orientalist spice and a generous helping of stomach-churning white saviour complex.

The 1987 movie, which won nine Oscars, including best picture and best director for Bernardo Bertolucci, was, for me personally, a 163-minute onslaught of multiple cringe attacks when I recalled how much I had loved the film when it first came out. But I was only an impressionable teen in 1987, I had to tell myself. I couldn’t have known any better.

The life of Aisin Gioro Puyi, China’s last emperor, is fascinating, but this time round, I found myself drawn towards the secondary character of Wenxiu, his “No. 2 wife”, played by Vivian Wu Junmei. She was last seen walking into the rain, two-thirds into the movie, and out of Puyi’s life forever.

Whatever happened to her after that? Who was she really? I asked myself as I watched, in between bouts of embarrassment (I had even bought the movie soundtrack on cassette tape!)

Vivian Wu Junmei as Wenxiu (left), Joan Chen as Empress Wanjong and John Lone as Puyi in a still from “The Last Emperor”. Photo: Columbia Pictures

Erdet Wenxiu (1909-1953) was born into an illustrious Mongol family whose fortunes were in decline. She was a fine student at school, but she was chosen as Puyi’s secondary wife just before she turned 13, and conferred the title Pure Consort (shufei), ranked just below Puyi’s principal wife, Empress Gobulo Wanrong.

Despite the imperial pretensions, such designations as “Pure Consort”, “Empress” and even “Emperor” were only courtesy titles, valueless trinkets that mattered only to people who clung on to them. When Wenxiu and Wanrong married Puyi, China had been a republic for almost a decade.

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Puyi preferred the company of the more attractive Wanrong, and Wenxiu often spent entire days on her own, either reading, studying or teaching her palace maids to read and write.

Wenxiu’s situation remained unchanged after the former imperial family was forced to vacate the Forbidden City in 1924. In their rented villa in Tianjin, Puyi and Wanrong lived in style on the first floor, while she had to share the ground floor with the servants.

Puyi continued to ignore Wenxiu, even after she tried to get his attention with a suicide attempt.

Wenxiu in the Forbidden City, which the former imperial family was forced to vacate in 1924.

In August 1931, Wenxiu had had enough, and walked out of her home. Through her lawyers, she served divorce papers to Puyi. Following weeks of cajoling, pleas and threats, Puyi agreed to a divorce, which was finalised in October.

After her divorce, Wenxiu changed her name and attempted to get on with her life. She became a teacher of Chinese language and traditional Chinese painting at a school in Beijing, but she was soon outed as the former Pure Consort, which attracted crowds and reporters to the school. She had to resign.

She changed residences several times because people would always find out who she was. Her money eventually ran out, and to survive, she even sold cigarettes on the streets. Even then, the reporters wouldn’t leave her alone.

When she died aged 44 in 1953, Wenxiu was buried in a pauper’s grave a few kilometres north of the Forbidden City.

In 1947, she found employment as a copy editor with the Chinese-language North China Daily newspaper. Soon after that, she married a businessman, a cousin of the newspaper’s publisher, and became a homemaker.

In 1949, Wenxiu and her husband couldn’t leave Beijing and China in time. Unlike many members of the ancien régime, she was not treated harshly after the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Her husband was given a job as a cleaner, and they lived quietly in very modest circumstances.

On September 17, 1953, Wenxiu, 44, died of a heart attack at home. Her husband’s colleagues fashioned a crude casket out of wood, and buried the former Pure Consort of the last Emperor of China in a pauper’s grave a few kilometres north of the Forbidden City.