Editing Puyi (section)

=== Relationship with Reginald Johnston ===
On 3 March 1919, the Scottish scholar and diplomat [[Reginald Johnston]] arrived in the Forbidden City to serve as Puyi's tutor.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=97}} President [[Xu Shichang]] believed the monarchy would eventually be restored, and to prepare Puyi for the challenges of the modern world had hired Johnston to teach Puyi "subjects such as political science, constitutional history and English".{{sfnp|Li|2009|p=113}} Johnston was allowed only five texts in English to give Puyi to read: ''[[Alice in Wonderland]]'' and translations into English of the "[[Four Books and Five Classics|Four Great Books]]" of [[Confucianism]]; the ''[[Analects]]'', the ''[[Mencius (book)|Mencius]]'', the ''[[Great Learning]]'' and the ''[[Doctrine of the Mean]]''.{{sfnp|Li|2009|p=113}} But he disregarded the rules, and taught Puyi about world history with a special focus on British history. Besides history, Johnston taught Puyi philosophy and about what he saw as the superiority of monarchies to republics.{{sfnp|Li|2009|p=114}} Puyi remembered that his tutor's piercing blue eyes "made me feel uneasy ... I found him very intimidating and studied English with him like a good boy, not daring to talk about other things when I got bored ... as I did with my other Chinese tutors".{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=97}}

[[File:Titular emperor Puyi of China in the Forbidden City, 1910s or 1920s.png|thumb|Titular emperor Puyi in the Forbidden City]]
[[File:Reginald Johnston.jpg|thumb|[[Reginald Johnston]], who became Puyi's tutor in 1919]]
As the only person capable of controlling Puyi, Johnston had much more influence than his title of English tutor would suggest, as the eunuchs began to rely on him to steer Puyi away from his more capricious moods. Under the Scotsman's influence, Puyi started to insist that his eunuchs address him as "Henry" and later his wife [[Wanrong]] as "Elizabeth" as Puyi began to speak "[[Chinglish]]", a mixture of [[Mandarin Chinese|Mandarin]] and English that became his preferred mode of speech. Puyi recalled of Johnston: "I thought everything about him was first-rate. He made me feel that Westerners were the most intelligent and civilised people in the world and that he was the most learned of Westerners" and that "Johnston had become the major part of my soul".{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=97–99}} In May 1919, Puyi noticed the protests in Beijing generated by the [[May Fourth Movement]] as thousands of Chinese university students protested against the decision by the great powers at the [[Paris Peace Conference, 1919|Paris peace conference]] to award the former [[German Empire|German]] concessions in [[Shandong]] together with the former German colony of [[Qingdao]] to Japan. For Puyi, the May Fourth Movement, which he asked Johnston about, was a revelation as it marked the first time in his life that he noticed that people outside the Forbidden City had concerns that were not about him.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=105}} After his first interview with the emperor, the British academic recorded his impressions in a report addressed to the British authorities; in this document Johnston mentions:

{{blockquote|He appears to be physically robust and well developed for his age. He is a very "human" boy, with liveliness, intelligence and an enthusiastic sense of humour. Furthermore, he has excellent manners and is totally free from arrogance ... Although the emperor does not seem to have been spoiled yet, from the nonsense and futility that surrounds him, I am afraid there is no hope that he will emerge unscathed from the moral dangers through of the next few years of his life (very critical years necessarily for a boy in his early adolescence), unless he can be removed from the influence of the hordes of eunuchs and other useless officials who are now almost his only companions. I am inclined to think that the best course of action to take in the interest of the boy himself would be to remove him from the harmful atmosphere of the "Forbidden City" and send him to the Summer Palace. There it would be possible for him to live a much less artificial and happier life than he can under the present conditions...{{sfnp|Johnston|1934|pp=165–167}}}}

[[File:Johnston, Puyi and Wanrong in the Zhang Garden.png|thumb|Puyi in the [[Zhang Garden]] with Wanrong and Johnston]]
Puyi could not speak [[Manchu language|Manchu]]; he only knew a single word in the language, ''yili'' ('arise'). Despite studying Manchu for years, he admitted that it was his "worst" subject among everything he studied.{{sfnp|Elliott|2001|p=484}}{{sfnp|Puyi|Kramer|Tsai|1987|p=45}} According to the journalist [[Syed Mohammad Ali]], Puyi spoke Mandarin when interviewed, but Ali believed he could understand English.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=0AJlAAAAMAAJ&q=puyi+spoke+mandarin Ali & Ally & Islam 1997], p. 392</ref> Johnston also introduced Puyi to the new technology of cinema, and Puyi was so delighted with the movies, especially [[Harold Lloyd]] films, that he had a film projector installed in the Forbidden City despite the opposition of the eunuchs. Johnston was also the first to argue that Puyi needed glasses since he had developed [[myopia]], as he was extremely near-sighted, and after much argument with Prince Chun, who thought it was undignified for an emperor, finally prevailed.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=101–102}} Johnston, who spoke fluent Mandarin, closely followed the intellectual scene in China, and introduced Puyi to the "new-style" Chinese books and magazines, which so inspired Puyi that he wrote several poems that were published anonymously in "New China" publications.{{sfnp|Li|2009|p=118}} In 1922, Johnston had his friend, the writer [[Hu Shih]], visit the Forbidden City to teach Puyi about recent developments in [[Chinese literature]].{{sfnp|Li|2009|p=120}} Under Johnston's influence, Puyi embraced the bicycle as a way to exercise, cut his queue and grew a full head of hair, and wanted to study at the [[University of Oxford]], Johnston's alma mater.{{sfnp|Li|2009|p=117}} Johnston also introduced Puyi to the telephone, which Puyi soon became addicted to, phoning people in Beijing at random just to hear their voices on the other end.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=100}} Johnston also pressured Puyi to cut down on the waste and extravagance in the Forbidden City and encouraged him to be more self-sufficient.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=92}}