Editing Puyi (section)

=== Marriage ===
[[File:Empress of China.JPG|thumb|[[Wanrong]], Puyi's wife and Empress of China]]
[[File:Wenxiu smiling.jpg|thumb|Secondary consort [[Wenxiu]]]]
In March 1922, the Dowager Consorts decided that Puyi should be married, and gave him a selection of photographs of aristocratic teenage girls to choose from. Puyi first chose [[Wenxiu]] as his wife, but was told that she was acceptable only as a [[concubine]], so he would have to choose again. Puyi later claimed that the faces were too small to distinguish between.{{sfnp|Puyi|Kramer|Tsai|1987|p=77}} Puyi then chose [[Wanrong]], the daughter of one of Manchuria's richest aristocrats, who had been educated in English by American missionaries in Tianjin, who was considered to be an acceptable empress by the Dowager Consorts. On 15 March 1922, the betrothal of Puyi and Wanrong was announced in the newspapers. On 17 March, Wanrong took the train to Beijing, and on 6 April, Puyi went to the Qing family shrine to inform his ancestors that he would be married to her later that year. Puyi did not meet Wanrong until their wedding.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=107–108}}

In an interview in 1986, Prince Pujie told Behr: "Puyi constantly talked about going to England and becoming an Oxford student, like Johnston."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=108–109}} On 4&nbsp;June 1922, Puyi attempted to escape from the Forbidden City and planned to issue an open letter to "the people of China" renouncing the title of Emperor before leaving for Oxford.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=109}} The escape attempt failed when Johnston vetoed it and refused to call a taxi, and Puyi was too frightened to live on the streets of Beijing on his own. Pujie said of Puyi's escape attempt: "Puyi's decision had nothing to do with the impending marriage. He felt cooped up, and wanted out."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=109}} Johnston later recounted his time as Puyi's tutor between 1919 and 1924 in his 1934 book ''[[Twilight in the Forbidden City]]'', one of the main sources of information about Puyi's life in this period, though Behr cautioned that Johnston painted an idealised picture of Puyi, avoiding all mention of Puyi's sexuality, merely average academic ability, erratic mood swings, and eunuch-flogging. Pujie told Behr of Puyi's moods: "When he was in a good mood, everything was fine, and he was a charming companion. If something upset him, his dark side would emerge."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=91–102}} On 21&nbsp;October 1922, Puyi's wedding to Princess Wanrong began with the "betrothal presents" of 18&nbsp;sheep, 2&nbsp;horses, 40&nbsp;pieces of satin, and 80&nbsp;rolls of cloth, marched from the Forbidden City to Wanrong's house, accompanied by court musicians and cavalry. Following Manchu traditions where weddings were conducted under moonlight for good luck, an enormous procession of palace guardsmen, eunuchs, and musicians carried the Princess Wanrong in a red sedan chair called the Phoenix Chair within the Forbidden City, where Puyi sat upon the Dragon Throne. Later Wanrong [[kowtow]]ed to him six times in her living quarters to symbolise her submission to her husband as the decree of their marriage was read out.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=108–112}}

Wanrong wore a mask in accordance with Chinese tradition and Puyi, who knew nothing of women, remembered: "I hardly thought about marriage and family. It was only when the Empress came into my field of vision with a crimson satin cloth embroidered with a dragon and a phoenix over her head that I felt at all curious about what she looked like."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=113}} After the wedding was complete, Puyi, Wanrong, and his secondary consort Wenxiu (whom he married the same night) went to the [[Palace of Earthly Tranquility]], where everything was red{{snd}}the colour of love and sex in China – and where emperors had traditionally consummated their marriages. Puyi, who was sexually inexperienced and timid, fled from the bridal chamber, leaving his wives to sleep in the Dragon Bed by themselves.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=113–114}} Of Puyi's failure to consummate his marriage on his wedding night, Behr wrote:

<blockquote>It was perhaps too much to expect an adolescent, permanently surrounded by eunuchs, to show the sexual maturity of a normal seventeen-year-old. Neither the Dowager consorts nor Johnston himself had given him any advice on sexual matters – this sort of thing simply was not done, where emperors were concerned: it would have been an appalling breach of protocol. But the fact remains that a totally inexperienced, over-sheltered adolescent, if normal, could hardly have failed to be aroused by Wan Jung's [Wanrong's] unusual, sensual beauty. The inference is, of course, that Pu Yi was either impotent, extraordinarily immature sexually, or already aware of his homosexual tendencies.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=114}}</blockquote>

Wanrong's younger brother Rong Qi remembered how Puyi and Wanrong, both teenagers, loved to race their bicycles through the Forbidden City, forcing eunuchs to get out of the way, and told Behr in an interview: "There was a lot of laughter, she and Puyi seemed to get on well, they were like kids together."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=115}} In 1986, Behr interviewed one of Puyi's two surviving eunuchs, an 85-year-old who was reluctant to answer the questions asked of him, but finally said of Puyi's relationship with Wanrong: "The Emperor would come over to the nuptial apartments once every three months and spend the night there ... He left early in the morning on the following day and for the rest of that day he would invariably be in a very filthy temper indeed."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=115–116}} A eunuch who served in the Forbidden City as Wanrong's personal servant later wrote in his memoir that there was a rumour among the eunuchs that Puyi was gay, noting a strange situation where he was asked by Puyi to stand inside Wanrong's room while Puyi groped her. Another eunuch claimed that Puyi preferred the "land-way" of the eunuchs to the "water-way" of the Empress, implying he was gay.{{sfnp|Jia|2008|pp=130–135}}

Puyi rarely left the Forbidden City, knew nothing of the lives of ordinary Chinese people, and was somewhat misled by Johnston, who told him that the vast majority of the Chinese wanted a Qing restoration. Johnston, a Sinophile scholar and a romantic conservative with an instinctive preference for monarchies, believed that China needed a benevolent autocrat to guide the country forward.{{sfnp|Li|2009|p=117}} He was enough of a traditionalist to respect that all major events in the Forbidden City were determined by the court [[Chinese astrology|astrologers]].{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=94}} Johnston disparaged the superficially Westernised Chinese republican elite who dressed in top hats, frock coats, and business suits as not authentically Chinese, and praised to Puyi the Confucian scholars with their traditional robes as the ones who were authentically Chinese.{{sfnp|Li|2009|p=117}}

As part of an effort to crack down on corruption by the eunuchs, inspired by Johnston, Puyi ordered an inventory of the Forbidden City's treasures. The Hall of Established Happiness was burned on the night of 26 June 1923, as the eunuchs tried to cover up the extent of their theft.{{sfnp|Puyi|Kramer|Tsai|1987|p=95}} Johnston reported that the next day, he "found the Emperor and Empress standing on a heap of charred wood, sadly contemplating the spectacle".{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=121}} The treasures reported lost in the fire included 2,685&nbsp;golden statues of Buddha, 1,675&nbsp;golden altar ornaments, 435&nbsp;porcelain antiques, and 31&nbsp;boxes of sable furs, though it is likely that most if not all of these had been sold on the black market before the fire.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=122}}

Puyi finally decided to expel all of the eunuchs from the Forbidden City to end the problem of theft, only agreeing to keep 50 after the Dowager Consorts complained that they could not function without them. Puyi turned the grounds where the Hall of Supreme Harmony had once stood into a tennis court, as he and Wanrong loved to play. Wanrong's brother Rong Qi recalled: "But after the eunuchs went, many of the palaces inside the Forbidden City were closed down, and the place took on a desolate, abandoned air."{{sfnp|Behr|1987|p=123}} After the [[Great Kantō earthquake]] on 1&nbsp;September 1923 destroyed the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama, Puyi donated jade antiques worth some £33,000 to pay for disaster relief, which led a delegation of Japanese diplomats to visit the Forbidden City to express their thanks. In their report about the visit, the diplomats noted that Puyi was highly vain and malleable, and could be used by Japan, which marked the beginning of Japanese interest in Puyi.{{sfnp|Behr|1987|pp=122–124}}