The teacher

Reginald Johnston llegó a la Ciudad Prohibida en 1919 como tutor de Puyi, para prepararlo para el mundo moderno. Johnston le enseñó sobre historia, filosofía y sobre los beneficios de la monarquía sobre la república. Johnston fue el que sugirió que comprara ropas occidentales y que se lo llamara Henry. También introdujo a Puyi a las nuevas tecnologías del cine y el teléfono.

En vocabulario: bequeath y para saber: Reginald Johnston

Johnston fue el primero en sugerir que Puyi necesitaba lentes y discutió con el Príncipe Chun quien lo consideraba poco digno de un emperador…

Briton Reginald Johnston arrived in the Forbidden City as Puyi's tutor on 3 March 1919. Puyi recalled: "I have never seen foreign men…”  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". Johnston was allowed only five texts in English to give Puyi to read: Alice in Wonderland and translations into English of the "Four Great Books" of Confucianism; the Analects, the Mencius, the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean. But he disregarded the rules, and taught Puyi about world history with a special focus on British history. Johnston also told Puyi so much about his native Scotland that Puyi eventually expressed the desire to visit the "Scotland the Brave" that his tutor spoke of with such pride and love. Besides history, Johnston taught Puyi philosophy and about what he saw as the superiority of monarchies to republics. 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… "

Wanrong smoking near Puyi

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. When the 14-year-old Puyi had some western-style clothing purchased to wear from a theater company, Johnston flew into a rage, saying that Puyi was wearing cheap clothing unworthy of an emperor, and had him buy expensive clothes from a western-style department store. Under Johnston'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 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 civilized people in the world and that he was the most learned of Westerners" and that "Johnston had become the major part of my soul". In May 1919, Puyi noticed the protests in Beijing generated by the May 4th movement as thousands of Chinese university students protested against the decision by the great powers at the Paris peace conference to award the former German concessions in Shandong province together with the former German colony of Qingdao to Japan. For Puyi, the May 4th 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.

Johnston, Isabel Ingram and Wanrong (sitting)

Puyi could not speak Manchu. Despite studying Manchu for years, he admitted that it was his "worst" subject among everything he studied. According to the journalist S. M. Ali, Puyi spoke Mandarin when interviewed but Ali believed he could understand English. 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 who disliked foreign technology in the Forbidden City. Johnston was also the first to argue that Puyi needed glasses, as he was extremely near-sighted, and after much argument with Prince Chun, who thought it was undignified for an Emperor to wear glasses, finally prevailed. 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.

Hall of Supreme Harmony, Forbidden City

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 go to study at Oxford, Johnston's alma mater. 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. Johnston also pressured Puyi to cut down on the waste and extravagance in the Forbidden City, noting that all the eunuchs had to be fed. Johnston convinced Puyi that he could open doors for himself and did not need eunuchs standing idly all the time by the main doors of the palaces just to open them if he should happen along.

Para saber

Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (13 October 1874 – 6 March 1938) was a Scottish diplomat who served as the tutor and advisor to Puyi, the last Emperor of China. He was also the last British Commissioner of Weihaiwei.

In 1919, he was appointed tutor of thirteen-year-old Puyi who still lived inside the Forbidden City in Beijing as a non-sovereign monarch.

As the Scottish-born tutor to the Dragon Emperor, Johnston and Isabel Ingram, daughter of an American missionary and the empress's tutor, were the only foreigners in history to be allowed inside the inner court of the Qing Dynasty. Johnston carried high imperial titles and lived in both the Forbidden City and the New Summer Palace.

After Puyi was expelled from the Forbidden City in 1924, Johnston served as Secretary to the British China Indemnity Commission (1926).

Johnston was appointed Professor of Chinese in the University of London in 1931, a post based at the School of Oriental and African Studies, to which he bequeathed his library in 1935.

He retained his ties with Puyi, which proved an embarrassment after the former emperor assumed the throne of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo.

Vocabulario

Bequeath: leave (property) to a person or other beneficiary by a will.

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In Manchukuo

Esto es parte del archivo: Puyi, el último emperador