just saw it and was obliged to share

  • Presents [none/use name]
    ·
    2 years ago

    Eh, Henry Puyi wasn't the monarch and hadn't been for decades. He was overthrown in 1919 when he was still a child, and China was a republic thereafter. Puyi was a weak man who did whatever people told him to do. He didn't escape in time when the Soviets invaded Manchuria but would have been turned over even if he had made it to Japan. Mao gave him the job of street sweeper in front of the Forbidden Palace, his former home. Just in case anyone doesn't know, socially street sweeper is the lowest job in China. It's just below street vendor and white monkey English teacher. So it was Mao rubbing it in, and Puyi accepted it because he was just that kind of man.

    • AmericaDelendeEst [any]
      ·
      2 years ago

      was a weak man

      i would say maybe weak leader but I wouldn't call someone a "weak man" for "doing what people told him to" when all of those people had guns and/or a willingness to do a murder on you

      • Vncredleader
        ·
        2 years ago

        And yet refuting that was one of the main points of his rehabilitation.

        Written testimony from certain selected survivors, who had defied the Japanese and Manchukuo authorities and paid for their resistance through torture, was now read out. Each ended with a call for retribution. 'The Japanese and Chinese traitors must repay their blood debt. Avenge our murdered families!'

        The intended lesson was this: Pu Yi had invariably excused his past actions on the grounds that there was no way he could have opposed the Japanese. Now here were humble Manchurian workers, farmers, housewives and children who _had dared defy the Japanese and Manchukuo oppressors.

        From The Last Emperor by Edward Behr.

        • AmericaDelendeEst [any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          And yet shithead calling me a Japanese collaborator defender literally posited in his post that Puyi was merely a figurehead since 1919

          Which way western man, figurehead whose life is dependent on appeasing those actually in power, or actual monarch capable of resistance if only he weren't a "weak man"

          • Vncredleader
            ·
            2 years ago
            1. I am not defending shithead here. That statement is fucked and should be removed.

            2. Those are not the only options. He didn't have to be an actual monarch to be capable of resistance. That's the point of the above quote, people with no power and no hope of succeeding fought back, so why couldn't he? Puppet or not, useless or not, he chose to continue being a puppet for these monsters and he himself earnestly viewed himself as being a coward and collaborator. He still went along with them, he still provided a figurehead, whether refusal would have changed anything or not, he still chose to do so, which is something Pu Yu himself viewed as wrong and criminal

        • AmericaDelendeEst [any]
          ·
          2 years ago

          Eh, Henry Puyi wasn’t the monarch and hadn’t been for decades. He was overthrown in 1919 when he was still a child

          1. You literally posit that he was a figurehead from birth

          2. go fuck yourself

    • Dingus_Khan [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      2 years ago

      You left out the middle of the story where he accepted the position of puppet ruler of Manchukuo from the Japanese and was complicit in their administration, even if he was only doing what advisors tell him.