Puyi Studied Manchu for Nine Years—So Why Did He Say in His Memoir That He Knew Only One Manchu Word?
Puyi Studied Manchu for Nine Years—So Why Did He Say in His Memoir That He Knew Only One Manchu Word?
MING YE
9/27/20265 min read
Puyi Studied Manchu for Nine Years—So Why Did He Say in His Memoir That He Knew Only One Manchu Word?
By MING YE
The Qing dynasty, the last imperial dynasty of China, was established by the Manchus. Because the Manchus constituted only a relatively small proportion of the empire’s population, the Qing court faced a continuing question of cultural identity. On the one hand, the rulers governed a predominantly Han Chinese population and increasingly adopted institutions and cultural traditions rooted in Chinese history. On the other, they sought to preserve important features of Manchu identity, including the Manchu language and script.
The history of Manchu during the Qing dynasty reflects this tension particularly clearly.
Chinese had an enormous and long-established literary tradition and occupied a central position in education and the civil service examination system. The Confucian classics, including the Four Books and Five Classics, remained fundamental to elite learning. From a purely practical perspective, Chinese increasingly became sufficient for many aspects of government and everyday life.
Nevertheless, successive Qing emperors continued to emphasize the preservation of Manchu.
Even as the imperial family became increasingly immersed in Chinese literary culture, abandoning the ancestral language was politically and culturally difficult. The ability to read and use Manchu remained an important component of imperial education.
By the Qing middle period, emperors received instruction in both Manchu and Chinese. The Qianlong Emperor possessed a particularly substantial command of Manchu, while among later Qing emperors Chinese gradually became increasingly dominant.
By the time of Puyi, the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, however, the situation had changed dramatically.
Puyi himself later left the striking impression that he barely knew Manchu at all.
But was that really the case?
“I Knew Only One Manchu Word”
One widely circulated story claims that after Puyi underwent political reeducation following the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Guo Moruo considered inviting him to assist with research on Qing history.
According to the story, Puyi declined, explaining that he did not know Manchu and therefore could not assist with the study of Qing historical documents written in the language.
The precise original source of this anecdote, however, is difficult to establish, despite its widespread circulation.
A more important statement comes from Puyi’s own memoir, From Emperor to Citizen (我的前半生).
Puyi recalled that although he studied a variety of subjects and was interested in many of them, he had little enthusiasm for learning Manchu.
His Manchu teacher was Iktan (伊克坦), an elderly scholar whom Puyi remembered as rather old-fashioned and whom he did not particularly like.
Puyi even claimed that after years of instruction, he remembered essentially only one Manchu expression:
ili
It meant, in this context, “Rise”—the response he could give after Manchu officials had formally greeted or paid respects to him.
Because this statement came from Puyi himself, it has frequently been cited as evidence that the last Qing emperor could barely speak Manchu.
Yet several details make the picture considerably more complicated.
Puyi Used Manchu Script to Annotate English
One particularly interesting piece of evidence concerns Puyi’s study of English.
Puyi studied not only Chinese and Manchu but also English. Surviving educational materials associated with him show that he used Manchu writing to annotate the pronunciation of English words.
Such material has been preserved in the Palace Museum.
This raises an obvious question.
If Puyi truly knew virtually no Manchu, how could he use Manchu letters as a phonetic tool when studying another language?
Doing so would require at least a practical familiarity with the Manchu writing system and its phonetic values.
It therefore suggests that the statement that Puyi knew literally only a single Manchu word should not necessarily be understood as a precise linguistic assessment of his abilities.
Nine Years of Manchu Lessons
There is another problem with taking Puyi’s statement completely literally: he studied Manchu for approximately nine years.
This was not occasional or informal exposure.
He received instruction from a dedicated Manchu teacher over an extended period.
Even during the brief restoration attempt led by Zhang Xun in 1917, when Puyi temporarily returned to the throne and court affairs became unusually complicated, his Manchu lessons reportedly continued under Iktan.
Puyi also demonstrated considerable ability in learning other subjects and languages.
Under these circumstances, it is difficult to imagine that nearly a decade of regular instruction resulted in knowledge of only a single word.
This does not necessarily mean that Puyi became fluent in spoken Manchu.
But there is an important difference between not being fluent in a language and knowing only one word of it.
Who Was Puyi’s Manchu Teacher?
Puyi’s Manchu teacher, Iktan, was not an ordinary private tutor.
He was a member of the Manchu Plain White Banner and had passed the imperial examination during the Guangxu period.
He had also served as Left Deputy Censor-in-Chief and was associated with the supervision of an institution devoted to Manchu and Mongolian studies.
Beginning in the third year of the Xuantong reign, he entered the Yuqing Palace to serve as Puyi’s Manchu instructor.
There was even a symbolic change in palace teaching etiquette associated with his appointment.
Under earlier court conventions, an imperial tutor teaching Manchu could be required to stand while instructing the emperor. Empress Dowager Longyu, however, believed that greater respect should be shown to the teacher and permitted Iktan to sit while teaching.
Iktan subsequently remained Puyi’s Manchu instructor for nearly a decade.
The fact that he retained the position for so long is at least consistent with the idea that Puyi’s Manchu education involved considerably more than memorizing a single expression.
Could Puyi Actually Read Manchu Books?
Scholar Wang Qingxiang, who conducted extensive research on Puyi, argued that Puyi may indeed have disliked Manchu at first and that his early progress may have been poor.
According to this interpretation, however, his ability gradually improved.
After approximately four years of study, Puyi was reportedly capable of reading Manchu books such as the Shengyu Guangxun (圣谕广训) and the Manchu version of the Classic of Filial Piety.
If so, his abilities would have extended considerably beyond a single spoken expression.
It is therefore useful to distinguish several different abilities:
speaking Manchu fluently, understanding spoken Manchu, reading Manchu script, and using Manchu letters phonetically are not the same thing.
A person might have limited conversational ability while still possessing enough literacy to read texts or use the script.
This distinction may be particularly important when evaluating Puyi’s own retrospective description of his Manchu education.
Why, Then, Did Puyi Say He Knew Only One Word?
There may never be a definitive answer.
Puyi wrote his memoir after experiencing extraordinary political and personal upheavals: the collapse of the Qing dynasty, life as a deposed emperor, the restoration attempt of 1917, his expulsion from the Forbidden City, his later role in Manchukuo, imprisonment, political reeducation, and finally life as an ordinary citizen of the People’s Republic of China.
His description of knowing only ili may therefore have been less a literal linguistic measurement than a retrospective way of emphasizing how distant he had become from the traditional Manchu education of the Qing imperial court.
It may also reflect his own assessment that his Manchu was poor compared with the level expected of earlier Qing emperors.
Without additional evidence, however, explanations of Puyi’s personal motives remain speculative.
What can be said is that the surviving evidence presents a more complicated picture than the simple statement that “Puyi knew only one Manchu word.”
He received years of formal instruction. He had a highly educated Manchu tutor. Evidence indicates that he used Manchu script in connection with his English studies, and scholarship on his education suggests that he acquired at least some ability to read Manchu texts.
Puyi was almost certainly very different linguistically from Qing emperors such as Kangxi or Qianlong, for whom Manchu remained an important language of imperial government and personal communication.
But the decline of Manchu within the imperial family was itself part of a much larger historical transformation.
By Puyi’s generation, Chinese had overwhelmingly displaced Manchu in most areas of everyday life, even among many Manchus themselves.
In that sense, the story of Puyi’s Manchu education is about more than the linguistic ability of one emperor.
The last emperor’s increasingly distant relationship with Manchu also reflected the decline of a language that, only a few generations earlier, had occupied a central place in the political and cultural life of the Qing imperial court.
— MING YE