Twilight in the Forbidden City

Johnson's account of the last years of the Chinese Qing dynasty provides a unique Western perspective on this historic period.

Reginald F. Johnston (Author)

9781108029650, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 June 2011

572 pages, 36 b/w illus. 2 maps
21.6 x 14 x 3.2 cm, 0.72 kg

British academic and diplomat Reginald Fleming Johnston (1874–1938) published Twilight in the Forbidden City in 1934. The work is a memoir of Johnston's time in Beijing between 1919 and 1924, at the court of the Qing Dynasty, where he served as tutor to Aisin-Gioro Puyi (1906–1967), last emperor of China. Johnston was one of only two foreigners who were permitted to enter the imperial palace, and so his account provides a unique Western perspective on the epochal events of the period. The work has a preface by the emperor Puyi and includes detailed descriptions of palace rituals, including Puyi's wedding ceremony; translations of key documents; Johnston's perspective on the revolution of 1911 and the 1917 restoration; his observations on Chinese society as a whole; and eye-witness accounts of the political intrigues of the palace. The memoir was dramatised in Bernardo Bertolucci's cinematic masterpiece, The Last Emperor.

Introduction
Preface
1. The Reform Movement of 1898
2. The collapse of the Reform Movement
3. Reaction and the Boxer Movement, 1898–1901
4. The last years of Kuang-Hsü, 1901–1908
5. The Empress-Dowager, T`z?-Hsi
6. The Revolution, 1911
7. The 'Articles of Favourable Treatment' of the Manchu Imperial House
8. The Ta Ch`ing and the Hung Hsien Emperors
9. Change Hsün and the Restoration of 1917
10. Autobiography of the Old Man of the Pine-Tree (translated from the Chinese)
11. The Forbidden City, 1919–1924
12. The Imperial tutors
13. The Manchu court in twilight
14. The Imperial Household Department (Nei Wu Fu)
15. The dragon unfledged
16. Monarchist hopes and dreams
17. The dragon restless
18. The dragon flaps his wings
19. Dragon and phoenix
20. Plots and stratagems
21. The Imperial garden
22. The summer palace
23. The Fifth of November
24. The dragon caged
25. The flight of the dragon
Epilogue: the dragon goes home
Pedigree of the Manchu Emperors
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]