In 1931, the Japanese attacked Chinese forces in northeast China, and quickly occupied the whole of Manchuria (the area covered by modern-day Jilin, Liaoning and Heilongjiang provinces). In 1932, the Japanese proclaimed the region an independent state and dubbed it Manchukuo. In 1934, they created an “Emperor “ for the puppet state by installing Pu Yi, the last Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, who abdicated in 1912 at the age of six following the 1911 revolution. A “palace “ was built in Changchun for Pu Yi, a miniature of his former Beijing imperial residence, the Forbidden City.
It is a complex composed of several buildings in a variety of styles, including Chinese, Japanese, and European. The front area was the administrative wing, and the rear of the palace was given over to residential quarters. The largest and most impressive of the buildings - the Tongde Palace – was not lived in by Pu Yi since he believed it to be bugged.
The palace complex is now a museum, housing several exhibits, including a slightly creepy pair of waxworks depicting the deposed Emperor and his first wife, Empress Wan Rong. Pu Yi's journey from Emperor, to Head of State to citizen in the People's Republic of China is chronicled through a variety of artifacts: pages from his journals are displayed on the wall to give an illuminating insight into his frame of mind during his stay at the palace. Another exhibition serves to highlight the regime under which northeast China found itself during the Japanese occupation, with a particular emphasis on the atrocities perpetrated during this time.
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