From Mao-Tse Tung-er Deshe (In ‘Mao Tse-tung’s Country’ by Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani), pp. 46-47
‘But still I’ll tell you a few things about my life in those dark days,’ [said Pu Yi]. ‘When I was a ruler my movements were confined to the four walls of my palace. I had no opportunity to step outside.
My life was tightly bound with rules and prohibitions. I did not have permission to step outside the palace. I came to Beijing after regaining my freedom and that was when I walked on the royal thoroughfares for the first time. Let me tell you about a funny incident.
‘When I came to Beijing everything seemed strange and unfamiliar. I didn’t even know how to ride a motorbus. I didn’t know that tickets were needed for the bus. One day I was waiting at a bus station near the the Bei Hai park with a sister of mine.The bus came and my sister got into it. I saw a lady standing in front of me and asked to her to get in before me. The moment she got in the bus left. I learnt later that the lady was a bus conductor. When I asked her to get in she assumed that I was not traveling on that bus.
‘In my life as a ruler I would get up whenever I pleased. But twice a week I had to get up early. On those two days the Prime Minister and the Commander in Chief of the Japanese forces would come to see me at 9 in the morning. I would have my lunch whenever I was hungry, between ten in the morning to one o’clock. And after that a long, undisturbed siesta. I wouldn’t wake up till six or seven in the evening. At lunchtime I would usually eat alone. Breakfast I never ate in those days. In the evening at about nine I would dine with the other men. My first wife, the Queen
in other words, died in 1945. I never kept any concubines. The daily expenses of the palace were borne by the Treasury. Apart from that I would receive a personal monthly allowance of 66,000 Yuan (132,0000 Rupees in Pakistani money).’
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* Arnold C. Brackman, The Last Emperor, 1975