Pu Yi, China’s last emperor, outed in new biography

The Los Angeles Times reports that Pu Yi—the last reigning member of China’s Qing dynasty, who was the subject of the popular film The Last Emperor—was secretly homosexual, as revealed in Jia Yinghua’s new biography, Unlocking the Secrets of the Last Emperor’s Final Marriage. The book sheds light on Pu Yi’s affair with a eunuch possessed of “red lips and white teeth” and also includes a picture of the deposed monarch with Wang Fengchi, a castrated servant with whom he was alleged to have had “out-of-the-ordinary relations.” The primary focus of the book is Pu Yi’s marriage to Li Shuxian, a twice-divorced dance hall hostess and alleged prostitute who married for wealth and glamour and found herself paired with a sexually dysfunctional pauper. The book has been promoted for months before its release in the Chinese press with headlines such as “Was the Last Emperor Gay?”