The Chinese Imperial Family
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The Directors of Fine Art Imports (Australia) travel 
to China regularly. 

Since our first visit in 1984 we have been privileged
to establish personal friendships with the surviving 
members of China's former Qing Imperial Family, 
including the famous traditional artist Ai Xin Jue
Luo Pu Zuo, as well as Ai Xin Jue Luo Yun Ying,
sister of the last Emperor, and her husband
Guobuluo Rongqi, known as the Uncle of China,
being twice brother-in-law to Pu Yi ,
the last Emperor.

Prince Guobuluo Rongqi was the eldest son
of one of China's most eminent aristocratic
families. His family were members of the
court at the Imperial Palace in Beijing,
and in 1922 his sister married the
Emperor Ai Xin Jue Luo Pu Yi
to become the last Empress of China,
the Empress Beautiful Countenance.

Princess Ai Xin Jue Luo Yun Ying,
the sister of Emperor Pu Yi, in turn
married Prince Guobuluo Rongqi in 1936.

During the last days of the Qing dynasty, Yun Ying
and Rongqi lived as part of the Imperial court
within the Forbidden City, and both accompanied
the Emperor Pu Yi when he assumed the
Emperorship of Manchuria under Japanese
governance.

In due course Rongqi was to accompany Pu Yi
to Soviet labour camps and subsequent
imprisonment in China following the declaration of
the Peoples' Republic of China in 1949.

During the years when her husband and her
brother were imprisoned in the Soviet Union,
Yun Ying suffered a very hard life in north-east
China. Her only son peddled newspapers, and died
from malnutrition at the age of eight.

TheEmpress Wan Jung, by now addicted
to opium, died in prison in China in 1946;
the Emperor Pu Yi died as a gardener
in Beijing in 1967.

Rongqi and Yun Ying lived together as
ordinary citizens of modern China, in a
fifth-floor, suburban Beijing apartment,
until Yun Ying's death in 1992.

Go to Imperial Chronology

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