Manzhouli, China 2015. ©Davide Monteleone
On August 18, 1945, Pu Yi, China’s Last Emperor, who by that time was reduced to being the emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, renounced his throne and prepared to flee northeastern China along with the defeated Japanese Army. Bernardo Bertolucci’s Academy —— film, ‘The Last Emperor’ depicted the moment when Soviet troops seized a Manchurian airport and stopped Pu Yi and his royal entourage from escaping to Korea. They were taken to the Soviet Union to meet an uncertain fate.
Pu Yi spent five years as a prisoner of war in the Soviet Union. In an autobiography that was published in the 1960s, he described his life in Chita and Khabarovsk.
I spent the last 3 weeks traveling in Northern Est China, close to the border between Russia and China searching for historical and contemporary relations between the two countries. I met ethnic Russian Chinese, mixed couples, woodcutter, traders, an orthodox Chinese priest and visited surreal amusement parks and "sanatorium".
Tomorrow I will fly back to Moscow exactly from Chita. I'll have numerous days of editing back home, but updates and stories will come soon.