Aisin-gioro De Zhen with her uncle, Aisin-gioro Yu Zhan. 

 
A poem that her uncle gave her when she was a child. Photos: Courtesy of Aisin-gioro De Zhen

By Ni Dandan

For the first 40 years of her life, Aisin-gioro De Zhen was known simply by the name De Zhen. Her family took up the pretense to conceal their Manchurian heritage, and more importantly, their relationship to the once despised imperial family of Aisin-gioro Pu Yi, China's last emperor.

The 47-year-old Shanghai native remained ignorant of her family's heritage until she was 11, when her grandmother fell seriously ill. Aisin-gioro remembered her grandmother as a quiet, melancholy woman, who spent her days sitting in her courtyard, drinking tea and occasionally practicing calligraphy. It wasn't until the last days of her grandmother's life that Aisin-gioro learned of her family's true name and their place in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911).

Aisin-gioro, whose paternal grandfather was a cousin of the emperor, has since retaken her family name and is now collecting stories from her family's surviving elders for a documentary about the Aisin-gioro family.

However, it is her own story that illustrates the change in how Chinese society views its imperial history and the country's last dynasty. Aisin-gioro said that most people, including those of her generation, have abandoned the once-prevalent prejudice against her family, replacing it with genuine interest and respect.

"I believe what they're showing is respect to the traditions and history of China, rather than to me as an individual. Their respect represents their recognition of my family's role in changing the Chinese economy and culture," she told the Global Times.

When she was growing up in the 1970s, young people didn't have their own values and were heavily influenced by the politics of time, according to Zeng Yanbo, a researcher with the Institute of Adolescents under the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. They reacted drastically to things that the government denounced, such as China's feudal history under the dynasties.

Hiding their history

After the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, Aisin-gioro's grandparents brought her father out of Beijing, drifted to Tianjin and Hangzhou and finally settled down in Shanghai. Seeing the changed environment, her grandparents and her father dropped their family name and began to lead a low-key life.

Aisin-gioro said her family hid her heritage from her so she could grow up free of the prejudice that plagued China at the time. But although she knew little about her family history, she could feel she was different from the other children in her junior middle school.

"I remember the class when my history teacher gave a lesson on the Treaty of Shimonoseki," she said, referring to the humiliating treaty that the Qing emperor signed with the Japanese in 1895 to end the first Sino-Japanese War.

"One of the boys in my class came over to my desk and broke my pencil, while several others called me a bastard. They were angry about the corrupt and inept Qing government and they knew I was a Manchurian, the people who founded the Qing Dynasty. So they took out their anger on me."

Her uncle Aisin-gioro Yu Zhan, who would have been a prince under the monarchy, copied a poem by Tang Dynasty (618–907) poet Bai Juyi to encourage her to deal with the insults with optimism. "Aside from the fact that most of my relatives like my aunts and uncles were good at calligraphy and writing poetry … I think my family was almost the same as most other local ones," said Aisin-gioro, who speaks fluent Shanghainese.

Aisin-gioro De Zhen at the Shanghai People's Conference earlier this month. Photo: Cai Xianmin

Reclaiming her name

Her curiosity about her family and the sense of belonging was not triggered until her father's death in 2002. "Living in a big city like Shanghai, most people of my age didn't dig into their family histories. But after my father passed away, I began to ask myself where he was from. That's when it hit me that I should restore my family name," she said.

The process only took four days, even with her special surname. But what happened next was even more surprising. "Some relatives, whom we hadn't been in contact with, found me when I traveled to Beijing and Tianjin. There were organizations doing research about the royal family of the Qing Dynasty that contacted me. And interestingly, some actresses even approached me, trying to learn what it's like to be a royal in real life," she said.

Her new-found notoriety helped her get appointed as a delegate to the Shanghai People's Congress two years ago. Over the last few years, Aisin-gioro has spent her time visiting elder members in her family who have spread out in Japan, Taiwan, Beijing, Tianjin and Shenyang for the documentary. "The number of my relatives in their 80s and 90s has fallen significantly in recent years. They're the generation that was closest to the Qing Dynasty. I hope that by making this effort, I can do something for my family," she said.

Aisin-gioro said some older members of her family still insist on concealing their surname, unable to forget society's treatment of their family after the fall of the dynasty. "Some of those in their golden years never got married or had a child. They still feel disconnected from society," she said.

Nonetheless, she believes the changes over the last 30 years have allowed her family to reveal themselves. "Without the opening-up, my family might have still been concealing our Manchurian identity from the public, let alone revealing our family's real name," she said.

Aside from her work on the documentary, Aisin-gioro is a mother and wife who remains in charge of her family's household chores. When asked if she had ever fantasized about life as a royal, she said it would have been nothing like the soap operas on television make it out to be.

"From what I know, most of the women in the Aisin-gioro family were not allowed to chase their love in those days. They had to sacrifice their own happiness for the stability of the country," she told the Global Times.