Widow Of China’s Last Emperor Dies

Li Shuxian, widow of China’s last emperor, has died of lung cancer at age 73. She died Monday in Beijing, the official Xinhua News Agency said in a one-sentence report Tuesday.

Li married Aisingyoro Henry Puyi, who had abdicated as a boy in 1912, after he was released from a re-education camp in 1959 and took up life as an ordinary Chinese citizen. Puyi died in 1967.

Puyi’s life was depicted in “The Last Emperor,” the 1987 Bernardo Bertolucci film that won nine Academy Awards.

He was born in Beijing on Feb. 7, 1906. He had just turned 6 when his family, under pressure from Sun Yat-Sen’s revolutionaries, abdicated on his behalf, ending the 268-year-old Qing dynasty and at least 3,000 years of Imperial rule.