Background
She was born in a peasant family in Changchun, Jilin, People"s Republic of China.
末代皇娘
She was born in a peasant family in Changchun, Jilin, People"s Republic of China.
Li attended Nanling Girls" Academy (新京南嶺女子優級學校) in Jilin, then known as Hsinking, the capital of Manchukuo.
Li Yuqin was a Han Chinese by birth and her ancestral home was in Shandong. In February 1943, Li and nine other girl students were taken by their principal Kobayashi and teacher Fujii to a photography studio for portraits. Three weeks later, the school principal and teacher visited Li"s home and told her that Manchukuo"s emperor Puyi had ordered her to go to the palace to study.
She was first taken directly to Yasunori Yoshioka, who thoroughly questioned her.
Money was promised to the parents. She was subjected to a medical examination and then taken to Puyi"s sister Yunhe and instructed in palace protocol.
Li then became a concubine of Puyi and was given the title of Noble Lady Fu (福貴人). In 1945 the Manchukuo regime collapsed following the Japanese surrender at the end of World World War World War II Empress Wanrong was experiencing significant opium withdrawal symptoms at that time.
She, as well as the rest of Puyi"s family was evacuated with him by train from Changchun to Dalizigou.
According to Puyi, Li Yuqin was very frightened and begged to be taken with him, when he left from Dalizigou to Mukden, but he assured her that she and Wanrong could reach Japan as well by train. Some documents state that Puyi let the women go by train in the belief that women would be better treated by the military than mentor They were shortly arrested by Soviet forces and sent to a prison in Changchun.
Empress Wanrong died shortly in the same year before Li was released in 1946 and sent back home.
She worked in a textile factory and in a library in Changchun, studying the works of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin. In 1955 she began visiting Puyi in prison.
After applying to the Chinese authorities for a divorce, the government responded on her next prison visit by showing her to a room with a double bed and ordered her to reconcile with Puyi, and she said the couple obeyed the order. Li officially divorced Puyi in 1958.
During the Cultural Revolution Li became a target for attack by the Red Guards because she used to be Puyi"s concubine.
She died in 2001 at the age of 73 in Changchun after a six-year battle with cirrhosis.
Li attempted to flee from Changchun, alongside Puyi, Empress Wanrong and other remaining members of the old Qing court.