BEIJING: The brother of China's last emperor - who was pushed off the throne in 1912, ending the Qing dynasty - has died in Beijing at the age of 96, state media reported. Puren was the youngest sibling of the final Qing monarch Puyi, a child-ruler portrayed in the Bernardo Bertolucci film "The Last Emperor". Puyi, from the ethnically Manchu Qing dynasty, became emperor in 1908 when he was just two years and ten months old. His abdication was an epoch-shattering event, ending the rule of the Qing which began in 1644.
The government which took power in 1912 required Puyi and his close family to live within the walls of the Forbidden City, where they retained imperial traditions and were tended to by eunuchs.
They were expelled from the palace complex in 1917.
Puren established a primary school with the help of his father in the 1940s and continued to teach until he retired in the late 1960s, the Guangzhou Daily newspaper reported.