ABSTRACT
Imperial consorts in traditional China were, like government officials, reticent about their private lives. The innumerable women who served as consorts of various ranks over the course of the two millennia of China's imperial age left only a small number of poems, which, for the most part, express the same thoughts and sentiments as the many poems in the voices of imperial consorts written by male poets. The poignancy of literary imaginings about these women and the rarity of actual accounts enhance our appreciation of the following memoir by Li Yu-ch'in, the last consort of the last emperor of China, P'u-yi. At the end of World War II, P'u-yi was captured by Soviet troops and imprisoned in Manchuria. Though not formally tried, as the consort of a war criminal, Li Yu-ch'in was socially ostracized. She was still young, but her parents advised her to wait for P'u-yi's release.
