Reginald Johnston
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Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston (1874–1938) was a Scottish academic, diplomat and pedagogue and the teacher of Puyi, the last emperor of China, and later appointed as commissioner of British-held Weihaiwei.
Born in Edinburgh, he studied at University of Edinburgh and later Magdalen College, Oxford. In 1898, he entered into colonial service and worked in Hong Kong. After initial service in Hong Kong Johnston was transferred to the British Trading Post at Weihewei on the coast of the Shandong Peninsula and nearer Beijing.
In 1919, he was elected tutor of thirteen-year-old Puyi who still lived inside the Forbidden City in Beijing as a non-sovereign monarch. As the British-born Tutor to the Dragon Emperor Johnston was the only foreigner in history to be allowed inside the inner court of the Qing Dynasty. Johnston carried high imperial titles, lived in both the Forbidden City and the New Summer Palace. When Puyi was expelled from the Old Palace in 1924, Johnston returned to the UK and became a professor at the School of Oriental Studies University of London. In 1926, he was appointed as commissioner of Weihaiwei, a leased territory in Shandong Province. He ruled the colony in a manner similar to a Chinese mandarin until Weihaiwei was returned to the Republic of China in Nanjing on October 1, 1930.
He retired to return to Scotland and lived on the small island of Eilean Righ in Loch Craignish, on which he created for himself a Chinese Garden. He died in Edinburgh. After cremation Reginald Flemming Johnston's ashes were scattered on the island of Eilean Righ and surrounding Loch.
Johnston's book Twilight in the Forbidden City, a bestseller in the 1930s, describes his experiences in Beijing and was used as a source for Bernardo Bertolucci's film dramatisation of Puyi's life The Last Emperor. He was portrayed by Peter O'Toole in the film.
Johnston Road in Wanchai, Hong Kong, is named after him.
Reference
- Raymond Lamont-Brown, Tutor to the Dragon Emperor: The Life of Sir Reginald Fleming Johnston, 1999. ISBN 0750921064
- Shiona Airlie, Reginald Johnston, 2001. ISBN 1901663493
Published works
- Twilight in the Forbidden City Reginald Fleming Johnston, (1934)
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