Slide 23 of 31: In this photo taken around 1909, four-year-old Emperor Puyi (right) stands next to his father and baby brother. After the Chinese revolution of 1911-12, the child emperor was forced to abdicate, ending the 2,000-year-old Chinese imperial system. Twelve years later, he fled the Forbidden City and reached the Japanese concession (colony) at Tianjin. From 1934 to 1945, he served as emperor of Manchukuo, the puppet state of imperial Japan in northeastern China. Captured by the Soviet army at the end of the Second World War, he was sent back to China in 1950 to face trial for war crimes. He was pardoned in 1959 and lived out his days working in Beijing’s botanical garden, an ordinary citizen who, as the South China Morning Post forlornly notes, “had to buy a ticket to enter his old home.” 