Late in 1931,
Yoshiko Kawashima, acting under instruction from the Japanese
Kwantung Army, fetched Wanrong from
Tianjin to
Dalian and then to Port Arthur (now
Lüshun) to meet Puyi who had accepted an offer from the
Empire of Japan to head the puppet state of
Manchukuo in
Manchuria (northeastern China) in the hope of restoring the
Qing dynasty. Wanrong disliked the Japanese and was firmly against Puyi's plans to go to Manchuria, and for a moment Puyi hesitated, leading
Kenji Doihara to send for Puyi's cousin, the very pro-Japanese Kawashima, to visit him to change his mind. After Puyi had snuck into Manchuria, Li Guoxiong (a servant) claims Wanrong had told him: "As you see, His Majesty had left and His Highness could not come here. I was deserted here and who would take care of me?" Yoshiko Kawashima, noted for her strong will, had some influence on Wanrong and she eventually secretly relocated to Manchukuo. However, a member of Wanrong's entourage later said Yoshiko Kawashima had only played a minor role. founding ceremony in
Xinjing (Changchun). Li Tiyu is pictured behind Puyi. Wanrong and her group landed at Dalian on 28 November 1931. Initially the Japanese military did not allow Puyi and Wanrong to stay together, with Wanrong's requests to visit Puyi being declined. Kudo Tetsuaburo, who worked as a guard for Puyi, stated there was a rumor the emperor had been killed and another rumor he had been put under house arrest. Wanrong was eventually allowed to visit Puyi in
Lushun. It is possible the Japanese military initially feared Puyi could be influenced by those around him at such a critical stage of development and were hesitant to allow them to live together. Prince Su's Mansion in Lushun served as Puyi's temporary palace in which Wanrong would spend a few months before settling in
Xinjing (Changchun). Li Guoxing, Puyi's servant recalled she acted like a spoiled child on several occasions. After arriving in Xinjing, Wanrong was closely monitored by the Japanese and had to do as they instructed. She began to detest the Japanese and secretly planned to escape on two occasions.
Wellington Koo, a diplomat, recalled in his memoirs when he was in Dalian, he once met a man who said he was sent by Wanrong to seek his help in escaping from Xinjing. Koo could not help her because of his status as a consultant then. Koo later wrote in his memoir "...My attendant said that he knew this man in Beijing and that he could meet him. He told me that this man was disguised as an antique dealer to avoid the attention of the Japanese (perhaps he had been an antique dealer). I went out to the porch and we stopped at the corner. The man told me that he was sent by the Empress. He said she asked me to help her escape from
Changchun because she knew I was going to Manchuria; he said she felt miserable about her life because she was surrounded by Japanese attendants in the palace (there were no Chinese attendants there), and her every move was watched and denounced. She knew that the emperor could not escape, and if she could, she could have helped him to escape." In another incident, around August or September 1933, when the wife of Zhao Xinbo (趙欣伯), a Manchukuo official, was preparing to leave for Japan, Wanrong approached her and asked her for help. However, Wanrong's plan to escape was again unsuccessful. In frustration, the Empress was noted to have been heard saying on one occasion: "Why can everyone else be free, but I can't be free?" On 1 March 1934, the Japanese government proclaimed Puyi as the emperor of Manchukuo and Wanrong as his empress. The couple lived in the Russian-built Weihuang Palace (now the
Museum of the Imperial Palace of the Manchu State), a tax office that had been converted into a temporary palace while a new structure was being built. Apart from Puyi's coronation in 1934, Wanrong only made one other public appearance as Empress of Manchukuo, in June 1934, when
Prince Chichibu visited Manchukuo on behalf of the
Shōwa Emperor to mark close ties between Japan and Manchukuo. While these were the only big state ceremonies she participated in, she is noted to have made smaller public appearances; in the non-fiction book
Wild Swans, she was noted to have participated in the official visit of the Emperor to
Jinzhou in September 1939, where the mother of the author was selected to present flowers to the Empress on her arrival to the city. According to the 1934 "Imperial Palace" archives, Wanrong made 27 pieces of
cheongsam in one year. She was also taught drawing and music, such as the piano as well as playing chess and tennis recreationally. On 21 November 1934,
The New York Times wrote an article stating that: "due to nervous illness, Empress Yueh Hua [pen name used by Wanrong] will soon leave the capital to spend the Winter at Dairen." Puyi became a devout Buddhist in the Manchukuo period, reading many books and sutras on the topic and had developed superstitions to the point where he would not allow his staff to kill a single fly. Puyi wrote Wanrong became so engrossed in these superstitions she would blink and spit unnecessarily, tellingly, as if she was mentally ill.
Secret affairs and mental health decline Puyi and Wanrong's relationship continued to deteriorate, albeit with continuing formalities such as Wanrong
paying tribute to the emperor. Puyi would sometimes sit in her bedroom before he slept and would leave at midnight unreluctantly which infuriated Wanrong. Her monthly spending also increased by twice the original amount, with most going towards buying opium and large numbers of fashion and movie magazines. While Puyi was absent, out of loneliness, the opium-addicted empress had secret affairs with two of Puyi's aides in Manchukuo's Imperial Palace, Li Tiyu () and Qi Jizhong (). Puyi had Qi sent to a military school in Japan just under a year of arriving in Changchun. On one occasion Puyi noticed another of his attendants, Li Tiyu, had lipstick on and questioned him as to why he was wearing it, with Li Tiyu responding he had been pale-lipped and wanted to make it look pleasant to the "
Lord of Ten Thousand Years." His answer caused an uproar of laughter, but Li subsequently always wore lipstick. In another instance, Puyi beat him after becoming suspicious of where he was during the night when his bed was found to be empty. Li told the emperor that he had been sleeping with the wife of one of his guards. The emperor finally ran out of patience with Li and banished him from the palace. Puyi attempted to divorce Wanrong, but the
Kwantung Army disapproved. He later tried issuing a proclamation about going to Lushun on 21 January 1935 to "avoid the cold," likely with the intention of abandoning Wanrong, but the Japanese saw through his plans and prevented him from leaving. Wanrong reportedly discovered the plot and was deeply upset. Wanrong gave birth to an illegitimate child, a girl, but the baby was
killed on delivery, and the newborn was supposedly thrown into a boiler. Wanrong was immediately removed by Puyi's Japanese handlers to a remote hospital. There are two accounts of what happened to Wanrong after her daughter's death. One account said Puyi lied to her, saying her daughter was being raised by a nanny, and Wanrong never knew about her daughter's death. and lived in a constant daze of opium consumption since then. In Puyi's unabridged memoir he wrote, "[...] she was told he had been adopted and remained dreaming of her son living in the world until her dying day." It is possible Puyi was simply aware of what would happen to the baby, and was too cowardly to do anything about it. Wanrong was eventually confined to her quarters at all times, with only a handful of servants permitted to attend her. It is not known how long she was kept under house arrest. Wanrong's father eventually stopped visiting her in Manchukuo. Runqi, her brother, said her father loved her greatly and could not bear to face what Wanrong had become. The empress by then had taken to smoking two packets of cigarettes a day along with smoking large quantities of opium, using the cheapest pipes available.
Hiro Saga, the wife of Puyi's brother, wrote about the empress at a shared dinner in 1937, noting: "The empress was seated to my right, and while I was watching, she kept on taking more and more turkey for herself. I was surprised at her good appetite. Perhaps to make sure that I didn't catch on to what was happening, her young brother Runqi went so far as to rudely grab the chocolate from the person next to him. He kept on eating in a comical way to turn everyone's attention toward him. Afterward I found out that the empress was an opium addict and often suffered from bouts of mental instability. She just wasn't aware of how much she was eating." In another incident, Puyi's sister wrote to Puyi in 1937 and said of Wanrong's appearance: "The enlarged photo of (the queen) is really terrible, it's changed since the last two years. It's hidden and not shown to others." After 1937, she no longer appeared at New Year or birthday parties. Yang Jingzhu (), the wife of one of Puyi's relatives,
Yuzhan (), claimed she found Wanrong's personal maid, Chunying, crying in the Palace. Upon asking her what was wrong, the maid had told her the empress had threatened to beat her if she did not eat a cookie that Wanrong had smeared with her own menstrual blood. In another instance, she was seen frantically running outside into the courtyard dressed in her pajamas and had to be dragged back inside by a eunuch. A maid present at the palace also recalled Wanrong laughing and crying frequently, and often appeared naked, although it is unclear if this meant full nudity or undergarments. The empress went so far as to send servants on more than one occasion to buy lottery tickets with financial records showing the purchase and price of lottery tickets. When Wanrong was mentally lucid she is said to have cried and cursed her father,) and found brightness to be uncomfortable. She would use a folded fan to block her face when she looked at others, trying to look through the cracks. Wanrong was so isolated in the last years of her life that Puyi's concubine, Li Yuqin, who arrived in 1943, only saw her face during the collapse of the regime in 1945. ==Imprisonment and death==