A separate exhibition centre near the Imperial Palace Museum focuses specifically on Puyi's biography and the wider context of the Manchukuo period. The exhibition covers his early life in the Forbidden City, the events that led to his installation as Emperor of Manchukuo, the thirteen years he spent in this city, and the Soviet capture and Chinese re-education that followed.
The narrative here is more biographical and less architectural than the palace museum itself, and the two complement each other well. The exhibition uses photographs, documents, and personal effects to build a portrait of a man who was extraordinarily constrained by his historical position — never able to be simply a person rather than a symbol. The Communist-period framing (Puyi as a reformed man who acknowledged his collaboration with imperialism) is present, but the underlying material is too specific and interesting to be entirely obscured by it.