to have Puyi's beloved wet nurse Wang expelled from the Forbidden City when he was 8 on the grounds that Puyi was too old to be breast-fed. Puyi especially hated Longyu for that. Puyi later wrote, "Although I had many mothers, I never knew any motherly love." Empress dowager Longyu ruled with paramount authority over the Qing imperial court, and though she was not the de jure "regent", she was the de facto ruler of the Qing empire.

Puyi had a standard Confucian education, being taught the various Chinese classics