Most Chinese have several different names, and emperors are no exception to this rule. There is a “milk name” during infancy, a _hao_, or familiar name by which one is afterward known to one’s intimates, a school name, a business name, finally, but not lastly, in the case of an emperor, a throne name or dynastic title. But though the present occupant of the Forbidden City has such a name, to wit: Hsuan T’ung, even this cannot be freely used; you cannot call a man to the billiard-table by his dynastic title. The names by which we know former emperors of China are really their “reign titles” and not personal patronymics. This left the present head of the Ch’ing dynasty handicapped, for, not being a real sovereign in spite of his legally imperial title, and unable to have a reign title at least until he is dead, there was no name by which he could be properly and generally called, whether to dinner or to an audience. Being a sensible young man, of modern rather than reactionary tendencies and by no means hostile to foreign influence, noting moreover that not only do foreigners who remain long in China have a Chinese name but that Western sovereigns have personal appellations, he decided to take a foreign name. The fact that his foreign tutor is an Englishman may or may not account for the fact that he has chosen to be called “Henry.”
Those who have seen him describe “Emperor Henry” as a tall, slender young man who is still growing, with the Chinese calligraphy of an artist and some of the poetic gifts of his imperial ancestor known as Ch’ien Lung. Not merely does he wield a wicked brush in both the classic and the modern colloquial Chinese, now and then having a poem published under an assumed name in a Peking paper, but he writes a very legible English with pen or pencil. His English speech is described as slow but correct, with a strong British accent. He reads newspapers voraciously and is said to be unusually well abreast of the times, both at home and abroad, for his years. His greatest single blow to date against tyrannical conservatism, however, and the mightiest example of his progressive tendencies occurred last spring at one fell swoop—he had his cue cut off. The three imperial dowagers and his two distinguished old Chinese or Manchu tutors tore what was left of their own hair in vain. “Henry” was determined to be up-to-date even if he is confined in one end of the once Forbidden City. The result is that for the first time in nearly three hundred years there is hardly a pigtail left within the Purple Wall, though the two old tutors, as a silent protest against what they consider an act of disloyalty to the traditions of “his Majesty’s” house, still wear their cues.