The Extraordinary Life of The Last Emperor of China in Puyi's autobiography "From Emperor to Citizen", and instead focuses on disclosing untold stories of Puyi in a multi-layered fashion. The book also contains historic documents of more than 300,000 Chinese characters related to Puyi's life. In addition to old photographs, Jia also publicised many cultural relics about Puyi for the first time in his book. The relics include: Puyi's abdication decree written in the Mongolian language and Chinese issued by the Colonial Affairs Department in 1911; the preferential conditions for the Qing imperial family; the Hongxian porcelain tray customised for Yuan Shikai; letters written by Puyi to farmers and
The Last Emperor was completed did the head of Columbia agree to distribute "The Last Emperor" in North America. Hemdale licensed its video rights to Nelson Entertainment, which released the film on VHS and Laserdisc. The film also received a Laserdisc release in Australia in 1992, through Columbia Tri-Star Video. Years later, Artisan Entertainment acquired the rights to the film and released both the theatrical and extended versions on home video. In February 2008 The Criterion Collection (under license from now-rights-holder Thomas) released a four disc Director-Approved edition, again containing both theatrical and extended versions. Criterion released a Blu-ray version on 6 January