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 an adaptation of "La Condition humaine" ("Man's Fate") by André Malraux. The Chinese preferred "The Last Emperor". Producer Jeremy Thomas managed to raise the $25 million budget for his ambitious independent production single-handedly. At one stage, he scoured the phone book for potential financiers. Bertolucci was given complete freedom by the authorities to shoot in The Forbidden City, which had never before been opened up for use in a Western film. For the first ninety minutes of the film, Bertolucci and Storaro made full use of its visual splendour. 19,000 extras were needed over the course of the film.