Question

Read the following passage found in From Emperor to Citizen.

When I was ten, my grandmother and mother started to come and visit me on the orders of the High Consorts, and they brought my brother Pu Chieh and my first sister to play with me for a few days. Their first visit started off very drearily: I and my grandmother sat on the kang, and she watched me playing dominoes while my brother and sister stood below us very properly, gazing at me with a fixed stare like attendants on duty in a yamen. Later it occurred to me to take them along to the part of the palace in which I lived, where I asked Pu Chieh, "What games do you play at home?"

"Pu Chieh can play hide-and-seek," said my brother, who was a year younger than I, in a very respectful way.

"So you play hide-and-seek too? It's a jolly good game." I was very excited. I had played it with the eunuchs but never with children younger than myself. So we started to play hide-and-seek, and in the excitement of the game, my brother and sister forgot their inhibitions. We deliberately let down the blinds to make the room very dark. My sister, who was two years younger than I, was at the same time enraptured and terrified, and as my brother and I kept giving her frights, we got so carried away that we were laughing and shouting.
After reading these paragraphs, the reader can most likely conclude that P’u Yi

A does not enjoy playing dominoes by himself
B regards his brother and sister as subjects and not siblings
C is grateful for having children his own age to entertain him
D does not often have the opportunity for uninhibited playtime

Answer 1

D. Does not often have the opportunity for uninhibited playtime

He does not quite regard his siblings as subjects, although they are described as such in the first paragraph. The children are not his own age, which he points out; in fact, they are younger. There is no indication he does not enjoy playing by himself.

Answer 2

The reader can most likely conclude that P'u Yi D does not often have the opportunity for uninhibited playtime.

Step-by-step explanation:

P'u Yi is an emperor and, as such, he is surrounded by rules and ceremonies. His life is not a carefree one - even when he wants to play, he does so with the eunuchs, who are not his friends, but his servants. When he finally gets the chance to play with his siblings, he experiences what it feels like to be just a child. They have the opportunity for inhibited playtime, away from adults, unconcerned with rituals and rules. He is clearly happy at this moment, getting "so carried away that we were laughing and shouting." That is not something that happens often for P'u Yi, so much so that this moment left quite an impression.