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Chicago Sun-Times
Chicago Sun-Times
National
Stefano Esposito

How a Chicago-area journalist helped prove an unassuming wristwatch once belonged to China’s last emperor

Russell Working at his home in Oak Park, and the Patek Philippe wristwatch that was owned by the last emperor of China, Aisingyoro Puyi. (Natalie Garcia/For the Sun-Times, Phillips Auctioneers LLC)

Russell Working had never spoken to the 83-year-old translator he was about to meet for the first time because the old man, fearing a KGB tap, had no phone.

What Working, an Oak Park-based freelance journalist, found was a man as colorful as his Soviet-era apartment tower was drab.

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