Dr. Sun Yatsen

The Beginning of his Revolutionary Career

Dr. Sun Yat-sen is a legend, in China, in Taiwan and in the Chinatowns of the world.  I have recently walked in the Sun Yat-sen garden in Vancouver’s Chinatown.  I’ll post a picture of that picturesque garden below.

How did this son of peasants, this Chinese Christian, come to be the first provisional president of the Republic of China?  And how did he earn the respect of the Chinese Communist Party, the Guomindang that ruled the Republic of China both on the mainland and on Taiwan, and the admiration of Chinese overseas?  There aren’t many political figures that are venerated by both the Chinese Communist Party and the Guomindang (also known as the Kuomintang).  His portrait can be found at Tiananmen Square in Beijing and in the Legislative Chamber in Taipei. So, Dr. Sun Yat-sen deserves our attention.  Now as we approach the 1911 revolution, it is time to look at him and his story.

Sun Yat-sen was born in Cuiheng, a village in the Pearl River Delta of Guangdong in November 1866.  At that point, there was no reason to believe that he would amount to anything politically.  Certainly not that we would be talking about him 150 years later as the first provisional president of the Republic of China or as a father of modern China.

His father was a peasant farmer who couldn’t earn enough as a farmer to support his family.  Macao was only about 55 kilometres or 40 miles to the south.  So, Mr. Sun found work there as a tailor, a journeyman, a porter, whatever would feed his family.  Yat-sen’s mother had bound feet as did Yat-sen’s younger sister.  Years later, he recalled hearing her pain when the binding broke the bones in her  little feet.

Yat-sen’s older brother by 15 years, Sun Mei had emigrated to Hawaii in 1879 to seek fortune.  Mr. Sun had also had two brothers go off to California to seek gold.  This area of Guangdong had lots of young men leave in the hope of a better life overseas.

Yat-sen lived in Cuiheng for his first 13 years and attended primary school.  He would have learned by memorization from the Classics in Three Characters textbook.

Then his older brother returned to the village.  He had done well in Honolulu and had returned to marry the girl his family had chosen for him.  The family discussed Yat-sen’s future and it was decided he would join his brother in Hawaii.  Their mother accompanied him on this first trip to Hawaii in 1879.  On the way, they stopped in Hong Kong and as Yat-sen recalled “I admired the ships and the huge expanse of the sea, and my desire to learn of the West and explore the vast world increased.”

There was no Chinese school on Oahu and Yat-sen was enrolled at a missionary school.  Instruction was in English and the students were mostly Hawaiian or half-castes.  He learned English, read the bible and received second prize in grammar at the end of his third year. He began to think of Christianity in association with progress and disassociated himself with the domestic gods worshipped by his older brother.

In the fall of 1882, Yat-sen began studies at Oahu College, run by American Congregationalists and began learning about medicine and law and was considering baptism.  His brother disapproved of the idea of his younger brother converting and sent him back to Cuiheng to reacquaint himself with their ancestors and with Chinese identity.

Yat-sen did not appreciate being sent back to his small and poor village after having seen Hong Kong and Hawaii, learning a new language and new ideas.  He and a friend Lu Haodong (who had been educated in Shanghai) rebelled and vandalized a local temple.    The villagers thought his mind had been poisoned by foreigners.  His family decided to send him to Hong Kong to continue his studies.

In 1884, he began studies at the Government Central School in Hong Kong.  The curriculum was English, but teaching included Chinese.  Yat-sen also was baptized as a Christian during this period, along with his friend Lu, and Yat-sen’s family selected a wife for him.

The American minister who baptized Yat-sen accompanied him to his village for the wedding.  The Sun home was now one of the most comfortable there, because of the support from Sun Mei in Hawaii.  Yat-sen married around aged 18 to the daughter of a village merchant one year younger than Sun.  This marriage was not based on romance, but on family duty to carry on the ancestral line. 

Soon after the wedding, Sun Mei who had heard of the conversion to Christianity, summoned him to Hawaii and cut off his financial support.  But Yat-sen was now able to appeal to Christians for support for his studies and they allowed him to return from there to Hong Kong.  His brother came around and returned to funding his younger brother.

But this interruption in his studies meant that Yat-sen never graduated from the school in Hong Kong.  His options for further studies in China were limited by his peasant background.  Any hopes of entering a naval academy were closed.

His Christian supporters in Hawaii would have liked him to have studied theology.  But there was no seminary in Hong Kong.  He was approved by the Medical School of Canton Hospital in Guangzhou.  He was joined by his friend Lu and they made friends with another Chinese Christian Zheng Shiliang who was from Shanghai and had been educated at a German Missionary school in Guangzhou.

After one year of medical studies in Guangzhou, Yat-sen enrolled in Hong Kong at the College of Medicine for the Chinese in 1887.  It had just been established and he was the very first student to enroll.  After five years, he graduated with a knowledge of medical science and an enhanced understanding of Western and Chinese culture.  Even more, he had made contacts among the westernized Chinese, which would prove important for his future. 

The contacts were more important for young Dr. Sun than his medical degree.  It was not recognized either by the Hong Kong or Macau colonial authorities.  When he did work briefly as a doctor, his practice was half European and half Chinese.  He was encouraged to continue studies in England, but had other ideas.

His network was crucial for Dr. Sun’s next steps.  One of the Christian Chinese pastors helped arrange funds for the pharmacy of East and West, which Sun founded in Guangzhou in 1893.  They also assisted with his first revolutionary campaigns in 1895 and in 1900.

He and three friends at college used to stay up late and talk of revolutions.  They called themselves the four bandits.  His friends from the Canton Medical School called him Hong Xiuquan, after the leader of the Taiping.  His friend from those studies, Zheng Shiliang was a high-ranking Triad dignitary and seems to have brought the secret societies to Sun’s attention.  But until 1894, Sun does not seem to have contacted any secret society.

Before turning to revolution, Dr. Sun first tried reform.  He  tried to get hired as an advisor to Earl Li Hongzhang.  Earl Li had helped defeat the Taiping Rebellion for the Empresses Dowager and then helped modernize China with the self-strengthening movement.  Like Sun, he was Han Chinese.  Earl Li had surrounded himself with bright thinkers and entrepreneurs.  Earl Li had one of them manage a cotton mill that was an early sort of private- public partnership.  And Li had another manage the China Merchants’ Steam Navigation Company.  These companies were supervised by officials but managed privately.  However, Earl Li only chose young men of affluent merchant families or from literati families.  He gave no time to the son of a peasant like Sun.

Sun petitioned Earl Li, as well as some other leading officials, like the Minister to Japan and the United States, as well as the manager of the customs service in Tianjin.

In 1894, Sun wrote to Earl Li and had a reforming journalist in Shanghai provide a letter of introduction.  But Sun’s efforts to meet with Earl Li in Tianjin were not successful.  They did not meet.  Sun’s petition to Earl Li was published in a Shanghai missionary publication, but Sun left for Hawaii disappointed and destined for a revolutionary career instead.

In his autobiography, Sun suggests that he was already a revolutionary by 1894 and that he wanted to use the trip to Tianjin to size up the Manchu regime.  He had already been discussing revolution with his friends at college and they called him Hong after the leader of the Taiping Rebellion.  Revolution had already been on his mind.  But whatever his true feelings before the unsuccessful trip to Tianjin in 1894, his incipient revolutionary thoughts crystalized, and he soon took action on them.

This period was also the time when China suffered a terrible defeat to Japan in the Sino-Japanese war.  The government’s failure to defend the country must have been a further factor for Sun.

He left Tianjin for Hawaii and in November 1894, roughly at the time of his 28^th birthday, founded the Revive China Society there.  It added Hong Kong the next year.  It was concerned with immediate action to express their dissatisfaction with the current order in China.  They raised money for an uprising in Guangzhou.

The Society’s charter mentions the danger faced by China, the weakness and incompetence of the Manchu government and invited courageous men to give new life to the country. 

Its first 20 members in Hawaii were all Chinese emigrants connected to Sun or his family.  This is the first known instance of Chinese emigrants entering the field of Chinese politics back home.  They were not simply wanting better treatment where they were.  That had been sought by emigrants before.  They wanted a new China back in the country of their birth.  That was new.

The chapter set up in Hong Kong in February 1895 built on Sun’s contacts there, including the remaining members of the 4 bandits from college.  It also fused with the Literary Society for the Development of Benevolence.  In spite of that name, it was anti-dynastic and revolutionary.  Its 16 members were all Chinese working for a British shipping company.  They were similar to Sun, usually educated in non-Chinese schools and with a connection the Chinese emigrant community, though in this case more connected to Australia and Malaysia.

There was an immediate issue of who would be President of the combined societies.  Both Sun Yat-sen and Yang Quyun, the leader of the Literary Society, both had strong egos and ambitions.  The issue of the presidency was deferred until October 10^th, almost 8 months.  Then Yang became President.

It was later stated that in addition to the official charter, there was also a secret oath to overthrow the Manchu dynasty, restore China and establish a republic.  But there are no documents to support that.  It also not clear if all 153 members (including 112 in Hawaii) all believed in those extra objectives.

At least some of the funders in Hong Kong were high ranking.  For example, Huang Yongshang sold an apartment block and invested funds in the first uprising.  His father had served on Hong Kong’s colonial Legislative Council as one of the King’s Chinese.

Another high-ranking Chinese person in Hong Kong was not a member, but a key ally.  Ho Kai attended meetings and arranged for publication of a series of articles in the China Mail, edited by Ho Kai’s friend Thomas Reid.  Ho Kai proposed a constitution for China and seems to have been more of a constitutional monarchist.  He was helpful in promoting the society on behalf of Yang and Sun. 

The real goal seems to have been action in Guangzhou, to push out the existing officials and to bring change.  Individuals may have had different understandings of what would come after that.  Certainly, the British in Hong Kong would prefer a model which opened up trade further and had professional administration of a British kind. That seems to have been what Ho Kai was promoting in an English language newspaper in Hong Kong.

While the China Mail endorsed the group and argued that the British should not repeat the mistake they made by not supporting the Taiping, the Crown authorities did not agree.  They would not fund or arm an uprising in China.

The Society’s plan was to use money raised in Hong Kong to recruit 3000 mercenaries on the coast of Guangdong.  They would gather in Hong Kong and travel with weapons and munitions by boat to Guangzhou.  They would then divide into four columns to take over various civil and military offices.  They would be joined by forces led by a bandit chieftain.  Bombs would also be set off in the city to add to the chaos.

Sun Yat-sen had set up a cover organization in Guangzhou called the Agricultural Study Association.  Its official goals were to promote education and agricultural progress.  It was supported by some local officials, including at least one who knew of the real intentions.  Liu Xuexun was a holder of the highest degree in the examination system and an organizer of a betting rink that took wagers on the results of official examinations.  He was very affluent and had ambitions to found his own imperial dynasty. 

Sun also had supporters among Chinese Christians.  The Agricultural Study Association was housed in a Christian bookstore with a Presbyterian chapel in the back.  The owner of the shop and the pastor of the chapel were both members of the Revive China Society and the location was used as a place to hide weapons.

The Revive China Society was not the only group partaking in uprisings in Guangdong province in 1895.  Two to three thousand people rebelled in eastern Guangdong that summer.  They seem to have mostly been secret society members or brigands.

But not all was well with the preparations.

On October 26^th, 1895, Sun’s men were on the wharf in Guangzhou waiting for the ship from Hong Kong.  But then Sun received a telegraph from Yang Guyun, the President, saying the “cargo” was delayed by twenty-four hours. 

Sun Yat-sen then decided to call things off and telegrammed Yang back.  But that message arrived too late and 400 men and weapons had already embarked in Hong Kong.  The authorities there found out and were too late to stop the departure, but prompt enough to alert the Guangzhou authorities who were waiting for the ship.  The magistrate met the ship with garrison troops. 

Most of the mercenaries were sent back to their villages and not punished.  But Sun’s childhood friend Lu Haodong, who had vandalized a temple with Sun in his home village and been one of the four bandits at college, was captured and tortured.  He refused to give up any of his accomplices and was killed while still proclaiming “If the Manchu are not destroyed, the Chinese cannot be revived...and even if I, one isolated individual, am killed, it will not be possible to kill all those who will rise up and follow me.”

Sun fled to Macao and then to Hong Kong.  But he was now a wanted man in Hong Kong.  The Revive China Society was out of funds, without weapons and undermined by the failure, and divided internally.  Sun blamed Yang for the failure.  Sun and others left Hong Kong to avoid extradition to Guangzhou, which the Chinese had requested.  The Society disbanded.

On October 30, 1895, Sun left Hong Kong for Japan.  He was banished from Hong Kong and unable to return to China during the Qing Empire.  Other then when he did return for another insurrection, he would be away from China for 16 years.

When he landed in Kobe, the press there described the unsuccessful insurrection as a revolution.  This was a change in use from the traditional Chinese meaning of the word, which suggested a change in imperial dynasty.  Here, the western sense of the word was used to mean a violent action leading to political or social upheaval.  Now for the first time, Sun embraced the word and from now on, his party would be the revolutionary party: gemingdang.

He also changed his look.  He cut off his queue in Japan.  The Manchu dynasty imposed the queue on Han Chinese as a symbol of their submission.  He also changed his hairstyle. He stopped shaving his forehead and allowed his moustache to grow.  He changed clothes too, from a Chinese robe to a European suit.  He was dressing and looking like a modern gentleman.

Sun did not stay long in Japan and continued on to Hawaii.  He was joined at his brother’s by his mother and his children.  They had been forced to leave their village to avoid collective punishment for Sun Yat-sen’s insurrection. The remaining Sun family was now all together in Honolulu.  Sun Mei was providing for them all financially.  The older brother’s Confucian sense of family duty was assistance to Yat-sen more than once.

Sun Yat-sen tried to gain supporters now in the US.  He travelled around the mainland US for 3 months trying to gain followers.  But he was being watched by Qing agents and did not achieve much.

He then accepted an invitation from his former professor Dr. Cantlie and arrived in London at the end of September 1896.

Private detectives hired by the Chinese legation kept detailed notes on his activities.  On October 11^th, they seized him and held him in the Chinese legation in London.

He feared being poisoned and refused the dishes prepared by the legation’s cook.  He tried to message Dr. Cantlie, but could not get anything out.  George Cole, the steward, passed all messages along to his superior.  Sun kept trying and after a week, he managed to gain Cole’s sympathy.  It was either Sun’s mention of socialism or of the persecution of Chinese Christians that gained Cole’s support.  Or maybe it was the 20 pounds Sun gave him with the promise of more to follow.  Cole personally brought a handwritten note from Sun to Dr. Cantlie alerting him to the kidnapping and plans for him to be smuggled by the legation back to China.  He asked for rescue...quick.

Dr. Cantlie tried to engage the British diplomatic apparatus, but it was a Sunday and not much could be achieved that way.  He then turned to the Times who wrote an article, but waited for official comment on Monday before publishing. 

The government response came and the Legation was put under surveillance and ships leaving for China were searched.  The Foreign Office contacted the senior British staff inside the Legation urging that the prisoner be released.  They threated to revoke the legate’s diplomatic privileges otherwise.

The Globe now pre-empted the Times and published a special edition featuring a long interview with Dr. Cantlie.  The next morning, all the newspapers were publishing Sun’s kidnapping.  The Legation was now surrounded not only by police, but by journalists, photographers and the public.  Representatives of Scotland Yard, the Foreign Office and Dr. Cantlie were able to arrange his release.  He went to a friend of the Cantlies to recover.

Then Sun jumped on the publicity offensive.  He wrote to the newspapers, gave press conferences and sat for numerous interviews.  He won universal support among the British.  He was seen as a respectable patriot who spoke very good English.  The China Mail in Hong Kong picked up on it too and provided even more compliments about Sun.

At the request of a Cambridge professor, Sun wrote a short autobiographical work called Kidnapped in London.  It was published in London and Shanghai and helped create a heroic image of Sun.

Sun stayed on in London for 8 months, further building contacts.  One was an Irish nationalist who became his bodyguard and they discussed Ireland and he joined Sun in his next insurrection in China in 1900.  Sun also learned about British South Africa and the colonial activities there.

Sun spent a lot of time reading, both in Dr. Cantlie’s library and at the British Museum.  While he was not the intellectual that Karl Marx was, both spent considerable time reading in the British Museum after their first revolutionary attempts.  Karl after 1848 and Sun after 1895.

He met some Russian political exiles there and struck up friendships.  One translated Kidnapped in London into Russian.  They asked each other how long revolution would take in each country.  Sun guessed 30 years.  The Russians guessed 100 years for their country.  Both overestimated how long change would take.  China’s first revolution was only about 14 years away and Russia would have two within 20 years, an unsuccessful revolution in 1905 and a successful one in 1917.

Sun published another work in London in 1897.  It was called Judicial Reform in China and described cruel tortures and corruption in the Chinese legal system.  It was meant to make the Manchu government look barbaric to a British audience and hopefully have Britain withdraw its support for the Chinese government.  But Sun didn’t get that far.  While he was protected in England, he remained banished in Hong Kong.  But his time in England had bolstered his revolutionary credentials and his public image.  This peasant’s son was becoming a revolutionary legend.