Dr. Sun Yat Sen
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Dr. Sun Yat Sen
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[edit] The Old Villa
Have you ever seen a beautiful old villa at No.12 Tai Gin Road a small road off Ah Hood Road then off the Main Road known as Baliester Road ?
It was a good looking villa and part of the efforts of many older people who had made it possible to keep some of the old memories of the old Chinese culture among the Chinese migrant population of Singapore alive. The villa was gazetted a national monument in 1994. This is the place where Dr. Sun Yat Sen had his headquarters in Singapore. Who was exactly Dr. Sun Yat Sen ?
In the heyday of the many old timers of Singapore, Dr. Sun a.k.a. affectionary known as Soon Boon 孙 文. Soon Boon was a big political figure from China. He was the founder of the revolutiuonary Party with intentions to overthrow the Great Qing dynasty. It succeeded in 1911 and I believe not without the large amount of hard earned savings and sweat money donated from the hundreds of thousand of people in the Nanyang region, including the poor migrant workers and famous rich towkays in Singapore.
Dr Sun Yat Sen chose Singapore as the nerve centre of his revolutionary movement (Tong Meng Hui 同盟會 ) in Southeast Asia, due to its excellent geographical location as a port of call and its considerable Chinese immigrant population. All in total, he must have visited Singapore eight times during his life. All the old timers had great recalling their heydays in association with Soon Boon .
Here is an old picture of his party members
Chinese Revolutionary Alliance Singapore Chapter, est. April 1906. Front row from left: Liu Gan Ting, Teo Eng Hock, Tan Chor Nam, Dr Sun Yat Sen, Wang Lie, Lau Kam Seng, Lim Nee Soon; back row from left: Goh Ngo Sow, Teo Bah Tan, Zhang Ji, Chan Lui Ho, Deng Ziyu, Wong Yew Ting, Teo Peng Kay
[edit] An Internet resource
- had this to say about Dr Sun Yat Sen:
Dr. Sun was born as Sun Wen (Soon Boon) in 1866 in the coastal village Tsuihsiang of Hsianshan County, Kwangtung Province, and later changed his name, first to Sun Yat-sen and, later, during his revolutionary days in Japan, to Sun Chung-shan. Raised in a poor farming family, Dr. Sun learned the hardships of working life at an early age and always sympathized with the people's hardships.
To carry out democratic revolution in China, Sun founded the Society for Regenerating China and the Revolutionary Alliance and extensively studied the political systems of European countries and America in formulating the Three Principles of the People: Nationalism, Democracy, and Social Well-being. After failing on several attempts to unite the people to revolt, Sun finally succeeded with the Wuch'ang Uprising on October 10, 1911, leading to the successful overthrow of the Ch'ing government and the establishment of the Republic of China.
Dr. Sun devoted his life to realizing this dream, leaving behind, with his death in 1925, a lasting contribution to his nation and an invaluable legacy for scholars and thinkers. This legacy includes Sun's outline and strategy for nation-founding and the Three Principles of the People. [[2]]
[edit] Story of Dr. Sun Yat Sen
***On November 12, 1866, Sun Yat-sen was born to a Hakka peasant family in the village of Cuiheng (翠亨村), now located inside the territory of the town of Nanlang (南郎镇), depending from the prefecture-level city of Siangshan (now renamed Zhongshan (中山市) after Sun), formerly Chungshan city, in Guangdong province, southern China. Sun Yat-sen's father, Sun Dacheng (孫達成), was a farmer by day and a midnight watchman by night. His mother was Madam Yang. Sun was the fifth of six children. His eldest brother, Sun Dezhang (孫德彰), was born in 1854. He was older than Sun by 12 years. Sun Dezhang followed his maternal uncle to Hawaii in 1871. He struck it rich years later. Sun also had elder sister Jinxing (金星) who died at 4, brother Deyou (德祐) who died at 6, sister Miaoxi (妙茜) and younger sister Qiuqi (秋綺).
[edit] Early Years
After receiving a few years of local schooling, at age 13, Sun went to live with Sun Mei, who had immigrated to Honolulu, Hawaii, as a laborer and had become a prosperous merchant. Sun studied at the Iolani School where he learnt English, Mathematics and Science. From absolutely no knowledge of English, Sun Yat-sen picked up the language so quickly that he was awarded a prize for outstanding achievement in English by King David Kalakaua. Sun then enrolled in Oahu College for further studies but he was soon sent home to China as his brother, Sun Mei, was afraid that Sun Yat-sen would embrace Christianity. When he returned home in 1883, he was greatly troubled by what he saw as a backward China that demanded exorbitant taxes and levies from its people. The people were conservative, and the schools maintained their ancient methods leaving no opportunity for expression of thoughts or opinions. One day, he passed by Beijidian, a temple in Cuiheng Village, where he saw many villagers worshipping the Beiji (North Pole) Emperor-God in the temple. Sun was extremely against acts of superstition, so he broke off the hand of the statue. For this act he incurred the wrath of fellow villagers. In November 1883, the 17-year-old Sun Yat-sen left Cuiheng village for Hong Kong. There, he studied English at the Anglican Diocesan Home and Orphanage (later renamed Diocesan Boys' School in 1913). In April 1884, Sun, 17, was transferred to the Central School of Hong Kong. True to his brother's earlier concern, Sun was later baptised in Hong Kong by Hickley, an American missionary of the Congressional Church of the United States. Sun believed that the salvation mission of the Christian church was similar to that of a revolution. His conversion to Christianity was related to his revolutionary ideals and push for advancement. His baptismal name, Rixin, means getting rid of the old to welcome the new, and accepting new thoughts and ideas. Ultimately, he earned a license of participate as a medical doctor from the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese (the forerunner of The University of Hong Kong) (1892), of which he was one of the first two graduates. He subsequently practiced medicine in that city briefly in 1893. He had an arranged marriage with fellow villager Lu Muzhen (盧慕貞) at age 20 and she bore him a son Sun Ke (孫科), who would grow up to become a high ranking official in the government, and two daughters, Sun Yan and Sun Wan. [edit] Influenced by Western Ideology He attached particular importance to the ideas of Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln. Sun often said that the formulation from Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, "government of the people, by the people, for the people," had been the inspiration for the "Three Principles of the People." He incorporated these ideas, later in life, in two highly influential books. One, The Vital Problem of China (1917), analyzed some of the problems of colonialism: Sun warned that "…the British treat nations as the silk-worm farmer treats his worms; as long as they produce silk, he cares for them well; when they stop, he feeds them to the fish." The second book, International Development of China (1921), presented detailed proposals for the development of infrastructure in China, and attacked the ideology of laissez-faire, as well as that of Marxism. Sun's admiration for these ideas filled him with dissatisfaction with the Qing government of China, and he began his political career by attempting to organize reform groups of Chinese exiles in Hong Kong. In October 1894 he founded the Xing Zhong Society (興中會, literally Revive China Society) to unveil the goal of prospering China and as the platform for future revolutionary activities. [edit] Exile to Uprising In 1895 a coup he plotted failed, and for the next 16 years Sun was an exile in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan, raising money for his revolutionary party and bankrolling uprisings in China. In Japan, where he was known as Nakayama Shō (Japanese: 中山樵, meaning The Woodcutter of Middle Mountain), he joined dissident Chinese groups (later became the Tongmenghui) and soon became their leader. He was expelled from Japan to the United States. On October 10, 1911, a military uprising at Wuchang in which Sun had no direct involvement, began a process that ended over two thousand years of imperial rule in China. When he learned of the successful rebellion against the Qing emperor from press reports, Sun immediately returned to China from the United States. On December 29 at Nanjing, a meeting of representatives from provinces elected Sun as the provisional President of the Republic of China and set the January 1 of 1912 as the first day of the First Year of the Republic. The official history of the Kuomintang (and for this matter, the Communist Party of China) emphasizes Sun's role as the first provisional President, but many historians now question the importance of Sun's role in the 1911 revolution and point out that he had no direct role in the Wuchang uprising and was in fact out of the country at the time. In this interpretation, his naming as the first provisional President was precisely because he was a respected but rather unimportant figure and therefore served as an ideal compromise candidate between the revolutionaries and the conservative gentry. Sun is highly regarded as the National Father of modern China. His Political philosophy, known as the Three Principles of the People was proclaimed in August 1905 and was based strongly on the American System. In his Methods and Strategies of Establishing the Country completed in 1919, he suggested using his Three People's Principles to establish ultimate peace, freedom and equality in the country. From Wikipedia resources at [[3]]
[edit] Do you know that
- Among Dr. Sun Yat Sen had many friends and mentors, one of them was a Buddhist Monk who was a gifted individual and writer but a seducer (libertine) of many women? His name was Su Manshu or 蘇曼殊 goto [[4]] He is a great influence on Chinese literature and his works had inspired romantic poetry such with eulogy to goddess of love and wine, and such literature on subjects along the same lines.[[5]]
- Dr. Sun Yat Sen could have become a Christian but was dissuaded and prevented by someone close? I read he was later baptised but he become a rebel or a revolutionary against the old Qing dynasty or ruling regime!
- Dr. Sun was married and then divorced his first wife to marry another with the name of Soong?
- That Soong family has the first old patriarch who was a Bible seller? and his family become the richest household in China?
- link to Story of my Grandfather [[6]]
