1. Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese physician, revolutionary, statesman, and political philosopher who founded the Republic of China and its first political party, the Kuomintang.
103 Facts About Sun Yat-sen
1. 2.
Sun Yat-sen led underground anti-Qing revolutionaries in South China, the United Kingdom, and Japan as one of the Four Bandits and rose to prominence as the founder of multiple resistance movements, including the Revive China Society and the Tongmenghui.
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Sun Yat-sen is considered one of the most important figures of modern China, and his political life campaigning against Manchu rule in favor of a Chinese republic featured constant struggles and frequent periods of exile.
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Sun Yat-sen later returned to launch a revolutionary government in southern China to challenge the warlords who controlled much of the country following Yuan's death in 1916.
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In 1923, Sun Yat-sen invited representatives of the Communist International to Guangzhou to reorganize the KMT and formed the First United Front with the Chinese Communist Party.
6.
Sun Yat-sen did not live to see his party unify the country under his successor, Chiang Kai-shek, in the Northern Expedition.
7.
Uniquely among 20th-century Chinese leaders, Sun Yat-sen is revered in both Taiwan and in the People's Republic of China for his instrumental role in ending Qing rule and overseeing the conclusion of the Chinese dynastic system.
8.
Sun Yat-sen Deming was born on 12 November 1866 to Sun Yat-sen Dacheng and Madame Yang.
9.
Sun Yat-sen's birthplace was the village of Cuiheng, Xiangshan County, Canton Province.
10.
Sun Yat-sen's father owned very little land and worked as a tailor in Macau and as a journeyman and a porter.
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Sun Yat-sen was initially unable to speak English, but quickly acquired it, received a prize for academic achievement from King Kalakaua, and graduated in 1882.
12.
Sun Yat-sen then attended Oahu College for one semester.
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In November 1883, Sun Yat-sen began attending the Diocesan Home and Orphanage on Eastern Street, and from 15 April 1884 he attended The Government Central School on Gough Street, until graduating in 1886.
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In 1886, Sun Yat-sen studied medicine at the Guangzhou Boji Hospital under the Christian missionary John Glasgow Kerr.
15.
Sun Yat-sen immediately sought to attend, and went on to obtain a license to practice medicine from the institution in 1892; out of a class of twelve students, Sun was one of two who graduated.
16.
At the school, the young Sun Yat-sen first came in contact with Christianity.
17.
Sun Yat-sen was later baptized in Hong Kong on 4 May 1884 by Rev Charles Robert Hager, an American missionary of the Congregational Church of the United States, to his brother's disdain.
18.
Sun Yat-sen attended To Tsai Church, founded by the London Missionary Society in 1888, while he studied medicine in Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese.
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Sun Yat-sen pictured a revolution as similar to the salvation mission of the Christian church.
20.
In 1891, Sun Yat-sen met revolutionary friends in Hong Kong including Yeung Ku-wan who was the leader and founder of the Furen Literary Society.
21.
In 1894, Sun Yat-sen wrote an 8,000-character petition to Qing Viceroy Li Hongzhang presenting his ideas for modernizing China.
22.
Sun Yat-sen traveled to Tianjin to personally present the petition to Li but was not granted an audience.
23.
Sun Yat-sen left China for Hawaii and founded the Revive China Society, which was committed to revolutionizing China's prosperity.
24.
Thereafter, Sun Yat-sen became the secretary of the newly merged Revive China Society, which Yeung Ku-wan headed as president.
25.
Sun Yat-sen mainly used the group to leverage his overseas travels to gain further financial and resource support for his revolution.
26.
Sun Yat-sen received financial support mostly from his brother, who sold most of his 12,000 acres of ranch and cattle in Hawaii.
27.
Additionally, members of his family and relatives of Sun Yat-sen would take refuge at the home of his brother Sun Yat-sen Mei at Kamaole in Kula, Maui.
28.
Sun Yat-sen was released after 12 days by the efforts of James Cantlie, The Globe, The Times, and the Foreign Office, which left Sun a hero in the United Kingdom.
29.
Sun Yat-sen traveled by way of Canada to Japan to begin his exile there.
30.
Sun Yat-sen arrived in Yokohama on 16 August 1897 and met with the Japanese politician Toten Miyazaki.
31.
In Japan, Sun Yat-sen met Mariano Ponce, a diplomat of the First Philippine Republic.
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Therefore, Sun Yat-sen did not have the opportunity to ally with the Philippines in his revolution in China.
33.
In 1897, through an introduction by Miyazaki Toten, Sun Yat-sen met Toyama Mitsuru of the political organization Genyosha.
34.
On 22 October 1900, Sun Yat-sen ordered the launch of the Huizhou Uprising to attack Huizhou and provincial authorities in Guangdong.
35.
Miyazaki, who participated in the revolt with Sun Yat-sen, wrote an account of the revolutionary effort under the title "33-Year Dream" in 1902.
36.
In 1903, Sun Yat-sen made a secret trip to Bangkok in which he sought funds for his cause in Southeast Asia.
37.
In Bangkok, Sun Yat-sen visited Yaowarat Road, in the city's Chinatown.
38.
On 6 April 1904, on his first attempt to enter the United States, Sun Yat-sen landed in San Francisco.
39.
In 1900, Sun Yat-sen temporarily exiled himself to Japan again.
40.
Around this time, Sun Yat-sen married Soong Ching-ling, the second daughter of Soong Jiashu, who was a Hakka like him.
41.
In 1904, Sun Yat-sen came about with the goal "to expel the Tatar barbarians, to revive Zhonghua, to establish a Republic, and to distribute land equally among the people".
42.
On 20 August 1905, Sun Yat-sen joined forces with revolutionary Chinese students studying in Tokyo to form the unified group Tongmenghui, which sponsored uprisings in China.
43.
On 1 December 1907, Sun Yat-sen led the Zhennanguan Uprising against the Qing at Friendship Pass, which is the border between Guangxi and Vietnam.
44.
Sun Yat-sen publicly fought off comments about how he had something to gain financially from the revolution.
45.
The high-powered preparatory meeting of Sun Yat-sen's supporters was held in Ipoh, Singapore, at the villa of Teh Lay Seng, the chairman of the Tungmenghui, to raise funds for the Huanghuagang Uprising, known as the Yellow Flower Mound Uprising.
46.
Sun Yat-sen had no direct involvement in it, as he was in Denver, Colorado, and had spent much of the year in the United States in search of support from Chinese Americans.
47.
Sun Yat-sen is credited for funding the revolutions and for keeping revolutionary spirit alive, even after a series of false starts.
48.
Sun Yat-sen stepped down as president, and Yuan became the new provisional president in Beijing on 10 March 1912.
49.
Sun Yat-sen sent telegrams to the leaders of all provinces to request them to elect and to establish the National Assembly of the Republic of China in 1912.
50.
Sun Yat-sen mobilized the old Tongmenghui at the core with the mergers of a number of new small parties to form a new political party, the Kuomintang on 25 August 1912 at Huguang Guild Hall, Beijing.
51.
Sun Yat-sen took part in the National Protection War of the Constitutional Protection Movement and supported bandit leaders like Bai Lang during the Bai Lang Rebellion, which marked the beginning of the Warlord Era.
52.
In 1915, Sun Yat-sen wrote to the Second International, a socialist-based organization in Paris, and asked it to send a team of specialists to help China set up the world's first socialist republic.
53.
Sun Yat-sen saw the danger and returned to China in 1916 to advocate Chinese reunification.
54.
Sun Yat-sen was now convinced that the only hope for a unified China lay in a military conquest from his base in the south, followed by a period of political tutelage, which would culminate in the transition to democracy.
55.
Sun Yat-sen received help from the Comintern for his acceptance of communist members into his KMT.
56.
Sun Yat-sen received assistance from Soviet advisor Mikhail Borodin, whom Sun Yat-sen described as his "Lafayette".
57.
Sun Yat-sen returned the praise by calling Lenin a "great man" and indicated that he wished to follow the same path as Lenin.
58.
In 1923, after having been in contact with Lenin and other Moscow communists, Sun Yat-sen sent representatives to study the Red Army, and in turn, the Soviets sent representatives to help reorganize the KMT at Sun Yat-sen's request.
59.
Sun Yat-sen established the Whampoa Military Academy near Guangzhou with Chiang Kai-shek as the commandant of the National Revolutionary Army.
60.
However, Sun Yat-sen met opposition by the Canton Merchant Volunteers Corps Uprising against him.
61.
In February 1923, Sun Yat-sen made a presentation to the Students' Union in Hong Kong University and declared that the corruption of China and the peace, order, and good government of Hong Kong had turned him into a revolutionary.
62.
On 10 November 1924, Sun Yat-sen traveled north to Tianjin and delivered a speech to suggest a gathering for a "national conference" for the Chinese people.
63.
Sun Yat-sen called for the end of warlord rules and the abolition of all unequal treaties with the Western powers.
64.
On 28 November 1924 Sun Yat-sen traveled to Japan and gave a speech on Pan-Asianism at Kobe, Japan.
65.
For many years, it was popularly believed that Sun Yat-sen died of liver cancer.
66.
On 26 January 1925, Sun Yat-sen underwent an exploratory laparotomy at Peking Union Medical College Hospital to investigate a long-term illness.
67.
Sun Yat-sen was hospitalized, and his condition was treated with radium.
68.
Sun Yat-sen left a short political will, penned by Wang Jingwei, which had a widespread influence in the subsequent development of the Republic of China and Taiwan.
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Sun Yat-sen served from 1949 to 1981 as vice-president of the People's Republic of China and as honorary president shortly before her death in 1981.
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For example, a KMT committee member Hsieh Kun-hong controversially referred to Sun Yat-sen as having "become immortal" after death under the posthumous name of "Great Merciful True Monarch" in 2021.
71.
Sun Yat-sen is already worshipped in the syncretic Vietnamese religion of Caodaism.
72.
Sun Yat-sen remains unique among 20th-century Chinese leaders for having a high reputation in both Mainland China and Taiwan.
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In Mainland China, Sun Yat-sen is seen as a Chinese nationalist, a proto-socialist, and the first president of a Republican China and is highly regarded as the Forerunner of the Revolution.
74.
Sun Yat-sen is even mentioned by name in the preamble to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China.
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Sun Yat-sen's tomb was one of the first stops made by the leaders of both the Kuomintang and the People First Party on their pan-blue visit to mainland China in 2005.
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Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People has been reinterpreted by the Chinese Communist Party to argue that communism is a necessary conclusion of them and thus provide legitimacy for the government.
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Sun Yat-sen again voiced her displeasure in 2002 in a private letter to Jiang about the distortion of history.
78.
Sun Yat-sen visited Taiwan briefly on only three occasions or four by counting 1924, when his boat had stopped in Keelung Harbor, but he did not disembark.
79.
In November 2004, the Taiwanese Ministry of Education proposed that Sun Yat-sen was not the father of Taiwan.
80.
Sun Yat-sen went on foreign trips to gather support and resources of Western and Christian nations.
81.
Sun Yat-sen was highly critical of anything from ancient Chinese which did not confirm to Western standards and idols.
82.
Sun Yat-sen spent years in Hawaii as a student in the late 1870s and early 1880s and was highly impressed with the economic development that he saw there.
83.
Sun Yat-sen used the Kingdom of Hawaii as a model to develop his vision of a technologically modern, politically independent, actively anti-imperialist China.
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Sun Yat-sen focused on China, with its vast potential and weak base of mostly local entrepreneurs.
85.
Sun Yat-sen promoted the ideas of the economist Henry George and was influenced by Georgist ideas on land ownership and a land value tax.
86.
Sun Yat-sen favored premarital health examinations, sterilization of those perceived as unfit, and other programs for socially engineering China's population.
87.
Sun Yat-sen became friends with Minakata Kumagusu, and their friendship deepened after they met while Sun was in exile in London.
88.
Sun Yat-sen was born to Sun Dacheng and his wife, Lady Yang on 12 November 1866.
89.
Sun Yat-sen had an older brother, Sun Dezhang, and an older sister, Sun Jinxing, who died at the early age of 4.
90.
Sun Yat-sen had an older sister, Sun Miaoqian, and a younger sister, Sun Qiuqi.
91.
At age 20, Sun Yat-sen had an arranged marriage with the fellow villager Lu Muzhen.
92.
Sun Yat-sen bore a son, Sun Fo, and two daughters, Sun Jinyuan and Sun Jinwan.
93.
Sun Yat-sen Fo was the grandfather of Leland Sun Yat-sen, who spent 37 years working in Hollywood as an actor and stuntman.
94.
Sun Yat-sen was the godfather of Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger, an American author and poet who wrote under the name Cordwainer Smith.
95.
Sun Yat-sen's first concubine, the Hong Kong-born Chen Cuifen, lived in Taiping, Perak for 17 years.
96.
On 25 October 1915 in Japan, Sun Yat-sen married Soong Ching-ling, one of the Soong sisters.
97.
Xiangshan, Sun Yat-sen's hometown in Guangdong, was renamed Zhongshan in his honor, and there is a hall dedicated to his memory at the Temple of Azure Clouds in Beijing.
98.
In George Town, Penang, Malaysia, the Penang Philomatic Union had its premises at 120 Armenian Street in 1910, while Sun Yat-sen spent more than four months in Penang and convened the historic "Penang Conference" to launch the fundraising campaign for the Huanghuagang Uprising and founded the Kwong Wah Yit Poh.
99.
The house, which has been preserved as the Sun Yat-sen Museum, was visited by President-designate Hu Jintao in 2002.
100.
Sun Yat-sen's Hawaiian birth certificate, which claimed that he was not born in China but in the United States, was on public display at the American Institute in Taiwan on US Independence Day on 4 July 2011.
101.
Dr Sun Yat-sen is a 2011 Chinese-language western-style opera in three acts by the New York-based American composer Huang Ruo, who was born in China and is a graduate of Oberlin College's Conservatory as well as the Juilliard School.
102.
Sun Yat-sen's life is portrayed in various films, mainly The Soong Sisters and Road to Dawn.
103.
Sun Yat-sen is portrayed during his struggle to overthrow the Qing dynasty in Once Upon a Time in China II.