introduction
Sun Ke is undoubtedly a special figure in the history of the Republic of China, and the reasons for this are obvious: First, he is the only son of Sun Yat-sen, the founder of the Republic of China, and it can be said that he is a very prominent figure in politics; second, he holds important posts in the National Government and successively serves as president of the Legislative Yuan of the Executive Yuan, and has served as vice chairman of the National Government for more than 40 years, which is itself a microcosm of the history of the Republic of China.
Figure | Sun Ke
01 After the Liberation War, what was sun ke's whereabouts?
On December 10, 1949, Chiang Kai-shek left Chengdu and flew to Taiwan. But when he was leaving, he did not inform Sun Ke, so he had to change his route to Hong Kong and live at 71 Repulse Bay Road.
While stranded in Hong Kong, the CCP had contacted him. Hopefully he can stay and not go to Taiwan. For various reasons, Sun Ke did not go to Taiwan in the end. Although the leader of our Party has some understanding of this, after all, he has served the Kuomintang for many years and has not been mentally prepared for a while. Although Sun Ke did not return to China, he did not return to Taiwan, and it is already very good to be able to do this.
For nearly a year or so, the Taiwan authorities have been doing their best to prevent Sun Ke from going to Taiwan. Compared with the fierce internal struggles within the Kuomintang government that had just arrived in Taiwan, it was far from the political center. And his will gradually weakened, losing his desire for power.
Since then, the struggle between Chiang Kai-shek and Sun Ke has officially come to an end. 1950 was probably the most difficult year of Sun Ke's life. In addition to the disappearance of the aura of politics and power, his family also has a crisis.
After leaving Hong Kong, Sun Ke briefly came to France and Greece, and finally settled in the United States in 1952, and his life in the United States was probably the most embarrassing and leisurely moment of his life.
According to scholars, sun ke and his wife's travel expenses abroad are actually the cost of selling their real estate. During this time in the United States, I can only live by the help of my children.
During the time he lived with his son, Sun Ke was responsible for cleaning various cleaning tasks, including the bathroom. Sun Ke, who had unlimited scenery at that time, now has to work with a vacuum cleaner every day; Mrs. Chen Shuying has changed from a typical young grandmother to a housewife responsible for cleaning the kitchen every day; and her son Sun Zhiqiang is responsible for outdoor cleaning work and carrying valuables.
Regarding his life in the United States, Sun Ke once recalled:
During the long years of settling in the United States, friends and friends paid very little, only friends who went to China did not hesitate to visit from afar; those who could not come, also took a telegram or a phone call, Mr. Zhang Junjie also overstepped the times, so except for the occasional small travel, most of the time was spent on reading. ”
Sun Ke has always loved to read, and once hung a proud painting of his own in his home in Nanjing, which reads "Cultivate Haoran Qi, reading is useful."
Pictured| Sun Ke and the children
After moving away from political struggles, Sun Ke seems to have really been rested. He had to go to the library every day, and it wasn't until the administrator urged him to come home reluctantly. In addition to reading in the library, Sun Ke was so difficult that he had no money to buy books, and could only buy periodicals and newspapers occasionally. Compared with the past life, today's life is really a bit bleak.
For a full 16 years, from 1949 to the end of 1965, Sun Ke seemed to be an outsider, keeping some distance from the Nationalist government led by Chiang Kai-shek. But gradually, with the shortage of life, everything had to be done by themselves. For Sun Ke, who is already 75 years old, there are really some difficulties.
So he had the idea of returning to Taiwan to settle down. In September 1962, Sun Ke came to Washington from the west coast of the United States to participate in the 32nd "Sino-US Cultural Foundation Committee" and was interviewed by a reporter in the United States in Taipei. During the interview, he conveyed to Chiang Kai-shek through the media his desire to return to Taiwan to see.
In April 1962, Sun Ke's physical examination found that he had mild hypertension. In addition, there were blood cells in the urine, and he underwent an operation because he was worried about bladder cancer. After a few months of rest, he finally recovered.
Pictured| Sun Ke and his wife
02 Sun Ke followed in the footsteps of his father Sun Yat-sen
Sun Ke was born on December 20, 1891 in Cuiheng Village, Xiangshan County (present-day Zhongshan City), Guangdong Province, to Lu Muzhen, Sun Yat-sen's original wife. At the time of his birth, Sun Yat-sen was still studying at the Hong Kong College of Western Medicine.
Regarding childhood, Sun Ke once recalled:
"In the second year of my life, my father opened a Chinese medicine bureau in Macau to practice medicine, so I moved to Macau with my mother to live with my father, and soon after moved to Hong Kong."
On October 26, 1895, the revolutionary party led by Sun Yat-sen was scheduled to hold an uprising in Guangzhou on this day, but unexpectedly the leak of the incident was finally failed because the Hong Kong aid was not reached and the traitors reported to the Qing officials. After the incident, the Qing officials rode out four times and offered a reward of 1,000 yuan in red silver to arrest Sun Yat-sen.
In order to ensure the safety of their families from being affected, they entrusted their dependents to transfer them. In the autumn of that year, Sun Ke, along with his grandmother Mrs. Yang, his mother, Mrs. Lu, and his eldest sister Jin Yan, were escorted from Hong Kong via Japan to Honolulu Maui Island by his uncle Mr. Dezhang, an uncle of the Gu Thorn Mountain Ranch. This winter, Sun Yat-sen also escaped to Honolulu to reunite with his family.
Pictured | Sun Yat-sen's family portrait
Sun Ke was 6 years old when he first arrived in Honolulu. It is said that many of the cattle and horses in the ranch sun ke learned to ride horses when they were six or seven years old. At that time, there was no saddle, so he tied the horse's nose with a rope, and occasionally accidentally fell off the horse, but he was more interested. In less than a year, he was able to ride freely.
Since Sun Yat-sen was busy with the revolutionary cause for many years, most of Sun Ke's childhood and adolescence were taken care of by Lu Muzhen. Therefore, his relationship with his mother is very deep. Even when he grew up and started a family, he was still very filial to his mother.
When Sun Ke reached school age, because there was no local school, his mother, Lady Lu, taught him with books such as the Three Character Classic, the Thousand Character Text, and the Poetry of Kindergarten Studies, and asked him to copy the characters.
At the age of 8, Sun Ke was invited by his uncle Huang Duanshi to start reading, and he and more than a dozen overseas Chinese children in the vicinity simultaneously taught and studied the Four Books and Five Classics, the Tang poems of the "Records of History" and the "Selected Writings of Zhaoming", etc., which laid the foundation for Sun Ke's Chinese language step by step.
Pictured| Sun ke was young in the United States
In 1901, Sun Ke came to St. Anthony's American Primary School founded by The Church of Heavenly Lakes to study, and because of his excellent grades, he completed the course for 8 years in only 4 years, and later went to St. Louis College in Honolulu to study.
It is said that when he was 12 years old, he began to read and work at the same time, and also published and translated English telegrams in the honolulu Freedom New Newspaper, the earliest revolutionary party newspaper. Just after turning 19 years old, he decided to join the league formed by his father. Although Sun Yat-sen never asked his son to inherit his mantle, he later participated in all the reforms of the League.
In 1911, Sun Ke officially graduated from the St. Louis College. After the founding of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen took office as interim president, and Sun Ke accompanied his mother and two sisters, and then came to the University of California. Also in this year, Sun Ke married Chen Shuying, a local overseas Chinese, in Honolulu.
Two years later, Sun Ke, who was studying in California, heard about his father's sensational marriage and married Song Qingling, who was only 23 years old and younger than himself. Although there is no information on his views on his father's marriage. But the only thing that is certain is that Sun Ke did not attend his father's wedding.
Pictured| Soong Ching Ling and Sun Yat-sen
As for the feelings between his father and Song Qingling, as well as his father's hurt to his mother Lu Muzhen, Sun Ke hardly left a single word. But from Sun Yat-sen's family letter to his son, it can also be seen that he wants to bring his son and Soong Qingling closer:
"After the Father has seen it, he has given it to Mrs. Sun to see, and after he has read it, he will pass it on to others." Recently, my father had to read a book called CellIntelligence the Cause Evolution, whose ideas were extremely new to the scholars of the near future, and when Mrs. Sun read me, I should send ru, ru can be translated, and can also open the eyes of Chinese scholars. ”
And the Lady Sun mentioned in Sun Yat-sen's letter is naturally Song Qingling.
Sun Ke's communication with his father on weekdays can only be through letters and sending books. Sun Ke, who studied in the United States, always received a bag of books from his father, from Chinese to English, from humanities to social sciences.
Under the influence of his father, Sun Ke loved to read all his life. My daughter remembered that since his old age, he would come to the study to read the newspaper and read after every afternoon walk.
03 After Sun Yat-sen's death, the contradiction between Sun Ke and Chiang Kai-shek became public
Sun Yat-sen died in Beijing in 1925, leaving only his wife, Soong Ching-ling, 33, and his 34-year-old son, Sun Ke. During Sun Yat-sen's lifetime, although it seemed that Sun Ke was not blessed or promoted, his influence was actually everywhere. For Sun Ke, Sun Yat-sen is not only his respected father, but also a mentor on the road of life.
In 1916, after successfully graduating from the University of California, Sun Ke went to the Columbus Graduate University Research Institute to study and received a master's degree. The following year, he and his friend Jiang Menglin returned to Guangzhou via Hong Kong and assumed the post of Marshal of the Navy and Army in the Military Government of the Republic of China.
Just when Sun Ke had just returned to China, Liao Zhongkai thought that he had studied municipal administration and wrote such a book as "Urban Planning Theory", so he proposed that he be the mayor of Guangzhou.
However, Sun Yat-sen, believing that Sun Ke lacked administrative experience, rejected the proposal, and finally nodded his head in agreement under the strong recommendation of Hu Hanmin.
In the face of various obstacles, Sun Ke built nearly 26 kilometers of modern roads in just over a year, widening the streets by 2.5 to 5 meters, and the new roads were paved with cement. In addition to demolishing walls and building roads, he also improved the appearance of the city government, promoted education, and strengthened social security in the Guangzhou Municipal Government, which had great results.
Pictured| Sun Ke and his wife
In 1924, Sun Ke resigned as mayor of Guangzhou and was ordered to come to Shenyang to contact Zhang Zuolin to jointly fight against the warlords Wu Peifu and Cao Kun, and to devote himself to the Northern Expedition. With the death of Sun Yat-sen, Sun Ke lost this big tree as a support, and life became more and more difficult.
In July 1925, the National Government was established in Guangzhou, and the Executive Committee of the Central Committee selected Wang Jingwei, Sun Ke, Zhang Renjie, Hu Hanmin, Tan Yanmin and 16 other members as members. In August, he became a member of the Military Commission of the National Government.
Since Sun Ke grew up in the United States, he was very eager and appreciative of the Anglo-American democratic system. Unlike his father, Sun Yat-sen, he initially did not support the policy of the United Russian Communist Party. When he was the mayor of Guangzhou, he formed a rightist clique centered on the Guangzhou Municipal Party Department that opposed the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communists.
At the first congress of the Kuomintang, he openly opposed kuomintang-communist cooperation, but was refuted by Mao Zedong and Qu Qiubai. But what is strange is that just one year after Sun Yat-sen's death, his political attitude underwent a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree change, and he became a supporter of the United Russian Communist Party and an important figure on the left wing of the Kuomintang.
Pictured| Sun Yat-sen and Sun Ke
The reason for this change came precisely from Sun Ke's dissatisfaction with Chiang Kai-shek's military dictatorship and his own desire for power. With the victory of the Northern Expedition, Chiang Kai-shek's personal power became increasingly powerful, seriously threatening Sun Ke's political position. At this time, Sun Ke could only compete with Chiang Kai-shek if he united with the Soviet Union and the Communist Party.
For this reason, Sun Ke also began to advocate the policy of the United Russia and the Communist Party. Out of the consideration of self-interest, Sun Ke proposed: Only by practicing democracy and improving party power will it become a "feudal party, a warlord party, and a party representing the class of oppressive forces." ”
Sun Ke's radical remarks won him the favor of the Kuomintang leftist leaders and Communists, and Chen Duxiu praised Sun Ke as a "real revolutionary leader."
However, in 1927, before and after Chiang Kai-shek launched the "April 12" counter-revolutionary coup, Sun Ke's attitude changed again and he raised the banner of anti-communism. He believed that communist activities had threatened Kuomintang rule, and scolded Borodin as "a communist conspirator in the Kuomintang."
Picture | Sun Ke speaking
With the victory of the Northern Expedition, China achieved formal unification. Sun Ke believed that this gave an opportunity to transform the country, so he proposed to promote the innovation of the Kuomintang in a gradual democratic way, which was obviously contrary to Chiang Kai-shek, who was increasingly strengthening his individual rights.
In 1932, Sun Ke put forward his own three "party rule" propositions: first, to advocate local autonomy; second, to replace centralization with decentralization; and third, to advocate the Kuomintang to improve relations with the people.
In 1932, Sun Ke took up the post of Legislative Yuan of the Republic of China and personally presided over the drafting of the Constitution, some of which were specifically aimed at Chiang Kai-shek. However, under the strong pressure of Chiang Kai-shek, some provisions were forced to be revised.
In the later period of the Anti-Japanese War Zone, Sun Ke once again attacked Chiang Kai-shek and demanded that he call for the realization of multi-party democratic politics and the democratization of the Kuomintang. In 1944, Sun Ke wrote in the New York Times, trying to use the Western model to readjust the direction of development and fundamentally negate Chiang Kai-shek, which almost broke the relationship between the two people.
However, in April 1948, when the Kuomintang elected the president and vice president, Chiang Kai-shek was in the need of a power struggle within the party, and he actually intended to let Sun Ke run for deputy.
The picture | Sun Ke's later years
Sun Ke's hosts are mainly the CC faction and the Guangdong faction, Li Zongren is a Gui warlord, and the support of the US government. It is said that Li Zongren spent more than 1,000 gold bars in the campaign and established an alliance with Chen Qian and Sun Ke, agreeing that whoever had the fewest votes in the primary election would use his votes to support those who received more votes.
Therefore, Sun Ke still lost to Li Zongren after three rounds of voting. In the winter of the same year, He Yingqin stepped down as chief executive, and Sun Ke held this position for the second time. But less than four months after he took up the post, the Kuomintang collapsed.
04 Why did Sun Ke return to Taiwan in his later years?
After many years in the United States, Sun Ke's health gradually improved, and Sun Ke returned to Taiwan on October 29, 1965. On that day, more than 3,000 people came to Songshan Airport to greet him, and sun Ke and his wife, who were snubbed, could not help but burst into tears.
The day after arriving in Taiwan, Chiang Ching-kuo accompanied Sun Ke and his son Sun Zhiping back to Taiwan to meet Chiang Kai-shek. The two had not seen each other for 16 years since they parted in 1949.
Photo | Sun Ke's return to Taiwan
According to media reports, the two talked very happily, and Chiang Kai-shek gave the First Hotel in Yangmingshan to Sun Ke and his family to live. The residence is quiet and quiet, and Sun Ke spent the last years of his life here.
On November 12, 1965, Sun Ke attended the commemoration of the centenary of Sun Yat-sen's birth in Taipei, and Chiang Kai-shek nominated him as senior minister of the Presidential Office. The senior minister of the presidential office was only an idle post used by Chiang Kai-shek to appease the top level of the party, and Sun Ke had a stable income. The awkward life of yesteryear is a thing of the past, but nothing will actually be done.
In September 1967, perhaps considering that Sun Ke was already 80 years old, Chiang Kai-shek made him the head of the examination institute. In this regard, Sun Ke said in his memoirs:
"Before I went back, I was old and wanted to stop engaging in politics, but because of the 'president's' order, I did not dare to disobey it. Now, 'all those who are citizens of the great cause of counter-offensive and restoration are responsible. Receiving the long examination institute, he also did his best to redeem the previous worries, so he did not resign modestly and resolutely accepted the order. ”
Picture | Sun Ke with Chiang Kai-shek, Chiang Ching-kuo and others
In fact, Sun Ke also has no real power in the examination institute, but is just a fictitious position.
Looking back on Sun Ke's life, Sun Ke received education abroad since childhood, coupled with the influence of his father Sun Yat-sen, he actually had good expectations for Chinese politics. However, for various reasons, he did not understand the social reality of China and believed too much in the Anglo-American political system, which was probably the reason why he and Chiang Kai-shek finally compromised after so many years of struggle.
In March 1973, Sun Ke participated in the event on the anniversary of Sun Yat-sen's death and on The Arbor Day in Taiwan. In Taipei's Zhongshan Park, he planted a forsythia tree and then retreated behind closed doors.
For his time is short, Sun Ke has a premonition very early. In mid-April, he wrote to his son and daughter-in-law stating that he would die soon. On August 23, Sun Ke suddenly felt chest pain and difficulty breathing, and after being diagnosed by doctors, he suffered from acute myocardial infarction complicated by heart failure.
Pictured| Sun Ke and his daughter in his later years
On September 12, 1973, he died of a heart attack at Taipei Veterans General Hospital. After living in Taiwan for 8 years, Before his death, Sun Ke was the "Senior Minister of the Presidential Office" and "The Examiner", but he could not get rid of the title of Sun Yat-sen in his lifetime, and he was the only son of Sun Yat-sen. This is the banner that Sun Ke prides himself on, and it is also a heavy burden that plagues his heart.
Like Sun Yat-sen, Sun Ke did not leave much of a legacy except for some books and photographs. The fact that the matter was later requested to be undertaken in a traditional manner by his children was also inconsistent with the Christian tradition of the Sun family.
Sun Suifang, a daughter whom Sun Ke had only recognized in his later years, placed a large pearl in his mouth, held white jade in both hands, and gold and silver yuan treasures in his pockets, and the children also ordered paper bungalows, cars and silver boxes for Sun Ke.
The secretary general of the "Presidential Palace" also developed one-third of the hilltop of the Yangmingshan Military Region as Sun Ke's cemetery. On the day of the funeral, Song Meiling came to pay respects to the remains. At this point, Chiang Kai-shek and his wife can also be called a complete courtesy.
Pictured| Hong Kong Public Priest Sun Ke
After Sun Ke's death, Chiang Kai-shek's evaluation of him was "magnificent in strength, great in knowledge", "meritorious in the country, sound in the world" and many other praises. If Sun Ke himself hears it, I am afraid that he thinks that the evaluation is not very close.
Although Sun Ke participated in the National Revolution initiated by his father at a very young age, he was only an ordinary person throughout his life.