"Did you know that MACAU is not my real surname, and I have been away from you for too long, Mother!" But what they took away is my flesh, and you still keep my inner soul..." In 1998, with the return of Macao, a song "Song of the Seven Sons - Macao" spread in the land of China, causing countless listeners to burst into tears.
"Song of the Seven Sons - Macao" is one of the famous poets Wen Yi's group of poems "Song of the Seven Sons". In the summer of 1925, when Wen Yiduo returned from studying in the United States, he saw everything he saw, full of devastation, and with a sad and indignant mood, he wrote a group of poems called "Song of the Seven Sons" to commemorate the seven places forcibly occupied by the Western powers. They are: Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Kowloon, Weihaiwei, Guangzhou Bay and Luda.
So, how did the seven places in the "Song of the Seven Sons" group of poems be occupied by the Western powers?
The first place to be occupied by the Western powers was Hong Kong.
In the summer of 1840, the First Opium War broke out. Two years later, the Qing army suffered a series of defeats. On August 29, 1842, the Qing Dynasty government ministers Qi Ying and Iribu signed the Treaty of Nanjing with the British representative Pu Dingcha on the British warship "Gao Huali", which was moored on the Xiaguan River in Nanjing. In the Treaty of Nanking, the Qing Dynasty was forced to cede Hong Kong Island to the British, and "the present Emperor will give hong Kong an island to the British monarch and heir to the throne of Chang Yuan, who will be in charge of the law." ”
The second place occupied by the Western powers was Kowloon.
The British were not satisfied after they ceded Hong Kong Island through the First Opium War. They also set their sights on the Kowloon Peninsula, which is surrounded on three sides by Victoria Harbour. In October 1856, Britain and France launched the Second Opium War. On October 24, 1860, British Plenipotentiary Erkin signed the Sino-British Treaty of Beijing with Prince Gong Yixuan, the Minister of Plenipotentiary and Minister Plenipotentiary stationed in Beijing, formally seceding the Kowloon Peninsula. On June 9, 1898, Qing Dynasty plenipotentiaries Li Hongzhang, Xu Yingma and British Minister Dou Nale formally signed the "Special Article on Expanding the Hong Kong Boundary Site" in Beijing, "leasing" the New Territories with a land area of nearly 1,000 square kilometers to britain.
The third place to be occupied by the Western powers was Macau.
As early as the Ming Dynasty, Portugal obtained the right of rental residence in Macau from the Ming government on the grounds of "drying goods". However, at that time, the sovereignty of Macau still belonged to China. In 1887, the Portuguese government and the Qing dynasty government signed the Treaty of Peace and Commerce between China and Portugal in Beijing, which clearly stipulated: "China will insist that the Portuguese country shall be permanently stationed in the administration of Macao and the land belonging to Macao, which is no different from the Portuguese government of other places." Since then, Macau has officially become a Portuguese colony.
The fourth place occupied by the Western powers was Taiwan.
In 1894, marked by the Battle of Toshima, the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War broke out. In this war that lasted nearly two years, the Qing army was defeated in both land and naval battles. In 1895, Li Hongzhang went to Maguan, Japan, and signed the Treaty of Maguan with Japanese Prime Minister Ito Hirobumi. The Treaty of Maguan stipulates that China will cede the entire island of Taiwan and all its subsidiary islands and the Penghu Islands to Japan. In addition, it also compensated Japan for military expenditure of 200 million silver. Since then, the treasure island of Taiwan has left the embrace of the motherland.
The fifth place occupied by the Western powers was the Brigade University.
Luda refers to Lushun and Dalian. In the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Maguan signed in 1895, the Qing Dynasty ceded the Liaodong Peninsula to Japan. Russian, French, and German intervention forced Japan to abandon the Liaodong Peninsula (the Qing Dynasty paid an additional 30 million taels of silver for the Liao). After that, Russia forced an agreement with the Qing Dynasty in 1898 on the pretext of forcing Japan to return the merits of Liao, and "leased" the two ports of Lushun and Dalian.
The sixth place occupied by the Western powers was Weihaiwei.
At the end of the 19th century, Britain and Russia were vying for spheres of influence in the Far East. When Russia seized the ports of Lushun and Dalian from China, the British did not want to be left behind and demanded "lease" Weihaiwei to the Qing government. At that time, the Qing Government could not afford to provoke Russia, let alone Britain, and had to submit. On July 1, 1898, the Qing Dynasty government, on behalf of Prince Qing Yili and the Prime Minister Yamen Minister and Shangshu Liao Shouheng of the Punishment Department, signed the "Special Article on The Lease of Weihaiwei" with the British Minister Dou Nale in Beijing, renting Weihaiwei and the nearby sea surface to the British.
The seventh place occupied by the Western powers was Canton Bay.
In the frenzy of division between the Western powers at the end of the 19th century, how can the French be missing? The French have always been eyeing the southwestern provinces of China as their sphere of influence and not allowing others to touch it. On November 6, 1899, French warships sent warships to Guangdong to force The Viceroy of Guangxi, Su Yuanchun, to sign the Treaty of Guangzhou Bay Concession and occupy Guangzhou Bay in the name of "leasing". By the way, Guangzhou Bay here has little to do with Guangzhou, referring to Zhanjiang. In the late Qing Dynasty, Zhanjiang's foreign trade was extremely prosperous, and it was praised by Wen Yiduo as "an iron lock on the back door of Shenzhou".
[Reference: "The Qing Dynasty Mainly Signed Unequal Treaties with Foreign Countries", etc.]