During the Xinhai Revolution, Mr. Liao Zhongkai experienced the path of life from a patriotic overseas child to a backbone of the Alliance Association that followed Sun Yat-sen's revolution, and then gradually grew into a professional revolutionary, and made important contributions to the rise, development and upsurge of this revolutionary movement in the struggle.
Liao Zhongkai
The son of a well-known overseas Chinese businessman in San Francisco embarked on the road of learning from the West to save the country
Patriotism is the core political quality of Liao Zhongkai. Mr. Liao was born on April 23, 1877 in San Francisco, California, United States, and took the name Eun Hee( Eun Hee). His father, Liao Zhubin, was the deputy manager of HSBC's San Francisco branch at the time, and was a well-known overseas Chinese businessman with considerable social status in the local area. Good family education and the influence of Confucian culture undoubtedly provided rich spiritual nutrition for the germination of Liao Zhongkai's patriotic thought. Liao Zhubin is a patriotic overseas Chinese leader who advocates putting Sinology first in educating his children. He often said to the children: "Don't forget that we are a Chinese", "Love the motherland, the first is not to forget the words of the motherland... You should learn to read through. It is based on this that in 1885, when Zhongkai was 8 years old, liao Zhubin, in addition to letting his son study English every morning, also asked him to go to the "Guoxue Museum" run by the Overseas Chinese in the afternoon to study Tang poetry and ancient Chinese. From the ancient books and his father's usual patriotic words and deeds, Zhongkai remembered "I am a Chinese" when he was a teenager.
The tragic situation of the vast number of overseas Chinese in San Francisco who have been repeatedly persecuted by the US Government and white racists against Chinese is the real social soil for the emergence and formation of Liao Zhongkai's patriotic ideas. In order to develop the gold mines in the San Francisco area and build the California Railroad, the U.S. authorities began to plunder "Chinese workers" as slave coolies from the 1850s. By the year before Liao Zhongkai's birth, there were about 160,000 overseas Chinese in California, including about 40,000 residents in San Francisco; they had made great contributions to the development and prosperity of the area. However, the US authorities took revenge on the "Chinese workers" and instigated white people to practice Chinese exclusion after the economic crisis in 1873. Since then, with the release of the US federal government and the California Regional Chinese Exclusion Act, the bloody storm of persecution of overseas Chinese has been hanging over San Francisco. When Liao Zhongkai was a teenager, he learned a lot from his parents about the tragic persecution of "Chinese workers", and he also saw white hooligans in San Francisco attacking Chinese with stones, sticks and other weapons, and a large number of police officers using beatings, detentions, expulsion and other means to force overseas Chinese to move elsewhere. Faced with the barbarism of white American racists, young Liao Zhongkai deftly threw firecrackers at white cops. As he grew older, Liao Zhongkai understood that the reason why overseas Chinese were humiliated in San Francisco was because the cowardly and corrupt Qing government was unable to protect the yanhuang descendants living in a foreign country. At this time, Liao Zhongkai's national and patriotic thinking grew, and a vision of serving the motherland sprang up in his heart when he grew up.
Just when the influence of Confucian traditional culture and the stimulation of serious ethnic crises fueled Liao Zhongkai's patriotic and patriotic ideas, Liao Zhubin suddenly died of illness in 1893 due to overwork, which caused the 16-year-old Zhongkai to lose his father. The whole family is also missing an important pillar. The orphaned and widowed family soon boarded a ship from San Francisco back to Hong Kong, ending years of living in the United States. On his way back to China, Liao Zhongkai "passed through Hong Kong and saw Chinese being bullied by the colonists, and patriotic ideas further grew." Since then, he has been determined to fight for the salvation of the motherland in the future. After Liao Zhongkai returned to his hometown of Guishan (Huiyang) County in Guangdong Province, he began a new life, increasingly pursuing progress and constantly striving to realize his ideals in life.
At first, Liao Zhongkai, who experienced the pain of losing his mother shortly after returning to his hometown, relied on and obeyed the arrangements of his uncle Liao Zhigang. This uncle has served as the general office of the Hong Kong Merchants Bureau and the general office of the Telegraph Bureau, and is quite prestigious in the provincial and Hong Kong society. When he chose the path of life for his nephew, he strictly adhered to the custom of the Hakka family in Guishan County of "believing that he is a living, reading a book", and expected and required him to take the road of entering the military as an official in order to honor his ancestors. Therefore, Liao Zhongkai, under the arrangement of his uncle, worshiped the Confucian Liang Jiga of his hometown and began a life of assiduously studying the Confucian "Four Books" and "Five Classics". Just as he was diligently studying the study of scripture and history and preparing to enter the road of scientific expeditions, two shocking things happened in Beijing and Guangzhou: First, after the Qing government signed the Treaty of Maguan with Japan in April 1895, Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and others who were taking the exam in Beijing launched a "letter on the bus", which proposed three major strategies for salvation: refusing peace, moving the capital, and changing the law. The wind of the restoration and reform soon blew to Guangzhou. Second, in October of the same year, Sun Yat-sen and other leaders led the Xingzhong Association to instigate the anti-Qing rebellion of the Yiwei Chongjiu armed forces, which caused a sensation in Wuyangcheng. Faced with the reality that the motherland was invaded by outsiders and riddled with holes, Liao Zhongkai quickly realized that there was no cure for transforming Chinese society from the Confucian classics, and that to save the country, he must learn to emulate foreign countries; his original enthusiasm for taking a place in the field of science quickly disappeared. To this end, Liao Zhongkai made a request to his uncle to go to Hong Kong to study Western studies, and received his support and financial support, and entered The Queen's College in Hong Kong in 1896. It can be seen from this that as early as 10 years before the Abolition of the Scientific Expedition by the Qing Court, Liao resolutely made the wise choice of abandoning Confucianism and studying westernly. Since then, he has studied for 6 years in Huangren College, a school with first-class teachers and teaching equipment, aiming at cultivating social elites, and has made great progress in ideology and academics. It should be said that this move was a major turning point in his life struggle, and he began to seek a new way to save the country.
Liao Zhongkai and Sun Yat-sen
Together with He Xiangning, he followed Mr. Zhongshan to the revolutionary road
In 1897, the 20-year-old Liao Zhongkai had reached the age of talking about marriage and marriage. When his uncle Liao Zhigang urged him to start a family, Zhongkai said his father's deathbed instructions: "Small-footed women are looked down upon in foreign countries, and you must follow the habits of the Hakka family and marry a bigfoot daughter-in-law in the future." After inquiring, the Liao family soon learned that the 19-year-old Miss Jiu of the Hong Kong real estate tycoon Ho Dai family had a pair of "heavenly feet" - it turned out that He Xiangning had a stubborn personality when he was young, and because of the influence of the female soldiers of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, he resolutely did not wrap his feet, and cut the foot wrap wrapped around her mother into a "flower butterfly" again and again; her father finally said to his wife: "Forget it, let her go!" So she kept a pair of big feet. As a result, in the era of the fashion "the fate of parents, the words of the matchmaker", Liao Zhongkai and He Xiangning did not have time to fall in love freely, that is, they held a wedding in Guangzhou in October 1897, coincidentally becoming a lifelong companion in the same boat.
After Liao Zhongkai married He Xiangning, he set up a new house in the home of his brother Liao Entao, who lived in the Temple of Three Officials. In order to avoid the frolicking of their nephews, they built a hut for the bedroom on the sundeck on the roof on the left side of the second floor of the Liao Mansion. Whenever Haoyue is a room, this young couple who are eager to talk to their knees often has the feeling of "double qing of the month of people" - they mean to name this building "double Qing Lou". Later, Liao Zhongkai named his poetry collection "Shuangqing Cicao", He Xiangning nicknamed "Shuangqing Lou Lord", and named his poetry and painting collection "Shuangqing Poetry Painting Collection", and later people named it "Shuangqing Anthology" when editing and publishing their couple's anthology, all of which came from this. Liao Zhongkai and He Xiangning spent four or five spring and autumn together on the "Double Qing Building". During this period, these two patriotic young people had lofty ambitions and ambitions, and paid close attention to the future of the nation and the destiny of the country.
At the beginning of the 20th century, China was facing the threat of national subjugation and extinction, and many scholars believed that the only way to save the country was to restore the country and learn from foreign countries, and regarded studying abroad as "the only way to save the country today", and went to Japan in droves to study. He Xiangning resolutely sold the dowry's jewelry, gold and silver jewelry and some family furniture, together with the private money saved when he was a daughter, "made up more than 3,000 gold" as the initial expenses for the two to study in Japan. In January 1903, Liao Zhongkai arrived in Tokyo first, and in April He Xiangning also came to her husband's side. The couple hopes to save the country and the country with the help of Western learning, especially the experience of Japan. It is precisely based on this understanding that Liao Zhongkai kept in mind that learning is the foundation of the founding of the country, and insisted on seizing the time to study hard to revitalize the Chinese nation. He was admitted to Waseda University and Chuo University to study political economy, and graduated from Chuo University in 1909. This laid a solid theoretical foundation for him to become an outstanding financial expert and expert in the early days of the Republic of China. During his stay in Japan, Liao Zhongkai often participated in various activities organized by the International Student Association in addition to his studies, and donated money to the "Russian Rejection Volunteer Brigade" (later renamed the Student Army) during the "Reject Russia" movement between April and May. Because of his active participation in the gathering of international students, he finally got a good opportunity to meet Sun Yat-sen, and was determined to follow Mr. Sun in the struggle to save the country. Therefore, it can be said that Liao Zhongkai's move to stay in Japan was actually the first step from patriotism to revolution.
He followed Sun Yat-sen's revolution to the end all his life
Liao Zhongkai's study in Japan coincided with the rising tide of democratic revolution in Tokyo's study circles and at home. Since 1903, "the ideological realities of the study circles in Tokyo have focused on the revolutionary question", and the revolutionary newspapers they published have sprung up like mushrooms, and the number of international students who are inclined to the republican revolution has also increased day by day. At that time, Liao Zhongkai, who had correctly chosen the path of revolutionary life, was eager to meet the revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen at an early date. The day finally came — one night in September, Liao Zhongkai and his wife were overjoyed to meet Sun Yat-sen for the first time at a gathering at the Chinese Students Association in Tokyo's Kanda District. Mr. Sun gave only a brief speech at the time, saying that "China is too weak." We should be indignant and strive to be strong and carry out a thorough revolution in order to save the motherland from peril. Liao And He not only "listened to God" Sun Zhi's speech, but also "inquired about the address of Mr. Sun's apartment when the meeting was adjourned, and prepared to visit him later to listen to more revolutionary reasoning." Later, Liao Zhongkai and his wife made several special trips to a "lower house" (hotel) in Koishikawa to visit Sun Yat-sen and ask him questions about the revolution and national salvation; "The topic immediately began with the political problems of China. Mr. Sun talked a lot, from the Opium War to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, to the Wushu coup, to the Boxer Rebellion, to the corruption and incompetence of the Qing government, and stressed that it is necessary to carry out an anti-Qing revolution" and "overthrow the Qing court and establish the Republic of China." Sun Yat-sen's remarks made Liao He "very admired and very much approved", and they immediately "expressed their approval of the revolution" and were willing to serve the patriotic salvation and the creation of the Republic of China. Sun Yat-sen was particularly appreciative of this, and entrusted Liao to "find people with lofty ideals among the international students, and make wide contacts so that they can form a group in the future to take charge of state affairs." Since then, Liao Zhongkai has acted according to Mr. Sun's instructions and done a lot of work to strengthen the revolutionary forces among the students studying in Japan.
Under the influence and promotion of Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary thought, due to the efforts of revolutionary volunteers in various provinces, especially the backbone of students returning to Japan, the patriotic revolutionary movement in major cities in China rose vigorously in 1904. It is marked by the Huaxing Association founded by Huang Xing and Song Jiaoren in Changsha in that year, the scientific remedial institute established by Liu Jing'an and Lü Dasen in Wuchang, and the Guangfu Association established by Cai Yuanpei and Tao Chengzhang in Shanghai. The backbone of these small revolutionary groups, frustrated by the anti-Qing revolutionary struggle, were forced to study in Japan again, and Tokyo became a place where Chinese anti-Qing heroes gathered. In order to organize the scattered revolutionary forces throughout the country to meet the needs of the development of the revolutionary struggle situation, Sun Yat-sen, after consultation with Huang Xing and others, formally established the National Revolutionary Party Leading the Xinhai Revolution, the Chinese League Association, in Tokyo on August 20, 1905. On September 1, Liao Zhongkai, who had returned to Hong Kong to collect tuition and visit his daughter, returned to Tokyo. That night, he was introduced by Li Zhongshi and He Xiangning, and Sun Yat-sen joined the Alliance. Since then, his "lender" in Tokyo has become an active organ of the League, and he himself has served as the foreign affairs officer of the headquarters of the League, the chief accountant, and the chief ally of the Tianjin branch. As a member of Sun Yat-sen's tiger generals, Liao made important contributions to the league's later party building, propaganda, and uprising activities.
First of all, Liao Zhongkai did important work to recruit party members and expand the affairs of the League, and achieved great results. In November 1905, he was responsible for the struggle against the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology's promulgation of the regulations banning qing students, and was responsible for the heavy responsibility of liaison, organization and guidance of this struggle against Japan. At that time, Liao made full use of the favorable conditions that he had made a large number of acquaintances and "admired" for the aspirants studying abroad, and not only persuaded everyone, especially Hu Ying, and others to listen to Sun Yat-sen's telegram that "they did not approve of the return of all students studying abroad" and not to withdraw from school and return to China in a matter of anger; at the same time, he also paid attention to arousing the patriotic enthusiasm of the vast number of students studying in Japan during the struggle, and urged everyone to strengthen unity and oppose separatism. He also promptly introduced the activists who had emerged from the struggle to the "organization of the League."
Second, Liao Zhongkai actively publicized the Three People's Principles of the League, especially in providing and supplementing ideological materials for Sun Yat-sen's people's livelihood. Sun Yat-sen, in his "Publication Speech" of the "Minbao" founded on November 26, 1905, for the first time attributed the oath of membership of the League, "expelling the Tartars, restoring China, establishing the Republic of China, and equalizing land rights", to the three major doctrines of nationality, civil rights and people's livelihood. Since then, the newspaper has carried out propaganda and advocacy of the Theory of the Three People's Principles more systematically, and defended the political program of the Three People's Principles in a fierce polemic with the reformists. Liao Zhongkai, as the main writer of minbao, successively used pen names such as "Tu Fu", "Yuanshi", and "Leaderless" to publish translations of "Progress and Poverty", "Outline of Socialist History", "Two Factions of Anarchism", "Anarchism and Socialism", "A Small History of the Nihilistic Party", "Sufia Biography", "Bakunin Biography", "The Era of Imperial Assassination", and the paper "Breaking Out Non-Nationalists" (unsigned). The propaganda content of these articles involves the three major doctrines of the League, and focuses on introducing and exploring the early European theory of socialism in the broad sense, in order to publicize Sun Yat-sen's people's livelihood and to provide and supplement ideological materials for it. It should be said that there are not many people in the League who can propagate the three major revolutionaries as comprehensively as he did, while always striving for their realization. This shows that Liao has truly realized ideologically that only Mr. Sun's Three People's Principles are the best way to save the country and govern the country. What is particularly valuable is that he was also one of the first Chinese intellectuals to contact and introduce the theory of scientific socialism: Liao Zhongkai, in his translation of the "Outline of the History of Socialism", described the five stages of the development of the socialist movement in Europe after the French Revolution, and highlighted the activities of the "League of All Laborers" (i.e., the First International) led by "McCarth" (Marx) and "Engels" (Engels). He also stressed in some translations that the translator deeply liked to study the history of Socialism in Europe and its movement and truth, in order to "guide me in the way", that is, to find a theory that conformed to China's national conditions from them and used it to guide the actual struggle for national salvation.
Third, Liao Zhongkai also contributed to the armed anti-Qing struggle of the League. In the spring of 1906, he sneaked to Tianjin on the orders of Sun Yat-sen in order to carry out a sino-French joint investigation Chinese mainland revolutionary strength, so that France could assist Sun Yat-sen in the anti-Qing struggle in the future. He Xiangning wrote a poem entitled "Farewell" at that time for her husband: "The national vendetta is not restored and it is difficult to die, and it is difficult to endure ordinary crying farewell." Advise the king not to regret the head of the noble, to leave a name in Chinese history. The words expressed their ambition and pride in sacrificing themselves to serve the country. After Liao Zhongkai arrived in Tianjin and made contact with the French officer Bugab, the General Staff of the French Army stationed in Tianjin immediately dispatched 7 officers to join Li Zhongshi, Hu Yisheng, and others assigned by Sun Yat-sen to Shanghai and set out for Jiangsu, Lianghu, Liangguang, and Chuanqian provinces for inspection and liaison work. During this period, Liao stayed in contact with the Beishi and the expedition. Although this joint inspection work was aborted by The Return of TheBes from his post, his efforts to do so are still worthy of recognition. After liao zhongkai returned to Tokyo, he arrived in Hong Kong in early 1907 on the orders of Sun Zhi, assisting xu Xueqiu and other liaison comrades in the alliance, and instigating the Chaozhou Huanggang Uprising. Usually, Liao Zhongkai and his wife also mobilized many relatives and friends among overseas Chinese to donate money to sponsor the Alliance to carry out the anti-Qing armed struggle.
After graduating from Chuo University in Japan's Junior College of Political Science and Economics for several years, Liao Zhongkai immediately returned to China and began his political career. In the autumn of 1909, he went to Beijing to participate in the Qing government's examination for international students, and was a member of the Chinese Political Science Department; soon after, he was sent by the Qing court to Jilin to serve as an interpreter under Chen Zhaochang. In the face of the criticism of the party's friend Guan Qianfu, Liao Zhongkai calmly replied: Going to Beijing to take the exam is not to become an official of the Qing Dynasty, but "it is easier to enter the Qing court and hold its political power in order to become a revolutionary work." For more than a year, he fulfilled this promise to his friends. During this period, Liao, on the one hand, actively assisted Wu Luzhen, a revolutionary who was the border affairs supervisor of the Qing Dynasty and the sixth town control system, negotiated with the Japanese authorities on the so-called "Between Islands issue, and contributed to the Qing government's efforts to finally reclaim the "Between Islands" occupied by the Japanese through negotiations; on the other hand, he used his open occupation as a cover to do his best to carry out some secret propaganda, liaison, and counter-insurgency work in the Kyrgyzstan and Liao regions. In the winter of 1910, he wrote a poem with the help of the scenery, which contained "Pine cypress to inspire the first ambition, wind and frost to change the plain face." Remotely know the South Ridge table, see early spring also. " and so on. Mr. Liao here expresses his nostalgia for the situation of Songbai himself: he shows that he will never change the original intention of the revolution because of the harsh environment of the struggle, and still maintains the revolutionary integrity of "being in the heart of Cao Ying in Han"; in the face of the repeated setbacks of the southwest uprising of the League, he still believes that after the harsh winter is spring -- he has firm faith that the cause of the democratic revolution will eventually be victorious!
On October 10, 1911, the cannons of the Wuchang New Army uprising sounded, and inspired by this victory, in just over a month, 14 provinces and cities in the country declared independence. There is also Liao Zhongkai's hometown of Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, which was peacefully restored on November 9, and a military government of Guangdong Province was established with Hu Hanmin, the head of the southern branch of the League, as the governor. Just as this cry for democracy and republicanism resounded throughout the land of Shenzhou, Liao Zhongkai left Jilin and returned to Guangzhou via Hong Kong to participate in the work of creating and consolidating the nascent local republican revolutionary regime. During this time, he "often entered the governor's palace to discuss matters and came out late at night" and participated in almost all the important governments. During the military government, Liao Zhongkai served as a privy councillor, the deputy director (division) director of the ministry (department) of the military government, the director of the department, and the director of the provincial national taxation department, and was always one of the important members of the military government. It was he who began his career as a professional democratic revolutionary in the Cantonese military government.
From the above, it can be seen that Liao Zhongkai's life trajectory during the Xinhai Revolution was: from the overseas Chinese in Jinshan, to the patriotic youth in Huizhou, to the students in Hong Kong and Japan, and then to the general of the League, and finally to the position of financial secretary of the Guangdong military government; he abandoned Confucianism and turned to Western studies, and from patriotism to revolution, until he followed Dr. Sun Yat-sen to become a professional democratic revolutionary. In the following ten years, he has been closely following Mr. Sun, experiencing the defeat of the Xinhai Revolution, launching a second revolution to curry favor with Yuan, carrying out the struggle to protect the country and protect the law, and promoting and realizing the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and in these struggles, he has become more and more frustrated, and finally became an important assistant and comrade-in-arms of Sun Yat-sen and the leader of the Left Wing of the Kuomintang.
(The author is Zhou Xingliang, professor of the Department of History, Sun Yat-sen University)