1898 was the year of the lunar calendar, an extraordinary year in Chinese history. In the same year, the reformers supported by the Guangxu Emperor, represented by Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, advocated learning from the West, advocating scientific culture, reforming the political and educational system, and developing agriculture, industry, commerce, etc., which lasted only 103 days and then died. The conservative faction, led by Empress Dowager Cixi, launched a bloody coup against the reformists led by the Guangxu Emperor. As a result, Guangxu was imprisoned in Yingtai, an isolated island in Zhongnanhai, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao fled to France and Japan respectively, and six other people, including Tan Sitong, Kang Guangren, Lin Xu, Yang Shenxiu, Yang Rui, and Liu Guangdi, were killed at Caishikou in Beijing.
Around the Penghu Reform Law, the Imperial Party and the Later Party launched a life-and-death contest. During this period, the restorationists did not stand still, and Kang Youwei planned a plan to "kill the queen in the garden". The specific plan was to first send troops to surround the Summer Palace, and then send dead soldiers into the Summer Palace to force the palace, and if Empress Dowager Cixi did not obey, she would be put on the spot to correct the law. Where did the army in the garden come from, and Kang Youwei took a fancy to Yuan Shikai, a powerful figure who was newly promoted to the position of alternate chief of the military department. At this time, he was training the new army at the Tianjin Small Station, and he had seven thousand powerful Beiyang new army. At the same time, because Yuan Shikai also seems to be more in favor of the reform of the restoration, he also donated money a few years ago when Kang Youwei was preparing for the strong society of the reformist political group. To this end, Tan Sitong secretly came to the Fahua Temple in the capital late at night to visit Yuan Shikai, who lived there, and strive to make him deal with Rong Lu, the governor of Cixi's confidant, and after seizing military power, he led troops into Beijing and surrounded the Summer Palace. As for the second step, Tan Sitong invited a friend, Bi Yongnian, a Changsha native, to prepare for him to lurk in Yuan Shikai's army in advance, and after the army surrounded the Summer Palace, he led 100 members of the Party as daredevils to rush into the Summer Palace to hunt down Empress Dowager Cixi. It was only because Cixi acted first, and Kang Youwei's plan to kill the garden after the killing was of course aborted. Empress Dowager Cixi suddenly returned to the Forbidden City, launched a coup d'état, imprisoned Guangxu, and regained power because she had watched a twist on Yang Chongyi, the overseer of the imperial history. This reproach accused the reformers of changing the old law and expelling the old ministers, and wanted to ask former Japanese Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi to serve as an adviser to the imperial court. It was just an attempt to please Empress Xi, and there was no substance, but it allowed Empress Xi to find an excuse for a coup.
The scheming Yuan Shikai originally thought that this plan to encircle the garden after the killing was whimsical, and when he saw that there was already a victory and defeat between Guangxu and Cixi, he saw that the wind made the rudder betray the Restoration Faction and inform Rong Lu of the plan that Tan Sitong had revealed to him. This intensified the repression of empress dowager Xi, resulting in the tragic killing of Tan Si and others.
What is less known is that after the failure of the Penghu ReformAtion, Kang Youwei also had a plot to assassinate Empress Dowager Cixi. In 1904, a new "Jichang Photo Studio" was opened in Dengshikou, not far from the Imperial Palace in Beijing. Photography was a fashion-forward thing, and Empress Dowager Cixi herself was very keen on photography. Under the influence of the ears, the eunuchs in the palace also liked to take pictures, and it became their fashionable practice to hang their own photos on the walls of the room. Soon, the eunuchs became regular customers of the Jichang Photo Studio, and the business of the Photo Studio was also booming. But this photo studio is not as simple as doing business. Wu Daoming, the owner of the Jichang Photo Studio, whose real name is Liang Tiejun, came to the capital this time and was entrusted with the mission entrusted by Kang Youwei. Liang Tiejun, whose real name is Erxu, is a native of Maicun, Nanhai, Guangdong, and when he was a teenager, he liked martial arts and advocated chivalry. Later, he changed his old habits and read angrily. He was one year older than Kang Youwei, and the two of them successively worshiped under the door of Mr. Zhu Jiujiang, a famous Confucian in Guangdong, and they were also brothers with Kang Youwei. However, the temperaments of the two are very different, and Liang Tiejun, who is tall and powerful, has learned martial arts since he was a child, and he is spontaneous and cheerful. He often likes to talk about Wang Tu's hegemony, likes to see righteousness and courage, and has a chivalrous style. Kang Youwei once recalled that at that time, Liang Tiejun forced himself to be like him, otherwise he would break off his friendship. Because Kang Youwei did not listen, the two really cut off contact. When the two met again a few years later, Kang Youwei was already a leading figure in the restoration faction, and Liang Tiejun was deeply impressed by Kang Youwei's ideas, and from then on, he saddled up and followed his career wholeheartedly. Liang Tiejun was doing salt business in Wuzhou at that time, earning a lot of money and having a lot of assets. He gave everything he had to support Kang Youwei. All of Kang Youwei's activities, from the launch of more than 1,300 people to write books on the bus in 1895, and then the establishment of the political group Qiang Society, until the Penghu Reform Law, a large part of all the expenses in the meantime were funded by Liang Tiejun. After the failure of the Wushu reform, Kang Youwei fled overseas, and Liang Tiejun abandoned his family business and followed him without abandoning. Liang Tiejun, who had practiced martial arts, also served as Kang Youwei's bodyguard.
During the coup d'état, Kang Youwei's younger brother Kang Guangren also joined Tan Si in the same blood dish. After Kang Guangren was martyred, he was taken away and buried by the servants of the Nanhai Guild Hall in the dark, and the whereabouts of the remains have not been known. In 1900, Liang Tiejun was ordered by Kang Youwei to return to Beijing from Singapore, and with the help of the kang family's old servants, he found Kang Guangren's remains at the Xuanwai Longshu Temple in Beijing and brought them back to Guangdong. In this year, the Gengzi Incident occurred, and the Eight-Power Alliance invaded China. Kang Youwei felt that there was an opportunity to take advantage of it, so he vigorously raised donations at home and abroad to try to protect the royal cause. His campaign to revive the Guangxu Emperor was unsuccessful. Tang Caichang, an important figure in the reform and reform, failed to organize a self-reliant army in Wuchang and was killed by Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Huguang. Kang Youwei revived his assassination plan, and Empress Dowager Cixi was undoubtedly Kang Youwei's primary target, and she was not only a sworn enemy of the Reform faction but also the culprit in the murder of her younger brother Kang Guangren. In addition, Rong Lu and Li Hongzhang, Zhang Zhidong are also on the list of assassinations. Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao planned several assassination attempts against Cixi and Rong Lu, but none of them succeeded because of the tight security of the Jing division. This time, Liang Tiejun, who was highly skilled in martial arts and a loyal backbone of the royalist party, was sent to serve as a secret operation for assassination.
Accompanying Liang Tiejun to Beijing were Luo Pushi and Liang Zigang. In order to hide his eyes and ears, in addition to the Jichang Photo Studio, Liang Tiejun also opened a Guangming Toyo Car Company and made a look of starting an industry. Liang Tiejun and others used these industries to frequently contact the police department and newspaper figures.
Through the photo studio, he took the initiative to make friends with Yao Huanqing, a eunuch who sat next to Cixi. After becoming acquainted with them through photography and bribery, he asked these palace attendants to boast of his photographic skills in front of Empress Dowager Cixi to pave the way for further approach and assassination of Cixi in the future. At the same time, through the information leaked by the eunuchs, he knew the living and health of Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor very well, and even the prescriptions prescribed by the imperial doctors in the palace to Guangxu and Cixi were all recorded. Liang Tiejun even got along with the Shangyi supervisor Ma Zong, who managed Guangxu's clothes in the palace, to the point of worshipping his brothers. Eunuch Ma took him into the Summer Palace and took a walk around, taking pictures around and taking the opportunity to figure out the terrain around it. At the same time, Luo Pushi was sent to Japan to learn bomb-making techniques in search of more powerful bombs. Liang Zigang opened Zigang Garden as a place for secret gatherings and making hidden ammunition. Despite the slow progress, everything is proceeding step by step. They once planned to send someone to mix with the luxury yacht "Little Fire Wheel" that Empress Dowager Cixi was riding on and assassinate her with a bomb. But in the face of the heavily guarded Qing court, things were by no means so easy.
In July 1905, Liang Tiejun's assassination team suffered a huge blow, and When Luo Pushi returned from Japan to Guangdong, he was arrested and killed because of the leak of information.
However, even greater blows followed, and in June of the following year Liang Tiejun was also arrested by the Qing court. Regarding Liang Tiejun's arrest, one theory is that he met Zhu Qi, a fellow nanhai villager in the streets of Tianjin, who was a detective from the Tianjin Visiting Bureau. Zhu Qi found out that Liang Tiejun had changed his name to Wu Daoming and couldn't help but become suspicious. After some spying, he deceived Liang Tiejun's trust, causing him and Pan to reveal their true identities. Subsequently, he seized the opportunity to search for Liang Tiejun's codebook and other confidential objects. Under Zhu Qi's betrayal, Liang Tiejun was immediately arrested. Some people also said that the matter was revealed by a guy in the store. There is also a theory that because Liang Tiejun was very close to the eunuchs in the palace, he attracted the attention of the Detective Team of the Admiral Yamen, who began to track him down, and finally grasped their secrets. Late that night, Liang Tiejun was arrested at his beijing apartment, and many letters and documents and related physical evidence were seized on the spot. Fan Luxiang, a Beijing police official who had been helping Liang Tiejun communicate secretly with Kang Youwei through foreign passenger mail, was also arrested. The two were first tried in Beijing, and later sent to Tianjin for personal interrogation by Yuan Shikai, the minister of Beiyang.
Liang Tiejun talked in the hall, talking about the critical point, which made Yuan Shikai hear a cold sweat, nervous and sweaty. Yuan Shikai, fearing that his secret dealings with the reformists would be exposed by Liang Tiejun, quickly sent him to the fourth town of the Machang Army, where he was buried hastily after being executed with poison, while claiming to have died of an acute illness. Fan Luxiang was also killed on the same day. On the same day, the Qing court issued a pre-constitutional edict, and Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao were excited and encouraged by this, and from then on, they completely abandoned the idea of assassinating Cixi and implementing a change of law, and instead threw themselves into the constitutional movement. In fact, shortly before Liang Tiejun was arrested, he proposed to Kang Youwei to change his strategy and abandon the assassination. In order to support Kang Youwei's reform and restoration, Liang Tiejun lost his family until he sacrificed his life. As the mastermind who sent Liang Tiejun to assassinate, Kang Youwei's actions afterwards were criticized. After Liang Tiejun was killed, Kang and Liang were quite indifferent, but they were glad that Liang Tiejun's death did not have a fatal impact on the royalists. And he was grateful that Yuan Shikai did not expand the case to himself. What is even more unauthentic is that a year later, Liang Tiejun's son went to England and wanted to discuss the aftermath of Liang Tiejun with Kang Youwei, but Kang Youwei actually avoided seeing him. No wonder Zhang Shizhao sighed: The friendship between life and death is not as good as the city road.