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Sun's Hong Kong story

By  Liu Wei (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-12-22 09:17

Although the story of Bodyguards and Assassins (十月围城) is fictional, Dr Sun Yat-sen did have profound connections with Hong Kong.

Sun was baptized by the Congregational Church during his first visit to Hong Kong in 1883. During his days at college, he often attended sermons at the nearby To Tsai Church, the first Chinese-run church in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong is also the place where Sun completed his secondary and college education. He qualified as a doctor here and was strongly affected by Western medicine and democratic doctrines. In the city he also made friends with many people who later became his comrades for the revolutionary cause, such as Chen Shaobai, You Lie and Yang Heling. Sun later made active use of everything that Hong Kong offered to advance the revolutionary movement.

Under British rule, Hong Kong was very much like a "foreign concession", so the Qing government was unable to interfere with its internal affairs, which made it an ideal base for Sun and his fellow revolutionaries to plan their activities. Hong Kong was a convenient place to travel to and escape from, when necessary. The modern financial system on the island also facilitated the inflow of capital from overseas Chinese, turning Hong Kong into a fund-raising center for revolutionary movements.

In November 1924, Sun set foot in Hong Kong for the last time, on his way to Beijing to settle national issues at the invitation of Feng Yuxiang, a warlord who then controlled the capital.

He died of liver cancer in Beijing the next year. In a speech in 1923 to students at the University of Hong Kong, Sun said Hong Kong was the place that fermented his revolutionary ideas.

On Nov 12, 2006, the Dr Sun Yat-sen Museum was officially inaugurated in Hong Kong to mark his birth on the same date 140 years earlier.