Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898-1918 9781503636255

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Transpacific Reform and Revolution

  A series edited by Gordon H. Chang

Transpacific Reform and Revolution The Chinese in North America, 1898–1918

Zhongping Chen

S t an f o r d U ni v ersi t y P ress S t an f o r d , C a l i f o rnia

Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2023 by Zhongping Chen. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Chen, Zhongping (Professor of history), author. Title: Transpacific reform and revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898–1918 / Zhongping Chen. Other titles: Asian America. Description: Stanford, California : Stanford University Press, 2023. | Series: Asian America | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022050314 (print) | LCCN 2022050315 (ebook) | ISBN 9781503636248 (cloth) | ISBN 9781503636255 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Chinese—Political activity—North America—History. | Transnationalism—Political aspects—China—History. | Chinese diaspora—Political aspects—History. | Revolutions—China—History—20th century. | North America—Relations—China. | China—Relations—North America. Classification: LCC E49.2.C5 C54 2023 (print) | LCC E49.2.C5 (ebook) | DDC 970.004/951—dc23/eng/20221026 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022050314 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022050315 Cover image: The top portion of the poster of the Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association in Victoria, 1903 (Courtesy of the Harvard-Yenching Institute Library). Cover designer: Susan Zucker

To Limin Huang, my companion in the Chinese diaspora over three decades

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Contents

List of Maps and Figures  ix Preface: In Pursuit of a New Network Approach to Overseas Chinese Political History  xi Acknowledgments xxi Abbreviations xxv Notes on Romanization and Currencies  xxvii Introduction

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1 Kang Youwei and the Rise of Overseas Chinese Political Reforms from North America

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2 The Crest and Ebb of Chinese Reform Politics from North America to the Pacific Rim

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3 Transpacific Interactions between Chinese Reformers and Revolutionaries

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4 Sun Yat-sen and the Unfinished Chinese Republican Revolution across the Pacific

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Conclusion: Toward a Network Revolution in the Transpacific Chinese Diaspora Notes  229 Bibliography  309 Index  343

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Maps and Figures

Maps 1. Pearl River Delta Region, 1915 2. Western Regions of North America, ca. 1910 3. Victoria’s Chinatown, 1918

3 13 206

Figures

1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Sun Yat-sen in Vancouver, 1911 xii Kang Youwei and his former student Tan Liang, 1905 xiii Liang Qichao and his reformist comrades in Vancouver, 1903 36 First executive officers of the Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada, 1903 37 Poster of the Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association in Victoria, 1903 90 Poster of the Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association of Vancouver and New Westminster, 1904 91 Feng Ziyou, the first agent of the Revolutionary Alliance in Canada, date unknown 121 The Lethbridge Chinese Nationalist League Home Defense, 1916 189 Tang Hualong, a late Qing constitutionalist and national politician in the early Republic of China, 1918 203 Wong Chong, a member of the Chinese Nationalist League in Victoria, 1918 207

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Preface In Pursuit of a New Network Approach to Overseas Chinese Political History

I first became interested in the political history of the overseas Chinese (Huaqiao 华侨) after I started my doctoral program at the University of Hawai‘i in 1990. Sun Yat-sen 孙逸仙 (1866–1925), known as the “father of Republican China” (Guofu 国父, see Figure 1), had initiated the revolution against the Qing dynasty (1644−1912) and the revolutionary struggle for a Chinese republic from Honolulu in 1894. After I moved to the University of Victoria in Canada in 2002, I also developed a research interest in the overseas activities of the late Qing reformist leader, Kang Youwei 康有为 (1858−1927, see Figure 2). Soon after Kang promoted the first but short-lived political reform of the Qing government in 1898, he arrived in this Canadian city and initiated an overseas Chinese reformist movement, including a plan for constitutional monarchy in China. What really piqued my interest, however, was my preliminary research on the assassination, in Victoria in 1918, of Tang Hualong 汤化龙 (1874−1918, see Figure 9 in Chapter 4), a main leader of late Qing constitutional reform and a prominent statesman of early republican China. The assassin, Wong Chong (Wang Chang 王昌, 1886−1918, see Figure 10 in Chapter 4), a barber in Victoria’s Chinatown and a member of Sun’s revolutionary party, became one of its heroic martyrs following his suicide moments after the assassination.1 My initial probe into the assassination case and its unsolved issues— Tang’s purpose for his North American trip, Wong’s motive, and suspicious co-conspirators in the murder—led me on a special research trip to China, specifically to the home provinces of both the victim and his killer,

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F i g u re 1 . Sun Yat-sen in Vancouver, 1911 (Courtesy of Burnaby Village Museum). Source: Burnaby Village Museum, HV 975.5.60. Yucho Chow photo. Reprinted with permission.

in 2009. During this visit, I was surprised to find that Tang and Wong received opposite treatment both in Sun Yat-sen’s party and, later, in Mao Zedong’s China. Tang was defamed by Sun’s party before and after his death in 1918, and his tomb was damaged during the Mao-led Cultural Revolution (1966−1976). Wong, however, was honored as a hero by Sun’s party, and his coffin and tombstone have been well preserved in the Yellow Flower Hill Cemetery (Huanghuagang 黄花岗) of revolutionary martyrs, a major tourist attraction in Canton (Guangzhou 广州). My subsequent research on this case in numerous Chinese, Canadian, and American archives and libraries made me gradually realize that, far from an accidental event, this assassination case was the result of decades of reforms and revolutionary movements among North American Chinatowns. The case was rooted in long-term transpacific Chinese politics prior to 1918, which continued to impact modern China and overseas Chinese communities, particularly North American Chinatowns, thereafter. This book covers both the transpacific reform and revolution of the Chinese in North America from the 1898 Reform and the overseas Chinese

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F i g u re 2 . Kang Youwei (sitting right) and his former student Tan Liang in Los Angeles, 1905 (Courtesy of Jane Leung Larson). Tan was a main leader of Chinese political reforms in the United States from 1899 to 1909. Source: This photo is from its copyright owner, Jane Leung Larson, one of Tan’s granddaughters. Reprinted with permission.

reformist movement under Kang Youwei’s influence until 1918—at which point the Republican Revolution under Sun Yat-sen’s leadership turned to militant violence, including Tang Hualong’s assassination, in the struggle for his party’s hegemony rather than a true republic in China. This research goes beyond most previous studies on Chinese reforms and revolutionary movements at home and abroad up to the outbreak of China’s 1911 Republican Revolution and its overthrow of the Qing dynasty and creation of the Republic of China the following year. It examines two eventful decades of overseas Chinese political history from the rise of political reformism after 1898 to the historic turning point of the revolutionary movement around 1918 in North America and the broader transpacific context. In this study, the “transpacific” perspective also goes beyond a research focus on the “dynamic flow of ideas and peoples engaged in border-crossing on both sides of the Pacific,”2 especially the circulation of Western-originated constitutional monarchism and republicanism as well as their Chinese reformist or revolutionary advocates on the two sides. The book expands the analytical focus to examine progressive development and transformation

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of transpacific networks over two decades, both by Chinese reformers and revolutionaries in North America, including historic changes in their interpersonal ties such as kinship and local fellowship, and in their institutional links such as political alliances and associations. This book will address not merely the political fights for a Westernstyle constitutional monarchy or a republican polity in modern China by the Chinese in North America, but also their reformist and revolutionary self-transformation—particularly the fundamental change in their ethnic, homeland, and cross-cultural connections at interpersonal, institutional, and ideological levels. Such political movements and the resultant relational change among the Chinese in North America from the transpacific level down to the personal level deserve both broad and deep analysis with a network approach. The network approach has received increasing attention in the humanities and social sciences for its broad focus beyond personal attributes and behaviors as well as organizational structures and functions. This approach has advanced previous studies toward more comprehensive and complicated examinations of interpersonal and institutional relations.3 It conventionally focuses on “a set of network members (sometimes called nodes) and a set of ties that connect some or all of these nodes. Ties consist of one or more specific relationships, such as kinship, frequent contact, information flows, conflict, or emotional support.”4 However, the conventional network approach—including its analytical concepts, such as relational density, connectivity, and centrality—is more useful for research on informal interpersonal ties than on institutional links or formal organizations and established rules. Its strength lies in describing social relations, and its weakness in explaining relational changes and the dynamics for such changes. In particular, previous network analyses of Chinese society, business, and politics have exhibited a common tendency to stress interpersonal ties at the expense of institutional links.5 Studies of informal Chinese politics have especially denounced personal relationship as a source of political factionalism and demanded an institutional check on such cliquish tendency.6 Similarly, in previous literature on overseas Chinese migrants, social and business networks based on interpersonal relations have received special attention from scholars. Recently, studies of the informal and personalized “overseas Chinese networks,” including the scholarly tendency to link Confucian capitalism with the formation of guanxi 关系 or interpersonal ties,

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have already met criticism and even refutation.7 Moreover, contemporary studies of Chinese migrant networks have begun to focus on “institutions” composed of families, native-place associations, sworn brotherhoods, and so on,8 as well as the “new networks” of overseas Chinese voluntary associations and their institutional development.9 Nonetheless, network analysis of transnational Chinese political associations and movements is still scarce.10 In contrast, my recent work on sociopolitical associations in modern China has developed a broader and more dynamic network approach together with its flexible concepts for the analysis both of interpersonal and institutional relations and of relational changes. This analytical approach stresses that the strength and significance of a network reside in its relational institutionalization (e.g., routinizing, regulating, organizing, and formalizing process),11 expansion, and diversification, as well as interaction between the network members, which provide interactive dynamics for social and historical changes. This approach has helped my research to develop a key concept, “associational networks,” and to use it to reveal the state-society interactive impetus for the development of chambers of commerce and their influence on “modern China’s network revolution” from 1902 onward. This revolutionary change in modern China involved the unprecedented development of new associations in different circles as well as fundamental changes in sociopolitical relations, including the associational rally of social forces for multiform interactions with political regimes.12 This new network approach can also help reveal a similar pattern of historic change among the Chinese in North America during their transpacific reforms and revolutionary movements from 1898 to 1918. For such a purpose, this book brings relevant approaches in Chinese, Chinese American, and Chinese Canadian histories, as well as diasporic discourse, together into a network analytical framework. The network analysis will detect the two decades of revolutionary change among the Chinese in North America and their transpacific diaspora beyond the limits of a single nation-state or a specific academic field. It will also reveal the dynamics, degrees, and influences of the historic change in North American Chinese communities by examining the institutionalization, expansion, and diversification of their new associational networks—especially their reformist and revolutionary organizations—as well as interactions among the network members and other sociopolitical forces in a transpacific context. This book covers the transpacific reform and revolution of North

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American Chinatowns beyond the scope of modern Chinese history and its subfield, the conventional history of “overseas Chinese” or “Chinese sojourners,” namely, Huaqiao in Chinese. The term Huaqiao came into use in the 1890s, the beginning of the historical period for this book, and became popular from then onward. It reflects the overseas migrants’ relations with China, Chinese culture, and its cultural institutions, such as their homeland-originated families, lineages, native-place associations, sworn brotherhoods, and so on. This term is applicable to the early Chinese migrants to North America, including many reformers and revolutionaries. Because local citizenship was not an option in the face of racial exclusion, many of them remained connected and committed to their homeland, and supportive of its reformist or revolutionary nationalism before the mid-twentieth century.13 Before the Republic of China was established in 1912, most of these overseas Chinese were not only sojourners,14 but also subjects of imperial China. Many of them still kept the queue, a hairstyle imposed on Chinese men as a symbol of submission and loyalty to the rule of the Manchu from Manchuria, who conquered China and founded the Qing dynasty in 1644. Both reformers and revolutionaries inside and outside late Qing China would call for the abandonment of the “pigtail,” and many Chinese men did so under the influence of Western hairstyle.15 Still, the conventional scholarship on the “overseas Chinese,” particularly regarding their relations with China and Chinese culture, has not reflected such cross-cultural interactions between the sojourners and the receiving societies, such as the United States and Canada.16 A new line of revisionist scholarship has criticized the China-centric connotations in the usage of Huaqiao or “overseas Chinese.” It suggests the reverse term, “Chinese overseas,” as an alternative concept and points out that the majority of ethnic Chinese living outside mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong became citizens of their residing nations after the Second World War.17 This revisionist scholarship has “advocated that the Chinese overseas be studied in the context of their respective national environments.”18 Similarly, Chinese American and Chinese Canadian histories have developed in the postwar period and shown a common tendency to stress the relations of migrants from China with the United States and Canada, especially their failed or successful assimilation into the receiving societies as well as their battles against racial oppression and exclusion.19 However,

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the new concept, “Chinese overseas,” is likely more applicable to postwar migrants from China than to their prewar predecessors in North America, and the related Chinese American and Chinese Canadian histories have also been limited by their nation-state frameworks. Clearly, either of the two lines of scholarship on the “overseas Chinese” or “Chinese overseas” has provided only limited insights into their historical experiences within the national and cultural frameworks of China or a receiving country. A new scholarly trend is to study Chinese migration and migrants through the reconstruction of the Jewish-history concept of diaspora as a transnational approach to Chinese labor migration, diasporic networks, and so on. Yet the “diasporic networks” refer mainly to Chinaoriginated organizations for transnational Chinese migration,20 rather than their political associations stressed by this study. In particular, the study of the “Chinese diaspora”—the “scattering of peoples from China” around the globe—has been criticized for its overemphasis on “unified ethnicity, culture, language, and place of origin or homeland.”21 Indeed, the concept of diaspora had long been used to describe the enforced exile of migrants from China and their scattering, sojourning, and suffering in foreign lands, as well as their adherence to a homebound dream.22 In contrast, recent diasporic scholarship stresses voluntary Chinese migration from the homeland, their cultural creativity and diversity in new environments, and their connections with the homeland, the receiving society, and their geographically dispersed coethnics.23 Nonetheless, it still tends to focus on global dispersion and homeland links of Chinese migrants,24 or on their ties with both the homeland and their globally dispersed coethnic communities, rather than their relations with the receiving society.25 A comprehensive interpretation of the concept of Chinese diaspora should reflect not only the historical change from the predominantly traumatic dispersion of early migrants from China to their more triumphant transnational mobility at present, as well as their homeland and coethnic connections, but also their cross-cultural interactions with receiving societies and the resultant cultural hybridity and multiplicity. Thus, my recent research redefines the concept as “the Chinese dispersion (migration) across cultural and national borders, as well as the dispersed Chinese (migrants) with interactive links to their homeland, hostlands and co-ethnic groups.”26 This new concept presents a network perspective on the Chinese diaspora that links the dispersion of migrants from China with their cross-cul-

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tural venture across the homeland, hostlands, and globally dispersed ethnic communities and with their resultant hybrid cultural attachment to all of them. The network diasporic perspective brings together scholarly concerns about the homeland connections in the field of overseas Chinese history, the China-originated migrants’ relations with the United States and Canada in Chinese American and Chinese Canadian studies, and their globalized coethnic bonds stressed by recent diasporic discourse. A network analysis of the fundamental change in the tripartite diasporic relations brought by Chinese reform and revolution in North America—particularly by their development of new political associations through interpersonal, institutional, and ideological links across the Pacific—can address related concerns by scholars in the aforementioned academic fields. In contrast with conventional scholarship on the patriotic commitment and contributions of overseas Chinese to the homeland, recent research on their diaspora stresses its influence on China’s engagement in the global system and its resultant political transition. While previous studies of Chinese Americans often focus on their antiracism politics, the transpacific study of their reformist and revolutionary movements for China has examined these political events as the background and impetus for their own identity transformation.27 In this book, network analysis of Chinese reform and revolution in North America will further reveal how they brought homeland politics, especially reformist and revolutionary nationalism, into interaction with constitutional monarchism or republicanism from the West. Together with such cross-cultural ideologies, reformist and revolutionary associations further enmeshed the Chinese in North America and their coethnics across the Pacific Rim into two divergent but still interactive movements for political change in China and their transpacific diaspora, including the Chinatowns in the United States and Canada. The network analysis in this book confirms recent studies of the diasporic Chinese and their transpacific reform and revolution by stressing their influence on the development of more intensive and interactive relations between modern China and Western political cultures, and on their own connections with such hostland cultures, homeland politics, and coethnic groups across the Pacific Rim. In particular, Chinese reformers and revolutionaries in the United States and Canada would develop cross-cultural identities with the constitutional and republican politics in North America before their postwar naturalization as American or Canadian citizens.

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They would also move from the overseas periphery of homeland politics to the forefront of the battle for China’s political change. Moreover, their geographically scattered ethnic communities in the Pacific Rim, especially North American Chinatowns, would develop closer interrelations than ever before. In fact, the reform and revolution of the Chinese in North America reflected and also reinforced long-term changes in their internal and external relations at ideological, institutional, and individual levels. This book examines the transnational mobility of a few key political leaders and their cross-cultural political mobilization of the Chinese in North America. These leaders fused reformist or revolutionary nationalism not only with Westoriginated constitutional monarchism or republicanism, but also with personal affinity and group interests among local and provincial fellows. Both reformist and revolutionary associations achieved transpacific development and expansion through the use of hybrid ideologies, institutional links, and interpersonal ties—including kinship, friendships, local fellowship, business partnerships, and teacher-student relations. Because a network approach still pays attention to interpersonal ties, and the concept of diaspora can also refer to “personally or vicariously” built homeland connections and coethnic affect, emotion, and consciousness,28 such theoretical tools can help this book deepen the analysis of overseas Chinese political change at the individual level among both reformers and revolutionaries, especially regarding their leaders. Special attention will thus be paid to the individual agency of reformist and revolutionary leaders to use and transform both interpersonal and institutional relations among their political associations for their political mobilization across North American Chinatowns and the transpacific Chinese diaspora. The network analysis of such diasporic relational change will highlight the increasing institutionalization of reformist and principally revolutionary parties, including their progressive incorporation and transformation of interpersonal ties with institutional norms, ranging from formal membership, leadership, and organizational hierarchy to transnational systems and cross-cultural ideologies. It will reveal a higher degree of institutionalization and a broader expansion of these political associational networks across North American Chinatowns and the transpacific Chinese diaspora than the mostly primordial diasporic networks of families, native-place associations, and the like stressed by the aforementioned research.

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The network analysis of North American Chinese reform and revolution in this book stresses the importance of interpersonal ties to dynamic organizational development. But its exposure of personal factions among the reformers and its emphasis on the factional fights as a major cause of their political failure partly confirms previous studies of informal Chinese politics. This book highlights the unprecedented level of institutionalization and expansion of the revolutionary parties as a major cause of their successes over the reformist rivals. However, such institutional development of the revolutionary parties, such as the increasing centralization of their leadership, also left negative impacts on political changes in both North American Chinatowns and China itself. The network analysis of the cross-cultural hybridity in reformist and revolutionary ideologies, as well as the divergence between their respective advocates among the Chinese in North America, addresses criticism of the scholarly tendency to stress a united, coherent, and even homogeneous Chinese diaspora.29 Detailed examination of competition, connections, and other forms of interactions between these reformers and revolutionaries will reveal more political division within each North American Chinatown and even inside many Chinese families than any diasporic coherency or homogeneity. Yet it also shows their unprecedented ethnic connectivity along partisan lines. In short, a network approach will help connect Chinese, Chinese American, and Chinese Canadian histories; Chinese diasporic discourse; and especially studies of relational change among migrants from China within the different academic fields and nation-state or transnational contexts. It also provides analytical tools for empirical examination not only of the origins, interrelations, and influence of North American Chinese reform and revolution, but also of the relations between local and transpacific Chinese politics, and of the change in their diasporic networks from the past to the temporal scope of this book and beyond.

Acknowledgments

It gives me great pleasure to thank the following individuals and institutions for their help with this book. I owe particular gratitude to Gordon H. Chang for his constant concern, support, and guidance. Under his codirectorship with Shelley Fisher Fishkin and other scholars, the Stanfordbased “Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project” provided me with a precious opportunity to work with many of its participants and to build a solid foundation for this undertaking. I would also like to give my special thanks to Mark Granovetter, an authoritative scholar in the field of social network theory. He not only encouraged me to develop a new network approach in my previous publication by Stanford University Press, Modern China’s Network Revolution, in 2011, but also took the time to read my discussion about network analysis in this book’s “Preface” and provided affirmative comments. Two Stanford University Press editors, Margo Irvin and Cindy Lim, guided my work with their professional advice, efficient arrangements, and patient help. I would like to acknowledge the long-term influence on this book by Jerry H. Bentley, the late professor of world history at the University of Hawai‘i and my first mentor in this vast field. It was at his world history seminar that I started my own research on the transnational history of the Chinese in North America. Because this book involves documentary and theoretical analyses of issues in Chinese history, Chinese American history, and Chinese Canadian history, as well as Chinese diasporic studies, I benefited from the help of scholars in these various academic fields. Sue Fawn

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Chung, Jun Fang, Xiaorong Han, Madeline Yuan-yin Hsu, Evelyn Hu-Dehart, Hong Liu, Timothy J. Stanley, Di Wang, and Peter Zarrow kindly read parts of or the whole manuscript and provided instructive advice, critique, and encouragement to help improve the book. Drs. Chung and Hsu also served as two anonymous readers of this manuscript for Stanford University Press, and I am grateful for their incisive and inspiring reports, in particular, for Dr. Hsu’s advice to make network analysis the book’s primary approach. Moreover, the manuscript was greatly improved through careful copyediting by Jenny Clayton, Laura Daly, and Mary Carman Barbosa. Dr. Clayton enriched the book with her knowledge of Canadian history, and Ms. Daly and Ms. Barbosa helped my final revision of the manuscript with their professional advice. I would also like to thank Mr. Daniel Brendle-Moczuk for his cartographic work on the maps. Certainly, in this book, any errors and omissions that remain are entirely my own responsibility. I gratefully acknowledge the support I received from the following scholars in China. My research for this book started from a field trip to China in 2009. It was first supported by Zhang Xianwen, a leading scholar in historical study of Republic China at Nanjing University. His arrangement for my archival research at the Second Historical Archives of China was especially helpful. My subsequent research trip to Wuhan received support and guidance from the late Zhang Kaiyuan, another authoritative scholar in modern Chinese history and former professor at Central China Normal University. His two disciples and colleagues, Ma Min and Zhu Ying, as well as Chen Feng at Wuhan University, were also helpful for my research in Wuhan. In Guangzhou, Chen Chunsheng and Liu Zhiwei at Sun Yat-sen University made helpful arrangements for my research in the city itself and in Zhongshan Municipality. In 2012, I took a subsequent field trip to Taishan County, Guangdong Province, the homeland of many early Chinese migrants in North America. My visits to a few villages and towns in the county, the birthplaces of some historical figures in this book, were fruitful thanks to the arrangements of Chen Ming at Sun Yat-sen University (now at Nanjing Normal University) and the late Mei Weiqiang, former professor at Wuyi University, as well as his colleagues, particularly Huang Haijuan and Wang Chuanwu. Wang Chaoguang at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing twice helped arrange my documentary research at the library of the Institute of Modern History at the academy in 2012 and 2016. Helpful support for my documentary work also came from archivists and

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librarians at the University of Victoria; the University of British Columbia; British Columbia Archives; the East Asian Library at the University of Toronto; Library and Archives Canada; U.S. National Archives at Seattle, San Francisco, and College Park, Maryland; the East Asia Library at the University of Washington; the Ethnic Studies Library at the University of California, Berkley; and the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. In my field trips to dozens of towns and small cities in British Columbia and Alberta in Canada, as well as those in the states of Montana, Washington, and Oregon in 2012, 2013, and 2014, I received gracious help from the staff in the local museums and archives. I’m also pleased to thank John Adams, Chi Jeng Chang, Guo Ding, Bobbie Jia, Jane Leung Larson, Karen Xiao Ning Shi, Robert Leo Worden, Yang Zheng, Hao Zou, and the late Philip P. Choy for having shared with me their historical knowledge and documents. Nearly a dozen undergraduate students worked as research assistants to check and collect documentary sources, principally newspaper reports, for this book. In particular, the doctoral and master’s students under my supervision in the past decade helped the project through documentary collection or participation in discussions about its themes at my graduate seminars. They include Dennis Chen, Sydney Cunliffe, Yixiong Fu, Liang Han, Hairong Huang, Yen-kuang Kuo, Jill Levine, Yanshuo Liu, Liam O’Reilly, Dmitry Petrov, Geoff Sock, and Chris Weicker. Dr. Kuo’s archival work for the book at the Cultural Communication Committee’s Historical Archives of the Chinese Nationalist Party in Taibei is specially appreciated. Financial support for the book came mainly from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The Center for Asia-Pacific Initiatives and the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Victoria, respectively, provided me with time off from courses through faculty fellowships in 2012 and 2014, which greatly facilitated my documentary analysis at the early stages. The Department of History at the University of Victoria and my colleagues in the department—especially Gregory Blue, Penny Bryden, Jason Colby, John Lutz, Lynne Marks, John Price, Patricia Roy, Eric Sager, and Jordan Stanger-Ross—also provided help and/or encouragement for my research. Parts of Chapters 1 and 2 appeared in two of my articles, “Kang Youwei’s Activities in Canada and the Reformist Movement among the Global Chinese Diaspora, 1899–1909,” Twentieth-Century China 39, no. 1 (2014):

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3–23, and “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism and the First Transnational Organization of Chinese Feminist Politics, 1903–1905,” Twentieth-Century China 44, no. 1 (2019): 3–32. I thank the journal for allowing me to reuse these two publications. Finally, I wish to thank my wife, Limin Huang, for her support and sacrifice for my academic pursuits during our three dozen years of common life, principally for her companionship during my wanderings across the Chinese diaspora in the past thirty-two years. This book is dedicated to her. Our son, Victor Houwei Chen, joined our diasporic life since 2002, and has grown from a teenage boy into a young man during my work on the seemingly endless book project. I will always miss his frequent smiles and laughter as a toddler, but his maturity, independence, self-confidence, and dedication to university education has allowed me to have more time and peace to write this book.

Abbreviations

Major Organizations CCBA CELRA CERA CKT CNL KMT

Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association (Baohuang nühui, Women’s Society to Protect the Emperor) Chinese Empire Reform Association (Baohuanghui, Society to Protect the Emperor) Chee Kung Tong (Zhigongtang, Active Justice Society, or the Chinese Freemasons) Chinese Nationalist League (Guomindang) Kuomintang (Guomindang, the Nationalist Party, 1912–1918, and Zhongguo guomindang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, 1919–; or CNL overseas, 1914–)

Major Archival Collections in Bibliography CERAD CKTMO KTBSW SHHRA WXZXY

“Chinese Empire Reform Association Documents, 1899–1948” “Chee Kung Tong Materials and Other Chinese Language Documents” “Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection” “Shanghai Huanlong Road Archives, 1914–1925” Wu Xianzi xiansheng yigao ji suocang wenjian [Mr. Wu Xianzi’s posthumous manuscripts and collection of documents]

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Notes on Romanization and Currencies

This book generally uses the pinyin system, a modern form of romanization, to transliterate the names of Chinese people, places, and organizations according to their Mandarin pronounciations. For a person of Chinese origin, his or her surname is followed by the given name with no comma between them. The pinyin romanization of the full name is sometimes followed by its old spelling in parentheses upon first mention if the latter also appears often in historical documents. Chinese characters of the personal name will be provided if information about them is available. The old spellings of a few Chinese personal and place names as well as institutional titles, such as Sun Yat-sen, Canton, and Chung Sai Yat Po, are still employed in the book because they have been widely used in English sources or previous publications, but on the first mention of these names or titles, parenthetical pinyin spellings for them are provided. Historical documents rarely identify money as a specific national currency, so this is mostly inferred in the book according to the geographic and historical contexts of sources.

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Transpacific Reform and Revolution

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Introduction

After the gold rushes erupted first in California in 1848 and then in British Columbia in 1858, successive waves of Chinese migrants arrived in North America. The construction of the Central Pacific Railroad in the American West from 1862 to 1869, the Canadian Pacific Railway from 1880 to 1885, and other North American railroads triggered new waves of migration from China to the United States and Canada. The racist agitations in California and British Columbia led the American and Canadian governments, respectively, to restrict immigration from China beginning in the early 1880s and pushed many Chinese migrants to move east. Yet the Chinese in the United States and Canada continued to disperse mostly on the Pacific Coast ranging from California to British Columbia, and their communitywide organizations in the two countries also developed first in San Francisco and Victoria, respectively.1 Thus, these early migrants had already established a base of institutional networks for the development of reformist and revolutionary associations across the transpacific Chinese diaspora after 1898. The overwhelming majority of early Chinese migrants in the United States and Canada, together with the major leaders of their reformist and revolutionary movements, came from Guangdong Province north of Hong Kong.2 They utilized their transpacific networks, especially their local and provincial fellowship, for both migration and political movements. Thus, it is important to start network analysis of reform and revolution in North American Chinatowns with a quick look at the long-established transpacific

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2

Introduction

channels for migrants between Guangdong and North America and their native-place connections with both reformist and revolutionary leaders. Previous studies of the transpacific migration from Guangdong Province to the United States and Canada have often stressed that it resulted from “push” forces such as natural disasters, population pressure, sociopolitical unrest, and economic poverty in China, as well as “pull” forces in North America, such as gold rushes and employment and business opportunities.3 Yet Guangdong also distinguished itself from other provinces of China by its geographical proximity to Macao and Hong Kong, the two Western colonies that provided havens for illegal emigrants before Qing China fully repealed its anti-emigration laws—the dregs of its traditional closed-door policies—in 1899. Hong Kong particularly facilitated increasingly convenient trips across the Pacific through its development of relevant legal and shipping systems as well as migrant networks.4 Both colonies would provide political protection and pivotal links for reformist and revolutionary radicals in late Qing China and the Chinese diaspora (see Map 1). A leading political reformer first in late Qing China and then in the Chinese diaspora, Kang Youwei was born in Nanhai County 南海县 adjoining Canton, the provincial capital of Guangdong. His family had produced Confucian scholars over thirteen generations and government officials over the recent three, but his reformism had a Western origin. Since 1757, Canton had been Qing China’s only port open to Western merchants for foreign trade and residence. After Britain defeated the Chinese empire in the first Opium War (1839−1842) and seized Hong Kong as a colony, five “treaty ports,” including Canton, were opened on China’s coast. Hong Kong’s nearness to Guangdong helped facilitate the local people to lead the first large wave of transpacific migration when the California gold rush began in 1848.5 Both the Western military challenges and cultural influences would stimulate Kang’s reformist thoughts and activities. Kang Youwei’s home county, Nanhai, is centrally located in the populous and prosperous delta of the Pearl River, which flows through Canton and enters the South China Sea through its estuary between Hong Kong to the east and Macao to the west. The people of Nanhai and two nearby counties, Panyu 番禺 and Shunde 顺德, speak a near-standard form of Cantonese and constitute one of the largest local and dialectal groups, Sam-yup (Sanyi 三邑, three counties), among early Chinese migrants in both the United States and Canada.6 Their merchant leaders in Canada would provide the

Introduction

3

M a p 1 . Pearl River Delta Region, 1915

earliest help for Kang Youwei to launch his overseas reform in 1899, as is detailed in Chapters 1 and 2. Although Kang initially pursued a traditional career path from a Confucian scholar to an official in Qing China by taking the Confucianism-based civil service examinations, he also received Western cultural influence both through his visits to Hong Kong and the foreign settlements in Shanghai, and through his study of Chinese publications about the West. He even opened a private school in Canton to teach Western learnings to his students, such as Liang Qichao 梁启超 (1873−1929, see Figure 3 in Chapter 1), who would go on to become an influential reformist journalist. Kang finally passed the civil examinations at the national level and became a junior official in mid-1895, just after Qing China suffered disastrous failure in the Sino-Japanese War (1894−1895). The unprecedented national crisis prompted Kang to lead a reformist propaganda campaign and join the Qing government’s political reform in 1898. But the so-called Hundred Days’ Reform quickly ended with a coup of the conservative faction in the Qing

4

Introduction

court and forced Kang to take refuge abroad and seek resumption of the reformist movement overseas.7 Liang Qichao, Kang’s chief disciple and the most influential propagandist in their reformist movement at home and abroad, came from the coastal area southwest of Canton, the part of the Pearl River delta that included the county of Taishan 台山, named Xinning 新宁 before 1914, together with Xinhui 新会, Kaiping 开平, and Enping 恩平 counties. These four counties, especially Enping, were hillier and less fertile than the aforementioned three counties surrounding Canton. Their geographical proximity to the Portuguese colony of Macao, however, enabled local people to engage in foreign trade and illegal emigration up to the mid-nineteenth century. The natives of these four counties speak a distinctive Cantonese dialect and constituted the sizeable local and dialectal group, Sze-yup (Siyi 四邑, four counties), which also produced the largest number of migrants, principally laborers, to North America and Australia from the 1840s to the early twentieth century.8 They were particularly active supporters of Liang Qichao’s overseas reformist activities, in no small part because he was a native of Xinhui County and a member of their local and dialectal group.9 The major revolutionary leader, Sun Yat-sen, was also a native of Guangdong Province, born to a poor peasant family in Xiangshan County 香山 县 on the southern tip of the Pearl River delta. This county was renamed Zhongshan County 中山县 in 1925 after one of Sun’s other names. Its residents were mostly immigrants from other places or their descendants, and thus spoke variants of Cantonese and other dialects. Xiangshan’s adjacency to Macao led to the natives of the county forming the majority of residents in the Portuguese colony and also to engage in illegal emigration overseas before the mid-nineteenth century. Many people from this county, including Sun Yat-sen’s elder brother, moved to the Hawaiian Islands and formed the Chinese immigrant majority there by the late nineteenth century. Sun both benefited from the improvement of his family fortune as a child owing to his brother’s business success in Hawai‘i, and also joined him there as a thirteen-year-old young immigrant in 1879.10 Thereafter, Sun Yat-sen received a Western education first in Honolulu and then in Hong Kong, including training as a doctor in Western medicine. He even converted to Christianity in the British colony in 1884. But his political adventures started with his submission of a series of petitions for reforms and self-recommendations to the Qing reformist officials, rang-

Introduction

5

ing from a retired diplomat in his home county of Xiangshan in 1890 to officials in Shanghai, and finally to Li Hongzhang 李鸿章 (1823–1901), the governor-general of Zhili Province 直隶省, in June 1894. Sun’s failure in these attempts, including his self-recommendations for an official appointment, and his disenchantment in the reform efforts of the Qing government and its unsuccessful war with Japan led to his return to Honolulu. There he established his first anti-Qing revolutionary organization in November 1894, approximately eighteen years before his rise as the first provisional president of the Republic of China in 1912.11 Both Kang Youwei and Sun Yat-sen were influenced by Western culture and ultimately pursued reformist solutions to the national crises of late Qing China up to the early 1890s, but Sun turned to more radical anti-Qing revolution in part because of his personal failure to enter the Qing government and push for reforms from inside. After Liang Qichao became a political exile overseas following the failure of the 1898 Reform, he and some radical students of Kang Youwei would briefly pursue an alliance with Sun for a republican revolution against the Qing dynasty, but they would eventually return to the seemingly promising overseas Chinese reform movement under the leadership of their mentor.12 Evidently, personal pursuits and interpersonal ties such as teacher-student bonds at least partly influenced the political choices of these politicians hailing from the same province. Chinese scholars from the 1930s have also identified Sun Yat-sen with the Hakka (Kejia 客家, guest people), another ethnic group of people in Guangdong Province and southern China, who were so named for the migration of their ancestors or themselves to the areas around Canton. But recent studies have questioned this assertion regarding Sun’s Hakka identity.13 There is a similar claim about the Hakka identity of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, though it lacks supportive evidence.14 Nonetheless, this ethnic group had undoubtedly maintained a tradition of mobility at home and abroad. In Guangdong, the Hakka people concentrated in Jiaying Department 嘉应州 (renamed Mei County 梅县 in 1912), the mountainous area northeast of Canton. They had long pursued economic opportunities by migrating from such barren highlands in southern China to coastal areas, including the Pearl River delta, and farther to Taiwan and Southeast Asia by the mid-nineteenth century. In North America, the Hakka people from Guangdong constituted only a minority among the Chinese migrants.15

6

Introduction

Predictably, most Chinese migrants in North America formed close ties with reformist and revolutionary leaders, including Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and Sun Yat-sen, because they hailed largely from the same three local or dialectal groups in eight counties of Guangdong Province. One report on Chinese migrants in the United States from the community leaders of San Francisco’s Chinatown in 1876 provided information about their rough proportions in different local and dialectal associations: 7.7 percent from the Sam-yup dialectal group, or the three counties around Canton and nearby counties; another 7.7 percent from Xiangshan and neighboring counties; 80.7 percent from the Sze-yup dialectal group, or the four counties, plus nearby counties; and 2.6 percent from the Hakka group. The remaining 1.3 percent of migrants did not join any of these associations. Two other estimates of the Chinese migrants in the United States in 1878 and 1888 showed roughly similar proportions of migrants in these local and dialectal groups.16 A more reliable study of data on Chinese migrants in Canada from the early 1880s reports that 23.3 percent were from the Sam-yup dialectal group of the three counties, 63.6 percent from the Sze-yup dialectal group of the four counties, only 1.6 percent from Xiangshan (Zhongshan) County, and the remaining 11.5 percent from other counties of Guangdong Province.17 Kang Youwei and Sun Yat-sen, respectively, led reformist and revolutionary movements among the Chinese in North America who were mostly Cantonese speakers from the eight counties near Canton and shared a close local fellowship. Even the smaller number of Hakkas and the migrants from other counties of Guangdong were considered their fellow provincials. However, these predominantly Cantonese migrants had long developed their interrelations beyond interpersonal ties, which is the focus of conventional network analysis. Their “traditional institutions,” such as families, native-place organizations, and secret fraternal societies, constituted “the nodes in interlinked networks” for their global migration.18 Based on my previous research on modern China,19 this book uses the concept of “associational network” to analyze both reformist and revolutionary associations with modern features, their intertwined interpersonal and institutional relations, as well as their interactions with other sociopolitical forces in North American Chinatowns and the transpacific Chinese diaspora. Certainly, these associations developed on the basis of the preexisting migrant networks of families, native-place organizations, and other “tradi-

Introduction

7

tional institutions,” as well as their predominantly primordial kinship, local fellowship, and other personal relationships. Merchant leaders of migrants from Guangdong Province built transpacific family networks for business and political activities from the beginning. In September 1855, eleven Chinese business establishments in San Francisco issued a public appeal to white Americans for friendship in the face of rampant racism.20 Hop Kee & Co. (Hejihao 合记号), owned by Loo Chock Fan (Lu Zhuofan 卢卓凡) and his younger brother from Guangdong Province, led this petition. After the gold rush began in British Columbia in 1858, the Loo brothers opened Kwong Lee & Co. (Guanglihao 广利号) in Victoria, which quickly became the headquarters of the transpacific family business networks. In connection with Hop Kee & Co. in San Francisco, Kwong Lee & Co. had several branches across British Columbia and sister companies in Hong Kong and Canton. It also played a leading role in the local Chinese protests against racial discrimination until its decline during the Loo brothers’ court battle with each other in the late 1880s.21 The multifamily business partnerships that sprang from Guangdong Province also supplied the Chinese laborers for the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia from 1880 to 1885. The four major Chinese labor contractors of the railway came from the same Li lineage in Shuilou Township (Shuilouxiang 水楼乡), Taishan County, and they used their respective companies in San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Victoria for the recruitment, transportation, and management of railroad workers from Guangdong Province. Three of the four labor contractors from the Li lineage, together with merchant leaders of Victoria’s Chinatown, later led a legal battle against the anti-Chinese laws of the British Columbia provincial government in 1884, and also established their communitywide organization there.22 The first North American Chinese communitywide organization grew out of a federation of dialectal and native-place associations in San Francisco’s Chinatown, the so-called Six Companies that operated from the 1850s. It further evolved into the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of San Francisco (Jinshan Zhonghua zonghuiguan 金山中华总会馆) in 1882. Similar organizations also appeared in the Chinatowns of New York, Honolulu, and Portland, Oregon, by the 1880s.23 In Victoria, the merchant leaders of the local Chinatown—including Loo Chock Fan of Kwong Lee & Co. and the Canadian Pacific Railway’s three labor contractors from

8

Introduction

the Li lineage—formed the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (Zhonghua huiguan中华会馆, CCBA hereafter) in 1884, which became the representative of all migrants from China to Canada for decades.24 The use of the term “Zhonghua” or “Chinese” in CCBA’s bilingual title has been regarded as an indication of the change from a narrow, native-place identity to a national identity among its predominantly Cantonese members from Guangdong Province.25 These organizations appeared in American and Canadian Chinatowns from the early 1880s as the leading forces of community reforms that sought to thwart mounting racism through the internal removal of social vices and charitable care of poor and helpless migrants from China. Indeed, the birth of the CCBA in San Francisco and its appearance in Victoria coincided with the enactment of Chinese exclusion acts in the United States beginning in 1882 and the introduction of several anti-Chinese bills in British Columbia in 1884. These provincial initiatives were mostly aborted later for their violation of the Canadian constitution, but politicians in British Columbia still pushed the Canadian government to impose a $50 (CAD) head tax on each immigrant from China in 1885.26 These new communitywide organizations in American and Canadian Chinatowns had already begun community reforms before the leaders of Victoria CCBA joined Kang Youwei in overseas Chinese political reform in 1899, which is detailed in Chapter 2. Nonetheless, the CCBAs were small in number, and the family business establishments or dialectal and nativeplace associations in their respective Chinatowns still lacked institutional interrelations. Similarly, secret societies among the Chinese communities in North America, which predominantly originated from the same Hong Fraternal Society (Hongmen 洪门) in China, lacked institutional unity and engaged repeatedly in the notorious “tong wars” or factional fights with each other from their beginnings in California in the 1850s.27 The secret societies would engage in both reform and revolution in the transpacific Chinese diaspora, but the origins of the Hong Fraternal Society in China and its North America order are still controversial.28 Its early lodges or local branches appeared in San Francisco and Sacramento in 1854,29 and in Victoria and the gold-mining town of Quesnel Mouth (Quesnelle Mouth or Quesnelle before 1900; City of Quesnel now) in the Cariboo region of British Columbia by the 1870s.30 They used the same title as their predecessors in Guangdong Province, Hongshuntang 洪顺堂 (Society of the Hong Obedience).31 A larger order of the Hong Fraternal Society

Introduction

9

of North American origin—Chee Kung Tong (Zhigongtang 致公堂, Active Justice Society, CKT hereafter)—appeared in San Francisco’s Chinatown and registered with the State of California under an alternative name, California Chinese Free Mason Society, in 1879.32 A self-publication of the Chinese Freemasons in Canada claims that the Canadian CKT developed its earliest lodges in British Columbia in 1876, as do some previous studies of the issue. But such claims seem to lack supporting evidence or include self-contradiction and misunderstanding of the Canadian CKT’s rare documents from the Cariboo region in 1882.33 Most likely is that the CKT or the Chinese Freemasons spread from California to British Columbia through the Chinese workers who came from San Francisco to build the Canadian Pacific Railway in the early 1880s. Its lodges were thus developed successively in Victoria, along the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia, and farther north in the Cariboo region and other areas of Canada.34 Similar to the transpacific family businesses and communitywide organizations based in San Francisco and Victoria, the CKT lodges and other orders of the Hong Fraternal Society in both the United States and Canada included only fellow provincials, even specific groups of clansmen, local fellows, and dialectal speakers from Guangdong. The institutional connections among the different families, community organizations, and fraternal secret societies were sporadic or temporary beyond a specific Chinatown, as were their interactions with homeland and hostland politics. However, their internal and external relations would undergo profound change through engagement in the North American Chinese reforms and revolutionary movements and associations. From a network perspective, the preexisting transnational family companies, communitywide organizations, and even secret societies in North American Chinatowns not only laid a foundation but also set precedents for the future reformist and revolutionary associations to use both interpersonal and institutional ties in their development. But these political associations would distinguish themselves by their numerous chapters, formal institutional structure, broad network expansion into diverse overseas Chinese communities beyond the Cantonese-dominated Chinatowns in North America, and intensive interactions with both homeland politics and hostland cultures in the transpacific context. The different levels of institutionalization, expansion, and diversification of the political parties under the leadership of Kang Youwei or

10

Introduction

Sun Yat-sen, as well as their competition and other forms of interaction with each other and with other sociopolitical forces, would significantly determine the fate of their respective political movements. This book adopts such a new network perspective in its analysis of the reform and revolution among the predominantly Cantonese migrants in North America, as well as their political associations and influences in the transpacific Chinese diaspora from 1898 to 1918, although the reformers suffered fatal failures from 1909, especially after the Republican Revolution around 1911. The first three chapters of the book focus on the North American trips of Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen, and other politicians in connection with the political mobilization, organizational development, and transpacific expansion of the Chinese reform and revolution in the United States and Canada. The fourth chapter covers the period after the 1911 Revolution created the Republic of China, and it focuses more on the institutional development of Sun’s revolutionary parties and that of his rival forces, the former reformers and the Chinese Freemasons, in their mutual competition for overseas Chinese support with a common slogan to protect the fragile republic. As a whole, the book examines the origins, interrelations, and influences of Chinese reform and revolution in North America and the transpacific diaspora for two decades. Chapter 1 starts with Kang Youwei’s involvement in the short-lived political reform of the Qing government in 1898 and his subsequent initiation the following year of radical reform of both China and Chinatowns through interactions with the Western political systems and overseas Chinese migrants in North America. It stresses his collaboration with merchant leaders of Canadian Chinatowns to launch a political reform and reformist association with patriotic and antiracism slogans. He then used his Guangdong provincial contacts in Canada and the United States as well as his former students and second daughter to expand this reformist association and its movements, including its women’s branches and their feminist activities, to Canadian and American Chinatowns, as well as to the Chinese communities across the Pacific Rim. Subsequently, Chapter 2 follows Kang Youwei’s consecutive trips from Canada to the United States and Mexico from 1904 to 1906 and the simultaneous expansion of his reformist association through its transpacific mobilization against American racism, its promotion of constitutional reform in China, and its development of a transnational business empire. While

Introduction

11

this reformist association rapidly expanded through interpersonal and institutional relations, the pursuit of individual, familial, and even factional interests by its leaders, including Kang himself, as well as their personal and cliquish clashes also contributed to its transpacific decline by 1909. Chapter 3 explores the transpacific mobility of Sun Yat-sen and his revolutionary fellows in their efforts to use personal connections with Chinese Freemasons and Christians to develop their own political associations for anti-Qing revolution in American and Canadian Chinatowns before and after 1909. Their successes in North American Chinatowns and in China’s Republican Revolution around 1911 relied not only on their combination of Western-originated republicanism with ethnic Chinese nationalism against the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty, but also on their assimilation of personnel, political strategies, and institutional resources from Kang Youwei’s reformist camp. Chapter 4 concentrates on the development of Chinese political parties in North America as highly institutionalized and politicized networks. It goes beyond the 1911 watershed in the Chinese Republican Revolution of most previous studies and further examines revolutionary struggles led by Sun Yat-sen for the fragile Republic of China and his partisans’ competition with Kang Youwei’s followers and the Chinese Freemasons in North America. This chapter attributes the hegemonic rise of Sun’s party in North American Chinatowns and in future China to its increasing institutionalization and expansion under centralized leadership and other political strategies. It also discusses the internal strife over the centralization of leadership in Sun’s parties and the radical tendency among his partisans to deal with political opponents with violence, including assassinations. Both network analysis and documentary research in this book reveal the origins and dynamics of North American Chinese reform and revolution from the interactions of their political leaders with migrant activists. The book challenges previous studies that often ascribe the origins of such overseas Chinese political movements and organizations solely to the transnationally itinerant agitators, such as Kang Youwei and Sun Yatsen,35 while neglecting these movements’ reactions to antiracism and other political initiatives of the migrant populace. The book also provides a comprehensive examination of the myriad interactions between diasporic reformers and revolutionaries beyond the infighting stressed by other studies.36 In particular, this research reveals the historic influence of both

12

Introduction

types of political movements on the transpacific Chinese diaspora, mainly on the diaspora’s unprecedented politicization and ethnic connectivity, its deep involvement in homeland politics, and its relations with North American hostlands beyond their racial tension. Finally, the book presents an argument about a network revolution in the transpacific Chinese diaspora on the basis of documentary analysis of the institutionalization, expansion, and diversification of reformist and revolutionary associations as well as their interactions with each other and with other sociopolitical forces across the Pacific Rim. This book focuses mainly on reform and revolution in the Chinese communities along the western coast of North America, ranging from California to British Columbia (see Map 2). But it also examines the interactions of these movements with politics of modern China and other overseas Chinese communities in the Pacific Rim, as well as the political cultures of the West, especially the United States and Canada. It crosses the static borders of the different nations and disciplinary fields within their nation-state frameworks, such as the history of modern China versus Chinese American or Chinese Canadian studies. Its analytical scope often expands flexibly to follow the transpacific mobility of political leaders and migrant activists as well as their relational expansion to different cities in the Pacific Rim, such as Canton, Shanghai, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Honolulu, San Francisco, Victoria, and Vancouver. Pacific Canada, including the cities of Victoria and Vancouver, will receive special attention in this book because it served as a central arena of Chinese reforms and revolutionary movements in North America and the Pacific Rim between 1898 and 1918, but has long been neglected in studies of overseas Chinese politics. This book complements and also connects previous studies of overseas Chinese reform and revolutionary movements in Japan,37 Southeast Asia,38 and the United States.39 Its network analysis draws from and also links up existing accounts of such overseas Chinese politics in these various regions. This study thus distinguishes itself from previous works on the local history of individual Chinatowns, which often focus on the so-called “forbidden city within Victoria”40 or the racialized “enclave of Chinese settlement” in Vancouver during the racist era.41 By contrast, my research stresses the interrelations among these Chinatowns and their interactions with China and with American and Canadian societies through reformist and revolutionary movements from the local to the transpacific level.

M a p 2 . Western Regions of North America, ca. 1910

14

Introduction

This panoramic view of the broad connections of local Chinatowns in Pacific Canada, especially those in Victoria and Vancouver, enriches recent scholarship on transpacific Chinese migration and communities based in Hong Kong, San Francisco, and other cities in the Pacific Rim.42 In this sense, this work goes beyond the conventional local history that has long been limited to “the study of individuals and groups interacting within a specific locality in the past.”43 Instead, my network analysis of the Chinese reform and revolution in North America as well as their transpacific connections confirms that local history should be local-centered rather than a locally contained historical study so as to reveal its links in a broader context.44 In other words, local history can center itself on a specific locality but also link itself with broader historical movements beyond the locally confined milieu. From a network perspective, Chinese reform and revolution in North America developed through interpersonal and institutional links across the transpacific world in space as well as in time. While this study starts its historical narrative from Kang Youwei’s engagement in the 1898 Reform in Qing China and in overseas Chinese political reforms thereafter, it also reaches back to an earlier period to trace Kang’s use of personal and associational networks to mobilize reforms. Similarly, discussion of Sun Yatsen’s leadership in the Republican Revolution across the Pacific, particularly in North America, looks back upon his 1894 initiation of a revolutionary party in Honolulu and formation of the party’s first North American chapter before 1898. The deep-rooted analysis goes beyond the focus of other research on Sun’s leadership of the 1911 Revolution by following his continuing struggle for the Republic of China until he and his followers turned to the militant fight for a single-party state around 1918. The book ends with the case study of Tang Hualong’s assassination in 1918 and its relationship to the new partisan politics and related political violence thereafter. While the political activities and transpacific mobility of Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen, and other elite politicians are a prominent focal point in the book, especially its first three chapters, their respective movements did not necessarily promote Chinese migration to North America between 1898 and 1918. According to available demographic data, the Chinese population in the United States decreased from 89,863 in 1900 to 61,639 in 1920,45 but it increased from 17,312 to 39,598 in Canada between 1901 and 1921.46 This demographic disparity resulted mainly from the imposition of Chinese ex-

clusion acts in the United States beginning in 1882, while Canada imposed merely a head tax on migrants from China from 1885 until 1923, when it followed the American path.47 The contrasting policies toward Chinese immigration in the United States and Canada help explain why most reformist and revolutionary leaders successfully launched their political movements first in Canada and then in the United States, although Sun Yat-sen’s use of his Hawaiian connections aided his North American travels to some extent.48 In order to examine the political history of the Chinese diaspora from the transpacific down to the local, familial, and personal levels, this book sifts through extremely rich and diverse sources ranging from the personal collections of leading reformers and revolutionaries and family documents of merchant leaders in North American Chinatowns, to English and Chinese newspapers as well as archives of various Chinese organizations and governments of China, Canada, and the United States. From 1898 to 1918, Chinese reformist and revolutionary organizations in North America left unusually rich documents. These sources not only provide a solid documentary foundation for this book, but also enable it to correct oral history errors or other erroneous accounts in the self-publications and academic works on these Chinese sociopolitical organizations.

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C h a p t er 1

Kang Youwei and the Rise of Overseas Chinese Political Reforms from North America

As a pioneering political reformer in late Qing China, Kang Youwei actually started his reformist activities in an effort to eliminate the sexist custom of binding women’s feet in his home county of Nanhai, and his initiative soon became politicized organizational action. Starting in 1883, Kang refused to impose the foot-binding practice on his two daughters, and condemned the custom for its physical torture of women. He also initiated an anti–footbinding association with a few local elites, but it soon dissolved under the Qing government’s banning of such associational activities in its attempt to maintain political control. Nonetheless, Kang’s action on this issue sparked a trend for him to form and use associational forces for his reformist activities in Qing China and overseas.1 By the 1880s, the Qing government had already carried out the “selfstrengthening” (ziqiang 自强) programs, which included a series of largely unsuccessful attempts to strengthen its imperial system with Western-style weapons, schools, factories, companies, and the like. In contrast, Kang Youwei’s first reformist petition to the throne, in 1888, requested radical institutional reform of the Qing government’s political structure. His attempt to submit this memorial through his official contacts inside the Qing government failed,2 but Kang would continue his efforts to use both formal institutional channels and informal personal contacts to build his political networks for his reformist activities at home and abroad. Kang Youwei took more than twenty years, until mid-1895, to pass the three-level civil service examinations, receiving the degree of metropolitan 17

18

Kang Youwei and the Rise of Overseas Chinese Political Reforms

graduate (jinshi 进士) at the late age of thirty-seven and a routine appointment as a second-class secretary in the Board of Works (Gongbu zhushi 工部主事) of the Qing government. In view of China’s recent failure in the Sino-Japanese War and the subsequent crises, Kang did not assume the secretarial post but turned to reformist mobilization for national salvation. He led a nationwide movement to establish study societies of scholars and their newspapers for the purpose of promoting political reforms. Kang’s reformism would influence the Guangxu Emperor (Guangxudi 光绪帝, 1871−1908, see Figure 5 in Chapter 2) before and during the 1898 Reform, or the Hundred Days’ Reform.3 While Kang’s importance in the short-lived 1898 Reform has attracted intensive attention from scholars, his subsequent political activities overseas have either been condemned for his promotion of a constitutional monarchy against the anti-Qing revolution, or commended for his continual mobilization for progressive reforms in Qing China.4 In fact, after Kang’s first two visits to Canada in 1899 exposed him to Western ideas ranging from racism to constitutionalism, he launched and led more radical reforms for both China and the Chinese diaspora for a full decade before the antiQing revolution rose in North American Chinatowns. Kang would also work with Chinese migrant leaders to form and expand a new reformist association in North America, and his young disciples would help develop its transpacific networks through new initiatives, such as feminist reformism.

Kang Youwei’s American Dream and Reformist Mobilization from China to Canada After the failure of his first reformist petition to the Guangxu Emperor in 1888, Kang Youwei drafted a string of four more memorials to the throne from mid-1895 to the beginning of 1898, and finally attracted the emperor’s attention through his tutor. As a result, Kang received an imperial order to offer his reformist ideas to high-ranking officials through a court meeting on January 24, 1898, and then presented his sixth memorial to push for the initiation of political reform from above.5 He pursued not only the Guangxu Emperor’s patronage for a top-down reformist strategy, but also foreign support of his ambitious reform plans. The attempts of Kang’s reformist group to seek British and Japanese support for the 1898 Reform have received scholarly scrutiny,6 but his search for American sponsorship in the era between the 1898 Reform and his first visit to North America still

Kang Youwei and the Rise of Overseas Chinese Political Reforms

19

deserves a systematic examination.7 Kang’s failures to receive such foreign support after the 1898 Reform, especially his thwarted attempts to enter the United States in 1899, would lead to a dramatic change in his strategy for reformist mobilization from China to Canada. Kang Youwei’s search for support from the United States emulated the pursuit of the “American dream”—the popular-culture reference to the utopian aspiration for rosy opportunities in the American land8—because it was unrealistic from the beginning and unsuccessful at the end. As early as January 1, 1898, Kang Youwei used an imperial censor to submit a memorial to the Guangxu Emperor, proposing to form an alliance with Britain against German invasion on China’s northern coast. This memorial also proposed to use railroads and mines as security to borrow money from American merchants to purchase warships and even for military support of American officers and soldiers. On March 8, 1898, Kang used another imperial censor to submit a special memorial, proposing to borrow 200−300 million taels (roughly 244−366 million ounces) of silver from American merchants. He fancied that such an immense loan would provide the United States with a strong incentive to keep other foreign powers in check in China for the protection of its own merchants’ interests. Kang would make a more desperate and visionary attempt to look for British, Japanese, and American political and military support toward the end of the 1898 Reform,9 but none of these proposals were approved by the Guangxu Emperor, nor did they receive any positive response from these foreign powers.10 Another strategy in Kang Youwei’s political activities from mid-1895 was to use study societies to rally comrades and preach reformist politics, but these attempts suffered setbacks even before the Hundred Days’ Reform started in June 1898. When Kang heard the news about the Qing court’s concession to Japan after the Sino-Japanese War in May 1895, he gathered more than 1,200 candidates for the imperial examination in Beijing and drafted the famous “provincial graduate petition” (gongche shangshu 公车 上书) on their behalf, which has been regarded as his second memorial to the Guangxu Emperor.11 His petition included one proposal to resist foreign economic intrusion after the war by establishing “chambers of commerce” (shanghui 商会) after the model of the British East India Company and the Dutch East India Company, though he actually mistook the two kinds of Western business organizations as the same kind of institutions.12 His mobilization of overseas Chinese political reform would start from an attempt to form a transnational corporation in Canada.

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Kang Youwei and the Rise of Overseas Chinese Political Reforms

In particular, Kang successively initiated the Society for the Study of National Strengthening (Qiangxuehui 强学会) in Beijing and Shanghai in late 1895, and the Society to Protect the Nation (Baoguohui 保国会) in Beijing in April 1898.13 He drafted the platform of the latter with the slogan of “protecting China’s nation, the Chinese race, and the Confucian religion” (baoguo, baozhong, baojiao 保国、保种、保教).14 This slogan called for political reforms for the purpose of saving China from internal crises and foreign invasion, including the Christian threat to the Confucian religion.15 Both of Kang’s associations were short-lived because of attacks from conservative officials, and his plan for chambers of commerce would not come to fruition in China until 1902.16 As a result, Kang Youwei adopted the tactics of using and strengthening the Guangxu Emperor’s power mainly to push reform forward.17 However, after the emperor launched the well-known Hundred Days’ Reform on June 11, 1899, the true decision-maker in the Qing court remained his aunt, the Empress Dowager Cixi 慈禧 (1835−1908). A critical analysis of the emperor’s reformist edicts during the short-lived movement has revealed that they largely promoted continuation and further development of previous reforms in regard to educational, economic, military, and administrative issues, rather than Kang’s radical proposals for institutional changes in the imperial political system.18 In particular, Kang proposed to form an emperor-controlled bureau of imperial institutions (zhiduju 制度局) composed of dozens of talented people selected from across the country, which would operate as the royal advisory and decision-making body under the Guangxu Emperor for top-down reforms. Because Kang’s plan for the bureau of imperial institutions met adamant resistance from the conservative faction, his associates in early September 1898 instead petitioned the Guangxu Emperor to establish a palace of grand works (maoqindian 懋勤 殿) with similar advisory and decision-making functions, but the Empress Dowager Cixi soon rejected the plan.19 Previous studies have interpreted the bureau of imperial institutions in Kang’s plan as a quasi-parliament with lawmaking functions, but this bureau and the planned palace of grand works quashed by Cixi differed from the Western-style institutions composed of elected representatives. Whether Kang and his associates proposed to form a parliament (yiyuan 议院) during the 1898 Reform is still debated by scholars, but both his published and unpublished writings around that time betrayed his belief that China was

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not ready for a parliament because its people were not sufficiently enlightened.20 Kang would change his attitude about the parliamentary issue after his visit to Victoria the next spring. Although Kang Youwei was an active agitator for the 1898 Reform, he remained a second-class secretary of the Board of Works at the beginning of the reformist movement. After his only exclusive audience with the Guangxu Emperor on June 16, Kang received a new appointment as secretary in the Office of Foreign Affairs (Zongli yamen 总理衙门). He further received the imperial assignment to manage a reformist newspaper in Shanghai on July 26, nearly two months before the reform ended with a coup by Empress Dowager Cixi on September 21. Kang’s appointment on June 16 has been interpreted as the emperor’s limited commitment toward him due to conservative opposition in the Qing court. Kang felt disappointment at the new assignment for the Shanghai newspaper project and delayed his departure from Beijing.21 In any case, the Guangxu Emperor’s dispatch of Kang to Shanghai on July 26, the climax of the Hundred Days’ Reform in Beijing, showed Kang’s peripheral position in the reformist movement. He would not become a major leader of political reforms until he rekindled the reformist movement overseas from North America. Kang Youwei received these two unimportant assignments in the 1898 Reform also because the empress dowager controlled both decision-making power and high-ranking appointments in the Qing court. Because the emperor lacked authority, he issued a secret edict on September 15 to Yang Rui 杨锐 (1857−1898) and three other newly appointed secretaries of the Grand Council (Junjichu 军机处), including Tan Sitong 谭嗣同 (1865−1898), eliciting their deliberation and advice. This edict expressed the emperor’s concern about the limitation of his power and even the loss of his throne, as well as his eagerness to replace conservative ministers with reformers without offending the empress dowager. Kang would later publish an altered form of the secret edict as an imperial order to him to mount a “secret rescue” (mijiu 密救) of the throne, and use the royal salvation mission for his reformist propaganda in Canadian Chinatowns and other overseas Chinese communities.22 This secret edict immediately accelerated the militant conspiracy of Kang’s faction against Empress Dowager Cixi. On the evening of September 18, Tan Sitong secretly met Yuan Shikai 袁世凯 (1859−1916), a proreform general of the Qing government’s New Army (Xinjun 新军) in Tianjin,

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who had been appointed as an alternate vice minister of the Board of War (houbu Bingbu shilang 候补兵部侍郎) by the Guangxu Emperor just two days earlier. After Tan presented his plot to besiege the Summer Palace (Yiheyuan 颐和园) with Yuan’s troops and kill the empress dowager, he failed to receive a firm commitment from the general. That same evening, a conservative official’s memorial prompted Cixi to return to the imperial palace in central Beijing the next day, September 19, 1898. She staged the antireform coup on September 21 and put the Guangxu Emperor under house arrest. Yuan’s report of Tan’s plot to kill Cixi motivated her to order the arrest and summary execution of six reformers—including Tan, Yang Rui, and Kang Youwei’s younger brother Kang Guangren 康广仁 (1867−1898)—on September 28.23 At the last crucial moment of the Hundred Days’ Reform, Kang’s reformist faction not only resorted to militant conspiracy against the Empress Dowager Cixi but also rushed headlong into a desperate attempt to look for support from foreign powers, including the United States. After Tan Sitong’s unfruitful meeting with General Yuan Shikai in the evening of September 18, 1898, one of Kang’s associates proposed to contact Edwin Hurd Conger (1843−1907), the American minister in Beijing, for help. They discussed the plan until the early morning of the next day and finally abandoned it because Conger had no military forces available for any helpful action. Kang then met a British missionary in China, Timothy Richard (1845−1919), on the morning of September 19, and they discussed a naive plan to secure British protection of the Guangxu Emperor by making Richard an imperial adviser. That afternoon, Kang paid a visit to Itō Hirobumi 伊藤博文 (1841−1909), the first prime minister of Japan but an out-of-office politician in Beijing around that time, about a similar plan to make Itō another imperial adviser. Through reformist associates, Kang submitted to the Guangxu Emperor two memorials on September 20 and 21, 1898, which requested the appointment of Itō and Richard as imperial advisers and also presented Richard’s presumptuous proposal to form an alliance or even a federation of China, Britain, the United States, and Japan.24 The two memorials would be Kang’s final adventures in the Hundred Days’ Reform before it ended in a palace coup on September 21, 1898. He had already received the Guangxu Emperor’s edict on September 17, ordering him to leave Beijing immediately for his newspaper assignment in Shanghai. Kang later claimed to have received a second secret edict from

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the emperor to rescue the throne, but his claim has been refuted by historians. Nonetheless, the imperial edict prompted his departure from Beijing on September 20, just one day before the coup, and he reached Shanghai on September 24 as a fugitive pursued by the Qing authorities. With the help of British diplomats, Kang soon escaped to Hong Kong on a British warship. As one of Kang’s former students and chief assistants in the 1898 Reform, Liang Qichao (see Figure 3) also received protection from Japanese diplomats and fled from Beijing to Japan on a Japanese warship.25 After Kang Youwei fled to Hong Kong on September 29, 1898, with the help of British diplomats, he immediately began to look for foreign support for his attempt to restore the Guangxu Emperor’s power and reformist program. Kang met Lord Charles Beresford (1846−1919), a British rear admiral and a member of Parliament, who was exploring trade information in East Asia on behalf of the Associated Chambers of Commerce in England. Kang mistook Beresford for a former lord commissioner of the admiralty and claimed to have received his promise to help save the Guangxu Emperor. He also wrote letters to foreign diplomats in Beijing for help, including a special one to Conger that requested the American government provide a military rescue for the emperor. In the British parliamentary debate over the issue in June 1899, Beresford would indeed call for Britain’s joint action with the United States, Japan, and Germany for an “open door” policy toward China by taking over its army. 26 Because the British and Japanese empires competed with imperial Russia in China and used the emperor’s reformist faction against pro-Russian officials in the Qing court, they protected Kang at first and granted him asylum. But the Japanese and British governments soon decided to protect their imperialist interests by maintaining the status quo in Qing China.27 Meanwhile, Washington had determined to pursue its interests in China by keeping the balance of foreign powers there and averting the collapse of the Qing dynasty. In particular, the administration of President William McKinley (1843−1901) would develop its own version of an open-door policy that urged major powers to open the Chinese markets within their spheres of influences equally to the trade of other countries, primarily to American business interests, and to keep China’s sovereignty for the purpose of preserving order within its own borders.28 In order to pursue this presumably open-door policy, the American government would close the door on Kang Youwei’s political adventure.

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Kang’s “American dream” of seeking support from Washington was therefore only one piece of his unrealistic plan to secure military help from Britain, the United States, and Japan for the restoration of the Guangxu Emperor and his political reforms. Because the British government would not make its final decision about this issue until its parliamentary debate in June 1899, up to that time Kang would still receive courteous treatment from the authorities in Canada, a dominion of the British Empire. But his plan to seek Japanese support initially suffered setbacks. The Japanese government gave him permission to pass through Japan only while en route to the United States and England. After Kang joined Liang Qichao and other reformist exiles in Japan in October 1898, his contacts with Japanese politicians of approximately five months’ time achieved nothing for his political plan. Instead, the Japanese government issued a polite order to leave Japan with a 7,000 (or 9,000) yen fund for his trip to the United States and England. One of his Japanese associates, Nakanishi Jūtarō 中西重太郎 (1875−1914), would be his English interpreter on the trip.29 Kang Youwei took a Japanese ocean liner from Yokohama to Seattle, but he would unexpectedly land in the western Canadian port of Victoria,30 and his subsequent attempts to enter the United States from Canada would be thwarted by the Chinese Exclusion Act imposed by the American government from 1882.31 As a result, Kang would unexpectedly prolong his exile in British Columbia from April 7, 1899, and finally take a cross-Canada tour until May 20, before he went to England to seek British support.32 Nonetheless, Kang still pursued his American dream as part of his attempt to seek foreign support for political reforms in China until he succeeded in reformist mobilization among Chinese migrants in Canada. Prior to Kang’s arrival, Victoria’s newspapers had already spread his fame through a series of reports about his close relations with the Guangxu Emperor in the 1898 Reform and the subsequent coup by Empress Dowager Cixi. In October 1898, a report about an interview with Kang in the Times of London included a thrilling tale about how he had helped the Guangxu Emperor launch a pro-West reform movement in the Qing court, and finally received from the emperor two secret edicts for a rescue of the throne just before Kang’s own escape from arrest by Cixi.33 Kang’s fame as a former imperial adviser for the reformist emperor and his background as a fellow provincial of the migrants from Guangdong Province would guarantee him a warm welcome by them in Victoria, despite being a fugitive pursued by the Qing government.

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When Kang Youwei’s ship reached Victoria on the evening of April 7, 1899, he immediately faced the same discriminatory treatment as other Chinese immigrants, including being subject to the $50 (CAD) head tax imposed on every Chinese immigrant, with the exemption of certain nonlabor passengers. Moreover, every Chinese arrival had to go through a strict medical examination in quarantine at William Head southwest of Victoria.34 Kang expressed both anxiety about these immigration procedures and curiosity about the first Western city he would see. According to a newspaper report, “he was on deck and everywhere asking questions” about the quarantine laws and other issues. In particular, he asked “what was Victoria’s population; its manner of municipal government; its facilities for policing and protecting against fires; its school and hospital arrangements.”35 A Chinese cook at the quarantine station spotted Kang Youwei’s name on his luggage and reported his arrival to a merchant director of Victoria’s CCBA, and the latter in turn conveyed the news to Lee Mong Kow (Li Mengjiu 李梦九, 1863−1924), the Chinese interpreter in the customs house and incumbent vice president of the CCBA. He welcomed Kang and his bodyguard, Li Tang 李棠, at the wharf together with other local Chinese merchant leaders.36 Probably with Lee Mong Kow’s help, Kang and Li Tang claimed to be members of the diplomatic corps and thus avoided paying the Chinese head tax.37 Kang recorded that hundreds of local Chinese lined the streets to greet him.38 A newspaper also reported that “the large crowd of Chinamen were soon engaged in the most animated gesticulations and ‘kow-towing’” as Kang’s carriage approached them.39 In Victoria, a Canadian immigration record described him as a man of forty-two years [forty-one years in the Western age-counting system]. It also included a detailed record about his physical appearance: “5’2” [1.58 meter] tall; long features; pits on left temple; a few grey hairs.”40 A local newspaper report provided a more vivid image of Kang: He dresses in a long, blue gown, and wears the circular cap with the red button of the mandarin class. Even his shoes are typical Chinese slippers … [He] speaks rapidly and often in a jocular vein, and the laughter, which ripples on his own lips, proves infectious, for he keeps his audiences in the best of humor.41

Kang’s inflammatory oratory and radical reformism, especially his direct interactions with local Chinese merchants and labor migrants, would soon lead

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to mass mobilization for new political reforms in the Chinatowns of Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster, the three largest cities of British Columbia. On the morning of April 8, 1899, Kang Youwei was accompanied by Lee Mong Kow in a carriage “driving about Victoria for the purpose of sightseeing and studying local conditions and customs.”42 He later recalled Victoria’s “view of glittering snow on the mountains [in all seasons] and mighty waves from the vast Pacific Ocean … Thousands of islands are all around, and scenic beauty is secluded but superb in the Americas. The weather is neither cold in the winter nor hot in the summer. It is really a wonderful place for keeping good health and studying foreign culture.”43 But Kang soon started political activities in the city for his reformist cause. In addition to an interview with the Colonist, a major newspaper of Victoria, after his arrival on the evening of April 7, he talked with a reporter of another local newspaper, the Daily Times, in the early afternoon of April 8. In both interviews he requested British intervention in Chinese politics for the purpose of resuming his reformist movement.44 Kang later published a shortened version of his interview with the Daily Times in a Chinese reformist journal based in Japan, but he deliberately omitted the pro-British statements.45 On the same afternoon of April 8, Kang was called on by Victoria’s mayor, and he then visited the British Columbia legislative buildings, a newly completed architectural masterpiece in the provincial capital. In the company of F. Carter Cotton, the provincial minister of finance, Kang visited the central chamber of the provincial legislature, the educational department, and other offices. The visit to the legislative buildings so impressed Kang that he told Minister Cotton that he would build something similar in China once he “returned to power.” After the minister casually assured him of British support, Kang “bowed low and expressed his thanks in profuse terms.”46 Kang Youwei’s visits to these Canadian officials and government offices showed his dual purpose of procuring foreign support for his reformist movement and making a personal inspection of Western institutions. On the morning of April 10, Kang resumed his political activities in Victoria after a Sunday break, meeting with the lieutenant governor of British Columbia—the representative of the British monarchy and nominally the highest official in the province. He also reviewed warships at the Esquimalt naval base west of Victoria. At noon, Kang paid a return visit to the mayor in Victoria’s city hall and used this opportunity to inspect the city’s fire brigade and prison, as well as the nearby provincial jail.47

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Kang Youwei also approached the American consul in Victoria, Abraham E. Smith, for entry into the United States, but it turned out that Kang was still subject to the Chinese Exclusion Act that had been imposed by the American government to stop labor immigration from China in 1882. He would not be able to enter the United States unless the Qing government provided him with a certificate to prove his status as a member of the exempted nonlaborer classes. Because Kang was on the most-wanted list of the Qing government, US Consul Smith contacted the customs officer in Port Townsend, Washington State, to see if it would be possible to admit Kang without an exemption certificate from the Qing government. Kang did not receive a reply before he left Victoria for Vancouver on April 13, 1899.48 Nonetheless, Kang Youwei’s inspection of the Canadian governments, educational system, and military facilities in Victoria soon inspired him to develop a new reformist program for China. On April 12, he announced a set of systematic principles for the reformist cause: “Representative parliamentary government, a system of national banks, state ownership of mines and railways, free education, both elementary and advanced, and including the establishment of technical schools and government seminaries for military and naval training.”49 This new program was more radical than his previous proposals for the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898 when he still regarded a parliament as being inappropriate for China.50 A historic moment in Kang Youwei’s stay in Victoria came with his first public speech to thousands of Chinese migrants at the CCBA’s buildings in the local Chinatown on the evening of April 8, 1899. He not only launched reformist propaganda among the overseas Chinese populace for the first time but also became aware of their political demands through direct contact.51 After describing the reformist program of the Guangxu Emperor in 1898 and his miserable life after the failure of the reform, Kang raised his voice and cried out: “Do you want China to strengthen itself? If so, please clap your hands! Do you hope for the restoration of the Guangxu Emperor? If so, please clap your hands.” The audience responded as one with thunderous applause. After the speech, Kang heard sad stories from audience members about their wandering lives in Canada and their suffering from racial discrimination, and learned of their worries about the fates of the reformist movement in China and of the homeland itself.52 Thereafter, his reformist propaganda would begin to pay attention to overseas Chinese issues.

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The Chinese Board of Trade in Vancouver held a special meeting on the evening of April 9 to discuss a plan to invite Kang to the city. At first, none of the attendees dared express any opinions because they feared persecution of their relatives in China by the Qing court for their support of Kang, who was considered a rebel in Qing China. The silence was broken almost half an hour later by Dr. Lui, or Liao Yipeng (Lew Yick Pen 廖翼朋), a dentist in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Liao first endorsed the plan to invite Kang because he regarded Kang highly as a former adviser of the Guangxu Emperor and a prophet of the Chinese people. Then, Yip Sang (aka Ye Chuntian 叶 春田 or Ye Liansheng 叶连生, 1845−1927, see Figure 4) and Chang Toy (Chen Cai 陈才, aka Chen Daozhi 陈道之, 1857−1921), two of the richest merchant leaders of Vancouver’s Chinatown, led the enthusiastic discussion toward a unanimous decision to welcome Kang with a reception.53 One of Yip Sang’s nephews, Yip Yen (Ye En 叶恩, aka Charley Yip Yen, 1861−1930, see Figure 4), who was the Chinese interpreter at Vancouver’s customs house, went to Victoria to welcome Kang in person.54 It is worth mentioning that Yip Sang and Yip Yen were, respectively, a major founder and a leading figure in Vancouver’s CKT, or the Chinese Freemasons.55 Kang Youwei still placed hopes for his reformist cause on American and British support. At his meeting with the mayor of Vancouver on April 13, the same day of his arrival in that city, he took the opportunity to thank the British for protecting his life after the failure of the 1898 Reform and spoke again about his plans to travel to London for further help.56 The high point of Kang Youwei’s first visit to Vancouver, however, was his public speech at the city hall on the evening of April 14. His lecture was attended by an audience of about one thousand Chinese from Vancouver and nearby towns as well as Japanese and Caucasian guests.57 In his speech, Kang Youwei deplored not only the weakness of China under the rule of Empress Dowager Cixi but also the disunity among millions of Chinese at home and abroad. He urged the solidarity of the Chinese people in all counties, prefectures, and provinces of China, as well as in foreign countries.58 After Kang “exhorted them to unite as one man to spread the gospel of Chinese reform in America,”59 he declared that a united Chinese people could defend themselves and save their nation. Even if their homeland could not be saved from foreign annexation, he declared, they would still be able to stand on their own merits as the Jews did in foreign lands. Unlike his previous lecture in Victoria, Kang’s speech in Vancouver

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did not end with shouting slogans to restore the Guangxu Emperor. But the comparison of overseas Chinese to the stateless Jews made his Chinese audience “sigh with feeling or weep in silence.”60 This speech showed that, while Kang still continued his top-down strategy of pursuing political reforms through the restoration of the emperor’s power in the Qing court, he also pursued a new bottom-up tactic of promoting a reformist movement through popular mobilization and solidarity at home and abroad. After the meeting, a local newspaper reporter presented Kang Youwei with a telegram warning that a Chinese highbinder had come from Seattle to Vancouver to assassinate him. Kang, however, was well protected by dozens of local Chinese “as though he were the Czar of Russia.” He told the reporter: “I believe that my countrymen in British Columbia are with me in my efforts for reform and I fear no assassin.”61 In a letter on April 11, 1899, the British colonial secretary in Ottawa, Joseph Chamberlain, had transmitted Kang’s request for protection to the governor general of Canada, the Earl of Minto. Chamberlain’s letter requested that a detective be put in charge of Kang’s security on his cross-Canada tour for his transatlantic trip to England because the Qing government had “put a price on his head.”62 As a result, a Canadian police officer was assigned to Kang as his personal escort beginning on April 18.63 The British request for special protection for Kang prior to his London trip evidently raised his profile in the eyes of Canadian politicians and would help in his subsequent visit to Ottawa. Meanwhile, Kang Youwei received the discouraging notice that the customs collector at Port Townsend in Washington State had refused to admit him into the United States without an exemption certificate from the Qing government. US Consul Smith in Victoria then made another request to the Department of State in Washington, DC, to admit Kang as a political exile. The need to wait for a reply from Washington and repeated invitations from the Chinese in nearby New Westminster caused Kang to visit that city and extend his stopover in Pacific Canada.64 As a result, Kang made more significant changes in his reformist propaganda. Kang Youwei’s visit to New Westminster began on April 18, and he first met the mayor of the city and then toured various urban institutions, such as the provincial jail, a mental asylum, and a gold-storage facility. Most significant, however, was his public speech at the opera house on the evening of April 19, in which he announced new reformist initiatives. The speech lasted about two hours and attracted more than six hundred Chinese resi-

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dents and about fifty Caucasian guests, including several women. While Kang’s lectures in Victoria and Vancouver successively had stressed the restoration of the Guangxu Emperor and the solidarity of Chinese at home and abroad as the keys to his reformist movement, the lecture in New Westminster further called for the reform of the overseas Chinese themselves and of their relations with the Caucasian residents in Western society.65 At the beginning of Kang Youwei’s speech, he refuted the foreign stereotype that Chinese felt no patriotism, and instead praised the overseas Chinese for their patriotic support of the reformist cause.66 After a detailed account of the 1898 Reform under the Guangxu Emperor and its failure, Kang roused his audience with the following suggestions and rhetorical questions: Now, dear friends, do your duty toward China. Be good citizens of whatever country you are in; observe the English laws, keeping them as though you were in China; may the English friends admire your good behavior. Be friendly, and have brotherly love toward each other. Now, you have heard all I had to say. Would you like to reform China? Would you be pleased to see your Emperor restored to power? Will you be glad to see China make good progress and become a powerful nation? Now if you do, say “Hig lo” (Yes). Here the speaker rose, as he concluded his address, and as he raised his hands above his head, the audience followed suit, shouting as one man: “Hig lo [Yes]!”67

Kang’s speech to the Chinese migrants thus included a new plan to promote reform of both China and Chinatowns, calling for the development of their internal solidarity, law-abiding behavior, and friendly relations with the Caucasian people. In subsequent meetings and discussions with merchant leaders of Chinatowns in Vancouver and New Westminster, Kang Youwei further proposed to unite all overseas Chinese through a transnational corporation. But he was not able to pursue this plan because of his quick departure. In late April 1899, US Consul Smith’s communications with Washington, DC, made it clear that Kang still could not enter the United States from western Canada.68 Thus, he decided to leave Vancouver at the beginning of May 1899 and reroute through “Ottawa and New York en route to England.”69 Kang still had hopes of winning foreign support through this trip. He had sent his

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interpreter, Nakanishi Jūtarō,70 back to Japan and replaced him with Claude Ley Kum (Chen Enrong 陈恩荣), a highly Anglicized Chinese scholar who had been born in Australia and came directly from Hong Kong. Kang returned to Victoria to prepare for his trip, accompanied by an additional interpreter, Loo Gee Wing (Lu Zhirong 卢梓荣, aka Lu Yangqiao 卢仰 乔), who had inherited the largely bankrupted Kong Lee & Co. in 1887 but rebuilt his family business to some extent and remained a merchant director of Victoria’s CCBA in 1899.71 Kang Youwei, his Chinese retinue, and his Canadian police bodyguard started their eastward trip from Vancouver on May 3, 1899.72 Their train first ran on the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia that had been built mainly by the laborers from China in the early 1880s. As Kang described in his travel notes, the tracks spread like a long snake around high mountains and across deep ravines, and his train passed through more than eighty tunnels and over numerous trestles. The view of clear torrents below and of snowy hills above formed a beautiful contrast and a marvelous spectacle. He also wrote depictions in poem and prose of his excitement as the train reached a flat hilltop in the Rocky Mountains: Silvery moonlight spread from the azure sky over white snow on thousands of ridges and peaks, creating a bright and splendid scene like a jade palace in heavenly paradise. After the train crossed the Rocky Mountains, Kang still enjoyed views of the boundless stretch of the prairies and Lake Superior, especially its thousands of islands in a vast expanse of misty and rolling waters.73 The entourage reached Ottawa late at night on May 8, 1899. While there, Kang Youwei’s political activities resulted in both success and failure. He met Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier (1841−1919) and visited the Canadian Parliament. On May 10, the governor general of Canada, the Earl of Minto, invited Kang to a state ball with about seven hundred guests.74 It was Kang’s first such event, and his excitement over his Canadian journey seemed to peak in Ottawa. His travel notes included detailed records about his meetings with Laurier and the Earl of Minto, as well as descriptions of dances in the ballroom, and he wrote a poem boasting that the governor general had specifically invited a young female artist from Toronto to paint a portrait of him.75 From May 12 to 16 he went sightseeing in Montreal, and on May 17 and 18 took a tour to Toronto and Niagara Falls, but he did not leave any notes or poems about Montreal or that great natural wonder of the world.76 His unusual silence about these

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trips might have stemmed from his frustration with his failed attempts to enter the United States at that time. Indeed, Kang Youwei repeatedly approached the American embassy in Ottawa for admission into the United States. He also sent a personal telegram to Washington, DC, on May 10 and enlisted the help of a Canadian official for such purpose. But all of his attempts turned out to be futile. Kang was thus forced to give up his original plan to seek support from the American government through a visit to Washington, DC, and then travel from New York to Europe. Instead, he decided to depart from Montreal for his transatlantic trip.77 While Kang Youwei ultimately failed to enter the United States from Canada or to obtain American support for the restoration of the Guangxu Emperor and political reform in China, a few merchant leaders of Vancouver’s Chinatown had successfully turned his proposal for a transnational corporation into practical efforts to organize overseas Chinese. Evidently, Kang’s proposal had originated from his famous “provincial graduate petition” in May 1895, which had included a plan to unite Chinese merchants into Western-style joint-stock companies, or what he misnamed as shanghui or chamber of commerce, for resistance to foreign economic intrusion. He converted his earlier plan into a new proposal for a transnational Chinese corporation in Canada, largely because his merchant associates in Canadian Chinatowns were already operating such business establishments. Among them, Lee Mong Kow claimed to have operated King-Tsi-Ching Company since 1888 with branches in Victoria, the Cariboo region of British Columbia, and Montreal, as well as ones in San Francisco, Hong Kong, Canton, and Australia,78 aside from the aforementioned Kwong Lee & Co. of Loo Gee Wing’s family. Kang’s plan easily won support from these Chinese merchants. According to a Vancouver newspaper report, the founders of the transnational corporation included Yip Sang, his nephew Yip Yen, and five other Chinese merchants in the local Chinatown. They claimed that Kang was “the originator of the scheme” and vowed to send out agents to establish the company’s branches “in every city of any size in Canada, the United States and Australia.” Specifically, they planned that this commercial venture would open a bank, build steamships, and even construct a railroad in Mexico, with all of these business establishments centrally managed by headquarters in Vancouver. These merchants scheduled the inaugural meet-

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ing of the transnational corporation on May 19 to elect its officers79—interestingly, just one night before Kang and his Chinese retinue sailed from Montreal to England on May 20, 1899.80 In London, Kang Youwei would experience the final failure of his attempts to obtain foreign governments’ support and to resume the top-down political reform under the Guangxu Emperor. Nonetheless, Kang Youwei’s first visit to Canada, particularly his contacts with the Chinese in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster, had enabled him to initiate a reformist movement for both China and Chinatowns. His new call for political reforms by the overseas Chinese populace—especially for their global solidarity, self-salvation, and equality with Caucasian people—went far beyond the scope of the short-lived reformist movement in the Qing court in 1898. Principal leaders in Vancouver’s Chinatown set to organizing a transnational corporation and also planned for its global expansion and for rallying all the overseas Chinese. Kang would again receive a warm welcome by the Chinese in Canada even after his political failure in England. Their collaboration would lead to the establishment of a new reformist organization in British Columbia and its early development in North America, principally on the West Coast.

The Birth of a New Reformist Association in Canada and Its Expansion in the United States Kang Youwei returned from England to Montreal on June 21, 1899, just one month after his departure, and his second visit to Canada lasted for nearly four months until October 10.81 Li Donghai’s early work on Chinese Canadian history incorrectly assumed that Kang remained in Canada from May 20, 1899, until April 1900, and some subsequent works have also failed to notice Kang’s return from England to Canada for the second visit in late June 1899.82 In fact, it was during Kang’s second visit to Pacific Canada that he led the new institutional initiative to revive the failed reformist movement under the Guangxu Emperor through the creation and transnational expansion of the Chinese Empire Reform Association (CERA hereafter), or Baohuanghui 保皇会 (Society to Protect the Emperor).83 This political association would develop a new set of institutional and ideological formulas and thus overshadow the preexisting “diasporic networks” based mainly on kinship and local fellowship.84 Its organizational development would soon outstrip that of the few chapters of Sun Yat-sen’s first

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anti-Qing secret society that had started from Honolulu in 1894, five years earlier.85 In particular, it would reverse Kang’s previous strategy of using the Guangxu Emperor’s power to promote top-down reforms; in its place was the new plan to develop a popular association as the driving force of the bottom-up overseas Chinese reformist movement under a slogan of protecting the emperor. As with his first unexpected Canadian tour, Kang Youwei did not anticipate his expedited return from England for his second visit to Pacific Canada in the same year. Nor did he intend at that point to pursue his previous proposal to form a transnational corporation as a reformist organization. Upon his arrival in Vancouver in April 1899, Kang relayed to local newspaper reporters that the plan for his journey to England was to seek support from the British government for his reformist cause, settle down in London, and then start visits to other European countries.86 Kang’s hopes were quickly dashed upon his arrival in London. During the lengthy debate in the House of Commons on June 9, 1899, the proposal of British military intervention in Qing China failed to pass because of concerns over civil service expenditure, and instead, the final decision was to befriend the de facto ruler of the Qing government.87 In fact, Kang suffered both political failure and financial loss in England. He did not see even “the ghost” of British Prime Minister Robert Salisbury, as his secretary complained.88 To make matters worse, Kang lost most of his travel funds from the Japanese government to a burglar in London and could not afford to live there. When the broken and disappointed Kang returned from Liverpool to Montreal together with his retinue on June 21, 1899, a mere month after their departure, they could not even continue the journey back to Pacific Canada.89 Kang Youwei’s Chinese secretary from Victoria, Loo Gee Wing, left Montreal for Victoria alone, and he soon exposed Kang’s failures in London and tried to persuade Lee Mong Kow and other local Chinese merchant leaders to keep their distance from Kang and his cause. But Kang’s fervent followers regarded Loo’s tale as “slander.”90 One man even made several unsuccessful attempts to assassinate Loo.91 As a successor to the founders of Kwong Lee & Co., once the largest Chinese business establishment in Victoria’s Chinatown, Loo’s split with Kang foreshadowed the clashes between Kang and overseas Chinese merchant leaders, especially those from Vancouver, in the reformist movement of the future. In Montreal, the desperate Kang sent a telegram to Lee Mong Kow in

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Victoria, asking for financial help, and Lee in turn forwarded the telegram to Yip Yen in Vancouver. Upon receiving funds and a prepurchased firstclass train ticket from Yip’s associates in Montreal, Kang returned to Vancouver on July 3, 1899. There he still won enthusiastic support from the local Chinese community, partly because he misleadingly bragged about the full support from the British government on his London trip.92 Kang immediately requested that the Canadian government restore his police protection, stating that he planned to leave Canada for China on July 9, only a few days later.93 To the contrary, however, his July 9 letter to Prime Minster Laurier stated that he would remain in Canada for some time and “spend the hot weather in some quiet islands close by.”94 A major reason for the extension of his stay in Canada, as he told a newspaper reporter in Vancouver, was his new plan to “spend some days here and in New Westminster perfecting the organization of the reform party here.”95 This “reform party” obviously refers to the transnational corporation—soon to be renamed CERA—created by Yip Yen, Yip Sang, and other Chinese merchants in Vancouver. CERA would become the first truly global political organization of the overseas Chinese, and Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao would become its two main leaders, but they left mutually contradictory accounts of its establishment. Kang’s proclamation of 1906 indicated that he founded CERA in Victoria on July 20, 1899, and that his initiative received support from Li Fuji (Lee Folk Gay 李福基, aka Li Wenhui 李文惠, 1846−1918) and other merchant leaders in the city as well as Yip Yen from Vancouver and Liu Kangheng 刘康恒 (aka Liu Zhangxuan 刘章轩 or Law A. Yam, 1870−1909) from New Westminster. But one of Kang’s writings in 1911 deliberately excluded Yip from the list of CERA’s founders because of their mutual animosity after 1906.96 Kang’s revised account of CERA’s establishment influenced most biographical works on his political activities.97 On the contrary, Liang Qichao left an inscription on the 1903 group photo of Yip Yen, his uncle Yip Sang, and four other Chinese merchants of Vancouver, which indicated that Kang had founded CERA along with them in Vancouver, not Victoria, in mid-1899. Liang’s inscription thereby traced the origin of CERA to the transnational corporation proposed by Kang and formed by these merchants in Vancouver in May 1899 (see Figure 4),98 but this discrepancy has long escaped scholarly attention. Indeed, the two major monographs on CERA present divergent accounts of its founders, birthdate, and place of origin in Canada. An early work on

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F i g u re 3 . Liang Qichao and his reformist comrades in Vancouver, 1903 (Courtesy of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library). This photo shows Liang (standing in the middle), his two companions (on his two sides) on their North American trip, and local reformist leaders in Vancouver, including Liang Rushan (second from left), Yip On (aka Ye Tingsan, third from left), and four others who are identified in Figure 4. Source: Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, Won Alexander Cumyow Collection, RBSC-ARC-1153-2PH-27. Reprinted with permission.

CERA by L. Eve Armentrout Ma traces its origin to Vancouver on July 20, 1899, but it lacks supportive evidence. That work also attributes the founding of CERA only to Kang and his pursuit of the reformist cause as one of the “outside agitators,” rather than to local Chinese and their political initiatives.99 By contrast, a relatively recent monograph on CERA locates its birthplace at 1715 Government Street in Victoria, dates its formation to July 20 or 23, 1899, and lists Yip Yen together with Kang as its two founders.100 Thus, it is necessary to reexamine CERA’s formative process in the context of Kang’s interaction with local Chinese merchant leaders in Pacific Canada.

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F i g u re 4 . First Executive Officers of the Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada, 1903 (Courtesy of Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library). This photo shows Yip Yen (aka Charley Yip Yen, standing) and other major reformist leaders in Vancouver. They include (from the left): He Zhenxiang (Ho Jun Chung), Yip Sang (aka Ye Chuntian), Lee Kee (aka Li Qingchi), Huang Yushan (aka Wong Soon King), and Won Alexander Cumyow. Liang Qichao’s inscriptions on both sides of the photo identify them as cofounders with Kang Youwei of the Chinese Empire Reform Association. Source: “The Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada: First Executive Officers,” 1903, in Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, Won Alexander Cumyow Collection, RBSC-ARC-1153-1-11-PH-04. Reprinted with permission.

In fact, the formation of CERA involved longer and more dramatic interactions between Kang Youwei and merchant leaders of Chinatowns in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster than previous studies have described. After Kang’s return from England to Canada, he initially stayed in Vancouver between July 4 and 9, except July 6−7 when he attended a meeting and other activities in New Westminster.101 In Vancouver, Kang was treated to a party at a restaurant by local Chinese merchant supporters. He proposed to found a new reformist organization under the title of

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“society to protect merchants” (baoshanghui 保商会)—probably based on the aforementioned transnational corporation that had been formed in May 1899—and to issue one-dollar certificates as shares of stock to its participants. His proposal immediately received enthusiastic endorsement from merchant participants at the party within the restaurant, and they subscribed to more than a thousand shares of stock on the spot. Nevertheless, Kang did not yet make a formal announcement of the formation of this association in Vancouver.102 Kang Youwei left Vancouver for Victoria on July 9 together with his retinue, including the Canadian police escort. According to an available police report, Kang engaged in sightseeing activities in Victoria thereafter, moving around the city by carriage from July 10 to 14, and then went sailing in the nearby seawaters starting on July 15. The police report also shows that he attended an evidently large-scale meeting at the Chinese theater on the evening of July 10, and went to another meeting at a Chinese restaurant on July 13.103 Presumably, Kang was presenting his plan to establish a reformist association at such meetings and calling upon the local Chinese community for support. He initially nominated Lee Mong Kow, his first contact in Victoria and the vice president of the local CCBA, as president (zongli 总理) of the planned “society to protect merchants.” Because Lee firmly declined the nomination, it became difficult to proceed with the plan for founding the new reformist association in Victoria. Nonetheless, Kang Youwei continued his political activities among local Chinese merchants, including Li Fuji, Chu Lai (Xu Li 徐礼 or Xu Quanli 徐全礼, aka Xu Weijing 徐维 经, 1847−1906), Feng Xiushi 冯秀石, Lu Runshan 卢仁山, Xu Linfu 徐 林福 (aka Xu Weisan 徐畏三), Lu Jin 陆进, and Lin Lihuang (Lam Lap Fong 林立晃, aka Lim Sam).104 It is worth noting that Chu, Feng, Xu, Lu Runshan, and Lu Jin were the major founders and earliest leaders of the communitywide organization in Victoria’s Chinatown, the CCBA, from its inception in 1884.105 Both Lu Jin and Lin Lihuang were also leading figures of the CKT or the Chinese Freemasons in Victoria.106 Like Yip Sang and Yip Yen in Vancouver, Lu, Lin, and other CKT leaders in Victoria supported Kang’s reformist mobilization for China and Chinatowns because the Hong Fraternal Society and its branches, particularly those in North America, were mainly mutual-aid organizations,107 and they were convinced by Kang’s call for overseas Chinese unity and self-protection

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through political reforms. The North American CKT inherited from the Hong Fraternal Society a traditional political slogan of “resisting the Qing and restoring the Ming” under Chinese rule (fan-Qing-fu-Ming 反清复 明). Kang’s political mobilization in Canadian Chinatowns also used the two so-called secret edicts from the Guangxu Emperor to call for a militant revolt for the rescue of the throne (qibing qinwang 起兵勤王), and thus catered to the CKT’s traditional slogan for a primitive “revolution” against the Manchu conservative rulers in power.108 For this political purpose, Kang once attempted to reuse the title of the aforementioned Society to Protect the Nation or Baoguohui for the new reformist organization, but the demise of this society under the attacks of conservative officials in the Qing court on the eve of the 1898 Reform made the title an unsafe choice for overseas merchants.109 At Kang’s meeting with the two CKT leaders, Lu Jin and Lin Lihuang, as well as with other merchants in Victoria, one of them, Huang Xuanlin 黄宣琳 (1836−?), proposed changing the title of the planned Baoshanghui, or the Society to Protect Merchants, to that of Baohuanghui, or the Society to Protect the Emperor. Kang immediately accepted this proposal.110 Lee Mong Kow’s choice of the English title for the organization—the Chinese Empire Reform Association—was in fact a more accurate reflection of its political purpose.111 Thereafter, Chu Lai and Lu Renshan, two merchant founders and leaders of the local CCBA, nominated Li Fuji as the president of CERA. Li accepted the nomination only after Kang urged him with the admonishment: “At present our motherland is in great danger. To initiate this association for national salvation is the duty of our citizens.”112 According to a report by Kang Youwei’s Canadian police escort, they attended a “meeting in the Chinese theater” on July 17−18, 1899, and then Kang “was writing letters and receiving visitors” over the next two days.113 This police escort told a local newspaper that Kang was working on a plan “to organize all the Chinamen in the United States and Canada into one body … If the plan which he is working on succeeds, Chinese banks, investment agencies and financial institutions will be established wherever there is money to be made.”114 Thus, CERA, which evolved from the transnational corporation created by Yip Yen and other merchant leaders of Vancouver’s Chinatown two months earlier, was formally established in Victoria in late July 1899. The plan for the transnational corporation was absorbed into that of CERA in order to unite the Chinese in North America through this

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reformist association and its profit-making businesses. A local newspaper also reported the performance of a Chinese orchestra in the theater on July 18, which was probably part of the inaugural ceremony of the new CERA.115 But Kang did not announce the formal establishment of CERA in Victoria until July 20, 1899, when he finished drafting its founding documents together with his “visitors,” as his police escort reported above. By that time, the merchant leaders of Vancouver’s Chinatown had already selected Yip Yen as the president of the CERA chapter in that city. Soon after, Liu Kangheng established another chapter in New Westminster and became its president.116 Both Yip and Liu joined their Victoria counterparts and Kang in CERA’s inaugural meetings on July 20, 1899.117 A stone inscription for Victoria’s CERA premises, erected in 1905 at 1715 Government Street, indicates that Kang Youwei, together with Li Fuji, Yip Yen, and Liu Kangheng as well as other merchants from Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster, jointly founded CERA.118 Because the building did not appear until 1905,119 it could not be CERA’s birthplace in 1899, as some previous studies have assumed.120 Nor could it be its first office, which was located at 1625 Government Street until the new office building was built.121 Evidently, CERA was neither initiated by Kang Youwei alone nor created by him solely with Yip Yen, as some studies of this association have assumed. It resulted from Kang’s reformist mobilization among thousands of Chinese migrants in Pacific Canada starting in early April 1899, and from his subsequent interactions with Chinese merchant leaders in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster up to late July of that year. Based on its embryonic predecessor in Vancouver, CERA eventually grew out of Kang’s four days of large-scale meetings with these merchant leaders in Victoria on July 17 to 20, 1899. In terms of both its titles in Chinese and English as well as its organizational origins, CERA owed its birth primarily to the local Chinese initiatives in Victoria and Vancouver, not merely to Kang’s reformist agitation for political reforms in late Qing China and the Chinese diaspora. Kang Youwei incorporated both political and business interests of the overseas Chinese into the programmatic document for this association, “The Preface for Regulations of the Society to Protect the Emperor” (Baohuanghui xuli 保皇会序例). This document was probably drafted during the inaugural meeting of CERA on July 17−20, 1899, and finalized by September of that year. It was soon reprinted as the preface and regulations for a “corporation (gongsi 公司)” to protect the emperor.122 Previous studies of

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the document have affirmed its effective use of the emperor-protecting slogan for the reform and salvation of China.123 They have also noted CERA’s use of “corporation” for its business activities in order to attract overseas Chinese, but Kang’s concern about more urgent political issues for overseas Chinese, such as racial discrimination, has been widely overlooked.124 Kang’s preface to CERA’s regulations condemned not only the foreign invasion of China but also anti-Chinese racism abroad, including the Chinese Exclusion Acts imposed by the American government from 1882, the Chinese head tax in Canada, and even the harassment of the Chinese by white teenagers on North American streets. Kang stressed that the major purpose of his reformist movement was to save not only the Guangxu Emperor and the Chinese nation, but also the “yellow race” (huangzhong 黄种), especially overseas Chinese, from racist discrimination. In order to unite all Chinese, he planned the reformist association at the local, national, and global levels. Kang also called for the development of newspapers, banks, and the like, and solicited for donations to these business ventures. He promised these donors industrial stocks or official positions as their rewards, including the possible promotion of a savior of the emperor from a commoner to the position of prime minister.125 Clearly, CERA was able to achieve rapid development among overseas Chinese not simply because Kang Youwei promoted reform of Qing China under the slogan of monarchist patriotism, but also because he adapted its reformist program to their business and political interests. In fact, CERA’s slogan of “saving the emperor” turned its overseas Chinese participants from passive seekers of protection from the Qing dynasty and its Manchu monarchy into active protectors of Qing China under foreign threat and of its reformist emperor under house arrest. It effectively mobilized them with the new platform for political reform of China and the Chinese diaspora, as well as with the old appeals for rescuing an enlightened but endangered emperor by loyal and chivalrous warriors in popular legends. Four days after the inauguration of CERA in Victoria on July 20, 1899, Kang Youwei moved to Sidney, a small port city north of Victoria, and resumed his sailing activities around small islands nearby over the next few days.126 Kang’s own account showed that he had a severe headache due to the long exile, and had to live on small Wen Island (Wendao 文岛). After living in a tent for a while, he moved into a room in a fisherman’s house and named it the Hut under the Vast Heaven (Liaotianshi 寥天室).127 Ac-

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cording to a local newspaper report, “Kang was living in a bare upper story of a Canadian frame house, with no furniture beyond a trestle bed and a rough pine table, with a couple of chairs.”128 However, Jung-pang Lo, a grandson of Kang Youwei, maintained that Kang retreated to Wen Island not for health issues, but for the purpose of eluding assassins of the Qing court. Because Kang’s writings mentioned his visit to a Wei Si Island owned by a Chinese—Wei Si 魏四, the nickname of Wei Ding-gao 魏鼎高—Lo also suggested that Wen Island was in fact Coal Island north of Victoria. But Lo’s only corroborative evidence appears to be anecdotal, in that some of Wei’s sons were born on Coal Island.129 Lo’s suggestion could be confirmed because Kang Youwei’s Canadian police escort reported their meeting with several Chinese visitors on September 19, 1899, the Mid-Autumn Festival, and their trip to Coal Island the next day. Kang also recorded a chat with a visitor from his home village, Su Yi 苏熠, on the evening of that holiday, when Su stayed on Wen Island overnight. Moreover, Kang’s published writing showed his love for Wen Island, although he also used a derogatory term to call it “Weijie” Island (Weijiedao 未洁岛), or “Unclean Island.” In fact, Weijie is phonetically close to “Wei Si” in the dialect of Kang’s home county, Nanhai, and its connotation, “unclean,” implies coal. Conceivably, Wen Island, Wei Si Island, and Weijie Island were used in Kang’s published articles to keep his stay on Coal Island a secret from the public, and to avoid possible assassination from the Qing government.130 Indeed, on Coal Island, Kang Youwei was protected by a Canadian police officer during the day, and by two Chinese bodyguards at night.131 Previous studies claimed that Kang left Coal Island only once in the summer of 1899 to attend a birthday celebration for the Guangxu Emperor on August 4, 1899.132 Kang’s own poems and other writings also indicate that CERA or other Chinese groups held the imperial birthday celebrations in Victoria, Vancouver, New Westminster, Seattle, Portland, and other North American cities. These writings vividly described how he personally led the royal birthday celebration at the premises of Victoria’s CCBA.133 According to Kang’s record, more than four hundred Caucasian men and women in Vancouver also joined the local CERA in the birthday celebration for the Guangxu Emperor on August 4, 1899, as did more than two hundred Caucasian residents in New Westminster. Everyone enjoyed the local CERA’s hospitality, drinking wine and watching Chinese plays.134 In

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Vancouver, even the mayor paid a visit to the Chinese playhouse, and a local English newspaper felt the need to credit “Chinese with more patriotism than is usually ascribed to them.”135 In fact, Kang Youwei’s accounts about personal attendance at the ceremonial activities in Victoria contradict available sources, which state that on the imperial birthday on August 4, Kang Youwei gathered only two or three fishermen to hold an informal ceremony in a straw shed on Coal Island.136 According to the daily records of his Canadian police escort, Kang was living and boating among some islands north of Victoria from July 25 to 27, but he hastened to the city on July 28 to attend a large meeting with approximately two thousand Chinese, and went to a smaller meeting the next day. Between July 30 and August 9, including Guangxu’s birthday on August 4, Kang was actually sailing around the nearby islands. A local newspaper report of the imperial birthday celebration in Victoria’s Chinatown did not mention his attendance either. On the evening of August 10, Kang again left Coal Island and attended meetings, visited friends, received visitors, or engaged in other activities in Vancouver, New Westminster, and Victoria until September 16 when he returned to Sidney and then resumed boating among nearby islands. Thereafter, Kang still maintained close contacts with local Chinese communities and frequently received visitors from Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster.137 His absence from the Guangxu Emperor’s birthday celebration and his fabrication of his attendance at the ceremony in Victoria betrayed the fact that he was not as serious about the emperor-protecting slogan of CERA as he claimed. By contrast, he was always active in local Chinese politics even after his retreat to Coal Island. In the summer of 1899, Kang’s life on Coal Island was a mixture of enjoyment and anxiety. He wrote more than twenty poems that summer, describing how he sailed a boat among nearby islands every day, admired the distant view of the snowy mountains under the summer sunlight, and sang sad folk songs from his homeland while paddling his boat or wandering on beaches as a tipsy man. His reclusive island had small hills, old pine trees, and large rocks projecting over the waves. Every day Kang watched the waves or took naps on these rocks, and in the evening he would have a walk on the beaches, circling the whole island. Kang Youwei’s Chinese host and other residents on the island were probably fishermen, but they also raised pigs, sheep, and other livestock. His needs were mainly furnished by Feng Junqing, a son of Feng Xiushi and a young founding member of CERA in

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Victoria. From Wei Si’s family and other Chinese residents on Coal Island, Kang also received free gifts of fish, cabbage, and squashes. Kang learned fishing from them, went pheasant hunting on a larger island, and sometimes swam in the ocean that remained cold even in the summer.138 In fact, Kang Youwei’s life on Coal Island was not always so idle, carefree, and peaceful as his poems described. His rough table inside the Hut under the Vast Heaven was filled with Chinese books, and his secretary even reported “how amazingly hard Kang worked learning English from him.”139 His poems about the island life also expressed his sorrow about the national crisis of China and his worries about both the Guangxu Emperor and Kang’s elderly mother, who had fled with other family members to Hong Kong just after the 1898 Reform and then led a vagrant life abroad. Kang suffered from headaches until early autumn, but his increasingly white hair and beard, as well as his political failure to get British and American support made him feel more forlorn on the lonely island. On September 17, 1899, Kang held a memorial service on Coal Island for the six martyrs of the 1898 Reform, about one lunar year after their execution in Beijing. Li Fuji and Liu Kangheng came from Victoria and New Westminster, respectively, for the memorial service, and Kang’s elegy expressed his deep regret over his failure to restore the Guangxu Emperor to power and his inability to avenge the death of the six martyrs. He specifically deplored the innocent death and hasty burial of his younger brother—Kang Guangren, one of the six martyrs—in Beijing, as well as his own effort to hide the tragic truth from their elderly mother thereafter.140 Less than ten days after the memorial service, Kang Youwei was alarmed by a report from several Chinese in Victoria that he might be arrested by an unknown authority. The Canadian police escort was specifically dispatched to Victoria to investigate the report, but it turned out to be an exaggerated rumor from newspaper reports about assassination plots against Kang.141 Despite the ever-present assassination threat from the Qing court, in September 1899 Kang Youwei still planned a telegraphic campaign against Empress Dowager Cixi by drafting a memorial to her on behalf of the overseas Chinese in Canada and other countries. This memorial denounced her resumption of her regency during the coup against the 1898 Reform, and demanded the restoration of the Guangxu Emperor to power.142 Around Cixi’s birthday on November 12, 1899, the CERA chapters in Victoria, Vancouver, New Westminster, and other Canadian cities successively sent “con-

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gratulatory” telegrams to her with the same political message, as did many overseas Chinese in Seattle, Portland, Boston, and other American cities, and their counterparts in South America and Southeast Asia. These overseas telegrams effectively helped prevent Empress Dowager Cixi and her faction from dethroning the Guangxu Emperor.143 Another emphasis of Kang Youwei’s political activities in the summer of 1899 was on the expansion of CERA from Canada to the United States and other countries. Previous studies have often stressed the importance of Kang’s former students in the expansion of this reformist association.144 In fact, Kang relied heavily on the Chinese migrants in Canada or those from the United States for CERA’s transnational expansion. He initially established contacts via correspondence with Chinese merchant leaders in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and other American cities.145 Thus, during his stay in Vancouver on September 11, “a number of Chinese came to visit him from the United States.”146 In late September 1899, Kang also sent three emissaries from British Columbia to the United States: Ma Guntang 马衮堂 from Victoria, Liao Yipeng from Vancouver, and Tan Chaodong 谭朝东 (also spelled as Chiu Doong Tam, Tom Chue Thom, etc.), a Methodist minister from New Westminster. Ma first entered the United States on October 29 and successively visited Port Townsend, Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. He delivered public lectures in these cities and helped establish local CERA chapters. In San Francisco, a leader of the CKT, Tang Qiongchang 唐琼昌 (1869−1916), became a major founder of the local CERA, as Yip Yen and Yip Sang in Vancouver, Lu Jin and Lin Lihuang in Victoria, as well as other leaders of the Canadian CKT had done already.147 It is unclear whether Liao was able to enter the United States, but Tan did enter in 1899. He also took a second tour across Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and other American cities in May 1900, delivered reformist speeches on the way, and raised funds for CERA.148 Although Kang Youwei retreated to Coal Island in the summer of 1899 for self-protection from a possible assassination attempt by the Qing government, he still received local Chinese support for a retaliatory action against Empress Dowager Cixi’s faction. In mid-August 1899, two Chinese youths in Victoria received Kang’s order to take a trip to Beijing and assassinate Ronglu 荣禄 (1836−1903), a confidential minister of Cixi. They received Kang’s instruction to travel to Japan and to receive training there

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for their roles as disguised Japanese, before proceeding to Beijing for the plot against Ronglu. Maps of Japanese legation and the imperial palace in Beijing, together with a schedule of Ronglu’s daily activities were also provided to them for the conspiracy.149 One of the two Chinese migrants, Guan Bing 关炳, left Victoria for his hometown near Canton for the conspiracy. He planned to hire assassins with a huge sum of money and indeed received responses from dozens of people. Because this plan did not receive endorsement from CERA’s office in Macao, it was abandoned later on.150 With the support of the Chinese in Pacific Canada, Kang Youwei initiated a plan for the most militant action of his reformist movement in China. On October 2, 1899, he wrote a letter to a contact in an American city, claiming to have mobilized more than 700,000 troops in military preparation for his reformist cause in China. Kang instructed the recipient of the letter to request travel funds from Canadian CERA leaders for his fundraising trips and speeches across the United States, urging Chinese migrants, especially rich merchants, to provide financial support for the military rescue of the Guangxu Emperor (qinwang 勤王).151 Kang Youwei’s use of the emperor-protecting slogan in the Chinese title of CERA and its political and military activities have long invited scholarly criticism for his promotion of “regressive” reforms toward a constitutional monarchy in opposition to the anti-Qing revolution. But some studies of CERA have indicated that Kang’s association initially sought to protect the Guangxu Emperor and the reformist cause from the suppression of Cixi and her conservative faction in the Qing government, rather than from attack by the revolutionary movement. By using the Guangxu Emperor as a political symbol of the Chinese nation and reformist movement, Kang actually helped overseas Chinese to expand their transnational interrelations and homeland connections beyond the limits of their local identity with home villages, counties, provinces, and dialectal groups.152 A more important but long-neglected fact about the origins of CERA is that the emperor-protecting slogan—together with most of CERA’s founders, organizational initiatives, and antiracism platforms—derived initially from the Chinese in Pacific Canada. Massive local support there enabled Kang Youwei not only to initiate the transnational association and its reformist movement in North America, but also to further turn the “conservative” slogan of protecting the Guangxu Emperor into CERA’s most “revolutionary” action: the military uprising in southern China. This mili-

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tary action would even bring Kang’s radical reformist followers into shortlived collaboration with the anti-Qing revolutionary forces, including those of Sun Yat-sen.153 Kang Youwei left Pacific Canada for Asia on October 10, 1899,154 but his collaboration with Chinese reformers in Canada and the United States had already led to the early development of CERA in North America, especially its spread on the Pacific coast from British Columbia to California. His mobilization for reform of China and Chinatowns—plus his introduction of overseas Chinese initiatives, interests, and influences into its new programs and political activities—positively affected CERA’s formative process and transnational expansion. Kang’s political strategies for CERA’s early development would soon be followed by his disciples in their attempts to expand the overseas Chinese political reform and its associational networks from Canada to the United States, and from North America to the Pacific Rim.

The Transpacific Spread of Overseas Chinese Political Reforms and Feminist Politics After Kang Youwei returned from Canada to Hong Kong in late 1899, he faced two attempts on his life by Qing government assassins and had to move to Singapore in January 1900. He used Singapore as a haven to prepare for the military rescue of the Guangxu Emperor, for which he dispatched his disciples, mostly his former students, as emissaries to raise funds for armed action and also to expand CERA in Southeast Asia, the Americas, Hawai‘i, and Australia.155 This use of interpersonal ties, such as teacher-student relations, along with CERA’s ideological appeal and new institutional norms helped it achieve rapid expansion. Kang’s young disciples promoted CERA’s transpacific network expansion, including its transnational development in North America, with new initiatives ranging from radical nationalism to politicized feminism. Upon Kang’s arrival in Hong Kong in November 1899, he received information that one of his former students, Tan Liang (Tom Leung, 谭良, aka Tan Zhangxiao 谭张孝, 1875−1931, see Figure 2 in the Preface), had migrated to the United States. He sent Tan a letter dated December 7, urging him to promote CERA’s expansion to American cities and to keep communications open with its leaders in Canada. After Tan reported that he had founded a CERA chapter in Los Angeles in early 1900, Kang began to use him as a confidential liaison for contacts with other reformist leaders in the

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United States, but showed distrust of CERA leaders in San Francisco due to their internal strife as well as exposure of his confidential letters.156 Kang also used his provincial fellowship with Chinese migrants in Australia for CERA’s expansion there. Before his departure from Canada in October 1899, he sent a letter to Mei Guangda (Mei Quong Tart 梅光达, 1850−1903), a well-known Cantonese merchant leader in Sydney, Australia, persuading him to form a CERA-like association for the salvation of the Guangxu Emperor, Chinese merchants, and other migrants as well as for China itself. Yip Yen also sent a letter to Mei, stressing their provincial fellowship with Kang and the urgency of forming the new reformist association. Moreover, on behalf of all CERA leaders in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster, another letter was addressed to their provincial fellows in Australia and sent along with CERA documents and fundraising booklets. All three letters were published in Sydney’s Chinese newspaper, Donghua xinbao 东华新报 (Tung Wah news) on October 11, 1899. It was in the editorial office of this newspaper that the first Australian CERA was established by more than one hundred Chinese migrants on January 14, 1900.157 Among Kang’s closest disciples, Liang Qichao visited the Hawaiian Islands in 1900 and Australia in 1901, and Xu Qin 徐勤 (1873−1945) and Ou Jujia 欧榘甲 (aka Ou Yungao 欧云高, 1870−1911) reached the United States in 1901 and 1902, respectively. Liang’s cousin, Liang Qitian 梁启田 (1872−?), and Liang Qichao himself, as well as Kang’s second daughter, Kang Tongbi 康同壁 (1881−1969), successively took tours from Japan to Canada and further to the United States between 1900 and 1903. Liang Qitian also ventured to Mexico in 1901.158 A look at their activities reveals the interpersonal, institutional, and ideological interactions between these younger reformers and Chinese migrants in their joint efforts to promote CERA’s transpacific expansion with various initiatives. In particular, the consecutive trips from Canada to the United States by the Liang cousins and Kang Tongbi illustrate their intensive interactions with politics in Qing China and with Western ideas ranging from racism to feminism, and the transnational interrelations between CERA’s Canadian and American chapters. While Kang Youwei planned CERA’s military uprisings in central and southern China for the rescue of the Guangxu Emperor during his stay in Canada in late 1899, Liang Qichao, Ou Jujia, Liang Qitian, and other young radical reformers in Japan formed an anti-Manchu and prorevolution group. They even pursued collaboration with Sun Yat-sen and other

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revolutionary partisans, although Kang rejected this initiative and ordered Liang to leave Japan for the promotion of CERA’s development in Hawai‘i in early 1900. In Honolulu, Liang Qichao joined a local order of the Hong Fraternal Society in early 1900 and raised nearly one-quarter of the funds from Chinese across the Hawaiian Islands for CERA’s military uprising in the middle Yangzi River valley, which focused more on the anti-Qing action than on the rescue of the emperor in Beijing. Liang Qichao even entered Shanghai secretly and tried to join the military uprising around Wuhan, in the middle Yangzi River valley, just before the uprising failed on August 21, 1900. Following this, Liang, together with Xu Qin and Ou Jujia,

still tried to launch military uprisings in southern China.159 During his subsequent trip to Australia in early 1901, Liang visited dozens of Chinese migrant communities and delivered reformist speeches promoting CERA’s development. But he gradually became reluctant to raise funds for CERA’s emperor-saving mission, and his writings included increasingly radical calls for the violent destruction of the Manchu dictatorship in the Qing government.160 Liang Qichao’s radicalism found echoes among CERA leaders in Canada, even though he did not visit there until 1903. On January 24, 1900, the Qing court under Empress Dowager Cixi suddenly announced a young son of Prince Duan Zaiyi (Duanwang Zaiyi 端王载漪, 1856−1922) as heir apparent to the throne, but her veiled conspiracy of deposing the Guangxu Emperor immediately incurred telegraphic protests from both individual reformers inside China and CERA chapters abroad. Among these telegrams, the harshest protests and warnings to Cixi’s conspiracy came from the CERA chapters in Vancouver and New Westminster. Because Western powers showed their sympathy with the Guangxu Emperor and Kang Youwei, Prince Duan and other conservative ministers under Cixi intensified their persecution of reformers and began to turn increasingly toward collusion with the Boxers (Yihetuan 义和团)—the antiforeign and anti-Christian groups of xenophobic peasants—in the spring of 1900.161 It was at this critical moment that Liang Qitian received Kang’s order to leave Japan for America, and the purpose of his mission was evidently to expand CERA’s fundraising activities for the military campaign to rescue the Guangxu Emperor. Upon his arrival in Victoria on March 2, 1900,162 he quickly set to fundraising in nearby Canadian cities. On March 17, 1900, Liang attended a large meeting in Victoria with about one thousand Chi-

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nese as well as CERA leaders from Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster. Yip Yen from Vancouver presided over the meeting, and Liang delivered a passionate address. His speech repeatedly inspired thunderous applause from the audience, and his fundraising call received an enthusiastic response. When Yip proposed a resolution to reform the Chinese government, educational system, military matters, and other issues under the restored Guangxu Emperor, the audience as one raised their hands and shouted their approval. The meeting led to the decision to publish a Chinese newspaper in Canada and establish a fundraising committee.163 The mass meeting continued the next evening with Yip Sang as the chairperson. Liang again delivered a speech, proposing to raise funds for the emperor-rescuing campaign, and dozens of CERA leaders led with the promise to collectively donate nearly $10,000 (CAD). In Victoria alone, $8,000 (CAD) was collected the next day and sent to CERA’s headquarters in Macao. In the company of CERA leaders from the three cities, Liang successively held fundraising meetings in Vancouver and New Westminster over the next few days. Leaders of the CERA chapters in the nearby city of Kamloops and the coal-mining city of Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, as well as Seattle, also attended these meetings and made donations, and so did their wives.164 While Liang Qitian’s speech in Victoria focused on Kang Youwei’s political reforms, he also mobilized the masses with radical nationalism. After the Victoria meetings, Canadian police discovered many posters in the local Chinatown that called for Chinese defense of their motherland against foreign invasion, including that from the British Empire. These posters used the unfortunate term “barbarians” to refer to foreign invaders in China, causing local newspapers to question whether Liang was in fact promoting Kang’s reformist efforts to introduce Western culture and political systems into China.165 CERA leaders, mainly those in Vancouver, denied any connection between their meetings and these posters in Victoria and denounced the usage of “barbarians” on these posters. But they acknowledged being patriotic Chinese and opponents to the partition of China by foreign powers.166 Liang Qitian also received from Kang Youwei the instruction to recruit military personnel in Canada, and many responded because of the increasingly urgent crisis in Qing China.167 Around mid-1900, the large-scale Boxer movement received tacit support from the Qing court under Empress Dow-

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ager Cixi for its antiforeign and anti-Christian actions and spread quickly in northern China, especially around Beijing. Meanwhile, foreign powers took more and more aggressive military actions in response, and even launched an unsuccessful expedition to the imperial capital with an international force in June 1900. On June 21, the Qing court under Cixi declared war on all foreign powers, and the Qing armies joined the Boxers in the siege of foreign legations in the imperial capital. The siege would not end until the second expedition of Allied forces reached Beijing on August 14 and forced Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor into exile to the inland city of Xi’an.168 As the national crisis in China intensified toward the end of July 1900, CERA leaders in Vancouver received an emergency message from their Macao headquarters to dispatch volunteers for the campaign to rescue the emperor. Thirty Chinese in Vancouver responded to this call overnight, and they were soon sent to Macao by the local CERA chapter, together with about twenty volunteers from Seattle and sixty others from New York and Boston. Still more volunteers in Honolulu and San Francisco were prepared to leave for Macao.169 A few Chinese from Canada had already returned to China by early June 1900, and Kang planned to use some of them as assassins, low-ranking generals, or tailors for military uniforms. Meanwhile, Kang Youwei also planned to move from Singapore to Hong Kong or to take a British warship to Beijing to rescue and restore the Guangxu Emperor. He even tried to bring the Chinese volunteers from Canada as his bodyguards for the planned venture. Because the British government demanded an edict from the Guangxu Emperor for the military rescue of himself, Kang’s attempt failed,170 as such an order was unobtainable from the emperor under house arrest. Worst of all, Kang’s plan to rescue the Guangxu Emperor through an uprising in cen-

tral China soon failed after a dozen of its young leaders were captured and executed by the Qing authorities in Hankou 汉口in late August 1900. Liang Qichao and other radical reformers then turned to a plan for new military uprisings in southern China at that time, and the CERA chapters in Canada again organized a fundraising campaign in early September 1900. By that time, the chapters in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster had already collected $12,000 (CAD) for the military campaign in China. It was reported that an additional $8,000 (CAD) was pledged by Victoria’s Chinese in early September,

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and $12,000 (CAD) was expected to be raised from their counterparts in Vancouver and New Westminster.171 Extant letters from Kang Youwei demonstrate that he did receive a large sum from Canada in May and July 1900.172

Liang Qitian left British Columbia for the United States in late July 1900, and Victoria’s CERA chapter dispatched Shen Caiman 沈财满 (aka Shen Man or Shum Moon 沈满) as his secretary for his reformist propaganda and fundraising activities among the Chinese in the states of Washington, Oregon, and California for seven months. In San Francisco alone, they collected $3,000 (USD) after Liang’s speech.173 Liang then traveled

to Mexico, visited thirteen cities in seven states there by mid-1901, and helped establish CERA’s Mexican headquarters in Torreón. He

also discovered opportunities to make profitable investments in agriculture, industry, and commerce in Torreón and even raised 7,000 Mexican silver dollars to found a grocery store there. His precedent would soon lead Kang and CERA into business speculation in Mexico. Liang later returned to the United States and continued his reformist propaganda there until his mission was taken over by Xu Qin in late 1901.174 After Liang Qitian’s departure from Canada, CERA’s Canadian chapters, principally in British Columbia, soon formed a national federation—the Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada (CERA of Canada hereafter)—under Yip Yen’s leadership in Vancouver in April 1900.175 On June 21, 1900, multiple CERA chapter representatives held a joint meeting at the Vancouver headquarters. Those attending resolved to petition the British, American, and Japanese governments for help with the restoration of the Guangxu Emperor and the preservation of the Chinese empire. The next month CERA of Canada sent a telegram to Governor-General Liu Kunyi 刘坤一 (1830−1902) in Nanjing, asking for his collaboration with foreign powers to restore the Guangxu Emperor to power. In addition to petitions to the governor-general and to London, Washington, DC, and Tokyo in mid-1900 and early 1901, they submitted another petition to the diplomatic representatives of the three powers and those of Germany in Beijing in January 1901, requesting the reinstatement of the emperor together with Kang and other dismissed reformers, to resume political reforms in China.176 While these petitions expressed the concerns of CERA of Canada regarding the national crisis—and their unrealistic hope for assistance from these foreign powers and from Governor-General Liu—their impact on

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political changes in China and Sino-foreign relations was not significant. Nonetheless, pressure from these foreign powers and suggestions from Governor-General Liu and other reformist officials and elites helped push the Qing court under Empress Dowager Cixi to launch the New Policy Reforms (Xinzheng 新政) on January 29, 1901. The New Policy Reforms would include the establishment and expansion of Western-style schools, new armies, government agencies, and so on, and finally lead to the reformist attempt to form a constitutional monarchy.177 It gave Kang Youwei new hope for the imminent restoration of the Guangxu Emperor by the Qing court. The newly appointed governor-general in Canton also alleviated political persecution of the domestic relatives of CERA leaders. Moreover, financial and personnel losses of CERA in the emperor-rescuing campaign of 1900, as well as the decrease of overseas Chinese donations thereafter, forced Kang to develop economic resources for his reformist association through business activities, and to curb CERA’s military ventures.178 By contrast, Liang Qichao and other young disciples of Kang Youwei retained their militant radicalism even after the failure of the emperor-rescuing uprisings in late 1900 and still called for anti-Manchu revolution in their reformist propaganda, as mentioned above. They received strong support from the main CERA leaders in Victoria and Vancouver. After Liang Qitian, Xu Qin, and Ou Jujia successively arrived in North America as Kang’s emissaries from 1900 to 1902, they all joined the CKT for reformist mobilization. By mid-1902, the relatively moderate Xu found it unhelpful to use CERA’s emperor-protecting slogan to win over New York’s CKT, and his speeches turned to exciting the overseas Chinese audience with the promise to save the emperor with military uprisings or to pursue Guangdong independence from the Qing court after the failure of Guangxu’s restoration. After Ou Jujia’s arrival in San Francisco that year, he used the local CERA organ, Wenxingbao 文兴报 (Wenxing daily), to promote the independence of Guangdong, the home province of most Chinese migrants in North America. Ou was soon expelled by Kang from the reformist organ for this radical propaganda, but he helped the American CKT’s headquarters in San Francisco launch a newspaper, Datong ribao 大同日报 (Chinese Free Press) in 1903 and tried to reorganize the secret society into a political party through its promotion of constitutional reform in China.179 In personal letters to Kang Youwei and in CERA’s internal communications, Liang Qichao and CERA’s Canadian leaders, such as Li Fuji in

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Victoria and Yip Yen in Vancouver, supported Ou’s radical propaganda.180 However, Kang rejected their appeals for an anti-Manchu revolution and provincial independence from the Qing court in his responses and publications. Instead, he persuaded them to maintain their confidence in the constitutional reform and the restoration of the Guangxu Emperor, and also started a new initiative to develop CERA’s transnational businesses as a key to the reformist cause.181 Liang retained his prorevolutionary radicalism even after he sent a letter of repentance to Kang under pressure from the latter in late 1902,182 but his visit to North America, particularly Pacific Canada, in the next year would help turn him into an ardent reformist leader again. Liang Qichao’s tour across North America from March to November of 1903 has received attention in previous studies mainly because it resulted in dramatic changes in his political thoughts, specifically his turn from a prorepublic and anti-Manchu revolutionary radical back into a follower of Kang Youwei’s constitutional reform of Qing China.183 Yet Liang’s visits to Pacific Canada at the beginning and end of his North American tour have long escaped scholarly scrutiny. In fact, during his approximately nine-month tour across North America, he stayed in British Columbia for nearly two months.184 His work with the reformist leaders in Canadian Chinatowns not only helped CERA establish a business empire across the Pacific, but also brought new dynamics to the reformist movement after he abandoned radical revolution. Having sailed from Yokohama, Liang Qichao reached the port of Victoria on March 3, 1903, traveling with Huang Huizhi 黄慧之 (aka Huang Weizhi 黄为之), one of his prorevolutionary comrades in Japan, and Bao Chi 鲍炽, his English interpreter from Sydney, Australia. Liang held only a short meeting with Victoria’s CERA leaders and an interview with Englishlanguage newspaper reporters on the deck of the ship before it continued its voyage to Vancouver.185 He chose Vancouver as the base for his political activities in Canada probably because of his shared brotherhood with Yip Yen and his uncle Yip Sang in the Hong Fraternal Society. Liang regarded Yip Yen as an especially close comrade after Yip cut his queue and thus his ties of loyalty to the Qing dynasty in late 1902, as Liang had already done during his prorevolutionary activities.186 Yip Yen would later join Huang and Bao on Liang’s North American tour, and each of them would act as Liang’s associates and play important roles in the rise and fall of CERA’s business ventures in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Penang later on.187

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In one of Liang’s own writings, he defined two purposes for his North American tour: to examine the conditions of overseas Chinese and to study the political institutions in the New World. But Yip Yen’s letter about Liang’s trip revealed that the latter’s major objective was to raise funds for CERA’s new business ventures.188 As early as mid-1902, Kang had instructed Zhu Jinli 朱锦礼—who was probably Zhu Li 朱礼, a young founding member of the Victoria CERA in 1899—to return to Canada to discuss the business plan with Li Fuji, Yip Yen, and other leaders of Canadian CERA chapters. As a result, the Victoria chapter of CERA took the initiative to establish a corporation on December 12, 1902. After Zhu returned to Hong Kong, he produced a draft of “the Regulations of the Chinese Commercial Corporation” (Zhongguo shangwu gongsi zhangcheng 中国商务公司章 程). Kang revised the set of regulations and then distributed it to all chapters of CERA in November 1902.189 This document was later finalized by the Canadian CERA leaders in Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster, together with Liang Qichao after he arrived in Canada on March 3, 1903.190 Immediately, a local newspaper in Vancouver reported Liang’s plan to “induce his countrymen in Canada to subscribe funds toward the starting of a big mercantile company.”191 Yip Yen promised to raise $100,000 (CAD) for CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation (Zhongguo shangwu gongsi 中 国商务公司) in Hong Kong, and by that time about $60,000 (CAD) had been pledged by its members in Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster. But Liang still ventured to two coal-mining cities on Vancouver Island, Nanaimo, and Union Bay, to promote CERA’s reformist cause and business plan. In a letter to a friend in Japan on April 13, 1903, he estimated that he had already achieved 50 to 60 percent of his plan for the North American tour, including 80 to 90 percent of the fundraising target for CERA’s business ventures. In view of the local Chinese enthusiasm for CERA’s reformist cause, including its business ventures, Liang determined to throw himself into these “practical issues” and turn away from his previous “empty talks,” including his former anti-Manchu and prorevolutionary propaganda.192 Liang also discovered new political hopes for the reformist cause from CERA’s activities in Pacific Canada. On March 7, 1903, CERA of Canada held an election for a new vice president and a supervisor among its chapters and members in Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster. Six candidates for vice president preceded the election with electoral campaigns and announced their respective platforms through public speeches. On

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the day of the election, telegrams from the three cities were used to report the total number of votes for each candidate and thus determine the electoral results. At a large gathering of local residents in Vancouver’s Chinese theater, Liang delivered a public speech on the progress and accomplishments of the reformist movement, and one of his writings later praised CERA of Canada’s election as the historic beginning of Chinese political parties, which had never happened in Chinese history over thousands of years.193 Because of Liang Qichao’s prorevolutionary tendencies, he had initially expressed indifference to Kang Youwei’s open organization of CERA as the Society to Protect the Emperor in Canada in 1899, and still doubted its plan for the Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong as late as 1902.194 He dramatically changed his stance, however, in Pacific Canada. On March 12, 1903, more than two hundred delegates from the CERA chapters in Vancouver, New Westminster, and Victoria as well as smaller cities nearby, such as Nanaimo and Ladner, held their annual meeting, first in Vancouver and then in New Westminster the following day. Attendees resolved to erect a building for their national headquarters in Vancouver and to open a night school there. Liang, along with approximately 130 delegates from lower mainland British Columbia, continued on to Victoria and gave a speech there on March 15 on the general cause of Chinese political reforms, after which the decision to erect CERA of Canada’s headquarters in Vancouver was unanimously approved.195 CERA of Canada held a banquet in Liang Qichao’s honor in Vancouver on April 2, 1903, but it was also one of its public relations events that extended beyond the local Chinese community. Guests at the banquet included not only CERA of Canada’s own leaders in Western-style suits but also US Consul L. Edwin Dudley, US Immigration Commissioner David Healy, publishers of local English-language newspapers, and three Canadian customs officers, of whom one was Lieutenant Colonel Charles A. Worsnop. After toasts were proposed to the British monarchy and the American president, Dudley praised China as a good friend of the United States, but Healy used the chance to justify the Chinese exclusion laws of the American government. Liang’s speech in reply recognized “the Anglo-Saxon peoples as friends” of the Chinese, but he also criticized “their prejudices against the coming in of Chinese laborers.”196 In fact, Liang’s witnessing of anti-Chinese

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racism during his trip across North America would turn him into a main leader in future fights against the US exclusion acts. While CERA of Canada’s activities greatly lifted Liang’s confidence in the reformist cause by mid-April 1903, he received a letter from Kang Youwei that sternly rebuked his prorevolutionary ideas and fundraising efforts for propaganda organs in Yokohama and Shanghai at the expense of the newly formed CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong. In response, on April 15 Liang wrote to Xu Qin, Kang’s emissary to the United States at the time, promising that he would express no doubt about Kang’s business plan and eliminate any radical rhetoric in his public speeches. But in the same letter he also expressed his belief that a revolution was unavoidable in Qing China, and he admitted to secretly sharing his prorevolutionary ideas with President Yip Yen and Vice President Liu Kangheng of CERA of Canada in their private chats.197 This letter reveals the resurgence of Liang’s reformist activism and the remaining revolutionary radicalism among himself and the major leaders of CERA of Canada around that time. After Liang Qichao presided over the ceremony to lay the cornerstone for the new headquarters building of CERA of Canada in Vancouver on April 17, 1903, he and his retinue left for Ottawa on April 28. Yip Yen also joined them on the trip.198 While there, in early May 1903, he visited the parliamentary buildings, a sawmill, and a paper mill over two days. His group spent the next five days in Montreal on the reformist mobilization of the local Chinese. At Liang’s behest, they established a CERA chapter before he departed for New York around May 12, 1903.199 Compared with Kang Youwei’s repeated failures to enter the United States in 1899, Liang Qichao’s American trip was successful from the beginning. This was because Theodore Roosevelt (1858−1919) had become president after McKinley’s assassination in 1901, and he veered the American government’s policy toward the Chinese reformist movement. Roosevelt showed a strong interest in “the awakening of China,” including its ongoing political reforms, as one of his future articles revealed.200 Thus, Liang easily reached New York and engaged in speeches and other reformist propaganda activities for nearly two months. He and Yip Yen then traveled to Washington, DC, for an audience with President Roosevelt on June 20, 1903. Liang also met with Secretary of State John Hay (1838−1905) one day prior. He then made whirlwind visits to Chinese communities in dozens of other American cities—including Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Portland, San Fran-

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cisco, and Los Angeles to late November 1903—expanding CERA’s chapters and raising capital for its new business ventures. After corresponding with Xu Qin, together they planned to launch a new fundraising campaign among the Chinese in the United States for a CERA-sponsored public school in Canton.201 During Liang’s travels across the United States, he even followed Kang Youwei’s instruction to write a letter to the CERA leaders in Hong Kong, apologizing for his previous indifference to fundraising activities for the planned Chinese Commercial Corporation. In another letter to Hong Kong dated September 1, 1903, Liang claimed to have helped the corporation raise more than $400,000 (USD) capital, although that amount had only been pledged by the Chinese in eastern cities of the United States. He further promised to collect approximately one million American dollars in total from North America for the business venture.202 In his travel notes across North America, he claimed to have received the warmest welcome from both Chinese and Caucasians in San Francisco in September 1903 and later in Los Angeles.203 Ironically, it was in San Francisco that Liang’s observation of the local Chinese community further turned him away from anti-Manchu and prorepublic revolutionary radicalism and toward the reformist cause for a constitutional monarchy in China. He regarded the Chinese in San Francisco as the most enlightened among their counterparts at home and abroad, but still criticized them as typically submissive subjects to despotism as opposed to eligible citizens for freedom under a republic.204 Some studies of Liang Qichao and his North American tour have pointed to his pessimistic view of the Chinese in San Francisco, along with pressure from Kang Youwei and other factors, to explain Liang’s turn from anti-Manchu revolution back to a pro-Qing constitutional reform.205 Liang’s negative view of the Chinese community in San Francisco resulted partly from his failure to collect the large amount of capital pledged by them during his fundraising tour in the United States. On November 18, 1903, he wrote a letter to Kang Youwei, reporting both his and Xu Qin’s inability to collect the funds for the Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong pledged by the Chinese in American cities, especially in San Francisco. His bleak letter also beseeched Kang to stop using their limited funds to finance CERA’s attempts to assassinate members of Empress Dowager Cixi’s faction.206

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But Liang Qichao’s Travel Notes across the New World (Xindalu youji 新 大陆游记) reveals his excitement at the enthusiastic support of CERA’s political reform and business ventures in most Chinese communities across the United States and especially in Canada. Upon returning to Vancouver on November 28, 1903, Liang quickly regained his confidence in the bright future of the reformist cause. He noted that CERA of Canada had already erected its new headquarters in Vancouver and completed the election of leaders from its chapters in seven Canadian provinces for a national convention later that month. His travel notes not only regarded Vancouver as the starting point of the reformist organization but also praised CERA of Canada for its adoption of a self-ruled government system of a civilized country in its nationwide election.207 In fact, Liang Qichao’s North American tour was still a great success for CERA because he mobilized Chinese migrants across the continent to pledge nearly $800,000 (USD) for the Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong, although only $605,000 (HKD) was eventually collected.208 His fundraising success in North America also helped Kang Youwei bring CERA out of its military failure to rescue the Guangxu Emperor in 1900 and into a new pursuit of both reformist politics and transnational business development. In San Francisco, Liang helped the local Chinese draft a petition and promised to deliver it to the Qing authorities in Guangdong Province in November 1903, requesting the redress of discrimination against these migrants in the United States. Along with his popular Travel Notes across the New World, he completed a pamphlet, Ji Huagong jingyue 记华工 禁约 [A record of the exclusion acts against Chinese laborers in the United States]. This pamphlet would soon become a part of CERA’s propaganda for a global Chinese movement against American racism and thus help raise the reformist organization to a new height of transpacific expansion and influence.209 In addition, Liang urged CERA of Canada to establish a department for collective protection (lianweibu 联卫部) during his initial visit to Vancouver in early 1903. On his subsequent trip to Helena, the state capital of Montana, in mid-August of that year, the local CERA chapter indeed formed this department to collect public funds for mutual assistance and collective protection from racial discrimination.210 In the near future, Kang Youwei would take over this institutional initiative for CERA’s organizational expansion in the transpacific world.

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Following Liang Qichao, Kang Youwei’s second daughter, the twentytwo-year-old Kang Tongbi, sailed from Yokohama and commenced a North American tour via Pacific Canada. On May 7, 1903, she landed at the port of Victoria as a student exempt from the head tax because the customs agent requested special permission for her entry from the Department of Trade and Commerce in Ottawa.211 But Kang Tongbi came with her father’s instruction to “preach national affairs in Europe and America and promote women’s rights as a pioneer.”212 In fact, she had already begun reformist propaganda for the reform of Chinese women’s rights in Japan at the beginning of 1903. Her first public speech in CERA’s Datong School (Datong xuexiao 大同学校) in Yokohama attracted more than one thousand people. She urged Chinese women to organize and unite themselves for their struggle against male oppression, collective search of new knowledge, and the defense of their motherland during national crises.213 This early speech exhibited Kang Tongbi’s incipient strategy to pursue politicized feminism in her future activities on the other side of the Pacific. Soon after Kang Tongbi arrived in Canada in May 1903, she began to mobilize and organize Chinese women into political reforms for gender equality, female education, and even women’s suffrage, and then led the transnational expansion of the feminist movement through her own North American tour. In Victoria, she “delivered a number of public lectures to the local Chinese on the subject of reform in China, … [and] created quite a furore in Chinatown.”214 Later that month she “organized a women’s branch of the Reform Association” in Victoria, 215 the first chapter of the Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association (CELRA hereafter), also known as Baohuang nühui 保皇女会 (Women’s Society to Protect the Emperor). On its extant poster (see Figure 5 in Chapter 2), one short horizontal couplet states: “In the rise or fall of our homeland nation, men and women hold equal responsibility” (guojia xingwang, nannü tongze 国家兴亡，男女同 责). Another couplet calls upon Chinese women to follow the great heroines in both Chinese and European history, including “Joan of Arc [1412– 1431], who sacrificed life for her nation, and Sophia Perovskaya [1853–1881], who wiped out the tyrant” (Zhende xunbang, Feiya chubao 贞德殉邦, 菲 亚除暴).216 Kang Tongbi then went to Vancouver on May 22, 1903, where she delivered a few public speeches at the headquarters of CERA of Canada. Each of her speeches attracted thousands of Chinese migrants.217 Just one week later,

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a local newspaper reported the formation of a reformist association by Chinese women in Vancouver and New Westminster on the evening of May 28, 1903. Kang Tongbi “presided at the meeting and directed the organization work.”218 On the extant poster of the second chapter of CELRA (see Figure 6 in Chapter 2), a couplet embodies strong political feminism. “How to create a constitution? How to raise popular morale? Both sexes should have the same power!” (Xianfa heyiding? Minqi heyishen? Nannü tongquan 宪法何 以定？民气何以伸？男女同权). From British Columbia, Kang Tongbi entered the United States together with President Yip Yen of CERA of Canada, and they arrived in Seattle on the evening of August 21, 1903. At the welcome banquet of Seattle’s CERA on the evening of August 23, she delivered a passionate speech to local Chinese men and women. Her speech stressed the duty of Chinese women to save their motherland from national crises and warned them of a fate more miserable than that of men should their homeland be doomed. Immediately following Kang Tongbi’s speech, the Seattle chapter of CELRA was inaugurated.219 From Seattle, she joined Liang Qichao in his subsequent tour and reformist mobilization in Oregon, and successively founded two more chapters of CELRA in Portland and in nearby Astoria.220 Because Kang Tongbi planned to enter a college in the eastern United States for the fall semester of 1903, she continued her tour eastward and established a chapter of CELRA in Chicago and another in New York later that year. Her political activities in Boston in July 1905 also resulted in the formation of a chapter of CELRA there.221 In the United States, Kang Tongbi’s reformist mobilization for feminist politics was evidently influenced by the rising American feminist movement. Going forward, she pursued a more practical strategy to promote women’s political participation to obtain rights in education as well as franchise through constitutional reform. As she told an American reporter in December 1903: If the Chinese women will educate themselves and assert themselves they will be treated more as American women are treated. I want to teach women in China their powers. I want them to vote. They ought to have a half voice in the government.222

Meanwhile, Kang Tongbi promoted the expansion of Chinese women’s political association by contacting female activists in other American Chi-

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natowns. As a result, at least one chapter of CELRA came into being in Los Angeles in 1904, and two others appeared under different names: the Chinese Ladies’ Reform Society (Zhongguo nü weixinhui 中国女维新会) in San Francisco in August 1903, and the United Society of Chinese Women (Huanü hequn 华女合群) in Honolulu by December 1904. These organizations united women in North American cities and Honolulu for the first time and also radicalized the reformist movement with feminist agitation for gender equality in education and suffrage,223 as is detailed Chapter 2.

In short, after the failure of the 1898 Reform in Beijing, Kang Youwei resumed the push for political reforms among overseas Chinese through his two Canadian tours in 1899, and through the formation of CERA and its organizational or informal network expansion within and beyond North America. His emissaries to Hawai‘i, Australia, and particularly North America between 1900 and 1903 continued to provide leadership and new initiatives for the transpacific spread of the reformist movement. Their promotion of overseas Chinese nationalism, transnational businesses, and feminist politics greatly expanded the institution and influence of CERA and CELRA in the transpacific world. Kang’s personal relations with his disciples and overseas Chinese merchant leaders helped the early development of CERA, but his clashes with them would also lead to the decline of this reformist organization and its political reforms.

C h a p t er 2

The Crest and Ebb of Chinese Reform Politics from North America to the Pacific Rim

From 1900 to 1903, Kang Youwei kept close contacts with his associates in North America from his places of exile—including Hong Kong, Singapore, Penang, and India—through emissaries and mail correspondence. Such transpacific contacts paved the way for Kang to lead the overseas Chinese reformist movement to its climax during and after his third visit to Canada and subsequent trips to the United States and Mexico between 1904 and 1907. However, his clashes with the American and Canadian CERA leaders would also lead to its decline around 1909, exactly ten years after its inception in Victoria.1 During that decade, CERA profoundly transformed the transpacific Chinese diaspora through its network expansion and mobilization against racism in North America, promotion of constitutional reform in China, and the construction of a business empire across the Pacific. In late 1900, Kang Youwei faced a new threat from the Qing government’s assassins in Singapore and had to leave for Penang, Malaysia. Even so, he still maintained monthly correspondence with the Canadian CERA chapters from March to June 1901. Again, after he and his second daughter Kang Tongbi moved from Penang to India in December 1901 and settled in remote Darjeeling in the Himalayan foothills in early 1902, his mail communications with CERA leaders in British Columbia continued. His letters were transmitted from Victoria or Vancouver per his instructions to other CERA chapters in North America.2 Through this kind of correspondence, Kang Youwei boosted the morale of the reformist leaders in North America after CERA failed to rescue the 63

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Guangxu Emperor and suffered heavy military, financial, and personnel losses. Kang encouraged them to retain their confidence in the New Policy Reforms of the Qing court from early 1901 and in the prospective restoration of the Guangxu Emperor’s power. He also made a new plan to develop CERA’s transnational businesses, which helped sway his radical followers away from an anti-Qing revolutionary tendency.3 Kang Youwei further tried to thwart rising racism against the Chinese in North America. On his successive visits to Canada and the United States in 1904 and 1905, he not only promoted new strategies to sponsor political reform of China and to enhance overseas Chinese unity by developing CERA’s transnational businesses, but also called for reform of Chinatowns as a way to alleviate racist prejudices. Such strategies enabled CERA to achieve transpacific expansion and influence by launching a global Chinese boycott against American mistreatment of migrants from China, and to build a business empire spanning from Hong Kong to New York, Chicago, and Mexico.4 As Kang Youwei traveled across Canada, the United States, and Mexico starting in late 1904, CERA shifted its North American center of gravity from Canadian Chinatowns to Chinese communities in American cities, principally New York, in 1905. Under Kang’s personal leadership, CERA also tried to formalize and centralize its organizational structure, although its attempts were not always successful.5 Meanwhile, a few Canadian and American CERA leaders, especially those from Vancouver, brought their personal, familial, and even factional interests into this reformist association and ultimately weakened CERA’s institutional ability to check interpersonal ties and resultant cliquish tendencies. The personal and cliquish clashes of these North American leaders with Kang and his inner group would constitute a major cause for the fall of CERA’s business empire and political movement.

Kang Youwei’s Canada–United States–Mexico Trips and the Mystery of His Last Canadian Tour Previous accounts of Kang Youwei’s activities in Canada are widely divergent over whether he visited Canada only once in 1899 and again in 1902 and 1904,6 or whether he took two Canadian tours in 1899, a third in 1904– 1905, and a fourth one in 1909.7 While Chapter 1 has shown that he visited Canada twice in 1899 alone, and the claim about his revisit in 1902 might be

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easily refuted, his alleged last Canadian tour in 1909 has been neglected by some scholars and remains somewhat a mystery.8 Yet an examination of Kang’s indisputable third trip to Canada in 1904– 1905 and his alleged last Canadian tour in 1909 is relevant to research on his subsequent visits to the United States and Mexico in 1905–1907, and even for understanding the causes of the rise and fall of Chinese political reforms in the Pacific Rim. The following discussion about Kang’s 1904–1907 Canada–United States–Mexico trips will highlight the transnational interrelations of his visits to the three countries and the transpacific influences of his travels on CERA’s antiracism mobilization and its new business network expansion, rather than the details of his activities in each country.9 In 1958 and 1967, Kang Tongbi and her son, Jung-pang Lo, successively published Chinese and English sequels to the autobiography of Kang Youwei. Both of them recorded Kang Youwei’s first two Canadian trips in 1899 and his third one from November 14, 1904, to February 12, 1905, and his fourth one to Victoria and nearby Coal Island, in June 1909.10 As Kang Youwei’s daughter and grandson, they relied on family documents as the basis of their records. Their recounting of Kang Youwei’s Canadian tours has been accepted by major Chinese and English works on Kang’s activities overseas.11 Li Donghai’s 1967 work on the Chinese in Canada was the first to claim that Kang Youwei visited Canada once in 1899 and revisited there together with his daughter, Kang Tongbi, in 1902. It also indicated that Kang returned to Canada in late 1904, but the alleged Canadian tour in 1909 was neglected. Li’s claim was accepted by Wickberg and his collaborators as well as by David Lai and his coauthors in their works on Chinese Canadian history.12 However, the claim about Kang’s visit to Canada in 1902 is based only on a poem that he sent in that year to Li Fuji, the first president of the Victoria chapter of CERA. In this poem Kang described his ventures over waters and mountains in the company of his daughter, evidently Kang Tongbi. According to the postscript of the poem, it was written by Kang on his birthday in March 1902 and copied by him for Li Fuji.13 Kang Tongbi’s own work indicates that she had accompanied Kang Youwei in India in early 1902, and that her trip to Canada actually started in May 1903, rather than one year earlier.14 In Kang Youwei’s own letter to Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier on November 17, 1904, he announced his arrival at that time, but mentioned only his two previous visits to “Canada 5 years ago,” or in 1899.15

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Kang Youwei’s third Canadian tour followed his journey from Asia to Europe starting in mid-1904, and it would lead to his consecutive trips to the United States and Mexico until mid-1906. After traveling back and forth between the American and European continents twice between mid1906 and late 1907, he would go back to Europe at the end of 1907, take side trips to the Middle East and South Asia, and finally return to Penang in October 1908.16 Thus, his third visit to Canada was merely a transitional portion of a nearly five-year trip around the world. Available sources show that Kang’s transatlantic liner from Liverpool reached Montreal on November 12, 1904, and he left western Canada for the United States on February 11, 1905.17 His personal interactions with the Canadian leaders of CERA before and during his approximately three-month trip in Canada enabled Kang to undertake new initiatives during his subsequent visits to the United States and Mexico, and to set a future course for the reformist movement, which saw its peak after 1905 and its decline around 1909. During Kang Youwei’s first visit to Canada in 1899, Prime Minister Laurier expressed sympathy with his reformist cause, as mentioned above, but the Canadian government still raised the Chinese head tax from $50 to $100 (CAD) for each immigrant in June 1900 and further appointed a royal commission to investigate Chinese and Japanese immigration. In 1900–1901, the royal commission visited American cities ranging from Washington, DC, to San Francisco and then conducted hearings in British Columbia, including Victoria, Nanaimo, Vancouver, and New Westminster on the coast as well as Kamloops, Rossland, and other cities in the interior of the province.18 Leaders of Victoria’s CCBA and CERA, as well as those of CERA of Canada and the Chinese Board of Trade in Vancouver provided evidence to defend Chinese immigrants and their communities during the hearings of the royal commission. But the overwhelming majority of 336 witnesses in British Columbia were Caucasian opponents to Chinese and Japanese immigration. The commission’s conclusion was to increase Chinese head tax to $500 (CAD) for the purpose of halting immigration from China.19 Meanwhile, at the request of CERA leaders in Canada, Kang Youwei wrote a series of letters to Prime Minister Laurier, arguing against Ottawa’s increase of the Chinese head tax in 1900 and again in 1903. Kang sent a letter to Laurier on May 2, 1902, in which he argued: “When the [Canadian Pacific] Railway was being constructed, the Chinese people came to Canada to help you with it, and now that it is finished you must not charge so much

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money for their return to China [sic].”20 This letter obviously mistook the Canadian government’s head tax on Chinese immigrants as a charge for their return to China. On April 29, 1903, Kang sent a letter to Li Fuji in Victoria claiming that he had written Laurier four letters about this issue, although the Chinese head tax was still raised to $500 (CAD) in that year.21 In another letter to Li Fuji and Liu Kangheng in New Westminster dated December 29, 1902, Kang Youwei indicated that overseas Chinese suffered discrimination in foreign countries due to both the weakness of China and the lack of unity, civility, and righteousness among the migrants themselves. In particular, this letter noted that the Sino-American treaty regarding the prohibition of Chinese labor immigration to the United States would expire in 1904. It called on the overseas Chinese to help end the discriminatory policies through their own solidarity and other sociopolitical reforms, including the improvement of sanitary conditions in Chinatowns and the elimination of the notorious tong wars.22 This letter, together with the aforementioned one to Prime Minister Laurier in the same year, reflected Kang’s attempt to thwart anti-Chinese racism in Canada and the United States through internal reforms in Chinatowns and direct contacts with white politicians. It also became the starting point of his mobilization of CERA chapters in a global Chinese boycott against American goods in response to the racist policies toward immigrants from China. Because CERA leadership in the anti-American boycott around 1905 and its transnational business expansion thereafter marked a climax of Kang’s reformist movement overseas, these episodes have received scholarly scrutiny to some extent,23 while minimal attention has been paid to connecting these events with Kang’s activities in the Canadian context, especially his third trip to Canada. CERA held its first general conference in Hong Kong in March 1904 prior to Kang Youwei’s subsequent global tour. The attendees were mostly Kang’s former students and other associates, such as Xu Qin, Liang Qichao, and the latter’s cousin, Liang Qitian. They primarily discussed the plan for CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong, and selected Kang and his close associates Xu and the Liang cousins as its executive officers. Liang Qichao’s strong recommendation of Yip Yen earned the latter the position of treasurer (guanyinyuan 管银员) of the corporation, while other leaders of American and Australian chapters of CERA became merely powerless councilors (yiyuan 议员).24 After the conference and before Kang’s global tour started from Penang in May 1904, he launched CERA’s rice

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brokerages in Penang and in Yangon (Rangoon), Burma.25 However, Kang’s decisions on his Canada–United States–Mexico trip from 1904 would lead to Yip Yen’s dominance in CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong, and to the dramatic expansion of CERA’s business ventures from Hong Kong and Southeast Asia into North America. During Kang’s third tour in Canada from November 1904 to February 1905, he would set the stage for the future mobilization of an anti-American boycott through personal appeals for overseas Chinese unity and reform of Chinatowns, as well as direct contacts with white elites, particularly Canadian politicians and American diplomats. After completing the Europe segment on this global tour, Kang Youwei arrived in Montreal on November 12, 1904, and received a warm welcome from President Yip Yen and Treasurer Yang Lingshi 杨灵石 of the Vancouver-based CERA of Canada, as well as from the leaders of its local chapter and hundreds of Chinese migrants in this Canadian city. Kang rode in a carriage preceded by a Canadian brass band and followed by thirty carriages carrying prominent Chinese and a rear guard of Chinese musicians with gongs, drums, flutes, and other musical instruments. A local English-language newspaper addressed Kang as a “prince” of Qing China in its report about his arrival. That evening, Kang spoke to a crowd of Chinese at a local church, where he “urged his audience to adopt the western methods and impressed upon them the value of sanitary conditions in their daily lives. They should maintain their patriotism for their motherland,” Kang stressed, but he also “congratulated the Chinese present on being law-abiding citizens of this country.”26 In Ottawa, an English-language newspaper announced that Kang Youwei would arrive in the capital city on November 16, 1904, and meet with representatives of the Canadian government to discuss the issue of admitting exiled Chinese reformers. The newspaper also reported that Lord Minto would depart from Ottawa the next day following the end of his term as governor-general.27 Because Prime Minister Laurier was also away from the city,28 Kang was unable to meet either of them as he had done in 1899. But he still presented Laurier with “an ancient Chinese porcelain of 200 years old” and “a box of Chinese silk embroidery” as gifts,29 and his successive visits to Toronto and Ottawa on November 15–18 received an equally warm welcome from local Chinese in the two cities. After his speech to several hundred Chinese migrants in Toronto, more than one hundred

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of them joined the local chapter of CERA on the spot. In another speech to members of the Ottawa chapter of CERA, he called for an increase in China’s “material strength” (wuzhi 物质) through commercial and industrial development,30 which would become a new slogan for his reformist movement. Kang Youwei and his entourage then traveled west, and during a short stopover in Winnipeg they were cordially greeted by local Chinese and treated with a banquet.31 Their arrival in Vancouver on November 22 met with even greater fanfare among the local Chinese. A major English-language newspaper reported that a large number of local Chinese of all classes came to the railroad terminal to extend a welcome to “Prince Kang.” Like the welcoming ceremony in Montreal, Kang’s decorated carriage was preceded by the city band, and it was followed by a procession of fifteen carriages of leading Chinese merchants in the city. On an elevated platform in Chinatown, Kang delivered a speech to a large gathering of Chinese.32 One emphasis of Kang’s speeches to local Chinese in Vancouver was his exhortation to pursue their unity with compatriots through the development of commercial companies and advancement in industrial education.33 This new reformist plan forced Kang to rely more on the business-managing skills of overseas Chinese merchant leaders in CERA, especially those from Canada. It was also in Vancouver that he made the final but fatal decision about managing personnel of CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong. Kang first nominated Li Fuji, then-president of the CERA chapter in Victoria, to manage the new venture. After Li repeatedly declined the nomination by early 1903, intense debates ensued among CERA’s main leaders over other nominees. Both Xu Qin and Liang Qichao strongly recommended Yip Yen for the position in late 1903, but Kang did not consent until Yip agreed to restrictions on his managerial power at their personal meeting in Vancouver.34 During Kang Youwei’s stay in Vancouver, he prepared for his entry into the United States by establishing contacts with white elites. As Liang Qichao had done in Vancouver the previous year, Kang joined the CERA of Canada leaders and their Caucasian guests at a banquet in his honor on November 29, 1904, and the attendance of nearly same white elites at the two banquets betrayed their close relations with this reformist association and its leaders. The thirteen non-Chinese guests at the banquet included L. Edwin Dudley, the American consul in Vancouver; J. Mackenzie Bowell, the local

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Canadian customs collector, and one of his colleagues, Lieutenant Colonel Charles A. Worsnop, as well as editors or reporters from all the main newspapers in Vancouver and Victoria. In addition to a series of toasts, Consul Dudley’s speech assured the audience that President “Teddy” Roosevelt was “a friend” of CERA. Kang then expressed appreciation and vowed to “enlighten his countrymen as to the civilization and noble ideas of the West.”35 It was around the time of this banquet that Consul Dudley helped Kang Youwei secure a visa to enter the United States. He also provided Kang with various letters of introduction to American authorities, ranging from customs officers to the secretary of state, requesting courtesy to Kang and his retinue.36 Likewise, Bowell and Worsnop would maintain close associations with the main leaders of CERA of Canada, particularly with its president Yip Yen and his brother Yip On (aka Yi Tingsan 叶庭三, 1871−, see Figure 3 in Chapter 1), the Chinese-language secretary of the association. It is evident that through their help Yip On succeeded Yip Yen as the Chinese interpreter at the Vancouver customs office on August 24, 1904, after the latter resigned to take a managerial post at CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong.37 The Yip brothers would use their cus-

toms house connections with its white officers to serve the interests of CERA and their own familial businesses, and to act as power brokers between the local Chinese community and Canadian society.38

Kang Youwei’s activities in Vancouver delayed his trip to Victoria until the evening of December 1, 1904, but his arrival there nonetheless received an enthusiastic reception by the local chapter of CERA and a band.39 A local English newspaper lauded him as “[t]he most illustrious of four hundred millions of Chinese.” Kang’s interview with the newspaper’s reporter succinctly stated the political, educational, and business plans for his reformist association and movement: “Firstly, to secure unity among the Chinese people; secondarily, to educate and enlighten them along progressive lines; thirdly, to bring about commercial and industrial activity in order that China may assume a place in the council of nations.”40 In order to alleviate white prejudices against Chinatowns and build friendly relations with the Caucasian society, Kang’s speech in Victoria on December 11 specifically urged local Chinese to “follow the customs of the people of this country, particularly their methods of living, to pay heed to the laws of sanitation and cleanliness.” In response, the CERA chapter in Victoria announced a plan to establish public baths for Chinese residents, and its members “agreed

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to patronize the institution … besides attending to the other requisites of cleanliness.”41 Thereafter, the Vancouver CERA chapter also planned “free public baths” for the cleanliness of Chinese residents there, and it further promised to “advocate better sanitary conditions” in the local Chinatown.42 Indeed, it operated a public bath (xishenfang 洗身房) and a barbershop (jianfasuo 剪发所) on the first floor of its headquarters building later on.43 From Victoria, Kang Youwei returned to Coal Island, where he had stayed in the summer of 1899, and lived in the Hut under the Vast Heaven again until December 22, 1904, as he worked on the compilation of his Travel Notes in Eleven European Countries (Ouzhou shiyiguo youji 欧洲 十一国游记). In the preface to this collection, he claimed he was able to become the greatest Chinese traveler because of his advantage of using modern forms of transportation and communication, especially cars, steamships, and telegrams. Kang regarded his travel as a search for methods to solve Chinese national crises and thus likened himself to the legendary Divine Husbandman (Shennong 神农) who had tested various herbs to invent medicine for the Chinese people.44 Although Kang Youwei soon became ill and moved to Harrison Hot Springs east of Vancouver from the end of 1904 to the beginning of 1905,45 he continued to develop a more concrete reformist plan based on his recent travels in the West, and thus completed a long essay, “National Salvation through Material Up-building” (Wuzhi jiuguolun 物质救国论). Based on his recent speech in Ottawa, this essay argued that Western countries became strong powers mainly because of the development of their material forces, including modern industries and new technology as well as gunboats and strong armies. But it also stressed material development as a way to stop liberalist and revolutionary tides that rose from the time of the Boxer fiasco in Qing China around 1900. Thus, Kang regarded the development of such material forces as the key to the salvation of China.46 In a letter dated April 12, 1905, he further argued that constitutional reform in China should start with the election of local councils for self-government from the township to the provincial level, and then extend to the national level more than ten years later.47 Such an argument reflected the gradual regression of Kang’s reformist thoughts and his opposition to liberalism, radical reformism, and revolutionary tides around the time of his third visit to Canada, but it laid the theoretical foundation for CERA to promote its transnational business. It was during Kang Youwei’s third visit to Canada in 1904−1905 that

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he and his overseas collaborators completed both theoretical and practical preparations, principally personnel arrangements, for CERA’s transnational business ventures, which he would further pursue during his subsequent visits to the United States and Mexico. His Canadian experiences also prepared him to lead the anti-American boycott at home and abroad while pushing for changes in American immigration policies and racial attitudes through his promotion of reforms in Chinatowns and his personal contacts with Caucasian politicians. Indeed, just after Kang Youwei left western Canada for the United State on February 11, 1905, and made successive visits to Seattle and Portland, he issued a public notice to CERA chapters in the states of Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. The notice informed them of his previous discussion and collaboration with the Canadian CERA chapters about two new initiatives: first, to set up cleaning societies (jiejinghui 洁净会) for the purpose of diminishing racial prejudice against Chinese unsanitary behaviors, and second, to establish lianweibu or departments for collective protection, which were actually the aforementioned antiracism institutions initiated by Liang Qichao in Vancouver in early 1903. Kang urged the CERA chapters in the four states to jointly form a general department of collective protection in Portland, Oregon, and to develop plans for cleaning societies by following the published rules of the new organizations in Canada.48 Thereafter, Kang temporarily settled in Los Angeles, but on May 4, 1905, he issued an emergency telegram to leaders of the CERA chapters in Japan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere as well as to reformist activists in Shanghai. The telegram warned that a special envoy from Washington, DC, had been dispatched to Qing China for the purpose of renewing the Sino-American treaty against Chinese labor immigration to the United States. It called on them to recruit patriotic people, hold public meetings, and send telegrams to the Qing court and provincial governors in protest against the renewal of the treaty. In particular, Kang suggested using newspapers as a way to mobilize the populace for the antitreaty movement. Consequently, Liang Qichao forwarded a proposal from CERA’s newspaper in Honolulu, Xin Zhongguo bao 新中国报 [New China daily], to its newspaper in Shanghai, Shibao 时 报 [Eastern times]. This proposal urged Chinese business and industrial organizations to boycott American goods in response to the Chinese exclusion acts that had been advocated by white trade unions. Meanwhile, one of CERA’s public notices indicated that departments for collective protection

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had appeared in Los Angeles, Fresno, and Marysville in California, and it urged the use of such organizations to raise funds for the mass mobilization. Kang probably issued this notice anonymously, and he later wrote at least one of the twelve songs for protests against the Sino-American treaty for the Anti-Treaty Society (juyuehui 拒约会) in Hong Kong.49 Through Shibao’s propaganda for the anti-American boycott from Shanghai, and the newspaper’s contacts with officials and merchants in China’s largest city, the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce (Shanghai shangwu zonghui 上海商务总会) held a special meeting on May 10, 1905. At this meeting, merchant leaders issued the call for boycotting American goods unless the Chinese exclusion acts were modified in the United States within two months. This chamber of commerce and its counterparts in other cities of China then served as central nodes of various boycott organizations and actions. CERA’s chapters under Kang Youwei’s leadership also mobilized overseas Chinese in their transnational boycott against American goods in Hong Kong and other cities or countries such as Singapore, Burma, and Australia.50 CERA of Canada also led the propaganda effort in Vancouver for the anti-American boycott because its agents had often been denied entry into the United States or faced mistreatment there. Under its influence, the Chinese Board of Trade in Vancouver held a mass meeting on June 19, 1905, which gathered about eight hundred Chinese from Vancouver, New Westminster, and Victoria. After the boycott telegrams from Shanghai and Canton were read at the meeting, prominent Chinese merchants from the three Canadian cities delivered strongly worded speeches, and those attending the meeting made a unanimous decision to take boycott action. More than $1,000 (CAD) was raised on the spot as funds for the boycott movement in China and as subsidies for laborers who refused to unload American goods or ships.51 The Chinese in Victoria also held boycott meetings and posted large red placards in the local Chinatown. They raised funds for the boycott movement and resolved not to work for any American citizens in the city.52 The Victoria chapter of CERA and its seventeen leaders, together with those of the local CCBA, CKT, and more than thirty merchants and companies, donated funds that were sent to China through the boycott headquarters in San Francisco.53 After the anti-American boycott started in China and among the global Chinese diaspora in mid-1905, Kang Youwei left Los Angeles for the East

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Coast of the United States, and he promoted the movement on his trip using the same antiracism strategies he had suggested and employed before and during his recent Canadian tour. His public speeches to both Chinese and Caucasian audiences—as well as his interviews with Englishlanguage newspapers in St. Louis, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and other American cities—directly criticized the Chinese exclusion acts and demanded changes to the discriminatory policies. Kang’s personal contacts with white elites on the issue culminated in two well-known audiences with President Roosevelt on June 15 and 24. On the day of the second audience the president issued an executive order, demanding courteous treatment of nonlabor Chinese travelers by American customs officers and other authorities. In a letter to the president on January 30, 1906, Kang urged further reform of American policies toward Chinese immigrants, making the same arguments as in his earlier letter to Canadian Prime Minister Laurier.54 At the peak of the anti-American boycott, Kang Youwei gathered CERA leaders from the United States, Canada, and Mexico for a general conference in New York on July 24–28, 1905. One of their resolutions was to form the general department for collective protection in Hong Kong, its associate department in Yokohama, and an affiliated department in each chapter of CERA. Another resolution was to establish cleaning bureaus, including public baths, in all Chinatowns, as Kang had called for during his third Canadian tour and at the beginning of his visit to the United States. Through these institutions, CERA members and their families would pay a monthly or annual fee in return for financial and legal aid in the case of illness, death caused by “foreigners,” or other difficult situations. Members were required to bathe once a week, shave every ten days, and wear Western suits or proper Chinese clothes.55 While the boycott caused limited improvement in American and Canadian policies toward Chinese immigrants,56 CERA’s new resolution about personal and public hygiene inspired its members across the Pacific Rim. In Australia, CERA chapters took active measures to adopt Western ideas, customs, and fashions for the purpose of reducing white prejudice. Many Chinese men decided to follow Western hairstyles by cutting their queues,57 which were a symbol of male Chinese loyalty to the Qing dynasty, as mentioned above, but also a target of anti-Chinese racism. Yip Yen, the former president of CERA of Canada, had recently moved from Vancouver to Hong Kong to be a manager of the Chinese Commer-

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cial Corporation for the reformist organization before the outbreak of the anti-American boycott. After Yip and other reformist leaders in Hong Kong received Kang’s aforementioned telegram of May 4, 1905, they immediately formed the Anti-Treaty Association to oppose the Sino-American treaty that banned labor migration to the United States. They then contacted Chinese newspapers and comrades, organized mass meetings, and sent telegraphic petitions to the Qing authorities in Beijing and Canton. After the AntiTreaty General Association (Juyue zonghui 拒约总会) appeared in Canton, Yip served as one of its four directors (zongli 总理) and thus became a major leader of the boycott movement.58 Under his management, CERA’s Huayi Company (Huayi gongsi 华益公司) became a major fundraising agency of the Anti-Treaty General Association in Canton,59 despite being illegal in late Qing China by that time as a reformist organization. The illegitimacy of CERA in late Qing China has led to some doubt by scholars about its role in initiating the anti-American boycott. Some studies have argued that this movement resulted from a national awakening or broad social changes, ranging from the influence of new media to the appearance of varied associations.60 In fact, the newly formed chambers of commerce in late Qing China “served as the central nodes of interaction among the different sociopolitical forces, expanded relations with varied urban organizations, and helped bring them into a nationwide boycott.”61 CERA chapters and leaders, ranging from Kang Youwei to Yip Yen, played a similar role among many overseas Chinese communities. Through their institutional and interpersonal collaboration with the Shanghai General Chamber of Commerce and other organizations, the anti-American boycott led Chinese at home and abroad to unity of action for the first time, as Kang had appealed for during his first Canadian tour. The anti-American boycott helped CERA greatly expand its organization and influence among overseas Chinese. It also helped CERA’s fundraising campaign for its Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong, and the Huayi Company under Yip Yen’s direct control. On Kang’s first month of his trip along the western coast of the United States in early 1905, he almost lost hope for CERA’s plan for the Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong because his fundraising efforts generated few Chinese investments in the venture.62 On April 8, 1905, Yip Yen and other CERA leaders in Hong Kong held a conference for the shareholders of the Chinese Commercial Corporation, and they found that it had collected only 10 percent

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of its capital subscribed by overseas Chinese. But the anti-American boycott from mid-1905 spurred overseas Chinese to send both their donations to the movement and their pledged capital to CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong.63 Thus, under the management of Yip Yen and other leaders, CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong soon received $598,760 (HKD) in investments from overseas Chinese, mainly from North America. Most of its capital was collected under Yip Yen’s direct control in Hong Kong by Huayi Company, which was a fundraising agency of the AntiTreaty General Association. The Chinese Commercial Corporation also provided initial funds for the Sino-Mexican Bank (Hua-Mo yinhang 华 墨银行) in Torreón, Mexico. With investment from CERA members, the Sino-Mexican Bank not only invested in a railway line and real estate speculation in Torreón but also would fund the Huayi Branch Company (Huayi fenju 华益分局) in New York, which would in turn provide capital for the operation of a restaurant in Chicago, King Joy Lo (Qiongcailou 琼彩 楼). Moreover, these business establishments funded reformist newspapers in Shanghai, Canton, New York, and other cities, and the Chinese Commercial Corporation under Yip Yen’s management further invested in other business ventures. Previously, in 1902, Liang Qichao had moved CERA’s press, the Guangzhi Book Bureau (Guangzhi shuju 广智书局), from Yokohama to Shanghai and expanded its operation with investments from the Chinese in North America, especially Canada.64 Perhaps inspired by CERA’s continued success in transnational politics and business following his third Canadian tour, Kang Youwei compiled his poems written from 1904 to 1907 as one collection and named it after the Hut under the Vast Heaven, his studio on Coal Island near Victoria. His preface to the collection of poems fully expressed the enthusiasm and excitement he felt about his political cause and personal life during these years: Since my reentry into Canada in November 1904, I continued the trip to the United States and Mexico, and returned to Europe. I was like a swan, flying highly, soaring steeply up by thousands of miles, and shooting up into the vast heaven.65

Indeed, after Kang Youwei left Canada on February 11, 1905, he first traveled in the United States along its Pacific coast until Los Angeles, then took a cross-continent trip to the East Coast and another one back to the West

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Coast, and finally visited the southwestern states until his nearly ten-month American tour ended in Texas by November 26, 1905. Thereafter, Kang toured Mexico for nearly five months until April 19, 1906, and returned to New York for his second visit to the United States. On August 15, he left New York for a transatlantic trip to Europe, and thus ended his consecutive Canada–United States−Mexico trips from November 1904 to August 1906,66 but he would soon come back from Europe to America. In trips across Canada, the United States, and Mexico, Kang Youwei championed the antiracism initiatives that came from his contact with the CERA of Canada leaders starting in 1902. He specifically promoted the community reform of Chinatowns and Chinese unity through new cleaning societies and departments for collective protection during his third tour across Canada from late 1904 to early 1905. During Kang’s first visit to the United States in 1905, he furthered the antiracism initiative by leading CERA into a global Chinese boycott of American goods as a protest against the US exclusion of labor immigrants from China, thereby pushing the reformist movement to a new peak of transpacific expansion and influence. During his first Mexican tour from November 1905 to April 1906, Kang personally implemented the aforementioned plan to unite overseas Chinese through business ventures in Mexico, as he had suggested during his first visit to Canada in early 1899. More importantly, he put into practice the new reformist strategy of enriching and strengthening China through the material development of modern industries, commercial ventures, and the like, as he proposed in the aforementioned article “National Salvation through Material Up-building,” which he completed on his third Canadian trip near the end of 1904. In fact, Kang had presented a proposal to form a department of colonization (zhiminbu 殖民部) under CERA at its New York conference on July 24–28, 1905, and use it as a means to purchase and develop land for Chinese immigration in Mexico and in South American and Southeast Asian countries. Delegates at the conference later turned this proposal into a resolution to form the department of land development (pidibu 辟地部) for the same purpose, particularly for Cantonese migration to these countries.67 Thus, after Kang’s arrival in Mexico and his personal investigation in Torreón, he soon decided to establish a bank in the Mexican city for money and land speculation, as well as other commercial and industrial ventures. His ambitious business plans initially included several profit-making schemes:

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using the bank to issue paper currency under the banking law in Mexico, shipping Mexican bullion to the silver-demanding China, and buying and selling land in Torreón’s booming real estate market. These plans were later expanded to include the construction of a streetcar line in Torreón and even an attempt to establish a steamship company for transpacific traffic between Mexico and China.68 On Kang’s transatlantic trip from New York to Europe starting on August 15, 1906, he wrote a long poem in which he claimed that he had discovered the best paradise to realize his two-decade-long dream of opening a “new national land” (xinguotu 新国土) for a “new China” (xin-Zhonghua 新中 华) with Chinese immigrants.69 Subsequently, during Kang’s second visit to the United State before his transatlantic trip, his activities mainly focused on raising a million dollars of capital for the bank in Mexico, which would include funds for the streetcar project. He also issued a set of revised rules for CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong, or what he called shanghui, and centralized its managerial power into his own hands.70 Because the United States and Mexico became so important for CERA’s organizational expansion and its political and business activities, Kang would return from Europe and take his third and fourth American trips between March and November 1907 as well as his second visit to Mexico in June of that year for the purpose of meeting Mexican President Porfirio Díaz (1830−1915). Afterward, he embarked from the United States to Europe again, then traveled through the Middle East and South Asia on his way back to Southeast Asia, ending this global tour from March 1904 to September 1908.71 It is important to note that he did not once set foot in nearby Canada during the nearly four years after his third Canadian tour ended in early 1905. In mid-1909, however, according to his second daughter, Kang Tongbi, Kang Youwei suddenly suspended his tour across Europe and took a special trip from Liverpool to the North American continent (Meizhou 美 洲) between late June and late July, where he merely revisited Coal Island north of Victoria. Kang then returned to Europe, where he resumed his tour and finally went back to Asia via the Suez Canal in mid-August 1909.72 Because Kang Tongbi and her fiancé, Luo Chang 罗昌 (1884−1955), accompanied Kang Youwei in Europe before and after this alleged Canadian trip in mid-1909, her account should be taken seriously.73 While her record of Kang Youwei’s round trip between Liverpool and Victoria in mid-1909 has

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never been disputed by other scholars, it has been neglected in the aforementioned works of Li Donghai, Wickberg and his collaborators, as well as other scholars. Nevertheless, Kang Youwei’s last trip to Canada remains mysterious simply because it was so sudden, short, and seemingly pointless except for his revisit to Coal Island. This alleged trip also happened at an unexpected moment because Kang’s relations with Yip Yen and his associates in Vancouver had become increasingly hostile by that time, as is detailed below. Moreover, contemporary newspapers in Canada were silent on Kang’s visit from Liverpool to Victoria in 1909, which suggests a shroud of secrecy, if indeed it ever happened. Due to the lack of relevant sources, particularly the inaccuracy and incompleteness of records of transatlantic passengers in the early twentieth century, it is difficult to prove or disprove the record of Kang Youwei’s trip from Europe to Canada in mid-1909. In fact, an examination of the crest and ebb of Kang’s reformist movement from Canada to the Pacific Rim up to 1909 suggests both the plausibility and implausibility of this mysterious trip. Certainly, this historical mystery deserves exploration not only because of its importance for a biographical examination of Kang’s life but also because of its implications for the rise and fall of his political reforms from Canada to the transpacific Chinese diaspora in the decade from 1899 to 1909.

The North American Center and Transpacific Crest of Overseas Chinese Political Reforms Because Pacific Canada was CERA’s starting point in 1899 and the springboard for the overseas Chinese political reforms under Kang Youwei’s leadership, it initially led the institutional development of this reformist association and its outreach to people of different ages, social classes, and native-place groups, including a small number of women in North American Chinatowns. After Kang shifted the focus of his personal activities and CERA’s operation southward through his four visits to the United States and two trips to Mexico from 1905 to 1907, he also tried to strengthen its formal structure and put it under direct control by himself and his closest associates, especially his former students. Nonetheless, Kang still dispatched CERA’s Canadian leaders for its business operations in Hong Kong, Mexico, and the United States, which helped the transpacific spread of Yip Yen’s

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personal networks of associates from Vancouver and set the stage for their cliquish activities in the future. When Liang Qichao completed his North American tour in November 1903 (see Chapter 1), he recorded eleven national and regional headquarters of CERA, as well as eighty-six local chapters in the Americas and the Hawaiian Islands. According to his breakdown of CERA chapters, twelve were under one national headquarters in Canada, and fifty-eight were under seven regional headquarters in the United States.74 The largest CERA chapter was probably the one in San Francisco because it claimed to include four thousand members among roughly forty thousand Chinese residents in the city around 1901.75 During Liang’s visit to San Francisco in September 1903, he claimed that the local CERA had nearly ten thousand members among the approximately twenty-seven thousand to twenty-eight thousand Chinese there.76 But the chapter leaders soon entered power struggles with each other and with both Xu Qin and Liang Qitian, two of Kang Youwei’s early emissaries to North America, and ultimately lost his trust.77 As a result, none of CERA’s seven regional headquarters in the United States could integrate their chapters as a united force. Liang Qichao’s travel notes from 1903 showed that CERA of Canada was the Vancouver-based national headquarters of its twelve chapters. Liang recorded the elections of CERA of Canada in Vancouver, Victoria, and New Westminster in March 1903, and indicated that, among more than six thousand qualified electors, only about one thousand cast their ballots. His records showed that the Chinese in Canada numbered about twenty thousand, and that CERA members accounted for 60 to 70 percent of Chinese residents in Vancouver, more than half of those in Victoria, and almost all of those in New Westminster.78 It was evidently based on Liang’s account of 1903 that Li Donghai’s early work on the Chinese in Canada claimed that CERA of Canada had only twelve chapters and six to seven thousand members from 1904 to 1906. Li also assumed that the CERA members in Canada were composed mainly of older merchants and included few laborers or youths.79 The work of Wickberg and his collaborators accepted Li’s claims, concluding that CERA “attracted support of the older, more prosperous Chinese merchants in Canada,” and that its twelve Canadian chapters had “a reported membership of 7,000” by 1904. Yet, as this collaborative work admits, “it is not possible that there would be 7,000 prosperous merchants in a [Chinese Canadian]

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community numbering only 28,000 in 1911.”80 Such self-contradictory assumptions have also appeared in more recent publications on the Chinese in Canada.81 A careful analysis of available sources indeed confirms Liang Qichao’s record of Canadian CERA chapters around 1903. CERA of Canada appeared in Vancouver in May 1900, and its twelve chapters in 1903 could be found in Victoria, Vancouver, New Westminster, Nanaimo, Union (Cumberland), Extension, Kamloops, and Rossland in British Columbia, as well as in Ottawa and Montreal. Two CELRA chapters also were located in the first three of those ten Canadian cities.82 An English-language newspaper article about CERA of Canada’s election on March 7, 1903, reported that its 1,489 members cast ballots—including 864 in Vancouver, 323 in Victoria, and 302 in New Westminster.83 Liang’s record about the number of ballots cast is thus roughly correct, and his statement regarding more than six thousand members of CERA of Canada in early 1903 was probably based on CERA’s own records. Even his estimate of the percentage of CERA members among residents of Victoria’s Chinatown is roughly accurate because its two major leaders in the city, Li Fuji and Dong Qiantai 董谦泰 (aka Dong Tai 董泰, 1844−?), had reported that nearly 40 percent of local Chinese had joined their association as early as August 1901.84 Thus, from the beginning, CERA membership went beyond the old and wealthy elite merchant circle. Previous studies have also tended to neglect the rapid expansion of CERA chapters among Chinese migrants in the transpacific world, particularly in Canada, after Liang Qichao’s North American trip in 1903. By December 1903, only one month after Liang’s departure from Vancouver for Japan, the number of CERA chapters in Canada had increased from twelve to sixteen, including the four newly formed ones in Ladysmith, Ashcroft, and Revelstoke in British Columbia as well as Halifax in maritime Canada.85 In July 1905, Kang Youwei announced at CERA’s general conference in New York that its chapters had spread to more than 160 cities.86 In particular, the editorial staff of a reformist newspaper in New York stated that the total number of CERA chapters in Canada had already reached thirty-six in mid-1904.87 This statement can be confirmed by an extant stone inscription in an original office of the Victoria CERA, which names the donors to the construction of the building around 1905. It shows that CERA indeed had members in thirty-seven Canadian cities. While the twelve chapters of CERA of Canada in 1903, except those in Ottawa and Montreal, were

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located in British Columbia, the thirty-seven cities on the list also included Calgary in the neighboring province of Alberta and Winnipeg in the prairie province of Manitoba, as well as the new metropolis of Toronto and the small city of London in the province of Ontario.88 This list omits at least two chapters, one in Sidney, a port city near Victoria, and another in Halifax within the maritime province of Nova Scotia, nor does it include the two CELRA chapters in British Columbia.89 In early 1904, CERA’s petition to the Qing government for the protection of Manchuria during the Russo-Japanese War (1904−1905) presented an incomplete list of its 132 chapters. The petition named forty-two in Canada and fifty-seven in the United States,90 a total of 99 in 1904, accounting for 75 percent of all CERA chapters in that year. The total number of CERA chapters later rose to over 170 in late 1906 and to about 200 in July 1908.91 According to available data, they were mostly located within the transpacific world, and their numbers reached approximately fifty-eight in Canada and 113 in the continental United States by late 1908.92 In other words, CERA chapters in the United States and Canada numbered nearly 171 and formed a majority of its approximately 200 chapters when its transpacific expansion attained its zenith in 1908. Evidently, CERA’s central arena was still in American and Canadian Chinatowns because both Kang Youwei’s personal activities and fellow migrants from Guangdong Province concentrated there. Certainly, CERA chapters in different Canadian cities had memberships of varied sizes. In the aforementioned election of CERA of Canada in March 1903, since 864 members voted in Vancouver alone, the number of all qualified voters, or the total membership of the local CERA, should have been over one thousand. According to Liang Qichao’s estimate in 1903, Victoria’s CERA membership included more than half of the approximately three thousand Chinese residents in the city.93 Its actual number was probably around one thousand in 1903, based on a local newspaper report of over six hundred participants in this local chapter in October 1902. The Victoria CERA chapter also had a junior branch composed of members ranging from six years up.94 In the New Westminster chapter of CERA, its members in the city and nearby Ladner and Chilliwack numbered more than nine hundred.95 By contrast, in the small port city of Sidney near Victoria, the local CERA chapter had only forty-seven members by early 1904. In the south-

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eastern part of British Columbia, the CERA chapter of Rossland, a small city in the mountains, had just fifty-three members in 1903.96 These two cases suggest that CERA chapters in small cities probably had around fifty members each. In Nelson, another small city in southeastern British Columbia, a newspaper reported two hundred fifty to three hundred members in the local CERA in late 1905, but the figure might be an exaggeration because the city had only about six hundred Chinese residents around that time.97 Because most Chinese in Canada lived in British Columbia, the membership in CERA chapters in other provinces would be necessarily smaller.98 In regard to the social backgrounds of CERA members in Canada, the president of the Victoria chapter, Li Fuji, indicated in a letter from 1900 that members were mostly poor, rather than predominantly rich merchants as other scholars have claimed. Li Fuji’s statement can be confirmed by a statistical analysis of the donors who contributed to the construction of Victoria CERA’s new headquarters around 1905. Among the total 620 donors, those from Victoria numbered 314, of whom 237, or 75 percent, contributed only $1– $5, and the remaining 77 donors contributed $6–$100 (CAD). Few members of CERA chapters in other Canadian cities made donations, and among the 121 donors from Vancouver, the contributors of five dollars or less numbered 90, or 74 percent.99 If the donors of one to five dollars could be considered as relatively poor, they evidently formed a majority of members in these CERA chapters. Because the CERA chapter in Victoria had about one thousand members around 1905, the overwhelming majority of them were obviously too poor to make any donation. Thus, CERA was mainly a political association of regular migrants from China. Nevertheless, the CERA of Canada leaders and its chapters included wealthy merchants, but they were not all elders, as Li Donghai, Wickberg, and other scholars had assumed. Three major founders and early leaders of the Victoria CERA—Li Fuji, Dong Qiantai, and Luo Yuehu (Lok Yut Wo 骆月湖, 1847−?)—were all between the age of fifty-one and fifty-four in 1899, when they joined Kang Youwei in founding the reformist association. Li and Luo were respectively the owner and the manager of Quong Man Fung & Co. (Guangwanfenghao 广万丰号), and Dong managed the longestablished Tai Soong & Co. (Taixunhao 泰巽号).100 Thus, they were still in the prime of life and energetic leaders of the local CERA chapter. Moreover,

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the founding members of the first CERA chapter in Victoria included at least eight youths (shaonian 少年), such as Feng Junqing 冯俊卿, in 1899.101 The previously cited work of Li Donghai also claims that the preexisting communitywide organization of Victoria’s Chinatown, the CCBA, did not provide direct support for the newly formed CERA in 1899, and that its major merchant leaders did not dare to join the reformist association. Li’s own list of the presidents (Zhengdong 正董) and managers (sishi 司事) of the Victoria CCBA between 1884 and 1904, however, includes not only Dong Qiantai and Luo Yuehu but also Chu Lai, Lu Renshan, and Xu Linfu, all of whom were among the major founders of the local CERA, as Chapter 1 has shown. In fact, Chu, Lu, Xu, and Feng Xiushi, the father of Feng Junqing, were major founders of both the CCBA in 1884 and CERA in 1899.102 As the CCBA’s incumbent vice president in 1898−1899, Lee Mong Kow declined Kang Youwei’s nomination to be president of the local CERA, but he did become one of its directors (zhili 值理).103 Moreover, the available list of Victoria CCBA leaders in 1902 shows that its president, Huang Jinfeng 黄 锦峰, vice president, Chen Chunchu 陈春初, and at least two of its eleven directors, Luo Yuehu and Liu Zikui 刘子逵 (aka Charlie Bo), were also among the major leaders of the local CERA.104 The Victoria CERA chapter incorporated not only major leaders from the preexisting CCBA but also their kinship, local fellowship, business partnerships, and other interpersonal relations into the new reformist association. Its two top leaders, Li Fuji and Dong Qiantai, were natives of, respectively, Taishan and Panyu counties in Guangdong Province, and thus represented Sam-Yup and Sze-Yup, the two major dialectal groups among Cantonese migrants in the city and Canada.105 When Dong’s company, Tai Soong & Co., ended its operations in 1902, he relocated to Vancouver. Thereafter, Li Fuji and the manager of his Quong Man Fung & Co., Luo Yuehu, dominated the Victoria CERA.106 Other early leaders of Victoria CERA included the “three On Hing brothers”107—Chen Dongru (Chan Tong Ork 陈东儒, 1848−1910) and his two sibling partners—in On Hing & Co. (Anxinghao 安兴号).108 Chu Lai and the manager of his company, Wing Chong & Co. (Rongchanghao 荣昌 号), Xu Linfu, were also major founders and early leaders of both the local CCBA from its beginning in 1884 and the newly formed CERA in 1899.109 Moreover, Chu was a Hakka, and thus served as a crucial link of this dialectal group with the communitywide organization in the local Chinatown and

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the reformist association.110 Through such connections, CERA leadership and membership, like those of the CCBA, could “cut across ethnic, linguistic, and clan/district lines” among the overseas Chinese,111 especially among the three major dialectal groups of migrants from Guangdong Province. Despite such overlap in leadership personnel and shared interpersonal relations, CERA distinguished itself from the preexisting CCBA by its further institutional formalization, wider transnational networks, and more radical political activism, including new feminist politics. After CERA first appeared in Victoria under Li Fuji and other early leaders in 1899, one of its posters shows that twenty-seven additional director positions had been established by September 1902.112 A list of local CERA donors for the antiAmerican boycott in 1905 shows one president, one secretary, and at least fifteen directors among its main leaders.113 The division of labor among these leaders is not known, but CERA’s leadership structure was possibly emulated by other Canadian chapters of CERA, such as the one in Vancouver. Although the Victoria CERA was formally inaugurated as the first chapter of this reformist association on July 20, 1899, Yip Yen, his uncle Yip Sang, the owner of Wing Sang Co. (Yongshenghao 永生号), and five other merchant leaders of Vancouver’s Chinatown had created its nucleus in the form of a transnational company over two months earlier. These five other merchant leaders were Won Alexander Cumyow (aka Wen Jinyou 温金有, 1861−1955, see Figure 4 in Chapter 1), the first Canadian-born Chinese; Dr. Lui or dentist Liao Yipeng; Chang Toy, the owner of Sam Kee Co. (Sanjihao 三记号); Lee Kee (Li Ji 李骥, aka Li Qingchi 李清墀, 1870−1953, see Figure 4 in Chapter 1), the founder of Lee Yuen Co. (Liyuanhao 利源号); and Huang Yushan 黄玉珊 (aka Wong Soon King, 1850−1918, see Figure 4 in Chapter 1), the owner of Hip Tuck Lung Co. (Xiedelonghao 协德隆号).114 A composite photograph of forty-two leaders of the Vancouver CERA includes a picture of Yip Yen, president of CERA of Canada (Jianada shu zongli 加拿大属总理). The main leaders of the local chapter included its zhengdong, or executive officer, Chang Toy, and Yip Yen’s uncle and younger brother, respectively—Yip Sang, as auditor (heshu 核数), and Yip On, as secretary (see Figures 3 and 4 in Chapter 1).115 When CERA of Canada appeared as the national headquarters in Vancouver in April 1901, its leaders included President Yip Yen, First Vice President Chang Toy, Second Vice President Yip Sang, and Corresponding Secretary Yip On, along with other wealthy merchants in the local Chinatown.116

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Absent from this list was Liao Yipeng, one of the seven initiators of CERA’s embryonic corporation in May 1899, who was excluded from the leadership of both its Vancouver chapter and its Canadian headquarters. Inscriptions made by Liang Qichao in early 1903 on the photograph of CERA’s Vancouver founders (see Figure 4 in Chapter 1) instead identified six earliest initiators of the reformist association in mid-1899 as Yip Yen, Yip Sang, Won Alexander Cumyow, Lee Kee, Huang Yushan, and He Zhenxiang (Ho Jun Chung 何振祥). In fact, He Zhenxiang was not among the original seven initiators, while two of them, Liao Yipeng and Chang Toy, were excluded from this photo. The photo identifies the six men as the “first executive officers” of CERA of Canada, including He Zhenxiang as the replacement of Chang Toy in the position of vice president.117 In 1904, Chang suffered further loss of the major leadership in the Vancouver chapter to its new president, Liang Rushan 梁如珊 (see Figure 3 in Chapter 1).118 The successive exclusion of Liao and Chang suggests the consequence of their open or covert rivalry with the Yips and their associates inside the reformist association. Indeed, Liao and Chang were both from Panyu County in Guangdong Province and related respectively to the Sam-Yup and Hakka dialectal groups, but the Yips and their close associates, such as Lee Kee and Huang Yushan, were natives of Taishan County and members of the SzeYup dialectal group. Their power struggles would replay in the near future, eventually weakening the Yips’ dominance in Vancouver’s Chinatown.119 Both rival factions contributed to the early development of the CERA chapter in Vancouver, which quickly overshadowed its predecessor in Victoria in forming a national headquarters, partly because its major leaders included younger and more active reformers. Yip Sang, the richest merchant and senior patriarch of the Yip lineage in Vancouver’s Chinatown, was fiftyfive years old in 1899, around the same age range as his counterparts in Victoria, Li Fuji, Dong Qiantai, and Luo Yuehu. His two nephews, however, Yip On and Yip Yen, were just twenty-eight and thirty-eight in that year. Meanwhile, Lee Kee was a young entrepreneur at the age of twenty-eight, Won Alexander Cumyow was a translator at thirty-eight, and Chang Toy, another tycoon in Vancouver’s Chinatown, was still a middle-aged man of forty-two.120 These youthful leaders played more active roles than their Victoria peers in CERA’s expansion, not only in Vancouver but also across Canada and North America. After the CERA chapters in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster

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dispatched three emissaries, including Liao Yipeng, to American Chinatowns for reformist mobilization in late 1899, Shen Caiman followed suit

as Liang Qitian’s secretary on their southward trip across the United States in late 1900, as discussed in Chapter 1. Shen at that time was the

comptroller of Chang Toy’s Sam Kee & Co. in its trade with the Wing Chong & Company of Chu Lai, Chang’s close friend and fellow Hakka in Victoria.121 In late 1904, President Liang Rushan of the Vancouver CERA and Won Alexander Cumyow, a top leader of CERA of Canada, also traveled to meet with their reformist comrades in Spokane and other American cities on their way to New York and Boston, later returning to Canada via Montreal. It was through their public speeches and political mobilization among the Chinese in Toronto that a new CERA chapter appeared there.122 In 1905, the Vancouver CERA elected a new president, Lee Jak-Tin. Lee then took “a tour of Canada from the Pacific to the Atlantic,” delivering public speeches first to the CERA chapters in Rossland, Nelson, and Fernie in southeastern British Columbia and then to those in Lethbridge, Calgary, and Edmonton in the province of Alberta.123 Yip Yen’s travels with Liang Qichao across Canada and the United States in 1903, their meeting with President Roosevelt,124 and another trip with Kang Youwei from Montreal to Vancouver in late 1904 greatly raised Yip’s status and transformed him into a highly influential figure across Chinese communities within and beyond Canada. At the end of Liang Qichao’s trip across North America in 1903, he claimed that Yip enjoyed “the highest reputation on the American continent and had won trust from everybody” among Chinese communities there.125 In November 1904, a newspaper in Vancouver even hailed Kang and Yip as “the two most distinguished Chinamen in America at the present time.”126 Through personal interactions of the CERA leaders in Vancouver with Kang, Liang, and other leading reformers, as well as their own trips and speeches, both local and external reformers made institutional initiatives and influenced the reformist movement across Canada and North America. Even the ambitious pursuits of personal, familial, and factional interests by these Canadian CERA leaders allowed for institutional changes in the reformist association and movement at the local, national, and transpacific levels. After Liang Qitian arrived in Canada as Kang’s first emissary and presided over a succession of joint meetings of the CERA chapters in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster in March 1900, these chapter leaders not

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only delivered public speeches in their respective offices every week, but also gathered their members for plenary meetings every year thereafter.127 During Liang Qichao’s stay in Vancouver in early 1903, he helped CERA of Canada draft a new constitution, including plans to establish a Department of Education (quanxuebu 劝学部) and Department of Public Relations (jiaoshebu 交涉部), in addition to the aforementioned lianweibu or Department for Collective Protection. Shortly after that, a Department of Education also appeared in the CERA office in New Westminster, where it operated a night school for teaching English.128 CERA of Canada also opened the Patriotic School, or Oi-Kowk Hok-tong (Aiguo xuetang 爱国学堂), in Vancouver that year. The school operated inside the building of Chang Toy’s Sam Kee Co., and its principal was Yip Sang. The two CERA leaders from opposing reformist factions were also its major financial sponsors, and they worked closely on this school partly because each had multiple wives and many children to educate there. The school provided education of Chinese language and Confucianism together with Western science for both boys and girls, including Yip’s four daughters.129 Following the precedent in Vancouver, CERA opened other schools under the same patriotic title in New York and San Francisco.130 By the summer of 1904, CERA of Canada had collected “funds for collective protection” from more than one hundred members, each paying fees ranging from $1 to $100 (CAD). The Department for Collective Protection then specified an annual fee of $4 (CAD) for regular members and $6 to $150 (CAD) for its leaders. This department promised financial aid to its members in case of injury or death, or assistance in repatriation if they became poor or sick.131 Such institutional innovation was duplicated in CERA chapters in California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. CERA’s general conference in New York in July 1905 also followed Vancouver’s precedent with its resolution to form its general, associate, and affiliated departments for collective protection as worldwide networks.132 One of the most important institutional innovations among CERA chapters in Canada was the creation of its women’s branches by Kang Tongbi in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster in 1903. The Victoria-born CELRA was the first women’s political association in the history of China and the Chinese diaspora. It distinguished itself from the Shanghai-based women’s educational institutions in the 1898 Reform and the late-coming feminist revolutionary associations of Chinese female students in Japan not

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only by its pioneering fusion of feminism with reformist politics but also by its formal organizational structure and transnational networks.133 The Victoria CELRA established the offices of president (zongli 总理), executive officer (zhengdong 正董), vice executive officer (fudong 副董), secretary (shuji 书记), and fourteen other leaders; according to its extant poster (see Figure 5), Kang Tongbi was its designated chairperson. Among the eighteen local leaders of this first CELRA chapter, only its secretary, Situ Mingyu 司徒鸣玉 (aka Situ Fenglian 司徒凤联), can be identified: she was a sister-in-law of Lee Mong Kow and the wife of Liu Zikui, both prominent figures in the Victoria CERA chapter.134 It is probable that most, if not all, of the female leaders of this CELRA were the wives, daughters, or other family members of the local CERA leaders. These women had already demonstrated their patriotic feminism through their political activism shortly after Kang Youwei’s overseas reformist movement began in that city. To support the military action mounted by Kang and his followers to rescue the Guangxu Emperor in 1900, the Victoria CERA organized a fundraising campaign in the spring of that year, and local women donated hundreds of dollars to the unsuccessful campaign.135 By helping Kang Tongbi establish the first chapter of CELRA in Victoria in May 1903, its members demonstrated their commitment to the reformist movement. On August 19, 1903, the Victoria CERA celebrated the Guangxu Emperor’s birthday and also used the occasion to hold “a banquet in honor of local Chinese ladies.”136 Although Kang Tongbi helped found CELRA’s first chapter in Victoria in May 1903 and its second chapter in Vancouver and New Westminster in mid-1903, the latter group played a more active role in terms of feminist mobilization and organizational expansion partly because many of its leaders came from the politically powerful Yip family, which dominated CERA of Canada. Its first meeting on May 28, 1903, gathered more than forty members, and they elected its first president, Mo Yuechan 莫月蟾 (1881−?), the wife of Liu Kangheng, or Law A. Yam, from New Westminster, who had recently won the election for vice president in CERA of Canada.137 However, the extant poster of this CELRA chapter dates its formation to autumn 1904 (see Figure 6), which suggests a reorganization after its birth in 1903. This poster positions the photos of the Guangxu Emperor (centered at the top), with Kang Tongbi, and Ye Meirong (Yip May Young 叶美蓉, 1886−?), the seventeen-year-old daughter of Yip Yen, in the upper portion,

F i g u re 5 . Poster of the Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association in Victoria, 1903 (Courtesy of the Harvard-Yenching Institute Library). The poster shows the Guangxu Emperor at the top center, Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao on his right and left sides, respectively, as well as Kang Tongbi above the portraits of eighteen local leaders of the first women’s political association in Chinese history. Situ Mingyu is the first person from the right in the top row. Source: Harvard-Yenching Institute Library, Hollis no. 990141995910203941.

F i g u re 6 . Poster of the Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association of Vancouver and New Westminster, 1904 (Courtesy of the City of Vancouver Archives). The poster shows the Guangxu Emperor at the top center; below are Kang Tongbi (right) and Ye Meirong (Yip May Young 叶美蓉), a daughter of Yip Yen, the main reformist leader in Canada. Nearly ten of the twenty other CELRA leaders on the poster were members of the Yip family. Mo Yuechan, Li Jihuan, and Nellie Yip are the second, third, and fifth persons from the left in the top row, and Mary Benson is in the middle of the bottom row. Source: City of Vancouver Archives, AM 1108-S3: The Yip Family and Yip Sang Ltd. Fonds.

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symbolizing the equal importance of the two young women in the local CELRA’s leadership. The photos of twenty other local leaders of this women’s organization are in the lower portion. Among them, Mo Yuechan became the vice president, while both President Li Jihuan 李姬欢 and one of the board members were respectively the first and second wives of Yip Yen. Moreover, Yip On’s wife was also a board member, and Yip Sang’s second, third, and fourth wives, as well as his Caucasian daughter-in-law, Nellie Yip (1882−1949), another daughter-in-law and second daughter, appeared as Chinese and English secretaries as well as board members. In total, at least ten leaders of the Vancouver CELRA were from the Yip family. Thus, the CELRA in Vancouver and New Westminster, together with its predecessor in Victoria, have been discredited by some scholars as “women’s groups that existed more on paper than in reality,” and their posters have been simply disregarded as a “public relations fantasy.”138 In fact, this poster reflects the realities of women’s lives, including conditions in the polygamous families of elite merchants in Canadian Chinatowns, and the Yips’ dominance in CERA of Canada, especially in the CELRA chapter for Vancouver and New Westminster. It displays the inability of these women to pursue gender equality in their family life, but their subjection to patriarchy in their families did not prevent the CELRA chapter from pursuing political feminism in public and political spheres. Such feminist politics not only found expression in the couplet of the poster that calls for gender equality through constitutional reforms, but also influenced CERA of Canada under the dominance of Yip Sang and his two nephews as well as Liu Kangheng from New Westminster. In December 1905, CERA of Canada gathered leaders of its chapters from different Canadian cities for a national meeting and specifically discussed the following issue: Women’s suffrage was one of the interesting questions discussed at a session of the executive [board] … The subject was debated pro and con with considerable animation, a large number of delegates taking part. It was decided, however, that as far as Chinese women were concerned the time had not yet arrived when they should be allowed to vote, as they did not have a sufficient knowledge of public questions.139

Although CERA of Canada did not grant suffrage to its female members, this meeting was historically significant because its agenda included the most sensitive feminist issue that still preoccupied suffragettes in the West

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and had only recently appeared in the writings of very few pioneer leaders of Chinese women.140 The historic debate over female franchise by the leaders of CERA of Canada happened at the end of 1905, more than two years after Kang Tongbi had expanded CELRA’s networks and its feminist movement from Canadian Chinatowns into Chinese communities in the United States from August 1903. It was also a response to her direct organization of CELRA’s chapters and indirect promotion of similar feminist organizations in three Canadian cities: Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster, as well as nine American cities: Seattle, Portland, Astoria, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Boston, and Honolulu. Based on her experience in Canada, Kang Tongbi made full use of the influence and connections of top male reformers, including her father, Kang Youwei, and actively recruited female relatives of CERA leaders for the new CELRA chapters. In particular, the Portland CELRA was founded with the support of President Li Meijin (Lee Mee Gin 李美近) of the local CERA, and its own president was Li’s wife, Huang Ruilian (Wong Suey Lim 黄瑞莲).141 Similarly, the first vice president in the New York CELRA was Mrs. Wong Kai, according to a report in a local newspaper.142 She appeared in the US Census of 1900 as the thirty-year-old Wong Toy,143 the wife of Huang Xi 黄 溪 (aka Huang Peiquan 黄佩泉), a leading figure of the New York CERA.144 Under Kang Tongbi’s influence, other female reformers formed their own organizations with different titles and initiated feminist mobilization. One of them was Huang Binghu (Wong Bing Woo 黄冰壶, 1875−1957), the wife of Tan Liang, a major leader of the Los Angeles CERA.145 While Kang Tongbi initially organized CELRA chapters in Canada with the slogan of promoting gender equality through constitutional reform, she and her feminist followers in the United States adopted a more concrete strategy of promoting women’s education as the prerequisite for their political participation and future enfranchisement.146 Immediately after the inauguration of the first American CELRA in Seattle on August 23, 1903, its female members contributed more than $100 (USD) in initial funds. Kang Tongbi promised on the spot to collect funds from all the CELRA chapters to open girls’ schools; she likely came up with this idea because Liang Qichao was calling for donations from overseas Chinese for a public school in Canton during his tour across American cities at that time.147 Thereafter, Kang Tongbi helped form the CELRA chapter in Portland before she and

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Liang returned for her second visit to that city on September 7, 1903. After Liang delivered a speech in the city, asking for donations to the planned public school in Canton, the members of the local CELRA chapter enthusiastically pledged $1,000 (USD). But they also criticized Liang for his plan to open the school only for boys rather than for girls in Guangdong Province. Their criticism made Liang promise to open a girl’s school in addition to the public school for male students in Canton.148 On Kang Tongbi’s subsequent visit to the nearby city of Astoria in late September 1903, she was joined by Ye Meirong from Vancouver’s CELRA, and Lao Yak Lon from Seattle, who was probably a leader of the newly formed CELRA chapter there. Influenced by their reformist speeches, local Chinese women in Astoria not only formed a new CELRA chapter but also donated $600 (USD) for the planned girls’ school in Canton.149 The subsequently formed CELRA chapter in New York and similar associations of Chinese women in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Honolulu all regarded female education as a key issue in their mobilization for political reforms and gender equality. They also tried to enrich the literary and political knowledge of their illiterate members by holding periodic meetings, delivering public lectures, reading newspapers together, and organizing other activities.150 These feminist associations greatly helped CERA’s reformist propaganda, fundraising campaigns, and other political activities, but most of them declined after 1905 due to both a lack of consistent support from the male leaders and the fact that CELRA’s main leader, Kang Tongbi, turned her attention to intensive studies at Barnard College thereafter.151 Nonetheless, CELRA in Vancouver still operated with support from the “Chinese men’s reform association” up to 1910. It attracted 90 percent of the women in the local Chinatown as its members and endeavored to educate girls and raise them with the same advantages and privileges as those enjoyed by boys. The association also helped to give women “a broader view” through its activities.152 It thus continued Kang Tongbi’s feminist mission to promote women’s rights in education and society, including politics. It is unclear whether CERA of Canada followed Liang Qichao’s proposal to form a department of public relations, but CELRA in Vancouver did try to develop amicable relations with Canadian society, especially white elites. One of the local CELRA’s directors, Mary Benson, was the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Worsnop of Vancouver’s customs office.153 Worsnop had

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close relations with the leaders of CERA of Canada, and he was a Caucasian guest at its banquet for Liang Qichao in April 1903 and at another one for Kang Youwei in November 1904.154 In particular, the local CELRA’s Caucasian English-language secretary, Nellie Yip, had married one of Yip Sang’s sons, Yip Quong 叶光 (1866−1948), in New York, and she began to learn Chinese after their move to Vancouver. Her connections with both the Chinese and Caucasian communities in this city greatly aided both CERA of Canada and the CELRA chapter in Vancouver in extending their public relations efforts beyond the local Chinatown.155 Nellie Yip was not an exception among Caucasian women close to CERA. In Halifax, two young Caucasian women, Ethel Sloane and Manda Tiftin, also married two leaders of the local chapter of CERA, Fong Chong Hong and Fong Quing, respectively, in a double wedding ceremony on April 7, 1904.156 Such cases of intermarriage were still rare, but they reflected the positive reactions of some sectors of Caucasian society to public relations outreach by CERA leaders at interpersonal and institutional levels. Nonetheless, other sectors were not so readily reached. On April 9 and 10, 1905, hundreds of white workers gathered at the Kootenay Shingle Company’s mill at Salmo near the city of Nelson in southeastern British Columbia and almost started a riot in their attempt to prevent the entry of thirty-two hired Chinese and Japanese laborers. The riot was barely avoided because of police intervention. In response to the racist challenge, the CERA chapter in Nelson held a special meeting on April 29 and passed a lengthy resolution, which was translated for a local newspaper by the CERA interpreter. The document began with a review of Chinese contributions to British Columbia and their suffering from discrimination in the province and ended with a strong appeal: “We the members of the Chinese Reform Association living in Nelson ask the white men of Nelson for as fair treatment as all foreigners receive in China.”157 This antiracism appeal to the white community, however, was not always successful. In Nelson and other small Canadian cities, CERA chapters developed and operated under strong influence from the national headquarters in Vancouver. In 1903 in Rossland, for example, the local CERA chapter took its cue from the national headquarters by creating leadership posts for executive officers, speakers, supervisor, accountants, secretaries, auditors, treasurers, and translators, as its extant poster shows.158 Nonetheless, the Rossland chapter’s innovations have been dismissed by some scholars as being “on

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paper” only, and its 1903 composite photo of its fifty-three leaders and members has been called “a fake,” because some of those included might not be merchants but laborers merely wearing the same Western suit and tie to take their pictures.159 In reality, the CERA chapter in Rossland did include fifty-three participants in 1903 and continued to recruit new members up to late 1904, although the local Chinese numbered only approximately four hundred around 1902.160 While its leadership structure could be a symbolic copy of that of CERA of Canada, its 1903 poster itself documents the same pattern of familial dominance that the Yips held in Vancouver: among the local chapter’s twenty-one leaders, nine came from the Ma lineage and seven from the Huang lineage; among its thirty-two members, the Mas and Huangs numbered twelve and eight, respectively.161 After Kang Youwei moved CERA’s center of gravity in North America from Canada to the United States by holding its general conference in New York from July 24 to 28, 1905, its institutional development demonstrated both continuity and change. The conference passed a new constitution, which reaffirmed CERA’s original purpose of saving the Guangxu Emperor for the salvation of the Chinese nation and people, and added a new statement denouncing the anti-Qing revolution as a traitorous action for causing domestic upheavals and the foreign partition of China. The new constitution included detailed rules for formal CERA membership, leadership, hierarchal structure, and so on, and planned CERA’s central headquarters (zongjue 总局) in Hong Kong and its nine departments.162 Most of these rules remained on paper only,163 but those regarding departments for hygiene, education, and collective protection already had been initiated and implemented by the Canadian CERA chapters under Kang’s and Liang Qichao’s influences and in turn influenced their counterparts in the United States and even Australia, as the foregoing discussion has shown. CERA’s New York conference in 1905 also symbolized Canada’s decreasing importance in the reformist association and movement under Kang Youwei’s leadership. Delegates to the conference were selected following the electoral rules for US representatives to Congress. Kang personally designated two delegates from the western United States, but allowed CERA chapters in the eastern United States to select their own delegates. Chapters in Canada and Mexico could decide whether to send delegates or entrust others as their representatives at the meeting. Thus, the majority of the nearly twenty delegates at the meeting were from the eastern United

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States, including only one representative for Montreal and another for western Canada.164 After the New York conference, under the leadership of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, CERA further shifted its focus toward the reformist politics inside China and its own transnational business ventures outside Canada, as did a few of its chief Canadian leaders. On September 1, 1906, the Qing court announced its preparatory plan for constitutional reform. In response, Kang Youwei issued a long public notice to more than 170 chapters of CERA on October 21, announcing the success of its previous struggles for the salvation of the Guangxu Emperor as a constitutional monarchy in Qing China. The notice called for a worldwide celebration on the eve of the Chinese spring festival in early 1907 and even promised to confer various awards on CERA leaders and members. This public notice also proposed to change CERA’s Chinese title—Baohuanghui, or the Society to Protect the Emperor—to Guomin Xianzhenghui 国民宪政会, or the National Constitutional Association, although Liang Qichao in Japan instead proposed to rename it Diguo Xianzhenghui 帝国宪政会, or the Imperial Constitutional Association.165 Nonetheless, its shortened Chinese title, Xianzhenghui or the Constitutional Association would become more popular later on, and its English title, CERA, was still in use thereafter, and so was CERA of Canada, although the latter’s Chinese title was changed to Jianada xianzheng zonghui 加拿大宪政总会, or the Constitutional Association of Canada.166 CERA of Canada instructed its chapters in Victoria, Nanaimo, and other cities of British Columbia to celebrate the commencement of constitutional reform in China with a parade on February 26, 1907, the eve of the Chinese Lantern Festival. Probably because the parade celebrated the inception of constitutional polity in China, a local newspaper in Vancouver mistook its organizers and participants as “Chinese republicans.”167 Meanwhile, Kang Youwei returned from his travels in Europe to New York on March 18, 1907. The New York CERA chapters and those in nearby cities warmly welcomed his arrival with a parade featuring a magnificent carriage drawn by six white horses. They further held a grand celebration for his fiftieth birthday on that day, and a double happiness blessed Kang’s birthday because the Huayi Bank (Hua yinhang 华益银行), or the aforementioned Huayi Branch Company, also opened in New York as CERA’s new business venture in North America on the same day.168 In Hong Kong,

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Yip Yen founded the Huayi Remittance Bank (Huayi yihao 华益银号) in the same year, and its stock market value would peak at $1,117,725 (HKD) in April 1908.169 Moreover, the Sino-Mexican Bank had received special permission from the Mexican government to construct a tramway in Torreón in late 1906, and it raised 937,268 Mexican silver dollars from overseas Chinese investment from 1906 to 1908 because of the prospect of real estate speculation. The business ventures in Mexico were so promising that Li Fuji moved from Victoria to Torreón as Kang Youwei’s representative and the supervisor of CERA’s business activities there in 1907.170 CERA’s business empire thus reached the peak of its transpacific expansion by early 1908. But Kang Youwei’s personal relations with CERA’s Vancouver leaders would soon lead to internal strife and institutional collapse. In 1905 he dispatched Yang Lingshi, the treasurer of CERA of Canada based in Vancouver, to the United States and Cuba, and later instructed him to help Tan Liang, a CERA leader in Los Angeles, with the establishment and operation of the King Joy Lo restaurant in Chicago. But Yang soon lost Kang’s trust and instead assumed the leadership of Portland’s CERA from 1906 until his return to Canada at the end of 1907.171 Throughout, the Vancouver CERA leaders continued to push the reformist movement to its climax through their transpacific mobility. While these major CERA leaders were away from Canada, a Canadian branch of the US Asian Exclusion League organized a mass meeting with 25,000 local white residents in Vancouver on the evening of September 7, 1907. The rally soon turned into violent attacks on the local Chinatown and the Japanese quarter. The rioters broke all glass windows and damaged buildings in Chinatown, including CERA of Canada’s headquarters and the business establishments of its major leaders, such as Yip Sang’s Wing Sang & Co.172 In sharp contrast to Kang Youwei’s active mobilization of CERA members for the anti-American boycott in mid-1905, however, CERA under his leadership did not react strongly to the Vancouver riot. Kang Youwei’s indifference to the racial riot and violent attacks on Vancouver’s Chinatown is intriguing given the importance he placed on Pacific Canada as a central arena for his reformist movement, even after he led the political movement to its transpacific crest and shifted its focus southward and toward China in 1905−1907. It reflected not only his gradual shift from overseas Chinese politics toward constitutional reform inside China and business ventures in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, the United States, and

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Mexico, but also his increasing conflicts with CERA leaders from Canada, particularly the Yips and their associates from Vancouver. Right before the Vancouver riot, Kang’s letter to Tan Liang, one of his former students and a main leader of CERA chapter in Los Angles, stated that he felt “extreme loathing of people from Canadian Chinatowns.” Kang deliberately kept Yang Lingshi in the United States but annulled his previous decision to dispatch Yang as an assistant to Tan in the King Joy Lo restaurant in Chicago, and also prevented him from joining Yip Yen in Hong Kong or returning to Canada.173 Such interpersonal conflicts would trigger CERA’s collapse and the decline of overseas Chinese political reform across the Pacific Rim even before the failure of the related constitutional reform in Qing China.

The Transpacific Ebb of Chinese Reformism from Chicago, Vancouver, and Hong Kong The decline of CERA and its transpacific business empire took place after mid-1908 due to multiple internal and external causes. Years later, on February 4, 1912, eight days before the Qing court abdicated, Kang Youwei wrote a long letter to Liang Qichao identifying Yip Yen, a reformist leader from Vancouver’s Chinatown, as the chief culprit of CERA’s business and political failures. The letter attributed the business failures to Liang’s request to let Yip manage CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong in early 1905 and blamed Yip as the backer of Tan Liang’s embezzlement of CERA funds through the operation of the King Joy Lo restaurant in Chicago. The letter blamed Yip’s mismanagement of the Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong as the trigger to the collapse of its related business ventures in the United States and Mexico, to a homicide case in Canton in 1909, and to the subsequent failure of CERA’s legitimate expansion into Qing China.174 These dramatic events occurred as chain reactions mainly in Chicago, Vancouver, and Hong Kong between Kang’s third tour across Canada in 1904–1905 and his alleged last Canadian trip in mid-1909, and they exposed the harmful side effects of CERA’s personalized networks and thus triggered the ebb of its transpacific political reforms. Kang Youwei’s conflicts with Tan Liang, one of his disciples and closest associates in the United States, and with Yip Yen, the most influential Canadian leader of overseas Chinese political reforms, resulted largely from the dependence on interpersonal relations—ranging from kinship to teacherstudent bonds—for the institutional expansion of CERA by its leaders,

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including Kang himself. Although such interpersonal ties helped CERA’s early development from Canada to the United States and its transpacific expansion thereafter, the pursuit of personal, familial, and factional interests by Kang, Yip, and their respective associates would also cause institutional disintegration and the eventual decline of the reformist organization. The King Joy Lo restaurant opened in Chicago through an informal process based on Kang Youwei’s personal arrangement with one of his former students, Tan Liang. Tan joined Kang for his first meeting with President Roosevelt in Washington, DC, on June 15, 1905, and then accompanied him on his tour of the East Coast and the Pacific Northwest of the United States from September 12 to October 15, when they parted ways in Portland, Oregon. Upon their parting, Tan received from Kang $7,000 (USD) along with the instructions to open a restaurant. The restaurant’s profit would be used as subsidies for CERA students—one of whom was Xue Jinqin 薛锦 琴 (1883−1960), who would be trained as a future assassin of Empress Dowager Cixi, although the plot was never put into practice. Tan established the King Joy Lo restaurant in Chicago with the seed money provided by Kang, and he received additional funds through Kang or personal loans from CERA’s Huayi Bank in New York before and after the restaurant began operation in December 1906.175 Kang and Tan made their personal arrangements for the King Joy Lo restaurant based on mutual trust between teacher and student. They did not take measures to distinguish between Kang’s capital investment and Tan’s personal loans for CERA’s business establishment or for the latter’s familial necessities. The future dispute between Kang and Tan over the nature of the former’s capital investment in the King Joy Lo restaurant and the latter’s personal loans for this business establishment would lead to the first fatal clash among the principal CERA leaders and add fuel to Kang’s conflict with Yip Yen and his associates in Vancouver.176 Because Yip Yen’s management of CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong resulted in a string of financial losses by late 1905, Kang Youwei reduced his managerial power and appointed a few followers of confidence, such as Kuang Shouwen 邝寿文, to supervise its business ventures. Kang also revised the company’s rules to impose strict control over its finances through accounting, auditing, and reporting measures, while also placing its operations under his direct control. Yip Yen reacted by hiring his own clansmen to control these Hong Kong business establish-

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ments.177 He also used Liang Qichao’s contacts inside Qing China’s consulate in Kobe, Japan, to illicitly acquire passports as merchants exempt from the head tax for labor emigrants in Hong Kong, and transported them into Canada. Yip Yen did so by working with his younger brother, Yip On, the Chinese interpreter, and their Caucasian associates in Vancouver’s customs office. Together with their uncle Yip Sang, the ticket agent of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s shipping services, both the Yips and CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong benefited and profited from this transpacific passenger smuggling operation.178 Yang Lingshi, a close associate of Yip Yen, returned to Pacific Canada at the end of 1907 and launched the reformist newspaper Xinbao (Sun Bo 新 报, New daily). One of Yip Sang’s sons, Yip Quong, was a cofounder of this newspaper,179 and the Yip family provided one-quarter of its startup capital.180 In 1907 alone, Yip Yen and Yip On used their Hong Kong−Vancouver smuggling ring to bring into its editorial office at least one editor and three typesetters with forged names, fraudulent passports, and false merchant status for tax exemption through Vancouver’s customs office.181 In this manner, the Yips greatly expanded their familial connections and influence through their CERA networks in Vancouver and across the Pacific. There have been detailed studies of Kang’s clashes with Yip Yen over the management of CERA’s business ventures in Hong Kong from 1905, especially over Zhenhua Company (Zhenhua gongsi 振华公司), which led to the assassination of one of its founders, Liu Shiji 刘世骥 (1857−1909), in Canton in 1909, and further to the fall of CERA.182 Equally important to examine is the macro view of how these cases happened as interrelated events across the Pacific—escalating into the collective showdown between Yip Yen and his Vancouver associates on one side and Kang and his supporters on the other—and turned interpersonal clashes into the institutional collapse of CERA from Hong Kong to Vancouver between 1907 and 1909. During these crucial years, Kang Youwei was leading the reformist association toward political adventures inside China and trying to increase his personal control over CERA and its transpacific business empire. From March 23 to April 2, 1907, Kang gathered dozens of delegates from the US CERA chapters and a few representatives of their counterparts in Canada, Australia, Macao, and Hong Kong for a general conference in New York. At least one attendee, Zhang Bingya 张炳雅, was from Victoria. Following Kang Youwei’s three-hour opening speech, attendees to the New York

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conference discussed and passed a forty-item constitution for CERA. This constitution presented a platform to pursue constitutional monarchy in Qing China and to prevent republican revolution, with the dual purpose of revering imperial power (zundishi 尊帝室) and promoting civil rights (kuo minquan 扩民权). It even envisaged CERA’s future political roles in curbing the Qing government as a political party and in enlightening the Chinese people about their citizenship rights and responsibilities.183 Contrary to CERA’s first constitution that was drafted by Kang in Canada in 1899 or the aforementioned second constitution adopted by its New York conference in July 1905, the 1907 resolution paid no attention to antiChinese racism overseas or community reforms of Chinatowns. This policy change would lead CERA into the domestic politics of Qing China at the expense of overseas Chinese investments in its transnational businesses. The new constitution also reflected Kang Youwei’s attempt to strengthen his personal control over CERA, particularly its membership dues and other financial resources. Each member was required to pay a $10 initiation fee and monthly dues of 25 cents (both fees were in the local currency of a specific chapter) for the rights to receive care, protection, and rewards from CERA as well as the exclusive privilege of investing in its business ventures. Local CERA chapters could collect these fees but had to issue receipts from central headquarters under Kang’s personal control and submit all income to him. In particular, the new constitution deprived CERA of Canada in Vancouver and its counterparts in large cities like San Francisco of their previous status such as zonghui 总会, or regional and national headquarters. Instead, they became lianhui 联会, or federations of local chapters for communications with the central headquarters.184 Based on this set of resolutions, even CERA’s central headquarters in Hong Kong would operate in name only, with Kang Youwei retaining central authority. The New York conference also resolved to move CERA’s central headquarters from Hong Kong to Canton for domestic expansion, while specifying that this planned institution would operate only as a local chapter until Kang had moved there.185 Kang’s attempt to increase his personal power at the expense of other leaders of CERA had already met resistance from Yip Yen by the time of the New York conference. In early 1906, Yip joined the popular nationalistic movement in Guangdong Province for the construction of the southern section of the Canton-Hankou Railroad (Yue-Han tielu 粤汉铁路) with

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Chinese capital rather than foreign loans. He not only pledged 300,000 Chinese yuan of stocks for the railway on behalf of CERA, but also took a nearly yearlong capital-raising trip across Canada and the United States starting in April 1906, and received about 500,000 yuan of overseas Chinese investment. At CERA’s New York conference between March 23 and April 2, 1907, Kang urged its attendees to send a collective telegram to Yip Yen, demanding his transfer of the railroad capital to the Sino-Mexican Bank. The demand reflected Kang’s attempt to finance his business ventures in Mexico to the detriment of the overseas Chinese investors in the domestic railroad, and it was rejected by Yip.186 Kang Youwei still became intoxicated with his new power in CERA and his control of its financial resources. Although Kang had married his first wife in 1877, and she had given birth to one son and four daughters, only two daughters, including Kang Tongbi, survived childhood. Thus, he still longed to fulfill the Confucian filial duty of continuing the family name with a male offspring. In 1897, Kang took a young concubine for the purpose of producing a son, but her newborn son died in 1902 one month after birth and she produced two more daughters for Kang by 1906. Even after inspiring Kang Tongbi to promote women’s rights and initiate the CELRA from Victoria in 1903, Kang Youwei nonetheless took a seventeen-year-old Chinese American girl, He Zhanli 何旃理 (aka Lillie Haw, 1890−1915), as his second concubine in November 1907. There are widespread legends about how the young girl admired Kang and offered to be his concubine,187 but Kang’s own writing revealed that the young woman was coaxed into this “marriage” by a matchmaker and became upset at her status as a concubine upon her discovery of the truth during their honeymoon.188 Starting from the end of 1907, Kang Youwei took He Zhanli on a honeymoon trip across Europe, Egypt, and the Arabian Peninsula and then returned to Europe. In May 1908, when He Zhanli discovered her true status as a concubine, she angrily returned to the United States, but Kang continued the trip in Europe with other family members, including Kang Tongbi. He and Kang Tongbi even ventured to the Arctic to see the rising of the midnight sun in Lyngseidet, Norway. The costly trip of nearly one year by Kang and his retinue also included forays into eastern Europe and Turkey and their third visit to Western Europe within a year. Before He Zhanli returned to Kang Youwei’s side under pressure from her parents, Kang sailed to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, eventually arriving in Pen-

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ang, Malaysia, in October 1908. During this trip, an economic crisis rising from the United States in late 1907 had already caused bank failures and a worldwide economic recession.189 Meanwhile, CERA faced political dissension and disasters even before its financial trouble arrived. In mid-February 1908, Kang Youwei issued from his trip in Europe a sixteen-page-long public notice to CERA members worldwide. This notice criticized them for their failure to pay the monthly membership dues, as the new constitution required. But it specifically scolded those Canadian “comrades” who refused to pay because they were displeased with Kang’s appointment of Kuang Shouwen as the associate manager of the Huayi Remittance Bank in Hong Kong and as a check on Yip Yen’s managerial power. Although Kang’s targets included the Canadian dissidents as a whole, he disclosed that his information about them came from the report of Li Fuji of Victoria. His notice also praised a young reformist activist from Victoria, Zhang Bingya, for his managerial work in the Huayi Bank of New York, and announced the appointment of Feng Junqing, another young CERA activist from Victoria, to its Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong. The notice publicly exposed the factional strife between Kang’s associates and Yip’s supporters in Vancouver for the first time but expressed Kang’s trust of CERA’s Victoria leaders. It would soon cause further personal and factional clashes inside CERA. Nonetheless, Kang’s notice still painted a rosy picture of CERA on the eve of a worldwide economic crisis, such as the rise of its Huayi Remittance Bank’s capital to nearly $1 million (HKD) on the Hong Kong stock market and the promising real estate speculation of the Sino-Mexican Bank in Torreón. The notice also revealed how CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation provided enormous subsidies for its political missions, especially its newspapers, in Qing China and overseas.190 Indeed, under the leadership of Kang and Liang Qichao, CERA was pushing hard for organizational, political, and business expansion into Qing China with funds from its overseas members, although Yip Yen was also undertaking business ventures in his home province of Guangdong. Under CERA sponsorship, the Public School of Guangdong Province (Guangdong gongxue 广东公学), later renamed the Nanqiang Public School (Nanqiang gongxue 南强公学), opened in Canton in 1905. This school had been initiated by Liang Qichao during his North American tour of 1903 and funded by 39,221 yuan in donations from overseas Chinese. It opened with more than ninety students in 1905, and their number rose to more than 200 the

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next year. Thereafter, its expansion through purchase of more land relied on a loan of 14,000 yuan from the Huayi Remittance Bank under Yip Yen’s control.191 In order to build its central headquarters in Canton from mid-1907, CERA purchased nearly two acres of land in the city with approximately 50,000 yuan of donations from its ninety-four overseas chapters, including those in Canadian cities. On September 2, 1908, CERA issued another call for an additional donation of 80,000 yuan for construction of the headquarters building. The building was never erected, however, and its land was later taken over by Yip Yen and sold as Nanqiang School’s payment for its debt to the Huayi Remittance Bank in Hong Kong, although CERA was merely a sponsor of the school.192 With Kang Youwei’s support, Liang Qichao’s political ventures inside Qing China absorbed increasingly more funds from CERA and came into growing conflict with the interests of its overseas leaders, particularly Yip Yen. After Liang started the Guangzhi Book Bureau in Yokohama for reformist propaganda in 1901, he moved it to Shanghai in 1902 and raised about 100,000 yuan of stocks from overseas Chinese, mainly from those in Canada during his visit there in 1903. The Guangzhi Book Bureau ultimately raised approximately 152,000 yuan, but more than 30,000 yuan was embezzled by Huang Huizhi, who had traveled with Liang in North America in 1903. The failure of the Guangzhi Book Bureau to pay dividends to its overseas stockholders in early 1908 caused furious denouncements of Liang, especially from those in Canada, including Li Fuji.193 In another attempt to propagandize reforms inside China, Liang supplied the Shibao newspaper in Shanghai with approximately 150,000 yuan from 1903 to 1907 and later requested more funds from Kang for Shibao and other reformist newspapers in China, but under Yip Yen’s control, CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong refused to provide the funds.194 Liang Qichao also founded the Political Information Society (Zhengwenshe 政闻社) as CERA’s peripheral organization in Tokyo in October 1907 and moved it to Shanghai in early 1908. This move inspired hope in Kang Youwei that CERA could expand into Qing China as a legitimate party, win support from high officials—even a royal family member, Prince Su (Suwang 肃王)—and promote parliamentary politics under the Guangxu Emperor. Even when CERA business ventures in Penang, Mexico, and Hong Kong had either failed or were falling into financial difficulties, Kang

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ordered the Huayi Bank in New York to send $7,000 (USD) as the Political Information Society’s initial fund in November 1907 and further approved Liang’s request for 2,000 yuan as its monthly fund from March 1908.195 Consequently, the Political Information Society expanded its leadership to include seventy-three reformist leaders from more than a dozen provinces, and its members numbered more than one thousand. It also allied with leading constitutional organizations and activists across China in a petition to the Qing court in mid-1908 to convene the parliament within three years, and its own memorial was submitted on behalf of more than two hundred overseas chapters of CERA. These political activities backfired, leading instead to the dissolution of the Political Information Society by the Qing government in July 1908.196 Thus, just when its overseas chapters had reached their highest number, CERA suffered a serious political setback inside Qing China. An even more serious blow to Kang Youwei and CERA was the sudden and mysterious death of the Guangxu Emperor at the age of thirty-seven on November 14, 1908, just one day before the death of Empress Dowager Cixi at the age of seventy-three.197 While Kang forever lost his hope to restore the power of the emperor he had promised to protect by launching CERA from Victoria in 1899, Liang Qichao tried to engage Prince Su to establish contacts with Prince Chun (Chunwang 醇王, 1883−1951), the father of the newly enthroned toddler Xuantong Emperor 宣统帝 (1906−1967) and de facto regent. In March 1909, a report from CERA’s Huanyi Bank in New York stated that the “party affairs” (dangshi 党事) in China, which had been managed by Liang, had already cost $100,000 (USD). Thereafter, without further financial support from Kang, Liang began to complain of extreme poverty,198 which testified to the seriousness of the financial crisis for CERA around that time. Evidently, Liang Qichao’s political investment in China intensified CERA’s financial crisis, which in turn led to Kang Youwei’s clashes with its overseas leaders, particularly Tan Liang in Chicago and Yip Yen in Hong Kong. In a letter to Liang Qichao dated April 8, 1907, Kang had already indicated his inability to fully fund Liang’s political ventures in China because of Yip’s refusal to make the capital earmarked for the Canton-Hankou Railroad available for CERA’s use. But this letter placed the blame for the fund shortage mainly on a large loan taken from the Huayi Bank in New York by Tan Liang for the operation of the King Joy Lo restaurant in Chicago.

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The following year, on March 9, 1908, Kang wrote another letter to Liang to explain the difficulty in meeting the latter’s further demands for funds. He listed a series of failures in the business ventures of CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong and in the real estate speculation of the Sino-Mexican Bank. Kang also reported his failure to raise funds for railway construction in Torreón, Mexico, and the collapse of the rice brokerage business in Penang in part because its capital was embezzled by Bao Chi, another companion of Liang on his North American trip in 1903. But this letter put the blame mainly on Tan Liang for his failure to pay the Huayi Bank in New York both the principal and interest for a loan of $80,000 (USD), which included a CERA capital investment of $12,500 (USD) in the King Joy Lo restaurant in Chicago, as Kang admitted to have approved. He also claimed that Tan had embezzled $24,000 (USD).199 In fact, in two letters in October and December 1907, Kang Youwei had already pushed Tan for the payment to the Huayi Bank in New York of the principal and 10 percent interest on CERA’s loan for the King Joy Lo restaurant, because Kang was desperately trying to raise enough funds for the construction of the streetcar line in Mexico. After he noticed that King Joy Lo’s annual statement of 1907 was missing the record of the $12,000 (USD) loan from the Huayi Bank in New York, he strongly suspected that Tan had pocketed the large sum of CERA funds for himself. However, in a letter to Kang in late 1908, Tan indicated that the King Joy Lo restaurant had actually received from Kang and the Huayi Bank in New York a total of $64,151 (USD), of which $29,500 (USD) was the Kang-approved CERA capital investment in the business venture. Only the remaining sum of $34,651 (USD) was the loan that should be paid back with interest. Because the King Joy Lo restaurant had previously paid to the Huayi Bank in New York about $8,800 (USD) as a part of the $34,651 loan, its annual statement at the end of 1907 showed a negative balance of $25,851 (USD), which was the remaining loan, rather than the amount presumed embezzled by Tan.200 Kang Youwei wrote a letter to Tan Liang on August 18, 1908, in which he largely accepted Tan’s explanation for their dispute, except the demand for payment of King Joy Lo’s remaining loan of $25,851 (USD) and Tan’s personal loan of $4,000 (USD) with interest. Nonetheless, Kang’s letter still claimed that “the Chicago matter” had bungled CERA’s business ventures in Mexico, Hong Kong, and New York and almost caused their overall collapse. Under Kang’s influence, his disciples in CERA, such as Xu Qin,

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mostly chose to align with their mentor against their former classmate, Tan Liang. Xu issued a public notice to all CERA members, accusing Tan of borrowing a total of 134,000 yuan, or $67,000 (USD), from the Huayi Bank in New York and failing to pay any interest, but spreading rumors about Kang. In response, Tan Liang published the letters he exchanged with Kang and his associates, as well as the accounting records of the King Joy Lo restaurant as a public notice in January 1909.201 Tan’s accounting records from the King Joy Lo restaurant showed that it had paid about $21,703 (USD) back on its loan from the Huayi Bank in New York by the end of 1908, although there was still $10,163 (USD) in unpaid loan and interest.202 Thus, “the Chicago matter” did not affect CERA’s business ventures as significantly as Kang claimed. Nonetheless, the dispute over the issue became the first instance in a chain reaction that led to the collapse of CERA’s business empire and reformist movement because it revealed the unreliability of the interpersonal ties between the chief CERA leaders, including Kang and his close disciples such as Tan. The issue also raised questions in the minds of overseas Chinese about Kang’s patriotic appeals for political reforms and his disposal of public funds.203 In New York, Kang Youwei’s nephew You Shiyin 游师尹 reported that Tan’s publication of Kang’s confidential letters in 1909 had intensified the internal strife against Kang among CERA chapters by March of that year. One of Yip Yen’s Canadian associates, Yang Lingshi, demanded an explanation for derogatory remarks about him by Kang in the published letters.204 After Tan Liang issued his public notice in 1909, Yip Yen and his associates in Hong Kong and Vancouver, including two of Kang Youwei’s former students, would enter into a showdown with Kang’s faction. Yip Yen’s relations with Kang Youwei had become increasingly strained from late 1905 as his attempts to expand Huayi Remittance Bank’s ventures from Hong Kong into Qing China suffered a series of business failures and financial losses. Yip claimed to have received both Kang’s approval and support from Kang’s trusted appointees in Hong Kong, including Kuang Shouwen, to invest in a fishing company in Guangdong Province and a hotel in Hong Kong. But the fishing company failed because of high taxes from the Qing government, and the hotel went bankrupt because of clashes between its managers and stockholders. Yip also claimed that Kang and other managers of the Huayi Remittance Bank approved a mortgage for investment in the Xuwen Land Reclamation Company (Xuwen wuben gongsi 徐闻务本公

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司) in Guangdong Province. But Kang later charged Yip with embezzling and wasting more than $300,000 (HKD), including $88,000 (HKD) that was lost on these three business ventures.205 Yip Yen also angered Kang Youwei because he refused to transfer more than $800,000 (HKD) overseas Chinese capital from the Canton-Hankou Railroad to the Sino-Mexican Bank in early 1907. Because Yip was not able to collect the overseas Chinese capital until mid-1907 when the railroad stocks had already been sold, he had to mortgage his family properties and draw $170,000 (HKD) from the Huayi Remittance Bank to purchase the stocks from their holders at a high price. Meanwhile, he asked for emergency relief funds from the Huayi Bank in New York and the Sino-Mexican Bank. This information led foreign banks to reclaim their large loans to the Huayi Remittance Bank during the ongoing economic crisis, which crushed its credit and stock value by mid-1908.206 Thereafter, Kang Youwei ordered the Huayi Bank in New York to shift $70,000 (USD) into the Sino-Mexican Bank, but Yip Yen and his associates argued that this was the capital of CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong and should be shifted to the Huayi Remittance Bank under Yip’s management.207 They also claimed that the Sino-Mexican Bank and the Huayi Bank of New York failed to pay back more than $140,000 (HKD) debt to the Huayi Remittance Bank in Hong Kong. Yip subsequently ordered the Huayi Remittance Bank to stop the financial transfer to its two sister banks in New York and Mexico, causing unprecedented chaos in CERA’s transpacific business empire amid a worldwide economic crisis.208 Kang Youwei and his loyal followers eventually entered a confrontation with Yip Yen and his associates through their transpacific struggle for the control over the newly formed Zhenhua Company, and this factional strife continued from Canton and Hong Kong to Vancouver and vice versa in 1909. This case—mainly the assassination of the company’s major founder, Li Shiji 刘士骥 (1857−1909), in mid-1909—has attracted scholarly attention as the trigger to the worldwide decline of Kang’s reformist association and its political movement.209 But previous studies have largely neglected the central arena of this dramatic event, Pacific Canada, the leading roles in the case played by Yip Yen and his Canadian associates, and the fatal impact of their collective showdown with Kang on CERA’s transpacific decline. Both Yip Yen and Liu Kangheng from New Westminster, the first two presidents of CERA of Canada, joined Li Shiji, an official in the provin-

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cial government of Guangxi Province and a long-term sympathizer with Kang Youwei’s reformist cause, in founding Zhenhua Company in early 1908. Other cofounders of the company included two of Kang Youwei’s former students: Ou Jujia, who had become alienated from Kang as a radical newspaperman, and Liang Yingliu 梁应骝 (aka Liang Shaoxian 梁少 闲), who was a manager of the Huayi Remittance Bank in Hong Kong. But Yip and Liu played especially important roles in the plan for the company because their petition to Governor Zhang Mingqi 张鸣歧 (1875−1945) of Guangxi Province promised to provide one million yuan as an initial fund for Zhenhua Company. They also planned to help it raise three million yuan from overseas Chinese, who suffered from discrimination abroad and dreamed of investing in homeland development. This petition specifically recommended Liu Shiji as the official companion of Yip Yen and Liu Kangheng for the fundraising mission.210 Governor Zhang not only praised and approved of Yip and Liu’s petition for Zhenhua Company but also helped register the company with the Qing government in Beijing. He also sent official requests to Chinese ambassadors to Britain and the United States as well as their subordinate consuls in Canadian and American cities, for support of the proposed capital-raising mission. Thus, Zhenhua Company was successfully formed on May 6, 1908, and its four initiators first subscribed to 75,000 early-bird shares at the discounted price of four yuan per share, or 300,000 yuan. Yip Yen and Liu Kangheng shouldered 20,000 and 40,000 shares, respectively, or a total of 240,000 yuan, which accounted for 80 percent of the initial investment from the four initiators. It is noteworthy that Yip and Liang soon defied Kang Youwei by stopping the financial transfer of funds from the Huayi Remittance Bank in Hong Kong to the Huayi Bank in New York and the Sino-Mexican Bank, which led to the financial chaos in CERA’s transpacific business empire.211 The total capital of Zhenhua Company was set at 650,000 shares of stock, or three million yuan, with 250,000 shares of early-bird stock set at a price of four yuan each and the remaining 400,000 shares at five yuan each. It would be invested in banks, railroad construction, mining industries, steamship transportation, and land reclamation in Guangxi Province. Governor Zhang promised tax exemption for its mines during the company’s first five years of operation and for the reclaimed land up to eleven years. Although Zhenhua Company would rely mainly on overseas Chinese

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investment, it designated only four Chinese business establishments in Canada as its fund-collecting offices in North America. Two of them belonged to Yip Yen’s family members, Yip Sang and Yip On in Vancouver; the third was operated by Lee Mong Kow in Victoria; and the fourth was Ying Tai & Company (Yingtaihao 英泰号) in New Westminster, which belonged to Liu Kangheng and his clansmen.212 Thus, Zhenhua Company would strive for overseas Chinese support mainly through Yip Yen and Liu Kangheng’s personal networks based in Pacific Canada, but it would also use CERA’s associational networks across North America. Meanwhile, Kang Youwei and his associates made attempts to control Zhenhua Company from its beginning, and their battles with its founders began in Vancouver and spread to New York, Hong Kong, and Canton. On November 16, 1907, Liu Shiji sent Kang a letter, which included a plan for a capital-raising trip to North America along with Yip Yen and Liu Kangheng. Kang wrote a long reply from Europe dated February 8, 1908. This letter exposed his ambition to use the company to expand CERA’s influence into both political reforms and resource development in Guangxi Province.213 On July 4, Liu Shiji, Liu Kangheng, and Ou Jujia sailed from Hong Kong for the capital-raising trip to North America. When their transpacific liner stopped in Japan, they paid a visit to Liang Qichao, but Liu Shiji rejected Liang’s request to help fund his and Kang’s return to the Qing government with 200,000 to 300,000 yuan from Zhenhua Company’s capital.214 Liu Shiji and Liu Kangheng reached Vancouver on July 24, 1908, and began their capital-raising activities in Victoria, where they first received support from Lee Mong Kow and other leaders of the local CERA chapter.215 Although Li Fuji, the main leader of Victoria’s CERA, was in Mexico at the time, he wrote a long letter to Liu Shiji and pledged to buy several hundred shares of Zhenhua Company’s stock. Local Chinese purchased a few thousand shares of stock within approximately a week. The capital-raising activities were even more successful in New Westminster, Liu Kangheng’s home city, and especially in Vancouver after Yip Yen returned there. By September 4, Liu Shiji claimed that 20,000 shares of early-bird stocks with value at 80,000 yuan had been subscribed to by the Chinese in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster.216 However, on September 22, 1908, Liu Shiji in Vancouver received Kang Youwei’s delayed letter dated May 31, 1908. This letter accused Yip Yen, Liu Kangheng, and Ou Jujia of selfish pursuits. Kang’s letter forwarded a

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similar accusation from Liang Qichao and urged Liu Shiji to work instead with Kang’s close associates in New York. Liu Shiji was shocked by Kang’s proposal to use Zhenhua Company for a “partisan” rather than patriotic purpose, and his diary claimed that his ten years of “blind faith” in Kang’s patriotism from the time of the 1898 Reform was suddenly broken.217 Meanwhile, Liu Shiji received a report about the collapse of CERA’s business ventures in Hong Kong, New York, and Mexico, in addition to news about the deaths of the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi on November 14 and 15, 1908.218 Moreover, a family letter reached Liu Shiji in Vancouver on October 12, which came with the warning that Governor Zhang had ordered Liu to distance himself from Kang’s CERA after the recent dissolution of its Political Information Society by the Qing court. Meanwhile, Liu received a telegram from Xu Qin and his four associates after they met Kang in Penang. The telegram demanded that Liu put Zhenhua Company under Liang Qichao’s control and exclude Ou Jujia, even though Liang was still on the mostwanted list of the Qing court. Thereafter, another telegram in the names of Liang and three other former students of Kang, as well as more letters from Kang himself and his associates in Penang, reached Liu Shiji. They all demanded that he commit to their “party” in the capital-raising activities and let Xu Qin manage Zhenhua Company. Liu Shiji rejected all of these demands with his claim to “pursue patriotic rather than partisan interests” (weiguo budang 为国不党). Thereafter, Liu received more letters from Kang and his followers, principally Xu Qin, but he further rejected their demands to turn Zhenhua Company into CERA’s “partisan” machine.219 Nonetheless, in Liu Shiji’s capital-raising activities in other Canadian cities and after his entry into the United States, he continued to use CERA’s connections and influences. In Toronto’s Chinatown, he delivered a public speech at the local CERA meeting hall on December 7, 1908, and then sold Zhenhua Company stock at a value of more than $10,000 (CAD).220 An advertisement from February 1909 showed that Zhenhua Company expanded its list of capital-subscribing agencies in North America to include three business establishments in Victoria, six in New Westminster, eight in Vancouver, and two in other Canadian cities, as well as eight in American cities ranging from San Francisco to Honolulu. Most of the business owners in Pacific Canada were identifiable leaders of the CERA chapters in Canada, such as Luo Yuehu and Lee Mong Kow in Victoria; Yip Sang, Yip On, Yi

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Xiaochu 叶晓初, Huang Kongzhao 黄孔昭, and Ma Dachun 马大淳 in Vancouver; as well as Liu Liru 刘丽如 in New Westminster. In the United States, Zhenghua Company had a capital-raising agency in the editorial office of Shijie ribao 世界日报 [Chinese world], CERA’s organ in San Francisco, and one of its capital-raising agents was Tan Liang in Los Angeles.221 Tan’s public notice about his dispute with Kang Youwei over the King Joy Lo restaurant in Chicago reached New York at the beginning of 1909, almost the same time that Liu Shiji’s capital-raising group for Zhenhua Company arrived there. As a result, Liu’s group won 90 percent of CERA leaders in New York, according to the report from Kang’s nephew, You Shiyin. Both Tan’s notice and Liu’s open attacks on Kang’s group in public speeches intensified the anti-Kang attitude and factional clashes among local reformers. After Yip Yen nearly came to blows with Kang’s supporters in New York, Liu Kangheng and Ou Jujia decided to return to China early, but Liu Shiji and Yip Yen planned to continue their capital-raising trip across the United States. On March 29, they were charged by Kang’s men with promoting a fraudulent mining scheme and briefly arrested by police in Pittsburgh. In the face of such harassment from Kang’s supporters, they shortened their trip in the United States, returned to Vancouver, and sailed for China on April 23, 1909.222 In all, Liu’s capital-raising trip in North America lasted for nearly nine months, including more than five months in Canada. Due largely to the success of the first stage of this fundraising trip, Liu Shiji’s group helped Zhenhua Company raise over one million yuan,223 but it was far short of the original target of three million yuan. In late March 1909, Yip Sang’s Wing Sang & Co. in Vancouver issued an incomplete list of stock subscribers, and it shows that Chinese migrants in seventeen North American cities made investments in Zhenhua Company. The identifiable cities on the list include Boston, New York, Baltimore, Hartford, Portland, and San Francisco in the United States, as well as Victoria, Calgary, Winnipeg, Toronto, and Ottawa in Canada, but it does not include Vancouver or New Westminster.224 Another available source shows that the Chinese in the two Canadian cities bought $50,000 (CAD) and $25,000 (CAD), respectively, in stocks from Zhenhua Company. In particular, CERA leaders in Vancouver and New Westminster became closely linked to Zhenhua Company not only through their large investments but also through two reformist leaders in the company, Yip Yen from Vancouver and Liu Kangheng from New Westminster.225

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Liu Shiji returned to Hong Kong on May 13, 1909, with the other fundraisers, and on May 27 he was murdered at his home in Canton. The official investigation of the homicide found that Liu was stabbed to death by a group of eight men led by He Qiwu 何其武 (aka He Wang 何望), a former student of Liang Qichao and an assistant to Xu Qin at the Hong Kong CERA newspaper. As a result, Kang, Liang, Xu, He, and other leaders of CERA were put on a wanted list for murder by the county and provincial governments around Canton. Around the same time, Xu Qin had implicated himself in the case by issuing a public notice to all CERA chapters around April 1909, condemning Liu Shiji’s conspiracy with Yip Yen, Liu Kangheng, and Ou Jujia for sabotaging the businesses of the reformist association. This public notice soon provoked Yip Yen’s attack on Kang Youwei’s group as a whole and led to another round of mutual attacks through public notices.226 A few months before these stormy events, Kang Youwei had finally experienced the joy of having his wish for a surviving male offspring fulfilled, twice, because his first and second concubines each gave birth to a son in Penang on December 19, 1908, and January 25, 1909, respectively. Around the time of this double happiness, he suffered major political blows, including the demise of the Guangxu Emperor on November 14, 1908; the publication of Tan Liang’s public notice about the King Joy Lo restaurant in Chicago at the beginning of 1909; the aggravating troubles over CERA’s other business ventures in Hong Kong, Southeast Asia, and North America; as well as the issue of Zhenhua Company. At this critical moment, Kang left behind his family and two newborn sons in Penang and took another global tour from March 1909 for unknown reasons. He visited Egypt, Jerusalem, and Europe up to the summer of 1909, in addition to his alleged trip to Canada, where he might have visited Victoria and specifically Coal Island.227 Before and during this journey, Kang Youwei kept in close contact with CERA leaders from Victoria. When Lee Mong Kow launched a fundraising effort to open a new Chinese public school and erect its building in Victoria’s Chinatown in late 1908, Kang issued a call for worldwide chapters of CERA to make donations.228 He also wrote two letters to Zhang Bingya—a young reformist activist from Victoria and a manager of the Huayi Bank in New York—probably after receiving the aforementioned report from his nephew You Shiyin about local CERA leaders, including Zhang, who were feeling the impact of Tan Liang’s public notice and Liu Shiji’s fundraising

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group for Zhenhua Company. Kang’s two letters provided details about his family finances and even addressed gossip about his relations with some women in Canada, asking Zhang to defend him from the somewhat lewd attacks on his perceived extravagant life by Zhenhua Company’s associates, which started from the East Coast of the United States in early 1909, as mentioned above. The two letters were then forwarded by Zhang to Luo Yuehu and other leaders of Victoria’s CERA for the purpose of defending Kang.229 Luo Yuehu replied on June 19, 1909. His letter did not mention Kang’s alleged trip to Victoria around that time, but it reported the critical impact of CERA’s new crises on the local Chinese. In particular, Luo expressed his shock at the almost simultaneous arrival of the news about Liu Shiji’s assassination in Canton and the public notice about Liu and Zhenhua Company issued by Xu Qin and his associates, as well as the allegation by San Francisco’s Chinese newspapers of CERA’s engagement in the murder. His letter also reported the local stockholders’ complaints about the successive failures of CERA’s business ventures in Hong Kong and New York, as well as their concerns over the lack of dividends from Liang Qichao’s Guangzhi Book Bureau and Sino-Mexican Bank. Luo ended his letter with a stern warning that CERA would disintegrate without successful collaboration with Zhenhua Company.230 Kang’s two letters to Zhang and Luo’s reply from Victoria provide some circumstantial evidence for understanding the mystery of Kang Youwei’s allegedly short, sudden, and seemingly pointless trip from Europe to Canada in mid-1909. In the face of CERA’s unprecedented crises—particularly the implications of Kang in Liu Shiji’s assassination—it is possible that he took the special trip for damage control, leaving Liverpool for Victoria either before or after receiving Luo’s letter. His departure was probably witnessed by Kang Tongbi during her stay with her father in Europe at that time, and was recorded by her half a century later. Such a trip would enable Kang Youwei to clear himself in the assassination scandal and to secure continuous support from CERA leaders and members in Victoria, the starting point of his overseas reform movement. This trip is more conceivable because of Kang’s urgent need for Victoria CERA leaders to defend him from the attacks by Yip Yen and his associates based in Vancouver, as Kang had tried to do in his letters to the young and unimportant Zhang Bingya. It is even imaginable that he stayed on Coal Island both for the sake of keeping his trip a

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secret and for the purpose of avoiding assassination, as he had done in the summer of 1899. The threat to his life would come not from the Qing court, however, but from his former supporters in Vancouver. After Kang’s alleged trip from Europe to Victoria between late June and late July 1909, the continued support for him by CERA leaders from this Canadian city also provided circumstantial evidence of the success of his trip. In October 1909, the top leader of the Victoria CERA chapter, Li Fuji, specifically went to Vancouver after his return from Mexico and tried to pacify local critics of Kang. Nonetheless, on November 28, 1909, fifteen leaders of CERA of Canada and its chapters in Vancouver and New Westminster still issued a collective proclamation to support Yip Yen’s attacks on Kang and his associates, denouncing the latter for their dictatorial, corrupt, repressive, and irresponsible behaviors in managing business ventures with overseas Chinese investments. These leaders included President Yip On, his cousin Ye Xiaochu, and their uncle Yip Sang, as well as the aforementioned Huang Kongzhao, Ma Dachun, and Liu Liru, all of whose shops served as stock-subscribing agencies of Zhenhua Company. In the same month, Li Fuji issued a long notice from Victoria, defending Kang from the attacks by Ye and his associates. The open clash between CERA’s Victoria and Vancouver chapters marked the institutional split of the reformist association from Canada to the global arena, because CERA leaders in Hong Kong, Australia, and other places soon joined in the internal strife with their pro-Kang telegrams and letters.231 Certainly, whether Kang Youwei took his alleged trip from Europe to Victoria in mid-1909 or not, the mystery itself shows the importance of Canada in particular, and North America in general, for political reforms across the transpacific Chinese diaspora. Indeed, both the rise of CERA from Victoria in 1899 and its fall from Chicago, Hong Kong, and Vancouver in 1909 resulted largely from Kang Youwei and his associates’ interactions with reformist leaders of North American Chinatowns for their political and business pursuits across the Pacific Rim.

Evidently, Kang’s collaboration with the leaders of Canadian and American CERA chapters around the time of his Canada–United States–Mexico trip in 1904−1907 helped the movement reach its zenith by mid-1908. Thereafter, his personal and factional clashes with these overseas Chinese

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reformers, especially those based in Chicago and those from Vancouver, triggered the decline of CERA across the Pacific in 1909. In particular, Kang Youwei and the North American leaders of CERA all used their kinship, local fellowship, business partnerships, teacher-student relationships, and other interpersonal ties to promote CERA’s organizational expansion and activities in transpacific business and politics. But their respective pursuits of personal, familial, and factional interests also caused CERA’s institutional disintegration. Nonetheless, CERA’s transpacific expansion and political mobilization in the decade from 1899 to 1909 had linked Canadian and American Chinatowns as well as the transpacific Chinese diaspora for the first time. It would maintain its networks and further influence the succeeding revolutionary movement across the Pacific.

C h a p t er 3

Transpacific Interactions between Chinese Reformers and Revolutionaries

Before the North American Chinese political reforms under Kang Youwei’s leadership underwent a transpacific rise and fall from 1899 to 1909, Sun Yatsen had already initiated an anti-Qing revolution from Honolulu in 1894. Ahead of Kang, Sun had taken his first trip across the American mainland on his way to Europe in 1896 and returned to Asia via Canada the following year. Thereafter, Sun took four more trips across the continental United States—in 1904, late 1909 to mid-1910, and twice before and after his second Canadian tour in 1911—not to mention his more frequent visits to Hawai‘i.1 This chapter will follow not only Sun’s multiple trips across North America, especially those within the temporal scope of this study, but also the transpacific mobility of other revolutionary agents, as well as their interactions with reformers and other sociopolitical forces. A network analysis of the interactions between the divergent reformist and revolutionary forces can reveal their competition, connections, and joint contributions to the relational expansion and rapid politicization of the transpacific Chinese diaspora up to the outbreak of the 1911 Revolution in China. Sun Yat-sen not only started his political adventure as a reformer in Qing China in the early 1890s, but also sought collaboration with Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and other reformist exiles in Japan around the 1898 Reform, nearly four years after his initiation of the Revive China Society (Xingzhonghui 兴中会) as an anti-Qing revolutionary organization in Honolulu in 1894. The Revive China Society even tried to take joint action with CERA’s military campaign for the rescue of the Guangxu Emperor in 1900, but the 118

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two parties soon engaged in rivalry for support from overseas Chinese communities thereafter.2 Sun’s attempts to expand the Revive China Society and its revolutionary movement to North America achieved only limited success both before and immediately after the transnational development of CERA chapters from Canada to the United States began in 1899.3 On August 20, 1905, Sun Yat-sen integrated the Revive China Society and other anti-Qing forces into the Revolutionary Alliance (Tongmenghui 同盟会) in Tokyo, and the ensuing “media war” between the latter and CERA organs has received considerable attention from scholars. Previous studies have illustrated how the Revolutionary Alliance gained influence over CERA by advocating for a republic in China rather than a constitutional monarchy, but the success of Sun’s party in the media war has been exaggerated.4 Moreover, the continuous upsurge of CERA’s transpacific networks, political influences, and business ventures up to mid-1908 has largely been overlooked, and its subsequent decline has erroneously been attributed to effective revolutionary attacks rather than to the internal strife detailed in Chapter 2. In contrast, a network analysis of the interactions of revolutionaries with reformers among North American Chinatowns and the transpacific Chinese diaspora will help detect the dynamics of the anti-Qing revolution not only from its political leaders and radical participants but also from the influences of CERA, the Chinese Freemasons, and Christian reformers. The transpacific rivalry and political relay between these reformers and revolutionaries demonstrate how the personnel, institutional, and ideological evolution from the former to the latter reflected both political continuity and change among the Chinese political movements in North America and the Pacific Rim, including the Republican Revolution in China around 1911.

The Chinese Freemasons and Christians in Reform and Revolution across North America Sun Yat-sen in the late 1910s recalled his first visit to North America in 1896, mainly deploring his failure to mobilize the Chinese in the American mainland—particularly his futile contacts with the members of the Hong Fraternal Society, including the CKT or the Chinese Freemasons, before they came under the influence of Sun’s revolutionary comrades years later. He omitted any mention of both his establishment of one chapter of the Revive China Society among a few Chinese Christians in San Francisco

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in 1896, and his return trip from Europe to Asia through Canada in 1897.5 One of Sun’s close comrades, Feng Ziyou 冯自由 (1882−1958, see Figure 7), left a similarly pessimistic account of the negative impact on the Canadian CKT under CERA from 1899 until he arrived in Canada in 1910 and enlightened the secret society’s members with revolutionary propaganda. Feng also recorded that the editor of the first Chinese Christian newspaper in Vancouver, Cui Tongyue 崔通约 (1864−1937), turned to anti-Qing revolutionary propaganda after 1906 because of his newspaper’s clashes with CERA.6 Thus, both Sun and Feng stressed the influence of revolutionary partisans or clashes with CERA in turning the CKT and Chinese Christians toward anti-Qing revolution. Deserving of further analysis, however, is how the CKT and Chinese Christians in North America were politically transformed under CERA’s influence and how Kang Youwei and other reformist forerunners influenced Sun, Feng, and Cui in their activities on both sides of the Pacific, especially on Sun’s American trip in 1904. After Sun Yat-sen founded the Revive China Society in Honolulu in November 1894, he established its headquarters in Hong Kong on February 21, 1895, and planned his first anti-Qing uprising in Canton. Because Kang Youwei had promoted political reform through study societies from mid-1895, including the Society for the Study of National Strengthening in Beijing and Shanghai, Sun followed suit and even tried to collaborate with Kang’s group. He organized the Society for the Study of Agriculture (Nongxuehui 农学会) in Canton in October 1895, but it was a cover to prepare for the military uprising. One member of this society was Cui Tongyue, a student of Kang Youwei. Although Sun Yat-sen’s plan for the military uprising received support from fellow Christians such as Zuo Doushan 左 斗山 and the Hong Kong Triad Society (Sanhehui 三合会), an order of the Hong Fraternal Society, it soon was aborted after being disclosed. Sun fled to Japan and ultimately to Europe on his first North American trip. Nonetheless, he formed a chapter of the Revive China Society in Yokohama on November 13, 1895, one of whose founding members was Feng Ziyou.7 Feng, together with Zuo Doushan and Cui Tongyue, would provide crucial connections for Sun’s second trip across the continental United States in 1904 and for the later revolutionary mobilization of Chinese Freemasons and Christians in North America. As a political fugitive, Sun Yat-sen first fled from Japan to Hawai‘i in November 1895, and then took his first trip across the American continent

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F i g u re 7 . Feng Ziyou, the first agent of the Revolutionary Alliance in Canada, date unknown (Photo in public domain). Source: Wikidata, “Feng Ziyou” (https:// www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q15900356, accessed September 12, 2022).

from San Francisco to New York between June 18 and September 23, 1896, before his transatlantic trip to England. Because Sun had received a certificate indicating student status from a Qing official in Shanghai in 1895, he landed in San Francisco as a nonlabor traveler exempted from the Chinese exclusion acts imposed from 1882. Sun Yat-sen used the introductory letters from his fellow Christians in Canton and Hong Kong to contact a Chinese priest in San Francisco and the members of his church, but he recruited only a few of them into the Revive China Society. He continued to deliver anti-Qing revolutionary speeches on his way to New York prior to his transatlantic trip to England, but only a few Chinese Christians were willing to associate with him.8

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Sun Yat-sen claimed that his contacts with the members of the Hong Fraternal Society were futile because such secret societies in American Chinatowns had become sworn brotherhoods for mutual assistance and had forgotten their original political slogan, “Fan-Qing fu-Ming” 反清复明, or “Resisting the Qing dynasty [under the Manchu rule], and restoring the Ming dynasty” of the Han Chinese.9 Although Sun founded the first North American chapter of the Revive China Society in San Francisco, this important fact was overlooked in his biography and personal collection of works compiled by his own party later on. In the most recent historical account of Sun’s first trip across the continental United States by his own party, its narrative of the San Francisco chapter of the Revive China Society is still based on a 1962 recollection by a partisan, who was not its contemporary member.10 In fact, on August 15, 1896, a newspaper in San Francisco reported not only the establishment of “the Hing Chung Woey,” or the chapter of the Revive China Society in local Chinatown—and its selection of Walter N. Fong (Kuang Huatai 邝华汰, ?−1906), a graduate of Stanford University, as its president—but also its “Regulation of Promotion of China.” The latter includes anti-Qing denouncements and a general call for the promotion of China, as well as ten rules for the organizational structure, officers, and members of the Revive China Society’s chapter in San Francisco.11 This chapter dissolved two years later because its members’ relatives in China suffered persecution under the Qing government.12 It is important to note that Sun had planned a “united government” (hezhong zhengfu 合众政府), probably an imitation of the United States of America, before his first antiQing uprising in Canton in October 1895,13 but the plan is not mentioned in the “Regulation of Promotion of China.” It was after his first trip across the continental United States and during his stay in London in October 1896 that Sun told a British reporter of his desire for a “[c]onstitutional government,” or “a republic … with a parliament elected by the people” in China.14 Regarding Sun Yat-sen’s subsequent return trip from Europe to Asia through Canada in 1897, Feng Ziyou both misdated it to 1898 and also claimed that Sun did not have enough time for revolutionary mobilization among the Chinese in Vancouver and Victoria. Feng deplored that this lost opportunity allowed Kang Youwei to launch CERA in Canada the next year and dominate Canadian Chinatowns through a reformist movement

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over the next decade, until Feng’s arrival in 1910 as the editor of Vancouver CKT’s newspaper and his initiation of a revolutionary trend thereafter. However, Feng’s account also conceded that Cui Tongyue, as the editor of the newspaper for Chinese Christians in Vancouver, had initiated anti-Qing revolutionary propaganda in Canada ahead of him.15 In fact, after Sun Yat-sen was kidnapped by the Qing legation in London in October 1896 and then released under diplomatic pressure from the British government, his fame soon reached Victoria through reports of his abduction in local English-language newspapers.16 When Sun left England and arrived in Montreal on July 11, 1897, he was being shadowed by both a Qing diplomatic official and a British private detective hired by the Qing legation in London. At the Montreal customs house, Sun disguised himself as a Japanese man and registered under the name of “Dr. Y. S. Lun.”17 He soon left Montreal for Pacific Canada, arriving in Vancouver on July 18 and in Nanaimo on Vancouver Island the next day. Sun then spent nearly two weeks on a stopover in Victoria from July 20 to August 2, waiting there for his transpacific liner. As a Christian, Sun was able to secure one night of lodging in each of the Methodist churches in Vancouver, Nanaimo, and Victoria.18 From July 21 until August 2, 1897, Sun Yat-sen stayed in Victoria’s Yung Chong Lung & Co. (Yingchanglong hao 英昌隆号) operated by Li Yingsan 李英三, a former president of the local CCBA, and his son, Li Mianchen 李勉臣, despite the risk of hosting Sun under constant surveillance by the Qing diplomat and the British detective.19 The detective’s daily reports on Sun showed that he did not engage in any revolutionary activities, presumably owing to the surveillance over him at all times. However, on July 27, Sun met for two hours with Chu Lai, proprietor of Wing Chong & Co., a major leader of the local CCBA and a later cofounder of CERA with Kang Youwei. Sun’s ticket for the transpacific trip to Japan was arranged by Lee Mong Kow, referred to as his “friend” by the British detective, but also another main leader of the local CCBA and the future CERA.20 Thus, on Sun’s first trip across Canada in 1897, he received care, help, and sympathy from local Chinese community leaders as well as future political reformers in Victoria’s Chinatown, regardless of their knowledge of his custody by the Qing legation in London for his anti-Qing activities.21 However, Feng Ziyou’s account of North American Chinese communities before his arrival in Canada in 1910, particularly the CKT, not only echoed Sun Yat-

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sen’s negative reflection but also overlooked the political transformation of the CKT under CERA’s decade-long influence. Moreover, it downplayed the turn of North American CKT and Chinese Christians from reform to revolution through their interpersonal, institutional, and ideological interactions with both sides. Like Sun Yat-sen, Feng Ziyou claimed that the CKT—whose members accounted for 80 to 90 percent of Chinese migrants in the United States and Canada at the beginning of the twentieth century—had turned away from the Hong Fraternal Society’s anti-Qing political slogan toward an appeal for “mutual assistance in adversity like brethren” (shouzu xiangu, huannan xiangfu 手足相顾, 患难相扶). According to Feng, Kang Youwei recruited many of the Canadian and American CKT leaders and members into CERA through “deception,” especially through his claim to be the imperial adviser of the Guangxu Emperor and his use of forged edicts from the emperor for the rescue of the throne. Some of Kang’s disciples—such as Xu Qin, Liang Qitian, and Ou Jujia—joined the CKT with the intention of using it for their political purposes.22 Ironically, Feng would follow these reformist forerunners into the CKT and use it for anti-Qing revolutionary mobilization as well. Recent studies of the Hong Fraternal Society in China have debated whether it began as an anti-Qing political organization from the late seventeenth century or as a mutual-aid and self-protective society of the poor from 1761.23 In 1891, following an English-language newspaper report on the CKT in Victoria as “the headquarters of the order of highbinders” with the purpose of “plotting the overthrow” of the Qing dynasty, the local CKT issued a statement denying the report and claiming that the organization’s anti-Qing “politics [had] dropped out, and [that] the society became what the name implies—a purely fraternal and benevolent institution.”24 This craftily worded public statement confirmed Feng’s description of the CKT as a mutual-aid organization of Chinese migrants, while concealing that it secretly maintained an anti-Qing revolutionary tradition among its members through oral history, confidential documents, and clandestine rituals. The CKT and other North American orders of the Hong Fraternal Society used various secret manuals that included anti-Qing legends, poems, passwords, and so on. These manuals have different titles, of which four versions from 1886, 1892, 1906, and an unknown year have been discovered in Placer County, California,25 and in British Columbia in the village of

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Clinton and the cities of Nelson, Barkerville, and Victoria.26 Each of these manuals includes the founding myth of the secret society, “Xiluzhuan” 西 鲁传 [A legend relating to the Western barbarian invasion], which typically reflects an anti-Qing revolutionary tradition. The legend recounts the fictional massacre of warrior monks in the legendary Shaolin Temple in Fujian Province by the Qing army after the monks had helped the ungrateful Manchu emperor defeat a barbarian invasion in 1674 or thereafter. According to the legend, five monks survived and took a blood oath with their supporters as sworn brothers to avenge the carnage through anti-Qing rebellions. After their rebellions were defeated by the Qing army, the rebels went to different provinces to rally their supporters through local lodges, including Hongshuntang, or the Society of the Hong Obedience, in Guangdong Province.27 This founding legend suggests that even though the Hong Fraternal Society might have appeared in 1761 as a mutual-aid and self-protective organization of the poor, as recent studies have argued, it nonetheless developed its anti-Qing revolutionary tradition in response to official suppression of the secret society. Another legend of the Hong Fraternal Society claimed that its anti-Qing uprising of 1787 was sabotaged by a mole from the Qing government, Tian the Seven (Tian Qi 田七). Thereafter, its documents replaced the number “seven” in Chinese, “qi 七,” with “ji 吉,” meaning auspiciousness.28 On a list of the CKT’s new members in the Cariboo region of British Columbia in 1885 and another such list from the Quesnel Forks lodge in the same region around that time, the space for the seventh member is filled not with a name or ji for auspiciousness, but instead with a political slogan: “Long live the great Ming emperors.”29 At the end of August 1894, nearly three months before Sun Yat-sen launched his anti-Qing Revive China Society in Honolulu, a newspaper in Omaha, Nebraska, reported the secret inauguration of the local “branch of Geehing”—or Yixing 义兴, another name for the Hong Fraternal Society—and the initiation ceremony for its fifty new members at a Chinese laundry. This ceremony was attended by 150 people, including grand masters of the secret society from San Francisco, Denver, Minneapolis, and other cities as well as “surrounding towns within a radius of 200 miles.” It started with anti-Qing speeches by the grand masters, one of whom promised to develop anti-Qing plans at the secret society’s meeting in Chicago on September 9. Then, the blindfolded new members took an anti-Manchu oath. Finally, they shared a bowl of blood from small cuts on their arms,

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which made them sworn brothers in the anti-Qing mission.30 This report shows one example of the anti-Qing revolutionary tendency among North American orders of the Hong Fraternal Society in the 1890s. The 1892 secret manual of the Hong Fraternal Society outlined its organizational principles and structures well before it came under the impact of CERA from 1899 and of the Revolutionary Alliance thereafter. Besides the retention of such anti-Qing political tradition through its legends, ceremonies, and so on, the manual included code names for the positions and passwords of the three main heads in each lodge or branch: the straw sandal (caoxie 草鞋), or general; the white fan (baishan 白扇), or secretary; and the Hong stick (honggun 洪棍), or grand master, who was in charge of imposing discipline. The disciplinary rules included the “Thirty-six Oaths” (Sanshilu shi 三十六誓), the “Twenty-one-Item Regulations” (Ershiyi li 二 十一例), and the “Ten Prohibitions” (Shijin 十禁). Most of these rules stressed fraternal care, assistance, and protection of the members in this organization, along with the specifications for secret rituals, annual worship rites, and the duty to keep its secrets from outsiders and principally from government agents.31 Thus, the stated pursuits by the Hong Fraternal Society of mutual assistance and self-protection did not prevent it from retaining and developing an anti-Qing revolutionary tradition. As the society’s major North American order, the CKT continued the use of the aforementioned secret manuals and ceremonies to indoctrinate its members with anti-Qing political tradition in clandestine activities, but it still pursued its fraternal care of members and communal protection from racial discrimination as a popular and powerful community organization. In October 1898, two leaders of Victoria’s CKT claimed that its membership included “[e]ighty percent of the best class of Chinese,”32 which corroborates Feng Ziyou’s aforementioned account. Kang Youwei was attracted to the CKT from the beginning of his reformist mobilization in Canada. Its leaders in Victoria, such as Lin Lihuang and Lu Jin, had daily contacts with Kang until they and other Chinese merchant leaders jointly launched CERA on July 20, 1899.33 In Vancouver, at least three leading figures in the local CKT—Yip Sang, Yip Yen, and Huang Yushan—were among the seven merchants who initiated the transnational company in May 1899 that evolved into CERA.34 In this sense, these CKT leaders were not simply the passive followers of Kang’s reformist

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propaganda, as Feng Ziyou’s account indicates, but also the local initiators of CERA and its political reforms. The CKT helped Kang launch CERA and its pro-Qing reform, despite secretly maintaining an anti-Qing political tradition, because Kang employed the slogan of saving the Guangxu Emperor for the purpose of protecting the Chinese nation and “race,” 35 including both the Manchu and Han Chinese, from foreign aggression and racial discrimination. Moreover, both Kang and the emperor were seen not only as progressive and patriotic reformers but also as leaders in the CKT’s fight against the ruling Manchu faction in the Qing court under Empress Dowager Cixi. Undoubtedly, the CKT’s merchant leaders also joined CERA’s political reforms and business ventures with the practical purpose of pursing fortune, fame, and power. After Yip Sang and Huang Yushan joined Kang in launching CERA and its political reforms from 1899, they and other leaders of its chapter in Vancouver, principally Lee Kee and He Zhenxiang, soon initiated a communitywide organization in the local Chinatown. They raised funds and purchased land for the establishment of the Chinese Benevolent Association (Zhonghua huiguan 中华会馆) in Vancouver at the end of that year.36 Yip, Huang, and Lee, as well as Shen Caiman, a young CERA leader and the manager of Chang Toy’s Sam Kee Co., and two other local merchants, later registered the Chinese Benevolent Association in Vancouver with the provincial government of British Columbia in 1906 and served as its “first trustees or managing officers.”37 CERA leaders, including those of the CKT in Vancouver’s Chinatown, thus increased their local dominance and personal influence through the new communitywide organization. In nearby New Westminster, the grand master of the local Chinese Freemasons, Tai Kee, also joined the CERA chapter in that city and became one of its directors. His death in March 1902 brought together members of the local chapter of CERA and of the fraternal society in a “largely attended and imposing” funeral.38 When Liang Qichao visited Honolulu in 1900 to mobilize the reformist movement there, he soon noticed that the local order of the Hong Fraternal Society encompassed 60 to 70 percent of the Chinese migrants, thus he joined the secret society in order to draw its leaders and members into CERA. As a member of the Hong Fraternal Society, Liang subsequently visited North America in 1903 and received exceptionally strong support from his brethren in the CKT, such as Yip Sang and Yip Yen in Vancouver.

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During his stay in Vancouver in April 1903, he claimed to have achieved 30 to 40 percent of his original plan to build CERA’s supportive base in the “secret society circle” (mimijie 秘密界), particularly the CKT, at the beginning of his North American trip.39 Under CERA’s influence, the CKT in Canada underwent significant changes. After CERA of Canada became incorporated in April 1900, it not only generated a chapter in Rossland in the Kootenay area of British Columbia in 1903, as Chapter 2 has indicated, but also influenced the formation of the local CKT lodge. This lodge had about one hundred members, and its opening ceremony was held on October 13, 1903, attended by the grand master from Vancouver and the master of the Kootenay area, and open to the local public.40 It was the first of the Chinese secret societies in British Columbia, on January 2, 1904, to incorporate under the provincial government. Its incorporation document copied that of CERA of Canada by stating their shared purpose: “[For] social intercourse, mutual helpfulness, mental and moral improvement and rational recreation” of their members.41 When the CKT in Victoria was incorporated on June 29, 1908, it in turn copied the Rossland CKT by stating their common purpose: “To make provisions by means of contribution, subscription, donation, or otherwise, against sickness, unavoidable misfortune, or death.”42 It was thus under CERA’s influence that the CKT in Canada began to change from a secret society into a legitimate organization through formal incorporation in Canada, and to modernize its original slogan for mutual assistance and self-protection of its members. In the United States, the first CKT in San Francisco had already become incorporated under the State of California on May 12, 1879. One main leader of the CKT, Tang Qiongchang 唐琼昌 (1869−1916), joined San Francisco’s CERA as its secretary from its inception in October 1899. The CKT leaders in both Canada and the United States probably shared the ambition to increase their influence by joining CERA in its progressive and patriotic movements. Their work with CERA not only helped CKT’s expansion, but also influenced the platforms of the fraternal organizations with reformism and nationalism beyond the traditional ideas of brotherhood and mutual assistance, as L. Eve Ma’s research has indicated.43 As a former student of Kang Youwei and a reformist newspaperman in San Francisco, Ou Jujia made the earliest attempt to reorganize the CKT as a political party and influenced its open pursuit of an anti-Qing revolution

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after he became the editor of its newspaper, Datong ribao, in 1903. In Ou’s “Introduction to Datong ribao” (Datong ribao yuanqi 《大同日报》缘起) in its first issue, he affirmed the legendary origin of the Hong Fraternal Society from the anti-Qing heroes just after the demise of the Chinese Ming dynasty, and urged its members to retain the society’s political tenet and organizational unity. His article set two purposes for the CKT’s newspaper: first, to reform this secret society as a public association and further as a political party, and second, to promote its alliance with other patriotic organizations by expanding its brotherhood into datong or “great unity” with other parties for salvation of China.44 It is worth noting that Ou named the CKT’s newspaper after Kang’s unpublished Datongshu 大同书 [The book of great unity],45 but transformed Kang’s utopian idea of a united and harmonious world into the practical purposes of a political party that would evolve from the CKT. Under Ou’s radical influence, the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco had dramatically changed its political attitude by the time Liang Qichao’s North American tour reached the city in late 1903. Because Liang had joined the CKT’s counterpart in Honolulu in 1900 and found that its members also accounted for 70 to 80 percent of the Chinese in San Francisco,46 he made certain to contact its headquarters there.47 While Liang had personally resolved during the North American tour to reject revolutionary radicalism and follow Kang Youwei’s reformist cause, he failed to stop the CKT headquarters in San Francisco from its anti-Qing tendency. During Liang’s two visits to San Francisco in September and November 1903, he had several rounds of talks with the CKT headquarters’ grand master, Huang Sande 黄三德 (1863−1946), but they broke off talk over the divergent Hong Fraternal Society’s anti-Manchu slogan and CERA’s slogan of protecting the Guangxu Emperor.48 Although Liang had just joined a Honolulu order of the Hong Fraternal Society in 1900, his travel note about San Francisco condemned the CKT and other orders of the secret society as the major vice of the city because of their tong wars with each other. In his opinion, although the CKT in San Francisco kept its traditional slogan of overthrowing the Manchu-ruled Qing dynasty, it was actually more corrupt than the latter. Nonetheless, Liang maintained close relations with the CKT’s leaders in Canada, especially Yip Yen, and even recommended him to Kang Youwei to manage CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong at the end of 1903.49 Thus, by the end of 1903, the American CKT began to diverge from

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its Canadian counterpart and to turn from the CERA-led reform toward antiQing revolution, but its revolutionary tendency was actually developed under the influence of radical reformer Ou Jujia. Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen returned from Japan to Hawai‘i two years after the Revive China Society under his leadership had suffered a devastating failure with its anti-Qing uprising in Huizhou Prefecture 惠州, east of Canton, on October 6−20, 1900, which was regarded by Sun as the second failure in his revolutionary movement. When Sun arrived in Honolulu in October 1903, he witnessed further breakdown of the Revive China Society in Hawai‘i, where it had begun nine years earlier. Most of its leaders and members in Hawai‘i, including Sun’s elder brother, had shifted to CERA as a result of Liang Qichao’s reformist propaganda campaign across the Hawaiian Islands in 1900. Therefore, Sun regarded CERA as a more deadly antirevolutionary force than the Qing court itself and launched a full attack on the reformist camp through public speeches and newspaper propaganda in Honolulu from 1903.50 Sun decided to take his second trip to the American mainland after hearing that Liang Qichao had raised millions of dollars from the Chinese in San Francisco and other cities through his reformist propaganda “in the name of revolution.”51 In fact, Liang had returned to the reformist camp by that time. Sun nonetheless followed Liang’s precedent and joined a Honolulu order of the Hong Fraternal Society, the Guoan Society (Guoan huiguan 国安会 馆), in January 1904. Zhong Shuiyang 钟水养 (aka Zhong Guozhu 钟国 柱), Sun’s sponsor for admission to the secret society, had probably sponsored Liang’s entry into the same lodge in 1900 and had previously served as the assistant director of the CERA chapter in Honolulu around that time. Sun received the prestigious title of the Hong stick, a grand master in charge of imposing discipline in this lodge.52 On Sun Yat-sen’s second trip across the continental United States of April 6 to December 14, 1904, his new ties with the Hong Fraternal Society would enable him to receive crucial help from the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco when he landed there.53 With a plan to win over the CKT through competition with CERA under Kang Youwei’s leadership, Sun would actually continue Ou Jujia’s reformist initiative to reorganize this secret society for his own anti-Qing revolutionary mobilization among North American Chinatowns. But his effort to reorganize the CKT with modern organizational principles and republican ideologies would not succeed.

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With the annexation of Hawai‘i by the United States in 1898 and the extension of citizenship to island residents, Sun Yat-sen managed to obtain a Hawaiian birth certificate with a set of forged documents for his 1904 visit to the continental United States. The birth certificate and the certificate of Sun’s American citizenship signed by the governor of Hawai‘i stated his age as thirty-three in 1904, although he was actually thirty-eight years old at the time. Nonetheless, the second certificate provided a relatively accurate description of his physical features: “Stature: 5 feet 5¼ inches [1.6 m.]; … Forehead: high, broad; Eyes: Brown; Nose: broad, medium bridge; Mouth: medium, moustache; Chin: small, full; Hair: black; Complexion: Brown; Face: Oval.” Despite these documents, however, upon reaching San Francisco on April 6, 1904, Sun was immediately detained by the American immigration authorities.54 Feng Ziyou later claimed that CERA leaders in Honolulu and San Francisco had tipped off the American authorities about Sun’s fraudulent birth certificate through Qing China’s general consulate. Earlier, through a fellow Christian and conspirator in the 1895 Canton uprising, Zuo Doushan, Sun had received an introductory letter to Reverend Wu Panzhao (Ng Poon Chew, 伍盘照, 1866−1931) in San Francisco, the chief editor of the local Chinese Christian newspaper, Chung Sai Yat Po (Zhong-Xi ribao 中西日报 [Chinese and the West daily news]). Sun urgently sought help from Wu, who in turn used Sun’s new ties with the Hong Fraternal Society to contact the CKT headquarters in San Francisco for help. Sun was finally released with help from the CKT’s two main leaders, Huang Sande and Tang Qiongchang. Because Ou Jujia used the CKT’s newspaper, Datong ribao, to criticize the “unwise” rescue of Sun by Huang and Tang, he was soon dismissed by them as the editor, and replaced by one of Sun’s revolutionary comrades, Liu Chengyu 刘成禺 (1876−1952).55 Ou then became the editor of a CERA newspaper in Singapore. He eventually returned to China, helped found Zhenhua Company, and clashed with Kang Youwei’s faction in 1909, as Chapter 2 has discussed.56 Thereafter, Sun Yat-sen took over Ou’s radical initiative to reform the CKT by drafting a new set of rules for this secret society, which required all of its lodges to register with the headquarters in San Francisco and specified new titles for their leaders—including the use of zongli 总理 (general director) instead of Hong stick for grand master. He also specified CKT’s new four-plank political platform, “expulsion of the Manchus, restoration of

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Chinese rule, establishment of a republic, and equalization of land rights.” CKT members readily accepted the first two planks for their consistence with the Hong Fraternal Society’s traditional slogan of “resisting the Qing dynasty” under the Manchu rule and “restoring the Ming dynasty” of the Han Chinese, but the local lodges rejected the remaining planks as unrealistic jargon. The four tenets would become the oath of the Revolutionary Alliance, but even many of its members doubted the wisdom of the fourth one, and changed it to “equalization of human rights.”57 From May 24, 1904, Sun Yat-sen and Grand Master Huang Sande toured the American mainland, delivering anti-Qing speeches to CKT lodges in an effort to implement the new set of rules. Sun’s main purpose was to collect the lodges’ registration fees for his revolutionary cause, while Huang’s objective and that of other leaders of the San Francisco CKT headquarters was to unify and control the lodges, including their financial resources. In turn, these local lodges used Sun and Huang’s influence and speeches to attract and recruit new members as personnel and for their financial resources. They mostly dodged the registration and thus rejected the submission of their local funds to CKT headquarters. Even the CKT headquarters in San Francisco failed to reorganize itself according to the new set of rules. Thus, Sun failed to reform the CKT before his departure from New York for Europe on December 14, 1904.58 During Sun’s tour across American mainland in 1904, his direct clashes with CERA leaders even led to attempts to assassinate him. Ou Jujia first recruited a voluntary assassin, Chen Yuesong 陈岳菘, in July 1904, with the intention of having him murder Sun in Chicago, but Ou soon found Chen to be an inexperienced young pedant.59 Before Kang Youwei left Canada for the United States at the beginning of 1905, he specifically instructed Tan Liang in Los Angeles to look for information about Sun’s activities, and urged Kang Tongbi to contact his disciples in New York to develop a plan to get rid of Sun before Kang’s own American tour. He requested both Tan Liang and Kang Tongbi to purchase bulletproof armors and protective jackets for him because he feared that he could be assassinated, similarly to President McKinley in 1901, by Sun’s associates.60 Sun’s contact with CKT leaders in New York, such as Huang Xi, who was also a local CERA leader, especially alarmed Kang’s associates in the city. Even after Sun’s secret departure from New York for Europe, Chen Yuesong still assumed that Sun had arrived in Chicago in January 1905, and

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boasted to have prepared to kill him there.61 And in October 1905, Kang Youwei still contacted Chen and other CERA leaders to form a plot against Sun, although Sun had returned from Europe to Asia by that time.62 Sun initially competed with Kang’s CERA in North American Chinatowns mainly through the CKT, and according to Huang Sande, Sun Yat-sen sent him a letter in mid-1905 urging the CKT to eliminate Kang, a request that Huang rejected.63 During Sun Yat-sen’s stay in San Francisco, he used Reverend Wu Panzhao’s Christian newspaper, Chung Sai Yat Po, to print eleven thousand copies of a popular anti-Qing brochure—Gemingjun革命军 (Revolutionary Army), written by Zou Rong 邹容 (1885−1905)—and had the CKT’s headquarters disseminate them to overseas Chinese in the Americas and Southeast Asia. Although Wu and a few Chinese Christians provided printing services and financial help for Sun, only one of them, Walter N. Fong, took an oath to become a formal member of his Revive China Society, but he had been the president of its first and short-lived chapter in San Francisco in 1896.64 Most Chinese Christians in the United States and Canada did not formally join Sun Yat-sen’s party, but many were supportive with revolutionary propaganda and mobilization through their radical reforms or institutional clashes with CERA under Kang Youwei’s leadership. Chinese Christian churches in both the United States and Canada, as well as Reverend Wu’s Chung Sai Yat Po, had complicated relations with CERA from its beginning. When CERA was first established in Victoria in July 1899, the Canadian Methodist Church had already conducted missionary work among the Chinese in British Columbia for decades. It opened churches and Sunday schools to attract migrants from China, and even brought in Chen Shengjie (Chan Sing Kai 陈升阶) from Hong Kong as a missionary in Vancouver’s Chinatown in 1888. Chen later became the minister of the Methodist Church in Victoria’s Chinatown in 1891, and his younger brother, Chen Yaotan (Chan Yu Tan 陈耀檀), took over the mission in Vancouver in 1896. After the Presbyterian Church launched its mission among the Chinese in Canada beginning in the 1880s, it also opened Christian institutions, including evening schools, in Canadian Chinatowns and recruited Wu Wenqing (Ng Mon Hing 伍文庆) from Canton as a missionary in Victoria in 1895.65 Both Christian groups would clash with CERA through their own reforms. Because Kang Youwei once sought to reestablish the Society to Protect

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the Nation in Canada before he founded CERA in Victoria in 1899, he evidently tried to revive its original slogan of “protecting China’s nation, the Chinese race, and the Confucian religion,” as Chapter 1 showed. After CERA’s initiation, the directors of its chapters in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster issued a joint fundraising call in late September 1899. It urged overseas Chinese to protect “the Confucian religion” together with the Guangxu Emperor and the Chinese nation, race, families, individuals, and posterity.66 This fundraising call probably made Reverend Wu Panzhao, then the editor of Chung Sai Yat Po in Los Angeles, demand Kang’s abandonment of the slogan of “protecting the Confucian religion” before the Christian newspaper moved to San Francisco as a pro-CERA organ. In response, Kang and CERA indeed stopped using this plank of protecting the Confucian religion against Christianity thereafter for the purpose of drawing Chinese Christians into their reformist association.67 In addition to the religious divergence between CERA and Chinese Christians, Chung Sai Yat Po and its editor, Reverend Wu Panzhao, began to clash with the CERA newspaper in San Francisco, Wenxing bao, over the US government’s policy toward Chinese registration from April 1903. The clash intensified after Reverend Wu’s involvement in the aforementioned rescue of Sun Yat-sen from the custody of the American immigration authorities in April 1904. On July 18, 1904, a front-page editorial in Chung Sai Yat Po openly denounced Wenxing bao for its journalistic principle of monarchism, and defended Reverend Wu’s departure from Kang Youwei’s monarchist group.68 This Christian newspaper clearly showed its prorevolution tendency thereafter. On June 20, 1906, its report about Zhang Binglin 章炳麟 (1869−1936), an anti-Qing scholar, hailed his release from jail in Shanghai and extolled him as a revolutionary hero. Its editor’s comment on the report and a front-page editorial on the newspaper two days later further applauded Zhang for rebuking Kang Youwei’s antirevolutionary stance and praised him as a great man of the Han Chinese. The newspaper also expressed indignation upon the death of Zou Rong, the young author of the well-known anti-Qing brochure, Geming jun, while imprisoned.69 In Victoria, the birthplace of CERA, local Chinese Christian churches had developed tense relations with this reformist organization partly for its pro-Confucianism activities. Due to Kang Youwei’s initiation of local Chinese worship for Confucius’ birthday from September 1899, the yearly

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ceremony continued under CERA sponsorship thereafter. Confucian curriculum influenced the Lequn Charitable School (Lequn yishu 乐群义 塾) in Victoria and CERA’s Patriotic School in Vancouver. In addition to the competition of these reformist schools with the Sunday schools of the churches, CERA’s public speeches and meetings on Sunday nights also drew the local Chinese from the missions. In 1899 alone, the Methodist mission lost half of its Chinese members in Victoria and declined to the lowest point in the province of British Columbia since its inception from 1885.70 Probably because of the religious and institutional contention, Reverend Chen Shengjie at the Methodist church in Victoria’s Chinatown urged his Chinese congregation to unite with the mission rather than Kang’s CERA and its conspiracy against Empress Dowager Cixi. Then, on Christmas Eve in 1899, a pipe bomb with a timed fuse was placed on a windowsill of the Methodist church and exploded during Reverend Chen’s religious service. The explosion shattered the window panes and caused great panic among Chen’s audience inside the church. A local newspaper soon reported its suspicion that someone from the local CERA chapter was the perpetrator. It was also rumored that a Chinese man who had failed to marry a girl in the Chinese Rescue Home associated with the church was the culprit. This case was not solved, but it reflected the strained relations between the first CERA chapter in Victoria and the local Chinese Methodist community.71 In New Westminster, Methodist minister Tan Chaodong had served as Kang Youwei’s interpreter for his first public speech there in April 1899,72 and quite a few Chinese Christians subsequently joined the local chapter of CERA.73 Tan even acted as Kang’s emissary to the United States in 1899 and 1900 to promote CERA’s expansion and fundraising there, as Chapter 1 showed. However, in a letter to Kang dated August 18, 1900, Tan complained that CERA members “look down upon the Protestant religion” and that its leaders in San Francisco “care only for profits” and “wish to embezzle.” Tan even criticized Kang for “play[ing] uselessly with the pen and the ink” in Singapore and urged him to return to China and mobilize soldiers and bandits for CERA’s military rescue of the Guangxu Emperor.”74 In a report to his mission headquarters around that time, Tan also complained that CERA’s supporters refused to accept the Christian religion, even though they were “crying out for reform, and talking about the Western methods of government and laws.”75 Thus, Chinese Christians in Canada gradually split with the CERA

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under Kang Youwei’s leadership, but they still followed his reformist precedent. In Vancouver, two Chinese Methodist ministers, Chen Yaotan and Feng Dewen 冯德文 (aka Fong Dickman, 1860−1946) received help from Zhou Tianlin 周天霖, a merchant, and Zhou Yaochu 周耀初, a photographer, in starting a Christian newspaper, Hua-Ying ribao 华英日报 [Chinese-English daily], in June 1906.76 Under Kang Youwei’s influence, they launched this Christian newspaper not only to preach the gospel, but also to advocate the reformist goals of combating gambling, opium smoking, and similar vices among the Chinese migrants.77 However, Feng Ziyou’s account of this newspaper depicts it only as the enterprise of two Christian individuals, the two Zhous, and interprets its clash with CERA merely as the result of a report about the latter by its editor, Cui Tongyue.78 In fact, this clash was also caused by Cui’s long-term religious and political discord with Kang and his disciples, as well as Hua-Ying ribao’s leadership in antiopium Christian reform. As a former student of Kang Youwei, Cui Tongyue followed his flight to Hong Kong after Empress Dower Cixi suppressed the 1898 Reform and began to round up reformers. However, Cui was baptised in 1899 after he witnessed how Kang had promoted the Confucian religion at the expense of Christianity, but Chinese Christian leaders in Hong Kong still supported Kang at the risk of their own lives at that critical moment. While Kang’s disciples used Christian publications only as references for their Confucian studies and still treated Christianity as heterodox, Cui was determined to bring Confucianism into Christianity. Nonetheless, he later still attributed his revolutionary motives to Kang’s inspiration.79 Cui Tongyue first became involved with Sun Yat-sen during the aborted Canton uprising in October 1895. After his conversion to Christianity, Cui still joined the Hong Fraternal Society in Hong Kong and engaged in various anti-Qing activities led by Sun and other revolutionaries, as well as the Triad Society in Canton, Macao, and Hong Kong. He also joined Sun’s Revive China Society in Hong Kong and engaged in anti-Qing revolutionary activities in Tokyo as a Japan-based correspondent for a Hong Kong newspaper, Shijie gongyi ribao 世界公益日报 (World welfare daily). But after the Revolutionary Alliance was founded by Sun in Tokyo in August 1905, it ostracized Cui for his fickle political behavior.80 Cui later argued that he offended Sun because one of his articles in Shijie gongyi ribao compared him with Kang Youwei, even though it favored Sun over Kang. In any case, it

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was around this time that Cui received a letter from Reverend Chen Yaotan and Zhou Yaochu in Vancouver, inviting him to serve as the editor of the Christian newspaper Hua-Ying ribao.81 He accepted this invitation, turning away from anti-Qing revolution for the newspaper’s Christian reform cause. The Qing court issued an antiopium edict as a new reformist policy in September 1906,82 just before Cui Tongyue arrived in Vancouver at the end of that year.83 The Chinese community in Victoria responded enthusiastically to the reformist edict and planned to form an antiopium society in July 1907.84 In particular, Chinese Christians in British Columbia soon launched an antiopium reform under the leadership of Cui’s Hua-Ying ribao and further led the Canadian government into the reformist movement and a global war against the pernicious drug. Ironically, the antiopium social reform in British Columbia would mainly target the major reformist leaders of CERA and intensify the clashes between them and Cui’s Christian newspaper. Although Kang Youwei launched overseas Chinese political reforms from Victoria in 1899, the opium issue was not addressed by CERA because many of its merchant leaders in Canada were engaged to some degree in the opium trade. After the Sino-American treaty in 1880 stopped opium importation along with labor immigration from China to the United States,85 Victoria’s Chinatown became a center of opium manufacturing and trade, including smuggling operations for the US Pacific Northwest. The opium business in Victoria also became a major revenue source for the Canadian municipal, provincial, and federal governments. Some leaders of the Victoria CCBA and those of the local CERA chapter, including Li Fuji, operated large opium factories in the city, and two main leaders of CERA of Canada—Lee Kee and Huang Yushan, respectively—operated Lee Yuen Co. and Hip Tuck Lung Co., the two largest opium factories in Vancouver.86 In contrast, the Christian newspaper Hua-Ying ribao began with a major objective to combat the opium-smoking habit among the Chinese community, and it became a leading force of the reformist movement against this “social evil.” By mid-1908, the Chinese Anti-Opium League had been established in British Columbia, with branches in the Chinatowns of Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster. One of its young leaders was Peter Hing (aka Wu Peide 伍德培), a son of Reverend Wu Wenqing or Ng Mon Hing, the first Chinese minister of the Presbyterian mission in Victoria’s Chinatown. Peter Hing, who had entered McGill University’s Faculty of Law in

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Montreal as its first Chinese student in 1906, returned to British Columbia to work as an editorial contributor to Hua-Ying ribao during his summer vacation in 1908 and committed himself to the antiopium campaign.87 Chinese Methodists and Presbyterians thus became united in their reform campaign against opium under the leadership of Cui Tongyue’s newspaper. It was from the editorial office of Hua-Ying ribao that Peter Hing sent a letter on May 29, 1908, to W. L. Mackenzie King—deputy minister of labor of the Canadian government and the future prime minister of Canada—upon King’s arrival in Vancouver to assess Chinese and Japanese property losses in the anti-Asian riot of 1907, which was mentioned in Chapter 2. This letter requested that King pay attention to the opium issue and demanded government support for the Chinese Anti-Opium League’s attempt to stop the use of the harmful drug among the Chinese. Hing also had several private meetings with King to discuss the issue, as did three other leaders of the Anti-Opium League.88 In King’s reply to Hing dated May 30, 1908, the deputy minister promised to make a personal investigation of the opium issue in British Columbia. In fact, starting on May 27, King’s hearings on Chinese claims for losses in the Vancouver riot of the previous year had already revealed the large scale and high profit of opium factories in Vancouver’s Chinatown. Among them, Lee Kee’s Lee Yuen Co. earned a gross income of $180,000 (CAD) from the manufacture of opium, with an annual profit of $20,000 (CAD). King’s further investigation into the opium trade revealed that opium manufacture and trade were not only legal but also heavily taxed by the Canadian government. For example, the city of Vancouver alone reaped $170,000 (CAD) in license fees each year.89 The Chinese Anti-Opium League in British Columbia submitted another petition to Deputy Minister King after his return to Ottawa at the beginning of July 1908, requesting that the Canadian government “prohibit the importation, manufacture, and sale of opium.”90 This petition received King’s endorsement and was incorporated by the Canadian Parliament into an antiopium law in mid-July of that year.91 By that time, Qing China had achieved significant success in its state-sponsored reformist campaign against opium, and it even signed a ten-year agreement with Britain to end the Indo-Chinese opium trade. China also hosted the International Opium Commission in Shanghai in early 1909, at which King represented the Canadian government and proudly reported that Canada had influenced the

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American government’s recent opium ban.92 Chinese Christians in British Columbia thus initiated the antiopium reform campaign that for the first time brought the Chinese community and the Canadian government into a united front with the ruling government in China and other Western powers before China joined the Allied powers in the First and Second World Wars. Unsurprisingly, the Canadian antiopium bill immediately met with protests from Chinese opium merchants in Vancouver and Victoria. They argued that the government of Canada had been duplicitous, and equally guilty, for levying taxes on their large amount of opium stocks but giving them such short notice for ending the businesses. In response, the senate in Ottawa amended the opium bill to grant a three-month grace period for the drug dealers to dispose of their stocks. But the large opium factories, including those of three main CERA leaders in Canada—Li Fuji’s Quong Man Fung & Co. in Victoria, and Lee Kee’s Lee Yuen Co. and Huang Yushan’s Hip Tuck Lung Co. in Vancouver—still suffered heavy losses because they had contracted or manufactured nearly a year’s supply.93 Meanwhile, the Chinese Anti-Opium League, which appeared in a local newspaper as the Chinese Reform League, aggressively helped police suppress the smuggling of the now-illegal drug by offering rewards to informants and even trapping smugglers with decoys.94 It was no wonder that this antiopium movement triggered a series of legal battles against Cui Tongyue personally and his newspaper Hua-Ying ribao by CERA leaders in British Columbia from 1907 until 1909. Cui was first sued for libel by Kang’s supporters in Canada for reporting the Qing government’s arrest of CERA’s members in Canton in 1907.95 This legal battle occurred just after Victoria’s Chinese, probably Christian converts, planned an antiopium society.96 Before this case was over in 1907, Cui faced another lawsuit for libel from Yip Wing, a CERA leader and the Chinese interpreter of the Victoria police court, for publishing a letter from forty-two Chinese in Nelson that charged Yip with giving false evidence at an inquest about a drowning case. Interestingly, Yip targeted his defamatory lawsuit at Cui rather than the Nelson authors of the letter, although Hua-Ying ribao published the letter with the standard editorial note of nonliability. Yip’s lawsuit seemed to have received direct help from CERA leaders in Vancouver.97 The aforementioned lawsuits were just the first two of a total of ten court battles initiated by CERA leaders against Cui and Hua-Ying ribao starting

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in 1907. Some if not all of them were in retaliation for antiopium social reforms led by the Christian newspaper. In response, Cui openly attacked CERA and launched his anti-Qing propaganda in Hua-Ying ribao. He also contacted revolutionary newspapers in Hong Kong, and reconnected with Sun Yat-sen. Although Cui claimed to have won the ten legal battles against CERA due to support from the local Chinese Christian community and the CKT in Vancouver, his newspaper became bankrupt in late 1909. He then became an editor of the Christian newspaper in San Francisco, Chung Sai Yat Po,98 and used it to continue his political struggles with the CERA publication, Shijie ribao 世界日报 [Chinese world], there. Cui would also become a founding member of the Revolutionary Alliance in San Francisco in 1910.99 Cui’s case exemplifies both interpersonal and institutional links between reforms and revolutionary movements, inside both the CKT and the Chinese Christian community, because of his political enlightenment as a former student of Kang Youwei and his connections with the Hong Fraternal Society, Chinese churches, and Sun’s Revive China Society and Revolutionary Alliance. The case also shows how the anti-Qing revolutionary tendency developed among the Chinese in North America beyond the influence of Sun Yast-sen’s visits to the continent in 1896−1897 and 1904, and before the first agent of the Revolutionary Alliance, Feng Ziyou, arrived there in 1910. The multiple origins of revolutionary movements in North American Chinatowns ranged from the anti-Qing revolutionary tradition of the Hong Fraternal Society among CKT members to the moral reformism of Chinese Christians who clashed with Kang’s CERA. Even revolutionary partisans like Feng also personified both competition and connections between reformist and revolutionary camps, as is detailed in the next section.

Transpacific Rivalry and Political Relay between Chinese Reformers and Revolutionaries After Sun Yat-sen’s first trip across the United States, England, and Canada in 1896−1897 and his second trip to the American mainland in 1904, he did not visit North America again until late 1909, partly because of his preoccupation with anti-Qing military uprisings in southern China. In 1907−1908, Sun’s Revolutionary Alliance led but lost a succession of six campaigns, or what he called his third to eighth failures in the anti-Qing revolution, following the two led by the Revive China Society in 1895 and 1900.100 These

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military failures would compel Sun Yat-sen and Feng Ziyou, another active revolutionary leader, to seek political refuge and new resources in North America in 1909 and 1910. In particular, Feng’s activities on both sides of the Pacific not only would render help for Sun’s efforts to expand the Revolutionary Alliance at the expense of CERA in North America, but also would reflect the historic change and continuity from reform to revolution in the transpacific Chinese diaspora. Feng Ziyou arrived in Canada in late 1910, right after Sun Yat-sen’s third trip to the continental United States from November 8, 1909, to March 22, 1910.101 Feng’s political career deserves special attention here because his move from Japan to Hong Kong, Vancouver, and San Francisco exemplified the transpacific rivalry and political relay between the reformist and revolutionary movements. As a defector from Kang’s reformist camp, Feng represented and also shepherded quite a few young radicals from Canadian and American Chinatowns in their transition from reformers to revolutionaries on both sides of the Pacific. A key figure in Feng Ziyou’s initial connections with North American Chinese reformist and revolutionary movements was the little-known Li Bohai 李伯海, a son of the first president of the Victoria CERA, Li Fuji.102 Feng’s conversion from Kang’s reformist cause to Sun’s revolutionary mission around 1905 indirectly influenced Li Bohai’s political choice through their common friends, and they respectively defected from their reformist families in Japan and Canada.103 Both Feng’s and Li’s political transition from reformist to revolutionary camps would be crucial for the expansion of the Revolutionary Alliance from East Asia to North America, but there is much more available information about Feng than about Li. Feng also had a more dramatic political career because of his shift from revolution to reform and back to revolution. Feng Ziyou was born in Yokohama in 1882, and his original name was Feng Maolong 冯懋龙. Both his father, Feng Jingru 冯镜如 (1844−1913), and his uncle, Feng Zishan 冯紫珊 (?−1921), had fled to Japan because their family had been involved in the uprising of the Heaven-Earth Society (Tiandihui 天地会), or the Hong Fraternal Society, around Canton in 1854−1864 and suffered persecution from the Qing government thereafter.104 The Feng brothers helped Sun Yat-sen found the Revive China Society’s chapter in Yokohama in November 1895, and Feng Ziyou became its youngest member at the age of thirteen. After Sun’s 1895−1897 round trip between

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Japan and Europe, he initiated a Chinese school in Yokohama, but Kang Youwei’s disciples, especially Xu Qin, turned it into a reformist institution under the name of Datong School. Both Feng Jingru and Feng Zishan then joined Kang’s faction in its competition with Sun and other revolutionaries for control of the school. Feng Ziyou also became a student in the school under Xu’s political influence. After the failure of the 1898 Reform in Qing China and the arrival of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao in Japan, the Feng family became closer to these reformers, and Feng Ziyou entered the Tokyo Datong High School (Dongjing datong gaodeng xuexiao 东京大同高等学 校) founded by Liang in late 1899.105 Liang Qichao, Ou Jujia, and other radical reformers once preached liberalism and individual freedom, called for the independence of Guangdong Province from the Qing government, and even tried to work with Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary group around 1900.106 Thus, previous studies of the media war between them often focus on the period after the formation of the Revolutionary Alliance in 1905,107 although Sun had started a newspaper war against CERA’s organ in Honolulu in 1903,108 as described earlier. Nonetheless, Feng Ziyou and his young associates in Kang Youwei’s reformist movement initially shifted toward an anti-Qing and prorevolution stance under the influence of Liang Qichao and other radical reformers,109 rather than that of revolutionaries such as Sun Yat-sen. While attending the Tokyo Datong High School in 1900, Feng Ziyou and his young classmates followed their radical teachers, including Liang and Ou Jujia, in the pursuit of liberalism and other Western ideas, and thus defied Kang Youwei’s ban on discussing individual freedom and Guangdong independence from Qing China. Feng openly changed his given name from Maolong to Ziyou 自由, or “freedom” in defiance of Kang’s ban on discussion about the idea. Two of his classmates at the school—Zheng Guangong 郑贯公 (aka Zheng Guanyi 郑贯一, 1881−1906) and Feng Siluan 冯 斯栾—followed suit and respectively adopted the pen names of Zili 自立 (self-standing) and Ziqiang 自强 (self-strengthening). After Feng was married in 1903, his wife, Li Sanduo 李三多, changed her given name to Ziping 自平 (self-peace). His brother-in-law, Li Bingxing 李炳星 (1889−1971), having entered the reformist school through Feng Jingru’s connection, renamed himself Zizhong 自重 (self-esteeming).110 By using zi or “self ” in their names, Feng Ziyou and his young associates had already turned from Kang’s reformism to Liang’s proliberalism and prorevolutionary stance.

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They would all become revolutionaries later on, although Liang would turn back to the reformist camp after his North American trip in 1903. Because of Feng Ziyou’s familial ties with the Hong Fraternal Society, he founded one of its lodges as the Triad Society in Yokohama in 1904 and became one of its principal leaders, a general with the code name of straw sandal. Feng’s wife, Li Ziping, and Qiu Jin 秋瑾 (1875−1907), a future revolutionary heroine from Zhejiang Province, also joined this lodge and became its two secretaries with the same code name of paper fan (zhishan 纸 扇), or the aforementioned “white fan.” This lodge for the first time brought dozens of radical students from different provinces of China into the secret society and later led them into Sun Yat-sen’s Revolutionary Alliance.111 Consequently, the Revolutionary Alliance had a much more diverse composition than the Cantonese-dominated CERA under Kang Youwei’s leadership. It incorporated mostly Cantonese members from Sun’s Revive China Society, Qiu Jin and other members of the Zhejiang-based Restoration Society (Guangfuhui 光复会), and those of another revolutionary group based in the middle Yangzi River valley, the Society for Chinese Revival (Huaxinghui 华兴会) under the leadership of Huang Xing 黄兴 (1874−1916). Its chapters spread throughout China and overseas, although by August 1911 they numbered just forty-one,112 far fewer than Kang’s CERA at its peak. Sun Yat-sen brought into the Revolutionary Alliance both the traditional practice of secret societies and new revolutionary ideology, and Feng Ziyou would be his closest follower in both aspects. During Sun’s stay in Europe in 1905, he once formed a makeshift “revolutionary party” among radical Chinese students there before he inaugurated the Revolutionary Alliance. For both organizations, he required members to swear to heaven and to date their written oath with the year in the heavenly cycle (tianyun 天运) rather than the reign period of the Guangxu Emperor, as the Hong Fraternal Society had long practiced. Their oath—“expulsion of the Manchus, restoration of Chinese rule, establishment of a republic, and equalization of land rights”—had also appeared in Sun’s draft for the American CKT’s new rules in 1904. Sun further developed a new revolutionary ideology from 1905, or what Feng Ziyou first dubbed the “Three Principles of the People” (Sanmin zhuyi 三民主义): anti-Manchu and pro-Han ethnic nationalism, democracy in the form of a Western-style republic, and socialism. He at first interpreted the last principle as Confucian cosmopolitanism (datong zhuyi

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大同主义), which had appeared in Kang Youwei’s work and became popular through Ou Jujia’s “Introduction to Datong ribao,” the newspaper of the CKT headquarters in San Francisco.113 After Feng Ziyou and his brother-in-law, Li Zizhong, joined the Revolutionary Alliance in late 1905, they received Sun Yat-sen’s order to develop a chapter in Hong Kong. Feng’s relations with Li’s family greatly facilitated their political activities in the British colony. Feng’s father-in-law, Li Yutang 李煜堂 (1851−1936), and the latter’s younger brother, Li Wenqi 李文启, were two rich merchants from Taishan County in Guangdong Province. Both of them joined the Hong Kong chapter of the Revolutionary Alliance under Feng’s leadership and helped it with financial contributions.114 In particular, Feng Ziyou’s relations with Li Bohai—a member of another Li lineage in Taishan County and the youngest son of CERA’s first president in Victoria, Li Fuji—would bring other young members from this lineage into the Revolutionary Alliance. They would help expand its organizations and activities in both Hong Kong and North America. Li Bohai joined Hong Kong’s Revolutionary Alliance in late 1905 through the sponsorship of Zheng Guangong, a classmate of Feng Ziyou, and a fellow journalist of Zheng, Chen Shuren 陈树人 (1884−1948). Li then worked closely with Zheng and Chen on a prorevolution tabloid newspaper in Hong Kong and used it to join the Revolutionary Alliance’s media war against CERA, including propaganda against the latter’s activities in Canada.115 Li Bohai probably provided the inside information from Canada for this newspaper to publish a jocular article in July 1905 as an oblique attack on Kang Youwei, his second daughter, Kang Tongbi, and her organizational activities for CELRA from Victoria in mid-1903. This article described how a prostitute—whose name was Qiongbi 穷逼 (meaning “hotly compelling”) but should be pronounced as Tongbi 铜壁 (meaning “copper wall” but referencing Kang Tongbi’s given name)—helped her father to attract the frequenters of brothels in his competition for the title of the king of pimps.116 Meanwhile, the newspaper Zhongguobao 中国报 [China daily] under Feng Ziyou’s editorship published another article as an open attack on Kang Youwei and Kang Tongbi’s “swindle” of overseas Chinese. At that time, Yip Yen had just moved from Canada to Hong Kong to manage CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation there, and he represented Kang Tongbi to launch a libel lawsuit against Zhongguobao. This legal battle ended with the success of Yip

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Yen’s reformist faction in 1906 and was damaging enough to cause a serious financial crisis for the Hong Kong chapter of the Revolutionary Alliance.117 This legal battle reflected the increasing confrontation between Kang Youwei’s CERA and Sun Yat-sen’s Revolutionary Alliance in the Pacific Rim around that time. After the Revolutionary Alliance appeared in Tokyo in August 1905, its organ, Minbao 民报 [People’s journal] soon launched a propaganda war against CERA’s reformist program for a constitutional monarchy in Qing China, but Liang Qichao used Xinmin congbao 新民丛报 [New citizen journal] to lead counterattacks on the idea of a violent revolution. The media war soon expanded to Southeast Asian Chinese communities and North American Chinatowns, including a fiery debate between the prorevolution newspaper of CKT’s American headquarters, Datong ribao, and CERA’s mouthpiece, Wenxingbao, in San Francisco. Previous studies of the propaganda war have often declared the success of the Revolutionary Alliance by 1907. Yet CERA’s continual expansion to more than two hundred overseas Chinese communities by July 1908 actually marked its heyday up to that time.118 Nonetheless, as Liang admitted by 1906, the Revolutionary Alliance’s propaganda had won the allegiance of more than half of Chinese students in Japan.119 In Hong Kong, Li Bohai made an important contribution to the Revolutionary Alliance’s transpacific expansion by introducing another young clansman, Li Shinan 李是男 (1886−1937), to Feng Ziyou in 1906. Li Shinan was born in San Francisco’s Chinatown but returned to Taishan County for a Chinese education. Through Li Bohai’s sponsorship, Li Shinan joined Hong Kong’s Revolutionary Alliance under Feng’s leadership. He would lead its expansion to San Francisco after his return to the United States in 1907, and also help its development in Hong Kong thereafter.120 In 1909, Li Shinan introduced Feng Ziyou by letter to his two clansmen and Taishan fellows in Hong Kong, Li Haiyun 李海云 (?−1936) and Li Yiheng 李 以衡, and sponsored them for membership in the Revolutionary Alliance. Li Haiyun later used his remittance shop repeatedly to provide financial help for the Revolutionary Alliance in Hong Kong, especially for its organ, Zhongguobao. After Feng Ziyou’s departure for Canada in late 1910, Li Yiheng would take over the responsibility for managing the revolutionary newspaper in Hong Kong.121 Thus, the three clansmen from the Li lineage of Taishan County made similar political choices in a chain reaction after Li Bohai’s shift from his reformist family in Victoria to the Revolutionary

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Alliance, and they all played leading roles in the anti-Qing revolutionary movements across the Pacific. When Li Shinan was preparing to return to the United States in 1907, Feng Ziyou instructed him to contact the grand master of San Francisco’s CKT headquarters, Huang Sande, and its secretary, Tang Qiongchang, as well as Liu Chengyu, the editor of its newspaper, Datong ribao, for the expansion of the Revolutionary Alliance there. Li’s contacts with them were unsuccessful, but he gathered a few young comrades to form the Youth Study Society (Shaonian xueshe 少年学社), and they began to publish a prorevolution weekly newspaper in San Francisco, Meizhou shaonian 美洲 少年 [American youth], from July 4, 1909. At least three founding members of the Youth Study Society were close associates of Huang Jin 黄金, a CERA leader in San Francisco, and one of them was doing promotion work for Huang’s company.122 Thus it was Feng Ziyou’s initial contact with Li Bohai, a defector from one leading reformist family in Canada, and through the latter’s enrollment of Li Shinan that the Revolutionary Alliance achieved initial expansion from Hong Kong to the American mainland, preparing an institutional foundation for Sun Yat-sen’s political activities during his third trip there from November 1909. Sun’s trip across Europe and North America followed a series of failures in his anti-Qing uprisings, particularly the aforementioned six military failures in 1907−1908. These uprisings not only exhausted the financial resources of the Revolutionary Alliance but also caused security or diplomatic concerns in neighboring countries of China and Western colonies, where Sun Yat-sen had plotted anti-Qing insurrections or had taken actions along the China border. As a result, Sun was expelled from Japan in 1907, from French Indochina in early 1908, and from the British colony of Hong Kong around the same time. He left Asia as a refugee and was forced to take a fundraising trip to Europe from May 1909 and then to the American mainland from November of that year.123 Sun Yat-sen’s third trip to the continental United States coincided with the internal strife of CERA there, allowing him to recruit its defectors for the development of the Revolutionary Alliance’s new American chapters. Upon his arrival from England to New York on November 8, 1909, he received a warm welcome from Huang Xi, a CKT member and former CERA leader in the city as well as fellow local migrant from Xiangshan County. Through Feng Ziyou’s contacts in New York, Sun soon formed the first

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American chapter of the Revolutionary Alliance at Huang Xi’s shop, but the participants at its first meeting numbered only seven, twelve, or sixteen, depending on the different sources. Huang became its chairperson, and his wife, Wong Toy, was one of its founding members, although she had been the first vice president of New York’s CELRA chapter in 1903. Another leader of the new Revolutionary Alliance chapter, Zhou Chao 周超, was also a former reformer.124 Sun Yat-sen continued his trip westward and founded one more chapter of the Revolutionary Alliance in Chicago in January 1910, but its earliest members still numbered only a dozen—most of whom were the manager, waiters, dishwashers, and other staff of a local restaurant, including its owner, who first hosted Sun because they had a mutual friend.125 Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen received an emergency telegram from the Hong Kong Revolutionary Alliance under Feng Ziyou’s leadership, requesting that he raise $20,000 (HKD) for the mobilization of the New Army in Canton in an anti-Qing uprising. Sun embarked on an urgent effort to raise enough funds from the Chinese in Chicago and the CKT chapters in Boston and New York. Although the CKT in Boston pledged $5,000 (HKD) for the military action, it remitted only $1,900 (HKD) to Sun; its counterpart in New York made no contribution. Because Sun raised only $8,000 (HKD), he traveled to San Francisco on February 11, 1910, and desperately asked for help from the CKT headquarters and the Youth Study Society under Li Shinan’s leadership. Only Li was able to raise $1,000 (HKD) for Sun from his father’s shop. However, the New Army’s mutiny failed on the day after Sun’s arrival in San Francisco, becoming the ninth failure in his anti-Qing revolution.126 This fundraising failure accelerated Sun Yat-sen’s effort to develop his own party machine in North America. On February 27, 1910, he instructed Li Shinan to convert the Youth Study Society in San Francisco into a chapter of the Revolutionary Alliance. Its earliest members numbered just eighteen, one of whom was Cui Tongyue, who had switched from a Christian reformer to an anti-Qing revolutionary after his clash with CERA in Canada. Sun visited Los Angeles, Bakersfield, Hanford, Fresno, and other cities in California before his departure from San Francisco on March 22, 1910, eventually returning to Japan via Honolulu. During and after his third tour across the continental United States from November 1909 to March 1910, the Revolutionary Alliance developed chapters in a dozen cities together

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with its headquarters, the General Bureau of the United States (Meiguo zongzhibu 美国总支部), in San Francisco.127 Sun Yat-sen had planned to stay longer in the United States, expand the Revolutionary Alliance into a larger organizational force through his visits to more American cities, and thereby build a stable financial base for anti-Qing uprisings in China. Instead, he responded to an urgent invitation from Honolulu to organize the Revolutionary Alliance chapter there and then continued on to Japan for another imperative situation.128 Thus, his third trip to the American mainland failed to achieve his grandiose plan, nor was he even able to go to nearby Canada. On this trip, he also failed to win full support from the CKT chapters on either coast of the United States. In contrast, Feng Ziyou’s arrival in Canada in late 1910 not only would resume the anti-Qing revolutionary propaganda initiated there by Cui Tongyue, but also would lead to CKT’s collaboration with the Revolutionary Alliance from Canadian to American Chinatowns up to the 1911 Revolution. Feng would avoid Sun’s failure to reorganize the CKT with modern organizational principles and republican ideological jargon by instead using the Hong Fraternal Society’s traditional anti-Qing slogans and personal contacts with radical youths for revolutionary mobilization. He would face stronger resistance from CERA in Canada than Sun met in the United States in 1909−1910, but his mission would also benefit from its previous political mobilization and its new defectors among Canadian Chinatowns. In Victoria, a group of Chinese youths formed the Sworn-Oar Society (Jijishe 击楫社) as an anti-Qing organization around 1907. Its title referred to the well-known story of Zu Ti 祖逖 (266−321), a heroic general in thirdand fourth-century China, who stuck an oar in the Yangzi River to vow the annihilation of nomadic invaders.129 Its leaders included Wu Ziyuan 吴紫垣, secretary of the CCBA in Victoria, and Situ Mao 司徒旄 (aka Situ Yingshi 司徒英石). Li Donghai’s discussion of these youths attributes their anti-Qing and prorevolution tendencies to the influence of the Revolutionary Alliance and its organ, Minbao, in Japan, but these claims are unsubstantiated.130 In fact, Situ Mao was a member of the local chapter of CERA up to 1905, and both he and Wu had invested in the Christian reform newspaper, HuaYing ribao, in Vancouver.131 After the Guangxu Emperor died on November 14, 1908, the Victoria CCBA received a telegram from the Qing legation in

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Washington, DC, about organizing a mourning ceremony. A mass meeting was thereby held in memory of the emperor at Victoria’s CCBA meeting hall, but the members of the Sworn-Oar Society openly disturbed the ceremony, and one of them delivered a speech voicing opposition to any mourning services for the Manchu emperor. After the dissident speaker was ejected from the meeting hall, he started a street-corner meeting nearby. The Sworn-Oar Society was dissolved after its main leader, Wu Ziyuan, left for China, but most of its members later followed Feng Ziyou into revolutionary activities.132 The anti-Qing revolutionary influence from Datong ribao—the organ of the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco—also influenced Canadian Chinatowns and even reached Ashcroft, a village about 300 kilometers northeast of Vancouver. A resident of Ashcroft, Liang Qizhang 梁齐长, published a notice in Datong ribao on March 8, 1909, stating that his name had been maliciously misused in an announcement of the local CERA by its president, Zhou Ziting 周子廷. Liang’s notice denounced CERA as an evil party and condemned Zhou and his associates as flatterers and followers of barbarians, or the Manchu rulers of the Qing dynasty.133 Zhou successfully sued Liang for defamation in the local police court and had him placed in jail temporarily. Through the mediation of some of Liang’s clansmen, he was released but had to issue an apology to Zhou through Xinbao, the reformist newspaper based in Vancouver.134 This dramatic episode happened just after the local chapter of CERA under President Zhou Ziting’s leadership erected its new office building in Ashcroft and held a grand opening ceremony on February 21, 1909. The local chapter already had forty-four leaders and members by the time of its inauguration, and it recruited more than ten new members, including one woman, through public speeches and other activities at the opening ceremony and on the following days.135 Thus, the Canadian CERA still continued its organizational expansion even at the grassroots level up to early 1909 before its decline amid internal strife. On February 15, 1909, CERA of Canada’s chapters in Victoria, Vancouver, and New Westminster held their annual joint conference, as they had done over the last decade, in the Chinese theater in Victoria, attracting over one hundred leaders and members. President Yip On of CERA of Canada and its other leaders delivered public speeches throughout the afternoon, still expressing their

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hopes for constitutional reforms in China after the death of the Guangxu Emperor.136 The attendees of this annual conference also visited the new building of the Great Qing China’s Overseas Chinese Public School (Da-Qing qiaomin gongli xuexiao 大清侨民公立学校) in Victoria,137 which was another achievement of local reformist leaders, especially Lee Mong Kow. Since 1907, the Victoria School Board had excluded Chinese students from the local public schools if they could not meet the English-language requirement, although non-English speaking children of French and German origins were admitted. In response, Victoria’s CCBA launched both a legal battle against the educational discrimination and a fundraising campaign across Canada for the construction of a new Chinese school. Under Lee’s leadership, this campaign received an endorsement from the Qing government’s educational delegation to North America in 1908 and a fundraising appeal by Kang Youwei in the same year.138 A total of $7,000 (CAD) for the new school came mainly from Chinese donors across Canada, including leaders of the Victoria CCBA and the CERA chapters in different Canadian cities, such as Lee Mong Kow in Victoria and Yip On in Vancouver.139 A Chinese ceremony formally opened the new school building on the morning of August 7, 1909. It was presided over by the Qing consulgeneral in San Francisco, Xu Bingzhen 许炳榛, and attended by delegates from many Chinatowns in British Columbia and Oregon. In the afternoon, an English-language ceremony was attended by Victoria’s mayor, other local officials, and invited dignitaries.140 Lee Mong Kow had become a key contact for these Qing officials with the local Chinese community, despite being a leader of CERA, which was still an illegal entity in Qing China. In April 1907, Lee had been awarded a fifth-rank official title from the Qing court and an imperial title of honor for the chastity of his widowed mother. On November 27, 1909, Lee hosted a large banquet in the landmark Empress Hotel in Victoria for the newly appointed Qing consul to Vancouver, Ouyang Geng (Owying King 欧 阳庚, 1858−1941). The banquet was attended by dozens of municipal and provincial officials as well as other Caucasian and Chinese dignitaries in British Columbia, including CERA leaders such as Li Fuji from Victoria and Lee Kee from Vancouver.141 The incumbent president of CERA of Canada, Yip On, was notice-

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ably absent. Instead, on the following day, Yip, his uncle, Yip Sang, and a dozen associates in the Vancouver-based CERA of Canada issued a collective proclamation condemning Kang Youwei’s group over the issue of Zhenhua Company.142 This proclamation caused internal strife in CERA throughout the Pacific Rim, as Chapter 2 has discussed. This internal strife dealt a much heavier blow to CERA than the propaganda attacks from the Revolutionary Alliance. In particular, the Yips’ withdrawal from CERA thereafter aided the expansion of the Revolutionary Alliance in Canada. Feng Ziyou’s account indicates that the influence from two revolutionary newspapers—Zhongguobao in Hong Kong and Datong ribao in San Francisco—sparked the realization by Vancouver CKT’s grand master, Chen Wenxi 陈文锡, and its secretary, Huang Bifeng 黄壁峰, of the irreconcilable contradiction between the Hong Fraternal Society’s antiQing tradition and CERA’s pro-Qing constitutional reform. In 1909, Chen and Huang launched Da-Han ribao as the organ of the local CKT chapter and contacted Feng in Hong Kong for the recruitment of an editor. Feng responded by recommending himself, because the Hong Kong Revolutionary Alliance under his leadership had suffered a devastating failure in the New Army munity of Canton in February 1910 and faced subsequent financial difficulty in running its newspaper, Zhongguobao. Feng’s true plan, however, was to open a new base in Canada for the Revolutionary Alliance.143 Indeed, Da-Han ribao was incorporated under the British Columbia government in February 1910; its five founders included Huang Bifeng and four other CKT heads.144 Because Yip Sang was a major founder of Vancouver’s CKT in 1892,145 his alienation from Kang and CERA evidently facilitated the prorevolution transition of the secret society. Right after Feng Ziyou landed in Victoria on September 20, 1910,146 he received help from Lee Mong Kow, the Chinese interpreter in the customs house and a reformist leader of the local Chinatown. Lee helped him avoid paying the $500 head tax by changing his stated profession in his passport from “chief editor” (zhubi 主笔) to “teacher” (jiaoyuan 教 员) to fit an exempt class. Feng also received a warm welcome from the Victoria CKT leaders, but one of them, Lin Lihuang, was also a CERA leader and was suspicious about Feng’s background. Feng was forced to answer Lin’s questions with a series of code words. He finally won Lin’s

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trust by reciting a password poem in reference to his own position as a general or straw sandal in the Yokohama lodge of the Hong Fraternal Society:147 A straw sandal is the fifth dragon, and a messenger for the Hong Fraternal Society. It keeps moving in wind and rains, and dispatches intelligence for instant victory. (草鞋原是五条龙，要把洪家信息通。风雨不停常走动, 文书一到便 成功.)148

Feng Ziyou soon used the CKT’s newspaper in Vancouver to start antiQing revolutionary propaganda. In contrast with Sun Yat-sen’s unsuccessful attempts to reform the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco and its chapters in the United States in 1904, Feng used CKT’s own institutions and political tradition. He deliberately avoided discussing the Revolutionary Alliance and its platform and instead employed the CKT’s traditional slogan of “resisting the Qing dynasty and restoring Chinese rule” (fan-Qing fu-Han 反清复汉).149 His newspaper used not only political editorials but also Cantonese folksongs as revolutionary propaganda. In order to avoid any competition with the local CKT, he delayed organizing a chapter of the Revolutionary Alliance and instead formed personal relations with young radicals, including some former members of the Sworn-Oath Society in Victoria.150 Feng Ziyou rarely made contacts with the Caucasian society in Vancouver, as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao had done.151 However, his use of the CKT’s anti-Manchu slogan directly addressed overseas Chinese concerns about foreign intrusion in Qing China. Da-Han ribao’s propaganda under this slogan blamed foreign domination in Qing China on the “Manchu barbarians” (Manru 满虏), leading to a clash with CERA of Canada.152 By the end of 1910, CERA of Canada had reclaimed its newspaper, Xinbao, from the control of the Yips and renamed it Rixinbao 日新报 [Chinese reform daily gazette], although it was formally incorporated in January 1911.153 Rixinbao’s editor, Liang Wenqing 梁文卿 (aka Liang Wenxing 梁文兴), was a former student of Kang Youwei and had once worked for Feng’s father in the Guangzhi Book Bureau in Shanghai. Feng used CKT’s Da-Han ribao to engage in political debate with Liang’s Rixinbao for more than a year, and

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he claimed to have defeated CERA’s newspaper in the propaganda war and won over many converts from the reformist association.154 Liang Wenqing, however, wrote a letter to Liang Qichao in Japan dated November 30, 1910, declaring his success not only in quieting Feng’s “impetuous remarks” (fuyan 浮言) but also in removing the Yips’ negative impacts on CERA of Canada. The letter indicates that CERA of Canada retained most of its loyal leaders and used them to replace the Yips in Vancouver.155 This letter and a subsequent one dated December 20, 1910, confirmed that these Canadian leaders had raised 29,000 Japanese yen from the members of CERA of Canada. The bulk of it, 25,000 yen, was remitted to Japan to pay for Liang Qichao’s desperate attempt to bribe the Manchu princes to legalize CERA in Beijing during the financial crisis of CERA’s business ventures in Mexico, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia.156 These letters demonstrated that CERA of Canada recovered to some extent from its internal crisis after the Yips’ defection, despite the new challenge from Feng’s Da-Han ribao. Lisa Rose Mar’s study includes a detailed discussion on the battle between Yip On and David Lew (Liao Hongxiang 廖鸿翔), a former secretary of CERA of Canada in Vancouver from late 1910 to early 1911. It reveals Lew’s attempt to replace Yip as the interpreter in Vancouver’s customs house by currying favor with Prime Minister Laurier and other leaders of the ruling Liberal Party for a reform of the Chinese immigration system abused by the Yips. Yip On eventually lost his position as the Chinese interpreter, and a royal commission’s investigation in early 1911 exposed his scheme to sell forged merchant passports to Chinese laborers in Hong Kong for admission into Canada and exemption of the $500 (CAD) head tax. Mar’s work infers that “[t]he collapse of CERA reduced Yip’s stature across the Pacific world and in Canada,” and that Lew’s challenge to Yip’s leadership may have been related to settling scores within Chinese exile politics. Mar also concludes that “the Yips quit CERA and endorsed Dr. Sun Yat-sen,” and that they “still held strong influence” in the Chinese community, especially the CKT.157 In addition to Mar’s aforementioned inference and conclusion, it is important to note that Yips’ associates also accused Lew of conspiracy with CERA’s three leaders—Lee Kee and Shen Caiman in Vancouver, and Lee Mong Kow in Victoria—in their competition with Yip On for influence over the Canadian immigration system.158 This accusation implies that these

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CERA leaders collectively retaliated against the Yips for their defection from the reformist association.159 The need to address the CERA leaders’ threat and to maintain a familial dominance in Vancouver’s Chinatown was probably why Yip Sang’s second son, Ye Qiumao 叶求茂 (aka Ye Jiandan 叶剑胆), received his father’s encouragement to join the anti-Qing revolutionary activities under Feng Ziyou’s leadership in 1911.160 Ye would become the chairperson of the first Canadian chapter of the Revolutionary Alliance in Vancouver in 1911.161 Like Feng Ziyou and Li Bohai, Ye Qiumao was also a young man from a reformist family who later joined Sun Yat-sen’s Revolutionary Alliance. The relations of all three young men with their reformist fathers reflected personal and political connections from overseas Chinese reforms to revolutionary movements inside Canada and across the Pacific. The three earliest revolutionary leaders in Singapore also shifted from Kang’s reformist movement to Sun’s anti-Qing cause. They then wrested control of Chineselanguage schools and other social organizations from reformers.162 Sun Yatsen’s Revolutionary Alliance finally achieved successes in North American Chinatowns on the eve of the 1911 Revolution in China partly because it benefited from the political mobilization, personnel training, and organizational development initiated by Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and CERA.

Reformers and Revolutionary Successes from North American Chinatowns to China A historical mystery of the Chinese Republican Revolution is that when the revolutionary movement erupted in China on October 10, 1911, and then engulfed southern China, Sun Yat-sen—the “father of Republican China”— was touring North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and Hong Kong on a trip that ended in Shanghai on Christmas Day.163 There is also a widespread claim that Sun extolled the overseas Chinese, principally those in North America, as collectively being the “mother” of the revolution in China. But scholars have questioned the factuality of both Sun’s “fatherhood” and his statement about overseas Chinese “motherhood” in the Republican Revolution.164 A network analysis of both the Revolutionary Alliance’s interactions with the CKT, specifically with its reformist leaders during Sun’s final North American trip in 1911, and of domestic reformers’ turn to revolution can reveal transpacific links between historic changes, including Sun’s political rise, in American and Canadian Chinatowns as well as China.165

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Sun Yat-sen took his last global tour from Penang in Southeast Asia to Europe, and reached the American mainland for the fourth time on January 19, 1911, about ten months after his departure from the West Coast. His fourth tour across the continental United States lasted only sixteen days before his rush to Pacific Canada on February 4, 1911.166 Although some studies have claimed that Sun went to Canada three times, in 1897, 1910, and 1911,167 the 1910 visit in fact never took place.168 His first trip across Canada was westward from Montreal to Victoria in 1897, and his second trip of more than two months was eastward, truncated by his dash to New York on April 19, 1911. Sun’s fifth and final tour across the American mainland of more than six months would take him from the East to the West Coast and back again until his departure for Europe on November 2, 1911, even though the Republican Revolution was raging across southern China by that time.169 Sun Yat-sen’s unusual itinerary on this last North American trip reflected the unprecedented challenges to his political activities in Asia and his personal leadership inside the Revolutionary Alliance. It also exposed his tenuous relations with the 1911 Revolution in China. But this trip would ultimately help the Revolutionary Alliance achieve unprecedented success in American and Canadian Chinatowns, rally the Chinese on the continent to pioneering fights for Republican China, and contribute to Sun’s own political rise in the Republican Revolution with the support of domestic constitutional reformers. Immediately following the formation of the Revolutionary Alliance in 1905, Sun Yat-sen had come under attack by some of its leaders from the middle and lower Yangzi River valleys. These leaders preferred a truce in the media war with reformers in 1907 and further disagreed with Sun’s “southern strategy” of focusing on anti-Qing uprisings around Canton and China’s southern borders. From 1907 to 1910, they formed separate anti-Qing parties for militant actions in the lower and middle Yangzi River valleys, and in late 1909 one of them traveled to Southeast Asia to publicly denounce Sun’s leadership, including the false charge of his embezzlement of overseas Chinese donations.170 In the face of this internal crisis and direct challenge to his leadership, Sun returned from the United States to Japan in June 1910, but he was unable to reorganize the Revolutionary Alliance’s headquarters there under his personal control before the Japanese authorities expelled him again.

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Upon arriving in Southeast Asia, Sun reclaimed control of the Revolutionary Alliance’s chapters there from dissidents in Singapore and relocated its Southeastern Asian headquarters to Penang. In November 1910, Sun and his Cantonese comrades, together with Huang Xing and a few other supporters from the Yangzi River valley, resolved to launch another anti-Qing uprising in Canton.171 This decision was made when the Revolutionary Alliance’s headquarters in Japan and its chapters in Europe, Hong Kong, and Southeast Asia were either in internal dissension or in turmoil after the recent failure of the New Army’s mutiny in Canton in February 1910.172 Although many previous studies, especially those in Chinese publications, stress the success of the Revolutionary Alliance in its media war against the reformist group beginning in 1905,173 its major organ in Tokyo, Minbao, suffered a decline in circulation until a publication ban was finally imposed by Japanese authorities in October 1908. Its newspaper in Hong Kong, Zhongguobao, was in serious financial crisis leading up to the departure of its chief editor, Feng Ziyou, for Canada in late 1910. Among the three earliest revolutionary organs in Singapore, the first newspaper collapsed at the end of 1905, the second was seized by reformers that same year, and the most important one, Zhongxing ribao (Chong Shing Yit Pao 中兴日报 [Restoration daily]), lasted only from 1907 to 1910. Each of the six less important revolutionary newspapers lasted just one or two years between 1908 and 1911.174 Sun’s subsequent plan for the Canton uprising can thus be interpreted as a desperate attempt to reverse the failures of his anti-Qing cause by making a bold move. Because of reports of Sun Yat-sen’s seditious speeches in Penang by the local Chinese reformers, he soon received a deportation order from the British colony following his exclusion from Japan, Dutch East India, French Indochina, and Thailand. At the end of 1910, he was forced to take refuge in Europe and North America again and raise funds for the planned Canton uprising. After a short and futile European trip starting on December 28, 1910, Sun reached New York on January 19, 1911, but soon departed for San Francisco. Despite having arranged with the leaders of the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco for a Chinese New Year dinner on February 4, he accepted Feng Ziyou’s invitation for a fundraising trip to Canada that same day.175 Apparently he held greater hope of achieving his fundraising goals in Canada than from the American CKT. Ironically, Sun’s pivot from previous failures to future successes actually began in Victoria—the starting

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point of Kang Youwei’s CERA and its overseas Chinese reforms from 1899, and home of CERA’s new Canadian headquarters from 1910. CERA under the leadership of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao was not “completely routed” in Canada or the transpacific world by 1911, as previous studies have assumed.176 After CERA of Canada lost support from the Yips in 1909, its headquarters shifted from Vancouver to Victoria because a top leader of the Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria, Lin Lihuang, became its president in 1910. Lin and many other leaders of CERA chapters across the Pacific Rim still followed Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao loyally, and they aligned with their reformist counterparts inside China in an attempt to accelerate domestic political reforms partly for the sake of avoiding a violent revolution in their homeland. Interestingly, the increasing contention of these reformers and the Qing government over the reform agenda would eventually provoke them to contemplate a revolutionary option.177 Similar political change among the leaders of CERA of Canada directly helped Sun Yat-sen achieve success in his fundraising campaign across North America.178 After the first election of provincial assemblies (ziyiju 咨议局) in Chinese history was completed by late 1909, leaders of sixteen provincial assemblies soon launched a joint petition to the Qing government for the early convening of a parliament. Although Liang Qichao lost direct contact with these domestic reformers after the Qing government outlawed CERA’s Political Information Society in August 1908, he instructed one of its former leaders, Xu Fosu 徐佛苏 (aka Xu Gongmian 徐公勉, 1879−1943), to join their activities.179 After the first petition from the representatives of the provincial assemblies was rejected by the Qing court on January 30, 1910, they submitted a second one on June 16. It was followed by nine other petitions from representatives of domestic organizations, such as chambers of commerce and educational associations, as well as overseas Chinese. The petition from the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and Australia was written by Kang Youwei. But the Qing government still refused to convene a parliament early.180 On October 3, it convened the provisional National Assembly (Zizhengyuan 资政院), but just half of the 196 assemblymen were from provincial assemblies while the other half were imperial appointees. Leaders of the provincial assemblies continued calling for the early convening of a parliament through a third round of petitions on October 7 and in the days that followed. CERA under Kang Youwei’s leadership dispatched

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two leaders as the representatives of the overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia, Australia, and America in the new petition.181 By September 27, however, CERA of Canada and its chapters in seven Canadian provinces had already submitted a petition to the Qing government through its president, Lin Lihuang, and vice president, Jiang Naitong 蒋奈 同. It stressed the urgency for the Qing government to convene a parliament to rally overseas Chinese support, prevent foreign partition of China, reform domestic politics with a responsible cabinet, and build military strength with popular support.182 This petition was similar to another one drafted by Kang Youwei for CERA in the United States and submitted by one of his disciples, Wu Xianzi 伍宪子 (1881−1959), during the third petition.183 Although the third round of petitions received support from the provisional National Assembly and dozens of provincial governors and governors-general, the Qing court still rejected it with a promise to convene a parliament in 1913, four years ahead of the original schedule, and then used police force to expel all petitioners from Beijing. Two CERA delegates in the third round of petitions, Xu Fosu and Wu Xianzi, both recorded the despair of most reformist petitioners at the Qing court and its sham reforms, as well as their secret discussion about the revolutionary option to launch provincial independence for a constitutional government.184 As the leader of the petition by CERA of Canada in 1910, Lin Lihuang showed a similar attitude toward the anti-Qing revolution during Sun Yat-sen’s fundraising trip in Victoria. When Sun arrived in Vancouver on the evening of February 6, 1911, he received a warm welcome from the local CKT leaders and members. Despite heavy rain, his lectures at the CKT meeting hall and the local Chinese theater attracted large audiences.185 According to Feng Ziyou’s account, Sun won the support of the local CKT not only because his lectures catered to its anti-Qing history and slogan, but also because his fame helped it recruit new members, the major source of human and financial resources for the fraternal society. Feng’s record indicates that Sun served as the “old matriarch” (laomu 老母)—the code name for the CKT’s marshal in the initiation ceremony for new members—and helped bring more than three hundred people into the Vancouver lodge. Feng took the opportunity to propose the formation of the Revolutionary Fundraising Bureau for National Salvation (Geming jiuguo chouxiangju 革命救国筹饷局), and the local CKT leaders immediately endorsed the proposal and volunteered to serve in the bureau. Feng claimed that the Vancouver CKT made the first donation of

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$10,000 (HKD) through this bureau, and further used it to issue bonds valued at $10, $100, or $1,000 (CAD) in the name of a revolutionary government, as Sun suggested. Feng then accompanied Sun to Victoria, where they mobilized the Canadian CKT headquarters to mortgage its premises for $30,000 (HKD) to fund the Canton uprising.186 Available sources show that Sun Yat-sen did deliver a speech in Vancouver on February 13, 1911, in which he presented highly exaggerated claims that his party controlled thirty to forty thousand soldiers and seven to eight thousand artillerymen in addition to one million troops elsewhere in China.187 On the same day, Sun helped Chen Wenxi, the grand master of the Vancouver CKT, hold an initiation ceremony for more than sixty new members.188 All of these activities by Sun were obviously aimed at raising funds for the planned Canton uprising, although Feng Ziyou’s account of Sun’s initial success in his fundraising activities in Vancouver remains questionable. Li Haiyun, the chief teller of the Hong Kong Revolutionary Alliance’s Planning Bureau (Tongchoubu 统筹部) for the Canton uprising, signed a receipt for $30,000 (HKD) from the Victoria CKT on March 1, 1911.189 Huang Xing, the leader of the planned military uprising, also sent a letter from Hong Kong to the Victoria CKT dated March 6, acknowledging the receipt of its $30,000 (HKD) donation, yet his letter to Feng on March 12 indicated that the Vancouver CKT’s $10,000 (HKD) had just reached there on the previous day.190 Moreover, on March 5, Sun Yat-sen wrote a letter to Lin Libin 林礼斌, a young merchant in Victoria, indicating that the Vancouver CKT was unable to mortgage its premises, and still needed one or two days to raise $10,000−$20,000 (HKD) and remit the funds to the Hong Kong Revolutionary Alliance.191 Thus, Sun’s fundraising efforts for the Canton uprising had not achieved much success in New York, San Francisco, or Vancouver at first, as he frankly admitted to the CKT’s leaders and Lin Libin in Victoria during his stay there.192 On February 22, 1911, Sun Yat-sen and Feng Ziyou traveled to Victoria together with Liao Yipeng, who was one of the seven merchant founders of CERA’s embryo, a transnational corporation in Vancouver, in 1899, but excluded from the leadership of CERA of Canada from its beginning, as mentioned above. They received a warm welcome at Victoria’s harbor from three leaders of the Canadian CKT headquarters in that city, one of whom was Lin Lihuang, the incumbent president of CERA of Canada. In Victoria,

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Sun delivered two lectures on the anti-Qing revolution for his fundraising purposes, one to the public and another to the local CKT members. Feng took the opportunity to press the Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria to provide financial support for the Canton uprising by mortgaging its premises. As Feng later recalled, the leaders of the CKT headquarters in Victoria had expressed concerns about competition over its status from the Vancouver lodge because the latter had more members and enjoyed more convenient communications with its counterparts across Canada. These leaders had requested Feng’s mediation in this rivalry, hence their willingness to accept his proposal at this moment. Feng also hoped that the CKT headquarters in Victoria would set a precedent, influencing leaders of its lodges throughout Canadian Chinatowns.193 For this purpose, Sun Yat-sen deliberately invited the leaders of Vancouver and New Westminster’s CKT lodges to the meeting at the CKT headquarters in Victoria. He urged them to make a collective decision to mortgage the headquarters’ premises and thus raise funds for the planned Canton uprising. Lin Lihuang was a crucial figure at the meeting, as both treasurer (sikuyuan 司库员) of the CKT headquarters in Victoria and president of CERA of Canada—the reformist rival of Sun’s Revolutionary Alliance. Perhaps due to his frustration with the Qing court’s rejection of the three rounds of petitions for early convening of the parliament, including the one he sent, Lin welcomed Sun’s arrival from the beginning and did not oppose his fundraising efforts for the anti-Qing uprising in Canton. He even proposed to raise funds from CKT members in case the uprising in Canton failed and the mortgaged premises could not be redeemed. But Sun promised that if the Canton uprising failed, he would return to bring all of his local fellows from Xiangshan County into the CKT as members and thus help the CKT pay off the mortgage.194 Evidently, Sun Yat-sen achieved his fundraising goal for the planned Canton uprising not only because his revolutionary mobilization pandered to the CKT’s anti-Manchu tradition and its need to recruit new members, but also because Feng exploited the competition between the CKT headquarters in Victoria and its lodge in Vancouver. Moreover, Lin’s lukewarm endorsement of Sun’s fundraising for the Canton uprising was consistent with both the general anti-Manchu trend inside the CKT and the new political attitude of the frustrated reformers in China and abroad. While the strong support for Sun’s fundraising effort by the CKT headquarters in Vic-

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toria would influence its lodges in other Canadian cities, Lin’s passive acceptance of the prorevolution tendency among radical reformers also set a precedent for CERA chapters in Canada under his leadership. An available archival document testifies to the inception of North American CKT’s true collaboration with Sun’s anti-Qing revolution from Victoria. This historic document shows that the Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria held a special meeting on February 24, 1911, at which a majority of the attendees agreed to mortgage its premises for $12,000 (CAD) as “the national salvation fund.” Lin Lihuang and the other eleven officers—together with Grand Master Ma Yanyuan 马延远, Secretary Zhang Hui 张辉, twenty-four committee members, and forty-six members—signed a resolution for the mortgage. On February 27, Ma and Zhang signed the mortgage document with the British Columbia Land and Investment Agency, which specified a loan of $12,000 (CAD) at an annual interest rate of 7 percent.195 In order to round up the donation fund to $30,000 in Hong Kong currency, Sun requested that Lin Libin borrow $900 (CAD) from a local bank, which was later paid by the CKT in Vancouver, and he also urged other merchants in Victoria to make up the remaining funds.196 In order to thank the Victoria CKT headquarters’ officers and merchant supporters for the success of the fundraising campaign, Sun invited them to a dinner. Because there was still furious dispute over the mortgage issue inside the CKT, only eleven of its officers and five merchants dared to accept Sun’s invitation. These merchants included not only Li Mianchen, who had hosted Sun during his first trip to Victoria in 1897, but also Huang Xuanlin, who had urged Kang Youwei to name his reformist organization Baohuanghui, or the Society to Protect the Emperor, in 1899. Immediately after the dinner started, the lights suddenly went out, intensifying the already uneasy atmosphere. While some guests at the dinner table regarded this incident as a bad omen, Lin Libin, Huang Xuanlin, and other merchants continued their support of Sun’s fundraising efforts after dinner, contributing donations amounting to more than $4,000 (HKD), according to Feng Ziyou.197 After this success in Victoria, Sun Yat-sen continued on to Nanaimo and Cumberland, two coal-mining cities on Vancouver Island, around February 26 and March 1, 1911. Thereafter, he mainly engaged in revolutionary mobilization and fundraising activities in Vancouver and the nearby New Westminster until mid-March. On March 5, he again helped Grand Master Chen Wenxi of the CKT in Vancouver to hold an initiation ceremony

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for more than seventy new members. Sun also returned to Nanaimo with Chen, and they jointly presided over an initiation ceremony for new members of the local CKT lodge on March 12.198 Sun’s fundraising activities eventually enabled the CKT in Vancouver to collect enough funds from its own members and the nearby lodges and to remit $10,000 (HKD) to Hong Kong’s Revolutionary Alliance by that time. Moreover, its own remittance to Huang Xing amounted to $19,000 (HKD) before the Canton uprising and $ 2,000 (HKD) thereafter.199 Because Sun Yat-sen received a special invitation from the CKT in Kamloops, a city northeast of Vancouver, he traveled there on March 15, 1911. His arrival at the local railway station received an enthusiastic welcome from the CKT members in that city along with a Western band they had hired. Sun’s letters around that time indicated that he had raised more than half of the targeted funds from North America for the Canton uprising, $50,000−$60,000 (HKD)—a significant portion of the total of $140,000– $150,000 (HKD) expected from the overseas Chinese in different countries, including Canada and the United States. He planned to collect the remaining half of the anticipated North American funds through his cross-Canada trip from Kamloops eastward. In his speech in Kamloops, however, he raised his North American fundraising target to $300,000 (HKD).200 The Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria dispatched one of its key leaders, Xie Qiu 谢秋, to help Sun Yat-sen on his fundraising trip across Canada, and they were accompanied by a leader of the CKT in Vancouver to Kamloops and other cities in British Columbia. Sun continued his revolutionary propaganda and fundraising activities from Kamloops to nearby Ashcroft, and then led his entourage into the Okanagan Valley. They crossed Vernon and reached Kelowna on March 24, 1911. In Kelowna, Sun was welcomed by more than thirty members of the local CKT and a Chinese music band. His fundraising tour in British Columbia ended in the mountain city of Revelstoke on March 28−29, 1911.201 Sun visited nearly ten large and small cities in British Columbia, all of them with CERA chapters. But in the mining town of Cumberland on Vancouver Island, he faced a potential threat to his life from a member of the local CERA chapter, and was guarded by four armed members of the local CKT that night.202 Evidently, most reformist leaders of the local CERA chapters had turned from hostility to tolerance of and even support

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for Sun’s fundraising activities for an anti-Qing revolution, as Lin Lihuang had done in Victoria. Upon reaching Calgary, the largest city in the province of Alberta, at the end of March 1911, Sun Yat-sen received an urgent telegram from Hong Kong’s Revolutionary Alliance asking him to raise another $30,000 (HKD) within five days. Thus, after his fundraising mobilization in the city, the desperate Sun had to decline invitations from CKT lodges in Lethbridge and other small cities in Alberta and instead rush to Winnipeg, the provincial capital of Manitoba and third-largest city in Canada at that time, where he collected only a few hundred dollars before his departure on April 6.203 In the company of Xie Qiu, Sun Yet-sen arrived in Toronto just around the time of the assassination of a Manchu general in Canton by an overseas Chinese revolutionary on April 8, 1911. This heroic action and dramatic event provided an enormous boost to Sun’s anti-Qing propaganda and fundraising efforts among the Chinese in Toronto. After speeches by both Sun and Xie on the evening of April 9, the local CKT followed Victoria’s precedent to raise funds for the Canton uprising by leveraging the value of its premises. It first auctioned the building to a Chinese grocery merchant for $8,260 (CAD), but the deal fell through. The local CKT lodge then mortgaged the building to the Dominion Bank and raised $10,000 (HKD) for the Canton uprising.204 Sun Yat-sen, together with Xie Qiu, ended their cross-Canada trip in Montreal by April 19, 1911. There Sun delivered his anti-Qing revolutionary speech to the local CKT members and then presided over its initiation ceremony for forty-three new members. The Montreal CKT raised nearly $6,000 (CAD) and then remitted the equivalent $11,000 (HKD) to Huang Xing. In May 1911, Huang’s retrospective report on the Canton uprising recorded the receipt of $63,000 (HKD) in Canadian donations, or 40.1 percent of the total $157,000 (HKD) in overseas Chinese donations for the anti-Qing uprising.205 Feng Ziyou also indicated that he personally handled the telegraphic transfer of over $70,000 (HKD), or 44.6 percent, from the Hongmen Fundraising Bureau in Vancouver to Hong Kong. He thus extolled the Canadian CKT as the champion among overseas Chinese donors for the anti-Qing uprising,206 because it contributed nearly half of the total funds for the military campaign. Unfortunately, the Canton uprising under Huang Xing’s command turned out to be the last and also the most tragic failure of the ten anti-Qing

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military uprisings plotted by Sun Yat-sen between 1895 and 1911. Eightysix participants in the uprising sacrificed their lives on the spot or were arrested and executed by the Qing government thereafter. Most of their corpses were later collected and buried in the famous Yellow Flower Hill Cemetery of seventy-two revolutionary martyrs.207 Nevertheless, Sun’s fundraising tour across Canada for the military uprising not only strengthened his confidence in the continual struggle against the Qing dynasty but also provided him with a precedent for future collaboration with the American CKT. Moreover, in a letter on March 30, 1911, the New Westminster CKT encouraged the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco to support Sun’s fundraising effort by emulating the two examples of the Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria and its lodge in Vancouver.208 Sun Yat-sen’s fundraising success in Canada and the United States thereafter relied mainly on the support of the CKT lodges, most of which had received political influence from the reformist politics of Kang Youwei’s CERA, as the foregoing discussion has shown. In that sense, Sun’s revolutionary mobilization of this secret society during his fundraising tour across Canada in early 1911 benefited significantly from the political legacy of Kang-led overseas Chinese political reforms. While Sun’s Canadian experience helped him win full support from the American CKT, he also followed some of CERA’s practices in his subsequent fundraising campaigns on his final trip across the United States. In the aftermath of Sun’s fundraising tour across Canada, Feng Ziyou took the opportunity to establish the Revolutionary Alliance’s first Canadian chapter in Vancouver in May 1911. It recruited more than one hundred members from the Chinese communities in Vancouver and Victoria. Under Feng’s leadership, this chapter actively mobilized its members to vote in the annual election of the Chinese Benevolent Association in Vancouver. They used their kinship and local fellowship to influence other Chinese voters in the election and successfully defeated almost all reformist candidates from the local CERA. As a result, twelve of the twenty new directors of the Chinese Benevolent Association were from the Vancouver chapter of the Revolutionary Alliance. One of them was Ye Qiumao, from the once-dominant Yip family of CERA of Canada. Because the Chinese Benevolent Association in Vancouver was founded mainly by Yip Sang, Huang Yushan, Lee Kee, and other reformist leaders of CERA of Canada in 1899, as mentioned above, the success of the local Revolutionary Alliance in this election again

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shows how it inherited the institutional legacy of Kang Youwei’s political reforms. Thereafter, Revolutionary Alliance chapters appeared in Victoria, Toronto, and other Canadian cities in late 1911.209 After Sun Yat-sen’s return from Canada to New York on April 19, 1911, he held a fundraising meeting with Chinese community leaders there, including those of the CKT and the local chapter of the Revolutionary Alliance, as well as CERA members who initially intended to sabotage the meeting. Because of low attendance, Sun had to cancel his public speech and instead held a round-table discussion. Ironically, his anti-Qing talk won the sympathy and a $20 (USD) donation from one of the CERA leaders, but nothing from the other attendees, including those from the New York CKT and the local chapter of the Revolutionary Alliance. Upon arriving in Chicago on April 28, Sun received the news about the failure of the Canton uprising. Undaunted, he immediately started a new fundraising effort for the care of the injured participants in the uprising and for the revitalization of the revolutionary cause. He planned to form a prorevolution corporation and use its stocks to raise funds, as Kang Youwei had done through CERA’s business ventures. Because very few people invested in the stocks, Sun quickly abandoned the plan.210 On Sun Yat-sen’s next stop in San Francisco around June 18, 1911, he decided to follow his fundraising precedent in Canada when negotiating with leaders of the American CKT headquarters there. He catered to their wishes to recruit new members by ordering all members of the local Revolutionary Alliance to join the CKT in San Francisco, and used the opportunity to push for the formation of a Hongmen Fundraising Bureau for an anti-Qing revolution, copying the precedent from Vancouver. One leader of the San Francisco CKT headquarters and the newly formed Hongmen Fundraising Bureau, Tang Qiongchang, was formerly a reformist head of the CERA in this city from its beginning in 1899. In order to ensure the collaboration of the Revolutionary Alliance with the American CKT, Sun Yat-sen relocated Feng Ziyou from Vancouver to San Francisco in August 1911. Feng formed close ties with Tang Qiongchang and with the CKT headquarters’ grand master, Huang Sande.211 Because a majority of Chinese migrants in San Francisco were CKT members, Sun’s Revolutionary Alliance actually won their support through this fraternal organization. Like Lin Lihuang in Victoria, Tang Qiongchang in San Francisco, and other North American CKT leaders who had once joined Kang Youwei’s

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CERA, many constitutional reformers inside China also turned to the antiQing cause after a military mutiny broke out in Wuchang 武昌, the provincial capital of Hubei Province (Hubeisheng 湖北省) in central China, on October 10, 1911. The chairperson of the Hubei Provincial Assembly, Tang Hualong, led the domestic trend of constitutional reformers shifting toward the Republican Revolution. After prorevolutionary officers and soldiers of the New Army launched the uprising on the evening of October 10 and formed a military government the next day, Tang joined them as the chief of civil and secretarial affairs in the new revolutionary power. He also sent a public telegram to other provincial assemblies throughout the country, urging them to support the Wuchang uprising. His other public telegrams at that time first proposed the formation of a republican government. Thereafter, leaders of the provincial assemblies in fourteen provinces either worked with revolutionary parties and prorevolution forces or played major roles in pushing for their provincial independence from the Qing government by November 27, 1911.212 More than a month before the Wuchang uprising, Sun Yat-sen had left San Francisco on September 2 and led three other partisans in a fundraising trip eastward. While staying in a hotel in Denver, Colorado, on October 12, Sun read from a morning newspaper the reports about the outbreak of the military uprising by the New Army in Wuchang. This military mutiny was led by two revolutionary groups of soldiers and officers without direct connections to Sun and his Revolutionary Alliance, except its Shanghai-based Central China Bureau (Zhongbu tongmenghui 中部同盟会), a separatist group beyond his direct leadership. Neither Sun nor his close comrades such as Huang Xing initially expected that this revolt could succeed, although Huang had personal contacts with the conspirators beforehand and later went to the Wuchang battlefields. Sun continued his travels toward the East Coast, but he widened his efforts to secure diplomatic and financial support for the increasingly promising revolution up to the end of his last American trip by November 2, and particularly during his subsequent visits to Europe by November 24, 1911. But all of his efforts were in vain.213 Nonetheless, Sun Yat-sen’s reputation as a veteran revolutionary leader, together with rumors of his successful contacts with Western governments for foreign support, especially financial aid, had brought him great prestige in China. The military governor of the revolutionary power in Jiangsu Province, a former reformist official in the Qing government, proposed to

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make Sun Yat-sen the national leader as early as November 14, 1911. After Sun’s arrival in Shanghai on Christmas Day, his candidacy for presidency received strong support from a few top leaders of the Revolutionary Alliance, principally Huang Xing. From San Francisco, the American CKT headquarters sent to Nanjing more than a hundred telegrams in the names of its lodges and overseas Chinese groups, stressing Sun Yat-sen as the only qualified candidate for new president. On November 28, even the Republican Construction Society (Gonghe jianshehui 共和建设会), which included Tang Hualong and other leading reformers, also nominated Sun Yat-sen as the president of the new republic in a telegram to delegates of the independent provinces. On the evening of that day, Sun was elected as the provisional president of the Republic of China by delegates from sixteen out of seventeen provinces. The inauguration was held in Nanjing on January 1, 1912, ushering in the Provisional Government of the Republic of China (Zhonghua minguo linshi zhengfu 中华民国临时政府). Most ministers in his cabinet were former reformers and even reformist officials of the Qing government.214 Because Sun Yat-sen safeguarded his leadership in the Revolutionary Alliance largely through his fundraising achievements and direction of his party toward successes during his last North American trip, it is appropriate to say that this trip made him the absent “father of Republican China.” More importantly, the Revolutionary Alliance’s successes in American and Canadian Chinatowns before the 1911 Revolution made the North American Chinese both the pioneering fighters for the Republican Revolution and its strong supporters afterward. After the Wuchang uprising, Feng Ziyou led the Hongmen Fundraising Bureau in San Francisco in a more active campaign for overseas Chinese donations for the homeland revolution. One of his major achievements at that time was to raise enough funds from San Francisco, Victoria, and other North American cities for the purchase of six airplanes, which were then shipped to Nanjing, the capital of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China. There were no qualified pilots to fly these airplanes, however, and they served merely as decorations for the newly built airport in Nanjing. Still, sensational newspaper accounts described their ability to soar into the sky at great heights and their strong military might. General Yuan Shikai, prime minister of the Qing government and leader of its New Armies in north China, secured a promise from the Provisional Government

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in Nanjing to end the Qing monarchy as the condition for his replacement of Sun Yat-sen as the provisional president in the new republic. He craftily used the sensational news reports about the airplanes from North America to scare Empress Dowager Longyu 隆裕 (1868−1913) of the royal family to tears. As the regent of the toddler Xuantong Emperor, she was thus pushed to the decision to abdicate on February 12, 1912.215 According to a report from the Hongmen Fundraising Bureau in San Francisco, it raised more than $400,000 (USD) from North American Chinese by the end of 1911,216 which probably came mostly from the United States. Based on more detailed records, the Canadian CKT contributed a total of 92,000 yuan to the Canton uprising of April 27, 1911, and its lodges in Vancouver, New Westminster, and Kamloops raised a 34,000 yuan “citizens’ donation” (guomin juan 国民捐) for the new Republic of China in 1912.217 In Victoria, Lin Libin received Sun Yat-sen’s special request to collect and remit 23,000 yuan by December 4, 1911,218 and the CCBA and the Canadian CKT headquarters in that city raised a 24,810 yuan “citizens’ donation” in 1912.219 In other words, approximately 27,774 Chinese in Canada contributed at least 173,810 yuan, an average of over 6 yuan each, to the Canton uprising, the 1911 Revolution, and the new Republic of China in 1911−1912.220 The fundraising success of Sun Yat-sen, Feng Ziyou, and other revolutionary leaders relied mainly on the support of the CKT and other institutions and individuals in North American Chinatowns, rather than on their own party machine. Sun was able to establish a short-lived chapter of the Revive China Society in San Francisco on his first trip to the American mainland in 1896 and a single-person chapter in the same city on his tour across the continental United States in 1904. Even during his third trip of November 1909 to March 1910, Sun founded only about a dozen makeshift chapters of the Revolutionary Alliance, each with discouragingly low membership. By the end of 1911, the Revolutionary Alliance had forty-nine chapters in the United States, but its Canadian chapters appeared in only four cities; namely, Vancouver, Victoria, Toronto, and Montreal, by late 1912.221

Clearly, the development of the Revolutionary Alliance in the United States and Canada benefited from CERA’s legacy, including its training

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of radical youth like Feng Ziyou. Among Feng’s Canadian followers, Li Bohai and Ye Qiumao also turned from leading reformist families toward the Revolutionary Alliance and contributed to its expansion from East Asia to the United States and Canada. Many constitutionalist leaders in China, such as Tang Hualong, followed the same trend during the 1911 Revolution. The personal and collective experiences of these political activists reflected the connections, competition, and general push and pull between reform and revolution across the Pacific over one decade. The two movements continued their political interactions and politicized network expansion across China, North American Chinatowns, and the transpacific Chinese diaspora after the 1911 watershed.

C h a p t er 4

Sun Yat-sen and the Unfinished Chinese Republican Revolution across the Pacific

The new Republic of China adopted Sun Yat-sen’s motion to use the Gregorian calendar to record dates starting with its inauguration on January 1, 1912.1 When the Spring Festival arrived on February 18, 1912, six days after the end of the Qing dynasty and over 2,000 years of imperial China, a Vancouver newspaper announced: “this is the last occasion on which the New Year will be celebrated according to the old calendar.” The article noted that Sun Yat-sen was in a political struggle with Yuan Shikai, pushing the latter to leave his power base in Beijing and assume the Republican presidency in Nanjing. The newspaper also reported that “the Chinese Reform Association” in Vancouver, or the local chapter of CERA under Kang Youwei’s leadership, raised the flag of the Republic of China for only one hour during the Spring Festival, and then replaced it with “a flag bearing a huge picture of the world.”2 CERA in New York also raised the world flag during the Spring Festival.3 Thus, like the continuation of celebrations of the Spring Festival according to the lunar calendar, Sun Yat-sen and his partisans continued their struggles for the fragile republic through political maneuvers with Yuan in China and with Kang’s faction, the CKT, and other forces in North America and the transpacific Chinese diaspora through their new associational networks of political parties. In the Pacific Rim, another revolution engulfed Mexico in 1911, leading to the massacre of 303 Chinese in Torreón on May 15 of that year. The atrocity destroyed the last portion of CERA’s business empire under Kang Youwei’s control and spread racist terror against the Chinese throughout 170

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the Americas. Before the First World War broke out on July 28, 1914, an economic recession intensified anti-Chinese racism in Canada because of rising competition in the labor market. In three towns related to the coalmining industry on Vancouver Island—Extension, South Wellington, and Ladysmith—a general strike took place in the summer of 1913, and white mobs launched four days of riots against Chinese miners.4 In the face of rising racism and unemployment in Canada before and during the war, many Chinese migrants returned to China,5 and thus homeland politics attracted increasing attention from residents of North American Chinatowns. In 1913, a young merchant from Victoria, Lin Libin, also went to China, and he visited Sun Yat-sen in Shanghai because they had worked together to raise funds for the Canton uprising nearly two years earlier. During their conversation, Lin asked whether Kang Youwei’s CERA had indeed tried to protect the Manchu monarchy. Sun’s reply indicated that both CERA and the Revolutionary Alliance had promoted a common revolution, but they simply adopted a moderate or a radical approach, respectively.6 Nonetheless, Sun Yat-sen’s and Kang Youwei’s parties as well as the partisan groups of other former reformers would continue their mutual competition for political dominance in North American Chinatowns and the Republic of China, and Sun would continue the Republican Revolution in the name of protecting the fragile republic. The North American CKT would join these partisan struggles and their maneuvers with Yuan Shikai and his military successors in fights for the “unfinished republic,” especially its unfulfilled promise of equal participation in politics by all people.7 The new partisan politics would further politicize and divide the transpacific Chinese diaspora but would also introduce new diasporic networks of different party organizations.

Sun Yat-sen and New Partisan Politics from China to North American Chinatowns After Yuan Shikai used both military force and political schemes to make himself the provisional president of the Republic of China in Beijing instead of Nanjing on March 10, 1912, Sun Yat-sen ended his presidency and then accepted Yuan’s appointment to manage nationwide railroad construction. As his two major political rivals, Kang Youwei largely retreated from politics during his exile in Southeast Asia and Japan from 1909 to 1913, and

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Liang Qichao became increasingly involved in domestic politics, leading to his move from Japan back to China in late 1912.8 Both the American and Canadian CKT headquarters tried unsuccessfully to make the Hong Fraternal Society, including themselves, a legitimate party under the new Republic of China, as will be detailed below. Thus, the North American Chinese political associations had been mostly in headless disarray following the 1911 Revolution. But in the mid-1910s, Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary party would revive through transpacific development, the American and Canadian CKT lodges would seek transnational unity and expansion, and even Kang’s followers in North America would become active leaders of a new nationalist movement. Their different attitudes toward homeland politics and competition for overseas Chinese support would lead to the transpacific development of their diverse partisan networks. Under the impact of historical precedents and political ideologies from the West and Japan, Liang Qichao and other politicians and politicized intellectuals in early Republican China stressed their parties as voluntary organizations with durable structures and common platforms for public activities and parliamentary politics. But the parties in the early Republican period were mostly political networks composed of personal factions with common interests, and they often used the new parliament to pursue these partisan interests.9 Nonetheless, they brought new institutional norms to early Republican China and the transpacific Chinese diaspora, and pursued their partisan politics along with varying degrees of commitment to the new republic. Prior to Sun Yat-sen’s concession of his presidency in early 1912, he endeavored to control Yuan Shikai through a series of new institutions, including the rushed enactment of the Provisional Constitution (Lingshi yuefa 临 时约法), which limited presidential power.10 By August 1912, another main leader of the Revolutionary Alliance, Song Jiaoren 宋教仁 (1882−1913), led its merger with other political groups into the Nationalist Party (Guomindang, or Kuomintang 国民党 in old spelling, KMT hereafter). The KMT was actually a looser organization than the Revolutionary Alliance, and it even abandoned the latter’s policies on land and gender equality to incorporate other political groups.11 Song Jiaoren led the KMT’s political battle against Provisional President Yuan Shikai and his associates by pursuing KMT’s partisan power in the parliament with a plan to win the imminent national election in late 1912

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and to form a cabinet in the Republican government. Although the KMT had more than fifty local chapters and liaison offices by 1913, only six of them were located overseas—in the cities of Victoria, San Francisco, Tokyo, Kobe, Yokohama, and Dutch Timor in Southeast Asia. Most of the earlier chapters of the Revolutionary Alliance in the Pacific Rim became inactive,12 and those in the United States especially suffered the loss of their supporters and popularity among ordinary Chinese migrants.13 Kang Youwei did not return to China until the end of 1913, and he even admonished Liang Qichao for keeping CERA from direct engagement in partisan politics inside China. Kang did draft a new constitution for CERA in 1912 with a plan to establish its headquarters in Shanghai or Beijing and to develop its chapters both at home and abroad, but the party ultimately remained an overseas Chinese organization.14 CERA under Kang Youwei’s leadership changed its name to Guomindang, or the Chinese National Party, in February 1912,15 but after the KMT adopted the same Chinese title, it had to rename itself as Xianzhengdang 宪政党 (Constitutional Party). Its English name remained the Chinese Reform Party, the one familiar to Westerners. Its new constitution of 1914 still stressed constitutionalism in China and included thirty-two bylaws regarding leadership, membership, activities, and so on for its overseas chapters.16 This party essentially based itself in overseas Chinese communities, and its chapters numbered forty-one in Canada, fifty-seven in the United States, and twenty-six scattered among other countries in 1913.17 After Liang Qichao returned from Japan to Beijing in October 1912, he soon joined Tang Hualong and other former constitutionalist reformers of the late Qing period in their new partisan organizations ranging from the Republican Party (Gonghedang 共和党) to the Progressive Party (Jinbudang 进步党). Although the Republican Party developed chapters in San Francisco, Vancouver, and other North American cities since mid-1912, Liang distanced himself from the Chinese Reform Party overseas, as Kang had advised. Kang and Liang’s divergence in domestic politics and their inability to unite their parties in China and abroad would be a primary cause for their later failure in political competition with Sun Yat-sen’s revolutionary party.18 Compared with the Chinese Reform Party, a more powerful rival for the KMT in North American Chinatowns was the CKT, Sun Yat-sen’s former partner in the anti-Qing revolution. Previous studies have detailed some

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causes of the CKT’s split with the KMT after the 1911 Revolution, such as its leaders’ failure to receive any remunerative awards or recognition as a legitimate party from Sun Yat-sen and his associates in the revolutionary governments, as well as the CKT’s apprehension of possible annexation by Sun’s party.19 In fact, the American and Canadian CKT chapters took different political stances after the 1911 Revolution because they initially worked either with Sun’s revolutionary party or with Yuan Shikai’s Beijing regime, respectively. As early as January 1912, the Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria dispatched two representatives to China, including Xie Qiu, who had accompanied Sun on the cross-Canada fundraising trip for the Canton uprising in early 1911. Their mission was to seek Sun’s help for the Canadian CKT to become a political party in China.20 Meanwhile, the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco renamed itself the Chinese Republican Association (Zhonghua minguo gonghui 中华民国公会) in February 1913 and claimed to be the representative of all overseas Chinese. It vowed to fight for their common interests, to challenge the Chinese exclusion laws in the United States, and to serve as an institutional facilitator of republicanism in China. Its grand master, Huang Sande, also went to China in March 1912 and pursued the same mission for the American CKT as the Canadian representatives did. Sun Yat-sen had already relinquished his provisional presidency to Yuan Shikai, but he promised to help Huang register the American CKT in Guangdong Province under the control of two revolutionary leaders—Governor Hu Hanmin 胡汉民 (1879−1936), and his military deputy and the former acting governor, Chen Jiongming 陈炯明 (1878−1933).21 By that time, Chen had launched a military operation against the Triad Society and other seditious orders of the Hong Fraternal Society to maintain political stability under the new government in Guangdong Province.22 Sun supported Chen’s efforts with concern about Yuan’s military interference in local security issues, and he specifically warned the Hong Fraternal Society against breaking the law.23 Governor Hu took the same stance as Sun and Chen, and repeatedly rejected Huang Sande’s request to legitimize the Hong Fraternal Society, including the CKT, in Guangdong Province. In turn, Huang demanded repayment of CKT’s previous donations to Sun’s Revolutionary Alliance from Governor Hu. Hu did initiate the payment of the overseas Chinese donations, including those from North American CKT, from the treasury of Guangdong Province before he was dismissed

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by Yuan Shikai in June 1913. The succeeding governor, Chen Jiongming, stopped the repayment two months later with the excuse that the money was needed for a military campaign against the threat of dictatorship by President Yuan Shikai.24 Yuan’s dismissal of Hu Hanmin and other KMT governors in southern China in mid-1913 was merely one step toward military dictatorship. After the KMT won a landslide victory in China’s first nationwide election for the new parliament in late 1912—threatening Yuan Shikai’s dominance in the Beijing government—KMT’s main leader, Song Jiaoren, was assassinated by Yuan’s agents on March 20, 1913. In response, Sun Yat-sen led a series of anti-Yuan military uprisings and provincial independence movements in southern China, or the so-called second revolution, from July to September of that year. He also sent three letters to the Chinese Republican Association—formerly the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco—by July 1913, asking for financial support.25 Meanwhile, the Chinese Republican Association had tried to incorporate itself through Yuan Shikai’s Beijing government in August 1912 and specifically entrusted Feng Ziyou as its Beijing-based representative on this issue, but it received only a promise to allow its registration as a chamber of commerce in the future.26 In mid-1913, Huang Sande’s letter to the leaders of the Chinese Republican Association in San Francisco expressed anger at Yuan’s treacherous policies. Another leader of the Chinese Republican Association was Tang Qiongchang, who was especially close to Feng Ziyou after becoming an overseas member of the parliament in Beijing in 1913 through Feng’s help. Such personal ties and political failure to register under Yuan’s Beijing government prompted the Chinese Republican Association to continually respond to Sun’s calls for help and to issue fundraising notices to its CKT lodges for the anti-Yuan military campaign.27 Sun Yat-sen fled to Japan again as a refugee in early August 1913, shortly before his anti-Yuan “second revolution” finally failed. Yuan Shikai then forced the KMT-dominated parliament to elect him as the formal president of the Republic of China in October 1913, but a month later he dissolved the parliament and outlawed the KMT party. Sun also turned away from the KMT’s lax China-based organization and instead began to prepare for the anti-Yuan “third revolution” by organizing the Chinese Revolutionary Party (Zhonghua gemingdang 中华革命党)—a small and secret organization of obedient, devoted, and self-sacrificing revolutionaries under strict

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discipline. This party required all new members to take oaths and affix thumbprints on their pledges of loyalty to Sun’s personal leadership.28 Sun Yat-sen’s pursuit of personal power and absolute obedience from a small number of loyal partisans seriously limited the expansion of the Chinese Revolutionary Party. Although he began to recruit partisans beginning in September 1913, quite a few veteran revolutionary leaders, including Huang Xing, refused to make pledges of loyalty to him in this fashion. When the Chinese Revolutionary Party finally came into being in Tokyo on July 8, 1914, its members numbered only 741.29 According to the official history of the party, it stressed infiltration into domestic armies and secret societies rather than expansion into mass organizations, and its total members later numbered only about ten thousand in its affiliated “patriotic groups.”30 The available registers of the party’s leaders, bureaus (zhibu 支部), and chapters (fenbu 分部) include only limited information about those in North America, such as its American Bureau (Meizhou zhibu 美洲 支部) in San Francisco and its Canadian liaison officer, Xia Zhongmin 夏 重民 (1885−1922).31 In fact, the Chinese Revolutionary Party probably recruited most of its members from North America, particularly the United States and Canada. Its successful membership expansion in North America was largely due to the efforts of the American Bureau under the leadership of Feng Ziyou and Lin Sen 林森 (1868−1943), a native of Fujian province and the future president of the Nationalist Government of China in 1931–1943.32 The American Bureau’s success broke through both Sun’s partisan limitations and his proJapan policies in a new nationalist movement. After joining the Chinese Revolutionary Party in Japan in January 1914, Feng arrived in San Francisco the following month and soon became the acting director (daili buzhang 代理部长) of the American Bureau. Sun Yatsen promptly ordered him to convert the American KMT chapters into Chinese Revolutionary Party chapters and to have their members reregistered with fingerprinted oaths. But Feng persuaded Sun to keep KMT’s Chinese title, or the Chinese Nationalist League (CNL hereafter) in English, in North America, so that it could be registered as a charitable institution for an anti-Yuan fundraising campaign. The Chinese Revolutionary Party under Sun Yat-sen’s control later gave permission for all of its overseas chapters to operate under the title of the CNL.33 The CNL’s American Bureau in San Francisco first registered with the

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state of California on March 20, 1914, vowing “to promote friendly and social relations among persons of Chinese birth or descent, … [and] to establish, maintain and ensure a sound republican, constitutional form of government” in China.34 In accordance with Sun’s demands, the American Bureau initially required its members to register with a fingerprinted oath and to promise to maintain the party’s secrets and personal loyalty to Sun.35 This strict requirement was soon replaced with a more flexible demand that a new member could provide a written oath with a personal signature. The requirement was later dropped from the revised rules of the CNL’s American Bureau under Lin Sen’s leadership, although the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Tokyo headquarters still insisted on this practice until the end of 1915.36 The American CNL was thus able to develop as an open organization with a large membership, rather than as a small and secret party as Sun Yatsen had planned. After the formation of the Chinese Revolutionary Party in July 1914, Sun Yat-sen issued a call to all of the Hong Fraternal Society’s orders overseas, requesting that their members join his party with oaths but without changes in their platforms and rules.37 Feng Ziyou greatly assisted Sun’s plans because he not only was the acting director of the CNL’s American Bureau in San Francisco but also became the chairperson of the Chinese Republican Association, or the American CKT headquarters in the city, beginning in early 1914. After the American Bureau of the CNL founded the Society to Protect Republican China (Minguo weichihui 民国维持会) as an anti-Yuan fundraising agency, the Chinese Republican Association also formed the Hongmen Fraternal Society’s General Fundraising Bureau (Hongmen chouxiang zongju 洪门筹饷总局) by July 1914, with Feng as a leader in both institutions. He visited many of the CKT lodges across the United States to raise funds for the anti-Yuan movement and to expand CNL’s organization, and not coincidentally, most of his recruits for the CNL came from the CKT lodges. By December 1914, Feng had raised nearly 100,000 Japanese yen and organized more than twenty chapters for the CNL. In October 1915, his report to the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Tokyo headquarters indicated that American CNL members numbered about seven thousand, or 10 percent of the Chinese migrants in the United States, although 70 to 80 percent of these migrants still belonged to the CKT.38 As a result, the leaders of the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco initiated a public split with the CNL over their new resentment

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against Feng’s tactics piled on their old grudge over Sun Yat-sen’s failure to reward them for their anti-Qing actions. They also felt angry at the suppression of the Triad Society by Governors Hu Hanmin and Chen Jiongming in Guangdong Province. When Grand Master Huang Sande returned from China to San Francisco in January 1915, he complained to Sun about Feng’s expansion of the CNL at the expense of the CKT, including Feng’s order for local CKT lodges to remit their funds to Sun instead of their San Francisco headquarters. Thus, Feng had to resign from the position of chairperson of the Chinese Republican Association. Sun’s reply refuted Huang’s complaints about his slight to Huang in China and blamed Chen Jiongming for causing the CKT’s failure to receive financial compensation and to register in Guangdong Province in 1912, but it was to no avail.39 Lin Sen became the new director of the CNL’s American Bureau from early 1915, and his leadership in nationalist mobilization against Japan’s aggression in China garnered support from quite a few North American CKT lodges.40 In the First World War, Japan joined the Allied powers on August 23, 1914, because of its long-term alliance with Britain, and it thereafter seized the German concession around Qingdao 青岛 in Shandong Province. While European powers were preoccupied with the Great War in Europe, Japan took the opportunity to pursue an expansionist policy in China and presented the secret “Twenty-one Demands” to Yuan Shikai’s Beijing government on January 18, 1915, seeking both special rights and political control of China through Japanese advisers. As a political refugee in Japan, Sun Yat-sen saw this diplomatic crisis as a political opportunity and negotiated with the Japanese authorities for support of his anti-Yuan cause in exchange for similar or greater concessions than the “Twenty-one Demands.”41 Sun’s opportunistic adventure pursued his narrow partisan interest at the expense of Republican China, which he was trying to save from Yuan’s regime. Meanwhile, Chinese protests against Japanese imperialism soon spread at home and abroad. When Lin Sen returned to the United States in February 1915 from an anti-Yuan fundraising tour in Cuba, he soon catered to the growing anti-Japanese nationalism by delivering a series of public speeches on national salvation across many American and Canadian Chinatowns. His speech in Boston even included a fundraising appeal for a possible Chinese war against Japan. From New York to Montreal, and Ogden to Boise, Lin received support from the local CKT lodges and delivered his speeches to large audiences on their premises. He later joined a few leaders

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of the American CNL in a petition to Sun, asking him to halt the antiYuan revolution and form an anti-Japanese united front. Sun’s reply insisted that the anti-Yuan revolution was the best way to save China from foreign aggression.42 Nonetheless, Lin’s patriotic agitation had already helped the American CNL expand in 1915. Under the leadership of Feng Ziyou, the CNL’s American Bureau had already developed more than seventy chapters and liaison offices, and recruited 3, 232 new members in 1914 alone. Lin further expanded its chapters through the nationalist mobilization and recruitment of defectors of the Chinese Reform Party under Kang Youwei’s leadership as they became increasingly indignant at Yuan Shikai’s Beijing government.43 Thus, from September 1914 to May 1915, the CNL’s American Bureau under Lin’s leadership demanded managerial power over all party chapters in the Americas and those in Europe. Sun Yat-sen approved this request in mid1915, although he kept the party’s chapters in the Philippines under the direct control of his Tokyo headquarters.44 Thereafter, Lin gathered the leaders of the CNL chapters in the United States and representatives of those in Japan, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Cuba, and South American countries for the Pan-American Fraternal Conference (Quan-Mei kenqin dahui 全美恳 亲大会) held in San Francisco from July 4 to August 3, 1915.45 CNL’s American Bureau in San Francisco renamed itself the General Bureau of the Americas (Guomindang Meizhou zongzhibu 国民党美洲 总支部) in January 1916,46 and its members numbered about 15,000 in the Americas. As its anti-Yuan fundraising agency, the Society to Protect Republican China collected more than $200,000 (USD) for the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Tokyo headquarters from July 6, 1914, to February 1916. 47 According to Feng Ziyou’s own account, the North American CNL remitted 1.2 million Japanese yen to the Tokyo headquarters, and he regarded the General Bureau of the Americas as the champion anti-Yuan fundraiser of the Chinese Revolutionary Party.48 The CNL in Canada paled in contrast in its organizational expansion and unification, both because of its lack of influential leaders and because of its strict obedience to Sun Yat-sen’s partisan rules and pro-Japan approach. While the Beijing-based KMT had founded a liaison office in Victoria on November 16, 1912,49 Sun Yat-sen dispatched only a low-ranking revolutionary leader, Hu Hanxian 胡汉贤 (1884−1968), in the winter of 1912–1913. Hu was chosen for the mission simply because he was from the four counties

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near Canton that produced many Chinese migrants in the Americas. Sun hoped that Hu could help raise overseas Chinese capital for railroad construction and other industrial projects in China, and Hu did call for overseas Chinese investment in homeland industries and economic construction using the KMT newspaper, Xin Minguo bao.50 After the Chinese Revolutionary Party was established in Tokyo in July 1914, Sun Yat-sen designated one of its early members, Xia Zhongmin, as its Canadian liaison officer to create the party’s chapter in Victoria. Because Xia’s trip was delayed for more than a year, Sun’s Tokyo headquarters instructed the KMT’s liaison office in Victoria to handle the task. Thus, in the winter of 1914, Hu gathered the former members of the Revolutionary Alliance and organized them into the first Canadian chapter of this secret party in the editorial office of Xin Minguo bao.51 In Vancouver, another chapter of the Chinese Revolutionary Party, together with a Canadian branch of the Society to Protect Republican China based in San Francisco, appeared under the leadership of Zeng Shiquan 曾 石泉 (1878−1942) by early 1915.52 In total, more than twenty chapters of the Chinese Revolutionary Party came into being by mid-1916, with membership numbering about two thousand.53 Until late 1914, the chapters in Calgary, Regina, Hamilton, and Montreal affiliated themselves with the CNL’s American Bureau in San Francisco, while those in Victoria, Vancouver, and Toronto retained their independence. However, the Victoria and Vancouver chapters were in constant discord until the end of 1915. These Canadian chapters were united only in their uniform use of the CNL title for public activities and in their affiliation with the Chinese Revolutionary Party based in Japan.54 The Canadian CNL also had strained relations with most CKT lodges in Canada. There is no indication of the success of the aforementioned visit to China in early 1912 of two representatives of the Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria to seek Sun’s support for the legitimization of their organization. But the Beijing government’s general consulate in Ottawa and consulate in Vancouver, as well as its cabinet (Guowuyuan 国务院), recognized the CKT lodges in Canada as legitimate societies in the fall of 1913.55 Moreover, after Cui Tongyue had been expelled from the Revolutionary Alliance in August 1911 over Sun Yat-sen’s suspicions of him as an agent of the Qing consulate general in San Francisco, he returned to Canada, became the editor of the Vancouver CKT organ, Da-han ribao, and joined

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the Vancouver chapter of the Republican Party. This local chapter affiliated itself with the Progressive Party headed by Liang Qichao, who had become a political ally of President Yuan Shikai and a rival of Sun Yat-sen’s KMT from mid-1913. Thus, Cui frequently used the CKT newspaper for pro-Yuan and anti-Sun propaganda. In April 1915, the Canadian CKT published an emergency notice in Cui’s newspaper, denouncing not only Sun’s anti-Yuan fights but also the pro-Sun stance of the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco and its adoption of the name “Chinese Republican Association.” This notice specifically distinguished the Canadian CKT as a legitimate organization recognized by Yuan’s Beijing government, as opposed to its American counterpart.56 However, the Montreal CKT lodge shared a leader, Wei Zhenpei 魏振 沛, with the local CNL. In February 1915, the Montreal lodge—with its exaggerated claim of nearly four thousand members—responded to the invitation from the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Tokyo headquarters to join the party. Because the thirty-second clause of the party’s constitution specified that a chapter should be a self-governing body, the CKT leaders in Montreal used this rule to demand their lodge be recognized as a chapter by the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Tokyo headquarters. The Tokyo headquarters acceded but required the CKT members in Montreal to affix their fingerprints on oaths of loyalty to Sun,57 although Sun Yat-sen’s call to the Hong Fraternal Society’s lodges allowed them to keep their original rules and platforms,58 and the American Bureau of the CNL later dropped this requirement, as is mentioned above. Wei Zhenpei was able to establish the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s chapter under the title of CNL in Montreal in mid-1915,59 but the local CKT lodge maintained close relations with the city’s Chinese Reform Party. They jointly founded the Chinese Benevolent Association, or Zhonghua huiguan, in February 1915 for the protection of Chinese laundries from acts of racial discrimination. This communitywide organization in turn formed the National Salvation Corps (jiuguotuan 救国团) to support Yuan Shikai’s Beijing government in the face of Japan’s “Twenty-one Demands” in April 1915. The patriotic corps raised funds for a possible war with Japan over this issue. Wei was the CNL’s leader in both organizations, but when one “partisan,” probably Wei himself, proposed to use the funds for anti-Yuan activities, the motion was rejected by most of the leaders of the National Salvation Corps.60 In Victoria and Vancouver, the local CNL chapters engaged in more

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acute clashes with the CKT, the Chinese Reform Party, and the Republican Party. On February 22, 1915, the CNL’s newspaper in Victoria, Xin Minguo bao, published the meeting minutes of the Canadian CKT headquarters in this city, including its resolutions to collect fees from gambling dens and to exclude former members of Sun Yat-sen’s Revolutionary Alliance from leadership roles. In response, the CKT headquarters threatened to demolish the building housing the newspaper and kidnap its editors. It was only through the local CCBA’s mediation that the CNL leaders settled the issue with the CKT headquarters by issuing an apology in early March 1915.61 When nationalist movements arose across China and Chinatowns in protest against Japan’s “Twenty-one Demands” in early 1915, the CNL in Canada failed to take a leading role as its American counterpart under Lin Sen had done. Its report to Sun Yat-sen complained that the founders of the newly formed patriotic organization were mostly from CERA, and their support of Yuan’s Beijing government against Japanese demands impeded the CNL’s anti-Yuan revolution.62 Indeed, the leaders of the Chinese Reform Party, the Republican Party, and the CKT lodges were all active in these patriotic organizations and in anti-Japanese nationalist mobilization in Vancouver, Victoria, and other Canadian cities. By contrast, the CNL leaders were rarely involved,63 and they often clashed with these organizations over their different attitudes toward Yuan’s presidency and other issues. As former leaders of CERA of Canada, Chang Toy and Yip Sang became the president and vice president, respectively, of the National Salvation Society (Jiuwanghui 救亡会) in Vancouver in February 1915, which vowed to support Yuan Shikai’s Beijing government against Japanese aggression. At one of its meetings in April 1915 a motion was discussed to ban anti-Yuan public speeches on the streets. But Zeng Shiquan and other CNL leaders denounced this motion and defended freedom of political speech. Nonetheless, the National Salvation Society under the dominance of Chang, Yip, and other leaders of the Chinese Reform Party and the Republican Party resolved to renounce its relations with anti-Yuan speakers. In June 1915, Zhang Rubo 张儒伯, a leader of the Republican Party and director of the Chinese Benevolent Association in Vancouver, suffered a physical attack by CNL partisans because he refused to let them use the community organization’s premises for anti-Yuan speeches every Saturday evening.64 In Victoria in March 1915, Lee Mong Kow, a former leader of the local CERA, became the president of the Overseas Chinese Patriotic Corps

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(Huaqiao aiguotuan 华侨爱国团). Lee had recently used his position as an interpreter in the Canadian customs house to limit a visit of Lin Sen, the director of the CNL’s American Bureau, from Seattle to Victoria to one hour on April 7, because of reports of Lin’s anti-Yuan agitation.65 In late April, following Japan’s ultimatum to the Beijing government to accept the “Twenty-one Demands,” Lee telegraphed the Beijing government, promising 200,000 yuan of military aid from the Victoria CCBA if China had to fight a war against Japan. The Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria had contributed nearly one-third of the $3,000 (CAD) local donation by that time.66 As Sun Yat-sen’s special emissary to Canada, Xia Zhongmin eventually arrived in Vancouver in early October 1915, and he brought a new wave of revolutionary radicalism into the Canadian chapters of the CNL. Xia also intensified the external struggles and internal strife of the party. Like Lin Sen’s trip to Victoria in April 1915, Xia’s arrival in Vancouver alarmed the Chinese interpreters—the former CERA leaders—in the Canadian customs house. As a result, Xia’s stay in Canada was restricted to less than two months, to the end of 1915.67 Working briefly for Xin Minguo bao in Victoria, Xia led the CNL newspaper into a media war with the CKT organ in Vancouver, Da-Han gongbao 大汉公报 [The Chinese times].68 Xia mainly used his limited time to take an anti-Yuan fundraising tour across Canada and help expand the Chinese Revolutionary Party under the aegis of the Canadian CNL. He also tried to integrate all Canadian chapters of the CNL, or the Chinese Revolutionary Party, and put them into direct contact with Sun Yat-sen and his Tokyo headquarters. Xia requested that Sun designate the Victoria chapter of the Chinese Revolutionary Party as the new headquarters for the party organization in Canada because its counterpart in Vancouver existed in name only. He also encouraged all Canadian chapters to send their anti-Yuan funds to Sun’s Tokyo headquarters directly, and claimed that the CNL’s American Bureau in San Francisco had impeded financial management by the Tokyo headquarters and repeatedly caused revolutionary failures.69 Xia’s proposal to Sun received strong support from the CNL chapters in Victoria, Calgary, Toronto, and other Canadian cities, and all of them demanded the formation of a Canadian headquarters in their letters to Sun Yat-sen.70 In contrast, both the director and associate director of CNL’s American Bureau in San Francisco, Lin Sen and Feng Ziyou, strongly rejected

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Xia Zhongmin’s proposal for direct communication between Sun and CNL’s chapters in Canada. On December 17, 1915, Lin wrote a lengthy letter to Sun, demanding that fund remittances from Canada to the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Tokyo headquarters and the latter’s mail of receipts, membership cards, and badges to the Canadian chapters, as well as other communications between the two sides, should go through his office in San Francisco. Feng also wrote a letter to Sun rejecting Xia’s proposal and supporting Lin’s demand.71 Because the American Bureau was so crucial in the anti-Yuan fundraising activities,72 Sun had to side with Lin and Feng against Xia’s proposal. At the end of 1915, the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s headquarters also ordered the CNL in Victoria to route all communications with it through the American Bureau under the leadership of Lin and Feng.73 Hence, the new partisan politics in Republican China, North American Chinatowns, and the transpacific Chinese diaspora during the early 1910s involved power struggles among the different parties under the leadership of Sun Yat-sen, Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao, as well as the American and Canadian CKT lodges. Factional strife for power even occurred between CNL’s American and Canadian partisans. However, each of the political parties or factions pursued its power in connection with either the anti-Yuan movement for the restoration of republican democracy or the pro-Beijing nationalist mobilization for the salvation of Republican China against the Japanese government’s “Twenty-one Demands.” While the CNL in Canada was less active than its American counterpart in the anti-Yuan revolution and its Canadian rivals in the anti-Japanese nationalist mobilization up to 1915, it would play a more important role than other partisan forces in the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s transpacific fights against two monarchist movements.

Antimonarchical Militancy from North American Chinatowns to China Yuan Shikai’s Beijing regime quickly lost popular support after it accepted most of Japan’s “Twenty-one Demands” on May 9, 1915, particularly after he began to plan and prepare for the restoration of the monarchy with himself as the emperor. Yuan’s fiercest challenges arose from his former allies in the Beijing government in the early 1910s, principally Liang Qichao’s Progressive Party and its military associates. Kang Youwei and his close disciples also joined the actions against Yuan’s imperial restoration, although

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he would later part with Liang by engaging in another monarchical movement in mid-1917. The Japan-based Chinese Revolutionary Party under Sun Yat-sen played only a limited role in the domestic fights against the two imperial restorations,74 but the North American CNL, especially its Canadian chapters, demonstrated strong institutional power and network ability to mobilize and influence the antimonarchical movement in the transpacific Chinese diaspora. The CNL’s American Bureau in San Francisco jump-started its militancy against Yuan Shikai’s monarchist movement through a political assassination on Christmas Day of 1915. Tragically, in following the bureau’s ongoing partisan feud with Liang Qichao’s Progressive Party, the victim in this violent assassination—one of Liang’s associates—was mistaken for an accomplice of Yuan, as is detailed below. The CNL in Canada, in contrast, led the largest and most militant antimonarchical movement overseas, which spread to the Chinese communities across North America, Japan, and Southeast Asia in early 1916. It also continued its militant partisan struggles with the Canadian CKT and Kang Youwei’s Chinese Reform Party, chiefly around the time of Kang’s engagement in the second imperial restoration in 1917. Yet scholars have afforded scant attention to the Canadian CNL’s antimonarchical activism, especially its anti-Yuan military action in 1916,75 and none at all to its influence on the transpacific Chinese diaspora. Yuan Shikai announced his plan for the imperial restoration in November 1915, after months of careful propaganda and preparations, including his personal worship of Heaven and Confucius, as an emperor had done in the past.76 Although Liang Qichao had previously collaborated with Yuan in their power struggles against Sun Yat-sen and the KMT since 1912, he strongly refuted the propaganda for the imperial restoration through his publication. In December 1915, Liang deceived Yuan with a request for a trip to the United States for his health, but his true purpose was to leave northern China safely for antimonarchical mobilization in the southern provinces. His secret plot with one of his former students, General Cai E 蔡锷 (1882−1916), would soon lead to the antimonarchical military uprising in Yunnan Province on December 25, 1916, and the subsequent independence of other southwestern provinces.77 In Canada, the Republican Party in Vancouver was under Liang’s influence, and it also resolved to preserve the Republic and oppose the imperial restoration at its meeting on November 21, 1915.78

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The CNL’s American Bureau in San Francisco and its director, Lin Sen, still regarded Liang Qichao as a partisan enemy and Yuan Shikai’s accomplice in the monarchical movement. Lin’s aforementioned letter to Sun Yat-sen on December 17, 1915, not only criticized the Canadian CNL’s independent tendency from his office in San Francisco, but also warned of Liang’s arrival. Lin assumed that Liang would travel to the United States under the guise of seeking medical treatment but for the actual purpose of seeking American funds for Yuan’s monarchical movement. His letter specifically reported that an associate of Liang—a very influential journalist from Beijing, Huang Yuanyong 黄远庸 (1885−1915)—had arrived in San Francisco as Liang’s precursor. According to Lin’s report, Huang Yuanyong brought with him an introductory letter and telegraphic ciphers for secret contacts with Huang Xing, who had refused to join the Chinese Revolutionary Party under Sun Yat-sen’s dictatorial control and was believed to be “in collusion with” the CKT in the United States. Lin believed that Huang Xing had been manipulated by the CKT and would also be deceived by Liang’s “monarchical party.”79 Thus convinced, Lin Sen first had Huang Yuanyong trailed and then ordered partisans to assassinate him in a restaurant in San Francisco’s Chinatown on the evening of December 25, 1915. Even Sun Yat-sen’s son, Sun Ke 孙科 (1891−1973), joined the conspiracy as a lookout. Because the three assassins fled the scene, the case was not fully solved for more than a century.80 In fact, Huang had written one specious article regarding the imperial restoration when he had been under Yuan Shikai’s threat in Beijing, but he soon rejected Yuan’s appointment as chief editor of a promonarchical newspaper and then fled overseas. As the associate director of the CNL’s American Bureau at that time, Feng Ziyou later recalled that Lin Sen had denounced Huang as the Progressive Party’s main adviser to Yuan Shikai in the ban of the KMT in 1913. Thus, Huang’s assassination resulted generally from the struggle of Sun Yat-sen’s partisans with the Progressive Party, and most pointedly, from Lin’s misunderstanding of Huang’s role in Yuan’s imperial restoration.81 Violence in partisan politics would recur in the assassination of Tang Hualong—another close associate of Liang Qichao and a leader of the Progressive Party—by a CNL henchman in Canada more than two years later. From Japan, Sun Yat-sen had begun to dispatch a few leaders of the Chinese Revolutionary Party back to China for anti-Yuan military actions start-

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ing in September 1915. One of them, Ju Zheng 居正 (1876−1951), became the commander-in-chief of the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Northeast Army (Dongbeijun 东北军) in Qingdao 青岛, Shandong Province, in November 1915. Because Japan had seized the German concession in Qingdao in November 1914 and played Sun against Yuan’s Beijing government, Ju received Japanese help, leading the Northeast Army into an anti-Yuan campaign in February 1916 and then marching westward toward Jinan 济南, the provincial capital of Shandong. Sun’s partisans also led small-scale anti-Yuan campaigns in Guangdong Province. Although Chen Jiongming had refused to join Sun’s Chinese Revolutionary Party, he still led an anti-Yuan uprising in Guangdong and requested financial support from the North American CKT in November 1915.82 CKT leaders in Victoria rejected Chen’s request because he had suppressed the Hong Fraternal Society and blocked its registration in Guangdong Province when he was the provincial governor in 1912. Instead, the Canadian CKT’s headquarters in Victoria and its lodges in Vancouver and New Westminster celebrated the recognition of their legitimate status by Yuan’s regime and called for peace in China.83 In contrast, the American CKT in San Francisco issued a fundraising call for the antimonarchical movement, although its grand master, Huang Sande, accepted an appointment from the anti-Yuan junta in Yunnan Province, which he helped raise funds for in the Americas. His fundraising appeal also reached the CKT lodges in Canada.84 In early 1916, Sun Yat-sen received a series of letters from CNL members in both the United States and Canada that included reports about their military training activities and requests for permission to organize anti-Yuan armies for direct participation in the domestic battles against his imperial restoration. Among overseas Chinese communities, the most militant actions were started by Canadian CNL members.85 Their militant activism would arouse a strong response among Chinese youths in the United States and Southeast Asia, and lead to many returning to China for battles against Yuan’s monarchical movement. Because Canada joined Britain and other Allied Powers in the First World War from its beginning in 1914, the wartime atmosphere in the country provided both protection and inspiration for the Canadian CNL to offer military training for its members. While previous studies have attributed this initiative only to Sun Yat-sen’s emissary to Canada, Xia Zhongmin,86 in

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fact Hu Hanxian initiated the military training program after moving from Victoria to Edmonton, the provincial capital of Alberta, prior to Xia’s arrival in late 1915. By April 1915, Hu had established a Military Society (junshishe 军事社) in Edmonton that pledged to provide home defense for Canada if that became necessary, and to prepare its members for military services in Canadian armies in the war. But a local newspaper dismissed their qualifications due to their limited English. Because Hu had received training at a police academy in Guangdong Province and led a “dare-to-die corps” in the provincial revolution around 1911, he served as the instructor for the Military Society. It provided both military training and political indoctrination for its members, and also capitalized on their physical training for performances along with a Cantonese opera troupe in public events to offer entertainment to local communities and to raise funds.87 By August 1915, the CNL’s Military Society in Edmonton operated with thirteen staff members, including a director (zongli 总理), a supervisor (Jianxue 监学), an instructor, two secretaries, and others, as well as forty students in three platoons (pai 排). When Xia Zhongmin reached Edmonton on his fundraising tour across Canada in November 1915, he found that the local CNL had more than 240 members, who enthusiastically contributed to an anti-Yuan military fund. Xia and Hu together initiated a plan to organize an overseas Chinese voluntary army for direct engagement in the domestic war against Yuan’s imperial restoration.88 Through the CNL’s networks, its chapters in Calgary and Lethbridge in Alberta, Victoria and Vancouver in British Columbia, and Saskatoon in Saskatchewan, as well as Toronto and other Canadian cities formed similar military societies by 1916.89 In Lethbridge alone, the local CNL had more than one hundred members, and about forty of them received military training under the aegis of a “home defense” team for wartime Canada (see Figure 8). They “dressed in natty uniforms and were equipped with service rifles,” a local newspaper reported. Their leaders claimed that “they were preparing to fight for the allies if China declared war on Germany.” But the local police chief later considered their military training a “menace and stopped it.”90 In view of Yuan Shikai’s acceleration of the imperial restoration in late 1915, members of these Canadian military societies called for a return to China for direct participation in the anti-Yuan battles there. At a general meeting in December 1915, the Edmonton chapter of the CNL decided to organize its Military Society’s members into the Overseas Chinese Dare-

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F i g u re 8 . The Lethbridge Chinese Nationalist League Home Defense, 1916 (Courtesy of Special Collections and University Archives, University of Victoria). This group photo shows the members of the Chinese Nationalist League’s military school in Lethbridge, Alberta, which engaged in military training under the title of a “home defense” team in wartime Canada. Source: Special Collections and University Archives, University of Victoria, Canadian Scottish Regimental Museum Collection (SC337), accession no. 1990-009, file no. 24.35. Reprinted with permission.

to-Die Vanguard of Canada (Jia-shu Huaqiao ganshi xianfengdui 加属华 侨敢死先锋队) under Hu Hanxian’s leadership, and to dispatch them to China. The Edmonton chapter also sought approval of the trip from the CNL’s American Bureau in San Francisco.91 The movement quickly spread to the CNL’s other military societies in Canada. In his memoir from 1965, Hu Hanxian claimed that more than five hundred members from various cities signed up to join the homebound trip at their own expense or with funds from the CNL.92 However, an available document lists just one hundred registered members of the Overseas Chinese Dare-to-Die Vanguard of Canada from ten Canadian cities; fourteen more members from four of these cities were later added to the list.93 In the United States, the CNL’s American Bureau in San Francisco had also adopted a proposal from one of its leaders, Wu Hengguan 伍横贯, to organize the Overseas Chinese Military Research Society of America (Meizhou Huaqiao junshi yanjiushe 美洲华侨军事研究社) in early 1915. This society soon recruited students from party members and began to offer military training in Boise, Idaho, beginning on May 1, 1915. Although Feng Ziyou served as its nominal director (shezhang 社长), Wu was its chief instructor (jiaowuzhang 教务长). Its students numbered fifty-one by early 1916.94 The CNL’s American Bureau in San Francisco then resolved to form

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“overseas Chinese military teaching institutes” (Huaqiao junshi jiangxisuo 华侨军事讲习所) at its Pan-American Fraternal Conference being held in July−August 1915. Although the implementation of this resolution met both personnel and financial difficulties, the American Bureau succeeded in founding an aviation school in Redwood City near San Francisco and another in Chicago by 1916.95 Because Wu Hengguan had maintained secret contacts with the CNL’s Military Society in Edmonton, he and the leaders of the CNL chapters in Portland, Oregon, and in California organized the Anti-Yuan Army of America (Meizhou tao-Yuan-jun 美洲讨袁军) in March 1916. They petitioned Sun Yat-sen for his permission to travel to homeland battlefields as their Canadian counterparts had. But Sun instructed them to wait until his anti-Yuan forces gained a military foothold in the coastal areas of China.96 By that time, the final list of the Overseas Chinese Dare-to-Die Vanguard of Canada amounted to 117 members for the homebound trip, of whom at least forty-three were from Edmonton and thirty-one from Victoria. Its three representatives, including Hu Hanxian, reached Japan even before Edmonton’s CNL directly contacted the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Tokyo headquarters for permission in mid-February 1916. They personally petitioned Sun for permission to make the homebound trip on behalf of their anxious comrades from Canada.97 The unfavorable military situation in China forced Sun to delay their trip. It was not until early April 1916 that the registered overseas Chinese from Canada and the United States received Sun’s order to make the transpacific trip in three groups, and they would meet in Japan for further instructions.98 Lin Sen briefly delayed transferring Sun Yat-sen’s order to the Canadian CNL, perhaps to buy time for the Anti-Yuan Army of America to prepare itself. The Canadian CNL leaders, including Hu Hanxian in Japan, openly expressed frustration with this delay in a letter to Sun. Eventually, the members of the Overseas Chinese Dare-to-Die Vanguard of Canada were able to embark in late April 1915, and their American counterparts arrived in Yokohama by the next month. It was not until mid-May 1916 that they finally joined the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Northeast Army under Ju Zheng’s command in Shandong. Their military unit was then reorganized as the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment (Huaqiao yiyongjun 华侨义勇团).99 Hu Hanxian’s 1965 memoire claimed that the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment had more than five hundred members, including more than three

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hundred from Canada and the United States as well as over one hundred from Japan.100 A contemporary newspaper published an exaggerated report about the regiment, estimating that it was composed of approximately seven hundred members and an aviation squadron with four airplanes and more than eighty pilots based in Wei County of Shandong Province as of July 1916.101 The register of the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment lists only its commander, Xia Zhongmin, vice commander, Wu Hengguan, and eight other staff members, as well as eighty-three soldiers in three corps. At least seventy-three of its ninety-three officers and soldiers, or 78 percent, came directly from Canada.102 Xia also commanded an air squadron composed of three airplanes, two Chinese staff members, four Japanese instructors, and six Japanese machinists, as well as fourteen Chinese pilots by July 1916.103 At least five of these pilots, including Hu Hanxian, came directly from Canada, and the others were from the United States, Japan, and Southeast Asia.104 Xia Zhongmin later reported 108 members in the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment in mid-September 1916.105 As only one of the five pilots from Canada, Mao Shaohan 马少汉, is also listed as a soldier on the register of the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment,106 the Canadian members numbered at least 77, accounting for 71 percent of the regiment’s 108 officers and soldiers. In addition to its air squadron, the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment acquired dozens of machine guns, rifles, and pistols from Canada, and its military equipment was superior to that of the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Northeast Army under Ju Zheng’s command. Thus, the volunteer regiment was ranked at the same level as a division under the direct command of Ju’s headquarters for the dual purpose of future expansion and military propaganda. The arrival of the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment, together with its air squadron, greatly boosted the spirits of the antiYuan revolutionary forces. Both Chinese and foreign newspapers reported that Sun Yat-sen’s army had received financial and personnel support from overseas Chinese and claimed that its campaigns would enjoy air cover from warplanes. Soon, the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment would participate in a surprise attack on the provincial capital, Jinan.107 This battle happened on the evening of May 15, 1916. In preparation for the campaign, three airplanes from the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment conducted a reconnaissance and spread propaganda flyers over the

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city. According to the original plan, one regiment of the Northeast Army would launch a frontal attack on the city as the main force, and a company of guards for Yuan’s governor in Jinan had secretly agreed to offer their support. The Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment sent one hundred members into the city in Japanese railcars disguised as merchants, tourists, and Japanese railroad workers. They were then supposed to hide in a Japanese hotel and other locations, and to carry out a surprise raid on the governor’s office and police bureau at the scheduled time. However, a Japanese informant reported the plan to Yuan’s army, and Jinan’s military police corps suddenly replaced the governor’s guards one hour before the Northeast Army’s regiment would launch its attack, resulting in heavy casualties to the regiment in a crossfire with enemy troops. Following a warning from the collaborative commander of the governor’s guards, the volunteer regiment members hastily retreated, but in the process they lost all of their pistols, grenades, and other weapons as well as a transceiver.108 The Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Northeast Army seized Wei County east of Jinan on May 23, 1916, enabling the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment, including its air squadron, to establish a base there and join in the defense of the county seat. The regiment helped defeat a sneak attack on the city by Yuan’s troops in early June, and captured several enemy agents. While the battles in Shandong continued, another group of sixty overseas Chinese gathered in Yokohama. This group probably included more than thirty late-coming members of the Dare-to-Die Vanguard of Canada, who either joined the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment in the Shandong battlefield or went to Shanghai as a special corps.109 According to Sun Yatsen’s announcement to all chapters of the Chinese Revolutionary Party in December 1916, a small number of overseas Chinese from Canada and the United States also joined their counterparts from Southeast Asia in the antiYuan battles in Guangdong Province.110 When Sun Yat-sen received reports about the Dare-to-Die Vanguard of Canada in early 1916,111 he instructed his partisans in Southeast Asia to organize anti-Yuan dare-to-die volunteers, to provide them with military training, and to dispatch them to Japan for further actions in China. In response, the CNL’s Tronoh (Teronoh) chapter in the British colony of Malaya formed the Valiant Corps (Tiexuetuan 铁血团), which was soon renamed the Carrying-on Corps (Jihoutuan 继后团), and it sent more than ten volunteers for the anti-Yuan battles in Guangdong and Guangxi

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Provinces.112 In total, more than one hundred overseas Chinese from Southeast Asia went to Guangdong in early 1916. They joined in a series of fierce battles, such as the attack on the warship Zhaohe 肇和舰 in the port of Huangpu 黄埔 on February 12, 1916, and on the cities of Shantou 汕头 and Jiangmen 江门, as well as other places in Guangdong Province. Some of them sacrificed their lives on the battlefields.113 On May 1, 1916, Sun Yat-sen returned from Japan to Shanghai to directly lead the domestic campaigns against Yuan Shikai. The overseas Chinese from both North America and Southeast Asia continued their battles against Yuan’s armies in Shandong, Shanghai, and Guangdong. But on June 6, 1916, Yuan suddenly died in frustration after many provinces, especially the southwestern ones under the influence of Liang Qichao and his Progressive Party, had declared independence. Because Sun’s Chinese Revolutionary Party had limited political influence or military force inside China, he merely urged Yuan’s successor, President Li Yuanhong 黎元洪 (1864−1928), to restore the Provisional Constitution of 1912 and the KMTdominated parliament of 1913. Sun also ordered the armies of the Chinese Revolutionary Party, including Ju Zheng’s Northeast Army in Shandong, to cease fighting and seek peaceful solutions. Nonetheless, the Guangdongbased overseas Chinese forces from Southeast Asia still tried to follow the precedent of the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment from North America, turn themselves into the Nanyang Corps (Nanyang shituan 南洋师团), and become affiliated with Ju’s Northeast Army in July 1916.114 Sun Yat-sen recalled the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment from Shandong to Shanghai on September 30, 1916, and dissolved it soon after. In his speech to its members, he praised their brave fight against Yuan’s monarchist dream and for the restoration of the Republic of China. He also sent a letter to all chapters of the Chinese Revolutionary Party on December 10, 1916, praising the overseas Chinese volunteers from both North America and Southeast Asia for their self-sacrifice in the antimonarchist movement and for risking their lives for naught but 300 yuan each from the Northeast Army or 30 yuan in Guangdong Province. In this letter, Sun explained the need to dismiss the volunteers because his plan for the party was not to strive for power using military force, but to restore the republic and its 1912 Provisional Constitution and the KMT-dominated parliament of 1913.115 Still, many of the overseas Chinese from North America would soon return to military services in Sun’s battles against the Beijing government under

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Yuan Shikai’s military successors. Among those from Canada, Ma Xiang 马湘 (1889−1973) and Huang Huilong 黄惠龙 (1878−1940) would become two of his chief bodyguards. Hu Hanxian would return to Canada in early 1918 and would continue his military activities for the Canadian CNL, including the establishment of its flying school in Saskatoon.116 The antimonarchical movement did not end with Yuan’s death in mid1916. One of its political repercussions in the Beijing government soon led the CNL in Canada into an unprecedented violent clash and long legal battle with Liu Zikui, a former leader of Kang Youwei’s CERA, and with the Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria, before Kang joined the second monarchist movement in Republican China in late 1917. This clash exemplified the continuity of political struggles between Sun’s and Kang’s factions both in China and in North American Chinatowns from the late Qing to the early Republican period, although in this case the Canadian CKT switched from being an ally of Sun into a supporter of Kang’s followers.117 When the Beijing government followed Sun Yat-sen’s proposal to restore the KMT-dominated 1913 parliament in late July 1916, the Chinese Benevolent Association in Vancouver immediately sent a congratulatory telegram because its incumbent president, Zeng Shiquan, was the main leader of the local chapter of the CNL, or the KMT-related overseas organization. This telegram also celebrated the reenactment of the Provisional Constitution of 1912 by the parliament, as Sun had demanded.118 Because Yuan Shikai had instituted the worship of heaven and Confucius as a major step toward his imperial restoration, the KMT-dominated parliament in Beijing had a heated debate over a motion to promote religious freedom instead of the Confucian religion from the beginning of its session in early September 1916. Meanwhile, Kang Youwei and his followers had been pushing the parliament to establish Confucianism as the state religion (guojiao 国教), and he quickly condemned the motion through a long letter to the parliament.119 Kang had first developed the idea of making Confucianism the state religion of China while in Victoria before he founded CERA there on July 20, 1899. He also initiated the annual worship of Confucius in the local Chinatown around the same time.120 As a former leader of the local CERA chapter, Liu Zikui became the new president of the Victoria CCBA on September 5, 1916,121 and not surprisingly, he led the local protest against the anti-Confucianism motion in the Beijing parliament. Lin Lirong 林立荣, a

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leader of the Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria and the CCBA’s vice president, was another leading figure in the local protest.122 Liu held a meeting with CCBA’s twenty leaders on September 20, 1916, at which they resolved to send a protest telegram to Beijing. He and Lin cosigned the telegram to Prime Minister Duan Qirui 段祺瑞 (1865−1936), one of Yuan Shikai’s military successors in the Beijing government. Their telegram denounced the motion by the Beijing parliament to abolish the Confucian religion, and demanded the legislature’s dissolution for a new election of other “virtuous and talented people.” It was sent to the Vancouver CKT lodge’s newspaper, Da-Han gongbao, for publication, and to the Chinese consulate in Vancouver to be transferred to Duan’s cabinet.123 The CCBA then called for the celebration of the imminent birthday of Confucius, and celebrations were held in the two Chinese schools in Victoria and Vancouver, respectively. At the ceremony of the Patriotic School in Vancouver, which began as a reformist institution in 1903, speakers included Lin Lihuang and other former leaders of CERA as well as the incumbent leaders of the Chinese Reform Party.124 Because the telegram from Liu Zikui and Lin Lirong called for the dissolution of the KMT-dominated Beijing parliament, the Victoria CNL leaders immediately launched counterattacks by distributing protest flyers. The CNL newspaper in Victoria, Xin Minguo bao, repeatedly accused Liu and Lin of sending out the telegram without discussion within the CCBA and demanded their clarification. In response, the Victoria CCBA leaders requested that the consulate in Vancouver send out a revised telegram without the demand for the dissolution of the parliament. They also scheduled a meeting to discuss the issue on the evening of October 8, 1916.125 When CCBA leaders had gathered on the upper floor of the Overseas Chinese Public School (Huaqiao gongli xuexiao 华侨公立学校) at the appointed time, a local CNL member, He Tiehun 何铁魂, led several fellows into the meeting room carrying clubs and other weapons. They provoked quarrels and physical fights with President Liu, Vice President Lin, and other leaders of the CCBA, smashed windows and furniture in the meeting room, and injured their opponents. Many of the nearly four hundred local Chinese who crowded the school courtyard and the street also engaged in the fray. When police arrived to stop the fight, Liu, Lin, and six other leaders of the CCBA had already suffered minor to severe wounds. The police arrested He Tiehun and seven of his followers, and released them on

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bonds ranging from $500 to $1,000 (CAD). The next day, both sides pressed charges against each other in the local police court.126 The eight members of the local CNL chapter were convicted by the police court and sent to the county court in Victoria for a further trial by the end of 1916. Its leaders—including Gao Yunshan 高云山, Li Zijing 李子敬, and Li Gongwu 李公武—were also arrested, released on bond, and put on trial. Gao in turn charged CCBA’s president, Liu Zikui, and his associates with causing the trouble, making them defendants in the court as well.127 Their mutual accusations led to long legal battles from the local police court to the county court and further to an assize court in Victoria until late 1917.128 The CNL in Canada mobilized its chapters to provide political support and financial assistance for the Victoria members and leaders, who even requested help from Sun Yat-sen himself.129 While some of the CNL leaders and members were later released by the county court, four of them were found guilty of assault and fined $75 (CAD) or jailed for three months. Li Gongwu and three others were convicted by the assize court and imprisoned in late 1917. Their charge against the CCBA leaders, particularly Liu Zikui and Lin Lirong, was dismissed by a court in March 1917.130 Interestingly, in the debate over the Confucian religion, the KMT under Sun Yatsen’s influence defeated Kang Youwei’s faction in the Beijing parliament by mid-1917,131 while in Canada around the same time, Sun’s adherents resorted to violence in their political struggles, leading to a succession of legal failures in the Canadian courts by the Victoria CNL chapter. Because the Victoria CCBA had twice attempted to send telegrams against the KMT-dominated parliament to the Beijing government through its consulate in Vancouver, the leader of the CNL in Vancouver, Zeng Shiquan, used his position as the president of the Chinese Benevolent Association in the city to demand an explanation from Consul Lin Shiyuan 林轼垣 in late October 1916. Although Consul Lin stated that his office twice declined requests from the Victoria CCBA to send its telegrams to Beijing, he still faced Zeng’s charge of committing “ten crimes.” Zeng further demanded Lin’s dismissal in a telegram from the Vancouver Chinese Benevolent Association to the Beijing government. Zeng’s abuse of power was immediately condemned by the Chinese Reform Party leaders within the community organization, and he was even assaulted from behind on the street on March 3, 1917. In the subsequent investigation of Consul Lin Shiyuan by the consul general from Ottawa, the Chinese Reform Party in

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Vancouver, together with the Republican Party and the CKT in the city, all supported Lin and thus ensured that his tenure lasted until the new consul, Wang Linge 王麟阁, arrived in December 1917. By then, Zeng had lost his leadership position in the Vancouver Chinese Benevolent Association election on July 1, 1917.132 The KMT-dominated parliament in Beijing also tried to use its alliance with Yuan Shikai’s ineffectual successor, President Li Yuanhong, to rein in Prime Minister Duan Qirui’s military faction in the Beijing government, but Duan received political support from Liang Qichao, Tang Hualong, and their partisan factions. In particular, President Li and the KMT under Sun Yat-sen’s influence strongly opposed the call of Duan, Liang, and Tang for China’s entry in the First World War in support of the Allied powers. This power struggle led to Duan’s dismissal by President Li on May 23, 1917. The political chaos created an opportunity for senior general Zhang Xun 张勋 (1854−1923) to lead his army into Beijing, force the dissolution of the parliament by President Li, and restore the last emperor of the Qing dynasty, the former Xuantong Emperor, or Puyi 溥仪, on July 1, 1917.133 Because Kang Youwei had not abandoned his former platform for a constitutional monarchy, he supported this effort, but he soon lost influence over the short-lived imperial restoration, and his reactionary behavior faced open denouncement from Liang Qichao.134 Still, Liang Qichao and Tang Hualong (see Figure 9) continued to support Duan, who quickly used his military forces to end the imperial restoration farce only twelve days after it had begun. Thereafter, Duan resumed his power as prime minister in the Beijing government, and another former protégé of Yuan Shikai, General Feng Guozhang 冯国璋 (1859−1919), became the new president. Under the dominance of these two military strongmen, the Beijing government declared war on Germany on August 14, 1917, and briefly led China into the Great War. Meanwhile, Kang received asylum from the American embassy in Beijing, staying there until February 3, 1918, and became a political conservative thereafter.135 Nonetheless, his preparation for a comeback in Beijing politics through the imperial restoration of 1917 probably led to the short-lived revitalization of his Chinese Reform Party in Canada before its further decline. While Kang Youwei called for the dissolution of the KMT-dominated parliament and engaged in the restoration of Puyi’s emperorship in June− July 1917, the Chinese Reform Party in Canada held its general conference

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for fraternal comradeship (kengqin dahui 恳亲大会) in Vancouver on June 5. The conference gathered leaders of the Chinese Reform Party chapters from different provinces of Canada and from its headquarters in New York. The Canadian CKT, the Republican Party, and other community organizations in Victoria and Vancouver also dispatched representatives to attend the meeting.136 However, the Chinese Reform Party in Canada was doomed to decline because it lost integration in its leadership and even the ability to collect membership fees.137 Kang’s notoriety from the short-lived imperial restoration in July 1917 dealt it another fatal blow. In the second antimonarchical movement, the open clash with Kang by Liang Qichao, Tang Hualong, and other former constitutionalist reformers of the late Qing period further caused their political and organizational disintegration. In contrast, the CKT’s networks would move toward unity in North American Chinatowns and the Pacific Rim. Sun Yat-sen’s partisan organization would achieve further global expansion, though it would suffer a severe setback in Canada after its involvement in the political assassination of Tang Hualong in Victoria in 1918.

Political Division and Partisan Dynamics in China and the Transpacific Chinese Diaspora After Sun Yat-sen’s return from Japan to China in May 1916, he witnessed the increasing aggravation of domestic politics up to the occurrence of the second imperial restoration by July 1917. As a result, China fell into the period of warlords—the military leaders of personalized armies who dominated civilian governments and caused political division from 1916 to 1928. Sun would join the southwestern faction of warlords in a separate government in Canton and its civil war against the Beijing government under northern warlords in 1918,138 but he also pursued a plan to build a strong party. His party would become an increasingly dominant force in China and the Chinese diaspora, largely because of its higher level of institutionalization under a central leadership and more successful expansion through recruitment and radical indoctrination of its members than its competitors. Such institutional and ideological successes, however, also led the CNL toward centralization of power and would spur its members toward political violence, as exemplified by their assassination of Huang Yuanyong in San

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Francisco in December 1915 and their attack on the Victoria CCBA in October 1916. By early 1917, Sun Yat-sen was ready to abandon the small and secret Chinese Revolutionary Party and to reorganize it as the Chinese Nationalist Party (Zhongguo guomindang 中国国民党), which would still be referred to as KMT in English-language publications.139 As one of Sun’s followers from the beginning of the Revolutionary Alliance in 1905, Chen Shuren had brought in Li Bohai as its first member from Canada, and in late 1916, Chen received an invitation from the Canadian CNL to serve as the chief editor of its organ in Victoria, Xin Minguo chenbao 新民国晨报 [New Republic morning daily].140 Chen’s reorganization of the Canadian CNL would turn it further into “a group of adventurers and henchmen” akin to the Chinese Revolutionary Party, foreshadowing Sun’s efforts to reorganize the KMT under his central leadership and personal control.141 The CNL’s American Bureau and the succeeding General Bureau of the Americas in San Francisco had already begun to build Sun’s personal cult and place the party chapters of both the United States and Canada under central control. As acting director of the CNL’s American Bureau in October 1914, Feng Ziyou boasted that the party had achieved development and consolidation because of its members’ “worship of the party leader” (chongbai dangkui 崇拜党魁), Sun Yat-sen.142 The General Bureau of the Americas under Lin Sen’s leadership further brought the party’s Canadian chapters under its tight control after he and Feng Ziyou had thwarted Xia Zhongmin’s attempt to put them into direct contact with the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Tokyo headquarters at the end of 1915, as mentioned above. Lin would later lead the motion to honor Sun Yat-sen with the posthumous title, the Father of Republican China, in 1939, which would be approved the following year by the Nationalist Government of China.143 The CNL chapter in Victoria received exceptional treatment, however, owing to its special status as the long-established KMT’s liaison office according to a certificate issued by Lin’s office on June 29, 1916. After Lin left the United States for China in July of that year, the General Bureau of the Americas in San Francisco issued a new set of rules for its chapters, by which it revoked the title of the KMT’s liaison office in Victoria and demoted it to a regular chapter. This enraged the Victoria leaders, who responded with an open letter on August 18, denouncing this decision. Their letter condemned the General Bureau of the Americas as a dictatorial authority whose rules

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went so far as to command all chapters to follow its format in letterheads and other documents, which could be printed only by its office in San Francisco. These chapters were also stripped of their authority to raise funds on behalf of the CNL unless they received permission from the General Bureau of the Americas.144 Under Chen Shuren’s leadership, the Canadian CNL would achieve relative independence and integration, but Chen also faced similar internal dissension from the beginning. After Chen arrived in Vancouver on August 15, 1916,145 he became chairperson of the CNL chapter there in February 1917. In a report to Sun Yatsen, Chen claimed that his leadership had ensured absolute allegiance from more than forty Canadian chapters and had also unified them because his office had replaced the General Bureau of the Americas in San Francisco for matters such as requesting and issuing badges and appointment documents for these chapters. Thus, he proposed to establish the CNL’s Canadian General Bureau (Jianada zongzhibu 加拿大总支部) in Vancouver. His report also stressed his initial achievements in Canada. In particular, he claimed to have indoctrinated CNL’s members with the belief that their party was the major re-creator of Republican China after two imperial restorations, although the foregoing discussion reveals that Sun’s party had limited influence on the first antimonarchical movement and almost no impact on the second. Lastly and most importantly, Chen promoted Sun as “the greatest man of all times and in the whole world” (gujin Zhongwai diyi weiren 古今 中外第一伟人) in the minds of all members.146 Another report from the Vancouver chapter two months later highlighted Chen’s leadership role in expanding CNL’s membership in the city. According to the report, before he became chairperson, the local CNL had recruited 301 members over ten months between April 1, 1916, and February 10, 1917, but two-thirds of them were readmitted former members. After he became chairperson, it recruited 281 members in just two months and ten days between February 11 and April 20, 1917, only seven of whom were readmitted former members. This brought the total membership to 582.147 Chen soon founded the CNL’s Canadian General Bureau in Vancouver and became its director in mid-1917. At that time, it claimed to have over eight thousand members in more than forty chapters. With this success, the General Bureau issued a call for a nationwide fraternal conference of the Canadian CNL. This conference was held in Vancouver in August 1917, and one of its resolutions was to purchase land for the erection of the premises of

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the CNL’s Canadian General Bureau in Vancouver.148 Chen’s centralization of power at the expense of other CNL’s leaders in Canada was soon refuted in a public notice by Li Gongwu, the former editor of Xin Minguo chenbao, and would result in direct confrontation with Li’s associates in Victoria, especially Gao Yunshan, in the near future.149 More serious clashes happened between the CNL and the CKT in Canada. As a result of these conflicts, sixty-nine leaders and senior members of the Victoria-based Canadian CKT headquarters initiated a hard-core organization—the Dart Coon Club (Daquanshe 达权社, literally Power-accessing Society)—on November 12, 1915, and formally inaugurated it one year later. Its purpose was to rid the CKT of the former members of Sun’s Revolutionary Alliance and prevent the exodus of CKT members under their influence. The Dart Coon Club recruited its members solely from CKT’s membership and prohibited the admission of anyone from other parties, particularly the CNL.150 It developed at least two branches in Calgary and Vancouver by late 1918, and later founded dozens of other branches.151 The appearance of the Dart Coon Club during the CNL’s expansion in Canada evidently intensified their competition. In December 1916, the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco was finally able to register through the Beijing government’s Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce (Nongshangbu 农商部) as an overseas Chinese industrial and commercial organization.152 It then followed the precedent of CNL’s General Bureau of the Americas by holding its first fraternal conference for dozens of representatives from its lodges throughout the Americas and Hawai‘i on April 1–14, 1918. Both the Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria and its lodge in Vancouver dispatched delegates to the meeting, representing twenty-six lodges in Canada. The participants in the two-week conference vowed to unite their lodges as a whole and also passed a new constitution, including one resolution to replace the code names of its leaders with new titles. Another resolution was to establish a CKT subheadquarters (fenju 分局) in Canton, although this plan later failed. Delegates at this meeting further decided to improve the CKT’s internal communications and unification by issuing all of its notices through its four newspapers in San Francisco, New York, Honolulu, and Vancouver.153 Subsequently, the Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria strengthened its central control over its lodges in Canada and in turn affiliated itself with the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco. Starting in July 1918,

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the Canadian CKT headquarters required each lodge to collect from every new member a basic membership fee for itself, $2 (CAD) for the Canadian headquarters, and $1.5 (CAD) for the San Francisco headquarters. By December 1919, its lodges would number more than thirty in Canada, and their representatives would gather in Victoria for the first Canadian CKT fraternal conference.154 The Hong Fraternal Society’s orders in Honolulu, Australia, and South Africa followed the American CKT headquarters in San Francisco first by changing their organizational names to Zhonghua Minguo Gonghui or the Chinese Republican Association, then to the uniform title of CKT, and later to the political title of Zhigongdang 致公党 or Zhigong Party.155 While both the CKT and the CNL in North America were expanding and unifying their respective organizations in mutual competition, the Chinese Reform Party under the leadership of Kang Youwei became increasingly inactive in the aftermath of Kang’s political debacle in the second imperial restoration of early July 1917. The Republican Party in Canada, the Canadian branch of the Beijing-based Progressive Party, did not fare any better after receiving notice that Liang Qichao and Tang Hualong (see Figure 9), the two main leaders of the domestic party, were organizing their respective factions in the Beijing parliament into an elitist Constitutional Research Association (Xianzheng yanjiuhui 宪政研究会), in March 1917. This organization arose from the self-claimed attempt by Liang, Tang, and other politicians to abandon partisan struggles and promote constitutional research for parliamentary politics, but it became the famous Research Clique (Yanjiuxi 研究系) within the Progressive Party. Because the Research Clique supported Prime Minister Duan Qirui before and after the second imperial restoration in July 1917, Sun Yat-sen’s KMT increased its animosity toward Liang and Tang over the old resentment against their previous collaboration with Yuan Shikai’s presidency.156 In fact, both Liang and Tang played important roles in the antimonarchical movement against Yuan from late 1915 to early 1916, but they subsequently supported Prime Minister Duan through the Progressive Party’s struggle with Sun Yat-sen’s KMT in the restored parliament. Thus in an open letter of June 10, 1917, Sun Yat-sen condemned them as advisers to Yuan’s imperial restoration and even proposed the execution of Liang and Tang, together with Duan and other warlord successors to Yuan, as the only way to end the civil war between the Beijing government and the south-

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F i g u re 9 . Tang Hualong, a late Qing constitutionalist and national politician in the early Republic of China, 1918. Tang was the victim of a political assassination in Victoria on September 1, 1918. Source: Qishui Tang xiansheng yinianlu, 1919.

west faction of warlords. After aiding Duan’s military faction to restore the Republic of China through a quick crackdown of the second imperial restoration in early July 1917, Liang and Tang became, respectively, minister of finance (caizheng zongzhang 财政总长) and minister of internal affairs (neiwu zongzhang 内务总长) in the Beijing government. But their refusal to restore the KMT-dominated parliament, in line with Prime Minister Duan’s faction, and their plan to win the new parliamentary election for the Research Clique led to their showdown with Sun and his partisans.157 Sun Yat-sen pursued his plan to form a separate government in Canton through the support of KMT members in the old parliament and the southwestern faction of warlords. On August 27, 1917, more than 120 members of the former parliament, mostly KMT partisans, gathered in Canton for a special parliamentary meeting to form the Military Government of Republican China (Zhonghua minguo junzhengfu 中华民国军政府) under the pretext of protecting the Provisional Constitution of 1912. On September 1, Sun was named grand marshal (dayuanshuai 大元帅) of the Canton military government. The Beijing government promptly issued a presidential

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order to arrest Sun Yat-sen and his supporters, and in retaliation, Sun issued an order on October 3, 1917, promising rewards for the arrest or execution of Duan Qirui, other leaders of his warlord faction, and their associates in the Beijing government, including Liang Qichao and Tang Hualong.158 In the Beijing government, the Research Clique was soon pushed aside by Prime Minister Duan’s faction. Although Liang and Tang had helped Duan terminate the KMT-dominated parliament in late 1917, their Research Clique failed to control the Provisional Senate (Linshi canyiyuan 临 时参议院) and had little hope of winning the election in the new parliament in late 1918 because of electoral fraud by Duan’s powerful faction. Moreover, Duan’s civil war against the Canton government failed, and his clash with President Feng Guozhang’s warlord faction led to the collapse of his cabinet on November 15, 1917. As a result, Liang and Tang both left the Beijing government.159 Leaders of the Research Clique ultimately realized their mistake in pursuing constitutionalism through collaboration with the warlord factions, but their partisan struggles with the KMT caused mutual damage. In early 1918, Tang Hualong was entrusted by the leaders of the Research Clique to examine constitutional politics abroad through his foreign trip, and he subsequently published an article criticizing the warlords and seeking reconciliation with the KMT. But Tang had already become a deadly enemy of the KMT by twice serving as the speaker of the House of Commons (Zhongyiyuan yizhang 众议院议长), in 1913 and 1916, for the anti-KMT Progressive Party; and by serving as minister of education (jiaoyu zongzhang 教育总长) in Yuan Shikai’s regime in 1914 and minister of internal affairs in Duan Qirui’s cabinet in 1917.160 Tang Hualong, together with Lin Changmin 林长民 (1876−1925), another leader of the Research Clique, left China for Japan on March 25, 1918. By coincidence, Duan Qirui returned as the prime minister of the Beijing government at the same time with support from his military faction and from foreign powers, including a huge loan from the Japanese government under Prime Minister Terauchi Masatake 寺内正毅 (1852−1919). When Tang and Lin arrived in Tokyo on April 2, they received a warm welcome from former and incumbent Japanese politicians and paid a special visit to Prime Minister Terauchi two days later. Although Tang claimed that his visit aimed to examine Japanese politics and society in general, the KMT newspaper in Shanghai expressed suspicion that he was carrying out a secret

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mission for Prime Minister Duan’s government and was helping the Research Clique win over young students in Japan. It also raked over KMT’s charges that Tang had offered assistance to the dissolution of the parliaments in 1913 and 1917 in exchange for ministerial posts in the Beijing government in 1914 and 1917.161 Tang parted with Lin Changmin and left Japan for North America on June 5, 1918 because he had received additional travel funds from the Research Clique leaders along with the aid of a young secretary, Huo Dehui 霍 德辉 (aka Huo Jian 霍坚 or Huo Libai 霍俪白, 1887−1957). They crossed the Pacific on a Japanese ocean liner and reached Victoria on the morning of June 19, 1918. During a daylong sightseeing tour of the city, which included a visit to the legislative buildings of British Columbia, Tang was deeply impressed by the beauty of its urban landscape and idyllic scenery. After attending a welcome dinner hosted by Lee Mong Kow and other local Chinese community leaders, Tang delivered a short speech at the Overseas Chinese Public School, in which he commended overseas Chinese patriotism but also condemned partisan division and internal fights in their patriotic groups.162 Next, Tang Hualong entered the United States through Seattle and traveled to the East Coast. In Washington, DC, he successively met with Acting Secretary of State Frank Polk (1871−1943), Secretary of State Robert Lansing (1864−1928), Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long (1881−1958), and other American officials between July 22 and August 5, 1918. Tang then returned to Canada, traveling from Toronto and arriving back in Victoria on August 28, shortly before his scheduled transpacific trip back to China.163 On September 1, the CNL newspaper in Victoria, Xin Minguo chenbao, carried a short article suggesting that Tang might have visited the United States “for the purpose of attempting to borrow foreign loans privately for Tuan Chi Fui [Duan Qirui]” and that “[i]f so, Tang’s guilt is ten or a hundred times more in comparison with that of traitor Tuan’s civil war in China.”164 Tang was nonetheless warmly treated again by Lee Mong Kow and other local Chinese community leaders. His young secretary, Huo Dehui, even became enamored with Lee’s eldest daughter, Lee Yut Wah (Li Yuehua 李 月华, aka Ida Lee, 1894−1958), and had a quick betrothal with the “society belle,”165 who had demonstrated talent by co-compiling a CantoneseMandarin dictionary.166 Wang Linge, consul of the Beijing government in Vancouver, and Fu Lin 傅霖, a Chinese student from the University of

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M a p 3 . Victoria’s Chinatown, 1918

Washington in nearby Seattle, also came to send Tang off to Vancouver on the evening of September 1, 1918, a Sunday.167 On the same day, Wong Chong (see Figure 10), a thirty-two-year-old local barber and CNL member, tidied up his place of business, the Victoria Barber Shop on the southwestern corner of the intersection between Cormorant Street, which traversed Chinatown from east to west, and Government Street, which ran north to south (see Map 3).168 He dressed in a new Western-style suit and took an official portrait at the Lai Chen Photographic Studio (Lizhen yingxiangguan 丽真影相馆), which was operated by a local CNL leader, Zhao Bichi 赵壁池 (1889−1963). Around 5:00 p.m., he visited his countrymen from Xiangshan county at Man Chong & Co. (Wanchanghao 万昌号), where he had dinner and a beer, his favorite drink.169 On the same evening, Tang Hualong, together with his secretary, Huo Dehui, Consul Wang Linge, and the young student, Fu Lin, attended a banquet with dozens of local Chinese. They arrived for the banquet around 6:30 p.m. at the Doy Hing Low Restaurant (Xuqing jiulou 叙馨酒楼) at

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F i g u re 1 0 . Wong Chong, a member of the Chinese Nationalist League in Victoria, who assassinated Tang Hualong in the local Chinatown on September 1, 1918. Source: Shaonian Zhongguo chenbao, September 8, 1918.

534 Cormorant Street, which was west of the southern entrance of Fan Tan Alley in the heart of Victoria’s Chinatown. This alley was a narrow passageway that paralleled Government Street and linked Cormorant Street with Fisgard Street to the north (see Map 3). After the banquet ended around 8:00 p.m., most attendees accompanied Tang on a leisurely walk to the Chinese Club, Shishixuan 适适轩 [Cozy studio], at 543 Fisgard Street. They turned from Cormorant Street northward onto Government Street, walked across one block, and then turned westward onto Fisgard Street. Tang and a few local Chinese were walking at the front of the procession when he suddenly came face to face with Wong Chong near the northern entrance of Fan Tan Alley.170 Wong had first waited for Tang Hualong in front of the Doy Hing Low Restaurant, but he took no action because Tang was surrounded by too many people after the banquet. So he dashed through Fan Tan Alley to wait for his victim at its northern entrance. When Tang walked by with his companions in front a procession of about forty people, Wong jumped onto

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Fisgard Street just in front of them. He pulled out two 32-caliber revolvers and, without a word, shot at Tang. The first shot hit Tang on the right side of his abdomen. The victim half turned with his head falling forward and cried out in Chinese: “I am hurt!” Wong fired again, and this shot entered Tang’s mouth and penetrated his brain, causing his immediate death.171 Wong Chong then ran toward Tang’s secretary, Huo Dehui, who was only ten to fifteen yards behind. Wong fired at Huo with the two revolvers, but his shots missed. Seeing a shot pass by his head, Huo fainted from the fright and fell to the ground, bruising his arms and legs, but the assassin believed he had shot Huo dead. At that moment, a local merchant companion of Tang, Ma Ruitang 马瑞堂 (aka Ma Suey), shouted at Wong to stop shooting. The assassin fired at Ma but also missed. When Fu Lin, the Chinese student, ran forward and tried to help Tang, Wong was standing in the middle of Fisgard Street and shooting at the crowd with revolvers in both hands. Wong shot at Fu but again missed. At the back of the procession, Consul Wang immediately fled from Fisgard Street toward Government Street upon hearing the first shot. Wong Chong ran after his remaining target, Consul Wang, and started a hot pursuit southward along Government Street.172 Consul Wang, who was an old and heavy-set man with baldhead, ran at remarkable speed along the west side of Government Street with Wong in pursuit, shooting at him every a few feet. When Wang reached the southwestern corner of the intersection of Government and Cormorant streets, he made a desperate attempt to enter a shop with a light on, but the door was locked. Wang later realized that the locked shop was none other than Wong Chong’s Victoria Barber Shop at 1432 Government Street, and it would have been a “tiger cage” for him if he had gotten inside. With Wong still in hot pursuit, Consul Wang ran across Government Street at full speed, dodged a streetcar, and burst into the Westholme Hotel, which was diagonally opposite to the dangerous barbershop on Government Street.173 Wong Chong ran after Consul Wang across Government Street and kept firing at him, but his chase was interrupted by a running streetcar and two Canadian soldiers who tried to stop him. When Wong lost sight of Consul Wang in front of the Westholme Hotel, a number of people, including a police detective, were running toward him from Government and Cormorant streets. He then fled eastward to Pandora Avenue. At the intersection of Pandora Avenue and Broad Street, Wong saw a number of firefighters ahead

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of him. He turned around, placed the muzzle of the revolver in his right hand to his temple, and pulled the trigger, but the gun was empty. Quick as a flash, Wong raised the other revolver and fired at his left temple. He dropped to the pavement and died on the spot.174 The subsequent police investigation found that Wong had left a letter to Yan Liangbo (Ngon Long Bak 颜良伯), one of his business partners in the Victoria Barber Shop. It reads as follows:175 Dear Sir: I cannot bear to sit here and watch my country perish. I have determined to act with a blood and iron doctrine. My near friends used to think that the business was entirely my own, but I have told Wong Hoy that the business was a partnership. You also have a share. When you see this, do not be sorry on my account. Now you better stop gambling, save your money and go back to China, and should you see my father, mother, brothers and sisters and friends, comfort them for me. What I shall do you know nothing of, but you shall see. The seventh year of the Chinese Republic [1918], September 1 Chung [Chong] Shake hands

Moreover, after the assassination, an anonymous envelope was delivered to Consul Wang Linge’s room at the Empress Hotel. The envelope contained one copy of Xin Minguo chenbao, the CNL newspaper in Victoria from September 1, 1918, which included the aforementioned article about Tang’s fundraising tour for the Beijing government.176 This article immediately directed the police investigation of the assassination toward the CNL in Canada. The Canadian government in fact had already put the CNL under the surveillance of the chief press censor in January 1916 because of British concern about its possible links to German agents and Indian nationalists in North America. During the First World War, when the Beijing government under the control of Prime Minister Duan Qirui had joined the Allied powers, its diplomats in Ottawa and Vancouver tried to convince the Canadian government of the threat from the CNL to Canada and its wartime alliance with China. Yet surveillance of the CNL revealed no subversive activities or threat to wartime Canada or British imperial interests. Even after Tang

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Hualong’s assassination, censorship of the correspondence of the CNL in Canada yielded no evidence that could prove its involvement in the conspiracy. Around that time, Montreal lawyer C. H. Cahan (1861−1944) was appointed by Prime Minister Robert Borden (1854−1937) to investigate the Bolshevik threat from labor organizations, immigrant populations, and so on. His investigation soon expanded to include CNL’s involvement in the assassination of Tang Hualong.177 Cahan submitted a special report about the case to the Ministry of Justice on October 16, 1918, and to Prime Minister Borden six days later. His report claimed that the CNL both sanctioned and carried out the assassination with the “full approval” of its members. Although Cahan’s indictment of the CNL was based mainly on circumstantial evidence, such as the aforementioned article in Xin Minguo chenbao of September 1, 1918, his report recommended suppression of both the CNL and its newspaper in Victoria.178 By that time, Cahan had already persuaded Borden’s administration to issue two Privy Council orders against radical publications and organizations. The first, PC 2381, banned publications in twelve “enemy” languages, including Russian, Finnish, and Ukrainian, but did not immediately affect Xin Minguo chenbao because China and Canada remained allies in the Great War. The second order, PC 2384, outlawed thirteen radical organizations, including the CNL and its associate institutions. It made membership in any of these organizations a crime retroactive to the beginning of the war, and specified punishment for the crime as a fine of up to $5,000 (CAD) and a prison term of up to five years. This order also granted police the extensive right to raid, without a warrant, any premises owned or suspected to be owned or occupied by an unlawful association.179 As a result, Canadian police raided the premises of the CNL and its members, arrested its leaders, and prosecuted them throughout the country. In Toronto, police arrested forty-three leaders of this party and raided 145 residences of its members from early November to late December. Three party leaders were put on trial and received sentences of one year in prison each. In Vancouver, police arrested three members of the party and raided more than ten premises on the evening of December 13, 1918. In Victoria on the same evening, a joint force of city police, military police, and federal secret service agents raided the CNL premises, including the editorial office of Xin Minguo chenbao, and more than a dozen private residences. Chen Shuren, editor of Xin Minguo chenbao and director of CNL’s Canadian

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General Bureau in Vancouver, together with five other party leaders in the city, were later arrested and tried. They were released in mid-1919 following the repeal of PC 2384.180 The nationwide police raids, public trials, and secret investigations still failed to produce substantial evidence for Canadian law enforcement agencies to establish any explicit link between the CNL and Wong Chong’s assassination of Tang Hualong. In Victoria’s Chinatown, a secret Chinese operator No. 220, working for the Canadian Department of Immigration, claimed that a man called Poon Lei “was accidentally present at the meeting” plotting the assassination of Tang Hualong, but refused to give further details. This operator even claimed to have received the information “but lacks direct confirmation, that a sum of $20,000 was provided by the C.N. L [CNL] for the defense of the prospective murderer in case he was nabbed before he could commit suicide.” The money was to be awarded to the assassins or their families. According to the report, an assassin who committed suicide would “have a state burial in Canton … in the ‘Patriot’s hill.’”181 It is noteworthy that Wong Chong indeed received this posthumous honor from Sun Yat-sen’s KMT in the future. When the police raided Chen Shuren’s office, they found a confidential letter dated December 2, 1918, from a CNL leader in Toronto to Chen, indicating that the assassination was “the work of a few members of the League in Vancouver and Victoria.”182 These two pieces of circumstantial evidence from 1918 seem to suggest that Wong Chong probably assassinated Tang Hualong with the assistance of co-conspirators and approval from high-ranking CNL leaders. Nearly a half century later, in a 1967 book on the history of the Chinese in Canada, Li Donghai tried to solve some mysteries around the assassination. Li conducted interviews with Lian Qiaoshan 连樵山, a close friend of Wong Chong, and Lin Libin, a guest at the banquet for Tang Hualong before the assassination, as well as other old-timers in Victoria. Li’s account shows that Wong was a loyal and ardent member of the CNL as well as a passionate and impetuous person with an alcoholic addiction. Li concluded that Wong was influenced by the partisan struggles in China and that his assassination of Tang was a rash personal decision rather than being inspired by the aforementioned article in Xin Mnguo chenbao on September 1, 1918.183 Li Donghai’s book in fact omitted a key piece of oral history evidence that he had presented in a 1959 article on the assassination case. Oral history information from Li’s interviews with the aforementioned Lian, Lin, and

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others indicated that Wong Chong had plotted the assassination with his business partner in their barbershop, Yan Liangbo, because both of them were patriotic members of the CNL and inspired by the assassination of Huang Yuanyong in San Francisco in 1915. But Wong became the lone assassin by chance, because he had drawn lots with Yan. Yan thus deliberately went to Vancouver two days before Wong took action on September 1, 1918, for the purpose of avoiding the subsequent “troubles.”184 This early account contradicts Li’s 1967 version of the story in its revelation that Wong Chong not only had a co-conspirator but also imitated the 1915 assassination of another political enemy of Sun Yat-sen’s party. Because Wong Chong and Yan Liangbo plotted the conspiracy together, and the latter was in Vancouver during the assassination, it might be safe to assume that Yan would report this plan to Chen Shuren, the director of the CNL’s Canadian General Bureau based in the same city. In fact, one of Tang’s cousins went to Canada especially to investigate this assassination case and gathered information showing that Wong Chong indeed had been goaded by Chen. An acquaintance of Chen once asked him at a conference in Beijing in 1930 about the authenticity of this accusation, and Chen did not deny the charge.185 If Chen was the mastermind of Tang’s assassination, however, Wong Chong’s family evidently failed to receive any monetary award afterward because his friends still requested Sun Yat-sen to provide financial help for Wong’s family members later on.186 Sun Yat-sen was not a suspect in the assassination of Tang Hualong in either the official or private investigation of the case. But he had twice demanded Tang’s death on June 10 and October 3, 1917, and Chen Shuren had actively promoted Sun’s personal cult among CNL members after his arrival in Canada in August 1916, as the foregoing discussion has shown. Whether Sun issued a personal order to assassinate Tang Hualong in Victoria in 1918 or not, it is plausible to infer that his demands for Tang’s death could have prompted Chen Shuren, Wong Chong, Yan Liangbo, and other blindly loyal partisans to take action. Another unsolved issue in Tang Hualong’s assassination is the true purpose of his North American trip and the related motive of Wong Chong and his co-conspirators. In reports about Tang Hualong’s assassination, the CNL newspapers in Victoria and San Francisco claimed that the purpose of his mission was to negotiate an American loan for the Beijing government under Prime Minister Duan Qirui’s control. The newspaper propaganda

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influenced one local member of the CNL in Medicine Hat, Alberta, to send a letter on October 1918, repeating the claim that Tang’s secret mission was “to come over to the United States to negotiate a loan for China for five billion dollars, to prolong the war in China.”187 The blind belief in partisan propaganda among CNL members could be one direct cause of Tang’s assassination. However, newspaper reports from Canada in late 1918 presented other reasons for Tang Hualong’s North American trip. One report claimed that Tang had met the aforementioned American officials—Acting Secretary of State Polk, Secretary of State Lansing, and Assistant Secretary of State Long—to arrange the use of Chinese ports by the American navy to build ships for China.188 But Tang Hualong’s diary indicated that the Beijing government’s ambassador in Washington, DC, signed the relevant agreement during Tang’s visit there.189 In July 1919, nearly one year after Tang’s assassination, George Taylor, president of the Vancouver branch of the Aerial League, alleged that Tang had been assassinated because of their negotiation over a plan to manufacture airplanes for the Beijing government, but he did not provide any evidence for the allegation.190 It would have been illogical for the Beijing government to contact Taylor to build airplanes, or to negotiate with American officials over a loan or shipbuilding deal through Tang Hualong, a former minister without any actual portfolio or diplomatic experience. An examination by the author of the personal documents of Polk, Lansing, and Long in the National Archives at College Park, Maryland, and other American archives also failed to find any concrete information about their meetings with Tang in July and August 1918. Although the Beijing government’s ambassador to the United States around 1918, Gu Weijun 顾维钧 (aka V. K. Wellington Koo, 1888−1985), accompanied Tang in all meetings with American officials, he did not leave any relevant record.191 In any case, after Tang’s Research Clique suffered failures in its competition with Duan’s faction in the Beijing government’s Provisional Senate and in the national election for the new parliament from late 1917 to late 1918,192 it is hard to imagine that Tang would be willing to travel to North America to carry out Duan’s political scheme. Because Tang Hualong’s North American trip was funded by the Research Clique,193 it was more likely that his mission was to expand his political knowledge and foreign connections to enable a political comeback for himself and his partisan group. Indeed, in his farewell conversation with

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two fellow partisans, Tang deplored the previous failure of grafting Western political systems onto what he saw as a “wicked” Chinese administration, but he still expressed his confidence in the use of parliamentary institutions to establish a democratic government and solve national crises. He planned to make a personal investigation abroad and hoped to gain valuable knowledge from the overseas trip.194 But the successive alliances from 1912 to 1917 of Tang Hualong and his partisan groups with the military strongman Yuan Shikai and warlord Prime Minister Duan Qirui against Sun Yatsen’s partisan groups, including their termination of the KMT-dominated parliament in 1917, had already made it impossible to limit their political struggles with Sun’s party to rational discussion and debates within the parliamentary framework. In mid-October 1918, Feng Ziyou and other CNL leaders in the United States dispatched a telegram in the name of overseas Chinese representatives to the Beijing government. It condemned Tang Hualong for his collusion as the speaker of the House of Representatives with Yuan Shikai and Duan Qirui for twice causing the dissolution of the parliament, and for his service as minister of education and of internal affairs with the “illegitimate” Beijing government. The telegram even blamed Tang for millions of deaths in the anti-Yuan and two antimonarchical campaigns between 1903 and 1917. It further characterized Tang, Yuan, Duan, Liang Qichao, and their associates as heinous criminals, and extolled Wong Chong as a patriotic defender of the Republic of China, a righteous fighter for its constitution, and a self-sacrificing martyr for the lofty cause.195 Indeed, such partisan hatred— which prompted vilification of Tang’s North American tour, specifically the unfounded accusation of his negotiation of an American loan for the Beijing government under Duan Qirui’s control—was the true cause of his assassination. It was under the influence of such partisan propaganda that CNL members like Wong Chong and Yan Liangbo plotted the conspiracy against Tang. Further political divisions between the Beijing and Canton governments arose around their respective calls for memorial activities for Tang Hualong and Wong Chong, as reflected by the aforementioned telegram from Feng and other CNL leaders in response to Beijing’s call for funeral services for Tang in October 1918.196 On September 14, 1918, Tang Hualong’s secretary, Huo Dehui, Consul Wang Linge, members of Lee Mong Kow’s family, and Tang clansmen in Victoria as well as dozens of local Chinese merchants held

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a memorial ceremony in front of the legislative buildings of British Columbia. Huo then escorted the coffin to leave Victoria for China on a Japanese ocean liner.197 Tang’s coffin reached Yokohama on October 2, 1918, and a subsequent memorial ceremony in a Tokyo temple gathered hundreds of Japanese dignitaries, including members of the cabinet and parliament. Upon its arrival to mainland China in Tianjin on October 12, a series of mourning and memorial activities continued from there to Beijing, then to the capital of his home province of Hubei, and finally to his hometown of Huangzhou 黄 州 up to late December 1918. Tang’s funeral in Beijing on October 27 lasted from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., and more than five thousand people were in attendance. They included major military and civilian leaders of the Beijing government, representatives of military governors from a few provinces, and foreign diplomats. On November 17, when the rail car with Tang’s coffin reached the city of Hankou north of Wuchang, the provincial capital of Hubei, more than twenty thousand mourners awaited it. Services were held for Tang in Hankou and Wuchang on November 22. Finally, Tang’s coffin reached his hometown of Huangzhou, where about five thousand people, including local dignitaries, held a public funeral for him on November 29.198 Clearly, the assassination of Tang Hualong by Wong Chong, a CNL member, added antagonistic fuel to the ongoing civil war between the Beijing and Canton governments and intensified national divisions. This bloody incident also accelerated the decline of the Research Clique because many of its leaders, including Liang Qichao and his associates from the late Qing reformist movement, successively left the violent politics and partisan struggles of the warlord period for academics, journalism, and even Buddhist studies.199 In contrast with the fanfare of Tang Hualong’s series of funerals in 1918, Wong Chong’s coffin was quietly taken back to China by a member of the Victoria chapter of the CNL. Although Sun Yat-sen personally instructed that he should be buried in the same cemetery as the revolutionary martyr Shi Jianru 史坚如 (1879−1900) in Canton, Wong’s coffin had to be put in temporary storage at the Tung Wah Hospital (Donghua yiyuan 东华医院) in Hong Kong because of the continuing battles between warlords around Canton.200 In the ensuing years, Sun Yat-sen’s KMT received support from the Soviet Union and the newly formed Chinese Communist Party (Zhongguo gongchandang 中国共产党) for a more radical Nationalist Revolution

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from 1923 to 1927. At the dawn of the new revolutionary movement, on March 9, 1924, the KMT held a memorial service in Canton for Wong Chong and more than forty of its overseas Chinese martyrs. Lin Sen, Chen Shuren, and other main leaders of the KMT, together with all of its members in Canton, attended the ceremony. Notably, the KMT’s first party funeral was for Wong Chong. His coffin was covered with a party flag and placed inside a cement tome in the famous Yellow Flower Hill Cemetery of seventy-two revolutionary martyrs, who died for the Canton uprising in 1911.201 Wong Chong’s 1918 assassination of Tang Hualong in Victoria not only reflected a repercussion of struggles between reformers and revolutionaries from the late Qing period, but also presaged a more radical and violent revolution in the future. Its direct impact on the CNL in Canada around 1918 was to severely test the party’s institutional strength under the suppression of the Canadian government. After the CNL was outlawed by Privy Council Order No. 2384 in mid-November 1918, at the close of the war, its partisans continued their activities underground. The chapter in Victoria used the Lai Chen Photographic Studio as a secret meeting place for its members;202 the Toronto chapter used a hotel in the city and then a Chinese restaurant in Kingston for secret gatherings of its own members and party leaders from other cities in eastern Canada.203 Prior to the ban, the Canadian CNL had expanded to fifty-seven chapters and included more than six thousand members by September 1918. When the wartime proscription was repealed in April 1919, normal operations soon resumed and the CNL in Canada managed to restore its fifty-seven chapters by early 1920.204 Sun Yat-sen reorganized the Chinese Revolutionary Party as the resumed KMT on October 10, 1919, but the party abandoned his previous political fight for the Republic of China through the restoration of its Provisional Constitution of 1912 and the parliament of 1913. Instead, the reorganized KMT vowed to consolidate the Republic of China by following Sun’s revolutionary ideology, placing all military and political power under its partisan control, removing any obstacles with military force, and providing tutelage for people during a “revolution period” until the establishment of a constitutional government.205

Undoubtedly, it was for the purpose of promoting this radical strategy that

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Sun Yat-sen’s KMT held the late-coming party funeral for Wong Chong in 1924, which extolled Wong’s loyalty, bravery, and violent assassination of Tang Hualong as an admirable model to its partisans in the new Nationalist Revolution. This militant strategy eclipsed the republican culture of political argument and contestation in a multiparty parliament and other public spheres, 206 but it helped propel the hegemonic rise of the KMT in China and the CNL in the Chinese diaspora, especially in North American Chinatowns.

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C o nc l u si o n

Toward a Network Revolution in the Transpacific Chinese Diaspora

After Kang Youwei returned to China in December 1913, he had an artist carve a unique seal with twenty-seven Chinese characters that described his life experiences starting in 1898: “A leader of the Hundred Days’ Reform, an exile for sixteen years, and a traveler who took three global tours, visited four continents, crossed thirty-one countries, and roved 300,000 kilometers.”1 The “three global tours” referred to Kang’s three round trips across Asia, North America, and Europe, as well as two visits to Egypt, between 1899 and 1909.2 Similarly, Sun Yat-sen took four round trips across Asia, North America, and Europe between 1895 and 1911, plus his last refuge in Japan from 1913 to 1916,3 although Kang’s travels were notably more luxurious. Both Kang and Sun took these global tours as exiles from China, much like that described by the classic notion of victim diaspora, particularly that of the exiled Jews.4 However, during their exiles abroad, Kang and Sun, respectively, led political reforms and revolutionary movements that successively engulfed and transformed North American Chinatowns and the transpacific Chinese diaspora between 1898 and 1918. In particular, their reformist and revolutionary associations—such as CERA and the CNL, which either originated from or centered on North America—achieved widespread expansion from American and Canadian Chinatowns to the transpacific Chinese diaspora and even into the much smaller Chinese migrant settlements in Africa and Europe between 1898 and 1918. The development of both reformist and revolutionary parties in North America and the Pacific Rim benefited from the preexisting “dia219

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sporic networks” of families, companies, native place organizations, and sworn brotherhoods.5 These preexisting networks, however, spread sporadically to certain Chinatowns as specific groups of clansmen, business partners, local fellows, sworn brothers, and so on among migrants principally from Guangdong Province. They developed mainly through kinship, local fellowship, and other informal and interpersonal ties rather than formal organizational and political principles. Reformist and revolutionary parties capitalized on these interpersonal ties and related personal interests by building them into their institutional frameworks along with cross-cultural political ideologies for expansion throughout the transpacific Chinese diaspora. They rallied both the Cantonese in North America and other ethnic groups of migrants, such as those migrating from Fujian Province to Southeast Asia, into transpacific movements against American racism in 1905, for constitutional reform and the Republican Revolution in China up to 1911, and for the protection of the newly formed fragile republic thereafter. Although most of the large-scale reformist and revolutionary movements aimed to promote political change in China, their respective partisan organizations, especially CERA and the CNL, acted mainly in North America and the transpacific Chinese diaspora and thus directly transformed diasporic relations. Thus, both reform and revolution of the Chinese in North America, and their respective political associations, contributed to fundamental change in the internal and external relations of their ethnic communities in the United States, Canada, and the Pacific Rim—or what I call a “network revolution” in the transpacific Chinese diaspora, including its cross-cultural transition. Reform and revolution in the transpacific Chinese diaspora spread much wider and showed more cross-cultural hybridity than “modern China’s network revolution” or its “unprecedented level of relational institutionalization, expansion, diversification, and interaction in the sociopolitical landscape,” as my previous research revealed.6 Compared with the revolutionary change or the “intellectual and institutional transformation” during the New Policy Reform of the Qing government from 1901 to 1910,7 the network revolution in the transpacific Chinese diaspora involved ideological, institutional, and individual transition in transnational and crosscultural environments. Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen, and other diasporic politicians not only experienced personal intellectual transformation through transnational mobility

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and direct contacts with different cultures, mainly Western political ideologies and systems, but also led the cross-cultural transition of numerous migrant participants in their respective movements. Such “cross-cultural conversion” happened through “the process of syncretism that blended indigenous and foreign cultural traditions” into hybrid ideas and institutions, rather than “a rejection of the old in favor of a new system of values,” as premodern world history had already testified.8 The cross-cultural hybridity found expression especially in the political platforms of reformist and revolutionary associations. Under Kang Youwei’s leadership, CERA developed by combining Western principles such as the political party and joint-stock company with traditional Chinese kinship, local fellowship, teacher-student bonds, and other interpersonal relations. From the beginning, CERA effectively fused patriotic reformism with the personal and political interests of its migrant participants, such as their demand for antiracism protections, in its platform for the protection of the reformist Guangxu Emperor as well as the Chinese nation and “race.” It further called for a constitutional monarchy in late Qing China thereafter, not to limit monarchical power, as happened in European history,9 but to further its mission to protect the Guangxu Emperor while promoting political reforms for national salvation and defense of overseas Chinese from racial discrimination. Although CELRA’s feminist movement demanded constitutional reform for women’s rights in education and politics, it avoided direct challenge to traditional family patriarchy and served a largely political purpose for CERA’s male leaders. Western republican tradition stresses political liberty and its institutional requirement, or representative government, for “freedom as nondomination” of citizens by others.10 In contrast, Sun Yat-sen launched the Revive China Society in 1894 and the Revolutionary Alliance in 1905 with the pledge of excluding the ruling Manchu minority of Qing China and restoring Han Chinese rule or dominance in a new republic. The success of Sun’s Revolutionary Alliance in North American Chinatowns by 1911 relied largely on the merger of its pro-Han republicanism with the anti-Manchu ethnic nationalism of the CKT. As the Republic of China came under the control of Yuan Shikai and his military successors from 1913, Sun’s continuous struggle for the Republican Revolution aimed primarily to restore the KMT-dominated parliament until he turned to the fight for a KMT-

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dominated party-state around 1918, especially in the subsequent Nationalist Revolution of 1923 to 1927. The reformist and revolutionary parties were able to develop beyond the Cantonese-dominated Chinatowns in North America and spread to other overseas Chinese communities in the Pacific Rim with migrants from Guangdong or other provinces of China because the common bond of cross-cultural political ideologies went far beyond personal concerns and group interests of local or provincial fellows. Similarly, the increasingly formalized institutional structures of these parties enabled their expansion and sustainability above interpersonal relations, such as local and provincial fellowship. In Victoria in 1899, CERA’s first constitution written by Kang Youwei specified formal leadership from its chapters up to regional and national headquarters and finally to general headquarters, plus the importance of their mutual communications through mail and newspapers. Its second constitution of 1905 and its third one of 1907 tried to expand the power structure of the general headquarters and establish more formal membership.11 Such institutional rules and its platform for patriotic reformism enabled CERA to develop beyond the limit of personal, local, and other informal ties among the predominantly Cantonese migrants in North America. It spread to more than two hundred Chinese communities in the Americas, Asia, Australia, and Africa, including approximately 171 Chinatowns in Canada and the continental United States by 1908. At least nineteen CERA chapters appeared in Southeast Asia, where the largest number of overseas Chinese were concentrated, most of whom came from Fujian Province. CERA also developed two chapters in Africa, although it seemed to have failed to expand into Europe.12 Sun Yat-sen established the Chinese Revolutionary Party in Japan in July 1914, and its constitution not only allowed its overseas chapters to continue using CNL as their name, but also specified formal leadership, membership, and organizational hierarchy from its headquarters to zhihui or bureaus down to fenhui or chapters.13 CNL developed more than seventy chapters and liaison offices on the American mainland in late 1914 and fifty-five chapters in Canada by September 1918. It also formed the General Bureau of the Americas in San Francisco in 1916 and the Canadian General Bureau in Vancouver in 1917, although the Chinese Revolutionary Party originally did not have any plan for this level of agencies.14 From 1914 to 1916, the CNL

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also developed forty-three overseas bureaus and sixty-three chapters in other regions of the world, principally Southeast Asia, although most of them remained under the direct control of the Chinese Revolutionary Party.15 Before this party stopped operation in July 1916 due to the restoration of the KMT-dominated parliament, Sun granted the CNL’s General Bureau of the Americas in San Francisco supervisorial power over the party’s chapters in Hawai‘i, Australia, Liverpool, South Africa, and Yokohama. A Fujian native, Lin Sen, was a major leader of this expansion, embodying CNL’s reach and institutional influence far beyond the Cantonese-dominated North American Chinatowns.16 The institutional development and transnational expansion of CERA and the CNL among the increasingly diverse overseas Chinese communities were typical expressions of the network revolution across the transpacific Chinese diaspora between 1898 and 1918. The network revolution led by these political associations in North America and the Pacific Rim in this period has been a key link to this book’s discussion of the historical origins, interrelations, and influence of the transpacific reform and revolution of the Chinese in the United States and Canada. It also sheds new light on the revolutionary change in the individual, institutional, and ideological relations of the Chinese in North America with respect to homeland politics, hostland cultures, and their coethnic communities across the Pacific Rim and even beyond. Scholarly studies of the origins of reform and revolution of the Chinese in North America and the transpacific world have tended to stress the political agitation and leadership of Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen, and other elite politicians, rather than migrants from China and their own interests and initiatives. Sun’s political activities and thoughts have been thoroughly scrutinized in previous research on the origins of the modern Chinese political revolution.17 However, the broader network revolution that spread from North American Chinatowns to the transpacific Chinese diaspora undoubtedly started from Kang’s personal contacts, ideological exchange, and institutional interactions with the Chinese in Canada and the United States for the initiation of a reform of both China and Chinatowns as well as CERA’s transnational expansion starting in 1899. Notably, Sun Yat-sen’s early organization of an anti-Qing revolution through the development of the Revive China Society and his mobilization of the Chinese Freemasons and Christians in North America largely failed

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during his trips across the continental United States in 1896 and Canada in 1897, and in his second North American tour in 1904. Although Sun took over the reformist mission to reorganize and mobilize the American CKT starting in 1904, his attempt to do so with radical republicanism and landequality ideas remained fruitless until his third visit to the United States from late 1909 to early 1910. Prior to the 1911 Revolution in China, Sun’s success in fundraising activities and the prevalence of the Revolutionary Alliance in Canadian and American Chinatowns can be credited in large part to Feng Ziyou’s personal interactions with the leaders of the Canadian and American CKTs and his mobilization of the secret society with its own anti-Qing slogan. Thereafter, the CNL’s development in the United States benefited from Sun’s revolutionary strategy against Yuan Shikai’s dictatorial regime in Beijing along with broad nationalist mobilization among North American Chinatowns. The competition between reformers and revolutionaries in North American Chinatowns and the transpacific Chinese diaspora has long attracted scholarly attention, especially regarding their ideological debates spurred by the media war over China’s option for a constitutional monarchy or a republican polity. In this study, network analysis of the interactions between the two camps confirms their political split and struggles not only along partisan and ideological lines, but also at the familial and personal level, such as the political breakup in three leading reformist families on both sides of the Pacific led by Feng Ziyou and two radical youths from Canada, Li Bohai and Ye Qiumao. As defectors from reformist families, their crucial contribution to the rise of the Revolutionary Alliance in American and Canadian Chinatowns underlines the connections and influences from reformers to revolutionaries. The overseas Chinese political reforms under Kang Youwei’s leadership influenced Sun Yat-sen’s late-coming revolutionary successes in North American Chinatowns not only through personnel training of young radicals like Feng Ziyou but also through institutional initiation to mobilize and reorganize the CKT. Sun’s takeover of this reformist mission, Feng’s continual mobilization of the CKT from inside, and Feng’s use of the newly formed Revolutionary Alliance chapter in Vancouver to grab the local Chinese Benevolent Association from reformers are all instances of institutional legacies passed from reformers to revolutionaries. In particular, the CKT’s initial engagement in political reforms under Kang’s influence and its sub-

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sequent support of the anti-Qing revolution under Sun’s leadership typified institutional links between the two political movements. Previous studies of the late Qing constitutionalists and the 1911 Revolution by Zhang Pengyuan, Joseph W. Esherick, Edward J. Rhoads, and other scholars have corrected early scholarship about the ongoing rivalry between reformers and revolutionaries. They have instead demonstrated how the leaders of constitutional reforms clashed with the Qing court and eventually joined the Republican Revolution after the Wuchang uprising broke out on October 10, 1911.18 But the foregoing analysis of Kang Youwei’s CERA and Sun Yat-sen’s Revolutionary Alliance reveals not only their close personnel and institutional interrelations, but also their transpacific rivalry and political relay during the decade leading up to the 1911 Revolution, rather than in the revolutionary movement itself. In the early Republican period, the reform-revolution interactions continuously affected the political relations of the China-based KMT under Sun’s influence, his Japan-based Chinese Revolutionary Party, and the CNL in North America with Kang’s Chinese Reform Party abroad and the Progressive Party under the leadership of Liang Qichao and Tang Hualong. But it was mainly the collaboration and competition between the CNL and the CKT that dominated the political life of North American Chinatowns after the 1911 Revolution. Their partisan struggles prompted each of these parties to seek institutional expansion and unification. As a result, they jointly contributed to the network revolution in the transpacific Chinese diaspora through their respective development. In conventional overseas Chinese history, the Chinese reform and revolution in North America have received scholarly attention mainly for their contributions to political change in China by 1911. In fact, their political associations exerted more direct influence on the revolutionary change in the internal and external relations of American and Canadian Chinatowns. The late-Qing reformers and revolutionaries, their respective successors after 1911, and the CKT divided every Chinatown in North America from the community level down to individual families through competition with each other. But they also utilized distinctive political platforms and partisan associations to politicize and organize the transpacific Chinese diaspora to an unprecedented level. CERA under Kang Youwei’s leadership from 1899 initiated a relational revolution among the transpacific Chinese diaspora from 1899 because it

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was the first to develop a new political platform, formal leadership, organizational hierarchy, and other ideological and institutional norms to rally its members across more than two hundred dispersed Chinese communities. However, CERA’s attempt to increase institutional control over its participants and their personal cliques based on interpersonal ties was largely unsuccessful, with most members refusing even to pay their dues, as Kang’s public notice in early 1908 demonstrated.19 Thus, it became plagued by the cliquish pursuit of personal, familial, and factional interests by Kang Youwei himself and other reformist leaders. Fault for its demise lies mainly with the clashes between Kang and the defiant leaders among his disciples or the Vancouver-based Yip family and its associates around 1909. Nonetheless, before its decline, CERA’s networks had already expanded overseas Chinese ethnic connections across the Pacific Rim and significantly linked up individual Chinatowns in North America with its reformist platforms and institutions. Sun Yat-sen led the network revolution in the transpacific Chinese diaspora to a new peak through the institutional development of his political associations ranging from the Revive China Society to the Revolutionary Alliance and the Chinese Revolutionary Party, including the CNL based in North America. These revolutionary parties gradually tightened control over their members through political oaths and ideology as well as a series of swearing-in ceremonies and other devices adopted from the CKT. The Chinese Revolutionary Party, together with the CNL, exerted their central leadership and organizational control over their members by demanding loyalty, obedience, self-sacrifice, regular payment of membership dues, and so on. In particular, the CNL achieved network expansion and membership diversification through its development among non-Cantonese migrants from China, especially those in Southeast Asia.20 Thus, it was finally able to unite most overseas Chinese in North America and the Pacific Rim under its revolutionary flag and bring them into its political movements. The North American CKT also contributed to the network revolution, first by joining the overseas Chinese political reforms under the leadership of Kang Youwei’s CERA, and then by helping Sun Yat-sen’s Revolutionary Alliance in anti-Qing movements before and during the 1911 Revolution. Although neither the American or Canadian CKT headquarters acquired legal status as legitimate parties in early Republican China, they achieved a certain degree of institutional unity in the late 1910s and further expanded

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to include other orders of the Hong Fraternal Society in Hawai‘i, Australia, and Africa into their transpacific networks. By joining reformist or revolutionary associations in the fight for a Western-style constitutional monarchy or republican polity in China, overseas Chinese in North America significantly transformed their relations with homeland politics. Previous studies have often stressed that overseas Chinese in North America provided shelter and support of reformist and revolutionary exiles such as Kang Youwei and Sun Yat-sen and their political movements because these migrants hoped to receive protection from a revitalized and modernized China.21 In fact, in both reformist and revolutionary movements across North American Chinatowns, participants ranging from leaders to everyday migrants, including the small number of women, regarded themselves as overseas pioneers and protectors of, first, a constitutional monarchy in the late-Qing reform, or later, a fragile republic in early republican China. Thus, they experienced the cross-cultural political transition from sojourners and subjects of imperial China to overseas pioneers and protectors of Western-originated monarchical constitutionalism or republicanism in modern Chinese politics, whether their missions failed or succeeded. In addition to supportive actions and financial donations to the late Qing reforms, the 1911 Revolution, and other political changes in China, North American Chinese reformist and revolutionary associations left a more profound mark on homeland politics, particularly in the years after the 1911 watershed in modern Chinese history. While CERA under Kang Youwei’s leadership failed to expand into China in this period, its leaders such as Liang Qichao became influential politicians in early Republican China. As a rising institutional leader of the transpacific Chinese network revolution since the mid-1910s, the CNL retained the KMT’s Chinese name after it was banned by Yuan Shikai in 1913 and later abandoned by Sun Yat-sen. In 1918 and thereafter, it provided an overseas foundation for Sun’s reorganization of the KMT and aided its rise as a ruling party about ten years later. After 1918, overseas Chinese participants in the revolutionary movements under Sun Yat-sen’s leadership came closest to homeland politics as the KMT, including the CNL in North America, became the hegemonic party in China and the global Chinese diaspora. The increasingly close ties of the transpacific Chinese diaspora with homeland politics through this party was a major institutional outcome of the diasporic network revolution.

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A key factor in the momentum of the transpacific Chinese political movements and their network expansion was the mounting racism faced by overseas Chinese. During the temporal scope of this book, the Chinese communities in North America had mostly strained relations with the Western society in their hostland. Their successive zeal in joining reformist and revolutionary movements was undoubtedly nourished by their desire both for coethnic unity and for homeland connections for self-protection and defense from a China made mightier by reform or revolution. But in the course of their cross-cultural conversion during the reformist and revolutionary movements, these migrant participants became identified with Western political cultures ranging from monarchical constitutionalism to republicanism, despite facing racist exclusion from American and Canadian societies. This passage paved the way for their future identity change toward Chinese Americans or Chinese Canadians. Indeed, after the decline of the Chinese Reform Party in the late 1910s, even the CNL gradually lost its influences among American and Canadian Chinatowns as anti-Chinese racism gradually subsided in the United States and Canada following the Second World War, especially from the 1960s. Most original residents of Chinatowns moved into other neighborhoods, became American or Canadian citizens, and turned the original North American “hostland” into their true “homeland.” The CCBAs in San Francisco, Victoria, and their counterparts in other North American cities, as well as the CKT-evolved Chinese Freemasons in the Pacific Rim became the historical legacies of the transpacific Chinese network revolution of the past.

Notes

Preface 1. Zhongping Chen, “An Assassination in Victoria,” Times Colonist, August 31, 2008. For details of the assassination, see Chapter 4. 2. John Price, Orienting Canada: Race, Empire, and the Transpacific (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), 1. 3. Barry Wellman, “Structural Analysis: From Method and Metaphor to Theory and Substance,” in Social Structures: A Network Approach, ed. Barry Wellman and S. D. Berkowitz (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 20; Stanley Wasserman and Katherine Faust, Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), i. 4. Barry Wellman, Wenhong Chen, and Dong Weizhen, “Networking Guanxi,” in Social Connections in China: Institutions, Culture and the Changing Nature of Guanxi, ed. Thomas Gold, Doug Guthrie, and David Wank (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 224. Emphases are in the original. 5. For a brief review and critique of the conventional network approach and its application to anthropological, sociological, and historical studies of China as well as research on Chinese business and politics by economists and political scientists, see Zhongping Chen, Modern China’s Network Revolution: Chambers of Commerce and Sociopolitical Change in the Early Twentieth Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), xii−xv, 6−8. 6. Andrew J. Nathan, Peking Politics, 1918–1923: Factionalism and the Failure of Constitutionalism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), esp. 25−58, and his “A Factionalism Model for CCP Politics,” in China Quarterly 53 (1973): 34−66. Nathan’s model has been criticized by Tang Tsou for its neglect of institutional constraints, see Tsou’s “Prolegomenon to the Study of Informal Groups in CCP Politics,” in China Quarterly 65 (1976): 102. For a further critique of Nathan’s

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model, see Lowell Dittmer, “Chinese Informal Politics,” in China Journal 34 (1995): 1−34. 7. See a critical review of this line of scholarship by Peter S. Li, “Overseas Chinese Network: A Reassessment,” in Chinese Business Networks: State, Economy and Culture, ed. Chan Kwok Bun (Singapore: Prentice Hall, Pearson Education Asia, 2000), 261−84. However, network analysis of informal economic ties, social relations, and political connections has still influenced recent publications on Chinese migrant history. For an example, see Huei-Ying Kuo, Networks beyond Empires: Chinese Business and Nationalism in the Hong Kong−Singapore Corridor, 1914−1941 (Leiden: Brill, 2014), esp. 7, 12−16. 8. Adam McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change: Peru, Chicago, and Hawaii, 1900−1936 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), esp. 20, 69−70. 9. Hong Liu, “Old Linkages, New Networks: The Globalization of Overseas Chinese Voluntary Associations and Its Implications,” China Quarterly 155 (1998): 582−609, esp. 598−100. 10. One example of such few studies is Pei-te Lien, “Ethnic Homeland and Chinese Americans: Conceiving a Transnational Political Network,” Chinese Transnational Networks, ed. Tan Chee-Beng (New York: Routledge, 2007), 107−21. This article focuses on the recent Taiwan migrants in the United States. In McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change, 87−94, it also touches lightly on overseas Chinese reformers and revolutionaries, but their political organizations were not the major subjects of his network analysis. 11. Institutional analysis, especially historical institutionalism, indicates that “institutions” include “both formal organizations and informal rules and procedures that structure conduct,” see Kathleen Thelen and Sven Steinmo, “Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Politics,” in Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis, ed. Sven Steinmo, Kathleen Thelen, and Frank Longstreth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 2. Here, “relational institutionalization” refers to the development of both formal and informal organizations, rules, and procedures that regulate and organize human activities and relations, especially to the increasing formalization of social relations. 12. Zhongping Chen, Modern China’s Network Revolution, esp. xv, 7−8, 199−213. 13. For conceptual analysis of the term “Huaqiao” or “overseas Chinese,” see Wang Gungwu, “The Origins of Hua-Ch’iao,” in Community and Nation: China, Southeast Asia and Australia (St Leonards, NSW: Asian Studies Association of Australia in association with Allen & Unwin, 1992), 1−9; Wang Gungwu, “Patterns of Chinese Migration in Historical Perspective,” in China and the Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Times Academic Press, 1991), 6−8. The concept of “Huanqiao” could

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also be applied to the Chinese migrants in Southeast Asia before the Second World War, see Els van Dongen and Hong Liu, “The Changing Meanings of Diaspora: The Chinese in Southeast Asia,” Routledge Handbook of Asian Migrations, ed. Gracia Liu-Farrer and Brenda S. A. Yeoh (New York: Routledge, 2018): 33−47. 14. For early Chinese migrants’ sojourning mentality and behavior in the United States, see Madeline Yuan-yin Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and South China, 1882−1943 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 9−11, 108−12. For similar phenomenon among the Chinese in Canada, see Zhongping Chen, “Chinese Familism and Immigration Experience in Canadian Towns and Small Cities: From Dual Paradigms on the Chinese in Canada to a Cross-Cultural Study of the Case of Peterborough, Ontario, 1892−1951,” Asian Profile 32, no. 4 (2004): 291−93, 304−5, 308−10. For a review of scholarly debate over the sojourning phenomenon and confirmation of its existence among the Chinese in the United States by the 1940s, see Philip Q. Yang, “The ‘Sojourner Hypothesis’ Revisited,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 9, no. 2 (2000): 235−58. 15. Michael R. Godley, “The End of the Queue: Hair as Symbol in Chinese History,” in East Asian History 8 (1994): 55−61, 65−70. 16. “Cross-cultural interactions” refer to “encounters between peoples of different civilizations, including their cultural conversion, conflict, and compromise.” See Jerry H. Bentley, Old World Encounters: Cross-Cultural Contacts and Exchanges in Pre-Modern Times (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), vii. 17. See the usage of the new term alternative to “the overseas Chinese” in the title of Wang Gungwu, China and the Chinese Overseas, and related discussions in his two articles, Wang Gungwu, “The Origins of Hua-Ch’iao,” 1−2, 8−9, and Wang Gungwu, “Patterns of Chinese Migration in Historical Perspective,” 18−20. 18. Wang Gungwu, “A Single Chinese Diaspora? Some Historical Reflections,” in Wang Gungwu and Annette Shun Wah, Imagining the Chinese Diaspora: Two Australian Perspectives (Canberra: Center for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora, Australian National University, 1999), 1, 17. 19. For a brief review of Chinese American history, see Shelly Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland: Modern China in the Age of Global Migration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2018), 4. For a typical example of similar works in Chinese Canadian history, see Peter Li, The Chinese in Canada (Toronto, Oxford University Press, 1998), esp. xi−xiii. 20. See a critique of these two lines of scholarship and the promotion of the new diasporic discourse in Adam McKeown, “Conceptualizing Chinese Diasporas, 1842 to 1949,” Journal of Asian Studies 58, no. 2 (1999): 306−31. For his discussion about diasporic networks, see also McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural

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Change. For a similar critique of previous studies and a call for the Asian American studies with a transnational perspective, see L. Ling-chi Wang, “The Structure of Dual Domination: Toward a Paradigm for the Study of the Chinese Diaspora in the United States,” Amerasia Journal 33, no. 1 (2007): 145−65. 21. Shu-Mei Shih, “Against Diaspora: The Sinophone as Places of Cultural Production,” Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader, ed. Shu-Mei Shih, Chien-Hsin Tsai, and Brian Bernards (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013), 26. 22. Rose Hum Lee, The Chinese in the United States of America (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960), 52−68; Stanford M. Lyman, Chinese Americans (New York: Random House, 1974), 6−7, and “The Chinese Diaspora in America, 1850−1943,” in The Asian in North America (Santa Barbara, CA: American Bibliographical Center-Clio Press, 1977), 13. 23. McKeown, “Conceptualizing Chinese Diasporas,” 308−22; Aihwa Ong, Flexible Citizenship: The Cultural Logics of Transnationality (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2000), esp. 821; van Dongen and Liu, “The Changing Meanings of Diaspora,” 34; Lok C. D. Siu, Memories of a Future Home: Diasporic Citizenship of Chinese in Panama (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 10−11. 24. Steven B. Miles, Chinese Diasporas: A Social History of Global Migration (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), 2, 11. 25. Siu, Memories of a Future Home, 11. 26. Zhongping Chen, “Building the Chinese Diaspora across Canada: Chinese Diasporic Discourse and the Case of Peterborough, Ontario.” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 13, no. 2−3 (2004): 205. This article mainly uses the case study of the Chinese in Peterborough to show how their locally centered diaspora turned from its predominantly hard past to its more successful present due to the gradual opening of national and cultural borders and other changes since the mid-twentieth century, and from its early networks based on homeland-originated families, lineages, and other ties to those fused with Christianity and other cultural elements in the hostland. The term “hostland” is a common usage in diasporic studies, and it is used here in contrast with the homeland of the early Chinese in North America because they maintained a sojourning mentality to some extent, as mentioned above. 27. Chan, Diaspora’s Homeland, 3−5, 9−16, 185−88; Shehong Chen, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002), esp. 5−8. 28. William Safran, “Diaspora in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return,” Diaspora: A Journal of Transnational Studies 1, no. 1 (1991): 84. 29. For critiques of this scholarly tendency, see Wang Gungwu, “A Single Chinese Diaspora?”; Shi, “Against Diaspora,” 25−30; Ien Ang, On Not Speaking Chinese: Living between Asia and the West (New York: Routledge, 2001), esp. 11−13, 75−85.

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Introduction 1. Shih-shan Henry Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1986), 10−32, 45−53, 62−67; Edgar Wickberg et al., From China to Canada: A History of the Chinese Communities in Canada (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1982), 13−27, 30−63, 301. 2. In Lynn Pan, The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas (Singapore: Chinese Heritage Center, 1999), 36, it indicates that 99 percent of Chinese migrants to the Americas were from Guangdong Province by 1957. For the Cantonese dominance among the Chinese migrants across the Pacific from the mid-nineteenth to the late twentieth century, see also Henry Yu, “Mountains of Gold: Canada, North America, and the Cantonese Pacific,” in Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora, ed. Tan Chee-beng (London: Routledge, 2013), 108−21. 3. Sue Fawn Chung, In Pursuit of Gold: Chinese American Miners and Merchants in the American West (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2011), 1−5, 10−13; Wickberg et al., From China to Canada, 6−9. 4. Wu Jianxiong 吴剑雄, “Cong haijin dao huqiao: Qingdai dui chuguo yimin zhengce de yanbian” 从海禁到护侨—清代对出国移民政策的演变 [From prohibition of maritime activities to protection of overseas Chinese: The change in Qing China’s policies toward emigration], in Haiwai yimin yu Huaren shehui 海外移民与华人社会 [Overseas Chinese emigrants and their societies] (Taibei: Yunchen wenhua shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1993), 19−39; Elizabeth Sinn, Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 43−136. 5. Kang Youwei 康有为, Kang Nanhai zibian nianpu 康南海自编年谱 [The chronological autobiography of Kang Youwei], in Kang Nanhai zibian nianpu: Waierzhong 康南海自编年谱: 外二种 [The chronological autobiography of Kang Youwei: With two supplements], ed. Lou Yulie 楼宇烈 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), 1−5; Him Mark Lai, “The Sanyi (Sam Yup) Community in America,” in Becoming Chinese American: A History of Communities and Institutions (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2004), 78−81, 86−87; Sinn, Pacific Crossing, 48. 6. Li Xinkui 李新魁, Guangdong de fangyan 广东的方言 (Dialects in Guangdong Province) (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1994), 28; Sinn, Pacific Crossing, 48; Chuen-yan David Lai, “Home County and Clan Origins of Overseas Chinese in Canada in the Early 1880,” BC Studies 27 (1975): 4, 6. 7. Kang Youwei, Kang Nanhai zibian nianpu, 5−6, 9−12, 19−20, 25−32, 36−68. 8. Mei Weiqiang 梅伟强 and Zhang Guoxiong 张国雄, eds. Wuyi Huaqiao Huaren shi 五邑华侨华人史 [A history of the overseas Chinese sojourners and settlers from five counties] (Guangzhou: Guangdong gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001), 2−10, 18−26, 36−39, 74−76, 79, 209; Li Xinkui, Guangdong de fangyan, 27.

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Because of changes in the administrative division of Guangdong Province beginning in 1983, Mei and Zhang’s work (pp. 3−4) adds Heshan County 鹤山县 to the four counties and calls them the “five counties” (Wuyi 五邑) but concedes that the term “four counties” was the most popular one in local historical records. 9. Ding Wenjiang 丁文江 and Zhao Fengtian 赵丰田, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian 梁启超年谱长编 [A detailed chronological biography of Liang Qichao] (Shanghai: Shiji chuban jituan and Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 2009), 170. 10. Huang Yuhe 黄宇和, Sanshisui qiande Sun Zhongshan: Cuiheng, Tandao, Xianggang 三十岁前的孙中山—翠亨、檀岛、香港 [Sun Yat-sen before thirty years old: Cuiheng village, Hawaiian Islands, and Hong Kong] (Hong Kong: Zhonghua shuju, 2011), 116, 130−36, 174; Ye Xian’en 叶显恩, “Xiangshan yimin Xiaweiyi de lishi kaocha” 香山移民夏威夷的历史考察 [A historical examination of migration from Xiangshan County to Hawai‘i], in Xiangshan wenhua 香山文 化 [Xiangshan culture], ed. Wang Yuanming 王远明 (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 2006), 91−104; Sinn, Pacific Crossing, 48−49; Li Xinkui, Guangdong de fangyan , 115−16, 452, 512−19. For Sun’s multiple names, see the cited book by Huang (pp. 130–32). 11. Huang Yuhe, Sanshisui qiande Sun Zhongshan, 194−98, 226, 263, 283, 330, 506−10, 520−28; 539−42; Clarence Elmer Glick, Sojourners and Settlers: Chinese Migrants in Hawaii (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1980), 238, 274−76. 12. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 119−25, 208–10, 214−15. 13. Huang Yuhe, Sanshisui qiande Sun Zhongshan, 13−65, 76−113; Sow-Theng Leong, Migration and Ethnicity in Chinese History: Hakkas, Pengmin, and Their Neighbors (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 32−33, 85, 189n7. 14. Qiu Quanzheng 丘权政, Kejia yuanliu yu wenhua yanjiu 客家源流与文 化研究 [A study on the origins of the Hakka people and their culture] (Beijing: Zhongguo Huaqiao chubanshe, 1999), 3–6. Qiu’s book makes this claim but does not cite any sources as supportive evidence. One piece of counterevidence against the claim is Kang’s derogatory comment on the origin of the Hakka ethnic group. He once stated that “the Hakka people in southern China were from the barbarian race of the three-branch Miao minority.” See Kang Youwei 康有为, “Jiaoxue tongyi” 教学通议 [A general discussion about teaching], Zhongguo wenhua jikan 中国文化研究集刊 [Collected papers on Chinese culture] 3 (1986): 409. 15. Leong, Migration and Ethnicity in Chinese History, 33, 43–60, 64, 70, 75–76, 127; Sinn, Pacific Crossing, 49. 16. Liu Boji 刘伯骥, Meiguo Huaqiao shi 美国华侨史 [A history of the Chinese in the United States of America] (Taibei: Xingzhengyuan qiaowu weiyuanhui, 1976), 169−72.

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17. David Lai, “Home County and Clan Origins of Overseas Chinese in Canada in the Early 1880s,” 6. 18. McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change, 20. 19. Zhongping Chen, Modern China’s Network Revolution, 7. 20. Sacramento Daily Record-Union, September 12, 1855. 21. David Chuenyan Lai, Chinese Community Leadership: Case Study of Victoria in Canada (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing, 2010), 38, 53−54; Tzu-I Chung, “Kwong Lee & Company and Early Trans-Pacific Trade: From Canton, Hong Kong, to Victoria and Barkerville,” BC Studies 185 (2015): 143−47. 22. Zhongping Chen, “Chinese Labor Contractors and Laborers of the Canadian Pacific Railway, 1880–1885,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 110, no. 1 (2018/2019), 20−23, 28−29. Today, Shuilou Township is called Shuilou Village (Shuiloucun 水 楼村). 23. Yucheng Qin, The Diplomacy of Nationalism: The Six Companies and China’s Policy toward Exclusion (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009), 44−45, 103. 24. David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 27−38, 65−89; Zhongping Chen, “Chinese Labor Contractors and Laborers of the Canadian Pacific Railway,” 28. 25. Qin, The Diplomacy of Nationalism, 54−55; Timothy J. Stanley, “‘Chinamen, Wherever We Go’: Chinese Nationalism and Guangdong Merchants in British Columbia, 1871−1911,” Canadian Historical Review 77, no. 4 (1996): 489−94. 26. Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America, 62−66; Qin, The Diplomacy of Nationalism, 103–105; David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 19, 27−37; Patricia E. Roy, A White Man’s Province: British Columbia Politicians and Chinese and Japanese Immigrants, 1858–1914 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1989), 54−61. 27. Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America, 51−55. 28. Dian H. Murray and Qin Baoqi, The Origins of the Tiandihui: The Chinese Triads in Legend and History (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994), 89–150; Sue Fawn Chung, “The Zhigongtang in the United States, 1860–1949,” in Empire, Nation, and Beyond: Chinese History in Late Imperial and Modern Times, a Festschrift in Honor of Frederic Wakeman, ed. Joseph W. Esherick, Wen-hsin Yeh, and Madeleine Zelin (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 2006), 234. 29. Daily Alta California, January 5, 1854; Daily California Chronicle, January 30, 1854. 30. Colonist, May 2, 1871, January 21, 1877, and January 5, 1879; Stanford M. Lyman, W. E. Willmott, and Berching Ho, “Rules of a Chinese Secret Society in British Columbia,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 27, no. 3 (1964): 536, plates 3 and 5.

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31. Liu Boji, Meiguo Huaqiao shi, 418–19; Yingying Chen, “In the Colony of Tang: Historical Archaeology of Chinese Communities in the North Cariboo District, British Columbia, 1860s–1940s” (PhD diss., Simon Fraser University, 2002), 427–28. 32. The San Francisco Directory for the Year Commencing April 1879 (San Francisco: Francis, Valentine & Co., 1879), 932; California Chinese Freemason, Wuzhou Zhigong Zongtang geming lishi tulu: 170 zounian jinian tekan, 1848–2018 五洲致公 总堂革命历史图录: 170 周年纪念特刊, 1848–2018 [A collection of pictures on the revolutionary history of the headquarters of the Active Justice Society across five continents, 1848–2018: A special issue in commemoration of the 170th anniversary] (n.p., n.d.), 37. “California Chinese Freemason” is listed on the cover of this source as its institutional author. This self-publication of the California Chinese Freemasons claims that this secret society first appeared in San Francisco around 1848 but left no historical documents. For other claims about the CKT’s origin from San Francisco in 1863 or from the Rocky Mountain mining fields around that time, see Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America, 52–53. 33. Jian Jianping 简建平, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada 中国洪门在加拿大 [The Chinese Freemasons in Canada] (Vancouver: Zhongguo Hongmen Minzhidang zhu Jianada zongzhibu, 1989), 13; Li Quan’en (David Chuenyan Lai) 黎全 恩, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun 洪门及加拿大洪门史论 [The Hong Fraternal Society and its history in Canada] (Hong Kong: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2015), 78, 83, 87–88, 93–95, 99; Wickberg et al., From China to Canada, 30–31. Jian’s book is the Canadian CKT’s self-publication, and the English translation of its title is original. For critiques of the baseless claim about the CKT’s origin in Canada by Jian’s book, self-contradiction in Li’s work, and misunderstanding of the Canadian CKT’s document from 1882 by Wickberg and his collaborators, see Zhongping Chen, “Vancouver Island and the Chinese Diaspora in the Transpacific World,” BC Studies 204 (2019/2020), 58–59, especially its detailed explanatory notes on the two pages. 34. Zhongping Chen, “The Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Transpacific Chinese Diaspora, 1880–1885,” in The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad, ed. Gordon H. Chang, Shelley Fishkin, et al. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2019), 303–304; Zhongping Chen, “Vancouver Island and the Chinese Diaspora in the Transpacific World,” 59. 35. L. Eve Armentrout Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns: Chinese Politics in the Americas and the 1911 Revolution (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1990), 45; Harold Z. Schiffrin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 4–9. 36. For a major example of these previous studies, see L. Ma, Revolutionaries,

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Monarchists, and Chinatowns. Ma’s book evolved from her doctoral thesis on such political competition; see L. Eve McIver Ballard Armentrout-Ma, “Chinese Politics in the Western Hemisphere, 1893–1911: Rivalry between Reformers and Revolutionaries in the Americas” (PhD diss., University of California at Davis, 1977). For Chinese publications with similar arguments, see Zhang Yufa 张玉法, Qingji de geming tuanti 清季的革命团体 [Revolutionary organizations in the late Qing period] (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2011), 274–97; Zhang Kaiyuan 章开 沅 and Lin Zengping 林增平, eds., Xinhai geming shi 辛亥革命史 [History of the 1911 Revolution] (Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 2010), vol. 2, 534–82. 37. For two examples, see Marius B. Jansen, The Japanese and Sun Yat-sen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954); Li Jikui 李吉奎, Sun Zhongshan yu Riben 孙中山与日本 [Sun Yat-sen and Japan] (Guangzhou: Guangdongsheng renmin chubanshe, 1996). 38. In regard with this region, the most authoritative work on this subject remains Yen Ching Hwang, The Overseas Chinese and the 1911 Revolution (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1976). 39. L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns; Gao Weinong 高伟 浓, Ershi shiji chu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui zai Meiguo Huaqiao shehui zhong de huodong 二十世纪初康有为保皇会在美国华侨社会中的活动 [The activities of Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association among the Chinese in the United States during the early twentieth century] (Beijing: Xueyuan chubanshe, 2009); Shih-shan Henry Tsai, China and the Overseas Chinese in the United States, 1868–1911 (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1983). 40. David Chuenyan Lai, The Forbidden City within Victoria: Myth, Symbol and Streetscape of Canada’s Earliest Chinatown (Victoria, BC: Orca Book Publishers, 1991). 41. Kay J. Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown: Racial Discourse in Canada, 1875– 1980 (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1991), 4. 42. Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 1850–1943: A Trans-Pacific Community (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002); Sinn, Pacific Crossing. 43. Lyle Dick, “2013 Canadian Historical Association Presidential Address: On Local History and Local Historical Knowledge,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 24, no. 1 (2013): 5. 44. Chen Zhongping 陈忠平, “Weiduoliya, Wengehua yu haineiwai Huaren de gailiang he geming, 1899–1911” 维多利亚、温哥华与海内外华人的改良 和革命, 1899–1911 [Victoria, Vancouver, and Chinese reforms and revolutionary movements at home and abroad, 1899–1911], Shehui kexue zhanxian 社会科学战 线 [Frontiers of social sciences] 11 (2017): 96; Zhongping Chen, “Vancouver Island and the Chinese Diaspora in the Transpacific World,” 65.

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45. Bureau of the Census, Abstract of the Twelfth Census of the United States, 1900 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), 40; Bureau of the Census, Abstract of the Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1923), 143. 46. Peter Li, The Chinese in Canada, 67. See also Wickberg et al., From China to Canada, 296, 301. 47. Tsai, The Chinese Experience in America, 62–67; Wickberg et al., From China to Canada, 55–59, 145. 48. Chen Xiqi 陈锡祺, ed., Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian 孙中山年谱长 编 [A comprehensive chronological biography of Sun Yat-sen] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1991), vol. 1, 307–10.

Chapter 1 1. Kang Youwei, Kang Nanhai zibian nianpu, 8, 11; Tang Zhijun 汤志钧, Wuxu shiqi de xuehui he baokan 戊戌时期的学会和报刊 [Study societies, newspapers, and journals during the 1898 Reform] (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1993), 10−12, 811−13. 2. Young-Tsu Wong, “Revisionism Reconsidered: Kang Youwei and the Reform Movement of 1898,” Journal of Asian Studies 51, no. 3 (1992): 515−19. 3. K’ang Yu-wei, “Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” in K’ang Yu-wei: A Biography and a Symposium, ed. Jung-pang Lo (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1967), 21, 29−67, 75−99, 131; Tang Zhijun, Wuxu shiqi de xuehui he baokan, 11−15, 21−64, 285−308. 4. Xu Songrong 徐松荣, “Wuxu hou Kang−Liang weixinpai shinian yanjiu gaishu” 戊戌后康梁维新派十年研究概述 [A review of one decade of research on Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao’s reformist group after 1898], Lishi jiaoxue 历史教 学 [Historical teaching], 3 (1995): 52; Ma Honglin 马洪林, “Kang Youwei yanjiu bainian huigu yu zhanwang” 康有为研究百年回顾与展望 [A review of onecentury of research on Kang Youwei and prospects for its developments]. Xushu yanjiu 学术研究 [Academic research], 12 (2008): 109−112. 5. Lin Keguang 林克光, Gexinpai juren Kang Youwei 革新派巨人康有为 [The great reformer Kang Youwei] (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 1990), 60−66, 131−41, 152−58, 195−98, 203−209. 6. Wang Shuhuai 王树槐, Wairen yu Wuxu bianfa 外人与戊戌变法 [Foreigners and the 1898 Reform] (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, 1970), 157−204. 7. For discussions about Kang’s failed attempts to enter the United States in 1899 and his subsequent American trips from 1905 to 1907, see Robert Leo Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile: The North American Phase of the Trav-

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els of K’ang Yu-wei, 1899−1909” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 1972), esp. chapters 2−3, 5−7. 8. Lawrence R. Samuel, The American Dream: A Cultural History (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2012), 1−7, 196−98; Cal Jillson, Pursuing the American Dream: Opportunity and Exclusion over Four Centuries (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004), 5−8. The term has also been used to refer to the American national ethos, such as the quest for religious or political freedom, individual liberty, social mobility, and so on; see Jim Cullen, The American Dream: A Short History of an Idea that Shaped a Nation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003). 9. Kong Xiangji 孔祥吉, Kang Youwei bianfa zouzhang jikao 康有为变法奏章 辑考 [Collection and examination of Kang Youwei’s reformist memorials] (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe, 2008), 125−26, 160−63, 404−406. 10. Wang Shuhuai, Wairen yu Wuxu bianfa, 177−78. 11. Kang Youwei, Kang Nanhai zibian nianpu, 11, 25−26. 12. Zhongping Chen, Modern China’s Network Revolution, 43. 13. Tang Zhijun, Wuxu shiqi de xuehui he baokan, 21−64, 79−137, 743−62. 14. Kang Youwei 康有为, Kang Youwei quanji 康有为全集 [The completed works of Kang Youwei], ed. Jiang Yihua 姜义华 and Zhang Ronghua 张荣华 (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe, 2007), vol. 4, 52. 15. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Youwei and Confucianism in Canada and Beyond, 1899−1911,” Journal of Modern Chinese History 14, no. 1 (2020): 4−5. 16. Kang Youwei, Kang Nanhai zibian nianpu, 32, 40; Zhongping Chen, Modern China’s Network Revolution, 53−57. 17. Young-Tsu Wong, “Revisionism Reconsidered,” 515−19, 527. 18. Luke S. K. Kwong, A Mosaic of the Hundred Days: Personalities, Politics and Ideas of 1898 (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1984), 152−59, 169−74, 194−200. 19. Mao Haijian 茅海建, Cong jiawu dao wuxu: Kang Youwei Woshi jianzhu 从 甲午到戊戌：康有为《我史》鉴注 [From 1895 to 1898: Appraisal of and annotation on Kang Youwei’s My History] (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2018), 297−99, 585−98, 606−607, 706−14, 735−36. 20. Li Chunfu 李春馥, Wuxu shiqi Kang Youwei yihui sixiang yanjiu 戊戌时 期康有为议会思想研究 [Kang Youwei’s ideas about the parliamentary system in 1898] (Beijing: Remin chubanshe, 2010), 12−14, 188−95; Huang Zhangjian 黄彰 健, “Kang Youwei yu Wuxu bianfa: Da Wang Rongzu xiansheng” 康有为与戊戌 变法: 答汪荣祖先生 [Kang Youwei and the 1898 Reform: A reply to Mr. Wang Rongzu], in Wuxu bianfa shi yanjiu 戊戌变法史研究 [Studies of the 1898 Reform] (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 2007), vol. 2, 853−55, 860, 867−69, 876−79; Kong, Kang Youwei bianfa zouzhang jikao, 6−12, 344−48.

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21. Kwong, A Mosaic of the Hundred Days, 92, 182−83, 188, 211. 22. Mao, Cong jiawu dao wuxu, 585−98, 606−607, 706−14, 735−37; Zhongping Chen, “Kang Youwei’s Activities in Canada,” 8−10. 23. Mao, Cong jiawu dao wuxu, 730−33, 750−53, 758−62, 777−79, 816−21; Kwong, A Mosaic of the Hundred Days, 203−24. 24. Mao, Cong jiawu dao wuxu, 762−75; Kwong, A Mosaic of the Hundred Days, 208−10; Kong, Kang Youwei bianfa zouzhang jikao, 399−401, 404−406. 25. Mao, Cong jiawu dao wuxu,737−42, 777−90, 801−807. 26. Mao, Cong jiawu dao wuxu, 837−42; Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 55−56. Beresford would receive promotion to admiral more than a decade after 1898. 27. Li Hairong 李海蓉, “Yingguo zhengfu dui Kang Youwei liuwang taidu zhi kaoshi” 英国政府对康有为流亡态度之考释 [An examination of the British government’s attitudes toward Kang Youwei’s exile], Shilin 史林 [History jungle], 1 (2019): 90−92; Wang Shuhuai, Wairen yu Wuxu bianfa, 179−87, 225−34. 28. Warren I. Cohen, America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 38−47. 29. Mao, Cong jiawu dao wuxu, 842−46, 862−64; Lin Keguang, Gexinpai juren Kang Youwei, 372−74; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 120. 30. Li Fuji 李福基, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe 宪政会纪始事略 [A sketch of the origins of the Constitutional Association] (N.p., 1909), 2, file no. AR-22, in “Chinese Empire Reform Association Documents, 1899−1948,” archival no. AAS-ARC, 2000/78, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California at Berkeley (hereafter CERAD). 31. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 66−71. 32. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Youwei’s Activities in Canada and the Reformist Movement among the Global Chinese Diaspora, 1899−1909,” Twentieth−Century China 39, no. 1 (2014): 6. This article (esp. pp. 6, 11−12, 16, 20) includes textual analysis of incorrect dates and times of Kang’s Canadian trips in previous studies. 33. Colonist, October 2, 4 and 7, 1898. 34. Colonist, April 8, 1899; Wickberg et al., From China to Canada, 57. 35. Colonist, April 8, 1899. 36. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 2. For Lee Mong Kow’s vice presidency in the CCBA, see Colonist, December 28, 1898. 37. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, “Immigrants from China, 1885−1949” (https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Home/ Search?q=Immigrants%20from%20China%2C%201885-1949&, accessed November 13, 2022). The database was searched with a variant of Kang’s name, “Kang Yu Wei,” and with the name of “Li Tang.”

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38. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 118. 39. Daily Times, April 8, 1899. 40. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, “Immigrants from China, 1885−1949,” for “Kang Yu Wei.” His Chinese nominal age was forty-two in 1899 because under the age-counting system in China, a person is born at the age of one, and one year is added to the age at the beginning of the next lunar year. 41. Daily Times, April 10, 1899. 42. Colonist, April 9, 1899. 43. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 9, 19. 44. Colonist, April 8, 1899; Daily Times, April 8 and 10, 1899. 45. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 117. 46. Daily Times, April 10, 1899. 47. Daily Times, April 10, 1899. Kang’s meeting with the lieutenant governor is misdated as April 12, 1899, in Jung-pang Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” in K’ang Yu-wei: A Biography and a Symposium (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1967), 179. The report of Kang’s activities on the same day of the evening newspaper should be more accurate. 48. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 66−68; Province, April 13, 1899. 49. The quotation is from Vancouver’s Province, April 13, 1899, but Kang first issued a similar statement in Victoria; see Colonist 13, 1899. 50. Mao, Cong jiawu dao wuxu, 698−99. 51. Daily Times, April 10, 1899; Province, April 10, 1899; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 118. 52. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 118. 53. Province, April 10 and 12, 1899; Colonist, April 13, 1899. Dr. Lui could be identified as Liao Yipeng because Kang Youwei’s dispatch of him to the United States was recorded by both Colonist, October 10, 1899, and Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 156. For Liao’s profession as a dentist and for general business backgrounds of Yip Sang and Chang Toy, see Lisa Rose Mar, Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada’s Exclusion Era, 1885−1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 22, 26, 35, 58. 54. Province, April 10, 1899; Colonist, April 10, 1899. For Yip Yen’s post in the customs house, see “Increasing Remuneration to the Chinese Interpreters in British Columbia to Mr. Lee Mong Kow $100 and to Mr. Yip Yen $60 from 1899/10/01, Minister of Trade and Commerce, 1899/10/17,” Orders-in Council-80493, RG2, Privy Council Office, Series A-1-a, vol. 788, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/CollectionSearch/Pages/record.aspx?app=ordincou &IdNumber=80493&new=-8586354118687559340, accessed November 14, 2022). 55. For the initiation of the CKT in Vancouver by Yip Sang and others, see

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“Xianshuibu changjian Zhigongtang quanjuan yuanbu” 咸水埠倡建致公堂劝捐 缘簿 (A fundraising register for the establishment of the Chee Kong Tong’s premises in Vancouver), file no. 980.413.12 in “Chee Kung Tong Materials and Other Chinese Language Documents,” archival no. RG-513, Barkerville Historic Town and Park Archives, Barkerville, BC (hereafter CKTMO). For Yip Yen’s relations with the CKT, see “Fuyuan shanqing” 福缘善庆 [Fortune, fate, charity, and blessing], file no. 980−413.26 in CKTMO. 56. Daily News-Advertiser, April 14, 1899. 57. Province, April 14 and 15, 1899; Colonist, April 15, 1899. Both newspapers reported this mass meeting as taking place on the evening of April 14, 1899, but Kang Youwei himself misdated it as April 16, as did Jung-pang Lo. See Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 118; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 179. Kang’s own account shows that he probably finalized the publishable text of the speech on April 16, 1899. 58. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 118. 59. Province, April 15, 1899. 60. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 118−19. 61. Province, April 15, 1899. 62. Province, April 15, 1899; J. Chamberlain, Letter to Lord Minto, April 11, 1899, RG 7, series no. G3, vol. 12, file 1899, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 63. H. B. Greaves, Report to Major A. B. Perry of the North-West Mounted Police in Victoria, May 9, 1899, RG 18, vol. 170, file 339–48, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 64. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 66−67; Daily News-Advertiser, April 18, 1899; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 118−19. 65. British Columbian, April 19 and 20, 1899; Greaves, Report to Major A. B. Perry of the North-West Mounted Police in Victoria. Both the local newspaper and Constable Greaves’s report dated the meeting to the evening of April 19, 1899, but Kang misdated it as April 20, as did June-pang Lo. See Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 121; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,”179. 66. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 121. 67.British Columbian, April 28, 1899. “Hig lo” is phonetically similar to “hai lo” [shiluo 是咯], meaning “yes” in colloquial Cantonese. 68. Province, May 18, 1899; Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 67−68. 69. Province, May 2, 1899. 70. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quaji, vol. 5, 120; vol. 12, 196. 71. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 2; Daily News-Advertiser, April 28, May 3,

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1899; Citizen, May 9, 1899. For Loo’s inheritance of Kwong Lee & Co in 1887 and his directorship in Victoria’s CCBA around 1899, see Colonist, September 29, 1887; December 28, 1898. 72. Greaves, Report to Major A. B. Perry of the North-West Mounted Police in Victoria; Daily News-Advertiser, May 3, 1899. Kang’s departure from Vancouver is misdated to May 5, 1899 in Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 179. 73. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vo. 5, 126; vol. 12, 196. 74. I. H. Heffernan, Report to the Officer Commanding the North-West Mounted Police in Regina, May 24, 1899, RG 18, vol. 170, file 339–48, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa; Citizen, May 9, 10, and 11, 1899. Kang’s arrival in Ottawa is misdated to April 9, 1899 in Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 179. 75. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 126. 76. Heffernan, Report to the Officer Commanding the North-West Mounted Police in Regina, May 24, 1899; Fred White, Letter to Wilfrid Laurier, May 18, 1899, RG 18, vol. 170, file 339–48, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. White’s name is unclear in his letter and is inferred from other documents in this file. 77. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 69−71; Heffernan, Report to the Officer Commanding the North-West Mounted Police in Regina, May 24, 1899. 78. Colonist, May 27, 1888. 79. Province, May 18, 1899. For detailed analysis of the initiators of the commercial corporation, see Chapter 2. 80. Heffernan, Report to the Officer Commanding the North-West Mounted Police in Regina, May 24, 1899. 81. “Canada, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1865−1935” (http://search.ancestry.ca/ search/db.aspx?dbid=1263, accessed November 14, 2022); Province, October 11, 1899. The database was searched with one variant of Kang’s Romanized name, Kang Yei Wei (Wei as a surname). 82. The wrong assumption first appeared in Li Donghai 李东海, Jianada Huaqiaoshi 加拿大华侨史 [A History of Chinese in Canada] (Vancouver, BC: Jianada ziyou chubanshe, 1967), 275−82, and it more or less influenced Wickberg et al., From China to Canada, 74; Huang Kunzhang 黄昆章 and Wu Jinping 吴金平, Jianada Huaqiao Huaren shi 加拿大华侨华人史 [A history of Chinese sojourners and settlers in Canada] (Guangzhou: Guangdong gaodeng jiaoyu chubanshe. 2001), 139; Li Quan’en (David Chuenyan Lai) 黎全恩, Ding Guo丁果, and Jia Baoheng 贾葆蘅, Jianada Huaqiao yiminshi 加拿大华侨移民史 [History of Chinese migration to Canada] (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2013), 183. 83. For a comprehensive analysis of CERA’s early history, see Chen Zhong-

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ping 陈忠平, “Baohuanghui zai Jianada de chuangli, fazhan ji kuaguo huodong, 1899−1905” 保皇会在加拿大的创立、发展及跨国活动, 1899−1905 [The establishment of the Chinese Empire Reform Association in Canada, its organizational development, and transnational activities, 1899−1905], Jindaishi yanjiu 近代史研 究 [Journal of modern history], 2 (2015): 141−48. 84. McKeown, “Conceptualizing Chinese Diasporas, 1842 to 1949,” 317−22; McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change, 20, 69−80. 85. For Sun’s creation of this anti-Qing revolutionary organization in 1894 and its “evanescent nature,” see Schiffrin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 41−46, 96. 86. Province, April 13, 1899; Daily News-Advertiser, April 14, 1899. 87. Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography,” 180, 255n4; Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 56. 88. Province, July 10, 1899. 89. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 55−56; Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 2−3. 90. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 2−3. 91. Zhang Bingya 张炳雅, “Jiu da-Qing huangdi xu” 救大清皇帝会序 [Note on the “Preface for Regulations of the Society to Protect the Emperor”], AR-1 in CERAD. 92. Daily World, July 4, 1899; Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 2−3. 93. A. B. Perry, Letter to Fred White, July 6, 1899, RG 18, vol. 170, file 339−48, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 94. Kang Youwei, Letter to Wilfrid Laurier, July 9, 1899, in Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier’s papers, MG26-G, vol. 117, pp. 35243−44, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 95. Province, July 5, 1899 (This newspaper misdates its publishing date as June 5, 1899). 96. Tang Zhijun 汤志钧, ed., Kang Youwei zhenglunji 康有为政论集 [Collection of Kang Youwei’s political writings] (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), vol. 1, 408, 598; Chen Zhongping “Baohuanghui zai Jianada,”142−43. 97. Kang Tongbi 康同璧, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian 南海康先生 年谱续编 [Continuation of Kang Youwei’s chronological autobiography], in Kang Nanhai zibian nianpu: Waierzhong 康南海自编年谱: 外二种 [The chronological autobiography of Kang Youwei: Two supplements], ed. Lou Yulie 楼宇烈 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1992), 72; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography,” 180; Ma Honglin 马洪林, Kang Youwei dazhuan 康有为大传 [An expanded biography of Kang Youwei] (Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chubanshe, 1988), 371; Lin Keguang, Gexinpai juren Kang Youwei, 376.

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98. This photo did not include all seven founders of the corporation. For an analysis of this issue, see Chapter 2. 99. L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 45, 48, 180n22, 181n30. Ma’s work cites Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography,” but comes to a different conclusion about CERA’s birthplace. 100. Gao, Ershi shiji chu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui zai Meiguo, 29−31. 101. M. W. Fyffe, Report to the officer commanding the North-West Mounted Police in Vancouver, August 31, 1899, RG 18, vol. 170, file 339−48, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 102. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 3. 103. Fyffe, Report to the officer commanding the North-West Mounted Police in Vancouver, August 31, 1899. 104. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 3−4. Lin Lihuang is phonetically identical with Lam Lap Fong in Cantonese dialect. In two consecutive reports about the trial of a CKT’s “chief ” in Victoria, Lam Lap Fong also appeared as Lim Sam in Colonist, January 18 and 19, 1888. When Lin’s concubine died on March 17, 1916, her name was recorded as Mrs. Lim Sam; see Da-Han gongbao [Chinese times], March 21, 1916, and BC Archives: Genealogy, for “Mrs. Lim Sam,” registration no. 1916-09-145799 (http://search-collections.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/Genealogy, accessed November 14, 2022). 105. “Yuduoli Zhonghau huiguan zhangcheng” 域多利中华会馆章程 [Constitutions of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association in Victoria], folder 1, box 1, Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Fonds. acc. no. 1977−084, University of Victoria Archives, Victoria, BC. See also David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 38. 106. “Yuduolibu chongjian Zhigongtang quanjun yuanbu” 域多利埠重建致公 堂劝捐缘簿 [A register of donations for the reconstruction of the Chinese Freemasons’ building in Victoria (1885)], file no. 980.291.28, in CKTMO. 107. Murray and Qin, The Origins of the Tiandihui, 3; Stanford M. Lyman, “Chinese Secret Societies in the Occident: Notes and Suggestions for Research in the Sociology of Secrecy,” in The Asian in North America (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-Clio, 1977), 89−90. 108. Feng Ziyou 冯自由, Geming yishi 革命逸史 [An unofficial history of Chinese revolution] (Beijing: Xinxing chubanshe, 2009), vol. 1, 107−108, 169. 109. He Junsan, Letter to Kang Youwei, September 28, 1899, in folder 14, carton 5, archival no. AAS ARC 2000/70, Yuk Ow Research Files, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California at Berkeley. He’s letter was from the United States, and it mentioned having received Kang’s proposal to form Baoguohui or the Society to Protect the Nation. For corroborative evidence from Victoria, see Lo, “Sequel

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to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 180, 256n6. But Lo’s assumption that Kang first tried to organize a China Reform Association (Zhongguo weixinhui 中国维新会) in Victoria is incorrect; see Chen Zhongping, “Baohuanghui zai Jianada de chuangli, fazhan ji kuaguo huodong,” 142. For the history of the Society to Protect the Nation in 1898, see Tang, Wuxu shiqi de xuehui he baokan, 743−62, and my discussion above. 110. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 3. 111. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 276. 112. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 4. For Chu and Lu’s relations with Victoria’s CCBA, see David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 38. 113. Fyffe, Report to the officer commanding the North-West Mounted Police in Vancouver, August 31, 1899. 114. Colonist, July 20, 1899. 115. Colonist, July 19, 1899. 116. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 4. 117. Tang Zhijun, Kang Youwei zhenglunji, vol. 1, 598. 118. Liang Yingliu 梁应骝, “Changjian chuangshi Baohuanghui suo beiji, Guangxu sanshisan nian siyue chushi” 倡建创始保皇会所碑记, 光绪三十三 年四月初十 (Inscription for the erection of the premises of the first chapter of the Chinese Empire Reform Association, May 21, 1907). This inscription is extant inside the building of 1715 Government Street, Victoria. 119. David Lai, The Forbidden City within Victoria, 131. 120. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 276; Gao, Ershi shiji chu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui zai Meiguo, 29. 121. The street numbers in this paragraph refer to those assigned by the municipal government of Victoria from 1908 and thereafter. According to International Chinese Directory, 1901 (San Francisco, Chinese directory Company, 1901), 70−71, the first office of the Victoria chapter of CERA was upstairs in the building at 153 Government Street, and Sun Lee Yuen & Co (Xinliyuan 新利源) was at the same address. In 1908, this address was changed to 1625 Government Street where the same company was still located, see Henderson’s City of Victoria and Suburban Directory for 1908 (Victoria, BC: Henderson Publishing Company, 1908), “Preface” and 125. A historical photo from 1901 showed that the office of the Victoria chapter of CERA and Sun Lee Yuen & Co were respectively located upstairs and on the ground floor of the building at 153 Government Street (or 1625 Government Street from 1908), but the address is misidentified as 1713 Government Street by the photo. See “Chinese Empire Reform Association located at 1713 Government Street…,” item no. M06928, in PR−0252, Ainslie James Helmcken Collection, City Archives of Victoria, BC. This building was demolished, and its location became a

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part of today’s Centennial Square where a statue of Sun Yat-sen is standing. John Adams also identified this office of the Victoria chapter of CERA from his research on historical photos of local buildings (Adams’ email to the author on February 23, 2019). See also Map 3 in Chapter 4 for locations of the first and second offices of the Victoria CERA. 122. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 136, 138, 144. 123. Xu Songrong, “Wuxu hou Kang-Liang weixinpai shinian yanjiu gaishu,” 52; Tang Zhijun 汤志钧, “Kang Youwei de haiwai huodong he Baohuanghui qianqi pingjia” 康有为的海外活动和保皇会前期评价” [An evaluation of Kang Youwei’s overseas activities and the early history of the Society to Protect the Emperor],” Lishi yanjiu 历史研究 [Journal of historical research] 2 (1994): 124; Ren Guixiang 任贵祥, “Lun Huaqiao yu Baohuanghui” 论华侨与保皇会 [A discussion on overseas Chinese and the Society to Protect the Emperor], Huaqiao Huanren lishi yanjiu 华侨华人历史研究 [Journal of overseas Chinese history studies], 4 (1996): 69−70; Gao Weinong, Ershi shiji chu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui zai Meiguo, 26−27, 89−92. 124. Tang, “Kang Youwei de haiwai huodong he Baohuanghui qianqi pingjia,” 123−24; L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 47−48, 56. Ma’s book has noticed that the supporters of the CERA in Canada expected that this association would alleviate anti-Chinese racism, but it fails to demonstrate how Kang incorporated such political demand into his reformist program. 125. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 144−54. Kang used the term “yellow race” mainly as a reference to Chinese and Japanese because he was still looking for support from Japan. Usage of this term was common at that time among anthropologists in the West, Japan, and reformers of late Qing China. Kang and other reformist leaders such as Liang Qichao also tended to include both Chinese and the Manchus in the “yellow race” as a way to refute the anti-Manchu and proChinese revolutionary propaganda; see Ishikawa Yoshihiro, “Anti-Manchu Racism and the Rise of Anthropology in Early 20th Century China,” Sino-Japanese Studies 15 (2003): 9−18, esp. 17−18. 126. Fyffe, Report to the officer commanding the North−West Mounted Police in Vancouver, August 31, 1899. 127. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 12, 197. 128. Colonist, October 19, 1899. 129. Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography,” 181, 261. 130. M. W. Fyffe, Copy of diary week ending September 21, 1899, RG 18, vol. 170, file 339−48 [The title of the diary is original], Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 134, vol. 12, 197−99. For more detailed textual research on Wen Island’s identification with Coal Island, see Chen

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Zhongping 陈忠平, “Kang Youwei Wendao zhimi jiqi haiwai gailiang yundong de xingshuai” 康有为文岛之谜及其海外改良运动的兴衰 [The mystery of Wen Island in Kang Youwei’s writings and the rise and fall of his overseas reforms], in Dushu 读书 [Reading], 3 (2018): 24−31. 131. M. W. Fyffe, Copy of diary from September 21 until September 30, 1899, RG 18, vol. 170, file 339−48 [The title of the diary is original], Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 132. Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,”181−82; L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 47. 133. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 133. 134. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 133. 135. Province, August 4, 1899. 136. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 133, vol. 12, 199. 137. Fyffe, Report to the officer commanding the North-West Mounted Police in Vancouver; August 31, 1899; M. W. Fyffe, Letter to the controller, NW. M.P, Ottawa, September 14, 1899, RG 18, vol. 170, file 339−48, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa; Fyffe, Copy of diary week ending September 21, 1899; Colonist, August 5, 1899. 138. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 12, 197−98. 139. Colonist, October 19, 1899. 140. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 134; vol. 12, 197−99; Kang Youwei, Kang Nanhai zibian nianpu, 65. 141. Fyffe, Copy of diary from September 21 until September 30, 1899. 142. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 134. 143. Province, November 7, 1899; Sang Bing 桑兵, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju 庚子勤王与晚清政局 [The military rescue of the Guangxu Emperor in 1900 and political situation of late Qing China] (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2005), 34−35, 48−49. 144. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 72; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography,” 181; Ren, “Lun Huaqiao yu Baohuanghui,” 69. 145. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 4; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 136, 138−39. 146. Fyffe, Letter to the controller, NW.M.P, Ottawa, September 14, 1899. 147. Colonist, October 10, 1899; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 136, 156; Ma Guntang, Letter to Kang Youwei, December 13, 1899, folder 14, carton 5, archival no. AAS ARC 2000/70, Yuk Ow Research Files, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California at Berkeley; L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 49−50. 148. Tom Chue Thom [Tan Chaodong], Letter to Kang Youwei, August 18,

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1900, archival no. FO 17/1718, “China, Chinese Revolutionaries in British Dominions: Sun Yat-sen, Kang-yu-wei, etc.,” 414−15, National Archives, London. Tan’s letter used the Chinese terms Se-lo (Shelu 舍路), Put-lun (Bolun 砵伦), and Chief Port (Dabu 大埠) to refer to Seattle, Portland, and San Francisco. For Tan’s religious background, see Jiwu Wang, “‘His Dominion’ and the ‘Yellow Peril’”: Protestant Missions to Chinese Immigrants in Canada, 1859−1967 (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2006), 49. 149. A. B. Winchester, Letter to T.R.E. McInnes, August 19, 1899, file 3906/99, box 1, GR429, Attorney General Correspondence, 1872−1937, British Columbia Archives, Victoria, BC. 150. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui 上海市文物保管委员会, ed., Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui 康有为与保皇会 [Kang Youwei and the Society to Protect the Emperor] (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1982), 462−63. 151. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 139. Kang wrote the letter to a Tengfang, who was probably Li Tengfang 黎腾芳, a Chinese migrant in Helena, Montana; see Fang Zhiqin 方志钦 and Cai Huiyao 蔡惠尧, eds., Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui: Tan Liang zai Meiguo suocang ziliao huibian 康梁与保皇会：谭良 在美国所藏资料汇编 [Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, and the Society to Protect the Emperor: A collection of materials preserved by Tan Liang in the United States] (Xianggang: Yinhe chubanshe, 2008), 331. 152. Tang, “Kang Youwei de haiwai huodong,” 124−26; Ren, “Lun Huaqiao yu Baohuanghui,” 70; Stanley, “‘Chinamen, Wherever We Go,’” 475−503. 153. Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 155−76, 182−204. 154. Province, October 11, 1899; Colonist, October 11, 1899. 155. Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 180−90, 193; Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan−Qing zhengju, 244−49. 156. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 25−28. 157. Donghua xinbao, October 11, 1899; January 17, 1900. For the establishment of the CERA in Sydney, see also Li Hairong 李海蓉, “Aozhou Baohuanghui chuangli tanyuan” 澳洲保皇会创立探源 [In search of the origins of the Chinese Empire Reform Association in Australia], Huaqiao Huaren lishi yanjiu 华侨华人 历史研究 [Journal of overseas Chinese history studies] 3 (2017): 75−83. 158. Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 180−81, 193; L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 49, 80−82, 89. 159. Zhang Pengyuan 张朋园, Liang Qichao yu Qingji geming 梁启超与清季革 命 [Liang Qichao and the revolutionary movement at the end of the Qing dynasty] (Changchun: Jilin chuban jietuan, 2007), 84−87, 92−104; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 128−32; Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 51, 76−80, 192−204.

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160. Cai Shaoqing 蔡少卿, “Liang Qichao fangwen Aozhou shulun” 梁启超访 问澳洲述论 [A narrative study of Liang Qichao’s visit to Australia], Jiangsu shehui kexue 江苏社会科学 [Social sciences in Jiangsu] 2 (2018): 144−60. 161. Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 39, 43−49, 51−53; Joseph W. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 272−75. 162. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, “Immigrants from China, 1885−1949” (https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Home/ Search?q=Immigrants%20from%20China%2C%201885-1949&, accessed November 14, 2022). The database was searched with a variant of Liang’s name, Leong Kai Ten. 163. Colonist, March 7, 1900; Province, March 20, 1900. 164. Province, March 20, 1900; Daily Times, March 23, 1900; Qingiyi bao 清议 报 [China discussion], 15 (1900): 16. Qingyi bao misdated the second meeting in Victoria to March 20, 1900. 165. Daily Times, March 23, 1900. See also Colonist, March 23, 1900. 166. Colonist, March 24, 1900. 167. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 186. In this source, Kang mentioned Liang Qitian by one of his other names, Junli 君力. 168. Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising, 283−310, esp. 288, 303, 310. 169. Province, July 30, 1900; See also Colonist, July 31, 1900; Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 85. 170. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 183, 200, 203, 215. 171. Colonist, September 12 and 20, 1900; Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 73−80. 172. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu Baohuanghui, 151,169. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 176, 234. 173. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 4; Colonist, July 25, 1900; Daily Times, August 16, September 7, 1900; March 10, 1901; L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 79−80. 174. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 162−64; L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 80. The letter from Liang referred to the money as “Mu-yin” 墨银, or Mexican silver dollar, rather than peso. 175. The Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada’s fonds, April 30, 1900, incorporation no. 75, microfilm reel no. B04406, GR-1526-Corporation Registry Files, British Columbia Archives, Victoria, BC. 176. Province, June 23, July 12, 1900; January 24, 1901. For the contents of these petitions and information about their submissions, see relevant documents in Cor-

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respondence, folder 1-1, Won Alexander Cumyow fonds, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver, BC. 177. Douglas R. Reynolds, China, 1898−1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1993), chapters 7−10, esp. pp. 13, 91−93. 178. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 396−404; Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 88−89, 418−22. 179. Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 366−75; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 108−113; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 200−204. The English translation of Datong ribao is the original, although the Chinese title means “great unity daily.” 180. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 189; Fang and Cai, KangLiang yu Baohuanghui, 99; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 200, 203−204. 181. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 6, 312−51; Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 38, 44. 182. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 196−97, 208−10. 183. Joseph R. Levenson, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and the Mind of Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 69; Hao Chang, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China, 1890−1907 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 238−71; L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 89−94. 184. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 203−18. 185. Colonist, March 4, 1903. For Liang’s arrival in Canada and personal information about Huang and Bao, see also Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 131−32, 204−205; Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 195, 438, 443; Zhongguo weixinbao 中国维新报 [Chinese reform news], April 28, 1904, AR-44 in CERAD. 186. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 102; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 207. 187. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 291, 318−19; Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 438−40, 442−46. 188. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 203−204. 189. Shanghai wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 220−21; Li Fuji, Xuanzhenghui jishi shilüe, 4−5; Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 44−45, 146, 304−305. 190. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 311; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 195; Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 423−27; Shanghai wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 266−86.

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191. Province, March 5, 1903. 192. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 204−205, 209. 193. Province, March 9, 1903; Zhongguo Weixinbao, March 11, 1904; Liang Qichao 梁启超, Liang Qichao quanji 梁启超全集 [The complete works of Liang Qichao], ed. Zhang Pinxing 张品兴 (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 1999), vol. 2, 1130. 194. Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 10, 5927−28, Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 210. 195. Province, March 12 and 13, 1903; Daily Times, March 16, 1903; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 210. 196. Daily World, April 3, 1903. For more information on Worsnop, see J. F. Bosher, Imperial Vancouver Island: Who Was Who, 1850−1950 (Bloomington, IN: Xlibris, 2010), 803. 197. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 209−10; Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 427−38. 198. Province, April 18, 1903; Daily News-Advertiser, April 29, 1903; Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1130, 1132. Liang’s own record misdated the ceremony to April 23, 1903. 199. Evening Journal, May 4, 1903; Daily Star, May 7, 1903; Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1133−34. 200. Cohen, America’s Response to China, 50, 61. 201. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 211−16; Colonist, June 21, 1903. Ding and Zhao’s biography quotes Liang’s travel notes that misdated his meeting with Hay and Roosevelt as June 11 and 12, 1903. 202. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 212−14. 203. Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1179, 1192. 204. Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1179, 1185, 1187−89; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 131, 205. 205. Zhang Pengyuan, Liang Qichao yu Qingji geming, 110−16; L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 91−92. 206. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 216−18. 207. Liang, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1126−200, esp. 1129−30, 1133, 1148, 1161, 1168, 1170, 1175−76, 1179, 1185−86, 1192, 1199. 208. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 242−43; Wu Xianzi 伍宪子, Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi 中国民主 宪政党党史 [A history of the Chinese Constitutional Party] (San Francisco: Shijie ribao, 1952), 77−78. 209. L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 93; Liang, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1200−16; Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 113. 210. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 210, 214.

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211. Colonist, May 8, 1903; Globe, May 11, 1903. The newspaper report from the Colonist records Kang’s name as F. B. Kang. She was born in 1881, see Kang Youwei, Kang Nanhai zibian nianpu, 10. But in Jun-pang Lo’s translation of this Chinese publication, it incorrectly dates her birth to 1887, see K’ang Yu-wei, “Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 36, 145. 212. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 107. 213. Yazao 亚造, “Ji Kang Tongbi nüshi Datong xuexiao yanshuo” 记康同璧女 士大同学校演说 [A record of Kang Tongbi’s speech at the Datong School], Dalu 大陆 [Continent], 6 (1903): 84−86. 214. Colonist, May 23, 1903. 215. Province, May 22, 1903. 216. For detailed research on Kang Tongbi and her initiation of CELRA’s chapters in Canada and the United States, see Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism and the First Transnational Organization of Chinese Feminist Politics, 1903−1905,” Twentieth-Century China 44, no. 1 (2019): 3−32. 217. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 11. 218. Province, May 29, 1903. 219. Xin Zhongguo bao 新中国报 [New China daily], September 19, 1903. 220. Xin Zhongguo bao, December 10, 1903; Morning Astorian, September 22, 1903; Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 14, 22−23. 221. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 14−16. 222. Herald, December 13, 1903. 223. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 16−17, 19−28.

Chapter 2 1. For Kang’s places of exile from 1900 to 1903 and his trips to Canada, the United States, and Mexico between 1904 and 1907, see Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 264−69; for his clashes with North American CERA leaders up to 1909, see Zhongping Chen, “Kang Youwei’s Activities in Canada,” 16−22, and more details below. 2. Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 187−90; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 398; Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 34−35, 37−38, 40−54. 3. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 398; vol. 6, 350−52; vol. 7, 189−93. 4. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Youwei’s Activities in Canada,” 17−19. 5. Gao, Ershi shiji chu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui zai Meiguo, 32, 42, 66−67. 6. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 275−82; Wickberg, et al., From China to Canada, 74.

254

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7. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 71−72, 121−25, 147; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 179−82, 197−98, 214; Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 64−81, 109−16, 239−40. 8. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Youwei’s Activities in Canada,” 16−22. 9. For details about Kang’s activities in each of the three countries in 1904−1907, see Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 115−240; Zhang Qizhen 张启祯 and Zhang Qireng 张启礽, Kang Youwei zai haiwai: Bu Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu 康有为在海外: 补南海康先生年谱 [Kang Youwei’s activities overseas: A supplement to the Continuation of Kang Youwei’s autobiography] (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2018), 42−120. 10. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 70−72, 121−25, 147; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 179−82, 197−98, 214. 11. Lin, Gexinpai juren Kang Youwei, 415−22; Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 64−81, 109−16, 239−40. 12. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 275−82; Wickberg, et al. From China to Canada, 74; Li, Ding, and Jia, Jianada Huaqiao yiminshi, 180−83. 13. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 282, especially the photocopy of Kang’s 1902 poem on the unnumbered page between pp. 272−73. 14. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 107; Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 8−11. 15. Kang Youwei, Letter to Wilfrid Laurier, November 17, 1904, Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier’s papers, MG 26−G. vol. 345, pp. 92267−68, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 16. Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 196−212. Lo’s account of Kang’s global trips includes an incorrect record of his travel from Mexico to Europe in July 1906, see my discussion below. 17. “Canada, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1865−1935”; Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 116. The passenger database was searched with a variant of Kang’s romanized name, Yei Wei Hang (Hang as his surname). 18. Roy, A White Man’s Province, 101, 111−14. 19. Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration: Session 1902 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1902), 168, 212, 231, 234−40, 293−94; Roy, A White Man’s Province, 114−17. 20. Kang Youwei, Letter to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, May 13, 1902. Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier’s papers, MG 26−G. vol. 233, pp. 65103−104, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 21. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 54. 22. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 46−48.

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23. L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 109−17; Gao Weinong, Ershi shiji chu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui zai Meiguo, 279−347; Tsai, China and the Overseas Chinese in the United States, 114, 116, 148−50; Jane Leung Larson, “Articulating China’s First Mass Movement: Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, the Baohuanghui, and the 1905 Anti-American Boycott,” Twentieth-Century China 33, no. 1 (2007): 4−26. 24. Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 447−48; Zhang and Zhang, Kang Youwei zai haiwai, 45, 49−50. 25. Kang Youwei, Letter to Li Fuji, May 26, 1904, folder 1, box 2, “Wu Xianzi xiansheng yigao ji suocang wenjian” 伍宪子先生遗稿及所藏文件 [Mr. Wu Xianzi’s posthumous manuscripts and collection of documents], East Asian Library, the University of Washington (WXZXY hereafter). 26. Daily Star, November 14, 1904. 27. Evening Journal, November 15, 1904. 28. Citizen, November 18, 1904. 29. Kang Youwei, Letter to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, November 17, 1904. 30. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 111; Kang Youwei, Letter to Kang Tongbi, November 16, 1904, no. S-C31, in “Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection” (courtesy of Jane Leung Larson) (KTBSW hereafter). 31. Province, November 21, 1904. 32. Province, November 22, 1904. 33. Province, November 22, 1904; Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 121. 34. Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 428−30, 448; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 230, 242; Zhang Ronghua 张荣华, “Zhenhua gongsi neihong yu Kang-Liang fenqi” 振华公司内讧与 康、梁分歧 [Internal strife for Zhenhua Company and the discord between Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao], Fudan xuebao 复旦学报 [Journal of Fudan University] 1 (1997): 74. 35. Daily News-Advertiser, November 30, 1904. 36. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 111−14, 199. 37. “Resignation: Charles Yip Yan, Chinese Interpreter, Vancouver, British Columbia, Minister of Trade and Commerce, August 24, 1904,” Orders-in-Council-170585, RG2, Privy Council Office, Series A-1-a, vol. 880, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/home/rec ord?app=OrdInCou&IdNumber=170585&q=Resignation:%20Charles%20Yip%20 Yan,%20Chinese%20Interpreter, accessed November 15, 2022); “Appointment: Yip On, Chinese Interpreter, Vancouver, British Columbia, Minister of Trade and Commerce, August 24, 1904,” Orders-in-Council-170586, RG2, Privy Council Of-

256

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fice, Series A-1-a, vol. 880, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (https://www. bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/CollectionSearch/Pages/record.aspx?app=ordincou&IdNumber= 170586&new=-8586354107171942355#1, accessed November 15, 2022). For the familial relations of Yip Yen and Yip On, see Chuimei Ho and Bennet Bronson, “The Chinese Empire Reform Association (CERA) in Vancouver, B.C., 1899” (http:// www.cinarc.org/Associations.html, accessed November 15, 2022). 38. For Yip On’s manipulation of his post in customs and his relations with Bowell and other white politicians in Canada as an ethnic power broker, see Mar, Brokering Belonging, 1−48, esp. 39. But Mar’s book (pp. 6, 18, 31, 144n28, 230, and Figure 1.1 on p. 20) sometimes mistakes Yip Yen and Yip On as the same person. 39. Daily Times, November 29, December 2, 1904. 40. Daily Times, December 2, 1904. 41. Daily Times, December 13, 1904. 42. Province, January 3, 1905. 43. The two Chinese signboards have remained on the wall of the original CERA building, and were discovered by Chi Jeng Chang (Chang, email to the author, March 6, 2017). 44. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 7, 344−45. 45. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 124. 46. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 8, 61−101, esp. 62−63, 71. 47. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 58. 48. Kang Youwei, “Gongqi” 公启 [Public notice], February 25, 1905, folder 1, box 2, in WXZXY. This public notice was issued through the CERA in Portland, and it is quoted in Zhang and Zhang, Kang Youwei zai haiwai, 66−67, but the book does not provide information about the origin of the source. 49. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 112−13, 379−83. This collection includes the twelve songs, and the first song also appears in Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 12, 263, although its last line of verse is slightly different. 50. Zhongping Chen, Modern China’s Network Revolution, 110−19; Larson, “Articulating China’s First Mass Movement,” 9−11, 14−17; Huang Xianqiang 黄贤 强, “Aozhou Huaren yu 1905 nian kang-Mei yundong” 澳洲华人与1905年抗美 运动 [The Chinese in Australia and the anti-American boycott of 1905], Huaqiao Huaren lishi yanjiu 华侨华人历史研究 [Journal of overseas Chinese history studies], 3 (2000): 54−63. 51. Province, June 19−20, 1905. 52. Colonist, June 24, 1905. 53. “Juanzhu [fan-]Mei jujinyue jingfeibu”捐助[反]美拒禁约经费部 [A record of financial donations for the anti-American boycott and opposition to Chinese

Notes

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exclusion acts], in folder 8, boxer 1, “Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Fonds,” acc. no. 2009−021, University of Victoria Archives, Victoria, BC. 54. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 116, 151−87, 281−305. See also Tsai, China and the Overseas Chinese in the United States, 134−35, 148−50; Zhang and Zhang, Kang Youwei zai haiwai, 69−79. 55. “Baohuanghui gongyi gaiding xinzhang” 保皇会公议改定新章 [The collectively discussed and revised rules of the Society to Protect the Emperor] (n.p., 1905), 13a−16b, 18a−b, and ba 跋 (postscript), in AR-2, carton 3 in CERAD. In Gao, Ershi shiji chu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui zai Meiguo, p. 78, there is a list of CERA delegates to the conference, but it omits the representatives of the CERA chapters in Honolulu and Mexico. 56. Mar, Brokering Belonging, 19. 57. C. F. Yong, The New Gold Mountain: The Chinese in Australia, 1901−1921 (Richmond, SA: Raphael Arts, 1977), 128. 58. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 158, 381; Larson, “Articulating China’s First Mass Movement,” 14. 59. Guangdong Juyue Zonghui, Letter to Yueduoli Zhonghua huiguan, 1905 (date unclear), folder 4, box 1, Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association Fonds, acc. no. 2009−021, University of Victoria Archives, Victoria, BC. CERA’s Huayi Company started operation in Hong Kong from March 1904, but it came under Yip Yen’s control later on, see Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu Baohuanghui, 331. 60. Major works on the subject include Margaret Field, “The Chinese Boycott of 1905,” in Papers on China 2 (1957): 63−98; Zhang Cunwu 张存武, Guangxu sayinian Zhong−Mei gongyue fengchao 光绪卅一年中美工约风潮 [The agitation over the Sino-American labor treaty in 1905] (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, 1966); Guanhua Wang, In Search of Justice: The 1905−1906 Chinese AntiAmerican Boycott (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001); Wong Sin Kiong, China’s Anti-American Boycott in 1905: A Study of Urban Protest (New York: Peter Lang, 2002). For short reviews of their relevant arguments, see Zhongping Chen, Modern China’s Network Revolution, 110; Larson, “Articulating China’s First Mass Movement,” 12. 61. Zhongping Chen, Modern China’s Network Revolution, 110. 62. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 57. 63. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 156−58, 224. 64. Wu Xianzi, Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi, 85−92. For two somewhat different accounts of the finances of CERA’s Chinese Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong and its various business ventures, see Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 326−32; and Ou Yungao 欧云

258

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高 [Ou Jujia], Ye En 叶恩 [Yip Yen], Liu Yiren 刘义任 [Liu Kangheng], and Liang Yingliu 梁应骝, “Bo Xu Qin deng bugaoshu” 驳徐勤等布告书 [Refutation of the notice from Xu Qin and others], 1a−2a, AR-18 in CERAD. 65. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 12, 258. 66. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 115−99, esp. 178−88, 199. Worden’s work provides a basically correct account of Kang Youwei’s first visit to Mexico from November 1905 to April 1906. But it incorrectly assumes that Kang soon returned to Mexico, and then cites an erroneous record of Kang’s next trip from Mexico to Europe in August 1906, which is from Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 204. In fact, after Kang’s first Mexican trip, his second visit to the United States lasted from April 29 to August 15, 1906, when he left New York for Europe; see Zhang and Zhang, Kang Youwei zai haiwai, 94, 106−107. Apart from the source cited by the work of Zhang and Zhang, there were quite a few newspaper reports about Kang’s departure from New York for Europe on August 15, 1906, rather than from Mexico. 67. “Baohuanghui gongyi gaiding xinzhang,” 3b, 19a. 68. Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 201−204; Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 65, 69, 71−72, 77; Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 206. 69. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 131−32. 70. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 8, 220−26. 71. Worden, “A Chinese Reformer in Exile,” 201−15, 263−69. The numbers of Kang’s visits to the United States and Mexico are based on the records from Zhang and Zhang, Kang Youwei zai haiwai, 51, 113−26. 72. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 147. 73. Chen Zhongping, “Kang Youwei Wendao zhimi,” 30. 74. Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1186. For an exaggerated report about the number of CERA chapters before and after 1903, see Wu Xianzi, Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi, 25−27. 75. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 291. The claim about the number of Chinese residents in San Francisco is an obvious exaggeration. 76. Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1179−80. Other sources reported 13,954 to 25,000 Chinese in San Francisco in 1900, see Yong Chen, Chinese San Francisco, 59−60, which also cites Liang’s another estimate of 30,000 Chinese in the city and its nearby places. 77. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 27, 292−93; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 204. 78. Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1127, 1129−30. 79. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 282, 289.

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80. Wickberg, et al., From China to Canada, 74−75, 88n4. 81. Huang and Wu, Jianada Huaqiao Huaren shi, 139−41; Li, Ding, and Jia, Jianada Huaqiao yiminshi, 183. 82. Chen Zhongping,“Baohuanghui zai Jianada,” 144−45. This article’s textual research on the early CERA chapters in Canada by 1903 is based mainly on sources from the International Chinese Directory, 1901, 65−68, 70, and from Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1133. 83. Province, March 9, 1903. 84. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 300. 85. Supplement to the New Westminster Columbian (New Westminster, BC: Columbian Printing Co., 1903), 66. I thank Jim Wolf for directing my attention to this source. 86. “Baohuanghui gongyi gaiding xinzhang” 5a. Kang’s announcement can be confirmed with other available sources, such as Fang and Cai, Kang−Liang yu Baohuanghui, 227. 87. New York Times, May 8, 1904. 88. Liang Yingliu, “Changjian Baohuanghui suo beiji.” 89. Zhongguo Weixinbao, April 28, 1904; Colonist, April 5, 1904. The first cited newspaper referred Sidney with the Chinese place name “Shenru 申汝.” 90. Bincheng xinbao 槟城新报 [Penang Sinpoe: Chinese daily news], March 7−8, 1904. The document is a reprint from Shangbao 商报 [Commercial daily] in Hong Kong. In Zhang and Zhang, Kang Youwei zai haiwai, 45−46, 168−70 it quotes the whole document, but incorrectly dates its origin from Shangbao, March 7, 1904, and also gives a slightly higher number of 134 CERA chapters (I thank Zhang Qiren, one of the authors of the book, for his clarification of the source in his email to me on August 21, 2021). 91. Tang Zhijun, Kang Youwei zhenglunji, vol. 1, 597, 608; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 8, 410. The figure of approximately 200 chapters is from CERA chapters’ memorial to the Qing government in July 1908, but Tang misdated it to 1907, as Kang’s collection shows. In Zhang and Zhang, Kang Youwei zai haiwai, 168, it adds the numbers of CERA’s chapters from three different lists, and claims that they had appeared in 240 cities in the world, but its statistical accuracy still needs to be verified. 92. Zhang and Zhang, Kang Youwei zai haiwai, 172−81. 93. Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1127, 1129. Liang estimated that Victoria had more than five thousand Chinese residents in 1903, but the Chinese Board of Trade of Victoria reported 3,263 local residents of Chinese origin in 1902, see Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration: Session 1902, 12.

260

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94. Daily Times, October 27, 1902. 95. Supplement to the New Westminster Columbian, 66. 96. Zhongguo Weixinbao, April 28, 1904; “Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada Member Portraits,” VPL 26814, Special Collections Historical Photographs, Vancouver Public Library. 97. Daily News, October 6 and 11, 1905; Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration: Session 1902, 124. 98. Wu Xianzi’s Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi (p. 26) claims that the CERA in Montreal appeared with more than two thousand members in 1903, that its counterparts in Ottawa and Toronto came into being in the same year, and their members numbered more than three hundred and one thousand, respectively. In fact, the 1901 Canadian census showed that the total Chinese population numbered only 1,044 in Quebec, including Montreal, and 712 in Ontario, including Ottawa and Toronto, see Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration, 7. Moreover, the CERA of Toronto did not appear until late 1904, see Zhongguo Weixinbao, September 29, 1904. 99. L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 48; Liang Yingliu, “Changjian Baohuanghui suo beiji.” For a statistical analysis of these donors, see Chen Zhongping, “Weiduoliya, Wengehua yu haineiwai Huaren de gailiang he geming,” 89. 100. For Li and Dong’s leadership with Victoria’s CERA at its inception, see Colonist, March 24, 1900. In the letters from the early leaders of the Victoria CERA, Li and Dong were always the only two cosigners until 1902, when Dong’s Tai Soong & Co. was closed, and he was replaced by Luo in subsequent letters, see Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 299−307. For their ages in the Canadian census of 1901, search their names (Lee Folk Gay, Dong Tai, and Lok Yut Wo) on the following database: “1901 Census Records for Victoria, British Columbia” (http://automatedgenealogy.com/census/District.jsp?id=4, accessed November 16, 2022.) For Li and Luo’s business affiliations, see David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 58−60. 101. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 4. 102. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 188−90, 278; Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 4; David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 38; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 12, 199. 103. Colonist, December 28, 1898; Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 3; “Juanzhu [fan-] Mei jujinyue jingfeibu.” 104. David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 58, 134; Fang and Cai, KangLiang yu Baohuanghui, 309−10. 105. Donghai 东海 (Li Donghai), “Jianada Lishi xianxian xiaozhuan” 加拿大 李氏先贤小传 [Brief biographies of the Lee pioneers in Canada], in Quan-Jia

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Lishi disanjie kenqin dahui jinian tekan 全加李氏第三届恳亲大会纪念特刊 [Special issue in commemoration of the third fraternal meeting of the Li lineage in Canada] (Cloverdale, BC: 1986), 48−49; “Changhetang yu Yushan zonggongsuo zhi yangeshi” 昌后堂与禺山总公所之沿革史 [A history of the Changhou Association and the General Association of Panyu Natives], in Yushan zonggongsuo luocheng jiniance 禺山总公所落成纪念册 [A commemorative book for the erection of building of the General Association of Panyu Natives] (Vancouver, BC: Yushan zonggongsuo, 1949), 2−3. 106. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 307; David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 58−60. 107. Colonist, March 24, 1900. 108. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 309−10, Colonist, June 18, 1910. Chen’s name often appeared in local newspapers as Tong Ork. 109. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 305, 309; Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 4; David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 38. 110. Timothy J. Stanley, “Chu Lai (Lay),” in Dictionary of Canadian Biography, vol. 13 (1901−1910) (http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/chu_lai_13E.html, accessed November 17, 2022). 111. Stanley, “‘Chinamen, Wherever We Go,’” 484. 112. For the date of the poster, see Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 145. For the poster itself, see Colonist, May 10, 1903. 113. “Juanzhu [fan-]Mei jujinyue jingfeibu.” 114. Province, May 18, 1899. For Won, see Wickberg et al., From China to Canada, 14. The newspaper records the last four of them as Dr. Lui, Sam Kee, Lee Yuen, and Hip Tuck Lung. For the identification of Dr. Lui with Liao Yipeng, see the discussion in Chapter 1; for the relations of Chang Toy with Sam Kee Co., of Lee Kee with Lee Yuen & Co., and of Huang Yushan with Hip Tuck Lung & Co., see Paul Yee, “Sam Kee: A Chinese Business in Early Vancouver,” BC Studies 69−70 (1986): 70−96; Donghai, “Jianada Lishi xianxian xiaozhuan,” 50; and Paul Yee, Saltwater City: An Illustrated History of the Chinese in Vancouver (Vancouver, BC: Douglas & McIntyre, 1988), 36. Lee Kee is identified as Li Qingchi because the latter name was also used to refer to one of the founders of CERA in the group photo of “The Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada: First Executive Officers.” 115. “Portraits of Chinese Men,” VPL 26691 in Special Collections Historical Photographs, Vancouver Public Library, Vancouver, BC. See also Ho and Bronson, “The Chinese Empire Reform Association (CERA) in Vancouver, B.C., 1899.” 116. The Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada’s fonds, April 30, 1900. 117. “The Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada: First Executive Officers.” See also Figure 4 in Chapter 1.

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118. Liang was originally a director of the CERA chapter in Vancouver; see “Portraits of Chinese Men.” For his business background, see Yee, Saltwater City, 39. He was also misnamed by English newspapers as Mark Long, the name of his company; see the related reports about him and his transcontinental travel in Province, November 22, 1904; Spokane-Review, August 24, 1904; and Zhongguo Weixinbao, September 29, 1904. 119. Mar, Brokering Belonging, 22, 37, 58; Yee, “Sam Kee,” 73. For Huang’s native place, see “Wong Soon King” in Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, “Immigrants from China, 1885−1949.” 120. Except for Chang, their ages can be checked by searching their surnames in the database “1901 Census Records for Burrard, British Columbia” (http:// automatedgenealogy.com/census/District.jsp?districtId=1, accessed November 17, 2022), but Yip On’s and Won’s surnames are given mistakenly as Yik and Cumyow in the database. For Chang’s age, see Yee, “Sam Kee,” 73. 121. Yee, “Sam Kee,” 73. Shen’s name also appeared as Shum Moon in historical documents. 122. Spokane-Review, August 24, 1904; Zhongguo Weixinbao, September 29, 1904. 123. Daily News, October 6, 1905. 124. Colonist, June 21, 1903. 125. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 242. 126. Province, November 22, 1904. 127. Liang Qichao, Laing Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1129−30; Colonist, March 23, 1900, March 10, 1901, March 3, 1902, February 27, 1904; Province, February 27, 1902, March 12, 1903. 128. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 210; Province, March 12 and 13, 1903. 129. Liang Zhihuai (Leung Chik-wai) 梁植槐, Ye Chuntian xiansheng zhuanji 叶春田先生传记 [Biography of Yip Sang] (Hong Kong, 1973), 6 (English section), 53 (Chinese section); Yee, “Sam Kee,” 94. For discussions about the Patriotic School in Vancouver, see Timothy J. Stanley, Contesting White Supremacy: School Segregation, Anti-Racism, and the Making of Chinese Canadians (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2011), 194−95; Belinda Huang, “Teaching Chineseness in the Trans-Pacific Society: Overseas Chinese Education in Canada and the United States, 1900−1919” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2009), 120−22, 249, 316; Wickberg, et al., From China to Canada, 76. These three works assume that CERA founded the Patriotic School in Vancouver and another one in Victoria. Huang and Wickberg as well as his collaborators further claim that the two schools appeared around 1900 and

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1901, respectively. None of them provide any evidence for the Patriotic School in Vancouver before 1903 or for its counterpart in Victoria around that time. 130. Zhongguo weixinbao, July 4, 1904, July 28, 1904; Mai Liqian 麦礼谦 (Him Mark Lai), Cong Huaqiao dao Huaren: Ershi shiji Meiguo Huaren shehui fazhanshi 从华侨到华人: 二十世纪美国华人社会发展史 [From Chinese sojourners to Chinese settlers: The Development of Chinese communities in American society during the twentieth century] (Hong Kong: Sanlian shudian, 1992), 49−59. 131. Zhongguo weixinbao, September 1, 1904 ; “Benhui lianwei zhangcheng” 本 会联卫章程 [CERA of Canada’s regulations for collective protection], folder 3, box 2, The Lee Family Papers, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver. 132. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 381; “Baohuanghui gongyi gaiding xinzhang,” 2b−3a, 12b−16b. 133. For comparisons of CELRA with the Chinese women’s feminist organizations in late Qing China and Japan, see Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 4−7, 13, 29. 134. The late Jack Wai Yen Lee (Li Huixian 李惠贤, 1922–2011), a grandnephew of Situ Mingyu, helped identify her connection to Lee Mong Kow and Liu Zikui (Jack Wai Yen Lee’s email to the author, March 2, 2011). Situ’s relations with Lee and Liu are also recorded in Li Mengjiu [Lee Mong Kow] 李梦九, untitled autobiographical draft (photocopy in author’s collection), 12. 135. “Yingguo Jianada shu sanbu Baohuang tongren dahuiji” 英国加拿大属三 埠保皇同人大会记 [Record of the Chinese Empire Reform Association’s meetings in three Chinatowns of the British dominion of Canada], Qingyi bao 清议报 [Chinese discussion], 45 (1900): 16b. Chinese Discussion is the original translation of the journal title. 136. Colonist, August 19, 1903. 137. Province, May 29, 1903. The name Liu Kangheng is identified with Law A. Yam because his election as a vice president of the CERA of Canada in March 1903 was reported by both the Vancouver newspaper, Province, on March 12, 1903, and by a Chinese newspaper in New York, Zhongguo Weixinbao, on March 11, 1905. Mo Yuechan appeared as his wife with the name Mok Sam [from her full name Mok Yue Sam in Cantonese] in the “1901 Census Records for New Westminster, British Columbia” (http://automatedgenealogy.com/census/District.jsp?districtId=2, accessed August 2, 2022). Liu’s surname is transcribed as Low in the database. 138. Chuimei Ho and Bennet Bronson, “The Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association in 1903−4: Real or Public Relations Fantasy?” (http://www.cinarc. org/Women.html, accessed November 17, 2022). For Nellie Yip’s background, see

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“Interview with Mrs. Yip Quong, February 26, 1924,” 5 (https://purl.stanford.edu/ qz132ss2867, accessed November 17, 2022). 139. Colonist, December 5, 1905. For reports of this meeting and its election of new leaders, see the same newspaper, November 30, 1905; January 9, 1906. 140. For examples of previous studies on women’s suffrage issues in the modern West and China, see Alana S. Jeydel, Political Women: The Women’s Movement, Political Institutions, the Battle for Women’s Suffrage and the ERA (London: Routledge, 2004); Louise Edwards, Gender, Politics, and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage in China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). 141. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 14−17, 22−24. For the spousal relationship between Li and Huang, see Immigration Office, Portland, Oregon, “In the Matter of the Application of Lee Mee Gin for the Laborer’s Return Certificate,” April 26, 1921, Chinese Exclusion Case File for Portland, box 63, case no. 5010/171 for “Lee Mee Gin,” National Archives at Seattle. 142. Daily Tribune, November 1, 1903. 143. United States Census, 1900 (https://familysearch.org/search/collection/1325221, accessed November 17, 2022). Wong Kai is the Cantonese pronunciation of Huang Xi in Mandarin, but it also appears as Wong Ki in the database. 144. Zhongguo weixinbao, May 12, 1904. For the relations of the New York CELRA with Huang Xi’s wife, or “Xi-shen” 溪婶 (Madam Huang Xi) in available Chinese documents, see Tonghao, Letter to Kang Tongbi, May 27, 1905, and “Kang Tongbi riji” 康同璧日记 [Kang Tongbi’s diary], June 27, 1904, no. B−44 and Diary in KTBSW. 145. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 165; Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 16, 24−25. 146. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 21−22. 147. Xin Zhongguo bao, September 19, 1903; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 212. 148. Morning Oregonian, September 8, 1903; Xin Zhongguo bao, December 10, 1903. 149. Morning Astorian, September 22 and 23, 1903. The newspaper recorded Yip May Young’s name as Yip Mea Yung. 150. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 22−25. 151. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 26−28. 152. Province, February 5, 1910. 153. For Mary Benson, see Figure 6, and Bosher, Imperial Vancouver Island: Who Was Who, 803. On the poster of the leaders of CELRA of Vancouver and New Westminster in Figure 6, Mary Benson is identified as Lujun fujiang furen Wei Shi Nie 陆军副将夫人威士聂, the wife of Lieutenant Colonel Worsnop.

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154. Daily World, April 3, 1903; Daily News-Advertiser, November 30, 1904. 155. In Figure 6, the poster of the leaders of the CELRA of Vancouver and New Westminster identifies Nellie Yip as Xiwen shuji Rulitao 西文书记汝利桃, meaning English Secretary Nellie Yip. For her life, see “Interview with Mrs. Yip Quong, February 26, 1924,” 1−6. 156. Colonist, April 5, 1904. 157. Daily News, May 3, 1905. 158. “Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada Member Portraits.” This poster is available at Chuimei Ho and Bennet Bronson, “The Chinese Empire Reform Association (CERA) in Rossland, B.C., 1903” (http://www.cinarc.org/Associations.html, accessed November 17, 2022). 159. Ho and Bronson, “The Chinese Empire Reform Association (CERA) in Rossland, B.C., 1903.” 160. Zhongguo Weixinbao, July 21, 1904; Report of the Royal Commission on Chinese and Japanese Immigration: Session 1902, 43. 161. “Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada Member Portraits.” 162. “Baohuanghui gongyi gaiding xinzhang,” 1a−24b, esp. 1a, 6a, 9a, 11b−18a, 24a. 163. For a detailed discussion of this New York conference and its new constitution, see Gao, Ershi shiji chu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui zai Meiguo, 73−81, 94−99, 102−20, 127−54, 174−82, 188−92. Gao incorrectly dates the meeting to July 24 to 26, 1905. 164. “Baohuanghui gongyi gaiding xinzhang,” 1a−24b, esp. 2a–b, 4b–5a, 11b−18a, 24a. 165. Tang, Kang Youwei zhenglunji, vol. 1, 597−607; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 204−205. 166. For the formal Chinese title of the Constitutional Association of Canada, see Yungaohua bu Xianzhenghui bugaoshu 云高华埠宪政会布告书 (Proclamation of the Constitutional Association in Vancouver’s Chinatown) (n.p., 1909), 17. 167. Province, February 26, 1907. 168. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 136; Zhang and Zhang, Kang Youwei zai haiwai, 113. 169. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 330. The cited source shows that this figure is from a 1909 report of Kuang Shoumin 邝寿民, the associate manager (xieli 协理) of the Huayi Remittance Bank. Yip Yen claimed that the market value of the bank reached more than $800,000 (HKD) in 1908, see Ou Yungao, et al., “Bo Xu Qin deng bugaoshu”, 2b. 170. Wu Xianzi, Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi, 79−80.

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171. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 422−23. 172. Province, September 9, 1907, May 27, 1908; Roy, A White Man’s Province, 191−93; Report by W. L. Mackenzie King, C.M.G., Deputy Minister of Labour, Commissioner Appointed to Investigate into the Losses Sustained by the Chinese Population of Vancouver, B.C. on the Occasion of the Riots in That City in September, 1907 (Ottawa: S.E. Dawson, 1908), 17−18. 173. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 256, 258, 260−61. See also Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 422−23. 174. Zhang Ronghua, “Zhenhua gongsi neihong yu Kang-Liang fenqi,” 74. 175. Zhang and Zhang, Kang Youwei zai haiwai, 75−76, 80−82, 93−95, 108−10; Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 240−43, 252. For Xue, see Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 10, 15, 24. 176. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 235−36, 242−53; Cai Huiyao 蔡 惠尧, “Kang Youwei, Tang Zhangxiao yu Qiongcailou” 康有为、谭张孝与琼彩楼 [Kang Youwei, Tan Zhangxiao, and the Qiongcailou restaurant], Lishi dangan 历史 档案 [Historical archives], 2 (2000): 99−106. 177. Fang and Cai, Kang−Liang yu Baohuanghui, 72, 266; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 287−93; 326, 331−32; Zhang Ronghua, “Zhenhua gongsi neihong yu Kang-Liang fenqi,” 74. 178. Zhang Ziwen 张子文, ed., Liang Qichao zhijiao shouzha 梁启超知交手札 [Letters of Liang Qichao and his confidants] (Beijing: Guojia tushuguan, 1995), 513; Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 314; Mar, Brokering Belonging, 32−35. Mar’s book sometimes misidentifies Yip Yen and Yip On as the same person, as mentioned before, and it does not address Liang and CERA’s involvement in the Yips’ smuggling and shipping operations between Hong Kong and Vancouver. 179. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 422; “Memorandum of Association of the Chinese Reform Gazette Sun Bo Company Limited,” December 26, 1907, incorporation no. 1968, microfilm reel no. B04426, GR-1526-Corporation Registry Files, British Columbia Archives, Victoria, British Columbia. 180. Yungaohua bu Xianzhenghui bugaoshu, 20. 181. “Royal Commission re. Chinese Immigration and Opium Smuggling,” RG 33, series 146, pp. 2340−53, 3207−14, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 182. For previous studies of these issues, see Wu Xianzi, Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi, 80−92; Gao, Ershi shiji chu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui zai Meiguo, 314−32, 348−77. For more details about this assassination, see citations and discussions below. 183. “Diguo Xianzhenghui daji yiyuan huiyi xuli” 帝国宪政会大集议员会议

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叙例 [Preface and constitution of the Imperial Constitutional Association passed by its general conference], 1a−4a, AR 5 in CERAD. For a slightly different version of the same document, see Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 487−95. 184. “Diguo Xianzhenghui daji yiyuan huiyi xuli,” 3b−8a; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 490−95. 185. “Diguo Xianzhenghui daji yiyuan huiyi xuli,” 8a; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 494−95. 186. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 236−37; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 203−4, 272−73n38; Ye En 叶 恩, “Bo Xu Qin bugaoshu zaiqi” 驳徐勤布告书再启 [Another refutation of Xu Qin’s notice], 2b, AR−19 in CERAD; San Francisco Call, April 7, 1907; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 330−31. 187. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 136; Lin, Gexinpai juren Kang Youwei, 539−43. 188. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 10, 218, 220−21. 189. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 136−41; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 210−12; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 10, 220. 190. “Kang Youwei zhi gebu Xianzhengdang tongzhi shu” 康有为致各埠宪政 党同志书 [Kang Youwei’s notice to comrades of the Constitutional Association’s chapters in all Chinatowns], 1−16, esp. 2−3, 6−8, 10−12, 15, AR-24 in CERAD. 191. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 212, 237; Wu Xianzi, Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi, 89−90. 192. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 529−37; Wu Xianzi, Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi, 89−90. According to the two sources, CERA purchased land parcels of more than 700 jing 井 for the purpose of erecting its central headquarters building. Based on the exchange rate of land units in Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 237, 700 jing of land equals 11.67 mu or 1.93 acres. 193. Wu Xianzi, Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi, 92; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 282, 291−93, 318−19. 194. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 282−83, 292−93. 195. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 273−77, 281, 289−93, esp. 274−75, 281, 292. 196. Zhang Yufa 张玉法, Qingji de lixian tuanti 清季的立宪团体 [Constitutionalist associations in the late Qing period] (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, 1971), 350−61; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 295−309; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 8, 410−21. The submission

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of CERA’s petition is misdated as 1907 by Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 136, and by Tang Zhijun, Kang Youwei zhenglunji, vol. 1, 608−25. 197. Recent chemical analysis of the Guangxu Emperor’s remains concludes that he was poisoned by arsenic trioxide, and Empress Dowager Cixi has been identified as the perpetrator. See Qing Guangxudi siyin yanjiu ketizu 清光绪帝死因研究 课题组, Qing Guangxudi siyin jianzheng 清光绪帝死因鉴证 [An appraisal of the cause of the Guangxu Emperor’s death] (Beijing: Beijing chubanshe, 2017). 198. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 310−14, 320−21; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 397. 199. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 248−49, 290−93. Kang’s records of Chinese yuan have been converted into American dollars here using the exchange rate of 1:2 between American dollars and Chinese yuan noted in his second letter. 200. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 77−78, 232−34. Kang sent the two letters to Tan on October 3 and December 9, 1907, but Fang and Cai misdated them to October 20 and December 20, 1906. I thank Jane Leung Larson for indicating the mistakes in the collection. 201. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 83−85, 235−36. Tan first published these documents in a pamphlet and sent its copies to the CERA chapters on the East Coast of the United States at the beginning of 1909. He further distributed its copies widely from May 1909, see Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 394, 422. 202. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 237−75, esp. 275.This figure probably included the accumulated interest of the unpaid loan in 1908. 203. Cai Huiyao, “Kang Youwei, Tang Zhangxiao yu Qiongcailou,” 99−106. 204. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 394, 422−23. 205. Ye En, “Bo Xu Qin bugaoshu zaiqi,” 1a−2a; Zhang Ronghua, “Zhenhua gongsi neihong yu Kang-Liang fenqi,” 74. 206. Ou Yungao, et al., “Bo Xu Qin deng bugaoshu,” 2a; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 330−31. 207. Ou Yungao, et al., “Bo Xu Qin deng bugaoshu,” 3a. Kang’s associates argued that this portion of fund was the capital for the Sino-Mexican Bank, see Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 328, and “Fu: Xu Qin deng bugao yuanshu” 附：徐勤等布告原书 [Appendix: The original notice from Xu Qin and others], in Ou Yungao, et al., “Bo Xu Qin deng bugaoshu,” 15a. 208. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 330−31; Ou Yungao, et al., “Bo Xu Qin deng bugaoshu,” 2a, 3a, 7a.

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209. For a recent study of Zhenhua Company, see Gao, Ershi shiji chu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui zai Meiguo, 348−77; For detailed studies of Liu’s assassination, see Zhao Liren 赵立人and Liu Renyi 刘仁毅, eds., Liu Shiji zhisi 刘士骥之死 [The death of Liu Shiji] (Guangzhou: Zhonguo yingshi wenyi chubanshe, 2006); He Yuefu 贺跃夫, “Liu Shiji beici’an yu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui de shuailuo” 刘士骥被刺案与康有为保皇会的衰落 [Liu Shiji’s assassination and the decline of Kang Youwei’s Chinese Empire Reform Association], Guangdong shehui kexue 广 东社会科学 [Guangdong social sciences], 3 (1987): 37−43. 210. “Juban shiye chengqing zoupai dayuan chuyang xuanshi enxin you” 举办 实业呈请奏派大员出洋宣示恩信由 [Petition for dispatching a high official for bestowing favor abroad and launching industrial ventures], 1a−3a; “Chuangban … Zhenhua Shiye Youxian Gongxi zhaogu zhangcheng” 创办 … 振华实业有限 公司招股章程 [Capital-raising regulations of … the Zhenhua Limited Liability Company], 5b, both in “Zhenhua Gongsi xingban Guangxi shiye bing fengpi zhunzou zili’an gegao” 振华公司兴办广西实业禀奉批准奏咨立案各稿 [All documents regarding the formation, reports, and approvals of Zhenhua Company’s industrial ventures in Guangxi Province], AR16 in CERAD. For Liang Yingliu, see “Fu: Xu Qin deng bugao yuanshu,” 14a. 211. “Juban shiye chengqing zoupai dayuan chuyang xuanshi enxin you,” 20a−25a; “Chuangban … Zhenhua Shiye Youxian Gongxi zhaogu zhangcheng,” 5b−6a; “Fu: Xu Qin deng bugao yuanshu,” 13b−15b. 212. “Chuangban … Zhenhua shiye youxian gongxi zhaogu zhangcheng,” 1b−6a; Jim Wolf and Patricia Owen, Yi Fao, Speaking through Memory: A History of New Westminster’s Chinese Community, 1858−1980 (New Westminster, BC: New Westminster Museum and Archives, 2008), 57−59. The company also had an overseas fund-collecting agency in Singapore. 213. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 8, 370−74. 214. Liu Zuoji 刘作楫, “Liu Mingbo guancha lingsi bugao tianxia tongbaoshu” 刘铭博观察令嗣布告天下同胞书 [A public notice to all under heaven by Liu Shiji’s son], 5a, AR 17 in CERAD. The cited information is from one extract of Liu Shiji’s diary on the fundraising trip, which is included in Liu Zuoji’s book. These diary extracts are also included in Zhao and Liu, Liu Shiji zhisi, 456−83, but some of them, especially the cited one, are missing. Zhao and Liu’s book (pp. 325−84) also includes extracts from Liu Shiji’s handwritten diary with Liu Zuoji’s comments and other relevant documents. 215. Province, July 25, 1908; Liang Chaojie 梁朝杰, “Zhenhua Gongsi zai Meizhou zhaogu shimo zhenxiang” 振华公司在美洲招股始末真相 [A true account of Zhenhua Company’s capital-raising activities in American continent], 1, 4−5, AR-21 in CERAD.

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216. “Liu Guancha Mingbo da Caiyuan Li Jun Fuji shu” 刘观察铭博答菜苑李 君福基书 [Liu Shiji’s reply letter to Li Fuji in Torreón], 3a−4b, in Liu Shiji 刘士 骥, Liu Guangcha quanye bian 刘观察劝业编 [A collection of Liu Shiji’s speeches and writings on industrial development], AR-15 in CERAD. 217. Liu Zuoji, “Liu Mingbo guancha lingsi bugao tianxia tongbaoshu,” 5a. Also see Zhao and Liu, Liu Shiji zhisi, 326. 218. Liang Chaojie, “Zhenhua Gongsi zai Meizhou zhaogu shimo zhenxiang,” 5−6. 219. Liu Zuoji, “Liu Mingbo guancha lingsi bugao tianxia tongbaoshu,” 5b−13b. See also Zhao and Liu, Liu Shiji zhisi, 333−69, 456−85. 220. Liang Chaojie, “Zhenhua Gongsi zai Meizhou zhaogu shimo zhenxiang,” 5, 10−12; Province, November 28, 1908; Globe, December 8, 1908. 221. Xinbao 新报 [New daily], February 16, 1909, in special collection of the Ashcroft Museum, Ashcroft, BC. For the CERA leaders in Vancouver and New Westminster, see Yungaohua bu Xianzhenghui bugaoshu, 17−18. 222. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 391−92, 394, 403, 415; Liang Chaojie, “Zhenhua Gongsi zai Meizhou zhaogu shimo zhenxiang,” 8−9, 12−14; Liu Zuoji, “Liu Mingbo guancha lingsi bugao tianxia tongbaoshu,” 6b−14a; Zhao and Liu, Liu Shiji zhisi, 327−32, 336−68, 460−80; San Francisco Call, March 29, 1909. 223. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 339. 224. Xinbao, March 20, 1909. 225. Globe, December 8, 1908. 226. Ou Yungao, et al., “Bo Xu Qin deng bugaoshu,” 1a−17b, esp. 12b; Zhao and Liu, Liu Shiji zhisi, 393−415; Ye En, “Bo Xu Qin bugaoshu zaiqi,” 1a−7b; Yungaohua bu Xianzhenghui bugaoshu, 18. 227. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 142−47. The two boys were actually Kang’s third and fourth sons, but they were the first two of his male offspring to survive infancy; see Lin Keguang, Gexinpai juren Kang Youwei, 543. 228. Colonist, August 27, 1908; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 9, 19. 229. Kang Youwei, Two letters to Zhang Bingya [early 1909], AR-25 in CERAD; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 418. The two letters were not dated but were evidently written in early 1909. 230. Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 418−20. 231. Yungaohua bu Xianzhenghui bubaoshu, 1−18, esp. 6; Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 451−54, 464−65.

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Chapter 3 1. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 108−10, 308−23, 479−94, 524−70. 2. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 152, 165−70, 179−96; Marie-Claire Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, trans. Janet Lloyd (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998 [1994]), 39−41, 49−55, 77−79; Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 188−204. 3. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 108−10, 183, 308−23. 4. For a short summary of these previous studies, see Lin Zengping 林增平, Guo Hanmin 郭汉民, and Rao Huaimin 饶怀民 eds., Xinhai geming shi yanjiu beiyao 辛亥革命史研究备要 [A primary reference for study of the 1911 Revolution] (Changsha: Hunan chubanshe, 1991), 146−49. 5. Sun Zhongshan [Sun Yat-sen] 孙中山, Sun Zhongshan quanji 孙中山全集 [Complete works of Sun Yat-sen], eds. Guangdongsheng shehui kexueyuan lishi yanjiushi 广东省社会科学院历史研究室, et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), vol. 6, 231−32; Liu Weiseng 刘伟森, ed., Quan-Mei dangshi 全美党史 [A history of the Chinese Nationalist League in the United States] (San Francisco: Zhongguo guomindang zhu Meiguo zongzhibu, 2009), vol. 1, 50−55. 6. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 601. 7. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 74, 80−81, 86−94, 100−105, 108−16, 139−44; Huang Yuhe, Sanshisui qiande Sun Zhongshan, 554−57; Cui Tongyue 崔通约, Canghai shengping 沧海生平 [Autobiography of Cui Tongyue] (Taibei: Longwen chubanshe, 1994 [1935]), 30−31. 8. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 102−10; “Sun Yat Sen,” 113, 130, 153, file no. 9995, “Immigration Arrival Investigation Case Files, 1884−1944,” National Archives at San Francisco (https://catalog.archives. gov/OpaAPI/media/296446/content/arcmedia/pacific/san-francisco/gallery/9995Cabin-Sun-Yat-Sen.pdf, accessed November 17, 2022). 9. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 6, 231−32. 10. Liu Weiseng, Quan-Mei dangshi, vol. 1, 50−52. 11. San Francisco Call, August 15, 1896. 12. San Francisco Chronicle, August 7, 1898. For Sun Yat-sen’s mail contact with Walter N. Fong up to July 1897, see Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 1, 170−71. 13. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 74, 81, 91; Shiffrin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 43−44. 14. Sun Yat-sen’s interview with the Daily News in London, October 26, 1896. See the reprinted interview in Patrick Anderson, The Lost Book of Sun Yatsen and Edwin Collins (New York: Routledge, 2017), 233. 15. Feng Ziyou 冯自由, Huaqiao geming kaiguoshi 华侨革命开国史 [A history

272

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of overseas Chinese revolution for the founding of Republican China] (Chongqing, 1946; repr. Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1953), 103−104. 16. Colonist, December 6, 1896. 17. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 138−39; “Canada, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1865−1935,” for “Y.S. Lun.” 18. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 139−44. 19. Slaters’ Detective Association, “Report. July 11−24, … re. Sun Yat Sen” (pp. 186−96), and “Report. July 25−August 2, … re. Sun Yat Sen” (pp. 197−200), both in Luo Jialun 罗家伦, Luo Jialun xiansheng wencun 罗家伦先生文存 [Extant writings of Mr. Luo Jialun] (Taibei: Guoshiguan and Zhongguo guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui dangshi weiyuanhui, 1976), vol. 3, 186−200. In Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 139−44, records of Sun’s activities in Canada are mostly based on the British detective’s reports, but the translation of the title of the Yung Chong Lung & Co. is incorrect. The information provided in this discussion about this company and its owners is from the writings of a local historian, Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 189, 301; and Donghai, “Jianada Lishi xianxian xiaozhuan,” 50. 20. Slaters’ Detective Association, “Report. July 25−August 2, … re. Sun Yat Sen,” 197−99. For information on the Chu Lai involvement in the CCBA and the CERA in Victoria as well as Lee Mong Kow’s leadership of CERA, see Chapters 1 and 2. 21. Slaters’ Detective Association, “Report. July 11−24, … re. Sun Yat Sen,” 194−95. 22. Feng Ziyou 冯自由, Zhonghua Minguo kaiguoqian gemingshi 中华民国 开国前革命史 [A revolutionary history before the founding of the Republic of China] (Shanghai: Gemingshi bianjishe, 1930), vol. 1, 156−59. See also Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 601. 23. Murray and Qin, The Origins of the Tiandihui, 16−34, 90−114, 117−50, 154−62; Li Quan’en, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun, 2−20. 24. Colonist, February 18, 1891. 25. “Hung Shun Tong Manuscript, 1886,” Internet Archives (https://archive. org/details/caaupmd_000009, accessed November 22, 2022). The manual has 334 pages. I thank Gordon H. Chang for directing my attention to this source. 26. Xiuxiang . . . Jinnangzhuan 绣像锦囊传 [The embroidered-bag book with illustrations] (n.p., 1892), volume 1 in the special collection of the Clinton Museum, Clinton, BC, and volume 2 in the collection of the CKT, Nelson, BC (photocopies of both volumes are in the author’s personal collection). The title of the manual is from the cover of volume 1, and it includes three unique but unidentified Chinese characters. The cover of volume 2 has been lost, but the two volumes have a total

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of 319 double-sided pages, and the page numbers are consecutive. I also found a mimeographed copy of a handwritten manual from the Barkerville Historic Town and Park Archives: Cao Long 曹龙, ed., Hongshuntang jinnangzhuan 洪顺堂锦 囊传 [The embroidered-bag book of the Society of the Hong Obedience] (n.p., n.d.), unnumbered item in CKTMO. It has only 149 double-sided pages, and its printing year is unclear. David Lai’s Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun (pp. 2−9) cites a similar manual from the Victoria CKT with the same title, Hongshuntang jinnangzhuan. This manual is a revised version from 1906, which is based on the aforementioned 1892 edition. 27. “Hung Shun Tong Manuscript, 1886,” 4−34; Xiuxiang … jinnangzhuan, vol. 1, 44a−67b; see also Cao, Hongshuntang jinnangzhuan, 1a−20b. For a more detailed citation of the founding legend, see David Lai, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun, 2−8; for an English translation of the legend in seven different versions, see Murray and Qin, The Origins of the Tiandihui, 197−228. 28. Feng, Zhonghua Minguo kaiguoqian gemingshi, 157; Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 106. 29. “[Tian] yun yiyounian liuyue ershisan wan xinding fangming lie” [天]运乙 酉年六月贰拾叁晚新丁芳名列 [A list of new members enlisted on the evening of August 3, 1885], no. 980.414.1−11 in CKTMO; “Quesnel Forks Chi Kung Tong, List of new members,” no. 980.416.1−18 in CKTMO. The list from the CKT of Quesnel Forks is not dated, but it obviously came from the 1880s. 30. Daily Bee, August 31, 1894. The newspaper claimed to have bribed an employee of the Chinese laundry to have one of its reporters witness the ceremony. But it is more likely that the newspaper got the information by bribing a participant in the ceremony. 31. Xiuxiang … jinnangzhuan, vol. 1, 89b−90a, 116b−17b; vol. 2, 190a−97a, 255a, 256a−62b. 32. Colonist, October 4, 1898. 33. Li Fuji, Xianzhenghui jishi shilüe, 3−4; “Yuduolibu chongjian Zhigongtang quanjun yuanbu.” 34. Both Yip Sang and Huang Yushan were founders of Vancouver’s CKT in 1892 because Yip’s another name, Ye Chuntian, and Huang’s company, Xiedelonghao or Hip Tuck Lung Co., were on its fundraising call of that year; see “Xianshuibu changjian Zhigongtang quanjuan yuanbu.” For Yip Yen’s relationship with the CKT, see “Fuyuan shanqing.” 35. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 144−54. 36. Da-Han gongbao, February 4, 1918. The founding year of the Chinese Benevolent Association in Vancouver was incorrectly dated as 1889 by Brij Lal, “Chinese Benevolent Association of Vancouver: 1889−1960: An Analytical History,”

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unpublished manuscript of 1975, in Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver, BC; and by Chee Chiu Clement Ng, “The Chinese Benevolent Association of Vancouver, 1885−1923: A Response to Local Conditions” (master’s thesis, University of Manitoba, 1986), 57, 75−76. Lal’s mistake was followed by Anderson, Vancouver’s Chinatown, 78, 262n11, but refuted by Wengehua Zhonghua huiguan bainian jinian tekan 1906−2006 温哥华中华会 馆百年纪念特刊 [A special publication for the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Benevolent Association in Vancouver] (n.p., 2006), 49−52. 37. Wengehua Zhonghua huiguan bainian jinian tekan, 53. This self-publication of Vancouver’s Chinese Benevolent Association refutes the claim that it was founded in 1889, but it still misdates its formation to 1896. This error results from a misunderstanding of the CCBA in Victoria as that of Vancouver in a petition from Chinese merchants in British Columbia to Li Hongzhang in September 1896, see pages 49−52 of this self-publication, especially the petition on page 52. 38. Daily News-Advertiser, March 8, 1902. 39. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 131, 205. 40. Rossland Miner, October 13 and 27, 1903. 41. The quotation first appeared in “The Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada’s fonds” in 1900, and then in the incorporation document, “Rossland Chinese Masonic Lodge,” January 2, 1904, no. 7, incorporation no. 131, microfilm reel no. B04406, GR-1526-Corporation Registry Files. British Columbia Archives, Victoria, BC. 42. This quotation first appeared in the incorporated document of “Rossland Chinese Masonic Lodge,” and then in “Declaration for Corporation of Chee Kong Tong Society,” June 29, 1908. Incorporation no. 200, Container no. 880056-4493, GR-1526-Corporation Registry Files. British Columbia Archives, Victoria, BC. 43. California Chinese Freemason, Wuzhou Zhigong zongtang geming lishi tulu, 37; L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 49−50, 55−57. 44. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 108−13. 45. Kang’s Datongshu was completed around 1902 and secretly shared with his disciples around that time, see Kung-chuan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World: K’ang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858−1927 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), 411−513. 46. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 131; Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1185. 47. Huang Sande, Letter to Wu Xianzi, July 21, 1929, no. AR-43B, Huang Sande zhi Wu Xianzi han, in CERAD; Huang Sande, untitled manuscript, 3−4, in folder 2, box 11, WXZXY.

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48. Huang Sande, Letter to Wu Xianzi, July 21, 1929; Huang Sande, untitled manuscript, 3−4. 49. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 131, 215−16; Liang Qichao, Liang Qichao quanji, vol. 2, 1179, 1185; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 242. 50. Shiffrin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 227−47, 314−26; L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 60, 101−104; Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 6, 233−35. Both Shiffrin and Ma incorrectly assumed that Sun’s visit to Hawai‘i was the first after his departure from there in 1896. In fact, Sun made a short visit to Hawaiian Islands from April to June 1901, before his final breakup with Liang over their negotiation for an anti-Qing alliance; see Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 268, 271, 278−79. 51. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 1, 229−30. 52. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 303; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 131. A photocopy of Sun’s admission into the Guoan Society with Zhong as his sponsor is in Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 35. The Guoan Society was not a CKT lodge in 1904, as is assumed by Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 114, 198, 261, but the San Francisco CKT would expand its influence to Hawai‘i later on; see California Chinese Freemason, Wuzhou Zhigong zongtang geming lishi tulu, 82. 53. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 308−10, 323. 54. “Sun Yat Sen,” 117−20, 150−51. The description of Sun’s physical features in the certificate is similar to that in the report from Qing China’s general consulate in San Francisco in June 1896; see Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 108. 55. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 114, 118, 262, 267−68; Feng, Zhonghua Minguo kaiguoqian gemingshi, vol. 1, 148−49. Chung Sai Yat Po was the Cantonese title of the newspaper. 56. There is a claim that Ou had left San Francisco for his home place in Guangdong Province to mourn the death of his grandfather in late 1903 or early 1904, nearly four months ahead of Sun’s arrival in the American city, see Li Shaoling 李 少陵, Ou Jujia xiansheng zhuan 欧榘甲先生传 [Biography of Ou Jujia] (Taibei: 1960), 28−38. However, a letter from an American Hongshuntang did protest the dismissal of Ou from Datong ribao, see Zhongguo Weixinbao, June 6, 1904. 57. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 114−17, 269, vol. 2, 521−27; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 312−13. The cited work from Feng Ziyou (p. 521) indicates that the oath was first used by Sun Yat-sen for a makeshift military school founded by him together with a few Japanese comrades in Tokyo in 1903.

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58. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 117, 269−70; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 313−23. 59. Ou Jujia, Letter to Kang Tongbi, July 29, 1904, no. S-C33 in KTBSW. 60. Fang and Cai, Kang-Liang yu Baohuanghui, 55; Kang Youwei, Letter to Kang Tongbi, December 5, 1904, and Kang Youwei, Letter to Kang Tongbi, December [n.d.], 1904, nos. S-C39 and S-C46 in KTBSW. 61. Chen Yuesog, Letter to Kang Tongbi, January 7, 1905; Tang Mingsan, Letter to Kang Tongbi, December 5, 1904, nos. B-32 and B-21 in KTBSW. 62. Kang Youwei, Letter to Kang Tongbi, October 20, 1905, in no. Kang-30 in KTBSW; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 361. 63. Huang Sande 黄三德, Hongmen gemingshi 洪门革命史 [A revolutionary history of the Hong fraternal society] (n.p., 1936), 13. 64. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 263−64; San Francisco Call, August 15, 1896; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 310−11. 65. Jiwu Wang, “‘His Dominion’ and the ‘Yellow Peril,’” 34−43, 51, 60−61. 66. This fundraising call was published in Sydney’s Guangyi Huabao 广益华报 [The Chinese Australian Herald], October 7, 1899, but it was obviously sent out from Canada in September of that year. The English translation of the newspaper title is original. 67. L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 58; Zhongping Chen, “Kang Youwei and Confucianism in Canada and Beyond,” 10. 68. L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 88, 91; Chung Sai Yat Po, July 18, 1904. 69. Chung Sai Yat Po, July 20 and 22, 1906. 70. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Youwei and Confucianism in Canada and Beyond,” 12; Jiwu Wang, “‘His Dominion’ and the ‘Yellow Peril,’” 55−56. 71. Colonist, December 27 and 28, 1899; January 3, 1900; Daily Times, December 26, 27, and 28, 1899. 72. British Columbian, April 28, 1899. 73. Supplement to the New Westminster Columbian, 66. 74. Tom Chue Thom [Tan Chaodong], Letter to Kang Youwei, August 18, 1900. The letter has been cited by L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 53−54, but Ma misinterprets Tan’s critique of CERA’s leaders in San Francisco as criticism of those in Vancouver. 75. Quotation from the Annual Report of the Missionary Society, Methodist Church of Canada (p. xxxv) in Jiwu Wang, “‘His Dominion’ and the ‘Yellow Peril,’” 56. 76. “Memorandum of Association of Waying Yatpo,” June 26, 1906, incorporation no. 1514, microfilm reel no. B04424, GR-1526-Corporation Registry Files,

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British Columbia Archives, Victoria, BC; Cui, Canghai shengping, 50. For Feng, see Jiwu Wang, “‘His Dominion’ and the ‘Yellow Peril,’” 38, 51; Jianada Yungaohua Huaren xiehe jiaohui, 93rd Anniversary of the Chinese United Church, Vancouver, BC, 1888−1981 (n.p., n.d.), 16−18, appendix 8. 77. Daily World, August 27, 1906; S. S. Osterhout, Orientals in Canada: The Story of the Work of the United Church of Canada with Asiatics in Canada (Toronto: Committee on Literature, General Publicity, and Missionary Education of the United Church of Canada, 1929), 87−88. 78. Feng, Huaqiao geming kaiguoshi, 103−104. The same account appears in Feng Ziyou 冯自由, Huaqiao geming zuzhi shihua 华侨革命组织史话 [A narrative history of overseas Chinese revolutionary organizations] (Taibei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1954), 48−49. For a similar account, see Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 601. 79. Cui, Canghai shengping, 14, 27−28, 31−32, 43−45. 80. Cui, Canghai shengping, 30−42, 48−49; Da-Han ribao (Tai−Hon Yat-bo) 大汉日报 [Chinese times], July 27, 1915; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 437; Sun Zhongshan, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 1, 281. The last source includes Sun’s letter on September 30, 1905, which informed a revolutionary partisan in Southeast Asia of Cui’s ostracism in Tokyo, although the latter’s name is struck from the letter by the editor. 81. Da-Han ribao, July 29, 1915; Cui, Canghai shengping, 50. Cui’s recollection in the second source misdates his receipt of Chen and Zhou’s letter as 1909. 82. Thomas D. Reins, “Reform, Nationalism and Internationalism: The Opium Suppression Movement in China and the Anglo-American Influence, 1900−1908,” Modern Asian Studies 25, no. 1 (1991): 101. 83. Da-Han ribao, July 29, 1915. 84. Colonist, July 11, 1907. 85. Sinn, Pacific Crossing, 211−12. 86. David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 38, 48−49, 52−54, 60−61, 94; David Lai, The Forbidden City within Victoria, 131; Colonist, July 19, 1908; Sarah M. Griffith, “Border Crossings: Race, Class, and Smuggling in Pacific Coast Chinese Immigrant Society,” Western Historical Review 35, no. 4 (2004): 475−82. 87. Colonist, July 29, 1906; May 2, June 18, July 3, 1908. 88. W. L. Mackenzie King, Report … the Need for the Suppression of the Opium Traffic in Canada (Ottawa: 1908), 5−6; Colonist, July 3, 1908. 89. Colonist, May 28 and 29, 1908; King, Report, 6; Roy, A White Man’s Province, 15. 90. King, Report, 6−7. See also Colonist, July 3, 1908. 91. Colonist, July 14, 1908. 92. Reins, “Reform, Nationalism and Internationalism,” 128−41; W. L. Mack-

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enzie King, Missions to the Orient, vol. 2, 11, MG 26 J13, William Lyon Mackenzie King Papers, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 93. Colonist, July 14, 16, and 19, 1908. 94. Province, December 31, 1909. 95. Feng, Huaqiao geming kaiguoshi, 103−104. 96. Colonist, July 11, 1907. 97. Province, May 9, 1907; David Lew (Liao Hongxiang), Letter to the President, CERA, June 27, 1907, David Lew Letterbook, p. 11, PR-1638, David C. Lew fonds, British Columbia Archives, Victoria, BC (http://search-bcarchives. royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/uploads/r/null/1/8/7/1876424adec89f25f96c01f18b2c162dd29 93a65485b722faca2f250da4e7a06/E.D.L58.pdf, accessed November 23, 2022). The newspaper spelled Cui’s name as Tuey Tong Yuk. Lew’s letter shows that Yip was a member of CERA, and it records his lawsuit as “Yip Wing v. Hong Yok,” which is probably a variant of Cui’s given name in the old spelling, Tong Yuk. 98. Cui, Canghai shengping, 51−52; 58−59; Feng, Huaqiao geming kaiguoshi, 104; Da-Han ribao, July 27, 1915; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 490. 99. Shehong Chen, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American, 27−28; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 490. 100. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 6, 230, 235, 239−40. For more details on these uprisings, see Luo Jialun 罗家伦, Guofu nianpu chugao 国父年谱初稿 [A draft bibliography of Sun Yat-sen] (Taibei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1959), vol. 1, 60−63, 98−102, 177−202. 101. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 169; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 479, 494. 102. Li Fuji, aka Li Wenhui, had four sons. Li Bohai was the youngest. See Li Wenzhuang gong jiasheng 李文庄公家乘 [Genealogy of the revered Mr. Li Wenzhuang], (n. p., 1902), vol. 4, 47b; Donghai, “Jianada Lishi xianxian xiaozhuan,” 49. In the second source, Li Donghai claimed that Li Bohai had acted in Victoria, Hong Kong, and Japan, and joined Sun’s Revolutionary Alliance in Japan in 1904. However, the Revolutionary Alliance did not appear in Tokyo until 1905, nor did Li Donghai’s writing cite any documentary evidence for the claim. 103. Feng Ziyou’s own account shows that Li Bohai joined Hong Kong’s Revolutionary Alliance under his leadership in the winter of 1905, see Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 357; vol. 2, 535. However, Li Bohai still could have lived in Japan and met Feng before their encounter in Hong Kong in 1905. 104. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 7−8. For details about this uprising, see Lei Dongwen 雷冬文, Jindai Guangdong huidang 近代广东会党 [Secret societies in

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Guangdong Province during the modern period] (Guangzhou: Jinan daxue chubanse, 2004), 79–94. 105. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 13−14, 48−49, vol. 2, 655−56; Chen Shaobai 陈少 白, Xingzhonghui geming shiyao 兴中会革命史要 [A synoptic history of the Revive China Society] (Taibei: Zhongyang wenwu gongyingshe, 1956 [1935]), 9−13, 24−26, 32−34; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 120−21. 106. Zhang Pengyuan, Liang Qichao yu Qingji geming, 31−92; Sang, Gengzi qinwang yu wan-Qing zhengju, 192−99, 358−72. 107. Zhang and Lin, Xinhai geming shi, vol. 2, 537−64; Lin, Guo, and Rao, Xinhai geming shi yanjiu beiyao, 146−52. 108. Zhang Pengyuan, Liang Qichao yu Qingji geming, 87−92; L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 60−63, 101−104. 109. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 62−63; vol. 2, 705. 110. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 62−63, vol. 2, 460, 705−706; Li Zizhong 李自重, “Cong Xingzhonghui zhi Xinhai geming de yishu” 从兴中会至辛亥革命的忆述 [A memoire from the Revive China Society to the 1911 Revolution], in Guangdong Xinhai geming shiliao 广东辛亥革命史料 [Historical documents regarding the 1911 Revolution in Guangdong Province], ed. Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi Guangdong weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui 中国人民政治 协商会议广东委员会文史资料研究委员会 (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1981), 203−206. 111. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 136, 301; vol. 2, 460−61. 112. Zhang Yufa, Qingji de geming tuanti, 222−46. 113. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 113, 274−76; vol. 2, 521−28. For a detailed analysis of the evolution of Sun’s “Three Principles of the People,” see Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, 66, 133, 156−72, 352−91. 114. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 144−47, 158; vol. 2, 737. 115. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 70, 356−57. 116. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 357; Yousuowei bao 有所谓报 [Meaningful chats], July 7, 1905. 117. Feng, Gemin yishi, vol. 2, 536−37. 118. Zhang and Lin, Xinhai geming shi, vol. 2, 536−64, 636n4; Lin, Guo, and Rao, Xinhai geming shi yanjiu beiyao, 146−52; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 8, 410; Liang Wenqing, Letter to Kang Youwei, July 18, 1905, no. Kang−0 in KTBSW. 119. Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 245. 120. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 158, 356−57. Apart from Feng’s account, most biographies of Li Shinan fail to mention Li Bohai as his sponsor for membership in the Revolutionary Alliance. For example, see Huang Boyao 黄伯耀, “Li Shinan

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shilue” 李是男事略 [A biographical sketch of Li Shinan], in Jindaishi ziliao 近代 史资料 [Historical data on modern Chinese history], 2 (1978): 8−9. 121. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 158−59, 356−57; vol. 2, 546. 122. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 357, vol. 2, 747; Wen Xiongfei 温雄飞, “Zhongguo tongmenghui zai Meiguo de chengli jingguo” 中国同盟会在美国的成立经 过 [The formative process of the Revolutionary Alliance in the United States], in Xinhai geming huiyilu 辛亥革命回忆录 [Memoirs of the 1911 Revolution], ed. Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi quanguo weiyuanhui wenshi ziliao yanjiu weiyuanhui 中国人民政治协商会议全国委员会文史资料研究委员 会 (Beijing: Wenshi ziliao chubanshe, 1982), vol. 8, 338−39, 345−49. For a general discussion on the organizational development of the Revolutionary Alliance in the United States., see Him Mark Lai, “The Kuomintang in Chinese American Communities before World War II,” in Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882−1943, ed. Sucheng Chan (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1991), 176−80. 123. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 395, 425, 464−65, 479−93. 124. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 479, 483; Zhongguo Weixinbao, May 12, 1904; Zhongping Chen, “Kang Tongbi’s Pioneering Feminism,” 31; Wu Chaojin 吴朝晋 oral account, Li Zihan 李滋汉 written record, “Sun Zhongshan sanfu Nuiyue” 孙中山三赴纽约 [Sun Yat-sen’s three visits to New York], Jindaishi yanjiu ziliao 近代史资料 [Modern Chinese history documents], 64 (1987): 2−7. 125. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 485; Mei Binlin 梅斌 林, “Guanyu Xinhai gemin qian Sun Zhongshan zai Meiguo Zhijiage huodong de huiyi” 关于辛亥革命前孙中山在美国芝加哥活动的回忆 [Reminiscence of Sun Yat-sen’s activities in Chicago before the 1911 Revolution], Guangdong wenshi ziliao 广东文史资料 [Cultural and historical documents of Guangdong Province] 25 (1979): 60, 64, 66. 126. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 485−89; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 357. According to Huang Sande’s Hongmen geming shi (p. 15), he answered Sun Yat-sen’s call to raise $7,000 (USD) from the CKT lodges for the Sunled Zhennanguan uprising on the border of China and Vietnam in late 1909 and early 1910, and further helped Sun collect $2,000 (USD) from these lodges during their trip to Phoenix, Los Angeles, and other American cities at the beginning of 1911. However, the Zhennanguan uprising happened in December 1907, and Sun did not take the trip with Huang across the southwestern United States in early 1911; see the cited work by Chen Xiqi, vol. 1, 416−18, 523−25. 127. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 490, 494; Feng, Gem-

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ing yishi, vol. 2, 601, 748; Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 1, 448, 450. In the last source (p. 497), Sun also called the San Francisco headquarters Meizhou tongmeng zonghui 美洲同盟总会 [The General Bureau of the Revolutionary Alliance in the Americas]. 128. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 1, 440, 446, 460−61; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 494−95. 129. Feng, Huaqiao geming zuzhi shihua, 72. 130. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 190, 298−99, 349. 131. Liang Yingliu, “Changjian chuangshi Baohuanghui suo beiji”; Xinbao, February 16, 1909. 132. Colonist, November 17, 1908; Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 298−99, 349. 133. Datong ribao 大同日报 [Chinese free press], March 8, 1909. 134. Xinbao, March 20, 1909. Liang’s apologetic notice was published on the newspaper’s supplementary page, Jingzhong 警钟 [Tocsin], March 20, 1909. 135. Xinbao, February 25, 1909. 136. Xinbao, February 16, 1909. 137. Xinbao, February 16, 1909. This school was renamed the the Overseas Chinese Public School after the 1911 Revolution ended the Qing dynasty in China; see Map 3 in Chapter 4. 138. Xinbao, February 16, March 20, 1909; David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 127; Stanley, Contesting White Supremacy, 195−96; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 9, 19. 139. Xinbao, March 20, 1909. 140. Colonist, August 7 and 8, 1909. 141. Colonist, April 16, 1907; November 28, 1909. 142. Yungaohua bu Xianzhenghui bubaoshu, 17. 143. Feng, Gemin yishi, vol. 2, 601. 144. “Memorandum of Association of Tai Hon Yet Bo Chinese Daily Newspaper Company Limited,” February 12, 1910. Incorporation no. 2853, microfilm reel no. B04434, GR-1526-Corporation Registry Files, British Columbia Archives, Victoria, BC. This incorporation document records Huang’s name as Huang Bi 黄壁. 145. “Xianshuibu changjian Zhigongtang quanjuan yuanbu.” 146. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa, “Immigrants from China, 1885−1949,” for “Fong Man Lung” (https://recherche-collection-search.bac-lac. gc.ca/eng/Home/Search?q=Immigrants%20from%20China%2C%201885-1949&, accessed November 22, 2022). Feng registered in the Victoria customs house with his original name, Feng Maolong. 147. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 169. 148. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 169. Feng’s account indicates that he recited this

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password poem, but the whole poem is from Xiuxiang … jinnangzhuan, vol. 1, 127a. 149. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 117−19, 169−70. 150. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 602−603, 750; Feng, Huaqiao geming zhuzhi shihua, 72. 151. Lu Danlin 陆丹林, “Feng Ziyou qiren qishi” 冯自由其人其事 [The personality and anecdotes of Feng Ziyou], Jindai Guangdong mingrenlu: dierji 近代广 东名人录: 第二辑 [Records of eminent persons from Guangdong Province, vol. 2] (Guangzhou: Guangdong renmin chubanshe, 1989), 153−54. 152. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 602−603. 153. “Memorandum of Association of the Chinese Daily Reform Gazette Sun Bo Limited,” January 25, 1911, incorporation no. 284, microfilm reel no. B05120, GR-1526-Corporation Registry Files, British Columbia Archives, Victoria. The incorporation documents include a letter stating that Xinbao was dissolved on November 15, 1910. 154. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 170. 155. Zhang Ziwen, Liang Qichao zhijiao shouzha, 329. 156. Zhang Ziwen, Liang Qichao zhijiao shouzha, 329−31; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 341−48. 157. Mar, Brokering Belonging, 15−48, esp. 18−22, 28−31, 33−46. The two quotations are from pp. 30−31. 158. “Royal Commission re. Chinese Immigration and Opium Smuggling,” 730, 799−801, 2536. This document records Shen Caiman as Shum Moon or S. Moon. For these persons’ leadership positions in CERA, see Chapter 2. 159. Mar’s Brokering Belonging (p. 22) also notices that Lew’s backers included Lee Kee, Shen Man (Shen Caiman), and Chang Toy, but treats them only as the “Chinese Canadian business titans who competed with Yip’s family for the profit of migration.” 160. Liang Zhihuai, Ye Chuntian xiansheng zhuanji, 82 (Chinese section); Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 604. 161. Ye Qiumao, Letter to Liang Zhihuai, March 8, 1929, folder 8, box 108, the Chung Collection, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver. 162. Hwang, The Overseas Chinese and the 1911 Revolution, 40, 51−52, 63, 156−65. 163. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 552−95. 164. Lyon Sharman, Sun Yat-sen, His Life and Its Meaning: A Critical Biography (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1968 [1934]); Winston Hsieh, Chinese Historiography on the Revolution of 1911 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institute Press, 1975), 68−72; Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, esp. 198−218; Jianli Huang, “Umbilical Ties: The

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Framing of the Overseas Chinese as the Mother of the Revolution,” Frontiers of History in China 6, no. 2 (2011): 183−228. Sharman’s work first attacks the cult of Sun in historical writings, but it is limited by its citation of only Western sources and plagued with factual errors. Among more rigorous scholarly publications, Hsieh’s and Bergère’s books, respectively, include the early and recent refutations of Sun’s dominant leadership in the 1911 Revolution. 165. For the relationship between the 1911 Revolution and the North American CKT, see Sun Fang 孙昉 and Liu Xuhua 刘旭华, Haiwai hongmen yu Xinhai geming 海外洪门与辛亥革命 [The Hong Fraternal Society overseas and the 1911 Revolution] (Beijing: Zhongguo zhigong chubanshe, 2011), 95−169; Li Quan’en, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun, 109−31. As for the importance of domestic reformers in the 1911 Revolution, it first received a systematic examination in P’eng-yüan Chang (Zhang Pengyuan), “The Constitutionalists,” in China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900−1913, ed. Mary Clabaugh Wright (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1968): 143−83; Zhang Pengyuan 张 朋园, Lixianpai yu Xinhai geming 立宪派与辛亥革命 [The Constitutionalists and the 1911 Revolution] (Changchun: Jilin chuban jituan youxian zeren gongsi, 2007 [1969]). The same line of scholarship includes Joseph W. Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976); Edward J. M. Rhoads, China’s Republican Revolution: The Case of Kwangtung, 1895−1913 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975); and Mary Backus Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865−1911 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986). This section is a further examination of the interactions among the different political forces around the 1911 Revolution in the United States, Canada, and China. 166. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 494, 520, 524−25. 167. The claim about Sun’s three visits to Canada in 1897, 1910, and 1911 first appeared in Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 301–302, but Li did not provide any supportive evidence. Wickberg et al., From China to Canada (pp. 76, 88n10) cites Li’s claim but fails to check its accuracy using primary sources. This claim has been repeated by other works, such as Huang and Wu, Jianada Huaqiao Huaren shi, 141–42. 168. Liu Weiseng, Quan-Mei dangshi, vol. 1, 54−55, 108−30. 169. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 525−30, 570. 170. Zhang and Lin, Xinhai geming shi, vol. 2, 501−503, 509−12; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 406−11, 469−79; Hwang, The Overseas Chinese and the 1911 Revolution, 212−19. For details about the anti-Sun movement inside the Revolutionary Alliance, see Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, 147−53.

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171. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 494, 505−18; Hwang, The Overseas Chinese and the 1911 Revolution, 226−34. 172. Zhang and Lin, Xinhai geming shi, vol. 2, 509−12, 531n152; Hwang, The Overseas Chinese and the 1911 Revolution, 226−34; Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, 185. 173. For typical examples, see Zhang and Lin, Xinhai geming shi, vol. 2, 534−64; Zhang Yufa, Qingji de geming tuanti, 277−97. 174. Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, 148, 155−56; Chen Shaobai, Xingzhonghui geming shiyao, 62; Hwang, The Overseas Chinese and the 1911 Revolution, 60−62, 100−101, 302. 175. Hwang, The Overseas Chinese and the 1911 Revolution, 234−36; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 520−25; Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 1, 509−10. 176. L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 125. For similar conclusions, see Zhang and Lin, Xinhai geming shi, vol. 2, 562−64, 802−806. 177. “Yingshu Jianada qiesheng xianzheng zonghui bing” 英属加拿大七省宪 政总会禀 [Petition of the Constitutional Association in the seven provinces of the British dominion of Canada], AR-8 in CERAD; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 334−35. 178. For a detailed analysis of Sun’s Canadian trip in early 1911, see Chen Zhongping, “Weiduoliya, Wengehua yu haineiwai Huaren de gailiang he geming, 1899−1911,” 92−94. 179. Zhang Yufa, Qingji de lixian tuanti, 386−95; Zhang Pengyuan, Lixianpai yu Xinhai geming, 11−12, 52−54; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 289, 306, 326. 180. Zhang Yufa, Qingji de lixian tuanti, 395−405; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 9, 173−75. Kang’s draft of the petition in the second source is dated as 1910, but it was obviously written for the second round of petitions because it called for convening the parliament on October 3, 1910. 181. Zhang Yufa, Qingji de lixian tuanti, 418−38; Zhang Pengyuan, Lixianpai yu Xinhai geming, 60. 182. “Yingshu Jianada qiesheng xianzheng zonghui bing.” This petition was presented from Canada to Zaixun 载洵, the Qing government’s minister of the navy, who was visiting the United States around that time; see Donghua xinbao, December 17 and 31, 1910. 183. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 9, 171−72; Zhang Yufa, Qingji de lixian tuanti, 410. 184. Zhang Pengyuan, Lixianpai yu Xinhai geming, 84−91. 185. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 1, 509−10. 186. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 170−71. 187. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 1, 511−12.

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188. Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 9, 24, 32. This book’s detailed record of Sun’s fundraising tour across Canada in early 1911 is based on the manuscript by Cao Jianwu 曹建武, “Jianada Zhigongtang fuguo yundongshi” 加拿大致公堂复 国运动史 [A history of the nation-restoring activities of the Chinese Freemasons in Canada], which was drafted in 1930 and published as a series in Da-Han gongbao in September−December 1978. Cao’s manuscript includes a relatively accurate record of Sun’s activities in British Columbia because it used the Vancouver CKT’s archives. But its account of Sun’s activities in other provinces of Canada, especially in Calgary and Toronto, includes serious factual errors, which are followed by Li Quan’en, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun, 118−30, and other Chinese publications; see my discussion below. 189. A photo of this receipt is in Feng, Zhonghua Minguo kaiguoqian gemingshi, vol. 2, figure 7, and a photocopy is also in Li Quan’en, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun, 123. 190. Huang Xing 黄兴, Huang Xing ji 黄兴集 [A collection of Huang Xing’s writings], ed. Hunan sheng shehui kexueyuan 湖南省社会科学院 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), 35−37. 191. Sun Yat-sen, Letter to Lin Libin, March 5, 1911, MS-1027, British Columbia Archives, Victoria. A photocopy of Sun’s letter is in Li, Ding, and Jia, Jianada Huaqiao yiminshi, 193. Sun’s letter was sent from Vancouver to Lin Libin in Victoria, and it also urged Lin to set an example for individual donors in Victoria’s Chinatown. 192. Lin Libin 林礼斌, “Yubu Zhonghua huiguan zhi yange ji Huaqiao xuexiao chuangli zhi yuanqi” 域埠中华会馆之沿革及华侨学校创立之缘起 [The evolution of Victoria’s Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association and the creation of the overseas Chinese school], in Jianada yuduoli Zhongghua huiguan, huaqiao xuexiao chengli 75 [he] 60 zhounian jinian tekan 加拿大域多利中华会馆、华侨学校 成立七十五 [和] 六十周年纪念特刊 [A special publication for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association and the sixtieth anniversary of the overseas Chinese school in Victoria], zhushu [writings] 3 (Victoria, BC: Zhonghua huiguan, 1959). 193. Province, February 22, 1911; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 171; vol. 2, 603; Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 24−25. 194. Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 24−25; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 601. 195. “Mortgage from Chee Kong Tong Society to B.C. Land & Investment Agency, 27th February 1911,” land title no. 3501571, Victoria Land Title Office, Victoria, BC. Photocopies of two of the three signature pages for the CKT’s resolution on February 24, 1911, are in Chuen-yan David Lai, “Contribution of the Zhigongtang in Canada to the Huanghuagang Uprising in Canton, 1911,” Canadian Ethnic

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Studies 13, no. 3 (1982): 102. But Lai’s article incorrectly suggests that Sun arrived in Victoria on February 14, 1911. Lai reprinted these two signature pages in Li Quan’en, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun, 122. Lin Lihuang signed the document with one of his other names, Lim Sam. 196. Lin Libin, “Yubu Zhonghua huiguan zhi yange ji Huaqiao xuexiao chuangli zhi yuanqi,” 4; Sun Yat-sen, Letter to Lin Libin, March 5, 1911. Lin’s account of the total funds from the CKT’s mortgage of its premises and individual merchant donors includes some inaccuracies; see Chen Zhongping, “Weiduoliya, Wengehua yu haineiwai Huaren de gailiang he geming, 1899−1911,” 93n3. 197. Lin Libin, “Yubu Zhonghua huiguan zhi yange ji Huaqiao xuexiao chuangli zhi yuanqi,” 3−4; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 603. 198. Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 24, 26, 33. 199. Huang Xing, Huang Xing ji, 35, 46. For a detailed analysis of the total funds from Vancouver’s CKT, see Chen Zhongping, “Weiduoliya, Wengehua yu haineiwai Huaren de gailiang he geming, 1899−1911,” 93. 200. Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 25; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 172; Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 1, 513−14. 201. Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 25−27. For Sun’s arrival in Kelowna, see Courier, March 30, 1911. 202. Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 25−27. Chen Zhongping, “Weiduoliya, Wengehua yu haineiwai Huaren de gailiang he geming, 1899−1911,” 88−89. 203. Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 27; Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 1, 515, 518−19. Jian’s book includes an inaccurate record of Sun’s stay in Calgary for three weeks and an exaggerated account of his fundraising success in Winnipeg. The same incorrect record appears in Li Quan’en, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun, 127; and Liu Weiseng, Quan-Mei dangshi, vol. 1, 123−25. 204. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 1, 515−16, 518−19; Globe, April 10 and 15, 1911; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 604; Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 27−28. The receipt of the $10,000 (HKD) donation from the Toronto CKT was signed by Li Haiyun in Hong Kong on April 13, 1911, and is in Feng, Zhonghua Minguo kaiguoqian gemingshi, vol. 2, figure 8. Jian’s book includes a record of the Toronto CKT’s initial attempt to sell its premises, which can be corroborated by the cited news report, but its claim of a $13,000 (CAD) donation from the CKT lodge is an exaggeration. Jian’s book also follows the aforementioned Cao Jianwu’s manuscript, “Jianada Zhigongtang fuguo yundongshi,” misdating Sun’s stay in Toronto to April 25 to 29, 1911, and mistaking the assassination of the Manchu general on April 8 as the Canton uprising on April 27, 1911. This mistake also appears in Li Quan’en, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun, 127−28, and affects Liu Weiseng, Quan-Mei dangshi, vol. 1, 126. The latter further misinterprets this event as the New Army’s

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mutiny in Canton, which actually happened on February 12, 1910, as mentioned earlier. 205. Huang Xing, Huang Xing ji, 46. The figures of the Canadian donation and the total overseas Chinese donations appear slightly different in David Lai, “Contribution of the Zhigongtang in Canada to the Huanghuagang Uprising in Canton, 1911,” 97, 103, because it cites an indirect source about Huang’s report. Lai’s article also indicates that the Canadian CKT’s claim to have contributed $141,000 (HKD) for the Canton uprising is an exaggeration. 206. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 603−604. Feng’s figure refers to the total Canadian donation to the Canton uprising; also see Feng Ziyou 冯自由, oral account, and Sun Xuanwu 孙宣武, written record, “Huanghuagang yiyi gedi chouxiang jiguan renwu hudong” 黄花岗一役各地筹饷机关人物活动 [The fundraising institutions, personnel, and activities for the Canton uprising in 1911], Geming wenxian 革命文献 [Revolutionary documents] 65 (1974): 361−62. Feng’s oral account specifies the total Canadian donation at $72,000 (HKD), and provides the breakdown of funds from the CKT chapters in the following cities: $10,000 (HKD) from Vancouver; $30,000 (HKD) from Victoria; $10,000 (HKD) from Toronto; and more than $20,000 (HKD) from other cities in Canada. 207. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 533. 208. California Chinese Freemason, Wuzhou Zhigong zongtang geming lishi tulu, 71. 209. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 604−5; Xin Minguo bao 新民国报 [The New Republic], November 3, 1912, British Columbia Archives, Victoria. 210. Wu and Li, “Sun Zhongshan sanfu Nuiyue,” 7−8; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 530−35. 211. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 537, 541−42; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 119−24. 212. Chen Zhongping 陈忠平 and Chen Ming 陈明, “Xinhai qianhou Tang Hualong yu geming dangren guanxi tanxi” 辛亥前后汤化龙与革命党人关系探 析 [A new examination of Tang Hualong’s relations with revolutionaries around the 1911 Revolution], in Xinhai Geming yu bainian Zhongguo 辛亥革命与百年 中国 [The 1911 Revolution and one century of China], ed. Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo 中国社会科学院近代史研究所 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2016), vol. 3, 1720−23; Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China, 182−86. For details about the political actions of Tang and his reformist counterparts in other provinces during the 1911 Revolution, see Zhang Pengyuan, Lixianpai yu Xinhai geming, 105, 114−17, 120−86. 213. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 546−48, 555−85, esp. 555; Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, 151−53, 201−209. For a detailed analysis of the Wuchang

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uprising and its tenuous relations with Sun Yat-sen and his Revolutionary Alliance, see Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China, 173−76. 214. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 603−604, 615−19; Joseph W. Esherick, “Founding a Republic, Electing a President: How Sun Yat-sen Became Guofu,” in China’s Republican Revolution, ed. Etō Shinkichi and Harold Z. Schiffrin (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1994), 129, 134−35, 139−45; Huang Sande, Hongmen gemingshi, 22−23. For detailed information about the formation of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China, see Zhang and Lin, Xinhai geming shi, vol. 3, 1184−1200. Their book stresses the dominance of revolutionaries in this government; in contrast, Bergère, in Sun Yat-sen, 198−227, downplays Sun’s importance in the revolutionary movement of 1911 and the new Republican government. 215. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 124, 380−82; “Yingshu Jianada zhu Yuduoli bu Huaqiao yijuan feichaun fangming” 英属加拿大驻域多利埠华侨义捐飞船芳 名 [A list of donors from Victoria, the British domain of Canada, for the purchase of airplanes], Xin Minguo bao, February 18, 1911, file no. 8728 in SHHRA; Li Chien-nung, The Political History of China, 1840−1928, trans. and ed. Ssu−yu Teng and Jeremy Ingalls (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1956), 259−67. The cited Xin Minguo bao was published on February 18, 1911, heralded as the first newspaper issue on that day of the Chinese Spring Festival. But it could have started before that time because its editorial office had printed Puxing gongsi gufen 普兴公 司股份 [A list of Puxing Company’s stockholders] on March 21, 1911, folder 1, box 3, The Lee Family Papers, Rare Books and Special Collection, University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver. 216. Liu Weiseng, Quan-Mei dangshi, vol. 1, 162−64. 217. Shenbao 申报 [Shanghai daily], April 6, 1913; see also Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 29−30. This newspaper report admitted a lack of knowledge about the amount of the “citizens’ donation” from Victoria in 1912. Because this report converted $30,000 (HKD) donation made by the Canadian CKT headquarters in Victoria in early 1911 into 40,000 yuan, at the rate of 3:4 between Hong Kong dollars and Chinese yuan, the 92,000 yuan of the total Canadian CKT’s donation for the Canton uprising in that year would be $69,000 (HKD), which is very close to the aforementioned amount given by Feng Ziyou. 218. Sang Bing 桑兵 ed., Gefang zhi Sun Zhongshan handian huibian 各方致 孙中山函电汇编 [Collection of letters and telegrams to Sun Yat-sen from various sides] (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2012), vol. 1, 162−63. 219. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 460. Li did not cite the origin of his source, but his figure evidently came from the CCBA’s archives because he held positions ranging from secretary to vice president of this organization from the

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early 1950s to the early 1980s. Because the CCBA in Victoria represented all Chinese in Canada around that time, parts of its “citizens’ donation” probably came from other Canadian cities. 220. This figure of the Chinese population in Canada in 1911 is from Roy, A White Man’s Province, 269. 221. Zhongguo Guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui disanzu 中国国民党中央 委员会第三组, ed., Zhongguo Guomindang zai haiwai 中国国民党在海外 [The Chinese Nationalist Party overseas] (Taibei: Zhongguo Guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui disanzu, 1961), vol. 1, 118–19, vol. 2, 15; Xin Minguo bao, November 3, 1912.

Chapter 4 1. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 610. 2. Province, February 19, 1912. 3. Liu Boji 刘伯骥, Meiguo Huaqiao shi xubian 美国华侨史续编 [A sequel of the history of the Chinese in the United States of America] (Taibei: Liming wenhua shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1981), 469. 4. Grace Peña Delgado, Making the Chinese Mexican: Global Migration, Localism, and Exclusion in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 104−105; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 215; Roy, A White Man’s Province, 255. 5. Patricia E. Roy, The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man’s Province, 1914−41 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003), 17−20. 6. Lin Libin, “Yubu Zhonghua huiguan zhi yange ji Huaqiao xuexiao chuangli zhi yuanqi,” 3. 7. David Strand, An Unfinished Republic: Leading by Word and Deed in Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011), esp. 111−12, 289−90. 8. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 675, 685; Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 150−68; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 399−427. 9. Zhang Yufa 张玉法, Minguo chunian de zhengdang 民国初年的政党 [Political parties in the early Republican period] (Changsha: Yuelu shushe, 2004), 22−23; Nathan, Peking Politics, 44−74. 10. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 676, 685. 11. Zhang Yufa, Minguo chunian de zhengdang, 52−61. 12. Zhang Yufa, Minguo chunian de zhengdang, 53, 63−71. Zhang’s list of KMT’s chapters is incomplete because it is based on newspaper reports and other historical records from the early 1910s. Nonetheless, the few available reports at a minimum show that most of its overseas chapters were neither active nor in close communication with their headquarters in China.

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13. Shehong Chen, Being Chinese, Becoming Chinese American, 56−57. 14. Wu Xianzi, Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi, 74−76, 162; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 9, 413. 15. Zhongguo weixin bao, April 6, 1912; Shanghai shi wenwu baoguan weiyuanhui, Kang Youwei yu baohuanghui, 468, 472; Wu Xianzi, Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi, 94−95. 16. “Xianzhengdang zhangcheng, Minguo sannian kan” 宪政党章程: 民国三 年刊 [The constitution of the Chinese Reform Party, printed in 1914], folder 4, box 2, WXZXY. This constitution is much longer than its 1912 version in Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 9, 413−14. 17. Wong Kin, International Chinese Business Directory of the World for the Year 1913 (San Francisco: International Chinese Business Directory Co., 1913), 1019−589, esp. 1354−558 (https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.$b440600&view=1up& seq=1928, accessed November 24, 2022). This directory lists all these chapters as Guomindang 国民党 or the Chinese National Party, as Kang’s party was called before it renamed itself as Xianzhengdang. Only one of them, the Bangkok chapter, was located in Asia. These chapters appear as “Xianzhengdang” or the Chinese Reform Party in a handwritten draft of Huang Jin 黄金, “Wanguo jixin bianlan” 万国寄信便览” [A convenient guide for international mail], folder 7, carton 26, Yuk Ow Research Files, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley. However, many of them have been mistaken as KMT chapters in Canada; see Wickberg et al., From China to Canada, 313. 18. Zhang Pengyuan 张朋园, Liang Qichao yu Minguo zhengzhi 梁启超与民国 政治 [Liang Qichao and Republican politics] (Changchun: Jilin chuban jietuan, 2007), 24−31; Liu Boji, Meiguo Huaqiao shi xubian, 493−94; Wong Kin, International Chinese Business Directory of the World for the Year 1913, 1363; Wu Xianzi, Zhongguo Minzhu Xianzhengdang dangshi, 74−76, 112. The Republican Party was incorporated into the Progressive Party in May 1913, but its Canadian branch kept the original name and membership. 19. Liu Boji, Meiguo Huaqiao shi xubian, 457−58, 493−94; Li Quan’en, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun, 140−41; Sun and Liu, Haiwai hongmen yu xinhai geming, 175−78. 20. Sang, Gefang zhi Sun Zhongshan handian huibian, vol. 1, 153, 286−87. 21. Shaonian Zhongguo chenbao 少年中国晨报 [Yong China morning daily], February 16, 1913; Liu Boji, Meiguo Huaqiao shi xubian, 457; Huang Sande, Hongmen gemingshi, 23−25; Shenbao, May 4, 1912. 22. Shenbao, March 1, April 26, May 8, 1912; Bianwan 砭顽, “Du Chen du jinzhi Sanhehui shiwen shuhou” 读陈督禁止三合会示文书后 [A comment on Governor Chen’s announcement to ban the Triad Society], Xinning zazhi 新宁杂

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志 [Magazine of Xinning County] 5 (1912): 5−8. Chen Jiongming was the acting governor of Guangdong Province before May 1912. 23. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 2, 346−48, 358−59. 24. Huang Sande, Hongmen geming shi, 23−25; Shenbao, June 29, July 3, 1913; California Chinese Freemason, Wuzhou Zhigong Zongtang geming lishi tulu,, 86−87; Huaqiao gemingshi bianzuan weiyuanhui 华侨革命史编纂委员会, ed., Huaqiao gemingshi 华侨革命史 [A history of overseas Chinese revolution] (Taibei: Zhengzhong shuju, 1981), vol. 2, 301−14. 25. Zhang Yufa, Minguo chunian de zhengdang, 298−311, 329−30, 339−41; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 788, 821−46; California Chinese Freemason, Wuzhou Zhigong Zongtang geming lishi tulu, 96. 26. Zhongguo di’er lishi dangan’guan 中国第二历史档案馆, ed., Zhonghua minguoshi dang’an ziliao huibian 中华民国史档案资料汇编 [Collection of archival materials regarding the history of the Republic of China] (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji chubanshe, 1991), vol. 3, Zhengzhi, part 1, 799−803. 27. California Chinese Freemason, Wuzhou Zhigong Zongtang geming lishi tulu, 79−80, 92−93, 98−101; Feng Ziyou, Letter to Ju Zheng (Juesheng), October 22, 1914, file no. 8151 in SHHRA. The year of Feng’s letter to Ju is inferred from its contents. 28. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 834, 846, 851−52, 854−58; Edward Friedman, Backward toward Revolution: The Chinese Revolutionary Party (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 57−70. 29. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 851−58, 886−89; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 629−30. 30. Zou Lu邹鲁, Zhongguo guomindang shigao 中国国民党史稿 [A draft history of the Chinese Nationalist Party] (Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 2011), vol. 1, 253. 31. “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao” 中华革命党史料 [Historical sources of the Chinese Revolutionary Party], in Geming wenxian 革命文献 [Revolutionary documents] 45 (1969): 93−263, esp. 109, 166, 192, 241. See also Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 421, 423, 454−89. 32. Lin Youhua 林友华, Lin Sen nianpu 林森年谱 [A chronical of Lin Sen’s life] (Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 2012), 1, 209, 678. 33. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 629−31; Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 113; Zhongguo Guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui disanzu, Zhongguo Guomindang zai haiwai, vol. 1, 147. 34. “Articles of Incorporation of the Chinese Nationalist League of America,” March 20, 1914, archival no. C0076320, California State Archives, Sacramento. 35. Zou, Zhongguo guomindang shigao, vol. 1, 251; Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 141−42, 178−79, 225−26.

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36. Guoshiguan 国史馆ed., Qian guomin zhengfu zhuxi Lingong zichao yiji 前 国民政府主席林公子超遗集 [Posthumous collection of the former President Li Sen of the Nationalist Government of China] (Taibei: Qian guomin zhengfu zhuxi Lin Sen xiansheng bainian danchen jinian choubei weiyuanhui, 1966), 61−62; Zou, Zhongguo guomindang shigao, vol. 1, 141−50; “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 438−40. 37. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 140−41. 38. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 632; Feng Ziyou, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, October 25, 1914, file no. 8017 in SHHRA; Feng Ziyou, Letter to Ju Zheng (Juesheng), October 22, 1914; Zhou Jiayi, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, November 17, 1914, file no. 8165 in SHHRA. For details about the Society to Protect Republican China, see “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 298−422. 39. Feng Ziyou, Letter to Ju Zheng (Juesheng), October 22, 1914; Huang Sande, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, January 30, 1915, file no. 7665 in SHHRA; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 938. 40. Zhongguo Guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui disanzu, Zhongguo Guomindang zai haiwai, vol. 2, 16−19. Lin was elected as the director of the CNL’s American Bureau in late 1914, but he received Sun Yat-sen’s formal appointment in February 1915; see Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 932. 41. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 898−99, 915, 927, 933−35; Li Jikui, Sun Zhongshan yu Riben, 422−27. Sun’s pro-Japan activities in 1914−1915 have received limited attention in these Chinese publications but more detailed scrutiny in Japanese and English publications, such as Fujii Shōzō 藤井 昇三, Sonbun no kenkyū: Toku ni minzoku shugi riron no hatten o chūshin to shite 孫文の研究: とくに民族主義理論の発展を中心として [A study of Sun Yatsen: The Development of nationalist theory] (Tōkyō: Keisō Shobō, 1966), 84−95; Jansen, The Japanese and Sun Yat-sen, 188−93; Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, 262−65. 42. Zhongguo Guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui disanzu, Zhongguo Guomindang zai haiwai, vol. 2, 17−19 ; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 632, 638. 43. Zhongguo Guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui disanzu, Zhongguo Guomindang zai haiwai, vol. 2, 18; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 961. 44. Guoshiguan, Qian guomin zhengfu zhuxi Lingong zichao yiji, 53−54; “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 440−42; Zhonghua gemingdang zongwubu, Letter to Lin Sen and Feng Ziyou, June 5, 1915, file no. 4866 in SHHRA. 45. Zhongguo Guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui disanzu, Zhongguo Guomindang zai haiwai, vol. 2, 20−21. For details about the conference, see “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 298−414. 46. “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 441−43.

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47. Zhongguo Guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui disanzu, Zhongguo Guomindang zai haiwai, vol. 1, 147−48; Liu Weiseng, Quan-Mei dangshi, vol. 1, 263−64. 48. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 632−33. For more general discussion about the American CNL, see Him Mark Lai, “The Kuomintang in Chinese American Communities before World War II,” 180−85. 49. “Zhifenbu zhutongzhi junjian” 支分部诸同志均鉴 [A notice to all bureaus and chapters], August 14, 1916, file no. 6186 in SHHRA. For the rules of the liaison office in Victoria, see “Minguo chunian zhi Guomindang shiliao” 民国初年之 国民党史料 [Historical documents regarding the Nationalist Party in the early Republican period], Geming wenxian 革命文献 [Revolutionary documents] 41 (1967): 71−72. 50. Hu Hanxian 胡汉贤, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo” 中华革命党讨袁军美洲华侨敢死队组织始末 [An account of the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Overseas Chinese Dare-to-Die Vanguard from the American continent], Guangdong wenshi ziliao 广东文史资料 [Cultural and historical documents of Guangdong Province] 19 (1965): 25. 51. Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 26; Zhonghua gemindang benbu, Letter to Ma Jieduan, early 1915, file no. 6098 in SHHRA. The cited letter has no date, but it was sent after Xia’s appointment as the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Canadian liaison officer on April 26, 1915, see “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 109, 241. 52. Zeng Shiquan, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, February 1, 1915, file no. 4856 in SHHRA. 53. Lin Qiwen and Li Zhujian, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, April 15, 1922, file no. 6232 in SHHRA. 54. Lü Nan, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, November 12, 1914, file no. 7738 in SHHRA; Lin Sen, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, December 17, 1915, file no. 7747 in SHHRA. The year of Lin’s letter is inferred from its contents. The CNL title usually appeared in the letterheads of these Canadian chapters. 55. Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 30. 56. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 545−46, 816; Da-han ribao, August 3, 10, and 28, 1914; April 26, 1915. 57. Wei Zhenpei, et al., Letter to Xie Huisheng and Chen Yingshi, February 28, 1915 (including an undated reply from Zhonghua gemingdang zongwubu and Dangwubu), file no. 6101 in SHHRA; Da-Han ribao, November 9, 1914. The CKT lodge obviously exaggerated the size of its membership because the total Chinese migrants in Montreal numbered only 1,197 in 1911 and 1,735 in 1921; see Wickberg, et al. From China to Canada, 303.

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58. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 140−41; Friedman, Backward toward Revolution, 99. 59. Wei Zhenpei, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, May 25, 1915, file no. 4865 in SHHRA. 60. Da-Han ribao, February 6 and 23, April 17, and June 19, 1915. 61. Dan-Han ribao, February 22, March 6 and 15, 1915; Ma Jieduan and Li Gongwu, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, March 19, 1915, file no. 7295 in SHHRA. 62. Ma Jieduan and Li Gongwu, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, March 19, 1915. 63. Da-Han ribao, February 22 and 26, March 4, 9, and 10, and April 8, 1915. These leaders included President Liao Chongjiao 廖崇教 of the Chinese Reform Party; President Liu Xuchu 刘旭初 of the Republican Party, and Cui Tongyue, editor of the CKT newspaper in Vancouver. For Liao and Liu’s leadership in the two parties, see Da-Han ribao, January 5 and February 25, 1915. 64. Da-Han ribao, February 26, April 26 and 27, June 14, 1915. 65. Ma Jieduan, Letter to Dangwubu, April 11, 1915, file no. 7371 in SHHRA. 66. Da-Han ribao, March 15 and April 27, 1915. 67. Ma Jieduan and Li Gongwu, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, October 21, 1915, file no. 8149 in SHHRA; Ma Jieduan and Li Gongwu, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, November 2, 1915, file no. 8181 in SHHRA; Lin Sen, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, December 17, 1915. 68. Da-Han gongbao 大汉公报 [The Chinese times], December 27 and 28, 1915; January 4, 1916. This newspaper changed its Chinese name from Da-Han ribao to Da-Han gongbao starting in November 1915. 69. “Zhonghua gemingdang shiqi handu” 中华革命党时期函牍 [Letters and other documents from the period of the Chinese Revolutionary Party], Geming wenxian 革命文献 [Revolutionary documents] 48 (1969), 86−89. One of Xia’s three letters from Canada is also in Sang, Gefang zhi Sun Zhongshan handian huibian, vol. 2, 476−77. 70. Ma Jieduan and Li Gongwu, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, November 2, 1915; He Jingli, Letter to Chen Qimei, December 3, 1915, file no. 7676 in SHHRA; Xu Yihe, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, December 10, 1915, file no. 8186 in SHHRA; Hu Weixun, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, January 15, 1916, file no. 8240 in SHHRA. 71. Lin Sen, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, December 17, 1915. For Feng’s letter, see “Zhonghua gemingdang shiqi handu,” 92−93, and Sang, Gefang zhi Sun Zhongshan handian huibian, vol. 2, 485−86. 72. Friedman, Backward toward Revolution, 99−100. 73. “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 442−43; Zhonghua gemingdang benbu, Letter to Ma Jieduan and Li Gongwu, December 13, 1915. 74. Li Chien-nung, The Political History of China, 311, 318−30; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 227−35.

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75. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 308−13; Wickberg, et al. From China to Canada, 105; Li, Ding, and Jia, Jianada Huaqiao yiminshi, 198−99. 76. Jerome Ch’en, Yuan Shih-k’ai (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972), 162−74. 77. Zhang Pengyuan, Liang Qichao yu Minguo zhengzhi, 57−74; Ding and Zhao, Liang Qichao nianpu changbian, 471. 78. Da-Han gongbao, November 22, 1915. 79. Lin Sen, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, December 17, 1915. 80. For the most recent research on this case, see Chen Zhongping 陈忠平, “Huang Yuanyong ansha’an dang’an jiemi” 黄远庸暗杀案档案揭秘 [Revealing the secret of Huang Yuanyong’s assassination through archival research], Dushu 读书 [Reading], 9 (2022), 50−58. This article is based mainly on Lin Sen’s aforementioned letter and a secret report about the assassination by three murders on November 10, 1947; see “Yang Tang, Liu Beihai, Yu Chang deng qiangsha Yuanshi zougou Huang Yuanyong shijian 杨棠、刘北海、余昌等枪杀袁氏走狗黄远庸 事件 [The case of Huang Yuanyong’s assassination by Yang Tang, Liu Beihai, Yu Chang, and others], archival no. 407/1, Zhongguo guomindang wenhua chuanbo weiyuanhui dangshiguan 中国国民党文化传播委员会党史馆 [Cultural Communication Committee’s historical archives of the Chinese Nationalist Party], Taibei, Taiwan. This case was partially exposed by two scholars in China in the mid-1980s, but their article is based on hearsay evidence from a friend of one of the assassins, Liu Beihai. It mistakes Liu as the only murderer with orders from Lin Sen and fails to reveal Lin’s motives; see Huang Liusha 黄流沙 and Sun Wenshuo 孙文铄, “Guanyu Huang Yuansheng zhisi” 关于黄远生之死 [On the death of Huang Yuanyong], Xinwen xuekan 新闻学刊 [Journal of journalistic studies], 2 (1986): 48−51. 81. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 635; Chen Zhongping, “Huang Yuanyong ansha’an dang’an jiemi,” 52−58. 82. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 915, 921−22, 957−58, 962, 965, 967−68, 976−77, 980−81, 991−93; Huaqiao gemingshi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Huaqiao gemingshi, vol. 2, 526−29; Da-Han gongbao, November 16, 1915. 83. Da-Han gongbao, November 16 and December 21, 1915; January 4, 12 and 17, and February 5, 1916. 84. Huaqiao gemingshi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Huaqiao gemingshi, vol. 2, 522−24; Huang Sande, Hongmen geming shi, 37−38; California Chinese Freemason, Wuzhou Zhigong Zongtang geming lishi tulu, 114−19; Hu Weixun, Letter to Sun Yatsen, January 15, 1916. 85. “Zhonghua gemingdang shiqi handu,” 50−52.

296

Notes

86. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 308; Huaqiao gemingshi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Huaqiao gemingshi, vol. 2, 531. 87. Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 26−28; Edmonton Bulletin, September 20, October 27, November 5 and 11, 1915. 88. “Jianada Dianwendun Junshishe zhiyuan xueyuan mingjice” 加拿大点问顿 军事社职员学员名籍册 [A register of staff and students in the Military Society of Edmonton, Canada], August 1915, file no. 7941 in SHHRA; “Zhonghua gemingdang shiqi handu,” 87; Liu Weihan 刘维汉, “Yiyongtuan baogao” 义勇团报告 [A report of the volunteer corps], September 19, 1916, file no. 3580 in SHHRA. 89. Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 28. For an example of these military societies, see “Liebizhu junshishe guize” 列必珠军事社规则 [Lethbridge Military Society’s rules], 1916, file no. 7961 in SHHRA. 90. Lethbridge Herald, March 13, 1919. 91. Ma Chaofan, Ma Zhaohua, and Hu Hanxian, Letter to Lin Sen, December 5, 1915, file no. 7973 in SHHRA. 92. Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 28−29. 93. “Jiashu gansi xianfengdui mingce” 加属敢死先锋队名册 [The register of the Dare-to-Die Vanguard of Canada], file no. 7962 in SHHRA; “Xinjiaru xianfengdui zhuduiyuan 新加入先锋队诸队员” [A register of the new members of the vanguard], file no. 7971 in SHHRA. See also a list of 112 members of the Dareto-die Vanguard of Canada in “Jiashu Huaqiao gansi xianfengdui … yusuanbiao” 加属华侨敢死先锋队… 预算表 [A budget … for the Overseas Chinese Dare-toDie Vanguard of Canada], file no. 7953 in SHHRA. 94. Wu Hengguan, Report to Lin Sen, 1915, file no. 7952 in SHHRA; “Beishibu Meizhou Huaqiao junshi yanjiushe zhixueyuan xingmingce” 贝市埠美洲华侨军 事研究社职学员姓名册 [A list of staff and students of Boise’s Overseas Chinese Military Research Society of America], 1916, file no. 7970 in SHHRA. The year of Wu’s report is inferred from its contents and related archives. 95. Huaqiao gemingshi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Huaqiao gemingshi, vol. 2, 492−500. For details about the Overseas Chinese Military Research Society of America and the two aviation schools, see “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 422−35. 96. Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 28; “Zhonghua gemingdang shiqi handu,” 51, 95; Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 245; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 638−39. 97. “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 503−522; Ma Zhaohua and Fang Zhuoyun, Letter to the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Tokyo headquarters, February 15, 1916,

Notes

297

file no. 7972 in SHHRA; Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 29−30. Hu’s memoire claimed that he and the three other representatives of the Overseas Chinese Dare-to-die Vanguard of Canada reached Tokyo in October 1915. 98. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 267, 269, 274; Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 30. 99. Hu Hanxian et al., Letter to Sun Yat-sen, May 5, 1916, file no. 7395 in SHHRA; “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 473. For the transpacific trip of the Overseas Chinese Dare-to-Die Vanguard of Canada, see Huaqiao gemingshi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Huaqiao gemingshi, vol. 2, 531, 609n19. But its account is based on Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 309−10, which includes incorrect dates of the arrival of the Vanguard’s members in Japan and China. 100. Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 30. 101. Minguo ribao 民国日报 [Republican daily], July 18, 1916. The Victoria CNL reported that over one hundred Chinese from Canada joined the homebound trip, and it claimed that fifty to sixty of them came from Victoria; see Ma Jieduan and Li Gongwu, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, August 23, 1916, file no. 7406 in SHHRA. 102. “Zhonghua gemindang Huaqiao yiyongtuan tuanbenbu xingmingce” 中 华革命党华侨义勇团团本部姓名册 [The register of the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment], 1916, archival no. 400/163.8, Zhongguo guomindang wenhua chuanbo weiyuanhui dangshiguan 中国国民 党文化传播委员会党史馆 [Cultural Communication Committee’s historical archives of the Chinese Nationalist Party], Taibei, Taiwan. This register was published under the same title in “Tao-Yuan shiliao yi” 讨袁史料 一 [Historical sources of the anti-Yuan campaigns, part 1], Geming wenxian 革命文献 [Revolutionary documents] 46 (1969): 461−72. Three of the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment’s members identified themselves as coming from the United States and one was from Japan, but sixteen members did not indicate their country of direct origin. 103. “Hangkongdui biancheng” 航空队编成 [Composition of the air squadron], July 11, 1916, file no. 3577 in SHHRA; Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang taoYuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 30−31. In his memoir, Hu exaggerated the number of pilots. 104. Hu Hanxian 胡汉贤, “Sun Zhongshan xiansheng zai Riben chuangban feixing xuexiao de jingguo 孙中山先生在日本创办飞行学校的经过” [An account of Sun Yat-sen’s establishment of an aviation school in Japan], Guangdong wenshi ziliao cungao xuanbian 广东文史资料存稿选编 [Collection of selected manuscripts on the culture and history of Guangdong Province] 1 (2005): 82, 84;

298

Notes

Cai Hepeng and Ma Chaofan, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, April 17, 1916, file no. 8585 in SHHRA. 105. Xia Zhongmin, Report to Ju Zheng, September 15, 1915, file no. 3692 in SHHRA. 106. Hu, “Sun Zhongshan xiansheng zai Riben chuangban feixing xuexiao de jingguo,” 82; “Zhonghua gemindang Huaqiao yiyongtuan tuanbenbu xingmingce.” 107. Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 30, 34. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian (vol. 1, p. 991) claims that the Overseas Chinese anti-Yuan Dare-to-Die Vanguard from the Americas joined the Northeastern Army in its attack on Wei County in early May 1916, but the source it cited does not include supporting evidence for this claim. 108. Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 31−33. Hu’s memoir dates the Jinan battle to May 14, 1916. For a similar account of the Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment’s engagement in the Jinan campaign, see Gu Renfa 辜仁发, “Zhonghua gemingjun Shandong fan-Yuan zhanzheng qinliji” 中华革命军山东反袁战争亲历记 [A memoir of my personal experience in the anti-Yuan wars of the Chinese Revolutionary Party’s army in Shandong Province], in Wenshi ziliao xuanji 文史资料选辑 [Selected materials regarding culture and history] 48 (1963): 120, 122. Gu’s account dates the Jinan campaign to May 15, 1916, which is consistent with the contemporary news reports in Minguo ribao, May 18, 1916; Shenbao, May 19, 1916. For a detailed account of the Jinan battle, see Shibao 时报 [Eastern times], May 21, 1916. 109. Friedman, Backward toward Revolution, 197; “Zhonghua gemingdang shiqi handu,” 89−90; Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 33; Xie Huisheng, telegram of May 31, 1916, file no. 3531 in SHHRA; Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 302. 110. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 399−400. 111. “Zhonghua gemingdang shiqi handu,” 51−52. 112. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 267−68; Zhao Yaodong, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, September 1916, file no. 7944 in SHHRA. The letter has no date, but it reached Sun on October 3, as noted on the letter. 113. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 399−400; Huaqiao gemingshi bianzuan weiyuanhui, Huaqiao gemingshi, vol. 2, 547−50. 114. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 991, 998−1000; Zhong Shui, Report to Ju Zheng, July 8, 1916, file no. 3386 in SHHRA. 115. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 1008−1009, 1013; Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 370−74, 399−401. 116. Hu, “Zhonghua gemindang tao-Yuan-jun Meizhou Huaqiao gansidui zuzhi shimo,” 35−37.

Notes

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117. The case received limited attention in David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 134−35; Li, Ding, and Jia, Jianada Huaqiao yiminshi, 290−91. The two books include insufficient and sometimes incorrect discussions about this case in the local context of the Victoria CCBA. 118. Da-Han ribao, November 22, 1915; August 1, 1916. 119. Jerome Ch’en, Yuan Shih−k’ai, 162−63; Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 10, 318−20. For details about the parliamentary debate over Confucian religion in late 1916, see Han Hua 韩华, Minchu Kongjiaohui yu guojiao yundong yanjiu 民 初孔教会与国教运动研究 [A study of the Confucian Religious Association and the movement for the Confucian state religion in the early Republican period] (Beijing: Beijing tushuguan chubanshe, 2007), 199−202. 120. Zhongping Chen, “Kang Youwei and Confucianism in Canada and Beyond, 1899−1911,” 11−12. 121. Xinbao, February 16, 1909; Da-Han gongbao, September 5, 1916; David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 134. 122. Da-Han gongbao, March 8, September 5, 1916. President Liu Zikui was also a CKT member; see David Lai, Chinese Community Leadership, 134. 123. Da-Han gongbao, September 22, October 23, 1916; Daily Times, November 23, 1916; January 17, 1917. 124. Da-Han gongbao, September 26, 1916. 125. Da-Han gongbao, October 7 and 23, 1916; Daily Times, November 24, 1916. 126. Colonist, October 10, 1916; Da-Han gongbao, October 9 and 11, 1916. 127. Da-Han gongbao, November 1 and 27, December 13, 1916; Colonist, October 25, December 19, 1916, January 11, 1917; Li Zijing and Li Gongwu, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, November 30, 1916, file no. 6188 in SHHRA. 128. Colonist, October 25, December 8 and 17, 1916; January 11, March 14, May 8, 1917; Da-Han gongbao, January 13, 1917. 129. “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 473, 498; “Yuduoli bu gongmintuan tongren baogao” 域多利埠公民团同人报告 [Report from Victoria’s Corps of Citizens], December 6, 1916, file no. 7349 in SHHRA; Li Zijing and Li Gongwu, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, November 30, 1916. 130. Colonist, February 1, May 8, 1917; Da-Han gongbao, January 19, March 13 and 14, May 11, 1917; “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 473, 498. 131. Han, Minchu Kongjiaohui yu guojiao yundong yanjiu, 208. 132. Da-Han gongbao, October 23, 1916; January 10 and 12, March 5 and 9, June 6, July 23, December 11, 1917. 133. Li Chien-nung, The Political History of China, 357−71; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, 1006−35, esp. 1006−1007, 1010−11, 1019−30; Zhang

300

Notes

Pengyuan, Liang Qichao yu Minguo zhengzhi, 77−79, 117−24; Chen and Chen, “Xinhai qianhou Tang Hualong yu geming dangren guanxi tanxi,” 1733−35. 134. Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 218−19, 233−35. 135. Li Chien-nung, The Political History of China, 371−73; Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography of K’ang Yu-wei,” 235−37. 136. Da-Han gongbao, June 6, 9, and 15, 1917. 137. Da-Han gongbao, June 4, 1917. 138. Zhonging Chen, “The May Fourth Movement and Provincial Warlords: A Reexamination,” Modern China 37, no. 2 (2011): 137, 141. 139. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 1015−16, 1021; Zou, Zhongguo guomindang shigao, vol. 1, 260, 354−55n1. The Chinese Nationalist Party distinguished itself from the pre-existing Nationalist Party first by the prefix term, “Zhonghua” 中华, in 1918, and then by another prefix term, “Zhongguo” 中国 from 1919. Both phrases mean Chinese or China. 140. Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 1, 356−57; Ma Jieduan and Li Gongwu, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, August 23, 1916. Xin Minguo chenbao was previously called Xin Minguo bao. 141. The quoted depiction of the Chinese Revolutionary Party and the reorganized KMT is from Bergère, Sun Yat-sen, 259, 325−31. 142. Feng Ziyou, Letter to Ju Zheng (Juesheng), October 22, 1914. 143. Lin Youhua, Lin Sen nianpu, 577−78, 595. 144. “Zhifenbu zhutongzhi junjian.” 145. Ma Jieduan and Li Gongwu, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, August 23, 1916. 146. Chen Shuren, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, March 10, 1917, file no. 7757 in SHHRA. 147. “Wengehua zhibu dangyuan zongshu ji xinjin dangyuan tongji” 温哥华支 部党员总数及新进党员统计 [Statistics of total and new members in the Chinese Nationalist League’s Vancouver chapter], 1917, file no. 7490 in SHHRA. 148. Zhongguo Guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui disanzu, Zhongguo Guomindang zai haiwai, vol. 1, 148; “Zhonghua gemingdang shiliao,” 498−99; Chen Shuren and Jiang Zonghan, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, December 8, 1919, file no. 5160.1 in SHHRA. 149. Gao Yunshan 高云山, “Jiuzheng Chen Shuren zhi miuwang yigao tongzhi” 纠正陈树人之谬妄以告同志 [A notice to comrades to rectify Chen Shuren’s fallacies], January 12, 1921, file no. 6194 in SHHRA. 150. Li Quan’en, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun, 133−35. According to the constitution of this organization, the term “Dart Coon” or “Daquan” in Mandarin

Notes

301

means to aspire to protecting its own public rights from encroachment by other organizations. 151. Da-Han gongbao, June 19, July 8, December 4 and 9, 1918. Jian’s Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada (p. 39) misdates the formation of Vancouver’s branch as 1915 and the one in Calgary as 1919. It also lists one branch of the Dart Coon Club in Cumberland in 1915 and another in Toronto in 1916. But its record requires verification because the first Dart Coon Club in Victoria was not formally established until 1916. 152. California Chinese Freemason, Wuzhou Zhigong Zongtang geming lishi tulu, 122−23. 153. California Chinese Freemason, Wuzhou Zhigong Zongtang geming lishi tulu, 126−31; Da-Han gongbao, March 25, March 27, April 5, 8, 18, and 24, 1918. 154. Da-Han gongbao, July 3, 8, and 15, 1918; Jian, Zhongguo Hongmen zai Jianada, 68−69. 155. California Chinese Freemason, Wuzhou Zhigong Zongtang geming lishi tulu, 82, 118; John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2007), 91; McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change, 237–38; Li Quan’en, Hongmen ji Jianada Hongmen shilun, 165. 156. Da-Han gongbao, March 17, 1917; Li Chien-nung, The Political History of China, 357−58, 361−63, 372−75; Zhang Pengyuan 张朋园, Zhongguo minzhu zhengzhi de kunjing, 1909−1949: Wan-Qing yilai lijie yihui xuanju shulun 中国民主政 治的困境：晚清以来历届议会选举述论 [The plight of Chinese democratic politics: A narrative discussion about parliamentary elections from the late Qing period] (Changchun: Jilin chuban jituan youxian zeren gongsi, 2008), 127−28. 157. Zhang Pengyuan, Liang Qichao yu Minguo zhengzhi, 31−45, 60−83, 91, 113−24; Chen and Chen, “Xinhai qianhou Tang Hualong yu geming dangren guanxi tanxi,” 1733−35; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 1028−29. 158. Li Chien-nung. The Political History of China, 375−77; Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 1034−35, 1050−53, 1061, 1066−68. 159. Li Chien-nung, The Political History of China, 378−81; Zhang Pengyuan, Liang Qichao yu Minguo zhengzhi, 80−88. 160. Hua Juemin 华觉民, “Jinbudang he Yanjiuxi 进步党和研究系” [The Progressive Party and the Research Clique], in Wenshi ziliao xuanji 文史资料选辑 [Collection of selected materials regarding culture and history] (Beijing: Zhongguo wenshi chubanshe, 1961), vol. 13, 113−14, 116, 120, 122, 124. 161. Minguo ribao, March 25, April 3, 5, 17, 22, 25, and 29, 1918; Li Chien-nung, The Political History of China, 382−83.

302

Notes

162. Hua, “Jinbudang he Yanjiuxi,” 124; Tang Hualong 汤化龙, “Shuzha 书札” [Letters], “You-Mei riji 游美日记” [Diary of North American tour], and “You-Mei yanshuo 游美演说” [Speeches on North American tour], all in Qishui Tang xiansheng yinianlu 蕲水汤先生遗念录 [Records of memories about Tang Hualong] (n.p., 1919), 8b−11b, 30b−33a, 45a. 163. Tang Hualong, “You-Mei riji,” 34b−43b, esp. 41a−42a; Chenbao 晨报 [Morning daily], December 1, 1918. This newspaper published Huo Dehui’s detailed recollection of Tang Hualong’s assassination and reports about memorial services for him in Victoria, Tokyo, Tianjin, and Beijing. 164. “Tang Hua Lung Deceased: Inquest, 4th September 1918,” pp. 19−20, GR 1327, file 166/1918, British Columbia Archives, Victoria, BC. The quoted phrases from the inquest are the original translations from the Chinese article that is included in the archival collection. 165. Colonist, May 3, 1919. Lee Yut Wah would later marry with Huo Dehui in Beijing in 1919. 166. Da-Han gongbao, February 11, 1916. 167. Chenbao, December 1, 1918; “Tang Hua Lung Deceased: Inquest, 4th September 1918,” 30. 168. Please see the changes in the landscape and names of streets in Victoria’s Chinatown by comparing Map 3 with a current map in Zhongping Chen et al., “Victoria’s Chinatown: A Gateway to the Past and Present of Chinese Canadians” (https://chinatown.library.uvic.ca/index.htmlq%3Dchinatown_map.html, accessed November 26, 2022). On the map of the website, the western section of today’s Pandora Avenue was called Cormorant Street in 1918, and the middle of the original Cormorant Street has been replaced with a part of the Centennial Square since the 1960s. 169. Ma Shaohan 马少汉, “Wang Chang lieshi zhuanlue 王昌烈士传略” [A brief biography of Wang Chang], archival no. 230/550 in Zhongguo guomindang wenhua chuanbo weiyuanhui dangshiguan 中国国民党文化传播委员会党 史馆 [Cultural Communication Committee’s historical archives of the Chinese Nationalist Party], Taibei, Taiwan. Ma’s biography of Wong Chong was published as “Wang Chang 王昌” in Geming renwuzhi 革命人物志 [Biographies of revolutionaries], ed. Qin Xiaoyi 秦孝仪, vol. 1, 119−22 (Taibei: Zhongyang wenwu gongyingshe, 1977). It is the most detailed among similar biographies, either published or unpublished, because Ma and Wong were close friends and CNL comrades in Victoria. Wong’s age is also based on Ma’s biography. For the Lai Chen Photographic Studio and Zhao Bichi, see Chen Gunyao 陈衮尧, “Jianada Huaqiao xunjiulu (shi)” 加拿大华侨勋旧录 (十) [Accounts of the meritorious old timers among the overseas Chinese in Canada, part 10], in Guangdong wenxian 广东文

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303

献 [Documents of Guangdong Province] 12, no. 1 (1982): 59−61.Wang’s half-length photo was in Shaonian Zhongguo chenbao, September 8, 1918, and the upper part of the photo is in Daily Times, September 3, 1918. 170. “Tang Hua Lung Deceased: Inquest,” 6, 25; Chenbao, December 1, 1918; Colonist, September 4, 1918. In the first cited source, Huo Dehui stated that the dinner started around 7:00 p.m., but Wang Linge indicated its beginning around 6:30 p.m. Wang’s statement seems to be more reasonable. 171. Ma Shaohan, “Wang Chang lieshi zhuanlue”; “Tang Hua Lung Deceased: Inquest,” 2−4, 13, 14; Colonist, September 4, 1918. 172. Chenbao, December 1, 1918; “Tang Hua Lung Deceased: Inquest,” 7, 14−16, 25−26; Colonist, September 4, 1918. 173. Colonist, September 4, 1918; Chenbao, December 1, 1918; “Tang Hua Lung Deceased: Inquest,” 26−27, 36−37. 174. Colonist, September 4, 1918; Chenbao, December 1, 1918. 175. Colonist, September 7, 1918. 176. “Tang Hua Lung Deceased: Inquest,” 17−19. 177. Wickberg et al., From China to Canada, 105−106; Allan Rowe, “‘The Mysterious Oriental Mind’: Ethnic Surveillance and the Chinese in Canada during the Great War,” Canadian Ethnics Studies 34, no. 1 (2004): 52−61. 178. C. H. Cahan, Letter to the Hon. Sir Robert L. Borden, October 22, 1918; and Report to the Minister of Justice, October 16, 1918. Both in Prime Minister Robert Borden Papers, vol. 243, pp. 136352−61, esp. 136355, 136360−61, reference no. MG 26 H, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 179. Rowe, “The Mysterious Oriental Mind,” 59−61; Wickberg et al., From China to Canada, 106. 180. Da-Han gongbao, November 4, December 16, 18, and 19, 1918, February 25 and 28, May 29, 1919; Colonist, December 14, 1918. 181. Malcolm R. J. Reid, Letter to Col. E. J. Chambers, chief press censor, October 2, 1918, vol. 576, file 246-2, RG 6 E, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. Operator No. 220’s report is enclosed in this letter. 182. Quotation of extract from Malcolm R. J. Reid, Letter to Col. E. J. Chambers, chief press censor, February 10, 1919, in vol. 576, file 246–2, RG 6 E, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 183. Li Donghai, Jianada Huaqiaoshi, 315−18. Li incorrectly denied the publication of Xin Minguo chenbao, together with the article, on September 1, 1918, because he assumed that Chinese newspapers through the 1960s had never been published on a Sunday, such as September 1, 1918. 184. Donghai 东海 [Li Donghai], “Wang Chang cisha Tang Hualong buyi” 王 昌刺杀汤化龙补遗 [A supplement to the account of Wong Chong’s assassination

304

Notes

of Tang Hualong], in Jianada yuduoli Zhonghua huiguan, huaqiao xuexiao chengli 75 [he] 60 zhounian jinian tekan 加拿大域多利中华会馆、华侨学校成立七十 五[和]六十周年纪念特刊 [A special publication for the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association and the sixtieth anniversary of the overseas Chinese school in Victoria] (Victoria, BC: Zhonghua huiguan, 1959): zawen yu shici 杂文与诗词 [essays and poems], 6. 185. Han Yuchen 韩玉辰, “Tang Hualong de yisheng” 汤化龙的一生 [The life of Tang Hualong], and Lu Weiqian 卢蔚乾, “Ji Tang Hualong ersan shi ” 记汤化 龙二三事 [A few episodes of Tang Hualong], both in Hubei wenshi ziliao 湖北 文史资料 [Cultural and historical documents of Hubei Province] 8 (1984): 92−93, 155. 186. Yang Xinghui, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, October 7, 1918, archival no. 241/149, in Zhongguo guomindang wenhua chuanbo weiyuanhui dangshiguan 中国国民 党文化传播委员会党史馆 [Cultural Communication Committee’s historical archives of the Chinese Nationalist Party], Taibei. The year of the letter is inferred from its contents. 187. Lee King Man, Letter to Lee Chuck Man, October 1918, enclosed in the deputy postmaster general’s report to E. J. Chambers, chief press censor for Canada, October 24, 1918, vol. 575, file 246, RG 6 E, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. 188. Da-Han gongbao, December 19, 1918. 189. Tang Hualong, “You-Mei riji,” 41b. 190. Colonist, July 4, 1919. 191. There is only a brief record of the meeting with Tang and Gu by Acting Secretary of State Polk in Frank L. Polk Diary, entry of July 22, 1918, microfilm W24050, reel 2, Lamont Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA. In Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long’s diary, he also left brief records of his meeting with Tang and Gu in the entry of July 22, 1918, and dinner with them in the entry of August 5, 1918; see Breckinridge Long Papers, series 1: Diaries, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Both the Robert Lansing Papers at the Library of Congress and the V.K. Wellington Koo Papers at the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, were checked, but no relevant information was found. 192. Zhang Pengyuan, Liang Qichao yu Minguo zhengzhi, 83−87. 193. Hua, “Jinbudang he Yanjiuxi,” 124; Han Yuchen, “Tang Hualong de yisheng,” 90, 93. 194. Liu Daokeng 刘道铿, “Tang Hualong de zhengzhi huodong jiqi sixiang” 汤化龙的政治活动及其思想 [Tang Hualong’s political activities and thoughts], Hubei wenshi ziliao 湖北文史资料 [Cultural and historical documents of Hubei Province] 8 (1984): 130. See also “Qishui Tang xiansheng xingzhuang” 蕲水汤先

Notes

305

生行状 [A brief obituary of Tang Hualong], in Qishui Tang xiansheng yinianlu, 6a−6b. 195. Minguo ribao, October 14, 1918. For a similarly partisan accusation against Tang by another KMT leader, Xie Chi 谢持 (1876−1939), see Chen and Chen, “Xinhai qianhou Tang Hualong yu geming dangren guanxi tanxi,” 1735−36. 196. Minguo ribao, October 14, 1918. 197. Colonist, September 15, 1918; Da-Han gongbao, September 18, 1918; Chenbao, December 1, 1918. Chenbao misdated the departure of Tang’s coffin from Victoria as September 8, 1918. 198. Chenbao, December 1 (supplementary issue), December 2 and 5, 1918; DaHan gongbao, October 25, November 16 and 26, and December 13, 1918. 199. Hua, “Jinbudang he Yanjiuxi,” 125−27. 200. Li Zhongkui, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, June 9, 1920, file no. 1208 in SHHRA. 201. Minguo ribao, March 10, 1924. 202. Chen Gunyao, “Jianada Huaqiao xunjiulu (shi),” 60. 203. Chen Gunyao 陈衮尧, “Jianada Huaqiao xunjiulu (ba)” 加拿大华侨勋 旧录 (八) [Accounts of the meritorious old timers among the overseas Chinese in Canada, part 8]. Guangdong wenxian 广东文献 [Documents of Guangdong Province] 11, no. 3 (1981): 52. 204. Chen Shuren and Jiang Zonghan, Letter to Sun Yat-sen, December 8, 1919; Cohan, Report to the Minister of Justice, October 16, 1918, p. 2; “Jianada zongzhibu suoshu gezhifenbu ji tongxunchu zhiyuanbiao” 加拿大总支部所属各支分 部及通讯处职员表 [Registers of staff in the chapters and communications offices of the Chinese Nationalist League’s Canadian General Bureau], April 27, 1920, file no. 5185 in SHHRA. 205. Zou, Zhongguo guomindang shigao, vol. 1, 260, 269−70. 206. For the new republican culture, see Strand, An Unfinished Republic, esp. 1−12, 283−90.

Conclusion 1. Ma Honglin, Kang Youwei dazhuan, 402, 438. 2. Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang xiansheng nianpu xubian, 69, 71−72, 109−41, 145−47. 3. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 103−44, 294−338, 364−67, 464−504, 520−92. Apart from Sun’s four round trips across Asia, North America, and Europe between 1895 and 1911 that were discussed in Chapter 3, this cited source indicates that he also traveled from Saigon to Europe in December 1905, and then from Marseille to Singapore on March 4, 1906. This account is based on a revolutionary partisan’s personal recollection of Sun’s departure from Saigon in

306

Notes

December 1905 and the notice about his trip from “Maxie” 马些 to Singapore in Feng Ziyou’s letter of March 20, 1906. However, the reliability of this personal recollection and of the transliteration of Maxie as Marseille still needs to be verified. If Sun did take this short trip, it was probably for his conspiracy with officials in Paris to get French support of his revolutionary cause. Bergère’s Sun Yat-sen (pp. 118−21) includes a detailed discussion about this conspiracy, but it does not mention Sun’s trip to France between December 1905 and March 1906. 4. For a critical analysis of the classic notion of victim diaspora, see Robin Cohen, Global Diasporas: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2008), 1−29. 5. McKeown, Chinese Migrant Networks and Cultural Change, 87−94, 116, 205−206, 237, 240−44. 6. Zhongping Chen, Modern China’s Network Revolution, xv. 7. Reynolds, China, 1898−1912, 1−3, 14. This book argues that the Qing government’s New Policy Reform in 1901−1910, as Chapter 1 mentioned, brought about revolutionary change in its intellectual thoughts and its educational, military, police, legal, and prison systems, especially its political transition toward a constitutional government. 8. Bentley, Old World Encounters, 6. 9. Vernon Bogdanor, The Monarchy and Constitution (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 1. 10. Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 2, 7–8. 11. Kang Youwei, Kang Youwei quanji, vol. 5, 152−55; “Baohuanghui gongyi gaiding xinzhang,” 6b−20b; “Diguo Xianzhenghui daji yiyuan huiyi xuli,” 3b−8b. 12. Zhang and Zhang, Kang Youwei zai haiwai, 168, 172−81; For the numerical dominance of the Fujian-originated migrants among the Chinese in Southeast Asia by the twentieth century and the global distribution of overseas Chinese in 1801−1925, see Pan, The Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas, 31, 62. 13. Zou, Zhongguo guomindang shigao, vol. 1, 155, 160. 14. Zhongguo Guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui disanzu, Zhongguo Guomindang zai haiwai, vol. 1, 148, vol. 2, 18; Cohan, Report to the Minister of Justice, October 16, 1918, 2. 15. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 454−89. According to the aforementioned constitution of the Chinese Revolutionary Party in 1914, all of these overseas bureaus and chapters used the CNL in their name for public activities. 16. Chen Xiqi, Sun Zhongshan nianpu changbian, vol. 1, 1003; Zhongguo Guomindang zhongyang weiyuanhui disanzu, Zhongguo Guomindang zai haiwai, vol. 1, 148; Feng, Geming yishi, vol. 2, 639.

Notes

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17. L. Ma, Revolutionaries, Monarchists, and Chinatowns, 45; Schiffrin, Sun Yatsen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution, 4–9. 18. Zhang Pengyuan, Lixianpai yu Xinhai geming, 105−86; Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China, 158−70, 182−215; Rhoads, China’s Republican Revolution, 205−33. 19. “Kang Youwei zhi gebu Xianzhengdang tongzhi shu.” 1. 20. Sun, Sun Zhongshan quanji, vol. 3, 98−99, 454−89. 21. For an example of these previous studies, see Tsai, China and the Overseas Chinese in the United States, 124.

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Bibliography

Major Archival Collections

CERAD: “Chinese Empire Reform Association Documents, 1899−1948.” Archival no. AAS−ARC, 2000/78, Ethnic Studies Library, University of California at Berkeley. CKTMO: “Chee Kung Tong Materials and Other Chinese Language Documents.” Archival no. RG−513, the Barkerville Historic Town and Park Archives, Barkerville, BC. KTBSW: “Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection” (courtesy of Jane Leung Larson). This is a digital collection of recently discovered documents and photographs once kept by Kang Tongbi during her stay in the home of Mary Starr Tudor, South Windsor, Connecticut, in 1904−1907. It includes approximately 237 letters (52 from Kang Youwei), 46 photographs, many miscellaneous items, such as a portion of Kang Tongbi’s 1904 diary and probably the earliest version of Kang Youwei’s autobiography. A small portion of these items is still held by the Starr family, but most of them have been acquired by private or public collectors in China through auction. However, a full digital collection of these items has been preserved by Jane Leung Larson and shared with the author. The reference numbers of the items in the collection are for their digital copies only. For an introduction to this collection, see Jane Leung Larson, “The Kang Tongbi Collection of South Windsor, Connecticut” on the “Baohuanghui scholarship” blog https://baohuanghui.blogspot.com/2014/11/the-kang-tongbicollection-of-south.html. Accessed September 21, 2022. For access to this digital collection, please make a request to the same website.

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SHHRA: “Shanghai Huanlong Road Archives, 1914−1925,” in “Zhongguo guo min dang Records, 1894−1987.” Hoover Institution, Stanford University. WXZXY: “Wu Xianzi xiansheng yigao ji suocang wenjian” 伍宪子先生遗稿及 所藏文件 [Mr. Wu Xianzi’s posthumous manuscripts and collection of documents], East Asian Library, University of Washington.

Archival and Rare Sources “Appointment: Yip On, Chinese Interpreter, Vancouver, British Columbia, Minister of Trade and Commerce, August 24, 1904.” In Orders-in-Council-170586, RG2, Privy Council Office, Series A-1-a, vol. 880, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa (https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/CollectionSearch/Pages/record.aspx ?app=ordincou&IdNumber=170586&new=-8586354107171942355#1). “Articles of Incorporation of the Chinese Nationalist League of America,” March 20, 1914. Archival no. C0076320, in California State Archives, Sacramento, CA. “Baohuanghui gongyi gaiding xinzhang” 保皇会公议改定新章 [The collectively discussed and revised rules of the Society to Protect the Emperor] (n.p., 1905), in AR-2, carton 3 of CERAD. “Beishibu Meizhou Huaqiao junshi yanjiushe zhixueyuan xingmingce” 贝市埠 美洲华侨军事研究社职学员姓名册 [A list of staff and students of Boise’s Overseas Chinese Military Research Society of America], 1916, file no. 7970 in SHHRA. “Benhui lianwei zhangcheng” 本会联卫章程 [CERA of Canada’s regulations for collective protection]. In folder 3, box 2, the Lee Family Papers, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver, BC. Cahan, C. H. Letter to the Hon. Sir Robert L. Borden, October 22, 1918. In Prime Minister Robert Borden Papers, vol. 243, p. 136352. Reference no. MG 26 H, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. ———. Report to the Minister of Justice, October 16, 1918. In Prime Minister Robert Borden Papers, vol. 243, pp. 136353−61. Cai Hepeng and Ma Chaofan. Letter to Sun Yat-sen, April 17, 1916, file no. 8585 in SHHRA. Cao Long 曹龙, ed. Hongshuntang jinnangzhuan 洪顺堂锦囊传 [The embroidered-bag book of the Society of the Hong Obedience]. N.p., n.d., unnumbered item in CKTMO. Chamberlain, J. Letter to Lord Minto, April 11, 1899. Archival no. RG 7, series no. G3, vol. 12, file 1899, Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa. Chen Shuren. Letter to Sun Yat-sen, March 10, 1917, file no. 7757 in SHHRA.

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———, and Jiang Zonghan. Letter to Sun Yat-sen, December 8, 1919, file no. 5160.1 in SHHRA. Chen Yuesog. Letter to Kang Tongbi, January 7, 1905, no. B-32 in KTBSW. “The Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada: First Executive Officers,” 1903. Won Alexander Cumyow Collection, RBSC-ARC-1153-1-11-PH-04, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver, BC. “Chinese Empire Reform Association located at 1713 Government Street …” Reference no. PR-0252-M06928, item no. M06928, PR-0252, Ainslie James Helmcken Collection, City Archives of Victoria, BC. “Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada Member Portraits.” VPL 26814, Special Collections Historical Photographs, Vancouver Public Library. Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada’s fonds, April 30, 1900. Incorporation no. 75, microfilm reel no. B04406, GR-1526-Corporation Registry Files. British Columbia Archives, Victoria, BC. “Chuangban … Zhenhua Shiye Youxian Gongxi zhaogu zhangcheng” 创办 … 振华实业有限公司招股章程 [Capital-raising regulations of … the Zhenhua Limited Liability Company]. In “Zhenhua Gongsi xingban Guangxi shiye bing fengpi zhunzou zili’an gegao” 振华公司兴办广西实业禀奉批准奏咨 立案各稿 [All documents regarding the formation, reports, and approvals of Zhenhua Company’s industrial ventures in Guangxi Province], AR16 in CERAD. Correspondence, folder 1-1, Won Alexander Cumyow fonds, Rare Books and Special Collections, University of British Columbia Library, Vancouver, BC. “Declaration for Corporation of Chee Kong Tong Society,” June 29, 1908. Incorporation no. 200, Container no. 880056-4493, GR-1526-Corporation Registry Files. British Columbia Archives, Victoria, BC. “Diguo Xianzhenghui daji yiyuan huiyi xuli” 帝国宪政会大集议员会议叙例 [Preface and constitution of the Imperial Constitutional Association passed by its general conference], 1a−8b, AR 5 in CERAD. Feng Ziyou. Letter to Ju Zheng (Juesheng), October 22, 1914, file no. 8151 in SHHRA. ———. Letter to Sun Yat-sen, October 25, 1914, file no. 8017 in SHHRA. “Fu: Xu Qin deng bugao yuanshu” 附：徐勤等布告原书 [Appendix: The original notice from Xu Qin and others]. In Ou Yungao, et al., “Bo Xu Qin deng bugaoshu,” 13b−17b. Also in Yungaohua bu Xianzhenghui bugaoshu, 21a−28b. “Fuyuan shanqing” 福缘善庆 [Fortune, fate, charity, and blessing], file no. 980413.26 in CKTMO. Fyffe, M. W. Copy of diary week ending September 21, 1899. RG 18, vol. 170,

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Index

Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Active Justice Society. See Chee Kung Tong (Zhigongtang, CKT) Anti-Treaty General Association (Juyue zonghui), 75 Anti-Yuan Army of America (Meizhou tao-Yuan-jun), 190 Asian Exclusion League, U.S., 98 associational networks of North American Chinese: approach to study of, xv–xvi; network revolution created by reform and revolutionary movements in North American Chinatowns, 220, 223, 225–27; and reform and revolution organizations, 6–7; regional and ethnic ties in, 7–9; use by both reformist and revolutionary groups, 219–20. See also transpacific networks Australia: CERA hygiene initiatives and, 74; CERA in, 32, 47–49, 62, 67, 96, 157, 222; Chinese merchants in, 32; Chinese migration to, 4

Baohuang nühui (Women’s Society to Protect the Emperor), 60. See also CERA; Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association Baohuanghui (Society to Protect the Emperor), 33, 39, 40, 97, 161. See also CERA; Chinese Reform Party; Constitutional Association Benson, Mary, 94–95, 264n153 Bowell, J. Mackenzie, 69–70, 256n38 Boxers (Yihetuan): Qing government alliance with, 49, 50–51; spread of movement, 51 Britain: aid to Kang in escape from China, 23; Kang’s hope of support from, 18–22, 23, 24; Kang Youwei in, 33–34 California Chinese Free Mason Society, 9. See also Chee Kung Tong (CKT, Zhigongtang) Canada: birthday celebration for Guangxu Emperor in, 42–43; Chinese population, 1900-1920,

343

344

Index

14–15; Chinese Revolutionary Party chapters in, 180; commission on Chinese immigration, 66; importance to CERA reform movement, 116; outlawing of radical organizations including CNL, 210, 216; repeal of ban on CNL, 216; restrictions on Chinese immigration, 1, 8, 15, 24, 66–67; suppression of publication in certain foreign languages, 210. See also CERA of Canada; Chee Kung Tong in Canada; Feng Ziyou, trip to Canada (1910-1911); Kang Youwei, in Canada; Ottawa; Sun Yat-Sen in Canada; Toronto; Vancouver; Victoria Canadian Pacific Railway, Chinese labor contractors for, 1, 7–8 Cao Jianwu, 285n188 Carrying-on Corps (Jihoutuan), 192–93 CCBA. See Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association CELRA. See Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association Central Pacific Railroad, and Chinese migration to U.S. and Canada, 1 CERA (Chinese Empire Reform Association): activist policies of, 85; after Chinese Revolution, struggle with competing groups, 171; and birthday celebration for Guangxu Emperor, 42–43; boycott of U.S. products, 67, 68, 72–73, 75–76; and call for constitutional monarchy, 221; clashes with Chinese Christians in North America, 120, 133–36, 137; “cleaning society” (jiejinghui)

initiative, 72, 74; commitment to Confucianism, and Chinese Christians, 133–35; conference in Victoria (1909), 149–50; constitution, first (1899), 40-41, 102, 222; constitution, second (1905), 96, 222; constitution, third (1907), 101–2, 103, 173, 222; cross-cultural hybridity in, 221; cultivation of ties with white elites, 69–70; and death of Guangxu Emperor, 106; department of colonization (zhiminbu), 77; department of land development (pidibu), 77; departments for collective protection (lianweibu), 59, 72–73, 74, 88; expansion into U.S., 45, 47–48; feminist movement in, 221; first general conference, 67; as first global Chinese political organization, 35; and first Spring Festival with new Republic of China, 170; formalization of organizational structure, 64, 222, 226; and fundraising for military restoration of Emperor, 50; fundraising for uprising in China, 51–52; fusing of reformism and local political interests, 221; global expansion of, 48–49, 52, 219–20, 222; growth beyond personal ties, 222; impact on transpacific diaspora, 63; inaugural meetings, 40; increasing shift to reformist policies after 1905, 97; influence on CKT in Canada, 128–29; initial growth in Canada, 79; intermarriage of members with Caucasian women, 95; land purchased for

Index Canton headquarters building, 105, 267n192; lawsuits against Hua-Ying ribao, 139–40; leaders supporting anti-Manchu revolution and Guangdong independence, 53–54; and lobbying against SinoAmerican immigration treaty, 72–75; members’ dues, 102, 103; name, Chinese, 33, 39, 46, 97; naming of, 39, 40; and network revolution in transpacific Chinese diaspora, 225–26; newspapers of, and lobbying against Sino-American immigration treaty, 72–73; New York conference (1905), 74, 77, 81, 88, 96–97; New York conference (1907), 101–2, 103; number of chapters and members, 80–82, 259nn90–91, 260n98; and opium trade in Canada, 137, 139; organizational status in Canada, 1911, 157; overshadowing of preexisting diasporic networks by, 33; petitioning for British, U.S., and Japanese aid in restoring Guangxu Emperor, 52–53; petitions for convening of parliament, 158; petition to Qing government on Russo-Japanese War, 82, 259n90; plan to rescue Guangxu Emperor, losses from, 46, 51, 53, 63–64; platform of, as product of Chinese in Canada, 46; and political mobilization of overseas Chinese, 41; “Preface for Regulations” of, 40–41; publishing press of, 76; Qing crackdown on political activism of (1908), 106, 112; radicalism among Canadian leaders, 49; rapid growth of, 41,

345

47, 81–97; and Revolutionary Alliance, competition with, 118–19; scholarship on, 80–81; selection of officers, 67; shift to U.S.-centric organization, 96–97; in small Canadian towns, 95–96; social background of members, 83–84; strength in Canada through 1909, 149–50, 153; and struggle for influence over Canadian immigration system, 153–54; support for Chinese colonization abroad, 77–78; support for Chinese migration to Canada, 66; telegram campaign demanding restoration of Guangxu Emperor, 44–45; transpacific expansion of, 79–80, 81–82; use of CKT chapters for recruiting, 127–28; in Vancouver, leadership of, 40; variations in chapter size, 82–83; women members of, 79. See also Baohuanghui; Chinese Reform Party; Constitutional Association CERA, and Sun Yat-sen: appeal of CERA to CKT members, 39; CERA members’ tolerance of Sun, 162–63; competition between, 133, 141–42, 145; efforts to assassinate Sun, 132–33; radical reformists’ work with Sun, 142; and Revive China Society competition with, 130, 162; scholarship on, 145; size of CERA vs. Sun’s anti-Qing society, 33–34; Sun’s attacks on CERA, 130, 142; Sun’s benefiting from CERA organizing, 164–65, 168–69; and Sun’s media war against CERA, 142, 144–45; Sun’s recruitment of disaffected CERA

346

Index

members, 146–47; and Sun’s U.S. fundraising, 165; work with Sun’s Revive China Society, 118–19 CERA, founding of, 35–40, 36, 37, 46, 126–27, 246–47n121; by Canadian Chinese businessmen, 32–33, 40; conflicting accounts of, 35–36; Kang’s leadership in, 33, 35, 37–40; Kang’s proposal for, 30, 32; in Victoria, 38–39 CERA, in Republic of China: English and Chinese names, 173; number of chapters, 173; reorganization of, 173. See also Chinese Reform Party CERA, Kang and. See Kang Youwei, and CERA CERA of Canada (Chinese Empire Reform Association of Canada): annual meeting (1903), 56; change of Chinese name, 97; Department for Collective Protection, 59, 88; election of officers (1903), 55–56; expansion of, 88; founding of, 52; headquarters building, 56, 57; headquarters of Canadian CERA, 80; and Kang’s conflict with Yip Yen, 116; Kang Tongbi’s work for, 60–61; Liang Qichao and, 55–59; organizational status in Canada, 1911, 157; revolutionary radicalism in, 57; schools opened by, 88, 262–63n128; support for Chinese immigration, 66 CERA transpacific business empire: expansion of, 67, 71–72, 97–98; investments in U.S. and Mexico, 77; planning of, 32, 41; rice brokerages of, 67–68; work on development of, 54, 55. See also Chinese Commercial Corporation;

Huayi Bank; Huayi Company (Huayi gongsi); Huayi Remittance Bank; Sino-Mexican Bank; Zhenhua Company CERA transpacific business empire decline, 99–116; Chinese Commercial Corporation losses and, 100–101, 109; conflict between Kang and Yip Yen factions and, 79, 99, 101, 102–3, 104, 106–7, 108–16, 226; conflict over Zhenhua Company and, 108–11; and disgruntled members withholding dues, 104; embezzlement and, 105, 107, 109; Huayi Remittance Bank losses in Qing China, 108–9; ill-fated push into Qing China and, 104, 105–6, 153; Kang’s blaming of Yip Yen and others for, 99, 101; Kang’s effort to seize control of CERA and, 101–4; King Joy Lo restaurant and, 99, 100, 106, 107–8; over-reliance on interpersonal relations and, 108, 111, 117; Panic of 1907 and, 104, 109; quarrels between CERA leaders and, 100; scholarship on, 109, 119; spending on projects in China and, 105–7 Chambers of Commerce in China, and CERA’s boycott of U.S. products, 72–75 Chang Toy (Chen Cai, aka Chen Daozhi), 28, 85, 86, 87, 182 Chee Kung Tong (CKT, Zhigongtang, Active Justice Society): and Chinese Nationalist League, 185; and Confucianism as state religion, 196–97; dominance in North American Chinatowns after 1911

Index revolution, 225–26; and donations to Revolutionary Alliance, 174–75; establishment in North America, 8–9; followers of Kang in, 53; founding legends of, 125; growth of, 198; Kang and, 28, 126; move toward anti-Qing stance, 128–30; as mutual aid society, 124; and nationalist mobilization against Japanese aggression, 178; and network revolution in transpacific Chinese diaspora, 226–27; in North America, and Sun’s fundraising success, 168; as order of Hong Fraternal Society, 8–9; origin of, 236nn32–33; political slogan of, 39; and Republic of China, efforts to achieve party status in, 172; and revolutionaries’ takeover of reformist mission, 224–25; secret anti-Qing activities, 124–25, 126, 140; Sun’s efforts to co-opt, 130–32; Sun’s efforts to mobilize, 119–20; Sun’s fundraising from, 147; and tong wars, 129; turn from CERA to Revolutionary Alliance, 165–66. See also Hong Fraternal Society (Hongmen) Chee Kung Tong after Republican Revolution: efforts to expand, 172; effort to become political party, 174, 180; in Honolulu, Australia, and South Africa, 202; ongoing struggle against competing groups, 171; renaming of headquarters as Chinese Republican Association, 174; as rival of KMT in North America, 173–74 Chee Kung Tong in Canada: alliance with U.S. branch, 201–2;

347

centralization of control, 201–2; CERA’s influence on, 128–29; and Chinese Revolutionary Party, 180, 181; CNL and, 180–82, 201; and Dart Coon Club, 201, 301n151; Feng’s gaining of support for Revolutionary Alliance, 148, 151–52, 224; funds contributed to Revolutionary Alliance, 168; leaders’ founding of CERA, 126–27; leaders of, in Victoria, 38; and opposition to Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 187; purging of former Revolutionary Alliance members, 201; recognition by Republic of China, 180; and rise of anti-Japanese nationalism, 182; Sun and Feng’s views on, 123–24; Sun’s recruiting and fundraising among, 158–63, 164; in Vancouver, 7–8, 38, 127, 164. See also Hong Fraternal Society (Hongmen) Chee Kung Tong in United States: and Feng Ziyou’s fundraising for anti-Yuan movement, 177; national conference (1918), 201; and opposition to Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 187; registration as overseas Chinese organization, 201; split with CNL, 177–78; Sun and, 156, 164, 165 Chen Jiongming, 174–75, 178, 187 Chen Shengjie (Chan Sing Kai), 133, 135 Chen Shuren, 144, 199–201, 210–11, 212, 216 Chen Wenxi, 151, 159, 161–62 Chen Xiqi, 272n19 Chen Yaotan (Chan Yu Yan), 133, 136, 137

348

Index

Chen Yuesong, 132–33 Chinese Anti-Opium League, 137–38, 139 Chinese Benevolent Association (Zhonghua huiguan), Montreal: founding of, 181 Chinese Benevolent Association (Zhonghua huiguan), Vancouver: clash with CNL, 182; election in 1911, 164, 224; founding of, 127, 273–74nn36–37; and restoration of parliament and constitution (1916), 194; Support of KMT, 196 Chinese Board of Trade, and CERA boycott, 73 Chinese Commercial Corporation: difficulty collecting funds pledged by U.S. supporters, 58–59; funding of Sino-Mexican Bank, 76; fundraising problems, 75–76; illegal migrant smuggling operation, 101; investment in Canton-Hankou Railroad, 102–3; investments in Mexico, 76, 77; Kang’s oversight of, 78, 100; large subsidies of CERA political mission, 104; Liang Qichao and, 56, 57, 58–59; losses, and decline of CERA business empire, 100–101, 109; and opposition to Sino-American immigration treaty, 75; planning of, 67; refusal to fund Liang’s Chinese ventures, 105; “Regulations” of, 55; selection of officers, 69. See also Yip Yen Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (Zhonghua huiguan, CCBA): call for dissolution of parliament, 195; and Chinese education in Canada, 150; and

conflict over Confucianism as state religion, 194–97; and development of national identity, 8; founding of, 7–8, 38; functions of, 8; joining of Kang’s reform movement, 8; and Kang in China, 25, 27; and mourning ceremony for Guangxu Emperor, 148–49; in San Francisco, founding of, 7; support for Chinese immigration, 66; in Victoria, CERA and, 84, 85 Chinese diaspora. See diaspora Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association (CELRA), 88–95; and CERA reformist propaganda, 94; chapters, 81; Chinese name for, 60; decline after 1905, 94; distinctive features of, 88–89; effort to improve relations with white community, 94–95; as first Chinese women’s political association, 88; founding of branches, 88–89, 93–94; fundraising for, 93–94; influence on CERA of Canada, 92; issues of interest to, 92–93; Kang Tongbi’s establishment of early chapters, 60–62; Kang Youwei’s transpacific networks and, 62; members as wives of CERA members, 89, 92, 93; national meeting (1905), 92; poster for, 60; promotion of women’s education, 93; and pursuit of feminist politics, 92; Vancouver and Westminster chapter, 89–92, 90–91, 94; in Victoria, 89, 90. See also Baohuang nühui; CERA Chinese Empire Reform Association (CERA). See CERA Chinese Empire Reform Association in Canada (CERA of Canada). See CERA of Canada

Index Chinese Exclusion Acts, 8, 24, 27, 41; Kang Youwei’s protests against, 56–57; Liang Qichao on, 56–57 Chinese labor contractors, 1, 7–8 Chinese Ladies’ Reform Society (Zhongguo nü weixinhui), 62. See also Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association (CELRA) Chinese Nationalist League (CNL): absorption into Chinese Revolutionary Party, 176, 222; and Anti-Yuan Army of America, 190–93; and assassination of Tang, 209–12, 214; Canada’s outlawing of, and arrest of members, 210, 216; Canadian government surveillance of, 209– 10; centralization and growth, 198, 199, 222; Chen’s reorganization of, 199; and CKT, 185; dominance in North American Chinatowns after 1911 revolution, 225–26; global expansion of, 219–20, 222–23; ideological radicalism, and violence of members, 198–99; influence on homeland politics, 227; in Malaya, anti-Yuan military forces raised by, 192–93; as name for KMT outside China, 176; opposition to Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 185–86, 187–93; and Pan-American Fraternal Conference (1915), 179; and power struggles in Republic of China, 184; and Progressive Party, 185; tightening of control over members, 226. See also Nationalist Party (Guomindang/Kuomingtang, KMT), General Bureau of the Americas (Guomindang Meizhou zonghibu)

349

Chinese Nationalist League (CNL), American Bureau: assassination of Huang, 185–86; CKT’s split with, 177–78; control of chapters in Americas and Europe, 179; growth of, 177, 179; loyalty pledge required by, 177; military aviation school of, 190; opposition to Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 185–86; registration as charitable institution, 176–77; rejection of Xia’s reorganization efforts, 183–84; San Francisco branch as central North American hub, 184; San Francisco branch’s renaming as General Bureau of the Americas, 179; and Society to Protect Republican China (Minguo weichihui), 177; training of anti-Yuan military forces, 189–90; turn to personal cult of Sun Yat-sen, 199 Chinese Nationalist League (CNL) in Canada: anti-Yuan Military Society, 188; Canadian General Bureau, founding of, 200, 222; and CCBA’s call for dissolution of parliament, 195; centralization and growth, 199–200; CKT and, 180–82; clashes with other groups, 181–82; and conflict over Confucianism as state religion, 195–97, 199; conflict with CKT, 201; fundraising for infrastructure projects in China, 180; military aviation school of, 194; nationwide conference (1917), 200–201; opposition to Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 185; repeal of ban on, 216; and rise of anti-Japanese nationalism, 182–83; slow growth of, 179–80; support

350

Index

for anti-Yuan movement over antiJapanese nationalism, 182; training of anti-Yuan military forces, 187–89, 189; turn to personal cult of Sun Yat-sen, 199; underground operations, after Canadian ban, 216; Xia’s reorganization of, 183 Chinese Nationalist Party (Zhongguo guomindang), 199; Soviet and Chinese Communist support of, 215–16; Sun Yat-sen’s reorganization of, 199. See also Chinese Nationalist League (CNL); Nationalist Party (Guomindang/ Kuomingtang, KMT) Chinese overseas vs. overseas Chinese (Huaqiao), as term, xvi–xvii; scholarship on, xvi–xviii, 230n13, 231n17 Chinese population in Canada, 19001920, 14–15 Chinese population in United States, 1900-1920, 14–15 Chinese Reform Party: CNL and, 181–82; conference for fraternal comradeship (1917), 197–98; and debate on Confucianism as state religion, 196–97; decline of, 197–98; inactivity after second imperial restoration, 202; loss of members due to Yuan government, 179; and National Salvation Society in Canada, 182; and rise of antiJapanese nationalism, 182 Chinese Republican Association (Zhonghua Minguo Gonghui), 174, 175, 177, 202. See also Chee Kung Tong after Republican Revolution Chinese Revolutionary Party (Zhonghua gemingdang): absorption

of U.S. KMT chapters into, 176; American Bureau, 176; branches in North America, 176; in Canada, 180, 181, 183; goals of, 176; and Li government in China, 193; loyalty pledge required by, 176, 177, 181; and Northeast Army, 187, 190–93; opposition to Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 185, 186–87, 190–93; Sun’s call for overseas Hong Fraternal Societies to join, 177; Sun’s organization of, 175–76; Sun’s reorganization as Chinese Nationalist Party, 199; tightening of control over members, 226. See also Chinese Nationalist League (CNL) Christians, Chinese, in North America: anti-opium campaigns, 136–38, 139; clashes with CERA, 120, 133–36, 137; support for Kang’s reformist program, 136 Chu Lai (Xu Li or Xu Quanli, aka Xu Weijing): and CCBA, 84; and founding of CERA, 38, 39; and Sun, 123 Chun, Prince (Chunwang), 106 Chung Sai Yat Po (newspaper), 131, 133, 134, 140 Cixi (Empress Dowager): announcement of new heir apparent, 49; CERA telegrams demanding restoration of Guangxu Emperor, 44–45; CERA telegrams opposing new heir apparent, 49; coup against Guangxu Emperor, 21, 22; death of, 106, 112; and death of Guangxu Emperor, 268n197; expulsion by international force (1900), 51; Kang’s plot to assassinate confidential minister

Index of, 45–46; reformers’ conspiracy against, 21–22; as true power behind Guangxu Emperor, 20 CKT. See Chee Kung Tong “cleaning society” (jiejinghui) initiative of CERA, 72, 74 CNL. See Chinese Nationalist League community organizations, Chinese, in North America: and development of national identity, 8; early development of, 1; as foundation for reform and revolution associations, 9; regional and ethnic ties in, 7–9; secret societies, 8 Conger, Edwin Hurd, 22, 23 Constitution, Provisional, of Republic of China: enactment of, 172; restoration of, 193, 194 Constitutional Association (Xianzhenghui), 97. See also CERA; Chinese Reform Party Constitutional Research Association (Xianzheng yanjiuhui), 202; see also Research Clique Cotton, F. Carter, 26 cross-cultural hybridity in North American Chinatowns, 220–21 Cui Tongyue: and anti-Qing revolutionary propaganda, 120, 123; break with CERA, 140; conversion to Christianity, 136; criticisms of CERA, 136; as editor of Chung Sai Yat Po, 140; as editor of Da-han ribao, 180–81; as editor of Hua-Ying ribao, 137, 138, 139– 40; as former student of Kang, 136; and Hong Fraternal Society, 136; joining of Revolutionary Alliance, 147; and links between reform and revolutionary movements in North

351

America, 140; and Republican Party, 180–81; and Revive China Society, 136; and Revolutionary Alliance, expulsion from, 180; and Sun Yat-sen, 120, 136, 140 Da-Han gongbao (newspaper), 183, 195 Da-Han ribao (newspaper), 151, 152, 153, 180–81 Dare-to-Die units from Canada, 188– 89, 190–91, 192 Dare-to-Die units from Southeast Asia, 192–93 Dart Coon Club (Daquanshe), 201, 301n151 Datong ribao (newspaper), 53, 128–29, 131, 144, 145, 146, 149, 151 Datong School, 60, 142 Department for Collective Protection (Lianweibu), 59, 72–73, 74, 88 diaspora, overseas Chinese or Chinese overseas: vs. Chinese “diaspora” concept, xvi–xviii; and hybridity of diasporic politics, xvii, xx; scholarship on, xvii–xviii; usefulness of network approach to, xiv–xx; and victim diaspora narrative, 219 Donghua xinbao (newspaper), 48 Dong Qiantai (aka Dong Tai), 81, 83, 84, 86 Duan Qirui, 195, 197, 202, 204 Duan, Prince, Zaiyi (Duanwang Zaiyi), son of, as announced Qing heir apparent, 49 Dudley, L. Edwin, 56, 69–70 1898 Reform. See Hundred Days’ Reform

352

Index

Esherick, Joseph W., 225 Europe: Kang in, 34, 66, 71, 76, 77, 78–79, 103–4, 114–16, 219; Sun Yat-sen in, 120, 132–33, 143, 146, 154, 155, 156, 166, 219 feminism among North American Chinese, growth of, 60–62, 88–95 Feng Dewen (aka Fong Dickman), 136 Feng Guozhang, 197, 204 Feng Jingru, 141, 142 Feng Junqing, 43, 84, 104 Feng Zishan, 141, 142 Feng Ziyou: and assassination of Huang, 186; changing of name to Ziyou, 142; and Chinese Nationalist League, 177, 179, 199; and Chinese Republican Association, 175, 177, 178; and Chinese Revolutionary Party, 176; on CKT in Canada, 120, 123–24, 126–27; and CNL anti-Yuan military forces, 189; as editor of Da-Han ribao, 151; as editor of Zhongguobao, 156; and failed antiQing mutiny, 147; fundraising and recruitment in North America (1910), 141; fundraising for anti-Yuan movement, 177; and fundraising for Canton uprising in 1911, 163; fundraising for Revolutionary Alliance in U.S., 167; fundraising success of, 224; and Hong Fraternal Society, 143; in Hong Kong, 145, 147; and Hongmen Fundraising Bureau, 167; on Hua-Ying ribao, 136; influence of radical Kang followers on, 142; and Li clansmen joining of Revolutionary Alliance, 144;

and links between reform and revolutionary movements in North America, 140, 141; political career of, 141–43; recruiting for Revolutionary Alliance, 146; recruitment in Canada, 123; and Revive China Society, 120; and Revolutionary Alliance, 144, 169; in San Francisco, 165; as Sun follower, 143; and Sun in Canada, 122, 156, 158–61; and Sun’s fundraising, 287n206; and Sun’s recruitment in U.S., 146–47; telegram condemning Tang Hualong, 214; turn from reformist to revolutionary movement, 141, 224 Feng Ziyou, trip to Canada (19101911), 148–49, 151–54; clashes with CERA, 152; gaining of CKT support for Revolutionary Alliance, 148, 151–52, 224; on impact of Revolutionary Alliance newspapers, 151; limited contact with Caucasian society, 152; recruitment for Revolutionary Alliance, 148–49; use of newspaper propaganda, 152–53 Fong, Walter N. (Kuang Huatai), 119–21, 133 Fu Lin, 205–6, 208 Gemingjun (Revolutionary Army) (Zou), 133, 134 General Bureau of the Americas (Guomindang Meizhou zongzhibu), 179; and central control of North American CNL, 199–200; establishment of, 222; regions supervised by, 223; turn to personal cult of Sun Yat-sen, 199. See also

Index Chinese Nationalist League (CNL), American Bureau gold rush, and Chinese migration to U.S. and Canada, 1, 7 Great Qing China’s Overseas Chinese Public School, 150–51 Guangdong Province: calls for independence from radical disciples of Kang, 53; Hakka people in, 5; reform and revolution leaders from, 2–4; as source of most early Chinese immigration to North America, 1–2, 6, 7, 233n2 Guangxu Emperor: assignment of Kang to Shanghai newspaper, 21; coup against, by Empress Dowager Cixi, 21, 22; death of, 106, 112, 114, 148–49, 268n197; Empress Dowager Cixi as true power behind, 20; and Hundred Days’ Reform, 20; Kang’s claim to have secret edict from, 21, 22–23, 39, 124; Kang’s efforts to restore, 23–24; Kang’s influence on, 18; Kang’s petitions and memorials to, 17, 18, 19, 22; Kang’s plan for military rescue of, 46–47, 49–51; Kang’s impacts on reform efforts of, 20; secret edict of September, 1898, 21; support for Kang’s reform ideas, 18 Guangzhi Book Bureau, 76, 105, 115 Guoan Society (Guoan huiguan), 130Hakka (Kejia) people, 5, 234n14 Hawai‘i: Hong Fraternal Society in, 49, 130; Liang Qichao in, 49, 129, 130; origin of Chinese migrants to, 4 Hawai‘i, Sun Yat-sen in: attack on CERA, 130; and initiation of

353

revolutionary movement, xi, 5; joining of Guoan Society, 130; migration to, 4, 120; newspaper war with CERA, 142; and Revive China Society loss of members to CERA, 130; U.S. citizenship papers falsely obtained, 131 He Tiehun, 195–96 He Zhanli (aka Lillie Haw), 103–4 He Zhenxiang (Ho Jun Chung), 37, 86, 127 Heaven-Earth Society (Tiandihui), revolt by, 141. See also Hong Fraternal Society (Hongmen) Hing, Peter (Wu Peide), 137–38 Hip Tuck Lung Co. (Xiedelonghao), 85, 137, 139 Hong Fraternal Society (Hongmen): campaign against, in Guangdong, 174; early North American branches, 8–9; in Hawai‘i, 49; in Honolulu, Australia, and South Africa, 202; initiation ceremony, 125–26; in Japan, 143; as mutual aid society, 122; origin of, 8; political slogan of, 39; revolt by (1854-1864), 141; scholarship on, 124; secret anti-Qing activities, 124–25, 126, 140; Sun on, 122; Sun’s efforts to mobilize, 119; Sun’s joining of, in Hawai’i, 130. See also Chee Kung Tong (CKT, Zhigongtang); Heaven-Earth Society (Tiandihui); Hongshuntang (Society of the Hong obedience) Hong Kong, 3; British seizure of, 2; as a base of CERA’s business empire, 54–59, 64, 67–70, 76, 78, 104-105, 112; as a center of anti-American boycott (1905), 72–76; CERA’s

354

Index

central headquarters in, 96, 102; as channel for Chinese migrants, 2; Chen Shuren in, 144; Cui Tongyue in, 136; Feng Ziyou in, 144, 151; as hub of transpacific Chinese business networks, 7, 14, 32, Kang Youwei in, 3, 23, 47, 63; Li Bohai in, 144; Li Shinan in, 145–46; Reformerrevolutionary struggles, 144; Revive China Society’s headquarters in, 120; Revolutionary Alliance’s chapter in, 144–45, 156, 159; Sun Yat-sen in, 4; Yip Yen in, 99–101, 108, 153; Yip–Kang power struggles in, 109–111, 114, 116 Hong Kong Triad Society (Sanhehui), 120. See also Hong Fraternal Society (Hongmen) Hongmen Fraternal Society’s General Fundraising Bureau (Hongmen chouxiang zongju), 177 Hongmen Fundraising Bureau, 163, 165, 167, 168 Hongshuntang (Society of the Hong Obedience), 8, 125, 275n56. See also Hong Fraternal Society (Hongmen) Honolulu, CELRA’s feminist organization, 62, 94; Liang Qichao in, 49, 127, 129; birthplace of Revive China Society, 120; Sun Yatsen in, 4, 129–30, 142; as starting point of Sun’s anti-Qing revolution, 14, 34, 118 Hop Kee & Co., 7 Hu Hanmin, 174–75, 178 Hu Hanxian, 179–80, 187–91, 194 Huang Huizhi (aka Huang Weizhi), 54, 105 Huang Kongzhao, 112–13, 116

Huang Sande, 129, 131–33, 146, 165, 174–75, 178, 187, 280n126 Huang Xi (Wong Kai, aka Huang Peiquan), 93, 132, 146–47 Huang Xing: and Canton uprising of 1911, 159, 163; and Chinese Revolutionary Party, 176; and Republican Revolution, 166; and Revolutionary Alliance, 156; and Society for Chinese Revival, 143; and Sun as provisional president of Republican China, 167; and Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 186 Huang Xuanlin, 39, 161 Huang Yuanyong, assassination of, 185–86, 198–99, 212, 295n80 Huang Yushan (aka Wong Soon King): and Chinese Benevolent Association, 127, 164; and CKT, 126, 273n34; and founding of CERA, 37, 85, 86, 127; and opium trade, 137, 139; See also Hip Tuck Lung Co. (Xiedelonghao) Huaqiao. See overseas Chinese Huayi Bank: and cost of Liang’s projects in China, 106; funding of CERA’s businesses in Qing China, 105–6; Kang and Yip Yen’s conflict over control of, 109; Kang’s and Yip Yen’s power struggle and, 110; loans to King Joy Lo restaurant and, 100, 107–8; opening of, 97 Huayi Company (Huayi gongsi), 75, 76, 97 Huayi Remittance Bank: and CERA’s financial collapse, 108–9; investment in Guangdong school, 105; Kang’s and Yip Yen’s power struggle and, 104, 110; losses in Qing China, 108–9

Index Hua-Ying ribao (newspaper), 136–40, 148 Hundred Days’ Reform (1898 Reform): Kang’s memorial service for martyrs of, 44; Kang’s seeking of British and Japanese support for, 18–22; Kang Youwei and, 3–4, 18; reformers’ conspiracy against Empress Dowager Cixi, 21–22 Huo Dehui (aka Huo Jian or Huo Libai), 205–8, 214 International Opium Commission, 138 interpersonal ties (guanxi), and Confucian capitalism, xiv–xv Itō, Hirobumi, 22 Japan: anti-Manchu reformers in, 48–49, 54, 118; banning of Revolutionary Alliance newspaper, 156; Chinese feminist revolutionary associations in, 88; Chinese schools in, 141–42; CNL in, 185; Cui Tongyue in, 136, 146; and funding of Kang Youwei, 34; Hong Fraternal Society in, 143; Kang Tongbi in, 60; Kang Youwei in, 24, 156; Kang Youwei’s hope for support for Chinese reform, 18, 19, 22, 24, 30–31, 52; Liang Qichao in, 23, 48, 101, 111, 142, 153; Research Clique members in, 204–5; Revive China Society chapter in, 120, 141–42; and Russo-Japanese War, 82, 259n90; seizure of German concession in Qingdao, 178, 187; Sino-Japanese War, 3, 5, 18, 19; and staging of anti-Yuan war, 190, 192; Sun Yat-sen in, 120, 123, 130,

355

141, 148, 155, 175, 186–87, 219, 222; Sun Yat-sen’s expulsions from, 146, 155; Sun Yat-sen’s followers in, 141–42, 145, 148, 176, 225; Tang Hualong memorial ceremony in, 215; training of Kang’s assassins in, 45–46; “Twenty-one Demands” to China, 178, 181–84; in World War I, 178 Japan’s imperialism in China, 178; and Chinese fundraising for potential war, 178–79, 181; and rise of Chinese nationalism, 178–79, 182; and Sun Yat-sen’s anti-Yuan campaign, 178–79 Ji Huagong jingyue (Liang Qichao), 59 Jinan, anti-Yuan forces’ surprise attack on, 191–92, 298n108 Jian Jianping, 286n204 Ju Zheng: as commander of Northeast Army, 187, 190, 191, 193; and opposition to Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 187 Kang Guangren, 22, 44 Kang Tongbi: at Barnard College, 94; and CELRA, 88–94, 90, 91; in India with father, 63, 65; influence of U.S. feminism on, 61; on Kang’s 1909 travel, 78–79; libel suit against Zhongguobao, 144–45; North American tour, and CELRA, 60–62; promotion of women’s rights, 60, 61–62; Revolutionary Alliance media attacks on, 144; sequels to Kang’s autobiography, 65; and Sun Yat-sen, effort to assassinate, 132–33; travel with father, 48, 103, 115; work for CERA of Canada, 60–61

356

Index

Kang Youwei, xiii; after Republican Revolution, and new nationalist movement, 172; and anti-Asian riots in Vancouver, 98; and antiChinese racism in North America, campaign against, 64, 67, 70, 74, 77; and assassination of Liu Shiji, 114, 115; autobiography, daughter’s and grandson’s sequels to, 65; ban on discussing Guangdong independence, 142; ban on discussing individual freedom, 142; call for dissolution of Chinese parliament, 197; call for reforms in North American Chinatowns, 64, 67, 68, 70–71, 72, 77; carved seal describing his life experiences, 219; and CELRA, 93; and Chinese Commercial Corporation, 69, 78, 100; and Chinese Reform Party, 179; on constitutional reform in China, 71; correspondence with Laurier, 65, 66–67; correspondence with North American associates (19001903), 63–64; Datongshu, 129; and debate on Confucianism as state religion, 194, 196; description of, 25; desire for male heir, and taking of concubines, 103–4, 114; on economic development as key to Chinese prosperity, 71, 77; in England to request British support, 33, 34; as exile from China, 219; expulsion from Japan, 24; followers’ origin in Guangdong Province, 6; funds spent on plans to assassinate Qing officials, 58; and Hakka people, 234n14; in India, 63, 65; marriage and children, 103;

and military uprising in China, fundraising for, 52, 89; movement to establishment study societies, 120; “National Salvation through Material Up-building” (Wuzhi jiuguolun), 71; opposition to Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 184–85; and origin of transpacific Chinese network, 4–7, 223; precautions against assassination, 132; and “provincial graduate petition,” 32; and Qing constitutional reform plan (1906), 97; rejection of radical followers, 54; retreat from politics (1909-1913), 171; Revolutionary Alliance media attacks on, 144–45; scholarship on, 223; setbacks of 1908-1909, 114; spending for personal uses, critics of, 115; support for Chinese colonization abroad, 77–78; and transpacific reform movement, 62; travel by, 71, 219; Travel Notes in Eleven European Countries (Ouzhou shiyiguo youji), 71; world travel in 1909, purposes of, 114–16; world travel on honeymoon with concubine, 103–4. See also CERA, founding of; Liang Qichao, and Kang Kang Youwei, in Canada: 1902 visit, false reports of, 64–65; 1904-1905 visit, 65, 66–72; 1909 visit, 65, 78–79, 115–16; accounts of, in autobiography sequels, 65; arrival, 24; assassination threats, 29, 42, 44, 45; and birthday of Guangxu Emperor, 42–43; call for reforms in North American Chinatowns, 64, 67, 68, 70–71, 72; and Canadian head tax on migrants, activism

Index against, 66–67; celebrity treatment received by, 24, 28, 68–70; chronic headaches, 41, 44; and CKT, 124, 126; concern about China, 44; cultivation of ties with white elites, 69–70; dislike of people from Canadian Chinatowns, 99; efforts to enter U.S., 24, 27, 29, 30, 32; followers sent to U.S., 45; illness, and stay at Harrison Hot Springs, 71; and leadership of overseas Chinese reformist movements, 63; meeting with Prime Minister Laurier, 31; memorial service for martyrs of Hundred Days’ Reform, 44; police guard assigned to, 29, 31, 35, 38, 39, 42; publishing of collected poems, 76; and restrictions on Chinese immigrants, 25; return after failed mission to England, 33, 34–35; return from England to, 33, 34; scholarship on, 64–65, 67; significance of, 65; study of English, 44; tours given by Canadian officials, 24–27, 28, 29, 31; travel to Ottawa, 31; at Wen (Coal) Island, 41–45, 71, 78, 115–16; world tour following, 66; and worry about his mother, 44 Kang Youwei, Canada-based reformist movement of, xii, 19; activism for, 25–26, 27, 28–30, 38, 43; announcement of principles for, 27, 29; British support, search for, 26, 28, 33–34; call for transnational corporation uniting overseas Chinese, 30, 32; calls for popular mobilization and solidarity, 29, 30; calls for reform of overseas Chinese, 30; CCBA’s joining of, 8; CERA

357

and, 41, 66–69, 71–72; claim to have Emperor’s authorization for, 21, 22–23; commitment to Confucianism, Chinese Christians on, 133–34; complaints of Chinese in Canada and, 27; and fear of reprisals against family in China, 28; and formation of Chinese national identity, 46; goals of, 70; limited impact on migration, 14; operation prior to anti-Qing revolution in North America, 18; opposition to, 34; plan for military rescue of Guangxu Emperor, 46–47; and plot to assassinate Cixi’s confidential minister, 45–46; salvation of “yellow race” as one goal of, 41, 247n125; scholarship on, 18; shaping of, by information gained in travel, 71; successful launch of, 33; transformation of North American Chinatowns, 219– 20; turn to focus on commercial ties, 69; and U.S. support, search for, 28 Kang Youwei, and CERA: on business empire collapse, responsibility for, 99, 101; CERA-led boycott of U.S. products, 67, 68, 72–73, 77; and CERA of Canada, 55–59; and CERA petitions for convening of Chinese parliament, 157–58; and CERA’s development of transnational businesses, 54, 55; clashes with leaders of, 63, 64; conflict with Vancouver branch, 98–99; conflict with Yip Yen faction, and collapse of CERA financial empire, 79, 99, 101, 102– 4, 106–16, 226; encouragement

358

Index

of, after military losses in China, 63–64; expansion into U.S., 45, 47–48; founding of, 30, 32, 33, 35, 37–40, 47, 62; global expansion of, 48–49; and Kang’s bottom-up reform strategy, 34; Kang’s building of, 79; and lobbying against SinoAmerican Treaty on Chinese immigration, 72–73; in Mexico (1907), CERA business interests and, 77–78, 107, 109; oversight of, 79; and political mobilization of overseas Chinese, 41; “Preface for Regulations” of, 40–41; “provincial graduate petition” and, 32; push into Qing China, 104, 105–6; reestablishing in Republic of China, 173; rice brokerages of, 67–68; selection as executive officer of, 67; struggle over control of (1907), 101–4, 108, 112 Kang Youwei, and Guangxu Emperor: and birthday celebration for Emperor, 42–43; break with followers over reinstallation of emperorship, 197, 198; criticism of his support for Emperor, 46; Emperor’s assignment of Kang to Shanghai newspaper, 21; influence on, 18; Kang’s celebration for ties to Emperor, 24, 28; Kang’s claim to have secret edict from, 21, 22–23, 39, 124; Kang’s efforts to restore, 23–24; Kang’s influence on, 18; Kang’s petitions and memorials to, 17, 18, 19, 22; Kang’s plan for military rescue of, 46–47, 49–51; Kang’s reform efforts and, 18, 20; plan for military rescue of, 46–47, 49–50, 51; support for,

20; telegram campaign to Cixi demanding restoration, 44–45 Kang Youwei, in Imperial China: antifoot binding campaign, 17; British support for reform, search for, 18–22, 23, 24; bureau of imperial institutions proposed by, 20–21; civil service exam and government appointment, 17–18; education and early career, 3; Emperor’s assignment to Shanghai newspaper, 21, 22; emperor’s support for reform ideas of, 18; execution of brother in plot against Cixi, 22, 44; family and background of, 2; flight overseas, 3–4, 23; and Hakka people, 5; and Hundred Days’ Reform, 3–4, 18, 19, 21; Japanese support for reform, search for, 19, 22, 24; origins in Guangdong province, 2–3; peripheral role in reform, 21; petitions to Guangxu Emperor, 17, 18, 19, 22; proposal for Chinese “chambers of commerce,” 19, 20, 32; and “provincial graduate petition,” 19; and Sino-Japanese War, 18, 19; and study societies, 18, 19, 20; support for Guangxu Emperor’s reforms, 20; U.S. support for reform, search for, 18–19, 22, 24; Western influence on, 5, 18 Kang Youwei, in Mexico, 77, 258n66; and CERA business ventures, 77–78, 107, 109; and leadership of overseas Chinese reformist movements, 63 Kang Youwei, return to Asia: assassination attempts against, 47; preparations for military rescue of Guangxu Emperor, 47

Index Kang Youwei, and Sun Yat-sen. See Sun Yat-sen, and Kang Youwei Kang Youwei, in United States: 1905 visit, 72–79; 1906 visit, 258n66; 1907 visit, 78, 97; and anti-racism campaign, 74; call for reforms in North American Chinatowns, 72; celebrity treatment received by, 97; CERA business interests and, 78; and CERA-led boycott of U.S. products, 72–73, 77; and CERA New York conference (1905), 74, 77, 81, 96–97; and Chinese Commercial Corporation, 75–76; and “cleaning society” initiative, 72, 74; and departments for collective protection (lianweibu) initiative, 72–73, 74; on East Coast, 73–74; and leadership of overseas Chinese reformist movements, 63; letters of introduction from U.S. consul in Canada, 70; in Los Angeles, 72; meetings with Roosevelt, 74; protests against Chinese Exclusion Acts, 74; publishing of collected poems, 76; routes of travel, 76–77 Kang Youwei, and Xuantong Emperor, 197 King, W. L. Mackenzie, 138–39 King Joy Lo restaurant (Chicago): as CERA venture, 76, 98, 99; and collapse of CERA business empire, 99, 100, 106, 107–8; Kang Youwei’s involvement with, 100 KMT. See Nationalist Party (Guomindang/Kuomingtang, KMT) Kootenay Shingle Company, and activism against Chinese and Japanese workers, 95

359

Kuang Shouwen, 100, 104, 108 Kwong Lee & Co., 7, 32, 34 Lansing, Robert, 205, 213 Laurier, Wilfrid, 31, 35, 65, 66–68, 153 Lee Kee (Li Ji, aka Li Qingchi): and CCBA, 164; and founding of CERA, 37, 85, 86, 127; and opium trade, 137, 138, 139; and struggle over Canadian immigration system, 153–54. See also Lee Yuen Co. Lee Mong Kow (Li Mengjiu): and CCBA, 84; family of, and memorial for Tang Hualong, 214; fundraising for Victoria school, 114; and Overseas Chinese Patriotic Corps, 182–83; and struggle over Canadian immigration system, 153–54; and Sun Yat-sen, 123; support for Kang Youwei in Canada, 25, 26, 32, 34–35, 38; support for Feng Ziyou in Canada, 150; and Tang Hualong in Victoria, 205–6; and Zhenhua Company, 111, 112 Lee Yuen Co., 85, 137, 138, 139. See also Lee Kee Lequn Charitable School (Lequn yishu), 135 Lew, David (Liao Hongxiang), 153–54 Li Bohai, 141, 144–46, 169, 199, 224 Li Donghai, 33, 65 Li Fuji (aka Li Wenhui): background of, 83; on background of members of Victoria CERA, 83; and CERA, 84; and Chinese Commercial Corporation, 69; denouncement of CERA leaders, 105; and establishment of CERA businesses, 55; and founding of

360

Index

CERA, 35, 38, 86; Kang’s and Yip Yen’s power struggle and, 104; and Kang’s conflict with Yip Yen, 116; Kang’s correspondence with, 65, 67; move to Mexico for business, 98; on number of members in Victoria’s CERA, 81; and opium trade, 137, 139; support for antiManchu revolution and Guangdong independence, 53–54; and Zhenhua Company, 111 Li Gongwu, 196, 201 Li Haiyun, 145, 159 Li Mianchen, 123, 161 Li Shinan, 145–47, 279n120 Li Yuanhong, as president of Republic of China, 193; conflict over Confucianism as state religion, 194–97; opposition to China’s entry into World War I, 197; overthrow of, 197; restoration of parliament and Provisional Constitution, 193, 194 Li Ziping (Li Sanduo), 142, 143 Li Zizhong (Li Bingxing), 142, 144 Lian Qiaoshan, 211–12 Liang Qichao: alliance with Yuan Shikai, 181; anti-Manchu revolutionary group formed by, 48–49; anti-racism initiative, 72; call for anti-Manchu revolution, 53–54, 142; call for Guangdong independence, 53–54, 142; and CELRA, 90, 93–94; and Chinese Commercial Corporation, 56, 57, 58–59, 69; on Chinese Exclusion Acts, 56–57; and Chinese Reform Party overseas, 173; and CKT, 127–28, 129; and Constitutional Research Association, 202; costly

projects in China, 105–7, 115; death of Guangxu Emperor and, 106; Duan and, 197, 202, 204; flight from China, 5, 23; and Hakka people, 5; and Hundred Days’ Reform, 5; influence in early Republican China, 227; in Japan, 23, 48, 101, 111, 142, 153; Ji Huagong jingyue by, 59; and lobbying against Sino-American Treaty on Chinese immigration, 72; and military uprisings in China, 49, 51–52; opposition to Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 184, 185; origin in Guangdong Province, 4; and plan for military rescue of Emperor, 49; on political parties in Republic of China, 172; and Progressive Party, 181; and Public School of Guangdong Province, 104; radicalism of, 49, 53, 54, 57; and reformers in China, contact with, 157; and “Regulations of the Chinese Commercial Corporation,” 55; and Republic of China, 172, 173; and Sun, brief alliance with, 5; Sun’s call for execution of, 202–3; ties to assassination of Liu Shiji, 114; touring in Canada, 57; Travel Notes across the New World, 59; and Yip Sang, 54; and Yip Yen, 54, 129; and Zhenhua Company, 111–12 Liang Qichao, and CERA: apology to Hong Kong CERA, 58; and CERA of Canada, 55–59; and CERA’s press, 76; competition with Revolutionary Alliance, 153; development of transnational businesses by, 55; first general conference of, 67; founding of, 35,

Index 36, 86; fundraising and recruiting in North America, 54–55, 80–81, 127–30; global expansion of, 48, 49; growth of, 81; ill-fated push into Qing China and, 153; name change for, 97; number of CERA chapters and membership, 80, 81, 82; reestablishing in Republic of China, 173; Revolutionary Alliance rivalry with, 145; tour of United States for, 57–59 Liang Qichao, and Kang Youwei: break over reinstallation of Xuantong Emperor, 197, 198; correspondence, 99; divergence after Republican Revolution, 173; Kang’s blame for CERA business losses, 99; Kang’s funding of Liang’s projects in China, 106–7; Kang’s rejection of Liang’s antiManchu revolutionary group, 49; Liang as student of Kang, 3, 5; rebuke from Kang for radicalism, 57; sent by Kang to Hawai‘i, 49; sent by Kang to North America, 53; turn from radicalism back to Kang’s reformism, 54, 58 Liang Qitian: anti-Manchu revolutionary group formed by, 48–49; Canadian police concern about, 50; CERA fundraising tour in U.S. and Mexico, 52; and CERA’s first general conference, 67; and CKT, 124; and expansion of CERA, 48, 87–88; and power struggles within CERA, 80; radical nationalism of, 50; recruitment for military restoration of emperor, 50; sent by Kang to fund-raise in Canada, 49–50

361

Liang Rushan, 36, 86, 87 Liang Wenqing (aka Liang Wenxing), 152–53 Liao Yipeng (Lew Yick Pen), 28, 45, 85, 86, 87, 159 Lin Libin, 159, 161, 168, 171, 211–12 Lin Lihuang (Lam Lap Fong, aka Lim Sam): and CERA of Canada, 157; and CERA petitions on Chinese parliament, 158; and CKT, 126; and debate on Confucianism as state religion, 195–96; and Feng in Canada, 151–52; and founding of CERA, 38, 39; and Sun’s fundraising, 159, 160–61 Lin Lirong, 194–96 Lin Sen: and anti-Japanese nationalism, 178–79, 183; and Anti-Yuan Army of America, 190; and assassination of Huang, 186; and burial of Wong Chong, 216; and Chinese Nationalist League, 177, 178, 184; and Chinese Revolutionary Party, 176; and General Bureau of the Americas, 199; opposition to Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 186 Lin Shiyuan, 196–97 Liu Chengyu, 131, 146 Liu Kangheng (aka Liu Zhangxuan or Law A. Yam): CELRA and, 92; and founding of CERA, 35, 40; Kang’s correspondence with, 67; Law A. Yam pseudonym of, 263n137; Liang Qichao’s talk of Chinese revolution with, 57; wife of, 89; and Zhenhua Company, 109–11, 113 Liu Kunyi, 52–53 Liu Liru, 113, 116

362

Index

Liu Shiji: assassination of, 101, 109, 114, 115; and Zhenhua Company, 111–12, 113 Liu Zikui (aka Charlie Bo), 84, 89, 194–96 Lo, Jung-Pang, 42, 65 Long, Breckinridge, 205, 213 Longyu (Empress Dowager), abdication, 168 Loo Chock Fan (Lu Zhuofan), 7–8 Loo Gee Wing (Lu Zhirong, aka Lu Yangqiao), 31, 32, 34 Lu Jin, 38, 39, 126 Lu Renshan, 39, 84 Luo Chang, 78 Luo Yuehu (Lok Yut Wo): background of, 83; and CCBA, 84; on CERA setbacks, 115; and founding of CERA, 86; and Zhenhua Company, 112 Ma, L. Eve Armentrout, 36, 128 Macao, 3; CERA office in, 46, 51; as channel for Chinese migrants, 2, 4 Ma Dachun, 112–13, 116 Ma Ruitang (aka Ma Suey), 208 Ma Shaohan, 302n169 Meizhou shaonian (newspaper), 146 Methodist Church, Canadian, 133, 135 Mexico: Chinese Commercial Corporation investments in, 76, 77, 78, 98, 107–9; revolution of 1911, and CERA’s businesses, 170 migration of Chinese to North America: Canadian restrictions on, 1, 8, 15, 25, 66–67; dialectal groups, 6; factors in, 2; Kang’s critique of restrictions on, 41; as primarily from Guangdong

Province, 1–2, 6, 7, 233n2; transpacific networks and, 1–10; U.S. restrictions on, 1, 8, 14–15, 27, 30, 32, 57 Military Government of Republican China (Zhonghua minguo junzhengfu), 202 Minbao (newspaper), 145, 148, 156 Minto, Earl of, 29, 31, 68 Mo Yuechan, 89, 92 Montreal: CERA chapter in, 260n98; CKT chapter in, 181; Kang’s first trip to, 31–32; Kang’s return to, 34–35; Kang’s trip to, 1904, 67; Revolutionary Alliance chapter in, 168; Sun in, 123 Nakanishi Jūtarō, 24, 31 Nanqiang Public School (Nanqiang gongxue), 104–5 Nanyang Corps (Nanyang shituan), 193 Nationalist Party (Guomindang/ Kuomingtang, KMT): assassination of leader, 175; and debate on Confucianism as state religion, 196; and election of 1912, 172–73, 175; founding of, 172; and lionizing of Wong Chong, 215, 216; name outside China, 176; number of chapters, 173, 290n17; opposition to China’s entry into World War I, 197; as reorganized Chinese Revolutionary Party, 199; rivals in North America, 173–74; Sun’s turn from, 175; Tang Hualong as enemy of, 204; turn to revolutionary tactics, 216; Yuan’s dismissal of governors from, 174–75; Yuan’s outlawing of, 175. See also Chinese

Index Nationalist League (CNL); Chinese Nationalist Party (Zhongguo guomindang) National Salvation Corps (Jiuguotuan), 181 National Salvation Society (Jiuwanghui), 182 “National Salvation through Material Up-building” (Wuzhi jiuguolun) (Kang), 71 network approach: increasing scholarly interest in, xiv; insights offered by, xix–xx; scholarship using, xiv– xv; strengths and weaknesses of, xiv; terminology in, xiv. See also associational networks; transpacific networks New Policy Reforms (Xinzheng), 53, 64, 220 New Westminster, Canada: birthday celebration for Guangxu Emperor in, 42; CERA chapter, founding of, 40; clashes between CERA and Chinese Christians in, 135; Kang in, 29–30, 37 North American Chinese political associations, disarray after Republican Revolution, 172 opium: antiopium activism in Victoria, 137; Canada’s outlawing of, 138–39; CERA leaders’ trade in, 137, 139; and Chinese Anti-Opium League, 137–38, 139; Chinese Christian campaigns against, 136–38, 139; end of ChineseBritish trade in, 138; government benefit from taxes on, 137, 138; profitability of Chinese Canadian trade in, 138; Qing government’s

363

anti-opium edict, 137, 138; SinoAmerican Treaty of 1880 and, 137 Opium War, first, 2 Ottawa: CERA chapter in, 260n98; Kang in, 31–32, 68–69 Ou Jujia (aka Ou Yungao): antiManchu revolutionary group formed by, 48–49; and attempt to assassinate Sun, 132; call for Guangdong independence, 142; and CKT, 124, 128–29; as editor of Datong ribao, 53, 131; Kang’s influence on, 129; and military uprisings in China, 49; sent by Kang to North America, 48, 53; and Zhenhua Company, 110, 112, 113, 131 Ouyang Geng (Owying King), 150 overseas Chinese (Huaqiao): vs. Chinese overseas, as term, xvi–xvii; scholarship on, xvi–xviii Overseas Chinese Dare-to-Die Vanguard of Canada (Jia-shu Huaqiao ganshi xianfengdui), 188– 92, 298nn107–8 overseas Chinese in North America: central role in battle for political change in China, xix; interplay of Chinese and North American politics in, xviii; queue and, xvi; racial exclusion of, and ties to homeland, xvi; as subjects of imperial China before 1912, xvi. See also associational networks of North American Chinese Overseas Chinese Military Research Society of America (Meizhou Huaqiao junshi yanjiushe), 189 Overseas Chinese Patriotic Corps (Huaqiao aiguotuan), 182–83

364

Index

Overseas Chinese Volunteer Regiment (Huaqiao yiyongjun), 190–93 Pacific Canada, reform and revolutionary movements in, as under-studied, 12 parliament, Chinese: and Confucianism as state religion, 194–95; dissolution by military faction, 175, 197; KMT victory in elections of 1912, 175; petitions to Qing government to convene, 157–58; restoration of, 193, 194 Patriotic School (Oi-Kowk Hok-tong), 88 Penang, CERA’s business venture, 54, 68, 105, 107; Kang Youwei in, 63, 66, 112, 114; Sun Yat-sen in, 155–56 Political Information Society (Zhengwenshe), 105–6, 112, 157 political parties in Republic of China, 172–75 Polk, Frank, 205, 213 “Preface for Regulations of the Society to Protect the Emperor” (Baohuanghui xuli), 40–41, 247n125 Presbyterian Church, Canadian, missionary to Chinese migrants, 133 Progressive Party (Jinbudang), 173, 184, 185–86, 202 Provisional Government of China: purchase of six airplanes, 167–68; Sun Yat-sen’s election as president of, 166–67 Public School of Guangdong Province (Guangdong gongxue), 104–5

Qing government: alliance with Boxers (Yihetuan), 49, 50–51; antiemigration laws, 2; anti-opium edict, 137, 138; constitutional reform plan (1906), 97; crackdown on CERA political activism (1908), 106, 112; election of provincial assemblies (1909), 157; expulsion from Beijing by international force (1900), 51; National Assembly (Zizhengyuan) convened, 157; and New Policy Reforms (Xinzheng), 53, 64; persecution of reformers and families, 28, 49, 53; petitions to, for convening of parliament, 157–58; self-strengthening programs, 17; slow progress on reform, 157 Qing monarchy, abdication, 167–68 Qiu Jin, 143 queue: cutting of, in Australia, 74; and overseas Chinese in North America, xvi Quong Man Fung & Co., 83, 84, 139 racism, anti-Chinese, in North America: critique of, in “Preface for Regulations of the Society to Protect the Emperor,” 41; decline after World War II, 228; effect on reform and revolutionary movements, 228; Kang Youwei’s campaign against, 64, 67, 70, 77; Liang Qichao’s campaign against, 72; local workers’ blocking of Chinese and Japanese workers, 95; prior to World War I, 171 railroad construction, and Chinese migration to U.S. and Canada, 1, 7–8

Index reform and revolutionary movements in North American Chinatowns: appeal of, 228; benefit from preexisting associational networks, 219–20; close interrelations between, 140, 225; competition between, 224–26; contributions of this work to scholarship on, 12–14; cross-cultural hybridity in, 220–21; effect of anti-Chinese racism on, 228; feminism and, 62; global spread of, 222; importance of local interpersonal links in, 14; influence on homeland politics, 227; interaction of, 11–12; and migrant political initiatives, 11–12; network revolution created by, 220, 225–27; political change in China as goal of, 220; profound impact of, 225–26; scholarship on, 223, 224, 225, 227; and transformation of diaspora’s relations with China, 226–27. See also reform movements in North American Chinatowns; revolutionary movements in North American Chinatowns reform movements in North American Chinatowns: evolution into revolutionary movements, 119; expansion of, 9–10; institutionalization of, xix, 9–10; regional and ethnic ties of supporters, 4, 5, 6–7; success of revolutionary groups over, xx “Regulations of the Chinese Commercial Corporation,” 55 Republic of China: campaign against Hong Fraternal Society in Guangdong, 174; and election of 1912, 172–73, 175; entry into

365

World War I, 197; Gregorian calendar for, 170; Li Yuanhong as president, 193; new partisan organizations in, 173; power struggles among parties, 184; Provisional Constitution of, 172; Sun Yat-sen’s creation of institutions to limit president’s power, 172. See also Feng Guozhang; Li Yuanhong, as president of Republic of China; Provisional Government of China; Yuan Shikai’s plan to become emperor Republican Construction Society (Gonghe jianshehui), 167 Republican Party (Gonghedang): in Canada, 181–82, 202; CNL and, 181–82; and Constitutional Research Association, 202; and debate on Confucianism as state religion, 196– 97; founding of, 173; and National Salvation Society in Canada, 182; opposition to Yuan’s plans to become emperor, 185; and rise of antiJapanese nationalism, 182 Republican Revolution (1911): eruption of, Sun Yat-sen on world tour during, 154, 155, 166; and reformists’ move to revolutionary camp, 169; Sun’s election as provisional president, 166–67; Sun’s fundraising and, 167; Sun’s tentative ties to leaders of, 166; turn to violence, xii–xiii; Wuchang uprising and, 166 Research Clique (Yanjiuxi), 202, 204– 5, 213, 215 Restoration Society (Guangfuhui), 143 Revive China Society (Xingzhonghui): chapters in San Francisco, 119-20,

366

Index

122, 133, 168; failure of anti-Qing uprising (1900), 130; founding of Yokohama chapter, 120, 141; incorporation into Revolutionary Alliance, 119; loss of members to CERA, 130; platform of antiManchu ethnic nationalism, 221– 22; Qing persecution of members’ families in China, 121; “Regulation of Promotion of China,” 121; in San Francisco, limited success in recruitment, 133; Sun’s establishment of Japanese chapter, 120; Sun’s founding of, 118, 120; Sun’s recruitment for, in U.S., 121; two failed military uprisings, 140; work with CERA, 118–19 Revolutionary Alliance: benefit derived from CERA organizing, 164–65, 168–69; chapters in North America, 168; competition with CERA, 119; Cui Tongyue and, 136; diverse membership of, 143; expansion to U.S. mainland, 145–46; failed New Army mutiny (1910), 146, 156; founding of Vancouver branch, 164; four tenets of, 132, 143–44; in Hong Kong, 144, 145, 278n102; integration of Revive China Society and other groups with, 119; interactions with CKT, network analysis of, 154; Kang Tongbi’s libel lawsuit against, 144–45; media war with CERA, 144–45, 156; merger into Nationalist Party, 172; mix of secret society practices and revolutionary ideology in, 143; newspapers, financial problems of, 156; recruiting of disaffected CERA members, 146–47, 151, 153–54;

and Republican Revolution, 171–73; six failed military uprisings, 1907-1908, 140, 146; spread in Canada, 165; successful platform of anti-Manchu ethnic nationalism, 221–22; and Sun Yat-sen as provisional president of Republican China, 166–67; uprising in Canton (1911), 163–65; in Victoria, absorption into Chinese Revolutionary Party, 180 Revolutionary Fundraising Bureau for National Salvation (Geming Jiuguo chouxiangju), 158 revolutionary movements in North American Chinatowns: assassination of Tang Hualong and, xii; evolution of reform movements into, 119; expansion of, 9–10; institutionalization of, xix, xx, 9–10; multiple origins of, 140; regional and ethnic ties of supporters, 6–7 Rixinbao (newspaper), 152–53 Ronglu, Kang’s plot to assassinate, 45–46 Roosevelt, Theodore “Teddy,” 57, 70 Sacramento, early Chinese secret societies in, 8 Sam Kee & Co., 85, 87, 88 San Francisco: CERA chapter in, 80; Chinese businesses in, and transpacific networks, 7; clashes between CERA and Chinese Christians in, 133–34; early secret societies in, 1, 7, 8; Revive China Society chapter in, 119–20, 121, 122, 133; Revolutionary Alliance expansion to, 145–46; Sun’s fundraising in, 165

Index secret societies in North America, and tong wars, 8 Shanghai, CERA’s press and newspaper, 72, 76, 105, 152; Kang Youwei and the Society for the Study of National Strengthening, 20, 120; Revolutionary Alliance in, 166; Sun Yat-sen in, 154, 171, 193; as the starting point of antiAmerican boycott, 73; women’s educational institutions, 88; Sharman, Lyon, 282–83n164 Shen Caiman (aka Shen Man, Shum Moon), 52, 87, 153–54 Shibao (newspaper), 72–73, 105 Shijie ribao (newspaper), 113, 140 Sino-American Treaty of 1880, 67, 72–75, 137 Sino-Japanese War, as spur to Chinese reform, 3, 5, 18, 19 Sino-Mexican Bank: and CERA’s financial collapse, 107, 109, 110; Chinese Commercial Corporation funding of, 76; investors’ concerns about, 115; Kang’s effort to secure CERA funds for, 103; tramway project, 98 Smith, Abraham E., 27, 29, 30 Society for Chinese Revival (Huaxinghui), 143 Society for the Study of Agriculture (Nongxuehui), 120 Society for the Study of National Strengthening (Qiangxuehui), 20, 120 Society of the Hong Obedience. See Hongshuntang Society to Protect Republican China (Minguo weichihui), 177, 179, 180 Society to Protect the Nation (Baoguohui), 20, 39

367

Song Jiaoren, 175, 182 Su, Prince (Suwang), 105–6 Su Yi, 42 Sun Yat-sen, xii; and anti-Manchu revolutionary group, 48–49; anti-Qing publications, 133; and anti-Qing revolution (1894), 118, 120; anti-Qing society, 33–34; assistance from CKT, 130, 131; and breakaway Revolutionary Alliance groups, 155–56; and burial of Wong Chong, 215; career as reformer, beginning of, 118; Chinese Christians’ support of, 120, 133; and CKT, effort to co-opt, 130–32, 133; on CKT in Canada, 123–24; conversion to Christianity, 4; detention by immigration officials, 131; and Duan, call for execution of, 202–3; education of, 4; efforts to mobilize Chinatown residents, 119–20; efforts to reform Qing government from within, 4–5; in England, kidnapping by Qing legation, 123; in Europe (1909), 146; as exile from China, 219; expulsion from Asian nations around China, 146, 156; failed fundraising efforts, 147; failure to mobilize overseas Chinese in the 1890s, 223–24; failure to win CKT support by 1910, 148; as Father of Republican China, xi,, 154, 167, 199; flight to Hawai‘i, 120; followers’ origin in Guangdong Province, 6; fundraising among CKT chapters, 165, 166, 168; fundraising and recruiting, 130, 132; and fundraising for

368

Index

Revolutionary Alliance, 156; global tour (1911), 154, 155; and Gregorian calendar for Republic of China, 170; and Hakka people, 5; on Hong Fraternal Society, 122; and Japanese aggression in China, 178–79; and Liang Qichao, 5, 118; and Li government in China, 193; migration to Hawai‘i, 4; and Nationalist Party, turn from, 175; and network revolution in transpacific Chinese diaspora, 226; in North America, 118, 141, 224; opposition to Yuan’s plan to become emperor, 190–93; origin in Guangdong Province, 4; plans for “united government” in China, 122; prorevolution corporation planned by, 165; recruiting and fundraising at CKT chapters, 164; recruitment for Revive China Society, 121; and reformist organizations, takeover of, 224–25; Revolutionary Alliance chapters formed, 146–48; scholarship on, 121, 223; Soviet and Chinese Communist support of, 215–16; study society founded by, 120; successful platform of anti-Manchu ethnic nationalism, 221–22; and Tang Hualong, calls for execution of, 202–3, 212; travel by, overview of, 219, 305–6n3; unexpected departure from U.S. (1909-10), 148; Western influence on, 4, 5. See also CERA, and Sun Yat-sen; Hawai‘i, Sun Yat-sen in; Revive China Society (Xingzhonghui); Revolutionary Alliance; Nationalist Party; Chinese Revolutionary

Party; Chinese Nationalist League; Chinese Nationalist Party Sun Yat-sen, and Kang Youwei: collaboration with, 118; Kang’s call for Sun’s assassination, 132–33; and Kang’s dominance of Canadian Chinese, 122–23; Kang’s influence on Sun, 120; view on Kang in Chinese Revolution, 171 Sun Yat-sen, in Canada: 1897 trip, 122–24, 155; 1910 alleged trip, 155; 1911 trip, 158–65; in Calgary, 163; CERA members’ tolerance of, 162–63; end of, 165; failure to mobilize Chinese during first trip, 223–24; fundraising for Revolutionary Alliance, 156–57; fundraising success, as model for future, 164; invitation for, 156; in Kamloops and Ashcroft, 162; in Montreal, 163; in Nanaimo and Cumberland, 161–62; and Qing government pursuit, 123; recruiting and fundraising at CKT chapters, 156–64; and threat from local CERA member, 162; in Toronto, 163; and uprising in Canton, 2011, 163–65; in Vancouver, 158–59; in Victoria, 159–61; in Winnipeg, 163 Sun Yat-sen, in Hawai‘i: attack on CERA, 130; initiation of revolutionary movement, xi, 5; joining of Guoan Society, 130; newspaper war with CERA, 142; and Revive China Society loss of members to CERA, 130; U.S. citizenship papers falsely obtained, 131 Sun Yat-sen, and Republic of China: creation of institutions to limit

Index president’s power, 172; flight to Japan, 175; help for CKT to register as party, 174; as manager of national railway construction, 171; military uprisings against Yuan Shikai (second revolution), 175; replacement by Yuan as provisional president, 170, 171; service as provisional president, 166–67; struggle to consolidate support, 170, 171; third revolution, 175–76 Sun Yat-sen, revolutionary movement of: initiation from Hawai‘i, xi, 5; limited impact on migration, 14; transformation of North American Chinatowns, 219–20; turn to, after failed reform efforts, 5 Sun Yat-sen, in United States: 1896 trip, 119–21, 223–24; 1904 trip, 130–33; 1909-1910 trip, 146–48; 1911 trip, 155–56, 164–66 Sun Yat-sen, and warlord period: alignment with southwest warlord faction, 198; calls for execution of Duan Qirui, Liang Qichao and Tang Hualong, 202–4, 212; KMT dominance as goal of, 221–22; party-building during, 198; separate government in Canton, 202–3 Sworn-Oar Society (Jijishe), 148–49, 152 Tai Soong & Co., 83, 84 Tan Chaodong (Chiu Doong Tam, Tom Chue Thom), 45, 135 Tan Liang (Tom Leung, aka Tan Zhangxiao), xiii; Kang’s accusations against, 99, 100, 106–8, 113, 268nn200–201; Kang’s recruitment for CERA expansion in U.S.,

369

47–48; and King Joy Lo restaurant, 98, 99, 100, 113; and Sun Yat-sen, effort to assassinate, 132; wife of, 93; and Zhenhua Company, 113 Tan Sitong, 21–22 Tang Hualong, 203; break with Kang over reinstallation of Xuantong Emperor, 198; CNL suspicions about, 205–6, 212–13; and Constitutional Research Association, 202; in Japan (1918), 204–5; as KMT/CNL enemy, 204, 214; KMT/CNL suspicion of overseas secret mission by, 204–6; meetings with U.S. officials, 205, 213; memorial services and burial of, 214–15; move from reformist to revolutionary camp, 169; in North America (1918), 205–6, 212–14; position in Duan government, 202; and Republican Construction Society, 167; and Republican Revolution, 166; in Republic of China, 173; support for Duan, 197, 202, 204, 214; ties to Yuan Shikai, 214; views of Sun Yat-sen and Mao’s followers on, xii Tang Hualong, assassination of, xi–xii; arrival in Victoria, and social events, 205–6; Canadian government investigation of, 210–11; CNL involvement in, 186, 209–12, 214; involvement of Wong’s business partner in, 211; as presage of future revolutionary violence, 216; revolution movements in North American Chinatowns and, xii; setting of, 206, 207; Sun’s call for, 202–3, 212; Sun’s indirect responsibility in, 212; and Sun Yat-

370

Index

sen’s turn to violence, xii–xiii; Tang’s attendance at banquet, and walk home, 206–7; Wong’s activities before assassination, 206, 207; Wong’s flight, and suicide, 208–9; Wong’s motives for, 211, 212; Wong’s shooting of Tang and others, 207–8 Tang Qiongchang, 45, 128, 131, 146, 165, 175 “Three Principles of the People” (Sanmin zhuyi), 143 Toronto: CERA chapter in, 68–69, 82, 87, 260n98; Kang in, 31–32, 68–69; Liu Shiji in, 112; Revolutionary Alliance chapter in, 163, 168; Sun Yat-sen in, 163 transnational corporation called for by Kang. See CERA (Chinese Empire Reform Association) transpacific networks: Kang Youwei’s reform activism and, 4–7, 223; and migration of Chinese to North America, 1–10; personal network of Yip Yen, 79–80; regional and ethnic ties in, 4–7; Sun Yat-sen and, 226. See also associational networks transpacific perspective, xiii–xiv Tokyo, as an arena of CERA’s activities, 105, 145; birthplace and headquarters of Revolutionary Alliance in, 119, 136, 156; Feng Ziyou in, 142; KMT’s overseas branch in, 173; headquarters of Chinese Revolutionary Party in, 176–77, 179, 183, 190; Travel Notes across the New World (xindalu youji) (Liang Qichao), 59 Travel Notes in Eleven European Countries (Ouzhou shiyiguo youji) (Kang), 71

Triad Society: campaign against, in Guangdong, 174, 178; in Hong Kong, 120 United Society of Chinese Women (Huanü hequn), 62. See also Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association (CELRA) United States: CERA’s expansion into, 45; Chinese Commercial Corporation investments in, 76; Chinese population in 1900-1920, 14–15; CNL in, 176–79; decision to support Qing dynasty after Cixi coup, 23; restrictions on Chinese immigration, 1, 8, 14–15, 27, 30, 32. Revive China Society in, 118, 121, 133; Revolutionary Alliance’s chapters in, 146–48. See also Chee Kung Tong in United States; Kang Youwei, in United States; Sun Yatsen, in United States Valiant Corps (Tiexuetuan), 192–93 Vancouver: antiopium activism in, 138; birthday celebration for Guangxu Emperor in, 42–43; CELRA chapter in, 89–92, 91, 94; CERA chapter in, 85–86, 87, 127; Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association in, 127, 164–65; Chinese Christian newspaper in, 136; Chinese Revolutionary Party branch in, 180; CNL chapter in, 182–83; Kang in, 28–29, 35, 37, 69–70; opium trade in, 138; Overseas Chinese Patriotic Corps in, 182–83; Revolutionary Alliance chapter in, 168; and rise of anti-

Index Japanese nationalism, 182–83; Society to Protect Republican China in, 180; Sun in, 123, 158–59 Victoria: beginning of overseas Chinese political reforms, 35–40; birthday celebration for Guangxu Emperor in, 42; CELRA chapter in, 89, 90; as center of Canada’s opium trade, 137; CERA chapter in, 81, 83–85, 89; CERA’s Chinese Public School in, 150–51; Chinese Revolutionary Party branch in, 180; CKT chapter in, 128; clashes between CERA and Chinese Christians in, 134–35, 137; CNL chapter in, 182–83, 199–200; Feng Ziyou in, 151–52, 159–60; first Chinese communitywide associations in, 1, 7–8; Kang in, 24–27, 31, 38–39, 70–71, 115–16; Revolutionary Alliance chapter in, 163, 168; schools’ discrimination against Chinese, 150; Pivot of Sun’s revolutionary successes, 156–61; Sun in, 123, 159-61; SwornOar Society (Jijishe) in, 148–49, 152 Wang Linge, 197, 205–7, 208, 209, 214 warlord period (1916–1928), 198. See also Sun Yat-sen, and warlord period Wenxingbao (newspaper), 53, 134, 145 Wickberg, Edgar, 65, 79. 83, 80 Wing Chong & Co., 84, 87, 123 Wing Sang & Co., 85, 98, 113 women’s education, at CERA of Canada schools, 88 Won Alexander Cumyow (Wen Jinyou): and founding of CERA, 37, 85, 86; U.S. tour to recruit for CERA, 87

371

Wong Chong (Wang Chang), 207; assassination of Tang, xi–xii; burial in Yellow Flower Hill Cemetery, 216; letter left for business partner, 209; memorial services and burial of, 215–16; as patriot, in view of KMT/CNL partisans, 214; views of Sun Yat-sen and Mao’s followers on, xii. See also Tang Hualong, assassination of Wong Toy, 93, 147. See also Huang Xi Worden, Robert Leo, 258n66 World War I, 171, 178, 197 Worsnop, Charles A., 56, 70, 94–95, 264n153 Wu Hengguan, 189–90, 191 Wu Panzhao (Ng Poon Chew), 131, 133, 134 Wu Wenqing (Ng Mon Hing), 133, 137 Wu Xianzi, 158 Wu Ziyuan, 148, 149 Xia Zhongmin, 176, 180, 183, 187– 88, 191, 199 Xie Qiu, 162, 163, 174 Xin Minguo bao (newspaper), 180, 182, 183, 195 Xin Minguo chenbao (newspaper), 199, 201, 205, 209, 210 Xinbao (newspaper), 101, 149, 152 Xinmin congbao (newspaper), 145 Xu Fosu (aka Xu Gongmian), 157, 158 Xu Linfu (aka Xu Weisan), 38, 84 Xu Qin: and CERA, 48, 52, 67, 80; and Chinese Commercial Corporation, 58–59, 69; and CKT, 124; Liang Qichao’s correspondence with, 57, 58; and military uprisings in China, 49; and reformist school

372

Index

in Yokohama, 142; sent by Kang to North America, 53; ties to assassination of Liu Shiji, 114; and Zhenhua Company, 112 Xuantong Emperor (Puyi), 106, 168, 197 Yang Lingshi, 67, 98, 99, 101, 108 Yan Liangbo (Ngon Long Bak), 209, 212 Ye Meirong (Yip May Young), 89–92, 90, 91, 94 Ye Qiumao (aka Ye Jiandan), 153–54, 164, 169, 224 Yellow Flower Hill Cemetery, xii, 164, 216 Yip, Nellie, 92, 95 Yip family: influence in Vancouver and CERA, 89, 92; Kang’s conflict with, 99; and struggle for influence over Canadian immigration system, 153–54; turn away from CERA, 151, 153–54, 157; turn toward revolutionary camp, 153–54 Yip On (aka Ye Tingsan): and CERA of Canada, 149–50; and Chinese Commercial Corporation, 101; defection from CERA of Canada, 150–51; fraternal relations with Yip Yen, 70, 85–86, 101, 255–56nn37– 38, 266n178; illegal migrant smuggling operation of, 153; and Kang’s conflict with Yip Yen, 116; in leadership of CERA of Canada, 36, 85, 86, 149–50; removal as interpreter for Vancouver customs house, 153; ties with white elite, 70; wife of, 92; and Zhenhua Company, 111, 112–13 Yip Quong, 95

Yip Sang (aka Ye Chuntian, Ye Liansheng): business of, 98; and Chinese Benevolent Association, 127, 164; and CELRA, 92; and CERA of Canada school, 88; and Chinese Commercial Corporation, 101; and CKT, 126, 273n34; creation of transnational CERA company, 85; defection from CERA of Canada, 151; and founding of CERA, 32, 35, 37, 85, 86, 127; and fundraising for restoration of Emperor, 50; and Kang in Vancouver, 28; and Kang’s conflict with Yip Yen, 116; Liang and, 54; and National Salvation Society, 182; wives of, 92; and Zhenhua Company, 111, 112–13 Yip Yen (Ye En, aka Charley Yip Yen): and boycott of U.S. products, 75; and CERA business expansion, 40, 97–98; and CERA investment in Guangdong school, 104–5; as CERA president in Vancouver, 40; and CERA’s development of transnational businesses, 55; and CKT, 126; conflict with Kang, and collapse of CERA financial empire, 79, 99, 101, 102–3, 104, 106–7, 108–16, 226; creation of transnational CERA company, 85; fraternal relations with Yip On, 70, 85–86, 101, 255–56nn37–38, 266n178; and expansion of CERA, 48; and founding of CERA, 32, 35, 36, 37, 40, 86, 127; and fundraising for restoration of Emperor, 50; and Kang in Canada, 28, 67; Kang’s blame for CERA business losses, 99, 101; and Kang’s loss of funds to

Index burglar, 35; and Kang Tongbi’s tour of U.S., 60–61; Liang and, 54, 57, 129; on Liang’s North American fundraising tour, 55, 57–58, 87; as president of CERA of Canada, 52, 85; and Revolutionary Alliance media attack on CERA, 144–45; rise to prominence, 87; support for antiManchu revolution and Guangdong independence, 53–54; ties with white elite, 70; transpacific personal network of, 79–80; wives of, 92; and Zhenhua Company, 109–11, 113 Yip Yen, and Chinese Commercial Corporation: financial problems at, 75–76; fundraising in North America for, 103; illegal migrantsmuggling operation of, 101; investment in Canton-Hankou Railroad, controversy over, 102–3, 106, 109; losses of, 99, 100–101; as manager, 69, 74–75; refusal to fund Liang’s Chinese ventures, 105; Yip’s dominance of, 68 Yokohama, CERA’s agencies in, 74, 76, 105; CNL’s chapter in, 223; Feng Ziyou and his family in, 141; Kang Tongbi in, 60; Kang Youwei in, 24; KMT’s branch, 173; Overseas China Dare-to-Die Vanguard, 190, 192; Revive China Society’s chapter, 120; Sun Yat-sen in, 141–42; Triad Society, 143; You Shiyin, 108, 113 Youth Study Society (Shaonian xueshe), 146, 147 Yuan Shikai: death of, 193; and plot to overthrow Empress Dowager Cixi, 21–22; and Qing abdication, 167–68

373

Yuan Shikai, and Republic of China: assassination of Song, 175; dismissal of KMT governors, 174–75; dissolving of parliament, 175; election as president, 175; and election of 1912, 172–73; Feng and, 197; and Japan’s “Twentyone Demands,” 184; and military dictatorship, 175; outlawing of KMT party, 175; as provisional president, 170, 171, 221; regime of, and CNL anti-Yuan fundraising, 224; struggle for power, 171; and Sun’s second revolution, 175 Yuan Shikai’s plan to become emperor, 184, 185, 193 Yuan Shikai’s plan to become emperor, opposition to, 184–93; CNL and, 185–86, 187–90; CNL forces fighting in China, 190–93; Japan’s assistance in, 187; from Liang Qichao, 185; organization of anti-Yuan armies, 187–90; from Republican Party, 185; from Sun’s Chinese Revolutionary Party, 186–87; uprisings in southwestern provinces, 185, 193 Yung Chong Lung & Co. (Yingchanglong hao), 123, 272n19 Zeng Shiquan, 180, 182, 194, 196–97 Zhang Bingya, 101, 104, 114–15 Zhang Mingqi, 110, 112 Zheng Guangong (aka Zheng Guanyi), 142, 144 Zhenhua Company (Zhenhua gongsi): conflict between Kang and Yip Yen factions over, 101, 111–13, 151; founding of, 109–10; initial stock sales and fundraising, 110–13;

374

Index

planned investments by, 110; support of Guangxi governor for, 110 Zhigong Party (Zhigongdang), 202 Zhong Shuiyang (aka Zhong Guozhu), 130

Zhongguobao (newspaper), 144, 145, 151, 156 Zhongxing ribao (Chong Shing Yit Pao) (newspaper), 156 Zou Rong, 133, 134 Zuo Doushan, 120, 131