Mei Lan Fang (梅蘭芳 1894-1961) was a famed Peking Opera actor in China. When the Japanese invaded China and occupied Shanghai, Mei stopped his stage performances and lived in seclusion at home. Chu Min Yi (褚民誼), the executive secretary and minister of foreign affairs of the puppet government then under Wang Jing Wei (汪精衞), attempted …
When the second Sino-Japanese war broke out in 1937, Ma Ben Zhai (馬本齋), a Muslim, responded to the call to fight the Japanese invaders. He led his younger brother, organized the Muslim army volunteers, and joined in the struggle against the Japanese. Ma’s volunteers struck against the Japanese troops several times. They made the enemy …
First published in Tulay Fortnightly, Chinese-Filipino DigestSeptember 20-October 3, 2016 | vol. 29, No. 8 issue On April 24, 1911, Lin Jue Min (林覺民), then 24, a native of Fujian and schooled also in Japan, wrote his father and his wife a farewell letter (與妻訣別書) before joining the Guangzhou (Canton) uprising against the Manchu regime.Part …
First published in Tulay Fortnightly, Chinese-Filipino Digestvol. 29 | no. 14 | December 20, 2016-January 16, 2017 In 1221, the army of the Northern Jin (金) Dynasty (1115-1234) moved southward to attack Qi Zhou (蘄州) of the Song Dynasty. At the time, the term of Li Cheng Zhi (李誠之) as governor of Qi Zhou prefecture …
Halfway into his reign, Ming Emperor Wan Li (萬曆 1573-1620) deployed a lot of eunuchs across the country to serve as mine supervisors and tax collectors. Invoking revenue generation, the eunuchs wantonly extorted large sums of money from the people. This further oppressed the masses, especially those living in dire poverty and had no livelihood. …
During the reign of Ming Emperor Long Qing (1567-1573), a mayor of Guang Nan (廣南) in Yunnan province, Liu Rong (劉容), was known for staying away from women. His friends, who suspected his behavior toward women was merely a pretense, thought of a way to test him. They arranged for the presence of a young …
In 1492, during the Ming Dynasty, Wang Ji (王繼) became the deputy minister of war in Nanjing. At the time, the Ministry of War did not have its own building but only occupied a borrowed private house as temporary headquarters. After Wang Ji assumed office, he used his own salary to purchase a private house …
Sun Yat-sen, after resigning as provisional president of the Republic of China, went to various parts of China in April 1912 in his capacity as national railway supervisor to propagate the importance of building railroads. One day, passing by Jiu Jiang (九江) of Jiangxi province, Sun Yat-sen saw a lot of advertising boards of foreign …
General Feng Yuxiang (馮玉祥) gained fame when he defected from the Qing imperial army and clique of warlords to join the revolutionaries led by Sun Yat-sen in 1911. Years later, he toppled the Zhi (直) warlord faction in Hebei province, which enabled Sun Yat-sen to reach the capital Beijing. Feng was also dubbed the “Christian …
Lin Lan Ying (林蘭英) was born in 1918 in Pu Tian (莆田) City, Fujian province. She was in the United States pursuing a Ph.D. in mathematics at Dickenson University in 1949 when news of the birth of New China reached her. Lin was eager to return to China to help build the nation but decided …
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