Sun Yat-sen’s former site of revolutionary propaganda in HonoluluSun Yat-sen’s former site of revolutionary propaganda in Honolulu
There are many different reasons why Sun Yat-sen was called “Sun Cannon”. One of the most widely circulated accounts is from Tang Degang’s book Yuan’s State of the Union, which says that after Yuan Shikai heard Sun’s railroad plan, he “spoke behind his back, saying that Sun was a ‘cannon'” and that “Sun’s It is said that Yuan Shikai was the one who called out the gag ‘Cannon'”. As for the connotation of the word “Sun Cannon”, today’s people mostly believe that the name is true, such as a netizen said, “used in this person is more than appropriate, Sun Yat-sen so famous …… good to say empty words to fool people, the actual done not The actual accomplishment of several pieces”.
The above statement does not hold true, considering the historical data.
The “Sun cannon” and the railroad plan are linked together by the revolutionaries, not Yuan Shikai
The so-called “cannon” comes from the Cantonese word “che dai gong” (also known as “rip gong”), which means to brag and talk big, and was later borrowed from Hakka. The impression of Sun Yat-sen as a “Che Da Cao” began when he was propagating the revolution overseas. In 1910, when Sun was visiting the Chinese in Chicago, a Chinese laundry owner told him, “Don’t come in, I won’t listen to your ‘Che Da Cai’, if you come in, I’ll If you come in, I will throw you with a hot head!” Sun Yat-sen had to “smile and nod very sincerely. ① This Chinese obviously used the “car cannon” to question Sun’s revolutionary idea of overthrowing the Manchu.
In addition, Sun Yat-sen’s Perception of “Che Da Cao” was also related to his “Founding Strategy” in the early years of the Republic. Hu Shih said in an article that “Dr. Sun Yat-sen, with thirty years of learning and thirty years of observation, made various plans for the construction of the country and put them forward for implementation, but his comrades were the first to oppose them. The polite said he was an ‘idealist’, the unkind mocked him as ‘Sun Cannon’!” ②Sun Yat-sen’s idea of “knowing what is difficult and doing what is easy” also had the intention of responding to such ridicule.
Among these nation-building plans, the railroad issue was the most criticized. Some people recalled that “when the Allied Society changed to the Kuomintang, the molecules were complicated, and when Dr. Sun proposed the construction of railroads, some people internally denigrated Dr. Sun as ‘Sun Cannon’ and the Premier advocated the construction of 100,000 miles of railroads. Many people thought that the Premier’s ideals were too high to be realized and added him to the gag ‘Sun Cannon’ to ridicule him”. (3) It was the revolutionaries, not Yuan Shikai, who associated “Sun Cannon” with the railroad plan.
Sun Yat-sen himself often used the nickname “Sun Cannon” to tease himself in his speeches
There are two completely different interpretations of the political meaning of “Sun Cannon”.
The anti-Sun people took “Sun Da Cao” as an insulting name and regarded Sun as “a man who only talks big and fires big guns” without any respect.
After the Xinhai Revolution, Sun returned to China and the title “Che Da Cao” was brought back to the country and further changed to “Sun Da Cao,” which became a common term of contempt for him by his political opponents. In 1913, Sun went to Beijing to meet Yuan Shikai, and at the banquet, some officers of the Beiyang Department loudly argued that “the republic was the work of the Beiyang” and that “Sun Yat-sen had no power at all, but was a big liar, a Sun cannon” and a “big liar”. Faced with this situation, Sun Yat-sen acted “calmly as usual”. ④
In his early years, Tan Yanzhi belonged to the Constitutionalist faction of the late Qing Dynasty. At that Time, in his opinion, “Sun was a revolutionary who only spoke foreign words without reading much Chinese books”. “The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you are doing. Later, Tan Yanzai changed his belief in revolutionary theory and recalled, “Since I followed Mr. Sun around and learned from him, I gradually realized that Mr. Sun was not the Sun Cannon I had heard of before, but was indeed a man of real talent who was well versed in Chinese and foreign languages and learned from the past and present, and was a real leader in the rejection of the Manchus, the opposition to Yuan, and the overthrow of the Northern Warlords.” ⑤
Yuan Tongchou, who had joined the revolution in his early years, recalled that Chen Jiongming was dissatisfied with Sun Yat-sen and “called him ‘Sun Da Cao’ every time he opened and closed his mouth”. In any case, Mr. Sun was always a superior officer, and Chen was always a subordinate. Can a subordinate insult a superior officer like that?” (6) Obviously, in the eyes of the revolutionaries, the term “Sun Da Cao” was meant to be insulting.
-Those who supported Sun believed that the nickname “Sun Cannon” expressed Sun’s idealistic spirit; and Sun himself was not offended by such a nickname.
In 1919, Chen Duxiu wrote that “a group of people, because of Sun Yat-sen’s idealistic arguments, gave him a nickname, Sun Da-cannon. President Wilson’s Fourteen Articles of Peaceful Opinion are now also mostly unattainable ideals, and we can also call him the Great Cannon of Wei”. Here, Chen Duxiu used the term “Sun Cannon” to describe Sun’s idealism.
In 1926, Zhang Youyu even wrote an article defending the nickname “Sun Cannon”, saying, “In today’s China, there are too few people who play the cannon. Whether in thought, politics, or society, there is a lot of garbage that cannot be washed away or swept up, which must be blasted away with cannons. “Therefore, Sun Yat-sen is called a cannon, which is a good indication of his greatness. (7) Here, the term “Sun Cannon” is regarded as a kind of praise.
In fact, Sun Yat-sen himself did not care much about the nickname “Sun Da-cannon”. In 1922, after Chen Jiongming’s mutiny, Sun Yat-sen also mentioned in his speech that “People say that I Sun Yat-sen car cannon, but this time the cannon is even more powerful, not with solid bullets, but with open bullets …… not difficult to turn his 60 battalions of Chen’s army into mud powder in three hours.” ⑧
Hu Shih: The greatest injustice suffered by Dr. Sun Yat-sen was that he was accused of being an idealist, not a practitioner
In terms of revolutionary ideals, Sun Yat-sen spent his whole Life trying to put into practice the gun he had spared.
Sun Yat-sen was perceived as a “car cannon”, an important reason for his overly optimistic approach, often beyond the understanding of ordinary people. For example, in 1918, when Xu Shichang, who had earlier been ambivalent about the Restoration, was elected president of the Beiyang government, Sun said to Ding Chaowu, a member of the extraordinary congress, “We have to defeat Xu Shichang.” Ding Chaowu cautiously replied, “We do not have the power to do so, and we should not say this. If we say it, we will incur the scorn of others and receive a counterattack.” Sun Yat-sen was not impressed and asked rhetorically, “Have we lost all the courage to speak?” Ding Chaowu later recalled with much emotion, “Mr. Sun was ridiculed by some as ‘Sun Da Cao’, but in fact, he was full of righteousness and dared to express his opinions.” ⑨
In fact, throughout his life, Sun Yat-sen physically practiced the cannon he had spared. From the founding of the Honolulu Xing Zhong Hui in 1894 to the Huanghuagang Uprising in 1911, the revolutionaries led by Sun Yat-sen staged 10 uprisings before and after. 1910 Chicago Chinese felt that it was unrealistic to overthrow the Manchu Qing Dynasty and expected to wear the official ranks and uniforms obtained from the royalists and return to their hometowns later to honor their ancestors. Who knows that within two years, the Qing court fell, and the “car cannon” became true. After the establishment of the Republic, Sun Yat-sen, in order to realize the ideal of the republic, launched the “Second Revolution” in a dozen years, raised troops to fight Yuan, led the legal protection movement twice, and established the military government in Guangdong three times. The Northern Expedition, which was the focus of Sun’s attention in his later years, also succeeded shortly after his death, unifying China under the National Government.
As for Sun’s most criticized “100,000-mile railroad plan”, it was not as outrageous as people thought
Sun Yat-sen’s “100,000-mile railroad plan” is the most important historical basis for people today to ridicule him as the “Sun Cannon”. There are two common opinions: 1. The figure of “100,000 miles” proposed by Sun in the early years of the Republic of China is too exaggerated, knowing that by 1950, the total mileage of railroads in the country was only 22,238 km. By early 2015, China’s total railroad mileage exceeded 112,000 km. 2, Sun published in the “Founding Strategy” of the railroad planning, “rather than railroad planning, it is more like a game of connecting lines between large and medium-sized cities …… believe that construction workers see so many straight lines, hanging The idea of throwing oneself into the river!”
Sun’s railroad plan of the mileage, there are two important data. One is that between 1912-1913, Sun repeatedly publicized “I will be able to build 200,000 miles of railways for China within ten years”, “the term of ten years, the strength of 200,000 miles of sound, live 400 trillion people’s lifeline”. Second, in 1919, in the “Strategy for the Establishment of the People’s Republic” envisioned that “if this 100,000-mile railroad is built within ten years, the need for locomotives and passenger wagons will be greatly increased” – according to Sun’s description, his design of the railroad system, a total of 76,000 miles, but Because “most of the main lines should be equipped with double tracks, so the total number of planned routes should be at least 100,000 miles.”
Whether it was “200,000 miles” or “100,000 miles,” the speed of development of China’s railroads later fell far short of Sun’s expectations. From this point of view, Sun was called “Sun Da Cao”, which seems to be justifiable. However, it is worth pointing out that Sun made special reference to the history of railroad development in the United States – for example, Sun claimed that “if the United States has more than 200,000 miles of railroad tracks, combined with the number of Chinese miles, there are 700,000 miles. It has become the richest country in the world. If China, which is five times larger than the United States, can build 3.5 million miles of railroad tracks, it will become the world’s top power.” –Considering that the United States did build more than 200,000 miles of railroads between 1880 and 1890, and that Sun repeatedly emphasized that the core of his construction plan was to bring in American capital, French capital, and even Japanese capital to build railroads for China by granting the right to operate for a certain number of years, the so-called ten-year construction The so-called “200,000 miles” and “100,000 miles” of railroads were not very realistic, but they were not very outrageous.
As for the “railway line plan” designed by Sun, there are indeed many unprofessional aspects. Tuana once accompanied Sun on a study tour of the northern railroads. He saw Sun sitting in the train drawing the line map, “the little railroad builder sitting in front of his map, marking a new line in one place, straightening this line and straightening that line again. He was completely absorbed in his dream, in the kind of dream that makes your pulse beat and your blood boil. In the end all the provincial capitals were connected by trunk lines, and all the sub-regional cities were connected by small lines, with branches in all directions, like big banyan trees, and it was an amazing production.” Tuana also raised his own doubts, arguing that Sun did not take into account cliffs or canyons, mountains or glaciers, forests or deserts, rivers or lakes when drawing the lines – “Doctor, that railroad around Tibet could never have been built. You can build it with brushes and ink, that’s all. Some of the passes your line would pass through are 18,000 feet high.”
But what Sun drew was, after all, a crude schematic, not an exact construction plan of the line. It is not advisable to criticize the “straight line” in the schematic too much.
Finally, regarding the historical case of “Sun Cannon”, we may conclude with Hu Shih’s comment on Sun.
“Mr. Sun is a practitioner, and all real practitioners have a visionary plan, separate procedures, and then do it step by step. A politician without a plan, who is just muddling along for a day, saying that he is ‘dedicated to practicality and not to empty talk’, is in fact not a practitioner, but can only be described as a muddler. The greatest injustice that Mr. Nakayama suffered in his life was that people said he was an ‘idealist’, not a practitioner. In fact, a person who does not have an ideal plan can never be a real practitioner. I call Dr. Zhongshan a practitioner because he had the guts to set the most ideal strategy for the founding of the country. But most of the politicians are all nonsense, as soon as they hear about the ten-year and twenty-year plan. As soon as they hear a ten or twenty year plan, they cover their ears and run away, saying ‘we don’t like empty talk’. Mr. Nakayama suffered this loss in his life. It was not his ideals that he suffered, but the fact that people regarded his ideals as empty talk. His revolutionary strategy, most of which was not implemented, was all because of this.” ⑩
Note
Binlin: “Memories of Sun Yat-sen’s Activities in Chicago before the Xinhai Revolution”, Guangdong Literature and History (25th series), Guangdong People’s Publishing House 1979, p. 68; ② Hu Shi: “It is difficult to know, but it is not easy to do”, Zhu Zheng, The Collected Works of Hu Shi (Vol. 3), Huacheng Publishing House 2013, p. 36; ③ Zhu Yunshan: “In Memory of the 72 Martyrs of Huanghuagang –In memoriam, Song Yulin and Han Yalob, Zhu Yunshan’s poems and essays, Unity Press, 2008, p. 113; “The Meaning of the Prime Minister’s Will,” edited by Zhu Yanping, “Chinese Nationalist Party Central Political School Documents 1927-1949,” Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 2014, p. 284. 284; ④ Zhang Guogam, “Sun Yat-sen’s Struggle with Yuan Shikai”, Liu Ping and Li Xue-tong, eds, Selected Materials of the Xinhai Revolution (Vol. 4), Social Science Literature Press 2012, p. 316; ⑤ Fang Dingying, “Tan Yanxiang’s Xiang Army and its Relationship with Sun Yat-sen”, Guangdong Literature and History Sourcebook (above), vol. 1, China Literature and History Press 2008, pp. 468, 469 (6) Zhang Pengyuan et al. recorded “Oral History of Mr. Yuan Tongchou”, Kyushu Publishing House 2013, p. 180; (7) Zhang Youyu: “The Revolutionary Party and the Cannon”, “Zhang Youyu’s Selected Writings (above)”, Law Press 1997, p. 10; (8) Duan Yunzhang and Shen Xiaomin, editors: “Chronology of the History of Sun Wen and Chen Jiongming”, Guangdong People’s Publishing House 2012, pp. 530, 531; (9) Ding Chaowu. Zhuanji zhuoji (A Brief Account of Following Dr. Sun Yat-sen during the Period of Law Protection), Selected Literary and Historical Materials (103rd Series), China Literature and History Press 1985, pp. 74, 75; ⑩ Hu Shih, “The Content and Commentary of Sun Wenshu”, published in Weekly Review, No. 31, July 20, 1919.
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