Monday, September 22, 2008
Tien-Lcheu
Tien-Lcheu was a philosopher. He was credited for being the inventor of Indian ink in 2697 BC. The type of ink that he invented was a mixture of pine smoke's soot, lamp oil mixed with gelatin on donkey's skin and musk. His invention became common by 1200 BC.
Tang Zhen
Tang Zhen , born Tang Dadao , courtesy name Zhuwan , was a Chinese philosopher and educator born in during the late and early dynasties. His given name was Dahao, but later he changed his given name to Zhen and his courtesy name to Puyuan .
In 1657, he successfully achieved the rank of ''juren'' or quasi-master degree provincial level. He then became the mayor of a town in Shanxi province. Later in life he became an author, philosophizing about politics and life.
In 1657, he successfully achieved the rank of ''juren'' or quasi-master degree provincial level. He then became the mayor of a town in Shanxi province. Later in life he became an author, philosophizing about politics and life.
Tang Junyi
Tang Junyi was a Chinese philosopher, who was one of the leading exponents of New Confucianism. He was influenced by Plato and Hegel as well as by earlier Confucian thought.
Born in mainland China, Tang Junyi went into exile in Hong Kong in 1949, after the declaration of the People's Republic of China, living there for the rest of his life.
There he helped found the New Asia College, which was integrated into the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1963. His work has mainly been influential in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States.
Born in mainland China, Tang Junyi went into exile in Hong Kong in 1949, after the declaration of the People's Republic of China, living there for the rest of his life.
There he helped found the New Asia College, which was integrated into the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 1963. His work has mainly been influential in Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States.
Sun Yat-sen
Sun Yat-sen was a revolutionary and leader often referred to as the . Sun played an instrumental role in the eventual collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911. He was the first provisional when the Republic of China was founded in 1912 and later co-founded the Kuomintang where he served as its first leader. Sun was a uniting figure in post-Imperial China, and remains unique among 20th-century politicians for being widely revered in both Mainland China and in Taiwan.
Although Sun is considered one of the greatest leaders of modern China, his political life was one of constant struggle and frequent exile. After the success of the revolution, he quickly fell out of power in the newly-founded Republic of China, and led successive revolutionary governments as a challenge to the s who controlled much of the nation. Sun did not live to see his party bring about over the country. His party, which formed a fragile alliance with the Communists, split into two factions after his death. Sun's chief legacy resides in his developing a political philosophy known as the ''Three Principles of the People'' .
Sun Yat-sen was born on November 12, 1866, to a peasant family in the village of Cuiheng, county , Guangzhou prefecture, Guangdong province . When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, the name of Xiangshan was changed to Zhongshan, His Japanese name when he was living in Japan. As a child, Sun Yat-sen listened to many stories about the Taiping Rebellion from an old Taiping soldier named Lai han-ing . After receiving a few years of local school, at age thirteen, Sun went to live with his elder brother, Sun Mei, in Honolulu. Sun Mei, who was fifteen years Sun Yat-sen's senior, had emigrated to Hawaii as a laborer and had become a prosperous merchant. Though Sun Mei was not always supportive of Sun's later revolutionary activities, he supported his brother financially, allowing Sun to give up his professional career. Sun Yat-sen studied at the prestigious Iolani School where he learned English, mathematics and science. Originally unable to speak the English language, Sun Yat-sen picked up the language so quickly that he received a prize for outstanding achievement in English from King David Kalakaua. He became a citizen of the United States and was issued an American passport. It is unclear whether or not he maintained his original citizenship as a subject of the Qing empire. After graduation from Iolani School in 1882, Sun enrolled in Oahu College for further studies for one semester.. He was soon sent home to China as his brother was becoming afraid that Sun Yat-sen was about to embrace Christianity. While at Iolani, he befriended Tong Phong, who later founded the First Chinese-American Bank.
His American experience was to be of lasting influence. Sun attached particular importance to the ideas of Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln. Sun often said that the formulation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, had been the inspiration for the ''Three Principles of the People''. He incorporated these ideas, later in life, in two highly influential books. One, ''The Vital Problem of China'' , analyzed some of the problems of colonialism: Sun warned that “…the treat nations as the silkworm farmer treats his worms; as long as they produce silk, he cares for them well; when they stop, he feeds them to the fish.” The second book, ''International Development of China'' , presented detailed proposals for the development of infrastructure in China, and attacked the ideology of laissez-faire, as well as that of adhering more to the ideas of Henry George's, particularly . His ideology remained flexible, however, reflecting his audience as much as his personal convictions. He presented himself as a strident nationalist to the nationalists, as a socialist to the socialists, and an to the anarchists, declaring at one point that “the goal of the Three Principles of the People is to create socialism and anarchism.” It is an open matter of debate whether this eclecticism reflected a sincere effort to incorporate ideas from the multiple competing schools of thought or was simply opportunistic posturing. In any case, his ideological flexibility allowed him to become a key figure in the Nationalist movement since he was one of very few people who had good relations with all of the movement's factions.
When he returned home in 1883, he became greatly troubled by what he saw as a backward China that demanded exorbitant taxes and levies from its people. The schools maintained their ancient methods, leaving no opportunity for expression of thought or opinion. Under the influence of Christian missionaries in Hawaii, Sun had developed a disdain for traditional Chinese religious beliefs. One day, Sun and his childhood friend Lu Hao-tung passed by Beijidian, a temple in Cuiheng Village, where they saw many villagers worshipping the Beiji Emperor-God in the temple. They broke off the hand of the statue, incurring the wrath of fellow villagers, and escaped to Hong Kong.
Sun studied English at the Anglican Diocesan Home and Orphanage in Hong Kong. In April 1884, Sun was transferred to the Central School of Hong Kong . Sun was later baptized in Hong Kong by an American missionary of the Congregational Church of the United States, to his brother's disdain. Sun pictured a revolution as similar to the salvation mission of the Christian church. His conversion to Christianity was related to his revolutionary ideals and push for advancement. As a result, his baptismal name, Rixin , literally means "daily renewal."
Sun studied medicine at the Guangzhou Boji Hospital under the medical missionary . Ultimately, he earned the license of medical practice as a medical doctor from the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese in 1892, of which he was one of the first two graduates. He subsequently practiced medicine in that city briefly in 1893. He had an arranged marriage with fellow villager Lu Muzhen at age twenty; she bore him a son Sun Fo, who would grow up to become a high ranking official in the Republican government, and two daughters, Sun Yan and Sun Wan.
During and after the Qing Dynasty rebellion, Sun was a leader within Tiandihui, a precursor to modern groups. Tiandihui provided much of Sun's funding. His protégé, Chiang Kai Shek, was also a member of Tiandihui .
Sun, who had grown increasingly troubled by the conservative Qing government and its refusal to adopt knowledge from the more technologically advanced Western nations, quit his medical practice in order to devote his time to transforming China. At first, Sun aligned himself with the reformists Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao who sought to transform China into a Western-style constitutional monarchy. In 1894, Sun wrote a long letter to Li Hongzhang, the governor-general of Zhili and a reformer in the court, with suggestions on how to strengthen China, but he was rebuffed. Since Sun had never been trained in the classics, the gentry did not accept Sun into their circles. From then on, Sun began to call for the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic.
Sun went to Hawaii in October 1894 and founded the Revive China Society to unveil the goal of a prospering China and as the platform for future revolutionary activities. Members were drawn mainly from fellow Cantonese expatriates and from the lower social classes.
In 1895 a coup he plotted failed, and for the next sixteen years Sun was an exile in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan, raising money for his revolutionary party and bankrolling uprisings in China. In Japan, where he was known as Nakayama Shō , he joined dissident Chinese groups and soon became their leader. He spent, on and off, about ten years in Japan while befriending and being financially aided by a democratic revolutionary in Japan, Miyazaki Toten . Nanjing Historical Remains Museum of Chinese Modern History exhibits a bronze statue of Sun and Miyazaki placed alongside. Miyazaki wrote a series of articles for newspapers including nationally-circulated Asahi about Sun and his revolutionary efforts under the title "33-year dream". His last name Nakayama came from the imperial family which occupied Sun's favorite estate mansion located in central Tokyo. He eventually left Japan due to fears of the excessively large level of support he had there and went to the States.
In Japan, He met and befriended Mariano Ponce, then a diplomat of the First Philippine Republic. Sun also supported the cause for Philippine Independence and even supplied the Philippine army with guns.
On October 10, 1911, a military in which Sun had no direct involvement , began a process that ended over two thousand years of imperial rule in China. When he learned of the successful rebellion against the emperor from press reports, Sun immediately returned to China from the United States. Later, on December 29, 1911 a meeting of representatives from provinces in elected Sun as the provisional President of the Republic of China and set January 1, 1912 as the of the First Year of the Republic. This republic calendar system is still used in Taiwan today.
The official history of the Kuomintang emphasizes Sun's role as the first provisional President, but many historians now question the importance of Sun's role in the 1911 revolution and point out that he had no direct role in the Wuchang uprising and was in fact out of the country at the time. In this interpretation, his naming as the first provisional President was precisely because he was a respected but rather unimportant figure and therefore served as an ideal compromise candidate between the revolutionaries and the conservative gentry.
However, Sun is credited for the funding of the revolutions and for keeping the spirit of revolution alive, even after a series of failed uprisings. Also, as mentioned, he successfully merged minor revolutionary groups to a single larger party, providing a better base for all those who shared the same ideals.
Sun is highly regarded as the National Father of modern China. His political philosophy, known as the ''Three Principles of the People'', was proclaimed in August 1905. In his ''Methods and Strategies of Establishing the Country'' completed in 1919, he suggested using his Principles to establish ultimate peace, , and in the country. He devoted all efforts throughout his whole lifetime until his death for a strong and prosperous China and the well being of its people.
After taking the oath of office, Sun Yat-sen sent telegrams to the leaders of all provinces, requesting them to elect and send new senators to establish the National Assembly of the Republic of China. The Assembly then declared the provisional government organizational guidelines and the provisional law of the Republic as the basic law of the nation.
The provisional government was in a very weak position. The southern provinces of China had declared independence from the Qing dynasty, but most of the northern provinces had not. Moreover, the provisional government did not have military forces of its own, and its control over elements of the New Army that had mutinied was limited, and there were still significant forces which had not declared against the Qing.
The major issue before the provisional government was gaining the support of Yuan Shikai, the man in charge of the Beiyang Army, the military of northern China. After Sun promised Yuan the presidency of the new Republic, Yuan sided with the revolution and forced the to abdicate. In 1913 Sun led an unsuccessful revolt against Yuan, and he was forced to seek asylum in Japan, where he reorganized the Kuomintang. He married Soong Ching-ling, one of the Soong sisters, in Japan on October 25, 1915, without divorcing his first wife Lu Muzhen due to opposition from the Chinese community. Lu pleaded with him to take Soong as a concubine but this was also unacceptable to Sun's Christian ethics.
In the late 1910s, China was greatly divided by different military leaders without a proper central government. Sun saw the danger of this and returned to China in 1917 to advocate unification. He started a self-proclaimed military government in Guangzhou , Guangdong Province, southern China, in 1921, and was elected as president and generalissimo.
In a February 1923 speech presented to the Students' Union in Hong Kong University, he declared that it was the corruption of China and the peace, order and good government of Hong Kong that turned him into a revolutionary. This same year, he delivered a speech in which he proclaimed his ''Three Principles of the People'' as the foundation of the country and the as the guideline for the political system and bureaucracy. Part of the speech was made into the National Anthem of the Republic of China.
To develop the military power needed for the against the militarists at Beijing, he established the Whampoa Military Academy near Guangzhou, with Chiang Kai-shek as its commandant and with such party leaders as Wang Ching-wei and Hu Han-min as political instructors. The Academy was the most eminent military school of the Republic of China and trained graduates who fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War and on both sides of the Chinese Civil War.
However, as soon as he established his government in Guangzhou, Sun Yat-sen came into conflict with entrenched local power. Sun's militarist government was not based on the Provisional Constitution of 1912, which the anti-Beiyang forces vowed to defend in the Constitutional Protection War. In addition, Sun was elected president by a parliament that did not meet quorum following its move from Beijing. Thus, many politicians and warlords alike challenged the legitimacy of Sun's militarist government. Sun's use of heavy taxes to fund the to militarily unify China also came at odds with reformers such as Chen Jiongming, who advocated establishing Guangdong as a “model province” before launching a costly military campaign. In sum, Sun's military government was opposed by the internationally-recognized Beiyang government in the north, Chen's Guangdong provincial government in the south, and other provincial powers that shifted alliance according to their own benefit.
He again became premier of the Kuomintang from 10 October 1919 – 12 March 1925. In the early 1920s Sun received help from the Comintern for his reorganization of the Kuomintang as a Leninist Party and negotiated the . In 1924, in order to hasten the conquest of China, he began a policy of active cooperation with the .
By this time, Sun was convinced that the only hope for a unified China lay in a military conquest from his base in the south, followed by a period of political tutelage that would culminate in the transition to democracy. Sun then prepared for the later Northern Expedition with help from foreign powers until his death.
On November 10 1924, Sun traveled north and delivered another speech to suggest gathering a conference for the Chinese people and the abolition of all unequal treaties with the Western powers. Two days later, he yet again traveled to Beijing to discuss the future of the country, despite his deteriorating health and the ongoing civil war of the warlords. Although ill at the time, he was still head of the southern government. On November 28 1924 Sun traveled to Japan and gave a remarkable at Kobe, Japan. He left Guangzhou to hold peace talks with the northern regional leaders on the unification of China. Sun died of on March 12, 1925, at the age of 58 at the .
One of Sun's major legacies was his political philosophy, the Three Principles of the People . These Principles included the principle of nationalism , democracy and the People's Livelihood . The Principles retained a place in the rhetoric of both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party with completely different interpretations. This difference in interpretation is due partly to the fact that Sun seemed to hold an ambiguous attitude to both capitalist and communist methods of development, as well as due to his untimely death, in 1925, before he had finished his now-famous lecture series on the Three Principles of the People. In addition, Sun is also one of the primary saints of the Vietnamese religion Cao Dai.
After Sun's death, a power struggle between his young ''protégé'' Chiang Kai-shek and his old revolutionary comrade Wang Jingwei split the KMT. At stake in this struggle was the right to lay claim to Sun's ambiguous legacy. In 1927 Chiang Kai-shek married Soong May-ling, a sister of Sun's widow Soong Ching-ling, and subsequently he could claim to be a brother-in-law of Sun. When the in 1927, marking the start of the Chinese Civil War, each group claimed to be his true heirs, a conflict that continued through World War II.
The official veneration of Sun's memory, especially in the Kuomintang, was a virtual cult, which centered around his tomb in Nanking. His widow, Soong Ching-ling, sided with the Communists during the Chinese Civil War and served from 1949 to 1981 as Vice President of the People's Republic of China and as Honorary President shortly before her death in 1981.
Sun Yat-sen remains unique among twentieth-century Chinese leaders for having a high reputation both in mainland China and in Taiwan. In Taiwan, he is seen as the Father of the Republic of China, and is known by the posthumous name ''Father of the Nation, Mr. Sun Chungshan'' . His likeness is still almost always found in ceremonial locations such as in front of legislatures and classrooms of public schools, from elementary to senior high school, and he continues to appear in new coinage and currency.
On the , Sun is also seen as a Chinese nationalist and proto-socialist, and is highly regarded as the ''Forerunner of the Revolution'' . He is mentioned by name in the preamble to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. In most major Chinese cities one of the main streets is named "Zhongshan" to memorialize him, a name even more commonly found than other popular choices such as "Renmin Lu" , or ''The People's Road'', and "Jiefang Lu" , or ''Liberation Road''. There are also numerous parks, schools, and geographical features named after him. The city of Zhongshan in Guangdong, where Sun was originally from, is named after Sun, and there is a hall dedicated to his memory at the Temple of Azure Clouds in Beijing.
In recent years, the leadership of the Communist Party of China has been increasingly invoking Sun, partly as a way of bolstering Chinese nationalism in light of Chinese economic reform and partly to increase connections with supporters of the Kuomintang on Taiwan which the PRC sees as allies against Taiwanese independence. Sun's tomb was one of the first stops made by the leaders of both the Kuomintang and the on their . A massive portrait of Sun continues to appear in Tiananmen Square for May Day and the .
Sun's notability and popularity extends beyond the Greater China region, particularly to where a large concentration of overseas Chinese reside in Singapore and Malaysia. Sun recognised the contributions that the large number of overseas Chinese could make, beyond the sending of remittances to their ancestral homeland. He therefore made multiple visits to spread his revolutionary message to these communities around the world.
Sun made a total of eight visits to Singapore between 1900 and 1911. His first visit made on September 7, 1900, was to rescue Miyazaki Toten, an ardent Japanese supporter and friend of Sun's, who was arrested there, an act which also resulted in his own arrest and a ban from visiting the island for five years. Upon his next visit in June 1905, he met local Chinese merchants Teo Eng Hock, Tan Chor Nam and Lim Nee Soon in a meeting which was to mark the commencement of direct support from the Nanyang Chinese. Upon hearing their reports on overseas Chinese revolutionists organising themselves in Europe and Japan, he urged them to establish the Singapore chapter of the Tongmenghui, which came officially into being on 6 April the following year upon his next visit.
The chapter was housed in a villa known as Wan Qing Yuan and donated for the use of revolutionalists by Teo. In 1906, the chapter grew in membership to 400, and in 1908, when Sun was in Singapore to escape the Qing government in the wake of the failed Zhennanguan Uprising, the chapter had become the regional headquarters for Tongmenghui branches in Southeast Asia. Sun and his followers travelled from Singapore to and Indonesia to spread their revolutionary message, by which time the alliance already had over twenty branches with over 3,000 members around the world.
Sun's foresight in tapping on the help and resources of the overseas Chinese population was to bear fruit on his subsequent revolutionary efforts. In one particular instance, his personal plea for financial aid at the Penang Conference held on November 13, 1910 in , helped launch a major drive for donations across the Malay Peninsula, an effort which helped finance the Second Guangzhou Uprising in 1911.
The role that overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia played during the 1911 Revolution was so significant that Sun himself recognized "Overseas Chinese as the Mother of the Revolution".
Today, Sun's legacy is remembered in Nanyang at Wan Qing Yuan, which has since been preserved and renamed as the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall, and gazetted as a of Singapore on October 28, 1994.
In Penang, the Penang Philomatic Union which was founded by Sun in 1908, has embarked on a heritage project to turn its premises at 65 Macalister Road into The project is expected to complete in late 2006.
#
#Sun Yat-sen's vision for China / Martin, Bernard, 1966.
#Sun Yat-sen, Yang Chu-yun, and the early revolutionary movement in China / Hsueh, Chun-tu
#Sun Yat-sen / Bergere, Marie-Claire. c. 1998.
#Sun Yat-sen 1866-1925 / The Millennium Biographies / Hong Kong, 1999
#Sun Yat-sen and the origins of the Chinese revolution Schiffrin, Harold Z. /1968.
#Sun Yat-sen; his life and its meaning; a critical biography. Sharman, Lyon, / 1968, c. 1934
#
#
#
#
Although Sun is considered one of the greatest leaders of modern China, his political life was one of constant struggle and frequent exile. After the success of the revolution, he quickly fell out of power in the newly-founded Republic of China, and led successive revolutionary governments as a challenge to the s who controlled much of the nation. Sun did not live to see his party bring about over the country. His party, which formed a fragile alliance with the Communists, split into two factions after his death. Sun's chief legacy resides in his developing a political philosophy known as the ''Three Principles of the People'' .
Early years
Sun Yat-sen was born on November 12, 1866, to a peasant family in the village of Cuiheng, county , Guangzhou prefecture, Guangdong province . When Sun Yat-sen died in 1925, the name of Xiangshan was changed to Zhongshan, His Japanese name when he was living in Japan. As a child, Sun Yat-sen listened to many stories about the Taiping Rebellion from an old Taiping soldier named Lai han-ing . After receiving a few years of local school, at age thirteen, Sun went to live with his elder brother, Sun Mei, in Honolulu. Sun Mei, who was fifteen years Sun Yat-sen's senior, had emigrated to Hawaii as a laborer and had become a prosperous merchant. Though Sun Mei was not always supportive of Sun's later revolutionary activities, he supported his brother financially, allowing Sun to give up his professional career. Sun Yat-sen studied at the prestigious Iolani School where he learned English, mathematics and science. Originally unable to speak the English language, Sun Yat-sen picked up the language so quickly that he received a prize for outstanding achievement in English from King David Kalakaua. He became a citizen of the United States and was issued an American passport. It is unclear whether or not he maintained his original citizenship as a subject of the Qing empire. After graduation from Iolani School in 1882, Sun enrolled in Oahu College for further studies for one semester.. He was soon sent home to China as his brother was becoming afraid that Sun Yat-sen was about to embrace Christianity. While at Iolani, he befriended Tong Phong, who later founded the First Chinese-American Bank.
His American experience was to be of lasting influence. Sun attached particular importance to the ideas of Alexander Hamilton and Abraham Lincoln. Sun often said that the formulation of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, “government of the people, by the people, for the people”, had been the inspiration for the ''Three Principles of the People''. He incorporated these ideas, later in life, in two highly influential books. One, ''The Vital Problem of China'' , analyzed some of the problems of colonialism: Sun warned that “…the treat nations as the silkworm farmer treats his worms; as long as they produce silk, he cares for them well; when they stop, he feeds them to the fish.” The second book, ''International Development of China'' , presented detailed proposals for the development of infrastructure in China, and attacked the ideology of laissez-faire, as well as that of adhering more to the ideas of Henry George's, particularly . His ideology remained flexible, however, reflecting his audience as much as his personal convictions. He presented himself as a strident nationalist to the nationalists, as a socialist to the socialists, and an to the anarchists, declaring at one point that “the goal of the Three Principles of the People is to create socialism and anarchism.” It is an open matter of debate whether this eclecticism reflected a sincere effort to incorporate ideas from the multiple competing schools of thought or was simply opportunistic posturing. In any case, his ideological flexibility allowed him to become a key figure in the Nationalist movement since he was one of very few people who had good relations with all of the movement's factions.
When he returned home in 1883, he became greatly troubled by what he saw as a backward China that demanded exorbitant taxes and levies from its people. The schools maintained their ancient methods, leaving no opportunity for expression of thought or opinion. Under the influence of Christian missionaries in Hawaii, Sun had developed a disdain for traditional Chinese religious beliefs. One day, Sun and his childhood friend Lu Hao-tung passed by Beijidian, a temple in Cuiheng Village, where they saw many villagers worshipping the Beiji Emperor-God in the temple. They broke off the hand of the statue, incurring the wrath of fellow villagers, and escaped to Hong Kong.
Sun studied English at the Anglican Diocesan Home and Orphanage in Hong Kong. In April 1884, Sun was transferred to the Central School of Hong Kong . Sun was later baptized in Hong Kong by an American missionary of the Congregational Church of the United States, to his brother's disdain. Sun pictured a revolution as similar to the salvation mission of the Christian church. His conversion to Christianity was related to his revolutionary ideals and push for advancement. As a result, his baptismal name, Rixin , literally means "daily renewal."
Sun studied medicine at the Guangzhou Boji Hospital under the medical missionary . Ultimately, he earned the license of medical practice as a medical doctor from the Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese in 1892, of which he was one of the first two graduates. He subsequently practiced medicine in that city briefly in 1893. He had an arranged marriage with fellow villager Lu Muzhen at age twenty; she bore him a son Sun Fo, who would grow up to become a high ranking official in the Republican government, and two daughters, Sun Yan and Sun Wan.
During and after the Qing Dynasty rebellion, Sun was a leader within Tiandihui, a precursor to modern groups. Tiandihui provided much of Sun's funding. His protégé, Chiang Kai Shek, was also a member of Tiandihui .
Transformation into a revolutionary
Sun, who had grown increasingly troubled by the conservative Qing government and its refusal to adopt knowledge from the more technologically advanced Western nations, quit his medical practice in order to devote his time to transforming China. At first, Sun aligned himself with the reformists Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao who sought to transform China into a Western-style constitutional monarchy. In 1894, Sun wrote a long letter to Li Hongzhang, the governor-general of Zhili and a reformer in the court, with suggestions on how to strengthen China, but he was rebuffed. Since Sun had never been trained in the classics, the gentry did not accept Sun into their circles. From then on, Sun began to call for the abolition of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic.
Sun went to Hawaii in October 1894 and founded the Revive China Society to unveil the goal of a prospering China and as the platform for future revolutionary activities. Members were drawn mainly from fellow Cantonese expatriates and from the lower social classes.
From exile to Wuchang Uprising
In 1895 a coup he plotted failed, and for the next sixteen years Sun was an exile in Europe, the United States, Canada, and Japan, raising money for his revolutionary party and bankrolling uprisings in China. In Japan, where he was known as Nakayama Shō , he joined dissident Chinese groups and soon became their leader. He spent, on and off, about ten years in Japan while befriending and being financially aided by a democratic revolutionary in Japan, Miyazaki Toten . Nanjing Historical Remains Museum of Chinese Modern History exhibits a bronze statue of Sun and Miyazaki placed alongside. Miyazaki wrote a series of articles for newspapers including nationally-circulated Asahi about Sun and his revolutionary efforts under the title "33-year dream". His last name Nakayama came from the imperial family which occupied Sun's favorite estate mansion located in central Tokyo. He eventually left Japan due to fears of the excessively large level of support he had there and went to the States.
In Japan, He met and befriended Mariano Ponce, then a diplomat of the First Philippine Republic. Sun also supported the cause for Philippine Independence and even supplied the Philippine army with guns.
On October 10, 1911, a military in which Sun had no direct involvement , began a process that ended over two thousand years of imperial rule in China. When he learned of the successful rebellion against the emperor from press reports, Sun immediately returned to China from the United States. Later, on December 29, 1911 a meeting of representatives from provinces in elected Sun as the provisional President of the Republic of China and set January 1, 1912 as the of the First Year of the Republic. This republic calendar system is still used in Taiwan today.
The official history of the Kuomintang emphasizes Sun's role as the first provisional President, but many historians now question the importance of Sun's role in the 1911 revolution and point out that he had no direct role in the Wuchang uprising and was in fact out of the country at the time. In this interpretation, his naming as the first provisional President was precisely because he was a respected but rather unimportant figure and therefore served as an ideal compromise candidate between the revolutionaries and the conservative gentry.
However, Sun is credited for the funding of the revolutions and for keeping the spirit of revolution alive, even after a series of failed uprisings. Also, as mentioned, he successfully merged minor revolutionary groups to a single larger party, providing a better base for all those who shared the same ideals.
Sun is highly regarded as the National Father of modern China. His political philosophy, known as the ''Three Principles of the People'', was proclaimed in August 1905. In his ''Methods and Strategies of Establishing the Country'' completed in 1919, he suggested using his Principles to establish ultimate peace, , and in the country. He devoted all efforts throughout his whole lifetime until his death for a strong and prosperous China and the well being of its people.
Republic of China
After taking the oath of office, Sun Yat-sen sent telegrams to the leaders of all provinces, requesting them to elect and send new senators to establish the National Assembly of the Republic of China. The Assembly then declared the provisional government organizational guidelines and the provisional law of the Republic as the basic law of the nation.
The provisional government was in a very weak position. The southern provinces of China had declared independence from the Qing dynasty, but most of the northern provinces had not. Moreover, the provisional government did not have military forces of its own, and its control over elements of the New Army that had mutinied was limited, and there were still significant forces which had not declared against the Qing.
The major issue before the provisional government was gaining the support of Yuan Shikai, the man in charge of the Beiyang Army, the military of northern China. After Sun promised Yuan the presidency of the new Republic, Yuan sided with the revolution and forced the to abdicate. In 1913 Sun led an unsuccessful revolt against Yuan, and he was forced to seek asylum in Japan, where he reorganized the Kuomintang. He married Soong Ching-ling, one of the Soong sisters, in Japan on October 25, 1915, without divorcing his first wife Lu Muzhen due to opposition from the Chinese community. Lu pleaded with him to take Soong as a concubine but this was also unacceptable to Sun's Christian ethics.
Guangzhou militarist government
In the late 1910s, China was greatly divided by different military leaders without a proper central government. Sun saw the danger of this and returned to China in 1917 to advocate unification. He started a self-proclaimed military government in Guangzhou , Guangdong Province, southern China, in 1921, and was elected as president and generalissimo.
In a February 1923 speech presented to the Students' Union in Hong Kong University, he declared that it was the corruption of China and the peace, order and good government of Hong Kong that turned him into a revolutionary. This same year, he delivered a speech in which he proclaimed his ''Three Principles of the People'' as the foundation of the country and the as the guideline for the political system and bureaucracy. Part of the speech was made into the National Anthem of the Republic of China.
To develop the military power needed for the against the militarists at Beijing, he established the Whampoa Military Academy near Guangzhou, with Chiang Kai-shek as its commandant and with such party leaders as Wang Ching-wei and Hu Han-min as political instructors. The Academy was the most eminent military school of the Republic of China and trained graduates who fought in the Second Sino-Japanese War and on both sides of the Chinese Civil War.
However, as soon as he established his government in Guangzhou, Sun Yat-sen came into conflict with entrenched local power. Sun's militarist government was not based on the Provisional Constitution of 1912, which the anti-Beiyang forces vowed to defend in the Constitutional Protection War. In addition, Sun was elected president by a parliament that did not meet quorum following its move from Beijing. Thus, many politicians and warlords alike challenged the legitimacy of Sun's militarist government. Sun's use of heavy taxes to fund the to militarily unify China also came at odds with reformers such as Chen Jiongming, who advocated establishing Guangdong as a “model province” before launching a costly military campaign. In sum, Sun's military government was opposed by the internationally-recognized Beiyang government in the north, Chen's Guangdong provincial government in the south, and other provincial powers that shifted alliance according to their own benefit.
Path to Northern Expedition and death
He again became premier of the Kuomintang from 10 October 1919 – 12 March 1925. In the early 1920s Sun received help from the Comintern for his reorganization of the Kuomintang as a Leninist Party and negotiated the . In 1924, in order to hasten the conquest of China, he began a policy of active cooperation with the .
By this time, Sun was convinced that the only hope for a unified China lay in a military conquest from his base in the south, followed by a period of political tutelage that would culminate in the transition to democracy. Sun then prepared for the later Northern Expedition with help from foreign powers until his death.
On November 10 1924, Sun traveled north and delivered another speech to suggest gathering a conference for the Chinese people and the abolition of all unequal treaties with the Western powers. Two days later, he yet again traveled to Beijing to discuss the future of the country, despite his deteriorating health and the ongoing civil war of the warlords. Although ill at the time, he was still head of the southern government. On November 28 1924 Sun traveled to Japan and gave a remarkable at Kobe, Japan. He left Guangzhou to hold peace talks with the northern regional leaders on the unification of China. Sun died of on March 12, 1925, at the age of 58 at the .
Legacy
One of Sun's major legacies was his political philosophy, the Three Principles of the People . These Principles included the principle of nationalism , democracy and the People's Livelihood . The Principles retained a place in the rhetoric of both the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party with completely different interpretations. This difference in interpretation is due partly to the fact that Sun seemed to hold an ambiguous attitude to both capitalist and communist methods of development, as well as due to his untimely death, in 1925, before he had finished his now-famous lecture series on the Three Principles of the People. In addition, Sun is also one of the primary saints of the Vietnamese religion Cao Dai.
Power struggle
After Sun's death, a power struggle between his young ''protégé'' Chiang Kai-shek and his old revolutionary comrade Wang Jingwei split the KMT. At stake in this struggle was the right to lay claim to Sun's ambiguous legacy. In 1927 Chiang Kai-shek married Soong May-ling, a sister of Sun's widow Soong Ching-ling, and subsequently he could claim to be a brother-in-law of Sun. When the in 1927, marking the start of the Chinese Civil War, each group claimed to be his true heirs, a conflict that continued through World War II.
The official veneration of Sun's memory, especially in the Kuomintang, was a virtual cult, which centered around his tomb in Nanking. His widow, Soong Ching-ling, sided with the Communists during the Chinese Civil War and served from 1949 to 1981 as Vice President of the People's Republic of China and as Honorary President shortly before her death in 1981.
Father of the Nation
Sun Yat-sen remains unique among twentieth-century Chinese leaders for having a high reputation both in mainland China and in Taiwan. In Taiwan, he is seen as the Father of the Republic of China, and is known by the posthumous name ''Father of the Nation, Mr. Sun Chungshan'' . His likeness is still almost always found in ceremonial locations such as in front of legislatures and classrooms of public schools, from elementary to senior high school, and he continues to appear in new coinage and currency.
Forerunner of the Revolution
On the , Sun is also seen as a Chinese nationalist and proto-socialist, and is highly regarded as the ''Forerunner of the Revolution'' . He is mentioned by name in the preamble to the Constitution of the People's Republic of China. In most major Chinese cities one of the main streets is named "Zhongshan" to memorialize him, a name even more commonly found than other popular choices such as "Renmin Lu" , or ''The People's Road'', and "Jiefang Lu" , or ''Liberation Road''. There are also numerous parks, schools, and geographical features named after him. The city of Zhongshan in Guangdong, where Sun was originally from, is named after Sun, and there is a hall dedicated to his memory at the Temple of Azure Clouds in Beijing.
In recent years, the leadership of the Communist Party of China has been increasingly invoking Sun, partly as a way of bolstering Chinese nationalism in light of Chinese economic reform and partly to increase connections with supporters of the Kuomintang on Taiwan which the PRC sees as allies against Taiwanese independence. Sun's tomb was one of the first stops made by the leaders of both the Kuomintang and the on their . A massive portrait of Sun continues to appear in Tiananmen Square for May Day and the .
Sun and the overseas Chinese
Sun's notability and popularity extends beyond the Greater China region, particularly to where a large concentration of overseas Chinese reside in Singapore and Malaysia. Sun recognised the contributions that the large number of overseas Chinese could make, beyond the sending of remittances to their ancestral homeland. He therefore made multiple visits to spread his revolutionary message to these communities around the world.
Sun made a total of eight visits to Singapore between 1900 and 1911. His first visit made on September 7, 1900, was to rescue Miyazaki Toten, an ardent Japanese supporter and friend of Sun's, who was arrested there, an act which also resulted in his own arrest and a ban from visiting the island for five years. Upon his next visit in June 1905, he met local Chinese merchants Teo Eng Hock, Tan Chor Nam and Lim Nee Soon in a meeting which was to mark the commencement of direct support from the Nanyang Chinese. Upon hearing their reports on overseas Chinese revolutionists organising themselves in Europe and Japan, he urged them to establish the Singapore chapter of the Tongmenghui, which came officially into being on 6 April the following year upon his next visit.
The chapter was housed in a villa known as Wan Qing Yuan and donated for the use of revolutionalists by Teo. In 1906, the chapter grew in membership to 400, and in 1908, when Sun was in Singapore to escape the Qing government in the wake of the failed Zhennanguan Uprising, the chapter had become the regional headquarters for Tongmenghui branches in Southeast Asia. Sun and his followers travelled from Singapore to and Indonesia to spread their revolutionary message, by which time the alliance already had over twenty branches with over 3,000 members around the world.
Sun's foresight in tapping on the help and resources of the overseas Chinese population was to bear fruit on his subsequent revolutionary efforts. In one particular instance, his personal plea for financial aid at the Penang Conference held on November 13, 1910 in , helped launch a major drive for donations across the Malay Peninsula, an effort which helped finance the Second Guangzhou Uprising in 1911.
The role that overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia played during the 1911 Revolution was so significant that Sun himself recognized "Overseas Chinese as the Mother of the Revolution".
Today, Sun's legacy is remembered in Nanyang at Wan Qing Yuan, which has since been preserved and renamed as the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall, and gazetted as a of Singapore on October 28, 1994.
In Penang, the Penang Philomatic Union which was founded by Sun in 1908, has embarked on a heritage project to turn its premises at 65 Macalister Road into The project is expected to complete in late 2006.
Names
Further reading
#
#Sun Yat-sen's vision for China / Martin, Bernard, 1966.
#Sun Yat-sen, Yang Chu-yun, and the early revolutionary movement in China / Hsueh, Chun-tu
#Sun Yat-sen / Bergere, Marie-Claire. c. 1998.
#Sun Yat-sen 1866-1925 / The Millennium Biographies / Hong Kong, 1999
#Sun Yat-sen and the origins of the Chinese revolution Schiffrin, Harold Z. /1968.
#Sun Yat-sen; his life and its meaning; a critical biography. Sharman, Lyon, / 1968, c. 1934
#
#
#
#
Su Song
Su Song was a renowned , , , , , , , , and , , antiquarian, and of the Song Dynasty .
Su Song was the engineer of a clock tower in medieval Kaifeng, which employed the use of an early escapement mechanism. The escapement mechanism of Su's clock tower had previously been invented by Buddhist monk Yi Xing and government official Liang Lingzan in 725 AD to operate a water-powered armillary sphere, although Su's armillary sphere was the first to be provided with a mechanical clock drive. The clock tower had 133 different clock jacks to indicate and . Su Song's treatise about the clock tower, ''Xinyi Xiangfayao'' , has survived since its written form in 1092 and official printed publication in 1094. The book has been analyzed by many historians, such as Joseph Needham. However, the clock itself was dismantled by the invading Jurchen army in AD 1127, and although attempts were made to reassemble the clock tower, it was never successfully reinstated. Although the ''Xinyi Xiangfayao'' was his best known treatise, the polymath had other works compiled as well. He completed a large celestial atlas of several star maps, several maps, as well as a treatise on pharmacology. The latter discussed related subjects on mineralogy, zoology, botany, and metallurgy.
Although later European Jesuit travelers to China such as Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault would briefly mention Chinese clocks with wheel drives in their writing, early European visitors to China mistakenly believed that the Chinese had never advanced beyond the stage of the clepsydra clock, incense clock, and sundial. Although not as prominent as in the Song period, contemporary Chinese texts of the Ming Dynasty describe a relatively unbroken history of designs of mechanical clocks in China from the 13th to the 16th centuries. that in Su's youth, he mastered the and rose to the top of the examination list for writing the best essay on general principles and structure of the Chinese calendar. He also was an antiquarian and . After serving in the Ministry of Personnel, he became a in 1086. Eventually, Su rose to the post of Vice President of the Secretariat. Among many honorable positions and titles conferred upon him, Su Song was also one of the 'Deputy Tutors of the Heir Apparent'. At court, he chose to distance himself from the political rivalries of the Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Sima Guang , and the Reformists, led by Prime Minister Wang Anshi ; although many of his associates were of the Conservative faction. sharing ideas about calendrical science, as the Liao state had created its own calendar in 994 AD. In an embarrassing event, Su Song admitted to the emperor that the calendar of the Khitan people was in fact a bit more accurate than their own, resulting in the fining and punishment of officials in the Bureau of Astronomy and Calendar. Su was supposed to travel north to Liao and arrive promptly for a birthday celebration and feast on a day which coincided with the winter solstice of the Song calendar, but was actually a day behind the Liao calendar. Historian Liu Heping states that Emperor Zhezong of Song sponsored Su Song's clocktower in 1086 in order to compete with the Liao for "scientific and national superiority." In 1081, the court instructed Su Song to compile into a book the diplomatic history of Song-Liao relations, an elaborate task that, once complete, filled 200 volumes. With his extensive knowledge of cartography, Su Song was able to settle a heated border dispute between the Song and Liao dynasties.
Su Song also created a celestial atlas as well , which had the hour circles between the xiu forming the , with stars marked in quasi-orthomorphic cylindrical projection on each side of the equator, and thus was in accordance to their north polar distances. This cylindrical projection was similar to Mercator projection, the latter innovated by Gerard Mercator in 1569. This is so because Su Song's fourth star map places the position of the pole star halfway between Tian shu and the current Polaris; this was the more accurate calculation that Shen Kuo had made when he observed the pole star over a period of three months with his width-improved sighting tube.
In the year 1070 Su Song and a team of scholars compiled and edited the ''Bencao Tujing'' , which was a groundbreaking treatise on pharmaceutical botany, zoology, and mineralogy. In compiling information for pharmaceutical knowledge, Su Song worked with such notable scholars as Zhang Yuxi, Lin Yi, Zhang Dong, and many others. This treatise documented a wide range of pharmaceutical practices, including the use of ephedrine as a drug. It includes valuable information on metallurgy and the steel and iron industries during 11th century China. He created a systematic approach to listing various different minerals and their use in medicinal concoctions, such as all the variously known forms of mica that could be used to cure ills through digestion. He wrote of the subconchoidal fracture of native cinnabar, signs of ore beds, and provided description on crystal form. Similar to the ore channels formed by circulation of ground water written of by the later scientist Georgius Agricola, Su Song made similar statements concerning copper carbonate, as did the earlier ''Rihua Bencao'' of 970 with copper sulphate. According to Edward H. Schafer, Su accurately described the translucent quality of fine realgar, its origin from pods found in rocky river gorges, it's matrix being pitted with holes and having a deep red, almost purple color, and that the mineral varied in sizes ranging from the size of a pea to a walnut. Citing evidence from an ancient work by Zheng Xuan , Su believed that physicians of the ancient Zhou Dynasty used realgar as a remedy for ulcers. As believed in Su's day, the "five poisons" used by Zhou era physicians for this purpose were thought to be cinnabar, realgar, chalcanthite, alum, and magnetite. For example, he noted that the freshwater crab species ''Eriocher sinensis'' could be found in the Huai River running through Anhui, in waterways near the capital city, as well as reservoirs and marshes of Hebei.
Su Song compiled one of the greatest Chinese horological treatises of the Middle Ages, surrounding himself with an entourage of notable engineers and astronomers to assist in various projects. ''Xinyi Xiangfayao'' , written in 1092, was the final product of his life's achievements in horology and clockwork. Fortunately, this book of Su's that was handed down included 47 different illustrations of great detail of the mechanical workings for his clocktower.
Su Song's greatest project was the 40-foot-tall water-powered astronomical clocktower constructed in Kaifeng, the wooden pilot model completed in 1088, the bronze components cast by 1090, while the wholly finished work was completed by 1094 during the reign of Emperor Zhezong of Song. The emperor had previously commissioned Han Gonglian, Acting Secretary of the Ministry of Personnel, to head the project, but the leadership position was instead handed down to Su Song. The emperor ordered in 1086 for Su to reconstruct the ''hun yi'', or "armillary clock", for a new clock-tower in the capital city. Su worked with the aid of Han Gong-lian, who applied his extensive knowledge of mathematics to the construction of the clock-tower. A small-scale wooden model was first crafted by Su Song, testing its intricate parts before applying it to an actual full-scale clock tower. In the end, the clock-tower had many impressive features, such as the water-powered, rotating armillary sphere crowning the top-level and weighing some 10 to 20 tons, a sophisticated use of oblique gears and an escapement mechanism, as well as an exterior facade of a fanciful Chinese pagoda. Upon its completion, the tower was called the ''Shui Yun Yi Xiang Tai'', or "Tower for the Water-Powered Sphere and Globe". Joseph Needham writes:
Years after Su's death, the capital city of Kaifeng was besieged and captured in 1127 by the Jurchens of the Manchurian-based . Yet the mechanical legacy of Su Song did not end with his work. In about 1150, the writer Xue Jixuan noted that there were four types of clocks in his day, the basic waterclock, the incense clock, the sundial, and the clock with 'revolving and snapping springs' . The rulers of the continuing Yuan Dynasty had a vested interest in the advancement of mechanical clockworks. The astronomer Guo Shoujing helped restore the Beijing Ancient Observatory beginning in 1276, where he crafted a water-powered armillary sphere and clock with clock jacks being fully implemented and sounding the hours. Complex gearing for uniquely Chinese clockworks were continued in the Ming Dynasty , with new designs driven by the power of falling sand instead of water to provide motive power to the wheel drive, and some Ming clocks perhaps featured reduction gearing rather than the earlier escapement of Su Song. The earliest such design of a sand-clock was made by Zhan Xiyuan around 1370, which featured not only the scoop wheel of Su Song' device, but also a new addition of a over which a pointer circulated, much like new European clocks of the same period.
Su Song's escapement is similar and reminiscent of the anchor escapement found in European clockworks of the 17th century. In Su Song's waterwheel linkwork device the action of the escapement's arrest and release are achieved by gravity exerted periodically as the continuous flow of liquid would fill containers of limited size.
In his writing, Su Song accredited the predecessor of his working clock to the hydraulic-powered armillary sphere of Zhang Heng , an earlier Chinese scientist. However, Su Song stated in his writing that after Zhang's death, no one was able to replicate his device, much like his own.
The mechanical clockworks for Su Song's astronomical tower featured a great driving-wheel that was 11 feet in diameter, carrying 36 scoops on its circumference, into each of which water would pour at uniform rate from the 'constant-level tank' . The main driving shaft of iron, with its cylindrical necks supported on iron crescent-shaped bearings, ended in a pinion which engages with a gear-wheel at the lower end of the main vertical transmission-shaft.
Joseph Needham gives a general description of the clock-tower itself:
That was figure Fig. 650, while Fig. 656 displays the upper and lower norias with their tanks and the manual wheel for operating them.
Fig. 657 displays a rather miniature and scaled-down pic for the basics of the escapement mechanism in an illustration , with Needham's caption here in this quote: "The 'celestial balance' or escapement mechanism of Su Sung's clockwork ,". The latter figure carefully labels:
*a right upper lock
*upper link
*left upper lock
*axle or pivot
*long chain
*upper counterweight
*sump
*checking fork of the lower balancing lever
*coupling tongue
*main counterweight.
The world's oldest illustrated depiction of an endless power-transmitting chain drive is from Su Song's horological treatise. as seen in Needham's Fig. 410 and Fig. 652. Although the ancient Philo of Byzantium featured a sort of endless belt for his magazine , which did not transmit continuous power, These gears having 600 teeth would thus ensure the division the day into basic unit measurements of 2 minutes and 24 seconds. Zhang's armillary sphere has often been compared to the 13th century monarch Alfonso X of Castile in Islamic-era Spain. The chief difference was that Alfonso's instrument featured an arrangement for making measurements of the azimuth and altitude, which was present in the Arabic tradition, while Su Song's armillary sphere was duly graduated. For the drawing of Su's armillary sphere, the listing of components are:
*The Outer Nest
**meridian circle
**horizon circle
**outer equator circle
*The Middle Nest This appealed to emperor, who featured artwork representing the clocktower on vehicles of major imperial processions, as illustrated in the ''Illustration of the Imperial Grand Carriage Procession'' of 1053.
The later Ming Dynasty/Qing Dynasty scholar Qian Zeng held an old volume of Su's work, which he faithfully reproduced in a newly-printed edition. He took special care in avoiding any rewording or inconsistencies with the original text as well.
In the realm of modern research, the deceased British biochemist and historian of Chinese science Joseph Needham has done extensive research and analysis of Su Song's texts and various achievements in his ''Science and Civilization in China'' book series. Joseph Needham had also related many detailed passages from Su's contemporary medieval Chinese sources on the life of Su and his achievements known in his day. In 1956, John Christiansen reconstructed a model of Su Song's clocktower in a famous drawing, which garnered attention in the West towards 11th century Chinese engineering. A miniature model of Su Song's clock was reconstructed by John Cambridge and is now on display at the at South Kensington, London.
Su Song was the engineer of a clock tower in medieval Kaifeng, which employed the use of an early escapement mechanism. The escapement mechanism of Su's clock tower had previously been invented by Buddhist monk Yi Xing and government official Liang Lingzan in 725 AD to operate a water-powered armillary sphere, although Su's armillary sphere was the first to be provided with a mechanical clock drive. The clock tower had 133 different clock jacks to indicate and . Su Song's treatise about the clock tower, ''Xinyi Xiangfayao'' , has survived since its written form in 1092 and official printed publication in 1094. The book has been analyzed by many historians, such as Joseph Needham. However, the clock itself was dismantled by the invading Jurchen army in AD 1127, and although attempts were made to reassemble the clock tower, it was never successfully reinstated. Although the ''Xinyi Xiangfayao'' was his best known treatise, the polymath had other works compiled as well. He completed a large celestial atlas of several star maps, several maps, as well as a treatise on pharmacology. The latter discussed related subjects on mineralogy, zoology, botany, and metallurgy.
Although later European Jesuit travelers to China such as Matteo Ricci and Nicolas Trigault would briefly mention Chinese clocks with wheel drives in their writing, early European visitors to China mistakenly believed that the Chinese had never advanced beyond the stage of the clepsydra clock, incense clock, and sundial. Although not as prominent as in the Song period, contemporary Chinese texts of the Ming Dynasty describe a relatively unbroken history of designs of mechanical clocks in China from the 13th to the 16th centuries. that in Su's youth, he mastered the and rose to the top of the examination list for writing the best essay on general principles and structure of the Chinese calendar. He also was an antiquarian and . After serving in the Ministry of Personnel, he became a in 1086. Eventually, Su rose to the post of Vice President of the Secretariat. Among many honorable positions and titles conferred upon him, Su Song was also one of the 'Deputy Tutors of the Heir Apparent'. At court, he chose to distance himself from the political rivalries of the Conservatives, led by Prime Minister Sima Guang , and the Reformists, led by Prime Minister Wang Anshi ; although many of his associates were of the Conservative faction. sharing ideas about calendrical science, as the Liao state had created its own calendar in 994 AD. In an embarrassing event, Su Song admitted to the emperor that the calendar of the Khitan people was in fact a bit more accurate than their own, resulting in the fining and punishment of officials in the Bureau of Astronomy and Calendar. Su was supposed to travel north to Liao and arrive promptly for a birthday celebration and feast on a day which coincided with the winter solstice of the Song calendar, but was actually a day behind the Liao calendar. Historian Liu Heping states that Emperor Zhezong of Song sponsored Su Song's clocktower in 1086 in order to compete with the Liao for "scientific and national superiority." In 1081, the court instructed Su Song to compile into a book the diplomatic history of Song-Liao relations, an elaborate task that, once complete, filled 200 volumes. With his extensive knowledge of cartography, Su Song was able to settle a heated border dispute between the Song and Liao dynasties.
Astronomy
Su Song also created a celestial atlas as well , which had the hour circles between the xiu forming the , with stars marked in quasi-orthomorphic cylindrical projection on each side of the equator, and thus was in accordance to their north polar distances. This cylindrical projection was similar to Mercator projection, the latter innovated by Gerard Mercator in 1569. This is so because Su Song's fourth star map places the position of the pole star halfway between Tian shu and the current Polaris; this was the more accurate calculation that Shen Kuo had made when he observed the pole star over a period of three months with his width-improved sighting tube.
Pharmacology, botany, zoology, and mineralogy
In the year 1070 Su Song and a team of scholars compiled and edited the ''Bencao Tujing'' , which was a groundbreaking treatise on pharmaceutical botany, zoology, and mineralogy. In compiling information for pharmaceutical knowledge, Su Song worked with such notable scholars as Zhang Yuxi, Lin Yi, Zhang Dong, and many others. This treatise documented a wide range of pharmaceutical practices, including the use of ephedrine as a drug. It includes valuable information on metallurgy and the steel and iron industries during 11th century China. He created a systematic approach to listing various different minerals and their use in medicinal concoctions, such as all the variously known forms of mica that could be used to cure ills through digestion. He wrote of the subconchoidal fracture of native cinnabar, signs of ore beds, and provided description on crystal form. Similar to the ore channels formed by circulation of ground water written of by the later scientist Georgius Agricola, Su Song made similar statements concerning copper carbonate, as did the earlier ''Rihua Bencao'' of 970 with copper sulphate. According to Edward H. Schafer, Su accurately described the translucent quality of fine realgar, its origin from pods found in rocky river gorges, it's matrix being pitted with holes and having a deep red, almost purple color, and that the mineral varied in sizes ranging from the size of a pea to a walnut. Citing evidence from an ancient work by Zheng Xuan , Su believed that physicians of the ancient Zhou Dynasty used realgar as a remedy for ulcers. As believed in Su's day, the "five poisons" used by Zhou era physicians for this purpose were thought to be cinnabar, realgar, chalcanthite, alum, and magnetite. For example, he noted that the freshwater crab species ''Eriocher sinensis'' could be found in the Huai River running through Anhui, in waterways near the capital city, as well as reservoirs and marshes of Hebei.
Horology and mechanical engineering
Su Song compiled one of the greatest Chinese horological treatises of the Middle Ages, surrounding himself with an entourage of notable engineers and astronomers to assist in various projects. ''Xinyi Xiangfayao'' , written in 1092, was the final product of his life's achievements in horology and clockwork. Fortunately, this book of Su's that was handed down included 47 different illustrations of great detail of the mechanical workings for his clocktower.
Su Song's greatest project was the 40-foot-tall water-powered astronomical clocktower constructed in Kaifeng, the wooden pilot model completed in 1088, the bronze components cast by 1090, while the wholly finished work was completed by 1094 during the reign of Emperor Zhezong of Song. The emperor had previously commissioned Han Gonglian, Acting Secretary of the Ministry of Personnel, to head the project, but the leadership position was instead handed down to Su Song. The emperor ordered in 1086 for Su to reconstruct the ''hun yi'', or "armillary clock", for a new clock-tower in the capital city. Su worked with the aid of Han Gong-lian, who applied his extensive knowledge of mathematics to the construction of the clock-tower. A small-scale wooden model was first crafted by Su Song, testing its intricate parts before applying it to an actual full-scale clock tower. In the end, the clock-tower had many impressive features, such as the water-powered, rotating armillary sphere crowning the top-level and weighing some 10 to 20 tons, a sophisticated use of oblique gears and an escapement mechanism, as well as an exterior facade of a fanciful Chinese pagoda. Upon its completion, the tower was called the ''Shui Yun Yi Xiang Tai'', or "Tower for the Water-Powered Sphere and Globe". Joseph Needham writes:
Years after Su's death, the capital city of Kaifeng was besieged and captured in 1127 by the Jurchens of the Manchurian-based . Yet the mechanical legacy of Su Song did not end with his work. In about 1150, the writer Xue Jixuan noted that there were four types of clocks in his day, the basic waterclock, the incense clock, the sundial, and the clock with 'revolving and snapping springs' . The rulers of the continuing Yuan Dynasty had a vested interest in the advancement of mechanical clockworks. The astronomer Guo Shoujing helped restore the Beijing Ancient Observatory beginning in 1276, where he crafted a water-powered armillary sphere and clock with clock jacks being fully implemented and sounding the hours. Complex gearing for uniquely Chinese clockworks were continued in the Ming Dynasty , with new designs driven by the power of falling sand instead of water to provide motive power to the wheel drive, and some Ming clocks perhaps featured reduction gearing rather than the earlier escapement of Su Song. The earliest such design of a sand-clock was made by Zhan Xiyuan around 1370, which featured not only the scoop wheel of Su Song' device, but also a new addition of a over which a pointer circulated, much like new European clocks of the same period.
Su Song's escapement mechanism
Su Song's escapement is similar and reminiscent of the anchor escapement found in European clockworks of the 17th century. In Su Song's waterwheel linkwork device the action of the escapement's arrest and release are achieved by gravity exerted periodically as the continuous flow of liquid would fill containers of limited size.
In his writing, Su Song accredited the predecessor of his working clock to the hydraulic-powered armillary sphere of Zhang Heng , an earlier Chinese scientist. However, Su Song stated in his writing that after Zhang's death, no one was able to replicate his device, much like his own.
The mechanical clockworks for Su Song's astronomical tower featured a great driving-wheel that was 11 feet in diameter, carrying 36 scoops on its circumference, into each of which water would pour at uniform rate from the 'constant-level tank' . The main driving shaft of iron, with its cylindrical necks supported on iron crescent-shaped bearings, ended in a pinion which engages with a gear-wheel at the lower end of the main vertical transmission-shaft.
Joseph Needham gives a general description of the clock-tower itself:
That was figure Fig. 650, while Fig. 656 displays the upper and lower norias with their tanks and the manual wheel for operating them.
Fig. 657 displays a rather miniature and scaled-down pic for the basics of the escapement mechanism in an illustration , with Needham's caption here in this quote: "The 'celestial balance' or escapement mechanism of Su Sung's clockwork ,". The latter figure carefully labels:
*a right upper lock
*upper link
*left upper lock
*axle or pivot
*long chain
*upper counterweight
*sump
*checking fork of the lower balancing lever
*coupling tongue
*main counterweight.
The endless chain drive
The world's oldest illustrated depiction of an endless power-transmitting chain drive is from Su Song's horological treatise. as seen in Needham's Fig. 410 and Fig. 652. Although the ancient Philo of Byzantium featured a sort of endless belt for his magazine , which did not transmit continuous power, These gears having 600 teeth would thus ensure the division the day into basic unit measurements of 2 minutes and 24 seconds. Zhang's armillary sphere has often been compared to the 13th century monarch Alfonso X of Castile in Islamic-era Spain. The chief difference was that Alfonso's instrument featured an arrangement for making measurements of the azimuth and altitude, which was present in the Arabic tradition, while Su Song's armillary sphere was duly graduated. For the drawing of Su's armillary sphere, the listing of components are:
*The Outer Nest
**meridian circle
**horizon circle
**outer equator circle
*The Middle Nest This appealed to emperor, who featured artwork representing the clocktower on vehicles of major imperial processions, as illustrated in the ''Illustration of the Imperial Grand Carriage Procession'' of 1053.
The later Ming Dynasty/Qing Dynasty scholar Qian Zeng held an old volume of Su's work, which he faithfully reproduced in a newly-printed edition. He took special care in avoiding any rewording or inconsistencies with the original text as well.
In the realm of modern research, the deceased British biochemist and historian of Chinese science Joseph Needham has done extensive research and analysis of Su Song's texts and various achievements in his ''Science and Civilization in China'' book series. Joseph Needham had also related many detailed passages from Su's contemporary medieval Chinese sources on the life of Su and his achievements known in his day. In 1956, John Christiansen reconstructed a model of Su Song's clocktower in a famous drawing, which garnered attention in the West towards 11th century Chinese engineering. A miniature model of Su Song's clock was reconstructed by John Cambridge and is now on display at the at South Kensington, London.
Shen Dao
Shen Dao was an itinerant Chinese philosopher from who also served at the Jixia academy in . His own original 42 essays have been lost, and only 7 are still extant, and he is known largely through short references and the writings of others, notably Han Fei and Zhuang Zi.
The most noteworthy aspect of Shen Dao's philosophy is the fact that it represented a synthesis of and thought. While these two schools may seem quite opposed to each other in some regards, they both share a view of nature as a fundamentally amoral force, and by extension, reality as an arena without set moral imperative – a stance that differentiates both schools from Confucianism.
In Confucianism, power is legitimized through superior moral character and wisdom. According to Shen Dao, authority arises and is sustained due to the nature of actual circumstances, rather than in accordance with an abstract set of moral values. Things simply flow based on the natural course of The Way , and do not arrange themselves so as to conform to an ethical system. Through this idea, it is possible to see a bridge between the mystical simplicity of Taoism and the cynical realism of Legalism.
The most noteworthy aspect of Shen Dao's philosophy is the fact that it represented a synthesis of and thought. While these two schools may seem quite opposed to each other in some regards, they both share a view of nature as a fundamentally amoral force, and by extension, reality as an arena without set moral imperative – a stance that differentiates both schools from Confucianism.
In Confucianism, power is legitimized through superior moral character and wisdom. According to Shen Dao, authority arises and is sustained due to the nature of actual circumstances, rather than in accordance with an abstract set of moral values. Things simply flow based on the natural course of The Way , and do not arrange themselves so as to conform to an ethical system. Through this idea, it is possible to see a bridge between the mystical simplicity of Taoism and the cynical realism of Legalism.
Shen Buhai
Shen Buhai was a bureaucrat who was the of under Marquis Zhao of Han from 351 BC to 337 BC. Shen was born in the State of ; he was likely to have been a minor official for the State of Zheng. After Han conquered Zheng in 375 BC, he rose up in the ranks of the Han officialdom. He was an innovator of administrative bureaucracy and was often linked with the . He is credited with writing the ''Shenzi''. Shen Buhai successfully reformed the bureaucracy in the State of Han; his reforms would later be copied by other states. He died of natural causes while in office.
Shen was chiefly concerned with government administration through the use of bureaucracy. His system required a strong ruler at the center. Shen Buhai believed that the ideal ruler should remain distant from his officials, keeping his innermost thoughts secret and maintaining an independence of thought. According to Shen, the ruler needed to be the loneliest person in the world.
To Shen Buhai, the greatest threat to a ruler's power came from within. He believed that threats from powerful, independent ministers to usurp power were more dangerous than threats from external forces. Shen championed the concept of ''Shu'' . Shen advocated for maintaining checks against the power of officials, and in equality among the officials.
He touted the primacy of finding the right person for the job . He evaluated officials based on skill, achievement and seniority. He also encouraged routine assessments of officials.
Shen Buhai promulgated his own concept of wu wei, which caused some scholars to link him with Taoism. In Shen's case, he believed that rulers maximized power by exercising power as little as possible. He also encouraged rulers to limit their scope, leaving the details of administration to capable ministers. Some modern scholars argued that Shen's legalism was more a blend of Taoism and than just purely the conceptual ''Shu'' school of Legalism.
Shen Buhai was criticized by both Confucians and Legalists. Unlike the Confucians, he never mentioned virtue; unlike the Shang Yang wing of the Legalists, he never mentioned Fa . The Confucian Xun Zi strongly criticized Shen Buhai's emphasis on secrecy and lack of trust in ministers. The legalist Han Fei criticized Shen for paying too much attention to methodology at the expense of laws.
Although Shen Buhai was later linked inseparably with the Legalists, it was Hanfei who merged the ideas of Shen Buhai with those of Shang Yang. In 141 BC, under the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, Shen Buhai's name was listed with other legalist thinkers whose ideas were officially banned from the government; from that point on, scholarship on the ideas of Shen Buhai went into a steep decline.
Shen Buhai was known for his cryptic writing style. He was credited with writing a now extinct two chapter text, the ''Shenzi'' . During the Han Dynasty, the compilation was organized into two outer chapters, and six inner chapters, but the admeasurement might be different as time goes by. The last mention of this work occurred in 1616, some scholars believe his work did not survived. During the Qing Dynasty, three major attempts were made to reconstruct the contents of this work. The only traces of this work remain in surviving texts which quote from the ''Shenzi'' in ''Qunshu Zhiyao'', compiled in 631, and ''Yilin'', compiled around 786.
Philosophy
Shen was chiefly concerned with government administration through the use of bureaucracy. His system required a strong ruler at the center. Shen Buhai believed that the ideal ruler should remain distant from his officials, keeping his innermost thoughts secret and maintaining an independence of thought. According to Shen, the ruler needed to be the loneliest person in the world.
To Shen Buhai, the greatest threat to a ruler's power came from within. He believed that threats from powerful, independent ministers to usurp power were more dangerous than threats from external forces. Shen championed the concept of ''Shu'' . Shen advocated for maintaining checks against the power of officials, and in equality among the officials.
He touted the primacy of finding the right person for the job . He evaluated officials based on skill, achievement and seniority. He also encouraged routine assessments of officials.
Shen Buhai promulgated his own concept of wu wei, which caused some scholars to link him with Taoism. In Shen's case, he believed that rulers maximized power by exercising power as little as possible. He also encouraged rulers to limit their scope, leaving the details of administration to capable ministers. Some modern scholars argued that Shen's legalism was more a blend of Taoism and than just purely the conceptual ''Shu'' school of Legalism.
Historiography
Shen Buhai was criticized by both Confucians and Legalists. Unlike the Confucians, he never mentioned virtue; unlike the Shang Yang wing of the Legalists, he never mentioned Fa . The Confucian Xun Zi strongly criticized Shen Buhai's emphasis on secrecy and lack of trust in ministers. The legalist Han Fei criticized Shen for paying too much attention to methodology at the expense of laws.
Although Shen Buhai was later linked inseparably with the Legalists, it was Hanfei who merged the ideas of Shen Buhai with those of Shang Yang. In 141 BC, under the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, Shen Buhai's name was listed with other legalist thinkers whose ideas were officially banned from the government; from that point on, scholarship on the ideas of Shen Buhai went into a steep decline.
Shenzi
Shen Buhai was known for his cryptic writing style. He was credited with writing a now extinct two chapter text, the ''Shenzi'' . During the Han Dynasty, the compilation was organized into two outer chapters, and six inner chapters, but the admeasurement might be different as time goes by. The last mention of this work occurred in 1616, some scholars believe his work did not survived. During the Qing Dynasty, three major attempts were made to reconstruct the contents of this work. The only traces of this work remain in surviving texts which quote from the ''Shenzi'' in ''Qunshu Zhiyao'', compiled in 631, and ''Yilin'', compiled around 786.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)