Sun Yat Sen in Penang

Author: Khoo Salma Nasution
Publisher: Areca Books
ISBN: 9789834283483
Page: 128 m/s
Year: 2008, 2010
Price: RM30.00

Foreword by Lynn Pan.

As a young revolutionary, Dr. Sun Yat Sen travelled widely and lived amongst the Chinese communities abroad, including Japan, North America and Southeast Asia. He mobilized the overseas Chinese with the dream of saving the Chinese nation. This book tells the story of how the Second Guangzhou Uprising, a turning point of the 1911 Chinese Revolution, was planned from a place 2,400 km away – in Penang in present-day Malaysia.

Dr. Sun Yat Sen (1866-1925) was the foremost Asian nationalist figure of the early 20th century. The Huanghuagang Uprising (also called the Canton Uprising or Second Guangzhou Uprising) of spring 1911, a turning point of the revolution, was strongly supported by the Overseas Chinese. The Xinhai Revolution later that year led to the inauguration of the Chinese Republic.

Dr. Sun’s political party was the Tongmenghui or China Revolutionary Alliance. In 1910, the Southeast Asia headquarters of the Tongmenghui moved to Penang. At the time, the Penang Philomatic Union, based at 120 Armenian Street, was the cover for the Penang Tongmenghui.

It was in Penang that Dr. Sun convened the Penang Conference in November 1910 to plan the Huanghuagang Uprising in Guangzhou, China.

Dr. Sun gave a famous speech at 120 Armenian Street to launch his fundraising campaign and raised $8,000 Straits Dollars on the spot. The Kwong Wah Jit Poh, one of the world’s oldest Chinese newspaper was launched by Dr. Sun and his Penang supporters at these premises a few weeks later.