Sun Yat-sen

Sun Yat-sen was a Chinese revolutionary and political thinker who helped overthrow the Qing dynasty and became provisional president of the Republic of China in 1912. He promoted nationalism, democracy and social welfare through his Three Principles of the People.

Sun spent much of his career organising movements in exile and struggling to unify a fragmented republic. Both the Nationalists and the Chinese Communist Party later claimed aspects of his legacy.

Jung Chang’s Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister tells the intertwined lives of the three Soong sisters, daughters of a wealthy Christian family whose marriages placed them at the centre of twentieth-century Chinese politics. Ai-ling married financier and government minister H. H. Kung, Ching-ling married revolutionary leader Sun Yat-sen, and May-ling became the wife and political partner of Chiang Kai-shek. In Robert Elegant’s Dynasty, the saga moves through the Boxer Rebellion, the fall of the Qing dynasty, Japanese invasion, civil war, Communist victory and the Cultural Revolution. Sun Yat-sen, Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong enter a narrative in which the family’s private alliances mirror the larger conflict between colonial Hong Kong, Republican China and the People’s Republic. Further fictional perspectives on Sun Yat-sen can be found in Tan Twan Eng’s The House of Doors. For broader historical treatment of Sun Yat-sen, see Robert Bickers’ Britain and China, 1840–1970, Robert Bickers’ Britain in China, Robert Bickers’ Out of China, and Jonathan D. Spence’s The Gate of Heavenly Peace.