Medicine Man and Revolutionary--Sun Yat-sen in Macao

In Taiwan, he is regarded as the nation's founding father; in China, as a pioneering revolutionary. Born in Xiangshan, Guangdong Province, Sun Yat-sen was no stranger to neighboring Macao, and with Macao being outside of Qing-Dynasty China's territory, Sun made many trips there in his efforts to encourage revolution, leaving his own historical mark on the place.

In 1958 this former residence of Sun Yat-sen was renamed Casa Memorativa Sun Yat-sen, and the interior of the home has been maintained in its old style. The Republican flag there and the Chinese name of the building are both instantly familiar to Taiwanese.

Sun's practice in Macao

Kiang Wu Hospital was first established in 1871, and today the 500-bed facility is one of only three general hospitals in Macao. In 1892, after graduating from Hong Kong College of Medicine for Chinese, Sun Yat-sen chose to travel to Macao and serve as a volunteer doctor at Kiang Wu Hospital.

At the time, Kiang Wu Hospital and all its doctors specialized in traditional Chinese medicine, and Sun was not only the first doctor at Kiang Wu with Western training, but the first Western-trained Chinese doctor in Macao. To commemorate this, a statue of Sun was raised at the gate to the hospital, where it still stands today.

Not long after Sun started working at Kiang Wu, he borrowed some money from the hospital to establish a combined Chinese-Western pharmacy at what is now 80 Rua das Estalagens. Sun borrowed the money and opened the pharmacy under the pretense of wanting to further help the people of Macao, but in fact he used it as a front for promoting his revolutionary ideals. Later, as the revolutionary movement began to spread elsewhere, the pharmacy quickly shut up shop, and today that same building is home to an electronics store.

Haojing Publishing & Pooi Kei Academy

Macao has a pair of bays, one in the north, one in the south, each as round as mirrors and rich in oysters, giving Macao its old name: Haojing'ao, or "Oyster Mirror Bay." At the turn of the 20th century, Sun Yat-sen was traveling around spreading the ideals of revolution, working primarily through the revolutionary alliance the Tongmenghui. In 1905 a branch of the Tongmenghui was formed in Hong Kong, with Pooi Kei Academy set up in Macao in 1909 and serving as a base for secret meetings.

In 1910 revolutionaries such as Xie Yingbo and Gao Jianfu worked to formally establish a branch of the Tongmenghui in Macao. The following year, Sun founded Haojing Publishing, which served not only as a headquarters for the Tongmenghui, but also as a center for the publishing and dissemination of revolutionary thought through Macao and Southeast Asia.

Now, nearly 100 years later, the three-story building that once housed this organization is an ordinary private residence standing by a pier on Rua de Pedro Nolasco da Silva. Meanwhile Pooi Kei Academy continued to evolve, becoming Pooi Kei Middle School, continuing to play a role in educating the children of Macao.

Casa Memorativa Sun Yat-sen

Sun Yat-sen and his family frequently set themselves up in Macao in the course of promoting revolution, and the Western-style house they occupied there in 1930 now stands as the Casa Memorativa Sun Yat-sen.

The building is three floors high and designed in an Islamic-influenced style. Sun's first wife, Lu Muzhen, and eldest son Sun Ke moved in soon after the building was completed, but official ownership remained in the hands of the Kuomintang. In 1952, after Lu Muzhen's passing, the Kuomintang, by then based in Taiwan, converted the building to a memorial for Sun.

In 1995 the Kuomintang passed ownership of the building to the Mainland Affairs Council, a government agency, and to this day the Taiwanese government continues to provide a fixed amount of funds each year for the upkeep of the building.

Sitting on Rua de Silva Mendes, the home is surrounded by a low wall, and the building itself is symmetrically designed, with an inscription by prominent early Kuomintang member Yu Youren placed above the door. In a sign of the respect Macanese have for Sun Yat-sen, despite the territory having become part of the People's Republic of China, inside the memorial hall one can see 12 flags--all the "blue sky, white sun, and red earth" flag of the Republic of China, hanging proudly regardless of the changes Macao has seen.

In addition to this, the home is host to various items from Sun's past, including the wicker chair and table he used while serving as generalissimo of Guangdong, handwritten documents from that period, and medical instruments he used in his practice as a doctor. All of these make this a location not to be missed for anyone visiting Macao with an interest in contemporary Chinese history.