Dr. Sun once described his village in this way: "back to the mountains, sitting by the sea, the land being mostly sandy and of poor quality, not useful for planting, so the people of the village wander in all directions...."

Like most small villages in southern Kwang-tung, Tsuiheng was a primarily agricultural village, producing mainly rice and peanuts. There were pine trees and lichee in the mountain forests, and one could catch fish, shrimp, and clams in the sea. "It was a self-sufficient small village, but by no means well off," says Li Po-hsin, former director of the Museum of the Former Residence of Dr. Sun Yat-sen. Thus many residents went outside the village to seek their fortunes.

Wandering off in all directions: Dr. Sun's older brother Sun Mei is an example of one who "wandered off in all directions."

Older than Sun Yat-sen by 11 years, when still very young this elder brother followed his uncle to the United States to study business. Because he was bright and hard-working, he became the "King of Maui" in Hawaii, owning several hundred mu of tenant farmland. He also became a key individual in expanding Dr. Sun's horizons. Because of his guidance, Dr. Sun left his village at thirteen to go to Honolulu, and "for the first time saw the wonder of a steamboat, the boundlessness of the sea, and from this point on I had the desire to study the West and to explore the ends of the universe."

Li Po-hsin points out that Dr. Sun's ability to go from being an ordinary person to being one of the great revolutionaries and thinkers of modern China is the result of the times in which he lived plus his own lifelong pursuit to "adapt to world trends and conform to the needs of the masses." His home and early life in Tsuiheng naturally had a certain impact on how his future thinking took shape, though this point shouldn't be exaggerated.

There were two phases in Sun Yat-sen's life in Tsuiheng. The first was from birth to 12 years of age, the second from 17 to 29. When Sun returned from Hawaii and began studying medicine at Alice Memorial Hospital in Hongkong, and after graduation began practicing medicine and making contacts in Macao and Canton, he often took advantage of time off to return to Tsuiheng.

A youth of "breaking the iron pot": Let's go back to 100 years ago.

Under a large banyan tree, a group of children are crouched down, listening to the story of Hung Hsiu-chuan. Among them one of them listens especially attentively. The story of Hung's leadership of the Taiping rebellion and his thoughts about resisting the corrupt Ching dynasty are transmitted at this time.

There's no telling which banyan tree was the one where children listened to stories, but one has been deliberately planted in front of Sun's old home and memorial museum, with a set of bronze statues of children listening to a tale.

Dr. Sun was by no means a "good little boy" when a child. One day, with his curiosity, he thought to have a peek at how the local chef-- nicknamed the "tofu master"--went about making the bean curd. Climbing the fence to get a look inside, he didn't expect a barrel of boiling soup to come out. He immediately "returned the compliment" with a large rock, hitting the cooking pot flush on. The infuriated "tofu master" set out to punish the offender, and Sun's mother had to apologize for him repeatedly. In the Tsuiheng Residents' Display Hall next to his old home, there is a replica of a broken iron pot, recalling this anecdote.

In another room the carts of the former police are displayed. When Dr. Sun returned from Hawaii, the people of the rural township pushed him to go into local government. He advised the towns-people to "repair the roads and light lamps on the streets at night, in order to prevent theft, and use able-bodied men to act as the night watchmen." The only thing left from which to recall this creative idea is this reconstructed patrol cart.

Recalling the "four bandits" of those days: Although it is a simple layout, a close inspection of the written works collected at his former home can bring one back to Dr. Sun's great ambitions and hopes of those days.

The little room which was at once bedroom and library has been restored by more recent generations to the layout of those days of fluid discussions of current politics by the "four bandits."

Sun and three classmates from medical school, Chen Shao-pai, You Lieh, and Yang He-ling would talk from morning until night, "and nothing we said was not revolutionary speech, nothing we thought about was not revolutionary thought, nothing we studied was not revolutionary materials..." Because their ambitions were much the same as Hung Hsiu-chuan, condemned by the Ching as a bandit, they called themselves "bandits."

Nevertheless, although they liked the "noble bandit" image, Dr. Sun was a visionary, not an uncouth rebel. For example, the reconstructed calligraphic treasure in front of his desk is his famous "letter to Li Hung-chang," the would-be reformer of the Ching dynasty, with its far-sighted advice to "make the best use of people, make good use of the land, make full use of materials, and make smooth the flow of goods," which still is valid today. This letter was written after Dr. Sun had returned to Tsuiheng.

In his memoirs Chen Shao-pai revealed that, "one day, a letter came unexpectedly from the Canton pharmacy, saying that Dr. Sun had disappeared, that it was getting impossible to do business, that income was not meeting expenditures, and that there was only a little money left. I hurried to Canton to take care of the shop for him, but after several days he suddenly returned, carrying something that looked like a document. When I opened it and looked, inside was a 'Letter to Li Hung-chang.' Only then did I know that he had gone to his home in Tsuiheng to shut himself up and write an essay!"

A laboratory for reform: What kind of a living environment produces such a person?

Li Po-hsin points out that the two periods that Dr. Sun spent in Tsuiheng had different influences on his thinking.

His childhood farm-family life and private schooling laid down a foundation of the understanding of Chinese culture in such books as the Three Character Classic, the Thousand Character Essay, the Four Books and Five Classics, and also developed a strong and healthy body and soul.

Further, the special environment of Tsuiheng, where many people went overseas to seek their fortunes because of the poor quality of the soil, enabled Sun Yat-sen to gain much more knowledge of the world than most Chinese youth of his era. This made him even less able to tolerate the poverty and backwardness of his village.

For example, when he was in his early teens, after his family received letters from elder brother Sun Mei, "there was a strong desire to sail the seas." When he was thirteen, the first time he accompanied his mother to take the boat to Macao, he was deeply impressed at seeing huge iron girders on the ships. "How many people did it take to make one of those girders? Whoever invented the iron girder must be a genius. If foreigners can do it, why can't Chinese? There are areas where Chinese are not quite so good."

The second stage was a critical period in the formation of Dr. Sun's revolutionary thinking. In this stage, Tsuiheng became the first laboratory for testing Dr. Sun's reform plans. He assisted the townspeople to build bridges and roads, and although his work was left uncompleted because of the resignation of the county magistrate and because of land disputes, this nevertheless encouraged him to study municipal government after returning to Hongkong, and from this to consider the future of all of China.

Source of Early Revolutionary Cadres: In 1890 he wrote a letter to the county magistrate Cheng Tsao-ju asking that agriculture be revived, that opium be eradicated, and that more schools be established. These improvements and their realization in county government "made Sun Yat-sen realize further the necessity of reforming national politics, and was influential in his later thinking about local self-government," concludes Li Po-hsin.

In addition, Tsuiheng provided cadres to Dr. Sun's early revolutionary activities. For example, his brother Sun Mei not only spread the family wealth and provided funding, he even accepted the responsibility for looking after the family of his younger brother, who was on the move, involved in revolutionary activities.

Also, there were Dr. Sun's neighbors Lu Hau-tung (who s later killed after the failure of the Canton uprising), Yang Hsin-ru (founder of the Taiwan branch of the Hsing Chung Hui, predecessor to the Kuomintang), and Yang Ho-ling (one of the "four bandits"), as well as many anonymous overseas Chinese from Tsuiheng who aided Dr. Sun after the establishment of the Hsing Chung Hui in Hawaii. Their support was helpful in enabling Sun to devote himself to revolution in that early period.

After the failure of the Canton uprising in 1895, Dr. Sun left his home, and travelled to many countries on behalf of the revolution, rarely returning to his hometown. After the founding of the Republic in 1911, because of the confused condition of national affairs, he only returned to Tsuiheng for a short stay in May of 1913, and never returned again, dying in 1925.

Planned preservation of Tsuiheng residences: During the anti-Japanese War (World War Ⅱ), the materials from Dr. Sun's home were removed to Macao. It has been more than thirty years since the reconstruction in 1956. In this period the outer wall of the old home has been repainted, and the internal layout has been redone many times. At present, based on oral historical data, the house is maintained generally in the condition of Dr. Sun's early years. Today, visitors to the place can not only see Sun Yat-sen's former home--a two-story Spanish style structure designed by Dr. Sun himself --they can also take in the Sun Yat-sen Historical Museum, where many materials are collected, and the Residents' Display Hall, completed only last year.

Xiao Runjun, director of the Museum of the Former Residence of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, plans that in the next several years they will do a complete preservation of the more than two hundred residences in Tsuiheng. Besides bringing back memories of the camaraderie of Dr. Sun and the revolutionary heroes of those days, it would thus become the one and only intact, unchanged village in Chungshan.

In fact, the Former Residence Museum is the most famous tourist attraction in Chungshan, and there is rarely a Taiwan traveler to the mainland who misses it. Two years ago, a conference was held here on "Sun Yat-sen and Asia," including scholars from Taiwan.

Keeping Tsuiheng's artifacts around: Most of them thought that the materials have been preserved pretty well. Not only the old residence, but even the "Tsuiheng Village" placard hung before the hamlet has not been changed. Although the school where Dr. Sun studied, the place he went swimming, and the temple where he smashed a Boddhisattva are no longer around, there are explanatory plaques at the spots. But the origins and alleged stories behind some things, like an oil lamp brought back from Southeast Asia, a dynamite container used for experimental explosions, or even an auspicious placard which was supposedly blow off the back door, "Good Fortune and Health," remain to be verified.

As for the emphasis in the museum on Dr. Sun's role as a poor peasant, Li Kuo-chi, a professor of history at National Taiwan Normal University, argues that of course there's nothing wrong with emphasizing that Dr. Sun's forebears were poor farmers, but when Sun was born his brother was already doing business in America and getting wealthy. Whether Sun should be considered a poor peasant is still a matter for discussion.

Lai Tse-han of the Institute of Social Sciences at the Academia Sinica believes, on the other hand, that at the end of the Ching dynasty 70% of the rural dwellers in China could be considered poor peasants, "so to emphasize Dr. Sun's rural origins but to also say that he undertook a petty bourgeois revolution (being a doctor), and that he was not successful--there is a contradiction here!"

As for the impact of commerce of Tsuiheng, the scholars also had several reactions.

The past few years, a group of "Sunologists" centered in Canton have been actively seeking exchanges and funding outside the country, as well as holding conferences in Tsuiheng. As exchanges become closer, a consensus should be easier to achieve. After all, Dr. Sun is a historical personage who led the way to overthrow the Ching dynasty and establish the Republic of China, so how to keep the artifacts of Tsuiheng around for the long-term is the common desire of people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait.

[Picture Caption]

In 1929, after Dr. Sun's death, the Republican government sent a photography team to Chungshan to record the area around the old home. (black and white photos are all courtesy of the Kuomintang Department of Party History)

The front door of the former residence of Dr. Sun Yat-sen is different from the direction of the passages commonly seen in Tsuiheng. It is said that Dr. Sun was forthright in destroying superstitions. The place with the slanted roof is the Residents' Display Hall, built just last year.

The former residence is a two-story Spanish style structure, said to have been designed by Sun himself.

The school where Dr. Sun studied as a child has been completely altered and restructured.

The area before the residence was rice fields, with many trees planted there today. It is rumored that this tree is the place where Sun as a young boy listened to stories of the rebel Hung Hsiu-chuan.

The bedroom and library--the table at the left has a reproduction of the famous "Letter to Li Hung-chang."

In May 1913, Dr. Sun returned to his home, from which he had been away more than a decade, posing for a picture with family members outside his home. From left, his second daughter Sun Wan, secretary Song Ailing, wife Lu Mu-chen, brother Sun Mei and his wife, and eldest daughter Sun Ting.

The front door of the former residence of Dr. Sun Yat-sen is different from the direction of the passages commonly seen in Tsuiheng. It is said that Dr. Sun was forthright in destroying superstitions. The place with the slanted roof is the Residents' Display Hall, built just last year.

The former residence is a two-story Spanish style structure, said to have been designed by Sun himself.

The school where Dr. Sun studied as a child has been completely altered and restructured.

The area before the residence was rice fields, with many trees planted there today. It is rumored that this tree is the place where Sun as a young boy listened to stories of the rebel Hung Hsiu-chuan.

The bedroom and library--the table at the left has a reproduction of the famous "Letter to Li Hung-chang.".

In May 1913, Dr. Sun returned to his home, from which he had been away more than a decade, posing for a picture with family members outside his home. From left, his second daughter Sun Wan, secretary Song Ailing, wife Lu Mu-chen, brother Sun Mei and his wife, and eldest daughter Sun Ting.