By night, sailors roistered among the fleshpots of Blood Alley and then had to fight their way out, while the bon ton dined and danced at the Astor House or the Palace Hotel at the corner of The Bund and Nanking Road. As the night owls headed home, wheelbarrows loaded with vegetables trundled along the narrow paths into Shanghai, passing the vile-smelling ‘honey carts’ bearing the night soil used to fertilise the fields in which they had been grown.
Poverty abounded in the walled Chinese city of Nantao and the industrialised Chinese boroughs of Chapei and Yangtzepoo. Thousands of workers had flocked to the city’s factories and textile mills where they laboured for 12 hours a day seven days a week. Wages were often below subsistence level and the chronic housing shortage meant that many workers slept in shifts in the same beds.33
For Western businessmen, there had been commercial opportunities galore as the Ching Government pawned the country’s assets in exchange for huge loans from foreign combines and banks. The British and Chinese Corporation signed a contract with Peking in July 1903 to build the railway line between Shanghai and Nanking. As surveyors moved into the Yangtze countryside, the theodolite became ‘an object of unfailing interest and terror to the Chinese’.34
The pyramidal grave mounds of ancestors were violated during construction and when the line opened carters and boatmen were thrown out of work.35 Other lines stretched from Peking to Hankow and would soon run down to Canton and Hong Kong, and as far west as Szechuen. Far from knitting the provinces together, as the Emperor Kuang-Hsu had envisaged, one Chinese statesman compared the rail network to a pair of scissors which imperialist powers were using to cut up the country.36
Proving Tocqueville’s axiom ‘that the most perilous moment for a bad government is that in which it begins to reform itself’, Sheng Hsuan-huai, a notorious hustler who headed the Ministry of Communications, decided to nationalise the main railway system. Confrontation between Peking and the provinces became inevitable when an imperial decree announced on 9 May 1911 that Peking had taken over the Canton–Hankow and Szechuen–Hankow lines. This was simply a ploy to hand these lucrative projects to a British-American-French-German consortium, which was offering a huge loan to replenish the depleted Ching treasury.37
‘Railway protection clubs’ were formed in four provinces to defend local interests, mainly those of the scholar-gentry, rich landlords and wealthy merchants. Resistance was strongest in Szechuen, where the provincial assembly was dominated by rights recoverists whose main objective was personal enrichment. Its leaders organised a mass movement of outraged citizens who demanded that the nationalisation program be scrapped and Sheng impeached for corruption. Although the vast majority of the population had no financial stake in the railways, local pride had been injured and the gulf between Peking and the people widened perceptibly.38
On 22 June, in honour of the Coronation of King George V at Westminster Abbey, the Chinese population of Shanghai was given permission to enter the hallowed turf of the ‘public’ gardens for just one day. The band played ‘Rule Britannia’, Union flags fluttered along The Bund and British buildings were bathed in patriotic red, white and blue electric light. The royal celebrations emphasised the lowly position that the Chinese occupied in their own country. By one of the quirks of history, they also saw the start of a catalogue of disasters that would strike the length and breadth of the Yangtze Valley.
Over centuries, silting had raised the river level several metres above the surrounding countryside. Levees had been built up, but there was nothing to hold back the floodwaters if these were breached. While large sums had been allocated towards flood control, much of the money had gone into the pockets of corrupt officials. The taotai of Shanghai, Tsai Nai-huang, had squandered 160,000 taels39 from the Whangpoo conservancy fund, with the result that dredging of the river system had ceased at a critical time. Donald’s friend Chang Jen-chun, who now occupied the viceregal seat of Liang-Kiang, a region comprising the central provinces of Anhwei, Kiangsi and Kiangsu, was ordered by Peking to investigate the charges against the taotai. Incredibly, Tsai Nai-huang had used the funds to buy up anti-government Chinese newspapers in order to close them down. He was politely asked to repay the money from his share of the Customs duties.40
Just a few days after the King’s coronation, the engorged Yangtze broke its banks during the monsoon. Floods spread over the valley until it resembled a turbulent inland sea. At one popular crossing point near Shanghai, the river was 70 kilometres wide; upstream as far as Hankow, the scenes of desolation were described as ‘pitiable in the extreme’. The racing tide washed away crops and threatened to breach the Hankow Bund and engulf the city. Groups of starving banditti roamed the valley, pillaging and burning farms and villages.41
Amos P. Wilder, the American consul in Shanghai (and father of the playwright Thornton Wilder), launched a famine relief committee to raise funds among foreign firms although, according to The Times, ‘local officials, prominent gentry and men of wealth would rather see their people starve by thousands than have them fed by foreign aid’. When aid was distributed, it was regarded as ‘legitimate prey’ and invariably disappeared into the pockets of Chinese officials. ‘It debauches the employees, it demoralises the community generally,’ The Times said. ‘It is almost impossible to have anyone punished for graft because all think they are entitled to all they can grab.’42
The chronic food shortages were exacerbated by speculators who hoarded grain in the good times in order to make a killing during the floods. Unable to afford the inflated prices, thousands of peasants died of hunger. ‘The crime of cornering the people’s food is, theoretically, one of the most heinous in the Chinese code, but it is practised constantly with impunity,’ The Times noted.43
Meanwhile, Thomas Millard had published a prospectus to attract readers and advertisers to his new newspaper. ‘Promoters of the enterprise have acted on the assumption that Shanghai has become a modern city, and that it will be a focus of the wonderful development just beginning in the Far East,’ he wrote.
As an up-to-date city, Shanghai affords a field for an up-to-date newspaper, provided at an up-to-date price. Such a newspaper at such a price the China Press is designed to be … The enterprise is sustained by no special interest or Government, and will present the news of China and the world without restraint or partiality.44
There was certainly no shortage of newsworthy events in Shanghai. A few days after the first edition of the China Press hit the streets, bubonic plague broke out in Chapei, killing 14 Chinese and filling the beds of the Chinese Public Isolation Hospital with plague patients. At a meeting between the taotai and representatives of the hospital and the Chapei Chinese police force, it was decided that the infected quarter should be fenced off from the International Settlement to prevent the plague virus spreading to Europeans. The Times correspondent reported, ‘The conditions under which the people live generally are such as to make plague in all probability endemic, not to speak of such diseases as smallpox, diphtheria and other infectious illnesses.’45
Bill Donald travelled upstream to report on the twin calamities of flood and famine. Entering Nanking in a sampan, he found Chang Jen-chun in the viceregal yamen that had once been a Taiping palace. Chang was carrying out a survey of conservancy requirements within his jurisdiction. Such schemes were always being attempted and then postponed for lack of funds. It was clear to Donald that nothing less than a comprehensive program of canalisation, dredging and embanking would stop the floods from recurring.
At the Custom House he watched in bewilderment as a coolie whose job was to clean up the courtyard swept the top of the swirling floodwaters. To the Australian, the sight seemed to symbolise the impossibility of uprooting old customs and changing traditional methods. With a heavy heart, Donald returned to Shanghai.
By mid-September, mass protests were paralysing many parts of Szechuen. In the provincial capital of Chengtu, wailing crowds
demonstrated in front of a placard in memory of the Emperor Kuang-hsu who had granted them the right to build their own railway. The governor-general ordered the arrest of agitators and fighting broke out between troops and demonstrators, with the loss of 32 lives. The Szechuen Railway Protecting Society joined the fray with its battle cry, ‘Drive out the foreign invaders and overthrow the Ching Dynasty.’ Branches of the railway society were organised by guilds and trades; even beggars had their own branch. The authorities rushed troops of the New Army in Hupeh to Chengtu, unaware that a revolutionary student group calling itself the ‘Literary Society’ had infiltrated the Hupeh garrison and converted many of its officers and men to the anti-Manchu cause.46
Meanwhile, Sun Yat-sen had set up a Central China Bureau of the Tungmeng hui in Shanghai under his deputy Huang Hsing and one of his protégés, Sung Chiao-jen. He had then left on a fund-raising trip in the United States. Huang and Sung were invited by the dissident students in Wuchang, provincial capital of Hupeh and Hunan, to travel up the Yangtze to foment disturbances.47
Huang planned to strike at the end of October. He had no way of knowing that the ‘dynastic cataclysm’ predicted by Sir Robert Hart and to which Sun Yat-sen had devoted his life was about to happen in the most unexpected way.
[1] Mayling Soong’s first name is spelled in various ways. This author has seen her signature on letters after her marriage to Chiang Kai-shek which are rendered ‘Mayling Soong Chiang (Madame Chiang Kai-shek)’.
White was the colour of the Revolution. And like the spectral white mist that rose from the flooded creeks and canals of the Yangtze Delta, it drifted slowly up the great river until it settled like a shroud over Wuhan, the tri-city area comprising Hankow, Hanyang and Wuchang at the junction of the Yangtze and Han rivers.
On the night of 9 October 1911 an explosion ripped apart revolutionary headquarters in the Russian concession of Hankow, the first tremor of an earthquake that would bring the 267-year-old Ching Dynasty crashing down. Police who searched the wreckage discovered that the house was a bomb-making factory and that a bomb had gone off prematurely. They also uncovered a cache of arms and a list naming conspirators who were planning to stage an uprising the following week. Some of them were officers of the New Army serving in the local garrison.1
In another part of Hankow that night, Chinese police raided a radical meeting and arrested 32 people, three of whom were publicly executed at dawn on 10 October – the Double Tenth. Anger spread among the soldiers, two of whom shot an officer when he questioned them about the weapons they were carrying.2 Later that morning, the engineering unit of the New Army seized the government munitions depot at Wuchang and artillery units joined in a combined attack on the yamen of the governor-general, who fled down the Yangtze in a Japanese gunboat. By midday, the New Army had complete control of the city. The Double Tenth Revolution was under way.3
Fierce fighting broke out between some 3600 revolutionaries and a 3000-strong loyal Ching force. A British reporter described ‘the streets deserted and the corpses of Manchus lying in all directions, 50 bodies being heaped together outside one gate alone. The Rebel troops are still hunting for Manchus, of whom 800 are reported to have been killed.’4
By 12 October, rebels from the 8th Division and a mixed brigade of the 21st Division had captured Wuchang and Hanyang and seized China’s chief arsenal and the government mint containing two million taels.5 At Hankow, the mixed brigade took the historic step of establishing a provisional republican government. As none of the revolutionary leaders was anywhere near Wuhan, the Ching commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Li Yuan-hung, was drafted in as military governor of Hupeh.
The reluctant Li’s main qualifications for the post were that he was the most senior officer available and that he was a Han, not a Manchu. He proclaimed Hupeh part of the ‘Chinese Republic’ and assured the city’s foreign consuls that he would respect all treaty obligations provided the powers stayed neutral during the struggle. The consuls cabled this message to their legations in Peking and, as mutinies and uprisings broke out sporadically throughout China, the powers heeded the warning and did nothing.6
The causes of the Revolution were quickly linked to the railways. ‘Undoubtedly it is a striking manifestation of the general hatred of the Manchu regime, but it was precipitated by the Government’s nationalisation object,’ The West Australian reported from Hong Kong.
Under the original scheme many thousands of the plebeian population of China had a financial interest in the railways, very small, perhaps, but nevertheless actual. The Imperial authorities formed the opinion that better results could be obtained by nationalisation and with this end in view they sought the famous Four Power Loan. The project excited the bitter opposition of the people, who in all parts organised angry demonstrations in condemnation of the scheme. Meanwhile, the more daring agitators and the secret societies were sowing the seeds of insurrection and carefully nurturing them.7
George Morrison and Bill Donald were in their element with the big breaking news story, firing off tightly worded cables to The Times and the New York Herald. ‘The rebellion gains increasing force and its well-organised appearances indicate that the Government is confronted with the most formid- able danger since the Taiping rebellion,’ Morrison cabled on 12 October. ‘At any moment a message may arrive announcing a sympathetic outbreak at Canton, where revolutionary agitation has been simmering for a long time.’
China, he said, was learning the folly of stationing troops in the province of their birth where they were likely to sympathise with the local population. The Minister of War, Yin Chang, had been ordered to take two of the Northern divisions to Hankow to suppress the rebellion. The following day he reported that the immense mass of educated Chinese in Peking were unreservedly backing the revolutionaries. ‘Little sympathy is expressed for the corrupt and effete Manchu dynasty with its eunuchs and other barbaric surroundings,’ he said. ‘The loyalty of the troops, even in Peking and Tientsin, is doubtful, especially when they become aware of revolutionary success elsewhere.’8
Dudley Braham, the Times’ former Russian correspondent (and later editor of the Sydney Daily Telegraph), was standing in as foreign editor at Printing House Square. He congratulated Morrison on his ‘most excellent’ news coverage. ‘We have left every other paper standing,’ he said. ‘So far I have only ventured to change one word in your messages – the word revolution. Our stylistic experts assure me that it can only be applied to a successful rebellion and then only after it has been successful.’9
Bill Donald decided to pay a call on Dr Wu Ting-fang, who had returned from a stint as China’s minister to Washington and joined the rebels. He found Wu’s home in Avenue Road in the International Settlement in a state of chaos. The Double Tenth coup had apparently caught the revolutionary leaders unprepared. Donald told his biographer that Wu ‘was striding up and down his living room, hands behind back, muttering. Other than the general idea that the Manchu must be ousted, there were no workable plans.’ According to Earl Selle, ‘The revolution had been born in a dream. Until now it had remained beautiful and visionary, undisturbed by practical matters. Worst of all, no one had heard from Dr Sun Yat-sen.’10
Contrary to this account, the revolutionaries knew that Sun was in the United States and had cabled him with the news. Although he hadn’t replied to those cables, he had in fact given members of the Tungmeng hui a clear, three-phase plan on how post-Manchu China should be governed.
During the first phase of three years, a military government would control all military and civil affairs at district level in the areas liberated by the revolutionary forces.11 The second phase would involve a period of political tutelage, lasting not more than six years. The military would retain control of the central government but a form of local self-government would be introduced in the districts and popular elections held for local assemblies and administrative positions. During this period, a pr
ovisional constitution stipulating the rights of the people and the duties of the military government would be approved. In the third and final phase, the military government would be dissolved and the country would be governed by the new constitution.12
Indeed, Li Yuan-hung, promoted to general, was already implementing the first phase of Sun’s plan as military governor in charge of the provisional government at Hankow. One of its members, T’ang Hua-lung, the former chairman of Hupeh Provincial Assembly, sent telegrams to other provinces urging them to declare independence of the Ching Court.
Donald visited Everard Fraser at the British Consulate in Shanghai to enlist his support. ‘Well, Mr Donald,’ Fraser said, ‘I suppose you have come about the revolution.’ Donald’s republican sympathies were an open secret among members of the British community. He told Fraser that the revolutionaries were not asking for recognition of their fledgling republic at this point but were willing to provide ‘exclusive information’ in the hope that British banks would provide them with loans once the republic became a reality.
Fraser agreed to listen. The following day Donald brought Dr Wu, Wen Tsung-yao and other members of the Revolutionary Party to the consulate. ‘Mr Fraser,’ Donald said, ‘there’s one thing I didn’t tell you yesterday – in case the Japanese attempt to jump into this arena, we expect the British to pull them out.’
Fraser laughed. He was in no position to commit his country to armed intervention against her Asian ally. However, in the days that followed, Donald briefed him on important developments which the consul reported to Sir John Jordan, who had replaced Sir Ernest Satow as British minister at Peking. Morrison described Donald as Fraser’s ‘chief source of information with regard to the Revolutionary Party’. And once he had learned to trust the Australian, Fraser became the revolutionaries’ chief advocate and protector.13
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