Hong Kong.

Yeung Ku-wan,

architect of the Guangzhou uprising,

sits teaching English on the second floor of his house.

His two-year-old son bounces on his lap.

It feels good to be home;

Exile didn't suit him.

His revolutionary partner,

currently living in hiding,

had warned him that he was in danger.

That a price was on their heads!

But not here.

Not in Hong Kong.

The British would protect him.

He keeps a revolver on his desk though, just in case.

There's a commotion on the stairs.

Students look over their shoulders.

The door bursts open.

Gangsters enter,

waving guns.

Yeung throws his son on the floor..

He lifts up a dictionary to shield himself

and reaches for the revolver.

His son screams.

Pupils scramble out of the way.

The gang leader

fires.

Yeung thumps face down on the desk.

The assassins flee downstairs and disappear into the narrow alleys,

excited to collect their bounty from Qing officials.

Rebels die.

That's the rule.

And there was no greater rebel than Yeung Ku-wan.

Well, there was one.

The man's partner:

Sun Yat-sen.

Music: Birth of the People

Honolulu.

Hawaii.

1879.

Sun Yat-sen would have many names in his life,

all Chinese men did then.

He'd have his genealogical name,

his baptism name,

his courtesy name,

but he would also have others.

Names with false passports to back them up.

Names he'd use in hiding.

Because Sun was a dangerous man:

The Qing were right to fear him.

After all, he'd bring two thousand years of imperial rule crashing down

But in 1879, he was just Sun Wen,

a student in Hawaii.

One of seven Chinese at his largely Hawaiian Anglican boarding school.

He'd been born in southern China, the son of poor peasants,

at a time when there was little opportunity for boys like him.

His family were not scholars who could get him a government position.

The stagnant economy promised no upward mobility.

Instability ruled back home.

The largest revolt in centuries, the Taiping rebellion had ended only two years before his birth.

Ever since the British took Hong Kong in the Opium Wars,

foreign countries were scrambling for larger and larger chunks of Chinese territory.

Now, they were flooding the market with cheap manufactured goods,

putting Chinese artisans out of work.

Foreign steam ships sailed up the rivers,

bringing in goods and bringing out coal.

Opium still ravaged the country.

Imperial attempts at modernization inevitably failed,

due to mismanagement and corruption.

Even when the government did adopt new technologies like steam ships,

They had to finance them through foreign capital and hire foreign engineers.

And yet the Qing government,

a northern ethnic minority perceived as foreign occupiers,

kept insisting on the supremacy of their culture

and deciding there was no need for change.

Many Chinese had gone overseas.

In fact, Sun's own brother went to the kingdom of Hawaii to work in the sugarcane fields,

and soon saved up for a shop and ranch.

Sun and his mother followed him.

The schools were better, that was sure.

At least they were for lucky kids with brothers who made enough to pay the tuition.

Here, unlike his village school, he got an education that opened the world.

He picked up English fast.

So fast that he was soon writing the school newspaper and received an award from the king.

But that wasn't all.

He learned about British and American legal systems,

constitutional government,

democracy,

and Western history

with an emphasis on the American Revolution,

Glorious Revolution,

and Unification of Germany and Italy.

When he graduated, he moved on to college-level courses at a missionary school.

Here, the curriculum was more specifically American,

imbued with a particular brand of new world optimism and dogma of self-betterment.

But it also exposed him to Protestantism

and when he came home one day asking permission to be baptized,

his brother figured enough was enough.

He sent Sun home.

But those years in Hawaii had changed the 17-year old Sun.

He now saw his village as backwards and superstitious,

and tried to fix that by tearing down one of the gods at the local temple.

The act got him banished,

and there was only one place for him to go:

Hong Kong,

1883.

Hong Kong was something totally different from Honolulu.

This was a true city, a little Victorian England in the middle of Asia

Technology, banking, modern transportation, clean streets, and massive buildings

The contrast between his poor village and this metropolis laid bare to him

how foolish the Qing had been not to modernize

He was only 50 miles from home

The next few years were a blur

He enrolled in college

got married (his parents arranged it)

And was baptized a Christian.

Sun decided he wanted to help people, so he got a medical degree

But Hong Kong didn't recognize his degree

So he opened a pharmacy in Macau

and later Guangzhou

earning a reputation for giving away free medicine

But medicine wasn't his only pursuit

He developed a group of friends in Hong Kong

middle-class professionals like him who loved to talk politics

several had connections with anti-Qing societies

and they began talking openly about overthrowing the Emperor and replacing him with a democracy

Theoretically at first,

then in specifics

The group became so notorious for their radical talk

people nicknamed him the four Desperados

And as they talked

the 'Century of Humiliation' marched on

The Qing lost Korea to the Japanese

and Vietnam to France

Western countries were building railways through the country

with corridors along the tracks where Chinese law didn't apply

The Empress Dowager increasingly pulled strings of government.

More Chinese territory got ceded to foreign control

Everyone from Germany to Italy to Belgium was taking a piece

But there was an undercurrent of hope

In 1884

He'd seen Hong Kong dock workers refuse to repair a French warship

damaged while fighting Chinese forces

And he met men in Hong Kong who believed it was possible to reform the Qing state

He found their arguments persuasive and decided to offer his ideas directly to the government

In 1894 he traveled to Beijing

both to see the capital

and to file a petition with his recommendations

for reforming agriculture opening free trade and leveraging China's human skill

He tried to deliver the letter to a government official known as a champion of reform

The man refused to see him

This rejection incensed Sun

But it was more than that

The wealth he saw displayed in Beijing, the open corruption

Drove every thought of reform from his mind

The ineffectual Qing must be overthrown

And he knew just where to start

Honolulu

20 men crowd into a two-story wooden house

Dr Sun is there along with his brother

They all know what this gathering is about

This is the first meeting of the Revive China Society

A secret revolutionary organization dedicated to overthrowing the Qing

I'm a doctor,

says Sun

But before treating my patients,

I must first cure my country

But to do that

he would need money

This oversea chapter will primarily be a fundraising organization

His brother had agreed to sell some of his property to help the fight

Could he count on these men?

Turns out, he could

Some sold businesses

Others gave what they could or organized fundraising events

Sun's electric speeches began attracting crowds in Honolulu's Chinatown

There were 5,000 Chinese in Hawaii, he'd say

If each person gave him a dollar that would be $5,000 towards the revolution

A few would give more than that

Volunteering to come back and fight when the time came

It came sooner than anyone thought

China had fared badly in the Sino-Japanese War

Suffering a series of embarrassing naval defeats

that had once again exposed the corruption and incompetence of the Qing

The time was right.

Three months after founding the Revive China Society in Honolulu

Sun returned to Hong Kong to establish its global headquarters

But this Revive China Society disguised as a social club was more than a fundraising group

Renewing contacts from his college years, he met up with Yeung Ku-wan

founder of a literary society that was like his social club, actually a revolutionary group

Unlike Sun, Yeung had deep contacts in Hong Kong

and with the anti-Qing secret societies that operated in southern China

He'd been cultivating them for a revolt and acquiring weapons for three years

Some of these secret societies were the infamous Triads

who in their centuries of anti-Qing resistance frequently turned to organized crime

Sun ever pragmatic turned a blind eye

The two groups merged

appointing Yeung chairman of the Revive China Society

and taking a pledge to expel the Qing

restore Chinese rule

and establish a federal republic

They greenlit the uprising

Sun's longtime friend Lu Hao-tung made them a flag to fight under

A white sun on a blue sky

It was time to rise

With the war ending, thousands of discharged soldiers were milling around Guangzhou

also known as Canton

Angry, defeated, and frequently unpaid

They were joining triad groups and revolutionary societies in steady numbers

If Sun and his comrades could start an uprising they reasoned the people would join them

They recruited 3,000 triads

When activated, they'd assemble in Hong Kong and catch a ferry to Guangzhou

Then they'd break into units to hit their designated targets

Some would seize government offices or bottle up troops and police

Others would capture or kill local officials

Sun quietly moved to Guangzhou

Presenting himself as a head of an agricultural society to explain the strange coming and goings

He set up a religious book shop as a front

There were spiritual pamphlets out front

and an arms cache in the back

Contacts in Hong Kong shipped him loads of revolvers hidden in barrels labeled cement

Triads surveilled government buildings and shadowed targets

And they chose a date

October 26th

A festival day where busy street celebrations could provide cover as the strike force got into position

It was an auspicious date

The ninth day of the ninth lunar month

Yet it would all go so wrong