In 1911, China became a republic. The people who led the revolution against the imperial Manchu Dynasty, were often Western educated and detached from Chinese traditions. Maybe that was why they were so resolute in ushering in a new political system in China. Charlie Soong, Sun Yat-sen, and others introduced in Seagrave's The Soong Dynasty learned the ideas and practices of a republic from the West. The world of late 19th century China was an intersection of Chinese and Western cultures, where traditions mingled with Western commercial and political ideas in the treaty ports on the eastern coast, and Western, especially American missionary zeal led to conflicts between Christianity and indigenous Chinese worship of ancestors and idols. Autocratic political practices led to a turn to secret societies and a strange juxtaposition of Westernized Christian Chinese mingling with secret society members and pricking their fingers to pledge their loyalty to secret society. The picture is further complicated by ethnic and regional differences in China, where the Hakka, migrant families from around Shanxi Province in north central China to Canton (or Guangdong), the southern Chinese province, clashed with the indigenous Canton population who regarded third and fourth generation Hakkas still as outsiders, and where the ruling Manchu ethnicity clashed with the majority of the population called the Han nationality.

1. The Hakkas in southern China

Hakkas, meaning "guest families," were migrants from northern China to various southern Chinese provinces. Although classified the same race as the major ethnic group called the Han nationality in the 20th century, historically they were prejudiced against in their new southern Chinese hometowns. Without modern means of communication, the various regions of China had distinctly different dialects and especially in southern China, the various dialects were often uncommunicable. In the latter case, the chief means of communication with other regions was written Chinese, which was the same across the country. The same families could dwell in the same place for hundreds of years and any outsiders would be viewed with suspicion. Thus Hakka families could stay in the same new hometown for generations but still be regarded as outsiders. The family of Han Chaoshun was a Hakka family in Kwangtung (other spellings: Canton or Guangdong) Province and they were fortunate enough to be accepted by the indigenous population because they joined the secret society Chiu Chao.

2. Chinese secret societies

Because of the autocracy of imperial Chinese governments, in history, Chinese seldom organized demonstrations, formed political associations, or tried to get involved in government. Any such attempts would be brutally cracked down. Thus, political resistance most often took the form of secret societies. These were extra-legal entities that in essence were not different from organized crime entities like the mafia in the West. But most of these secret societies had a political agenda. The ones mentioned in this book were all involved with resistance to the Manchu government in China. They were all branches of the Hong Bang (red gang), so called because the word hong here has the same pronunciation as the first word in Hong-wu, the title of the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, the Chinese dynasty before China was taken over by the ethnic Manchus who were not Chinese then.

Regular political organizations often worked with secret societies even after the Republican revolution in 1911overthrew the imperial dynasty of the Manchus because the republic failed to develop a strong bureaucratic system to effectively govern the country.

3. The first Chinese in America

The mingling of the modern political parties such as the Nationalist Party and secret societies constituted only one dimension of the forces shaping modern Chinese society. Another dimension was the direct interaction between Chinese and Americans, and between overseas Chinese and Chinese at home in China.

Chinese immigration to the U.S. increased significantly after the Gold Rush in 1849. They came as railroad builders (transcontinental); gold diggers (e.g. the city San Francisco, in Chinese, is called jiujinshan, or old gold mountain); or students: the first groups of Chinese students were sent to the U.S. in the 1870s. The Burlingame Treaty (1868) set up the program to send young Chinese students to study in America. After a sizable Chinese workers came to the U.S. and clashed with unionized American workers, the Exclusion Act (1882) barred unskilled Chinese workers from entering the U.S.

The story of Charlie Soong (Han Chao-shun) was set against this background of secret societies, the world of overseas Chinese, and American Protestant evangelism.

Growing up in Canton and trips with brother to the East Indies.
Trip with “uncle” to America (1875); stowing away on a ship and eventually ending in North Carolina.
Meeting Julian Carr, enrollment first in Trinity College, and then Vanderbilt University.
Return to Shanghai as a missionary (1886).
Joining the Red Gang: a secret society established to fight the Manchu Dynasty in the 1600s.
Meeting and marrying Nie Kwei-tseng, and starting a printing business.
Comprador Charlie: starting a flour mill funded by Julian Carr.
1894, meeting Sun Wen (Yat-sen), one of the leaders of anti-Manchu movement in China.

4.The world of Sun Yat-sen and early Chinese revolutionaries

The world of Sun Yat-sen was very similar to that surrounding Charlie Soong: direct and indirect Western influences (Canton, Hawaii, Hong Kong), Chinese traditional background, and secret society background (membership in the Red Gang and the Triad). The financial help for his revolutionary activities came primarily from abroad, the donations of overseas Chinese, as well as perhaps some Americans such as Julian Carr. Since Sun was barred from the Chinese mainland after his first attempted revolt in 1907, most of the time Sun spent abroad mobilizing funding for the revolution. He was in Colorado when the revolution occurred in 1911.

This not only explains Sun's power base, which was why he resigned one month after becoming the president, letting Yuan Shikai, a former official in the imperial Manchu government who had a more stable power base to become his successor because many regional warlords were his former students at the modern military academy in Zhili province. In 1912, Yuan purged the Nationalists in the government, assassinating the leader of the Nationalist Party, Song Jiaoren, forcing Sun Yat-sen to start a "second revolution" against Yuan in 1913. Although Yuan eventually failed to be an emperor (he was one for about 100 days 1915-1916), China remained under regional warlord rule. The Nationalists held onto Canton Province, and lived under the mercy of Chen Jiongming, Canton’s warlord. After Chen Jiongming rebelled against Sun Yat-sen in 1922, Sun decided to ally with the Communists and the Soviet Union. Sun would eventually die in 1925.