[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 148 (2002), Part 15]
[House]
[Pages 20820-20821]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]


               TRIBUTE TO CHINATOWN COMMUNITY OF CHICAGO

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Davis) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, on Sunday, October 6, I 
participated in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen 
Museum in what in Chicago is fondly called Chinatown. Dr. Sun Yat-Sen 
is known to many as the Father of the Chinese Revolution and the Father 
of the Republic of China because it was he who masterminded the plan to 
restore China to the common people which led to what is called the 
Republic of China today.

[[Page 20821]]

                              {time}  2045

  Dr. Sun Yat-Sen was born on November 12, 1866, in Hsiangshan County 
near the city of Canton in southern China where he had local schooling 
in traditional Chinese texts until he was 13 years old, when he then 
went to join his brother in Hawaii. In Hawaii, he studied at the 
missionary school and graduated from Oahu College. He then returned to 
China and began his medical studies at the College of Medicine for 
Chinese in Hong Kong and received his medical degree in 1892.
  Dr. Sun Yat-Sen practiced medicine briefly in Hong Kong in 1893, 
after which he became strongly involved in the political scene of 
China. It was in the midst of the war between the Boxer Rebellion and 
Europeans that Dr. Sun Yat-Sen started plans for his own revolution. In 
1894, when he went to Beijing and discovered that the government had 
done little for the good of the people, he returned to Hawaii where he 
organized the Review China Society for his revolutionary purpose. A 
branch was established in Hong Kong as an agricultural study society; 
when plans were made to seize control of the government.
  Unfortunately, the plans failed, which led to Dr. Sun's flight to 
Japan and later to London in 1896, where he was arrested and imprisoned 
for 12 days by the Chinese and later released. Dr. Sun did not let this 
stop him. He used his educational knowledge by spending time at the 
British Museum Library where he invented the ``Three People's 
Principles,'' his most important work, which later became the 
fundamental basis for the government in China.
  He also advocated a ``five power constitution,'' which included the 
examination of unsorial branches in addition to the executive, 
legislative and judicial branches for purposes of control. When he 
returned to Japan from Europe in 1905, he formed another revolutionary 
society called the Tong Meng Hui, the ``Chinese Revolutionary League,'' 
which consisted of his former revolutionaries in Japan and young 
Chinese intellectuals studying in China at that time.
  Dr. Sun's league's uprising of rebels and encouraging of people to 
speak out in Hunan Province led to political unrest in the Ching 
Dynasty under the control of the Emperor Pu Yi. Also, in the fall of 
1911, his Tong Meng Hui League was involved in the important uprising 
in the Wuchang, where rebels seized control of the government, which 
led to that day being called the ``Double Ten Day,'' and led to the 
name change of China to the Republic of China.
  In January of 1912, Dr. Sun returned to China where he was elected 
provisional President of the New Republic. It was during his reign that 
he transformed his revolutionary organization into a political party 
called the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang. In early 1913, his party 
won more seats than any rivals since China's first-ever national 
elections. Later that year he was forced into exile and married his 
second wife Soong Ching-Ling in 1914 in Japan.
  Nevertheless, Dr. Sun never gave up hope for China because he 
assembled a government made up of his old party when he settled in 
Canton. He later allied with the Communist International of Moscow due 
to the need for military supplies and advisers to strengthen his 
political organization, so that he would be able to break the hold of 
individual military leaders in south China and create a new unified 
government with forces in north China.
  It was on his way to meet with the northern militarists that he fell 
ill and died in Beijing in March of 1925 due to an inoperable liver 
cancer. Dr. Sun Yat-Sen's corpse became a complex political symbol, 
with his body being preserved and kept at a temple on the outskirts of 
Beijing, where people from all walks of life, including generals and 
political figures, came to pay homage to him.
  His Kuomintang Party, after their victory about 20 years later, 
honored him by building a gigantic mausoleum near the capital of 
Nanjig, where they buried him, which made his burial an event of 
political enshrinement.
  Mr. Speaker, I commend the community of Chinese-Americans in Chicago 
for establishing the Sun Yat-Sen Museum at 2245 South Wentworth Avenue.

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