What is the life story of Sun Yat-sen?

Sun Yat-sen was born in the poor town of Xiangshan near Guangzhou (Canton)/Guangdong. He followed his brother to Honolulu as a child where he studied some of the traditional Confucian Classics and obtained his college degree in Hong Kong. During his studies and practice in medicine in the area of Hong Kong, Macao, and Guangzhou he developed contacts with some of the traditional secret societies. In Hawaii Sun had learned more about democracy, modern legal systems, modern schools and the need for industrial development, he formed an opinion that democracy was not sufficient enough to protect a state against foreign intrusion.

In 1894 he founded the Revive China Society whose goal was to overthrow the Manchus and to found a republic. The symbol of the society was the blue sky-white sun flag later used by the Republic of China. In 1896 the Qing secret service kidnapped Sun Yat-sen while he was staying in London. With the help of the British foreign office he was released and became famous overnight.

In the following years Sun developed his ideology, the Three People's Principles: : nationalism, democracy, people's livelihood, minquan rights, minsheng rights. Actually, Sun did not find enough support among the Chinese overseas, and further, he had to cope with the hostility of the monarchist reformists like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao who were against revolutionary activities. Liang Qichao had a conflict with? Sun, especially after the disastrous Boxer Rebellion in 1900. Sun now obtained support from writers and intellectuals within China, like Cai Yuanpei, Huang Xing, and Song Jiaoren. These societies joined together in 1905 under the name of the United League, a society that would be able to stage several revolutionary uprisings.

Agents of the Tongmenghui were able to convince members of the New Army of the revolutionary cause, and the garrison at Wuchang, Hubei started a revolution late 1911 after large groups of the gentry that had invested money, felt discontent with the nationalization of the Sichuan Railway. Although Sun who was abroad most of November 1911, was proposed as the leader of the new republic, the ceded presidency to the powerful general Yuan Shikai who was able to convince the Manchu government to retreat. After an attempt to encounter the dictatorial politics of Yuan Shikai in a second revolution, Sun fled to Japan where he married Song Qingling in 1914.

What is the Three People Principle?

Mínquán
The Principle of Minquan is usually translated as "democracy"; literally "the People's power" or "government by the People." To Sun, it represented a Western constitutional government. First, he divided political life of his ideal for China into two sets of 'powers':

Mínzú

Mínshēng
The Principle of Minsheng is sometimes translated as "the People's welfare," "Government for the People," or even socialism, though the government of Chiang Kai-shek shied away from translating it as such. The concept may be understood as social welfare or as populist governmental measures. Sun understood it as an industrial economy and equality of land holdings for the Chinese peasant farmers. Here he was influenced by the American thinker Henry George; the land value tax in Taiwan is a legacy thereof. He divided livelihood into four areas: food, clothing, housing, and transportation; and planned out how an ideal government can take care of these for its people.

What is the Sun Yat-sen suit?

It is said that Sun Yat-sen instructed Huang Longsheng, a Western-style tailor from Zhejiang Province, to design a suit based on the one commonly worn by Chinese men in Japan and south-east Asia. The early form of Sun Yat-sen suit had a closed stand collar and centre-front buttons.

the design. It is the later style of Sun Yat-sen suit which was further modified and adopted as China's national dress by Mao Zedong after 1949.Thus, it is? also known to the westerners as "Mao Suit" or "Mao Tunic".Long after Sun's death, popular mythology assigned a revolutionary and patriotic significance to the Sun Yat-sen suit, even though it was essentially a foreign-style garment. The four pockets were said to represent the Four Cardinal Principles cited in the classic Book of Changes and understood by the Chinese as fundamental principles of conduct: Propriety, Justice, Honesty, and Shame. The five centre-front buttons were said to represent the five powers of the constitution of the Republic and the three cuff-buttons to symbolize the Three Principles of the People: Nationalism, Democracy, and People's Livelihood.

Sun Yat-sen is the most prominent leader of the Chinese "bourgeois" revolution; he was called the "father of the nation". He was a uniting figure in post-imperial China and is widely revered not only by Chinese but also the whole world.