ABSTRACT
Sun Yat-sen was born on November 12, 1866, to a poor peasant family in the village of Ts'ui-heng, Hsiang-shan district, in the Pearl River delta of Kwangtung Province. In the year Sun was born, imperial armies had just mopped up the last remnants of T'aip'ing resistance. Sun's attempt to pursue a modern medical career also met with disappointment. He did not stay in Hong Kong because the local medical council decided that the graduates of the new school were not qualified to practice modern medicine in the colony. In Hong Kong Sun joined forces with Yang Ch'ü-yün, a Hong Kong-born Fukienese whose temperament and anti-Manchu feelings matched Sun's. Sun's spokesman Eugene Ch'en tried to explain to Western diplomats that Sun's public repudiation of the unequal treaties did not mean that he favored unilateral and immediate abrogation and that Sun's friendship with Russia did not make him antiforeign.
