Former Residence of Sun Yat-sen

Dr. Sun Yat-sen was the great forerunner of the Chinese bourgeois democratic revolution. He led the Chinese people in the struggle against the Qing Dynasty and successfully overthrew the feudal autocratic monarchy that had been practiced in China for several thousand years and he became the final president of the first republic in Asia, the Republic of China. Therefore, he was reputed as"father of the Republic of China"and father of the republics in Asia.
Sun Yat-sens former residence is situated in Cuiheng Village, 29 kilomters to the southeast of the present-day Zhongshan City proper. He was born here on November 12, 1866 and spent Ms childhood in the village. Because Ms father was an ordinary farmer and the family was poor, Ms elder brother had to go to Honolulu to seek a living when he was 5 years old. At the age of 12, he followed Ms elder brother to Honolulu and studied there in a missionary school. Later he came back to Hong Kong [o study in a college of Western medicine and, after graduation in 1892, practiced medicine in Macao and Guangzhou. At that time. China was suffering domestic troubles and foreign invasion. In 1894, the Japanese militarists launched a war [o annex Korea and invade China. The corrupt and incompetent Qing government signed Me humiliating Maguan Treaty with the Japanese, providing that China should cede Taiwan, open trading ports and pay war reparations to the war-maker. This had greatly aroused Sun Yat-sens patriotic indignation. He decided that the Qing Dynasty was rouen to the core and must be overthrown and placed by a democratic republic, and therefore he resolutely plunged into the struggle against the Qing government.