incognito in America, England and Japan, organizing drill, educational
and contributing corps of the “Kao Lao Hwei” (reform associations), the
money and men going to Canton, Shanghai and Wuchang, where the main
revolution broke out on that memorable day, October 10, 1911. General
Hwang Hing was Sunyacius’ representative in China in receiving this
aid. All of Sunyacius’ helpers proved loyal to their trust in handling
this money, except one, and of him Sunyacius himself writes: “He will
meet with his due reward.”
Sunyacius’ head carried a price (the modern blacklist) and only his
insistence on British citizenship saved him from being kidnapped as a
lunatic (no less) by the yellow and white detectives of the Manchus,
to have his ankles crushed under the hammer and his body cut into a
thousand pieces (lin chee) slowly at Peking. He was seized on Portland
Street in London, in 1896, and hurried to the Chinese Legation.
Sunyacius’ rescue came about in this dramatic way: His Hongkong
teacher, Doctor Cantlie, was then practising in London. Sunyacius gave
to a British secretary in the Chinese Legation a note addressed to
Doctor Cantlie, to whom it was fortunately delivered in the British
spirit of fair play and through the pleas of a woman, the Briton’s
wife counseling her husband to deliver the letter in “noble scorn
of consequence”. The heroic Doctor Cantlie at once took it to Lord
Salisbury and the British Foreign Office, which intervened, surrounding
the Chinese Legation with officers (a new siege of Peking). Sunyacius
was reluctantly given his freedom by the Manchuized Chinese. Only for
Britain, therefore, Sunyacius would never have lived to strike the
tocsin of a republican revolution. But then, Britain has been the
mother and teacher of reformers since Cromwell’s day.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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