The United States remained an elusive but promised land for Kang during the next five years. From his Coal Island retreat in British Columbia during summer 1899, Kang made a third, unsuccessful attempt to enter the United States, this time through Seattle.1 Rebuffed, he set his sights on Hawaiʻi, which had been annexed to the United States only the year before, bringing the quasi-independent republic, with its 25,000 Chinese residents, under the Exclusion policy.2
Kang consulted with L. Edwin Dudley, the U.S. consul in Vancouver, on how to legally obtain entry to the islands. Dudley, in turn, procured a letter of introduction for Kang from the Hawaiian consul general stationed in Victoria and wrote to the U.S. consul general in Honolulu to inform him of Kang’s pending arrival and good intentions, stating that he thought Kang was “travelling under a British passport.”3 Although American consular officials in Hawaiʻi posed no objections to a visit, Dudley was informed that a U.S. Bureau of Immigration official in Honolulu would only admit Kang if he possessed the unattainable Section 6 certificate.4 It is testimony to Dudley’s unusual regard for Kang that he would go to such lengths to aid a man whom the U.S. government had on four occasions in one year successfully kept out of the country.
On October 10, 1899, Kang left Canada for Japan, Hong Kong, and Singapore. However, in January 1900, the Chinese minister in Washington, Wu Tingfang, believing that Kang was aboard the Japanese steamer America Maru bound from Hong Kong for Honolulu and San Francisco, personally notified the U.S. Secretary of State. Wu was sure that Kang, “being under some sort of indictment
Kang did not return to North America until 1904 and finally crossed the U.S. border in February 1905. During this four-year period, the Qing court’s attitude toward Kang and reform had somewhat softened. In 1901 the Empress Dowager introduced the New Policies (Xinzheng), a series of administrative, economic, and political reforms resembling the Hundred Days’ program that was a direct response to the shock of foreign troops invading Beijing and the desperate escape of the imperial family to Xi’an during the Boxer Uprising. Cixi’s 1901 edict announcing the reforms also denounced Kang as a traitor still bent on sedition—“Even though he and others have fled overseas, they continue to lead people astray with their ‘Rich-You Honorable-Wei’ (fuyouguiwei, a play on the name Youwei) membership certificates and their incitement to rebellion.”7 But, as the years passed, Qing diplomats in the United States put increasingly less pressure on American immigration authorities to bar the entry of Kang or his followers. Although the U.S. Chinese Exclusion policy was tightening during this period, there was great sympathy in the United States for Kang’s reform movement and respect for its leaders, all of whom ultimately were able to enter the country with or without the required papers.
By the time Kang returned to North America in November 1904, he had traveled to twenty-five countries and territories in Europe, Asia, and Africa, moving quickly from one place to another, in part to elude Qing assassins but also to satisfy his prodigious curiosity about the world. Throughout his exile, Kang would occasionally withdraw from his fast-paced travels to isolated retreats where he felt safe and could write. He found a nearly year-long haven in the hills of Darjeeling, India, and fell in love with Sweden, where he would ultimately buy an island home. While traveling, Kang spent considerable time and expense keeping contact with his followers and the Baohuanghui hubs in Victoria and Vancouver. He used telegrams and the postal mail to maintain control over his organization’s leaders and to issue public letters and official Baohuanghui statements for circulation by printed letter and in Baohuanghui newspapers. Kang’s journeys during these years are briefly traced below. A few significant events are introduced that had a great impact on Kang and his Baohuanghui organizational activities.
1.1 Hong Kong
In October 1899, Kang learned that his mother had fallen ill in Hong Kong, He sailed first from Victoria to Japan on the Empress of India. Arriving in Yokohama on October 26, Kang came under the close scrutiny of Qing authorities, who were determined to capture Kang dead or alive. Only through the intercession of friendly Japanese officials did Tokyo agree to let Kang transit Japan on his way to Hong Kong and most likely he never went ashore. He wrote to Liang Qichao that his ship was escorted by two police patrol boats to protect him.8 Indeed, the day Kang arrived in Yokohama, one of the premier Baohuanghui newspapers, Liang Qichao’s Qingyi Bao (China Discussion) was set on fire, probably by a Qing agent, a double tragedy because all the manuscripts Kang had sent to the paper for publication during his travels were also
The Qing government alerted authorities in Shanghai and Hong Kong (and in many other countries) to arrest Kang should he attempt to land, an entreaty refused by the British government in Hong Kong, which was especially angered when the Qing advertised a reward of 100,000 taels for Kang’s capture.10 As the Hawaiian Star of January 4, 1900, put it, “this is regarded as an incitement to commit murder in a British colony.”11 To the dismay of the Qing government, Kang was treated as a dignitary in Hong Kong, and British Governor Henry Blake vowed that he would vigorously protect Kang from danger.
While in Hong Kong, Kang made two important moves on behalf of the Baohuanghui. First, he consciously or unconsciously found a way to forestall the friendly collaboration of Liang Qichao and his group of “sworn brothers” with Sun Yatsen (Sun Yixian, Sun Zhongshan, Sun Wen) in Japan that had developed when Kang left for Canada in March 1899. By the end of 1899, Liang was making a long delayed journey outside of Asia to organize Baohuanghui chapters in Hawaiʻi.12 Two other members of Liang’s brotherhood in Japan—his cousin and Kang’s former student, Liang Qitian, departed on his own multiyear organizing trip to the Americas, and another former student and probably the most radical of the group, Ou Jujia (Ou Yunqiao, On Won Chew, Ou Yungao)—took over Baohuanghui headquarters in Macau.13 The organization
At the Qing court, calls for dethroning the emperor had begun soon after Cixi resumed the regency. When Guangxu did not perform his public New Year rites in 1899, rumors of his ill health made international news.15 That summer, as Kang and the Canadian Chinese were in the process of inaugurating the Baohuanghui, an article datelined Victoria appeared in the June 29 New York Times. It reported confusing hearsay that the emperor would either resume power in July or be replaced with a child emperor.16 Shortly thereafter, a circular telegram, not yet in the name of the Baohuanghui, originated in British Columbia, inquiring after the health of the emperor and asking that he be returned to power. Including the telegrams from Canada, at least forty were reported coming from Southeast Asia, Japan, and the Americas.17
Moderate reformer Jing Yuanshan, head of the Shanghai Telegraph Administration, helped by two more radical reformers, Tang Caichang and Wang
Today the Baohuanghui is our only hope to save China from perishing. The overseas Chinese are indignant. In the last month of the lunar year [January 1900], hundreds of telegrams were dispatched to Beijing to oppose the adoption [of Pujun] as heir apparent. This shows that Heaven will not let China perish by keeping several million Chinese overseas for the purpose of the restoration of the Han mandate!23
Staying in Hong Kong proved too dangerous for Kang. After surviving two close assassination attempts at the hands of Qing agents, on January 27, 1900, he left for Singapore.24
1.2 Singapore and Penang
Kang’s main supporters in Singapore were Khoo Seok Wan (Qiu Shuyuan) and Lim Boon Keng (Lin Wenqing). Khoo was a fervent reformer and follower of Kang who had organized his own circular telegram movement with one hundred Singapore merchants on October 12, 1899, to protest the threatened abdication of Guangxu.25 Khoo was one of Kang’s wealthiest supporters and became the foremost funder of the Qinwang military uprising, which was being planned while Kang was in Singapore (see Chapter 4). Lim was similarly involved in promoting the restoration of the emperor through an English-language newspaper, China Times, which he edited for the Baohuanghui.26
The February 14 edict, which was publicized in Singaporean newspapers, offered a tempting 145,000 tael reward for the heads of Kang and Liang.28 This new inducement to prospective assassins prompted Kang to announce that he would leave Singapore for Europe on February 23.29 However, a report from Singapore in the next month said that Kang had secretly returned from the ship on the pilot’s boat and had since been living in a country home with a Sikh police guard.30 This elaborate feint was organized by the Singapore chief of police, who disclosed the plan in a letter to Straits Settlements Governor Sir Alexander Swettenham.31 It was then that Kang moved to the home of Lim Boon Keng on March 26, and, on April 7, to the home of Zhang Fanglin to further throw off enemy agents trailing him.32 In spite of the precautions, press reports from Singapore several months later erroneously said that agents had gotten past the Sikh guards and had “badly wounded” Kang who was “lying at the point of death.”33
In the meantime, Kang’s compatriot Yung Wing (Rong Hong) met Kang in Singapore to discuss Qinwang plans.34 Yung had fled Beijing in 1898 because of his close association with Kang and the Hundred Days.35 He had become
While hiding in Singapore, Kang was deeply involved in the intrigue of staging a sweeping uprising in China timed to take advantage of the chaos of the Boxer Uprising and the foreign troops storming the country to protect their interests. Plans for Qinwang had been in the works since early in Kang’s exile, and fundraising among members began in autumn 1899 when Kang was still in Canada.37 Kang openly sought help from foreign governments to overthrow the Boxers and their patrons, Cixi and her faction, and thereby effect Guangxu’s restoration. The whole of the Baohuanghui was mobilized to support the action, which was to start in the Yangzi Valley and spread north, and Kang and his associates raised hundreds of thousands of dollars from members in Japan, Southeast Asia, Hawaiʻi, Canada, and the United States to support the military action. Khoo Seok Wan in Singapore was the most generous donor. Baohuanghui newspapers argued for the necessity of military action, and foreign newspapers, including the Victoria Daily Colonist, covered the plans (and the rumors) as they developed.
On the whole, we cannot conscientiously say that Kang cuts a dignified figure in these plots and counter-plots, and he is not a man of the right calibre to undertake the regeneration of his unhappy country. If, as he pretends, he has eight million taels and several millions of supporters prepared to take up arms on his behalf, and if he really meditates a coup against the Empress Dowager … would it have been possible for him to do anything more foolish than to show his hand in this way, and put the enemy on its guard? As it is, this idiotic bombast has merely the effect of compromising the safety of his adherents left behind in China while he tries hard to excite sympathy in Europe.40
Qinwang was one element of a tripartite strategy by Kang and the Baohuanghui to use violent means (uprisings, assassinations, and overseas Chinese military training) to obtain their ends and is the subject of Chapter 4. But it would fail badly and led Kang to abandon hope of restoring the emperor through military action.
As it happened, around the same time that Qinwang failed, during the court’s long exile in Xi’an, Cixi was moved to issue an edict in the name of the emperor on January 29, 1901, that apologized for “the accumulated and continued abuses and our excessive attention to empty formalities over the past several decades [which] have contributed to the present calamitous situation.”41 The edict heralded a decade of significant reforms, the so-called New Policies (Xinzheng). Kang, who spent much of 1901 in the Straits Settlements island of Penang, was heartened that many of his ideas shown through in the edict’s proposals. He wrote his student Tom Leung in Los Angeles: “The old clique has been almost entirely eliminated. It is clear that Heaven desires a new China … It is said that ‘His Majesty will return to power in the third month [April 19–May 17], and Lü
1.3 India
On the advice of a doctor, Kang moved from the unhealthy dampness of Penang to the snowcapped mountains of India.44 He arrived in Kolkata on December 12, 1901, accompanied by his second wife Liang Suijue, second daughter Kang Tongbi, and several others, including two servants.45 He spent eighteen months in India, mostly in seclusion in the mountains where he finished writing some old books, rewrote others lost during 1898, chronicled his travels in India, and worked on poetry and philosophical treatises.
Initially Kang and his entourage stayed in Kolkata, where they were invited to a “majestic” ceremony with masses of British and Indian soldiers and rajahs (“kings”) from various Indian states. After the ceremony, they met the lieutenant
During her stay in India, Tongbi wrote a poem including a line that Chairman Mao Zedong would quote when meeting her decades later: “As a woman who journeyed west, I am the first Chinese.”48 She wrote years later that, “Of the Chinese who traveled to India through history, starting with Qin Jing,
During his India sojourn, Kang produced two works concerning India itself: “Yindu Youji” (Records of Travel to India) and an eighteen-page essay about India in the form of a letter addressed to Liang Qichao entitled “Yu Tongxue Zhuzi Liang Qichao Deng Lun Yindu Wangguo Youyu Gesheng Zili Shu” (Discussing India’s Extinction caused by Independence of its Provinces in a Letter to Liang Qichao, Colleagues, and Followers). The two works provide a look at how Kang viewed China’s historical interactions with India as well as expressing his general ideas on the problems of civilization and nationhood. He observed, as a warning to China, how the division of India into independent provinces “led to its quick demise.” He was critical of the Hindu caste system and saw how British colonial rule had weakened the ruling class. As with his other travel literature, he inaccurately assumed that the customs and practices he observed in places he visited briefly were common throughout India. In the second work, he rejected Liang Qichao’s ideas on provincial autonomy and expressed grave concerns about China’s potential political fragmentation, especially because of societal elements that were obstacles to nationalism.50
Among other works Kang completed during this period was Datong Shu (Book of Great Community), unveiling a vision of the future so daring that Kang would not permit it to be published in full during his lifetime. Peter Zarrow writes that it describes “[p]erhaps China’s only full-fledged utopia” and is “a complete critique of power in all its forms.” He notes that Datong Shu outlined a programmatic path to a completely egalitarian world by abolishing all boundaries—gender, race, class, nation, even species—to attain “unity, equality, independence, productivity, peace, and joy.”51 This dream was in stark contrast to Kang’s heavily nationalistic, China-oriented political agenda, but one can see clearly Kang’s organizational mind at play. In Datong Shu, Kang
During this time, Baohuanghui members’ loyalty was wavering over the growing concern that the Manchus were not worth “protecting” and should be driven out. Liang Qichao had overseen the publication and distribution of a controversial and popular book, Xin Guangdong (New Guangdong), written by Baohuanghui—but anti-Manchu—stalwart Ou Jujia that called for an independent Guangdong. Kang worked hard to close the ranks once again and used India as an example of disunity that led to foreign aggression and takeover. In a group letter sent to “all comrades” through members in Canada, Kang wrote: “I have been in India and have seen that Indians can’t even become generals in their own army. Indian soldiers can’t take part in the Assembly. I am sorry for the Indians, and I grieve when I read their books. My conclusion is that independence for the provinces and revolution is not good for China. Today, if we hope to save China and defend her independence, we should concentrate our attention and pool efforts to deal with the three evil ones [Ronglu, Li Lianying, and Cui Yugui].”54 Kang hadn’t forsaken violence in this letter and urged members to unite to restore the emperor, stating, “If we organize an insurrectionist army and launch a general offensive toward North China, financial resources will be an important concern.”
1.4 Southeast Asia and Hong Kong
After two years of an exile within an exile, Kang left India in spring 1903 for a tour of Southeast Asia, an early stronghold of Baohuanghui support. There he founded or shored-up chapters and generally aroused a new sense
In fall 1903, Kang made his way north to Hong Kong and in March 1904 met with Liang Qichao, Xu Qin, and others at the first true assembly of Baohuanghui leaders.58 Plans were made to establish periodicals and newspapers in Hong Kong, Yokohama, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and the Guangdong Public School. After the Hong Kong meeting, Kang sent Liang on an undercover trip to Shanghai in April 1904 to establish what would quickly become China’s most innovative and politically influential newspaper, Shi Bao (Eastern Times), building its reputation as an agitator and information clearinghouse during the anti-American boycott that emerged the next year.59 In Hong Kong, Kang may also have overseen the completion of his biography (Wo Zhuan) assembled by his students Lu Naixiang and Lu Dunkui, and he would later make many attempts for the manuscript to be translated into English to enhance his reputation.60
Kang left Hong Kong for Europe on March 22, 1904. In a dramatic change of policy, the British government was in the process of banishing Kang from Hong Kong because “it cannot be expected that a British colony which is in constant and friendly communication with the constituted Chinese authorities will tolerate the presence of men who use the security and protection afforded them by the British flag to stir up sedition in China and hatred and distrust of the foreigner whose hospitality they enjoy.”62 Not only was Kang banned from returning to Hong Kong but banishment orders were given for the editors and printer of the Baohuanghui newspaper Shang Bao (Sheung Po) because of its pronounced anti-Western views and inflammatory nationalism. This change in British policy toward Kang has been documented by historian Phoebe Li, and it would keep Kang from fulfilling his dream of visiting Australia and caused him to focus his political proselytizing on the Chinese in North America.63
1.5 Europe
After a long journey by ship from Hong Kong—with diversionary breaks of a day to more than a month in Saigon, Bangkok, Malacca, Penang, and Ceylon—Kang transited the Suez Canal, with a stop in Port Said, Egypt. He finally arrived in Italy in mid-June 1904 and then proceeded to France, where he was joined
October 4, 1904 in Aberdeen, Scotland, possibly at St. Margaret’s School for Girls: standing, from left: Luo Chang, unknown man, and Zhou Guoxian; seated, from left: Kang Tongbi, Kang Youwei, and nanny for girls; at Kang’s feet, Malaysian Chinese girls studying at St. Margaret’s, the daughters of Zhou’s relatives, Lu You 陸佑 and Lu Qiutai 陸秋泰.
Sweden aroused Kang’s poetic and romantic nature and stimulated his utopian bent. Swedish sinologist Göran Malmqvist wrote that Kang thought Sweden’s social and political development surpassed that of other countries and that this small, poor country had previously achieved his dream of Datong. Kang’s Swedish journal catalogs the country’s advanced social welfare institutions and extols Sweden’s frugality, cleanliness, order, and good management, qualities he found lacking in China. Kang’s Datong world features publicly run childcare and schools to equalize educational opportunity and old age homes in the most beautiful scenic spots. While in Sweden, Kang visited public housing, public baths, child care centers, and shelters for the poor. He praised a relief home for the poor with its spotless windows and corridors, white carpets, thick cotton-padded mattresses, and plentiful doctors and nurses who saw patients twice a day, “all paid for by funds in the State Treasury! How benevolent! Just like the world of Datong!” Kang remarked that the population of Sweden was about 4 million with 2,000 students attending university. “The population is no greater than our Shunde County (Guangdong), so shouldn’t Shunde be worthy of Sweden and have 2,000 university students?”65
While sitting on a rock on the Sandhamn island Baltic seashore, Kang wrote, “I received a message that Changshu [Weng Tonghe, the emperor’s tutor] was dead. I sobbed and cried while the roaring wind and mournful waves added more grief to my sorrow.”66 Although Weng had attempted to stop the more radical measures proposed by Kang during the Hundred Days and was dismissed by the emperor into his own bitter exile, Kang did not forget Weng for bravely recommending him to the emperor, an act that abruptly thrust Kang into political power.67 Kang recalled in a poem:
Kang left Sweden and sailed from Liverpool on November 1, 1904, arriving in Montreal eleven days later.
2 Kang Returns to North America
Kang Tongbi’s telegram from London asking President Roosevelt to allow her father to enter the United States to attend the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair.
Despite these successes, Kang was uneasy and even fearful as he faced the challenge of Sun Yatsen, who had spent 1904 targeting Baohuanghui members in the United States. Kang also constantly worried about money.75 Perhaps
In Montreal, Kang was greeted by his followers and a band at the berth on the St. Lawrence River and was escorted to the Windsor Hotel.82 Kang’s advance man was the Vancouver Baohuanghui president Ye En (Charles Yip Yen), depicted by La Presse as “a millionaire from Victoria, British Columbia” comparable to John Pierpont Morgan and Andrew Carnegie.83 In fact, Kang would soon tap Ye En to head the Commercial Corporation in Hong Kong. As he did in 1899, Kang resumed his efforts to reform Chinese behavior and urge adaptation to local norms. On November 13, Kang’s appearance at Montreal’s Knox Church prompted such a large crowd that the usual churchgoers had to relinquish their pews in the main part of the church, which filled with his Chinese audience. Kang compared Chinese and Western cultures, “much to the disadvantage of the former,” and, according to the Montreal Star, vowed that China “would become one of the greatest nations of the earth, if western methods and civilization were adopted.”84 But incessant travel had taken its toll on Kang’s health. A persistent case of bronchitis plagued him for months, and he longed to return to the peace and solitude of Coal Island, off Victoria, British Columbia.85 Thus, he spent only a few days in eastern Canada before heading west.
From Montreal, Kang proceeded to Toronto, arriving on the evening of November 15. Vancouver Baohuanghui leaders Ye En and Yang Lingshi had gone ahead to promote Kang among the local Chinese to assure that Kang would be greeted in style at the train station and housed in a “grand hotel.” Kang viewed Niagara Falls, then returned to give a talk until 11:00 PM in a Toronto church, with several hundred prospective members in the audience. Ye called on those moved by Kang’s speech to join the Baohuanghui at once, and a few hundred signed up and He Yanmei was selected as president. Kang and his escorts then traveled to Ottawa, where Kang gave an evening lecture on a topic he would soon develop into one of his most influential tracts, “Wuzhi
In Ottawa, according to press reports, Kang also planned to make return visits to Sir Wilfrid Laurier, the prime minister, and Lord Minto, the governor general, both of whom he had met in 1899. Kang took the opportunity—when informing Laurier of his hoped-for visit—to send the prime minister an “ancient Chinese porcelain and a box of Chinese silk embroidery as a small present.”87 Both men were out of the city, however, and Kang did not tarry in Canada’s capital.88 Leaving Ottawa on November 17, he proceeded by Canadian Pacific Express to Winnipeg, Manitoba (where there was a Baohuanghui chapter) for a stop on November 19 and thence to Vancouver, on November 22.89 Kang’s English-speaking and Scottish-educated interpreter and private secretary Zhou Guoxian and Austrian bodyguard, valet, and linguist Rupert Humer came with him from Europe and would remain at his side throughout much of the next year.90 Humer met Kang
Ye En’s daughter, Yip May Young, wrote in broken English to her friend Tongbi that “Uncle” Kang was welcomed in Vancouver by a crowd, not only of Chinese, but “in all different nations,” and more than 3,000 people came to City Hall to listen to him “preach” from 8:00 to 10:00 that night.92 Kang called for unity of overseas Chinese with their compatriots and stressed the importance of developing commercial enterprises and promoting industrial education.93 On November 29, Kang was entertained with a lavish banquet by Vancouver’s Baohuanghui.94 The non-Chinese guests included a dozen Canadian officials, the Japanese and American consuls, and journalists from local English-language newspapers. Kang’s old acquaintance, U.S. Consul L. Edwin Dudley, spoke about the friendship of President “Teddy” Roosevelt and Secretary of State John M. Hay for the Baohuanghui, and, “referring to the work of the Reform Association, he said the awakening and development of China would be even more rapid than that of Japan.” However, in his talk, Kang graciously “declined the honor” after Dudley compared him” to Bismarck and Garibaldi.” Kang also expressed surprise at the success of the Baohuanghui and attributed this in part to its “foreign friends.”
Upon his return to Vancouver, Kang had approached Dudley about renewing his quest to enter the United States. Three days before Kang’s banquet, Dudley had duly informed the Department of State that he intended to issue Kang a Section 6 certificate. He also requested that Kang and his party be given immunity from luggage inspection.95 The latter request was denied on the basis that
Since my return to Canada in November 1904, I continued my travels to the United States and Mexico, and returned to Europe. I was like a swan, flying high, rising steeply up thousands of miles, and shooting into the vast heavens.100
After Kang finished compiling Ouzhou Shiyi Guo Youji (Travel Notes on Eleven European Countries) on December 22, he incorporated these experiences in his essay “Wuzhi Jiuguo Lun.” He argued that Western countries became strong primarily because of their development of science, industry, and technology, which gave them the tools to build steamships, modern factories, and gunboats, and, as a result, powerful militaries. Material (or industrial) civilization was thus the key to the salvation of China.101 Two North American cities were singled out in the essay, Vancouver and Los Angeles, for the speed of their transformation to modernity. Vancouver had only recently surpassed Victoria in population and influence.
The two metropolises used to be desolate mountains covered with vegetation and home to foxes and hares. Today they have developed into metropolises covering dozens of [square] miles with populations of more than 100, 000. How magnificent the buildings and parks are! How imposing the schools and mansions are! Tramcars are numerous, and electric lamps are just as bright as the moon. On Sundays, people all go to the parks. There are men and women as well as carriages everywhere. Los Angeles is even more magnificent than Vancouver.102
While on Coal Island, Kang could easily travel to Victoria, and his letters during that period were mailed from the city on Driard Hotel stationery.103 On December 11, Kang gave a public speech to Victoria’s Chinese, again lecturing his followers to “follow the customs of the people of this country, particularly their methods of living, to pay heed to the laws of sanitation and cleanliness” so as to overcome “the objections against the presence of Chinese in this country.”104 This resulted in the Victoria chapter promising to set up a bathhouse for Chinese residents; the Vancouver chapter followed suit, announcing it had formed a Society for the Promotion of Cleanliness and provided “free public baths.”105 The renovation of the Vancouver Baohuanghui building in 2017 exposed large characters for Baths (Xishenfang) and Barber (Jianfasuo) on the first floor, indicating that Kang’s suggestions were taken to heart.106
Meanwhile Consul Dudley was arranging for the documents that would serve as Section 6 certificates for Kang and Zhou Guoxian.107 These were registered with the U.S. consulate in Vancouver on December 17, for a simple fee of $1 each.108 Kang must have kept his copy of the Canadian government-issued
Sign for “Barber” and “Baths” [Jianfasuo, Xishenfang], in the Canadian Baohuanghui headquarters known as Da Zhonghua, 529–531 Carrall Street, Vancouver.
His Excellency is a tourist within the meaning of the Chinese Exclusion Act, and therefore, entitled to enter the United States, but he is more than this, he is at the head of a great movement for the uplifting of his people, and I shall feel personally obliged for any courtesy you may show His Excellency and the gentlemen who accompany him.
Dudley also was impressed with the work of Kang’s Chinese Empire Reform Association, which he intimated in his letter to John Hay. He wrote that he had “been carefully watching the results of [Kang’s] efforts, and I believe that his influence has worked great good among the Chinese residents in this Province … I feel that His Excellency is doing great work not only for the benefit of his own people, but for mankind.” Dudley also suggested that it was the “better class” of Canadian Chinese who were members of the reform association.112 Dudley’s solicitous arrangements for Kang’s entry into the United States went far beyond the call of duty, yet Kang continued to delay the short trip across the border. Personal letters to his daughter and other Baohuanghui leaders in the United States from December 1904 through January 1905 show that Kang felt unprepared on many fronts to advance to what he knew could be his main stage. Holding him back were fear of Sun Yatsen, lack of
Section 6 certificate Issued by the Canadian government “for “Professor Kang Yu Wei,” signed by J. M. Bowell, Controller of Chinese and Collector of Customs, Vancouver, certified by L. Edwin Dudley, U.S. Consul, Vancouver, December 17, 1904, and notations of acceptance by H. Edsell, Sumas, Washington, February 11, 1905.
Sun Yatsen’s presence in the United States during most of 1904 (April 6 to December 24) terrified Kang into preparing both defensive (body armor) and offensive responses (assassination), a topic explored in depth in Chapter 4. Not only Sun but other revolutionary orators were touring the United States at this time, stirring up much mutual suspicion among Baohuanghui members as they wondered who among them was to be trusted. Baohuanghui stalwarts such as Tang Mingsan and Liang Wenqing (Liang Qiushui, Liang Wenxing) in New York and Huang Rongye in Hartford were writing alarming letters to Kang Tongbi and no doubt to Kang himself describing Sun’s attacks on Kang and the Baohuanghui and reporting on his conversations with Baohuanghui members and allies.114 Among those suspected of collusion was the elderly Yung Wing, who had met Sun in Hartford and praised him publicly afterward. This caused local Baohuanghui leader Huang Rongye to warn Tongbi, “Thief Sun has met Mr. Yung [Yung Wing]. I don’t know the content of their conversation. But what else could it be about other than bad-mouthing Mr. Kang and our party? … Given Mr. Yung’s words, his mind must have been poisoned by Bandit Sun. We should be very careful when we consult Mr. Yung about confidential party matters in the future.”115 Yet, Yung cooperated closely with Kang in 1905 and received funding from him.116 During most of December, Sun was in New York City, preparing to depart for London, frustrated because he had failed to raise much money, even though his speeches in Chinese communities across the United States had roused a certain amount of revolutionary zeal and alienated some (although not many) Baohuanghui members from the reform movement. Kang fretted over whether it was safe to go to San Francisco, where Sun had strong supporters among the Zhigongtang (Chee Gong Tong, Chinese Triads, Freemasons), including Wong Sam Duck (Huang Sande), who in his
Kang planned to sell Commercial Corporation shares as he made the rounds of American chapters (following his speeches, it was customary to solicit funds) and was impatiently waiting for the company’s stock certificates that had been sent by Luo Chang from London to New York and were delayed because Luo forgot to include the bill of lading.118 Kang believed that Canadian and U.S.-based investors would be key to the Commercial Corporation’s success, and, although he was ultimately disappointed by the stock sales he made, he wanted to begin his U.S. trip with plenty of certificates on hand. Kang also had grown exasperated with Hong Kong’s handling of the Commercial Corporation and during this third trip in Canada made the critical decision to appoint Ye En, the first national president of the Canadian Baohuanghui and the originator of the 1899 scheme to create a multinational corporation, as the general manager (zongli). Ye won the appointment because he enjoyed a high reputation among the Chinese in North America and received strong recommendations from two other top Baohuanghui leaders, Liang Qichao and Xu Qin.119 Ye En and his family settled in Macau in March 1905, and under his management, the Commercial Corporation rapidly expanded.120
While in Canada, Kang became engrossed in another more labor-intensive and member-directed fundraising scheme—the sale of membership badges in each city on his U.S. itinerary. The full story of the badges, which illustrates Kang’s detail-oriented and obsessive management style, is told in Chapter 3.
Kang’s preoccupation with this and other fundraising schemes reflected his personal insecurity about money and dependence on others to provide it. He continually wrote Tongbi that he had no money to disperse and was unable to redeem a money order from the Hong Kong headquarters.121 Frequently, during this period, Kang solicited funds from the wealthy Ye En, to pay for a variety of projects, from production of badges to Tongbi’s personal expenses and a loan of $2,000 to $3,000 for Yung Wing.122 Yet, when Kang needed $300 or $400 to go to the United States, he was ashamed to ask Ye En “for such a small amount of money.” Since Tongbi was handling some disbursements from Hartford National Bank (with funds from the Hong Kong headquarters), he asked her for $200. “For even as small an amount as $200 I still need it to be wired. You know how in need of funds I am.”123 He asked Tongbi to send some blank checks (presumably her Hartford bank), “so I can withdraw money anytime.” Tongbi was something of a banker for the Baohuanghui in North America, sporadically receiving funds from Hong Kong and dispersing them for Baohuanghui projects and to her father. Kang did not get the $200 until he arrived in Portland, even after sending Tongbi repeated letters telling her, “I have no money here.”124
Curiously, while Kang was begging his daughter to send him money, he was also discussing mysterious plans with her involving tens of thousands of dollars (U.S. or Hong Kong), likely concerning early business projects. “I just received a letter from Hong Kong that says they only collected a little more than thirty
Yet, two group letters sent from the Hong Kong headquarters that coincided in time with Kang’s third trip to Canada give a sense of how stretched Baohuanghui finances had become on all fronts. Guangzhi Shuju (Diffusion of Knowledge Publishing House), a publishing and translation company in Shanghai initiated by Liang Qichao with much financial support from Kang and Baohuanghui members, issued its annual settlement of accounts in December 1904 that showed a loss and lower dividends for members, causing an uproar.127 A plea was also made to renew subscriptions to the Hong Kong newspaper, Shang Bao (Commercial News) “so we can pay for expenses.”128 And most demanding was the Guangdong Public School, a project championed by Baohuanghui leader Xu Qin, who wrote all members on January 15, 1905, asking them to fulfill the pledges made a year earlier to support this initiative. Xu made a down payment himself on a $16,000 building, bought textbooks, and began hiring teachers, far exceeding the donations he had received. He planned a modern boarding school for 150 students and classes in Chinese, English, gymnastics, and music. “My heart shakes like a hanging flag … I beg for your quick response.”129
Originally, Kang planned to stay for a while in Hartford with Yung Wing, but Tang Mingsan told him that Hartford was too near New York, where there was still fear Sun Yatsen would reemerge. Moreover, a doctor told Kang that his bronchitis would not improve until he stopped using his voice so much and moved to a warmer climate. In January, Kang complained to Tongbi that his symptoms were “so severe that if I speak often I feel a lot of pain. I also cannot bend to write … So this time I visit the United States with fear. I am afraid I am aging and cannot endure the arduousness of dealing with people all the time.” Yet, his urge to travel could not be restrained: “I plan to make use of these two months’ leisure time to go to Brazil, and I will be excused from social activities and talking. (This way I will recover on my own.)”131
On February 6, Kang sent a red New Year greeting to Tongbi: “I wish you peace and luck this coming spring. Please send several hundred badges to Portland if they are ready. I will go to Portland on February 11.”132 Kang was ready to embark on a nine-and-a-half month, fifty-city tour of the United States that would be the pinnacle of his career as an itinerant politician.
3 Kang Enters the United States
We will see each other soon. You can tell me everything about Los Angeles. When I tour places, I will definitely visit their factories, government agencies, and schools because these are very important. I would like to have a disciple or close relative accompany me so that I can entrust a lot
of things to that person in the future. Do you wish to tour with me? Send me a telegram if you do.133
Tom Leung would spend much of 1905 with Kang, usually serving as a physician (Tom was an herbalist by profession) but also as a key functionary in Baohuanghui activities as diverse as its business arm, the Commercial Corporation; its military cadet training program, the Western Military Academy; and its support of Baohuanghui students abroad. Tom also provided Kang with a home base for two months in Los Angeles, from which Kang was able to further explore his theory that China’s greatest need was modern technology and industry, as will be discussed in Chapter 5. Apart from Kang’s deep interest in absorbing the secrets of American power, he was obsessed with the challenge from Sun Yatsen and his embryonic revolutionary party and queried Tom: “Do you know where that Thief Sun [Sun Zei] is now? Please keep a close watch and investigate his whereabouts.”134
Americans first learned of Kang’s imminent arrival in the United States from an article that appeared in the Washington Post and other newspapers on January 8, 1905, describing the Chinese Empire Reform Association as “a powerful reform movement which is quietly spreading over the entire world, and in which nearly 5,000,000 people are interested.”135 It stated that Kang’s mission was to strengthen reform association chapters and “endeavor to establish a Chinese International Banking Institution, with capital of $15,000,000.” A large section in this article was devoted to General Richard A. Falkenberg, “commander-in-chief of the Chinese imperial reform army.”136 Falkenberg’s prominence in this story foreshadows the coming controversy over the Western Military Academy (Gancheng Xuexiao), a network of military training
Before departing Canada, Kang wrote in his European travel book that he had “not yet tasted all the herbs of the earth.” By this he meant he had not visited all the countries of the world in search of the best “cures” for China, in seeming expectation of his impending United States tour.137 Kang, Zhou Guoxian, Rupert Humer, Ye En, and Hip Kwong left for the United States on February 11, 1905.138 After a minor delay at the border, they crossed into the United States on the Central Pacific Railway at Sumas, Washington, and proceeded to Port Townsend, Washington, where Kang’s visa was certified by immigration officials.139
We have come to the United States because it is the country where the greatest effort toward progressive China should be made. A country of freedom and broad-minded ideas, it is only fitting that Chinese in America should do much towards making the movement a success. And, if we hope to teach the Chinese here something, so also do we now hope that we may ourselves learn many things that will help us in our work.141
Still suffering from bronchitis, Kang left Seattle on February 13 after a farewell banquet that included thirty women (perhaps representing the local Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association).143 Portland reform association leaders escorted Kang to their city, headquarters for the twenty-six Pacific Northwest chapters. He was met at the train depot by one hundred local members.144 A few days later, several hundred Chinese filled every seat at the First Methodist Church where Kang gave his first talk.145 In Portland, Kang was asked about the intrigue widely publicized before his arrival in the United States that would mar his visit—Richard Falkenberg and several other American military officers had promised large commissions to American National Guardsmen in Portland and Seattle to enlist in the Chinese Imperial Reform Army and train Chinese cadets, a project having nothing to do with the Western Military Academy according to San Francisco Baohuanghui leader Tom She Bin (Tan Shubin).146 Through Zhou Guoxian, Kang informed the Oregonian that “his work is not to stir up strife and revolution nor to create dissatisfaction among the Chinese in the country but rather to encourage them to become better citizens and in that way carry the work of the reform back to the mother country.147
Kang had his first taste of American institutions in Oregon’s capital, Salem, where he first visited with Governor George E. Chamberlain and then inspected
Kang rested in the rural abode of Portland Baohuanghui leader Li Meijin about twenty-five miles south of the city, returning to Portland around March 1.151 He visited Astoria, where numerous Chinese were employed in the fishing and canning industry, on March 9, and “addressed a large crowd of his countrymen at Fisher’s Opera House” before leaving by train for Los Angeles.152 Along the way, he made stops to give speeches in Sacramento, Fresno, Bakersfield, and other California towns where the Baohuanghui had chapters.153
Kang’s brief stay in Fresno, a thriving agricultural town in the San Joaquin Valley with the third largest Chinatown in California and an active Baohuanghui chapter, yielded a most unexpected consequence. He met an impassioned fifteen-year old American-born Chinese girl who would become the love of his life. Among those greeting Kang’s train in Fresno were Lily Haw (He Zhanli, He Jinlan) and her father, Haw Gum (He Chunfang, Fernando Haw, Jim Fernando), a vineyard foreman and dedicated Baohuanghui member whose admiration of Kang inspired his daughter’s more complicated emotions.154 That evening, Lily
Lily Haw (standing at right) and her family, Fresno, California, circa 1907.
“Frequent bursts of applause” interrupted Kang’s speech as he urged all Chinese men “to cut off their tails and otherwise seek to uplift their race,” reported the Fresno Republican.155 Long before the fervor over shedding the Manchu-required queue would begin in 1911, Kang urged his followers to modernize their appearance by removing their queues and cease shaving their heads.156 Baohuanghui chapters in North America, Fresno included, had
In Fresno, Kang further galvanized the audience by introducing his Datong ideal of gender equality, a subject well-suited to appeal to the few women present. Stories have been told that Lily Haw was so taken by Kang that she offered to play the zither for him after the talk, a meeting that led to a mutual infatuation fired by letters during the next two years, culminating in 1907 when Kang took Lily as his third wife.158
With such a send-off, Kang embarked for Los Angeles, but his arrival was delayed by storms. Kang was welcomed at the Los Angeles train station on March 15 by a military guard from the Western Military Academy. Escorted by the Academy’s chief instructor, “General” Homer Lea, Kang rode in an open car to the Baohuanghui headquarters and from there to a home near Westlake Park, where he would live for nearly two months, hosted by his student Tom Leung.159 In Los Angeles, as in every other American town and city visited by Kang in 1905, he was following in the footsteps of his followers and local leaders who had built the Baohuanghui, chapter by chapter, since 1899.
…
It was five years between when Kang Youwei first set foot in North America in 1899 until he returned again in 1904. This long period was one in which he
See Chapter 1, and also Robert L. Worden, “K’ang Yu-wei, Sun Yat-sen, et al., and the Bureau of Immigration,” Ch’ing-shih wen-t’i 2, no. 6 (June 1971): 1–10.
Delber L. McKee, Chinese Exclusion versus the Open Door Policy, 1900–1906: Clashes over China Policy in the Roosevelt Era (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1977), 35.
L. Edwin Dudley, U.S. Consul, Vancouver, BC, to R. P. Rithet, Consul General, Hawaiian Islands, Victoria, BC, September 1, 1899; Letters Sent, U.S. Consulate, Vancouver, vol. 60, Dudley to S. Seabrook pro R. P. Rithet, to Dudley, September 8, 1899 (copy), Miscellaneous Letters Received, U.S. Consulate, Vancouver, vol. 18; Dudley to William Haywood, U.S. Consul General, Honolulu, September 11, 1899. Letters Sent, vol. 60, all from Entry UD-10. RG 84, NA-College Park.
M. P. Boyd, Vice and Deputy Consul General, Honolulu, to Dudley, October 10, 1899, Miscellaneous Letters Received, U.S. Consulate, Vancouver, vol. 18, Entry UD-10, RG 84, NA-College Park.
Hay to Gage, January 29, 1900, copy in Chinese File 14735.89, Box 162, RG 85, NA-Washington.
Eddie Tang, “British Policy Towards the Chinese in the Straits Settlements: Protection and Control, 1877–1900 (With Special Reference to Singapore)” (M.A. thesis, Australian National University, 1970), 279–80. The matter was mentioned again in the summer but only to the degree that the Treasury Department had “no interest at present” in Kang or Liang; Gage to Hay, July 30, 1900, Letters Sent, Records of Correspondence, Chinese Files, Imprint Book C–l, 308, Entry 133, RG 85.
Douglas R. Reynolds, China, 1898–1912: The Xinzheng Revolution and Japan (Cambridge: Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University, 1993), 202. The Chinese reads: “尚以富有貴爲等票誘人謀逆” (Guangxu Chao Donghualu 光緒朝東華錄 [Records from within the Eastern Flowery Gate, Guangxu Era] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1958), ed. Zhu Shoupeng 朱壽朋, 4:4601). The Xinzheng reforms occurred between 1901 and 1910.
Kang, writing to Liang Qichao, said he would leave Japan from the port of Moji on October 28, sailing straight to Hong Kong and hoped his presence on the ship would be kept secret because he had heard that Manchu official Gangyi intended to send a naval vessel to intercept him. Because of the dangers for Liang Qichao, he probably did not see Kang on this trip, but sent in his stead another Kang follower, Liang Zigang 梁子剛, for secret talks. Kang Youwei to Liang Qichao 梁啟超, October 27, 1899, in Kang Youwei Quanji 康有為全集 [Collected Works of Kang Youwei], ed. Jiang Yihua and Zhang Ronghua 姜義華, 張榮華 (Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 2007), vol. 5, 140.
Jung-pang Lo, “Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography,” K’ang Yu-wei: A Biography and Symposium (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1967), 182. Note: some of the dates on this page have been incorrectly transcribed from the lunar calendar—for example, the fire was on October 26, according to Qingyi Bao. However, the paper kept publishing until late 1901, when it was superseded by Xinmin Congbao.
Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 261 n13. The British had banned Sun Yatsen’s entry after 1896, but the Qing minister in London, Luo Fenglu 羅豊禄, was told that Sun wished to overthrow the Qing whereas Kang wanted to rightfully restore the Guangxu Emperor.
“Reward for Kang Yu Wei,” Hawaiian Star, January 4, 1900.
The revolutionary Feng Ziyou’s claim that Liang and his sworn brothers wrote to Kang in Hong Kong suggesting he resign has not been verified; possibly Xu Qin, or some other person close to Kang, informed him that Sun and Liang’s group were getting close. Nor is it likely, as Feng claims, that Kang became so angry that he immediately sent Liang to Hawaiʻi, since the trip had been long planned. See Chen Xuezhang 陳學章 and Wang Jie 王傑, “Xu Qin yu Hengbin Datong Xuexiao” 徐勤與橫濱大同學校 [Xu Qin and the Datong School in Yokohama], in Kang Youwei yu Jindai Wenhua 康有為與近代文化 [Kang Youwei and Modern Culture], ed. Fang Zhiqin and Wang Jie方志欽,王傑 (Kaifeng: Henan Daxue Chubanshe, 2006), 265.
Zhao Chunchen 趙春晨, “Aomen Baohuang Zonghui Shishi Gouchen” 澳門保皇總會史事鉤沉 [Deep Study of the History of the Macau Baohuanghui Headquarters], Guangzhou Daxue Xuebao (Shehui Kexue Ban) 3, no. 2 (February 2004).
Zhou Yongming, Historicizing Online Politics: Telegraphy, the Internet, and Political Participation in China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 59–79. Zhou, 65, describes telegrams from Chinese in Siam (known as Thailand since 1938) signed by as many as 80,000 people after a rumor in February 1900 spread that the emperor had been poisoned.
“China’s Ailing Emperor,” The Sun (New York), May 15, 1899.
“Imperial Changes in China,” New York Times, June 29, 1899, 3. In May, North China Daily News (Shanghai) reported that the emperor would be replaced by the grandson of Prince Gong or the grandson of Prince Yicong, which was reprinted by Zhixin Bao 知新報 on June 8, 1899; Sang Bing 桑兵, Gengzi Qinwang yu Wan-Qing Zhengju, Di-Er Ban 庚子勤王與晚清政局 (第二版) [The 1900 Movement to “Rush Troops in to Save the Throne” and the Late Qing Political Situation, 2nd ed.] (Beijing: Beijing Daxue Chubanshe, 2015), 51–52.
Liang Yingliu to Tan Zhangxiao, December 8, 1899, no. 501 in Fang Zhiqin and Cai Huiyao 方志欽, 蔡惠堯, ed., Kang Liang yu Baohuanghui: Tan Liang zai Meiguo Suocang Ziliao Huibian 康梁與保皇會: 譚良在美國所藏資料彙編 [Kang, Liang, and the Baohuanghui: A Compilation of Materials Collected by Tom Leung in the United States] (Hong Kong: Yinhe Chubanshe, 2008), 331. A generic telegram can be found here: “Yingshu deng bu Shangmin Qing Cixi Guizheng zhe” 英屬等埠商民請慈禧歸政摺 [Merchants of British Columbia and other places memorializing Cixi to return the government], 1899, in Kang Youwei yu Baohuanghui 康有為與保皇會 [Kang Youwei and the Baohuanghui], ed. Shanghai Shi Wenwu Baoguan Weiyuanhui 上海市文物保管委員會 (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, 1982), 3.
Edward J. M. Rhoads, Manchus and Han: Ethnic Relations and Political Power in Late Qing and Early Republican China, 1861–1928 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 71, says Pujun’s father, Zaiyi or Prince Duan, was sympathetic to Cixi’s pro-Boxer stance. Also see Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 182.
“Feili Yaowen Hui Zhi” 廢立要聞匯志 [Report of Important News on Deposing the Emperor in Favor of a New One], Zhixin Bao, March 31, 1900, quoted in Sang, Gengzi Qinwang, 66.
Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics, 69, says that besides Japan where it was published, Qingyi Bao had outlets in Beijing, Shanghai, Sydney, Honolulu, Singapore, San Francisco, Lima, and other cities.
Sang, Gengzi Qinwang, 59–71. In this section, Sang also details the escalating claims by Kang of his responsibility for this movement as time went on. Thus, we rely not on his accounts, but on contemporary newspapers and correspondence of others about these events.
Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics, 68.
Chen Guoyong 陳國鏞 to Tan Zhangxiao, May 19, 1900, no. 513 in Fang and Cai, 276; English translation in “New Source Materials on Kang Youwei and the Baohuanghui: The Tan Zhangxiao (Tom Leung) Collection of Letters and Documents at UCLA’s East Asian Library” by Jane Leung Larson, Chinese America: History and Perspectives 7 (1993): 156–61.
Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 183.
Zhou, Historicizing Online Politics, 66–67.
Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 184–85.
Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 183.
“Price on Reformers’ Heads,” Straits Times, March 8, 1900, 3. Li Hongzhang, Liangguang governor, had added 40,000 taels, and, later the Shanghai magistrate another 5,000 taels, to the 100,000 to be paid by the Qing court.
Song Ong Siang [Song Wangxiang], One Hundred Years’ History of the Chinese in Singapore (Singapore: University of Malaya Press, 1967), 313–14.
Arnot Reid, “Kwang Hu Wei,” Straits Times, March 23, 1900, 3. This may refer to Khoo Cheng Tiong’s [Khoo Seok Wan’s father] house in Thomson Road. Initially Kang stayed at Khoo Seok Wan’s home on Boat Quay, February 1–25 (Song, One Hundred Years’ History, 317, and Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 183).
Cuscaden to Swettenham, February 21, 1900, National Archives (UK), FO 17/1718, “Chinese Revolutionaries in British Dominions, Sun-Yat-Sen, Kang-yu-wei, etc., (Kidnapping of Sun-Yat-Sen by the Chinese Legation), 1896–1905,” 304–5.
Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 183–84.
“Attempts to Kill Kang Yu Wei,” New-York Tribune, July 13, 1900, 3; and “Kang Yu Wei May Be Dying,” New-York Tribune, July 23, 1900, 3. Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” does not mention any such events although he does say that about this time, a Japanese agent, Miyazaki Torazō, arrived in Singapore and was arrested on suspicion of planned assassination of Kang. See Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 264–68 n22.
Yung Wing, My Life in China and America (New York: Henry Holt, 1909), 238, 241. Yung, who had returned to China from the United States in 1895, states that “My headquarters became the rendezvous of the leading reformers of 1898,” and after the coup, “Being implicated by harboring the reformers and in deep sympathy with them, I had to flee for my own life and succeeded in escaping from Peking.” He then lived in Shanghai and Hong Kong, moving back to the United States in 1902.
“Affairs in China,” Hartford Courant, July 9, 1900, 4. Thank you to historian Yvonne Yung for identifying Twitchell and Yung in this article which does not name them.
Kang Youwei to Tengfang [Li Tengfang 黎騰芳], October 2, 1899, in Kang Youwei Quanj, vol. 5, 139.
“Affairs of the Orient: Strength of Reformists Shown,” Daily Colonist (Victoria), March 7, 1900, 8.
“War Clouds Over Orient,” Daily Colonist (Victoria), March 18, 1900, 8. Also, “Chinese Cloud Grows Darker, Warships Despatched by the Empress Dowager in Pursuit of the Crafty Kang,” Daily Colonist (Victoria), March 27, 1900, 2.
“Late News of the Orient, The Dowager Empress Makes Trouble for Reformers—Kang Yu Wei,” Daily Colonist (Victoria), March 27, 1900, 8. This article also reported Kang’s alleged departure for Europe.
Reynolds, China, 1898–1912, 201.
Kang Youwei to Tan Zhangxiao, March 11, 1901, no. 515 in Fang and Cai, 29.
Kang Youwei to Tan Zhangxiao, August 22, 1901, no. 508 in Fang and Cai, 36.
Straits Settlement Governor Alexander Swettenham to British Colonial Affairs Minister Joseph Chamberlain, December 15, 1901, National Archives (UK), FO 17/1718, “Chinese Revolutionaries in British Dominions, Sun-Yat-Sen, Kang-yu-wei, etc. (Kidnapping of Sun-Yat-Sen by the Chinese Legation), 1896–1905,” 596, states that Kang left Penang with his family on December 7.
Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” K’ang Yu-wei, 189, mentions only Kang Tongbi was with him in India. But “Yindu Youji” 印度游記 [Records of Travel to India], in Kang Youwei Quanji, vol. 5, 509–50, translated in Kamal Sheel and Ranjana Sheel, trans. and ed., Kang Youwei Engages India: His Travel Narratives (1901–1902) and Predicaments of Civilization and Nation (New York: Routledge, 2024), DOI 10.4324/9781003453512, 33, lists Tongbi, Wanluo 婉絡 [Liang Suijue], Huang Rongsheng 黄榕生, servant Wu Jiren 吳積仁, and older female servant A Juan 阿娟. While in Darjeeling, Liang Suijue bore a son, Kang Tongji 康同吉, who died after one month, January 1902.
Kang, “Yindu Youji,” in Sheel and Sheel, 33–117.
Kang Tongbi’s unpublished “Yindu youji houxu” 印度游記後序 [Postscript to account of a journey to India], manuscript courtesy of Chi Jeng Chang, 19–20, 23–31, 33–35.
As recounted in Zhang Yihe 章詒和, Wanshi bing buru Yan 往事並不如煙 [The Past is not like Smoke] (Beijing: Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, 2004), 163; the full line is: 若論女士西游者, 我是支那第一人. Liang Qichao first described Kang Tongbi’s India journey and published this poem in Xinmin Congbao 新民叢報 no. 4 (March 1902), in his column “Yinbinshi Shihua” 飲冰室詩話 [Notes on Poetry from the Ice Drinker’s Studio].
This statement is the first line of Kang Youwei’s “Yindu Youji” and is repeated in Kang Tongbi’s “Yindu youji houxu.” The four men listed are reputed to be the first Chinese Buddhist pilgrims to India: Qin Jing 秦景 of the Eastern Han (27–220), Faxian 法顯 (traveled from 399–414), [Tang] Sanzang (or Xuanzang 玄奘, 602–664), and Huineng 慧能 (638–713).
Kang, “Yindu youji,” 97–117, and “Yu Tongxue Zhuzi Liang Qichao Deng Lun Yindu Wangguo youyu Gesheng Zili Shu” 與同學諸子梁啟超等論印度亡國由於各省自立書 [Discussing India’s Extinction caused by Independence of its Provinces in a Letter to Liang Qichao, Colleagues, and Followers], 141–74 in Sheel and Sheel, Kang Youwei Engages India.
Peter Zarrow, After Empire: The Conceptual Transformation of the Chinese State, 1885–1924 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 51–53.
Laurence G. Thompson, Ta T’ung Shu: The One-World Philosophy of K’ang Yu-wei (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1958), 86.
Peter Zarrow, Abolishing Boundaries: Global Utopias in the Formation of Modern Chinese Political Thought, 1880–1940 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2021), 29.
Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 191. Kang Youwei to Li Fuji 李福基 and Ye En 葉恩, September 23, 1902, no. 542 in Fang and Cai, 40–41. Ronglu 榮祿 (1836–1903), head of the Grand Council; Li Lianying 李蓮英, Cixi’s chief eunuch (d. 1911); and Cui Yugui 崔玉貴, a eunuch famous for throwing Guangxu’s favorite concubine into a well on Cixi’s command, were considered reactionaries by Kang.
See Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 193; also, 269 n25, which suggests that it was upon the news of Ronglu’s death that Kang felt it safe to travel again. He Yin Huaqiao Jiaoyu jian 荷印華僑教育鑑 [Handbook of Education of the Chinese in the Netherlands Indies] (1928), 372 and 405, cited in Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 269 n26.
Didi Kwartanada, emails to Jane Larson, December 10, 2008, and February 2, 2009.
“Kang Yu Wei,” Straits Echo (Penang), August 29, 1903, 3. When Kang hired Zhou, he was secretary of the Klang General Farms, a government agency. After Zhou left Kang in fall 1903, he would go on to study in Scotland and met Kang again in Europe in 1904.
Not until Kang convened plenary meetings in New York City in 1905 and 1907 was a representative group of chapter leaders present, although none of Kang’s top deputies, such as Liang Qichao or Xu Qin, attended.
In Shanghai Liang Qichao traveled, as he frequently did, under a pseudonym and stayed in the relatively safe Japanese hotel, Tigers’ Den, where he met with his confederates Di Chuqing 狄楚卿 and Luo Xiaogao 羅孝高. Joan Judge, Print and Politics: Shibao and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996), 32. More on Shi Bao 時報 and the 1905 boycott in Chapter 6.
Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 195. Liang Qichao’s involvement in the first years of the Commercial Corporation is discussed in Chapter 3 and Chapter 9 describes the conglomerate’s rise and fall.
F. H. May, Officer Administering the Government, to Alfred Lyttleton, Secretary of State for the Colonies, March 24, 1904, “Kang Yu Wei,” National Archives of Australia (hereafter NAA): Series A1, 1910/3933, https://recordsearch.naa.gov.au/, accessed February 6, 2019.
Li Hairong 李海蓉, “Yingguo Zhengfu dui Kang Youwei Liuwang Taidu zhi Kaoshi—Jian lun Baohuanghui de Moluo” 英國政府對康有為流亡態度之考釋—兼論保皇會的沒落 [Textual Analysis of the English Government’s Attitude toward Kang Youwei in Exile—and the Rise and Fall of the Baohuanghui], Shi Lin no. 1 (2019): 89–100, 204.
Kang called the Netherlands “Holland” [Helan 荷蘭].
Kang Youwei (Ma Yueran 馬悦然 [Göran Malmqvist], ed.), Kang Youwei Ruidian Youji 康有為瑞典遊記 [Kang Youwei’s Swedish Travel Journal] (Hong Kong: Commercial Press, 2007), 16, 63, 85.
Kang Youwei, “Ku Weng Tonghe (wai yi shou)” 哭翁同龢 (外一首) [Tears for Weng Tonghe (another poem)], August–September 1904, no. 110 in Fang and Cai, 87–88.
Young-tsu Wong, “Emperor Kuang Hsu and Reform,” in Rejuvenating a Tradition: Reform and Revolution in Modern China (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 130.
Kang Youwei, “Ku Weng Tonghe.”
Fenglang zongheng yi chuyou 風浪縱横亦出游 This line has a double meaning, as the storms imply the political climate in China. Kang traveled despite the danger he encountered as a wanted person by the Qing court.
This line comes from the phrase, canghaisangtian 滄海桑田 (time brings great changes).
Pine and catalpa trees 松楸 are both known for their longevity. The former residence refers to Kang’s temporary home on Wen Island, Liaotianshi 寥天室 [Hut under the Vastness of Heaven].
This line also has a double meaning, the waves referring to turbulent Chinese politics.
Kang Youwei, untitled and unpublished poem, written upon return to Wen Island, Victoria, Canada, December 5, 1904, among Kang Tongbi’s possessions saved by her in 1969 to be given to her last personal secretary, Zhang Cangjiang 張滄江, for his preservation in North America; courtesy of Chi Jeng Chang, Vancouver, BC. Translation by Yang Zheng, with Chi Jeng Chang.
“Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865–1935,” https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1263/?name=Yei+Wei_Hang&f-Self-Travel-Ship=Lake+Manitoba&f-Self-Travel-Ship_x=1&gender=m&gender_x=1&name_x=1_1, accessed May 16, 2023. The database was searched with a variant of Kang’s Romanized name, Yei Wei Hang (Hang as a surname). The ship departed on November 1, 1904.
For example, in the December 5, 1904 letter from Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi 康同璧, no. S-C39, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection, Kang is depending on wealthy member Ye En and the Hong Kong headquarters to supply Tongbi with funds for personal support and Baohuanghui projects. He states baldly that “I have no money here,” and hopes that he can raise stock shares in the United States.
See Chapter 6 on the Baohuanghui and Chinese exclusion for details on the much-publicized treatment of China’s representatives at the St. Louis exposition and its evocation during the 1905 anti-American boycott.
Telegram of Kangtungbac, London, to President Roosevelt, Washington, October 25, 1904, Chinese File 14735-89, Box 162, RG 85, NA-Washington.
F. H. Larned, Acting Commissioner General of Immigration to F. W. Berkshire, Chinese Inspector in Charge, New York, October 28, 1904, cc to Boston and Ellis Island, New York Harbor. Chinese File 13298.
Larned to Berkshire, October 28, 1904.
Berkshire to Larned, November 7, 1904; and Larned to Berkshire, November 8, 1904, acknowledgment, Chinese File 13298.
Larned to Berkshire, October 28, 1904, Chinese File 13298.
“A Chinese Reformer,” Toronto Globe, November 14, 1904.
“Un Regenerateur de L’Empire de Chine,” La Presse (Montreal), Novembre 14, 1904, 1 and 5, with drawings of Kang, Liang, the Guangxu Emperor, Ye En, and local Baohuanghui leaders; also see “Orienteaux A Montreal,” La Presse, Novembre 17, 1904, 1. Ye En was, of course, a Vancouver man.
“Knox Church Crowded with Attentive Chinese Audience,” Montreal Star, November 14, 1904, 12.
Many letters from Kang to Tom Leung, Kang Tongbi, and others between December 1904 and until the end of April 1905 refer to Kang’s illness. Also see Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 197–98.
Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, November 16, 1904, no. S-C31, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Kang Youwei, Hotel Russell, Ottawa, to Laurier, November 17, 1904, Laurier Papers, vol. 345, no. 92267; also see “Asst. Private Secretary” to Prince Kang Yu Wei, Vancouver, November 23, 1904 (copy), vol. 345, no. 92269, acknowledging Kang’s gift.
“Chinese Prince, Kang Yu Wei Was a Guest at Russell House,” Ottawa Citizen, November 18, 1904, 10.
“Kang Yu Wei, The Noted Reformer on His Way to Vancouver,” Vancouver Daily News-Advertiser, November 16, 1904, 7; “Kang Yu Wei Route,” Vancouver Daily News-Advertiser, November 20, 1904, 1; “China’s Exiled Prince Arrives,” Province (Vancouver), November 22, 1904.
Zhou Guoxian 周國賢 also traveled with Kang in Europe in 1906–7. After he left Kang’s service, Zhou studied for two years at Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio (1908–9?), and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of Chicago (1911). That same year, Zhou traveled with Kang to Japan where he met Liang Sishun, Liang Qichao’s daughter; they married in 1914. In 1913 Zhou was Liang’s secretary when he was appointed minister of justice in the cabinet of Xiong Xiling 熊希齡 (1913–14). Zhou also served as Chinese consul general in Rangoon (1918), Vancouver (1919), Manila (1922), Singapore (1924), and Ottawa (1925).
See Rupert Humer (born ca. 1886) reference in “Kang Yu-wei Here For A Week,” Hartford Courant, July 17, 1905, 11, which identified him as a linguist who had attached himself to Kang’s party in Belgium in 1904. Carl C. Glick, Double Ten, Captain O’Banion’s Story of the Chinese Revolution (London and New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1945), 146, identified Humer as an “Austrian linguist.” A Rupert Humer, born ca. 1886 in Austria, then living in Newark, New Jersey, is recorded in the 1920 and 1940 U.S. censuses.
Yip May Young 葉美蓉 to Kang Tongbi, November 26, 1904, no. E-35, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
“China’s Exiled Prince Arrives,” Province (Vancouver), November 22, 1904, 1; Kang Tongbi, Nanhai Kang Xiansheng Nianpu Xubian, 121.
“Chinese Reform Leader,” Vancouver News-Advertiser, November 30, 1904, 2.
No. 652, Dudley to Francis B. Loomis, Acting Secretary of State, November 26, 1904, Despatches From United States Consuls in Vancouver, Canada, 1890–1906, RG 59, https://catalog.archives.gov/id/211527778?objectPage=268, accessed May 24, 2024, repeating the telegram of November 25, plus additional information on Kang, Liang, and Kang Tongbi in their respective dealings with the United States. Dudley listed others who would accompany Kang: Zhou Guoxian, secretary Yong Lin Shak, Ye En, and an Austrian valet—Kang’s traveling party was somewhat different when he finally crossed the border in 1905. Yong Lin Shak could be Vancouver Baohuanghui member Yang Lingshi, who was in the United States between 1905 and 1907 in Los Angeles and Portland. Dudley also stated Kang Tongbi had visited President Roosevelt in 1903, and Tongbi’s memoirs also mention an October 12, 1903, visit to the president and his family, but a search of the Desk Diaries, Series 9, Roll 430, Roosevelt Papers, MSS 38299, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/resource/mss38299.mss38299-430_0193_1119/?sp=296&st=image&r=0.1,-0.008,1.057,0.398,0, shows no record of this visit.
Telegram of Herbert H. D. Pierce, Washington, to American Consul, Vancouver, November 26, 1904; Despatches From Department of State to U.S. Consulate, Vancouver, vol. 44, Entry UD-10, RG 84, NA-College Park.
Thank you to Chi Jeng Chang and Connie Kang for their compilation and translation of “Kang Youwei Vancouver Poems,” December 1904.
Kang probably went to Coal Island on December 4, 1904, with visits to nearby Victoria for Baohuanghui functions and to Harrison Hot Springs for its recuperative qualities.
Kang Youwei, “Ouzhou Shiyi Guo Youji Xu” 歐洲十一國 游記序 [Preface to Travel Notes on Eleven European Countries], in Kang Youwei Quanji 康有為全集 [Collected Works of Kang Youwei], ed. Jiang Yihua and Zhang Ronghua 姜義華, 張榮華 (Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 2007), vol. 7, 344–45. Kang said he completed this work on December 22, 1904. It was published in 1905 by Guangzhi Shuju in Shanghai.
Kang Youwei, Liaotianshi Shiji 寥天室詩集 [Collection of Poems in the Hut under the Vastness of Heaven], in Kang Youwei Quanji 康有為全集 [Collected Works of Kang Youwei], ed. Jiang Yihua and Zhang Ronghua 姜義華, 張榮華 (Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 2007), vol. 12, 258. Kung-ch’üan Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World: K’ang Yu-wei, Reformer and Utopian, 1858–1927 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975), 29.
Kang Youwei, “Wuzhi Jiuguo Lun” 物質救國論 [National Salvation through Material Civilization] in Kang Youwei Quanji 康有為全集 [Collected Works of Kang Youwei], ed. Jiang Yihua and Zhang Ronghua 姜義華, 張榮華 (Beijing: Zhongguo Renmin Daxue Chubanshe, 2007), vol. 8, 61–101, especially 62, 71. See Chapter 5 for further details on this essay.
Kang, “Wuzhi Jiuguo Lun,” in Kang Youwei Quanji, vol. 8, 84–85.
For example, see Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, December 5, 1904, no. S-C39, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
“Practical Methods: How Kang Yu Wei Works along Beneficial Lines--Delivers Address,” Victoria Times, December 13, 1904, 1.
“Big Cleanup for Chinatown,” Province (Vancouver), January 3, 1905, 1.
Thanks to Chi Jeng Chang who made this discovery during the building’s renovation in 2017. The building was constructed in 1903 at 5050-509 Carrall Street, Vancouver, and was occupied by the Chinese Empire Reform Association until 1945. It is the property of the Lim Sai Hor (Kow Mock) Benevolent Association. See “Historic Study of the Society Buildings in Chinatown: Report of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society Contractor to the City of Vancouver,” Appendix, A43–A63, July 2005.
Certificate issued by J. M. Bowell, Vancouver; certified by L. Edwin Dudley, U.S. Consul, Vancouver, December 17, 1904. This certificate and full Section 6 documentation is in Chinese Exclusion Act Case Files, 1895–1943, Sumas File 140 (Kang Yu Wei), Records of the Immigration and Naturalization Service, RG 85, NA-Seattle. Dudley, Bowell, Kang, Harry Edsell, and others signed the various documents. Thanks to Joseph Ng for identifying the file location. A duplicate copy of this certificate is in Kang Youwei Residential Museum, Qingdao.
U.S. Treasury Fees, U.S. Consulate, Vancouver, December 17, 1904, recorded $1.00 fee for “Chinese Certificates,” vol. 3, Entry UD-10, RG 84, NA-College Park.
The copy of the certificate, stamped “Duplicate,” was donated to the Kang Youwei Residential Museum in Qingdao by Pang Lian 龐蓮 (1907–97), wife of Kang Tongning 康同凝 (1909–78), Kang’s fourth son by He Zhanli 何旃理, Kang’s third wife.
No. 384, F. W. Berkshire, Chinese Inspector, New York to Commissioner General of Immigration, March 1, 1907, Chinese File 14735-89, Box 162, Entry 132, RG 85, NA-Washington, noted “Not reported by Consul.”
Dudley to Customs Officers of the United States, December 7, 1904, 312, vol. 75; Dudley to John Hay, Secretary of State, December 7, 1904, 313, vol. 75; Dudley To Whom It May Concern, December 7, 1904, 314, vol. 75, in Letters Sent From U.S. Consulate, Vancouver, BC, August–December, 1904, vol. 124; also see Dudley to Kang Yu Wei, Hotel Vancouver, November 26, 1904, Letters Sent, 289, vol. 75; Chew Kok Hean to Dudley, December 1, 1904, Letters Received, U.S. Consulate, Vancouver, vol. 27, all in Entry UD-10, RG 84, NA-College Park.
Dudley to John Hay, Secretary of State, December 7, 1904, 313 in Letters Sent From U.S. Consulate, Vancouver, BC, August–December, 1904, vol. 124, RG 84.
Kang visited Harrison Hot Springs, east of Vancouver, in December and January. Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 197–98. Letters sent and received at the U.S. Consulate, Vancouver, indicate that Dudley and his wife also vacationed at Harrison Hot Springs during the latter half of December, possibly coinciding with Kang’s stay.
See Chapter 4 for details. The letters date from December 1904 to February 1905 and are in the Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Huang Rongye 黃榮業 to Kang Tongbi, December 7, 1904, no. S-C32, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, December 31, 1904, no. S-C48, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection. Huang Sande 黄三德, Hongmen Geming Shi 洪門革命史 [Revolutionary History of the Triads] (China: 1936), 12–15. See Chapter 4.
Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, letters, January 12, 1905, no. S-C49 and January 26, 1905, no. S-C7, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection. Luo Chang was a student at Oxford at the time.
Sang, Gengzi Qinwang, 537–41; Gao Weinong 高偉濃, Ershi Shiji chu Kang Youwei Baohuanghui zai Meiguo Huaqiao Shehui zhong de Huodong 二十世紀初康有為保皇會在美國華僑社會中的活動 [Activities of Kang Youwei and the Baohuanghui among the Chinese in the United States in the First Part of the twentieth Century] (Beijing: Xueyuan Chubanshe, 2009), 314–15.
Yip May Young [Ye Meirong, daughter of Ye En] in Macau to Kang Tongbi, March 22, 1905, no. E-37, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection, verifies the family’s arrival in Macau. Chapter 3 covers the early development of the Commercial Corporation, and Chapter 9 is devoted to its flowering and demise.
Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, December 5, 1904, no. S-C39, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, letters, December 5, 1904, no. S-C39; December 1904, no. S-C46, December 31, 1904, no. S-C48, January 9, 1905, no. S-C35, and January 12, 1905, no. S-C49, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, January 12, 1905, no. S-C49, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, February 6, 1905, no. S-C23, and W.S. Andrews, Asst. Cashier, Hartford National Bank, to Kang Tongbi, notice, February 21, 1905, no. E-5, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, February 1905, no. S-C25, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection. The same letter to Tongbi mentions that Kang had bought ten thousand [dollars of life insurance?] from the New York Life Insurance Company (whether with his own or Baohuanghui funds is not known).
Kang Youwei to Li Fuji, May 26, 1904, in “Wu Xianzi Xiansheng Yigao ji Suocang Wenjian 伍憲子先生遺稿及所藏文件 [Mr. Wu Xianzi’s Posthumous Manuscripts and Collection of Documents], Special Collections, University of Washington; thank you to Zhongping Chen for this reference. See Chapter 9 for more on rice brokerage investments.
Zhongguo Baohuanghui Zongju 中國保皇總局 [China Baohuanghui Headquarters] to all comrades, printed announcement, Hong Kong, December 14, 1904, no. Z-9, and Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, December 5, 1904, no. S-C39, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Zhongguo Baohuanghui Zongju, December 14, 1904, no. Z-9, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Xu Qin to comrades, January 15, 1905, no. Z-7, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection. The school opened in 1905 with ninety students. See Chapter 3.
Kang Youwei to Luo Chang 羅昌, January 9, 1905, no. S-C35, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, January 12, 1905, no. S-C49, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, February 6, 1905, no. S-C23, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection.
Kang Youwei to Tan Zhangxiao, December 6, 1904, no. 131 in Fang and Cai, 54.
Kang Youwei to Tan Zhangxiao, December 22, 1904, no. 356 in Fang and Cai, 56.
“Chinese Reform Plan,” Washington Post, January 8, 1905. This article also appeared in the Cleveland Plain Dealer “Sunday Magazine” on the same date and in the Philadelphia Inquirer a week later. All say Kang “is now on his way to this country and will visit President Roosevelt, who is already aware of the coming visit of this titled Chinaman and also of the vast movement now on foot, to Americanize China, being made acquainted a short time ago with the facts by Miss Kang Hong Beck, a bright and charming girl of seventeen years, who, while in Washington recently, accepted an invitation to call on the president of the United States.” Kang Tongbi’s visit to the White House was in October 1903, according to her unpublished memoirs. Chi Jeng Chang, “Kang Tongbi (Kang Tung Pih) Chronicle,” unpublished paper, September 28, 2014, 4, citing Kang Tongbi’s unpublished memoir.
Falkenberg, an accomplished self-promoter, may have been instrumental in prompting this article, which does not mention his rival, Homer Lea.
Kang, Ouzhou Shiyi Guo Youji in Kang Youwei Quanji, vol. 7, 345.
Hip Kwong is listed as a Vancouver merchant, Wing Yuan Co., whose destination is the same as Kang’s and Zhou’s—Seattle, Portland and Washington, DC. Canadian Pacific Railway [Chinese] arrivals at Port Sumas, Washington, February 11, 1905.
Telegram of Harry Edsell, Chinese Inspector in Charge, Sumas, BC [sic], to F. J. Schofield, U.S. Vice Consul, Vancouver, February 10, 1905, Letters Received, U.S. Consulate, Vancouver, vol. 30, Entry UD-10, RG 84, NA-College Park. As a further and final note on L. Edwin Dudley, a letter addressed to Dudley from Joseph M. Singleton (Zhao Wansheng 趙萬勝), president of the New York City Baohuanghui, February 10, 1905, was received (Letters Received) and noted Dudley’s expected arrival in New York and promised to inform him when Kang arrived there, Miscellaneous Letters Received, U.S. Consulate, Vancouver, vol. 30, Entry UD-10, RG 84, NA-College Park.
“Seventh Memorial to the Emperor” (submitted February 1898), translated in Hsiao, A Modern China and a New World, 209.
“Kang Yu Wei in Seattle, Prominent Chinese Has Great Mission,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 12, 1905, 1 and 10.
Kang at times denied his heritage as a Chinese aristocrat, apparently for reasons of appealing to his general middleclass American and Chinese audiences, people who had struggled to reach their middle position, and Kang wanted to appear as one of them. “Step by step Kang, the Cantonese son of a shopkeeper and grandson of coolie” read an article in the Daily Colonist (Victoria), April 13, 1899, 6. An imaginative reporter who had talked with Kang wrote this piece of misinformation.
“Kang yu Wer,” Seattle Republican, February 17, 1905, 4. See Chapter 3 for a description of the Chinese Empire Ladies Reform Association.
“Kang Yu Wei Here, Noted Chinese Reformer Is Visiting Portland,” Portland Oregonian, February 14, 1905, 8.
“Chinamen Hear Reformer,” Portland Oregonian, February 18, 1905, 10.
“Recruit an Army,” Portland Oregonian, January 31, 1905, 14.
“Kang Yu Wei Here,” Oregonian, February 14, 1905, 8.
“Chinese Murderer Receives Full Pardon,” Anaconda Standard, February 22, 1905, 1.
“Salem’s Royal Visitor,” Salem Capital Journal, February 21, 1905, 3.
Chen Yuesong, “Meiguo Lai Gao: Shi Nanhai Xiansheng You Kelijin Xilin Ji” 美洲來稿: 侍南海先 ⽣遊柯利近⻄林記 [Contribution from the United States: Report on Escorting Mr. Nanhai to Salem, Oregon], Tung Wah Times, April 22, 1905, 2.
Kang Youwei to Kang Tongbi, February 22, 1905, postmarked Sherwood, Oregon, February 24, no. 康-23, Kang Tongbi South Windsor Collection. “Personal Mention,” Portland Oregonian, March 2, 1905, 4.
“Reformer Talks at Astoria,” Portland Oregonian, March 10, 1905, 7.
Lo, “Sequel to Autobiography,” 198.
Kang Youwei, “Wang Ying He Zhanli Nüshi Zhuang” 亡媵何旃理女士狀 [Description of Losing Concubine He Zhanli], February 5, 1915, in Kang Youwei Quanji, vol. 10, 220–21. He Zhanli was born on October 11, 1890 according to affidavits by her father Haw Gum, mother Chun See, and doctor Chester Rowell, in statements verifying Lily [Lillie] Haw’s status as American-born, Fresno County, California, notarized August 17 (parents) and August 19, 1908 (doctor); documents donated by Pang Lian, He Zhanli’s daughter-in-law, to the Qingdao Kang Youwei Residential Museum. Kang in poems about He said she was born in 1891.
“Chinese Reformer,” Fresno Republican, March 14, 1905, 6.
Kang in 1898 in his report to the emperor on the Meiji reforms suggested abolishing the queue and that the Guangxu Emperor should take on a Western hairstyle; universal queue-cutting was the policy after the Revolution began in Wuchang and until Yuan Shikai took over the Republican presidency from Sun Yatsen. See Rhoads, Manchus and Han, 64–65, 252–53. Kang, who often did not practice what he preached, did not cut off his queue until around his sixtieth birth year, 1917, as seen in a portrait by Xu Beihong painted around that time as well as a photograph of Kang taken in Shanghai and dated 11th month, 1917 (see image in Conclusion). Thank you to Aida Wong, for noting this, email to Jane Larson, May 22, 2016.
“Chinese Revolutionary Badge,” San Francisco Chronicle, August 17, 1904, 6: “The queue-cutting reform recently started among the Chinese residents of the national capital has taken possession of the Chinese colony at Fresno. The Chinese Empire Reform Association stands sponsor for the peculiar movement.” The movement in Washington, DC, New York, Boston, and Philadelphia is mentioned in “Abolish the Queue,” Washington Evening Star, August 11, 1904. In a 1902 public letter, Liang Qichao thanked Ye En for his photo: “We have one more comrade because Huibo [Ye En] has cut off his [Manchu-style pigtail—queue].” Liang Qichao to Ye En, Li Fuji, et al., August 14, 1902, no. 540 in Fang and Cai, 102. “Chinese Reformer Here,” Los Angeles Times, March 16, 1905, section 2, 8.
Mabelle M. Selland, From China to Fresno: A Love Story (Fresno: Heritage Fresno Press, 2007), 42–49. Although he firmly believed in women’s equality, Kang eventually had six wives. See Chapter 10 for Kang’s marriage to Lily Haw.