This month marks the 100th anniversary of Dr Sun Yat Sen being proclaimed the first President of China. His name today is the most pacific, uncontroversial and consensual of China´s recent history- and indeed of Macau´s own history. His life and work is deeply admired by young and old, rich and poor, Portuguese and Chinese, communists and nationalists alike. Monuments have been erected in honour of his memory on both sides of the strait of Taiwan as well as in the two SARs. He is the romantic hero of noble causes and unfair fights; the mortal enemy of the mandarins, of corruption and injustice; the founder of the First Republic; the father of modern China.
His brief stay in Macau, still somewhat unstudied, is today viewed through nostalgic, rose-coloured glasses. He was, in his time, the illustrious and misunderstood doctor, a wise and concerned politician, an impulsive and generous revolutionary, a Chinese patriot and friend of the Portuguese.
He was most probably all of the above and much more, but his contemporaries did not always view him in such positive terms – far from it.
Birth of a revolutionary
Born in Cuiheng, a small village 30 km from Macau, in 1872 Sun Yat Sen first set foot in the Portuguese colony where his parents had previously lived. He was 12 years old and on his way to Hawaii to meet his rather wealthy merchant brother, Sun Mei. In the following five years Sun, while finishing high school, was exposed to a culture that would influence him for the rest of his life. He became a catholic and fearful of God, absorbing the ideologies of the New World – at the time, more than ever, the land of opportunity, democracy and progress.
But the call from the motherland, a strong characteristic of the Chinese people, brought him back in 1883, this time basing himself in Hong Kong, where he finished his degree in medicine. It was also in Hong Kong that he took part in subversive activities against the imperial Chinese regime for the first time.
He supported various dockworkers’ strikes in Hong Kong, making homemade bombs, and was detained by the British police for being a suspect in bombing attacks. While appearing in court, he met Francisco Hermenegildo Fernandes, a judicial translator who would later return to Macau to dedicate himself to the family business; commercial typography and later to his own publication.
Fernandes and Sun met again by chance in 1893. Unable to practice medicine in Hong Kong, Sun Yat Sen was obliged to leave the British colony and move to Macau to look for a job. After getting settled into a small house on Travessa da Misericórdia, where he was the neighbour of the famous Portuguese writer Wenceslau de Moraes, he found work at Kiang Wu Hospital, a recently established institution but with rather old habits, practicing only traditional Chinese medicine – a situation that Sun Yat Sen was keen to change.
Sun Yat Sen came to be mentioned for the first time in a local Macanese newspaper, on the August 1, 1893. The Echo Macaense, was headed by Francisco Hermenegildo Fernandes, who referred to him merely as Dr. Sun, a sign the name was either already well known in the city or that the editor was close to him, or perhaps both.
The article was published in the weekly bilingual (Portuguese-Chinese) publication, the first of its kind in the history of Macau.
The main article consisted of a letter from Dr. Sun to Chiang Keng-hong, who was previously the Chinese foreign minister in Washington and living in Heang-Shan at the time of the letter. Both men were born in the very same district. Dr. Sun urges Chiang Kong-hong to use his influence to encourage the development of three things in the district of Heang-Shan: Firstly, to assist in the plantation of mulberry bushes and the breeding of silk worms; secondly, to build an association to help opium addicts; and thirdly, to promote the development of public education, establishing a school for every 100 families. Following the letter were some observations made by the publication, supporting Dr. Sun´s ideas.
These were the ideas of a young doctor who had just graduated in Hong Kong, and had just arrived in Macau, with interests in life that clearly reached beyond medicine and the territory´s own boundaries, as time would come to show.
Positive Press
On November 25, 1893, the Echo Macaense published another article in its Chinese section where Sun´s name was once again mentioned:
“New hospital in Chin San – It is reported that a new hospital will soon be opened in Chin-San, where patients will be treated according to the European system, offering only European medicine. It is also said Dr. Tang from the Alice Memorial Hospital in Hong Kong, has been invited to head the said new hospital, at the recommendation of Dr. Sun.”
A few days later, on December 19, another translation of the Chinese section, distributed with the weekly Portuguese edition, included informal praise of Sun Yat Sen, while revealing at the same time the hostile climate surrounding the new hospital:
“Unfortunately, the Chinese doctors at the hospital do not present any guarantees of their knowledge, some of them having come from the “veg-traders” and water carrier classes. But ever since Dr. Sun started practicing at the clinic in the Chinese hospital, curing only by the European system, and supporting means to fund the society known as the European clinic, the hospital has been of great help to many, as over 100 people have sought medical help daily at the said hospital. Heads of the hospital were resentful and shut down the internal patients ward. Now even the outpatient clinic is proving to be a problem, as Dr. Sun is made to deal with the funding of subscriptions and all other expenses on his own. It is a lot for one man to take on”.
It was a clear cry for help and support of the methods Sun Yat Sen insisted on introducing at the reclusive institution.
Fading memory
Despite some support, there was also clear hostility towards Sun, not only from his colleagues at Kiang Wu, but also from Portuguese doctors bothered by the notoriety of a braided Chinese man in traditional costume who was conquering in the city.
Sun Yat Sen packed his bags and made his way to China, where he had his first serious encounter with the Qing dynasty: an armed revolt in Guangdong´s capital Guangzhou, on the November 26,1895, which was quickly and efficiently suppressed by the imperial army. Sun was one of the few rebels able to flee. He returned to Macau on his way to safer shores, aided by his friend Francisco Fernandes.
The local press largely failed to mention his clandestine passing through the territory. Only the Ching-Hai Tsung-Pao, in its publication on November 6, painted a profile of the head of the rebels, explaining that Sun Yat Sen sought to convince the emperor of the urgency for reform.
Many years went by before his republican ideals finally prevailed. From 1895 to 1911, Sun Yat Sen led over a dozen attempts against the Qing dynasty, always at a distance, from both Japan and the United States of America. He was kidnapped in London by the emperor´s secret police, a fact widely broadcasted by the international news. But over the years, his name was largely forgotten in Macau, as the local community focussed solely on their own problems.
