Song Jiaoren: The Father of Constitutionalism Who Sleeps in Zhabei

Basic facts

20 March 1913, 10.40 p.m.

The Shanghai North Railway Station on that day is where the whole story begins.

In 1913 the Republic of China held its general election for the National Assembly, and the Kuomintang won a sweeping victory. Song Jiaoren was preparing, following the European convention of the "cabinet system", to form a government as party leader.

At about 10.40 p.m. on 20 March, Song Jiaoren was shot at Shanghai Station.

What he said as he fell

After the shooting, Song Jiaoren, in unbearable pain, collapsed over a chair, pulled Yu Youren's head to his chest with his hand, and gasped: "My pain is great; I fear I shall not rise again…"

Huang Xing, Yu Youren, Liao Zhongkai and others who had come to the station to see him off rushed him to the Shanghai–Nanjing Railway Hospital for emergency treatment.

Three last wishes in the hospital

In the hospital he left his last wishes to Yu Youren:

Three things I would tell you: One: all the books I have left in Nanjing, Beijing and Tokyo I give to the Nanjing Library; Two: I come of a poor family, and my old mother is still living; when I am gone, I ask Keqiang (Huang Xing) and you and our old friends to look after her for me; Three: you all should press on with all your might, and not let thoughts of me make you give up your sense of duty. I have spent all my strength trying to reconcile the north and the south; rumour-mongers and ordinary people, not knowing the ins and outs, often misunderstand it — my suffering is only what I deserve, and have I any regret in dying?

A man of 31, and what was on his mind as he died was "all my books to the Nanjing Library".

The telegram to Yuan Shikai

He also instructed Huang Xing to draft a telegram on his behalf to Yuan Shikai:

To His Excellency President Yuan in Beijing: I had meant to take tonight's Shanghai–Nanjing train to the capital to pay my respects to you. At 10.45, at the station, a wicked man suddenly fired a bullet at me from behind; it entered at the upper waist and reached the lower abdomen, and it must prove fatal. I reflect that since I began my education I have kept myself to self-respect; though I have won but little freedom from fault, I have never made a private enemy. The Qing government was bad, and I rose to take part in reform, holding to humanity and to public right, never daring to harbour a thought of seeking power. Now the foundations of the state are not yet firm and the people's welfare has not increased, and I am suddenly to let go my hold; there is regret left even in death. I humbly hope Your Excellency will open your heart and deal out justice, and do all you can to safeguard the people's rights; so that the nation may obtain a firmly fixed and unshakeable constitution — then the day I die will be as the years of my life.

"So that the nation may obtain a firmly fixed and unshakeable constitution — then the day I die will be as the years of my life." That is where his name, "father of constitutionalism", comes from.

After the operation he did not improve; at 4.48 a.m. on the 22nd he died, aged only 31.

Who the killer was: a century-old mystery

The assassin Wu Shiying and the man who hired him, Ying Guixin (of the Qing Bang, appointed by Yuan Shikai as Jiangsu inspector of Shanghai), were quickly exposed.

Yet as to who stood behind it, opinions have differed for a century — Yuan Shikai, Zhao Bingjun, Hong Shuzu, and even Sun Yat-sen, Huang Xing and Chen Qimei have all fallen under suspicion.

The killer of Song Jiaoren remains a mystery to this day. This is the only question in this book where we tell you plainly, "we don't know either."

Why Song Jiaoren was buried in Zhabei

Song Jiaoren was assassinated in Zhabei, but why was his grave also placed in Zhabei? There is a story in that.

Tan Renfeng's proposal

On 1 April 1913 Shanghai's Minli Daily published Tan Renfeng's "Remarks on the Grave of Song Jiaoren after His Murder":

"Mr Song is a great man of the Republic, not something the province of Hunan may keep to itself. So although some now urge that his remains be taken home and buried on Mount Lu, I do not agree; better to raise a fresh subscription in Shanghai, open a piece of open ground there, first lay out a park, and bury Mr Song in it, as the burial ground of our Kuomintang men."

"Not something the province of Hunan may keep to itself" — that one sentence decided that Song Jiaoren would be buried in Shanghai. Song Jiaoren was a Hunanese, and by ordinary custom should have been buried on Mount Yuelu in Changsha; but Tan Renfeng held that he was "a great man of the Republic" and should be buried in the city where he met his death.

Why Xiangyi Lane in Zhabei

Tan Renfeng and the others first bought forty mu of land at Xujiahui, but the consensus was:

the site was too cramped to be enlarged, and too far from the railway station where Song Jiaoren died.

So they bought another 103 mu at Xiangyi Creek in Baoshan County, ten li from the concessions, and entrusted Wang Yiting and Long Zixiu with the building work.

"Too far from the railway station where Song Jiaoren died" — that reason is very moving. The Xiangyi Creek finally chosen is the site of today's Zhabei Park.

(The funds came from the 100,000 silver dollars in funeral expenses that Yuan Shikai allotted on top of the budget at Tan Renfeng's request.)

What the burial ground looked like

That inscription is worth copying out

The gentleman's death, the world laments it. The gentleman's conduct, the world knows it. What need have I to record it! Shall I write with a straight brush? The straight brush brings a man slaughter; shall I write with a crooked brush? The crooked brush brings the judgement of heaven. Alas! The tears of the nether world, the blood of all under heaven, an old friend's brush, the assassin's steel; carve it on the empty hills, look for it to the good historian, inscribe it on heart and liver, submit it to heaven and earth!

"Shall I write with a straight brush? The straight brush brings a man slaughter; shall I write with a crooked brush? The crooked brush brings the judgement of heaven." In plainer words: write it straight and the truth-teller is killed; write it crooked and the crookedness is punished by heaven. This is the dilemma an old friend set down in China in 1913.

From burial ground to park

The place where Song Jiaoren's grave stands went through these changes:

"The grave destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, rebuilt in the 1980s" — a man remembered, destroyed, and remembered again. That is itself a little history.

(For the grave's detailed form and its level of protection see Part Three · Zhabei Park.)

Yuan Shikai's two telegrams

Worth reading side by side are Yuan Shikai's two telegrams.

After the assassination, Yuan Shikai "expressed great surprise" and at once sent a telegram of condolence:

"To Mr Song Dunchu in Shanghai: on reading the Reuters wire, I was shocked to hear that you have been wounded by a thug, and I am deeply dismayed. I have just received your telegram and learned the details. In building the Republic, men of talent are hardest to come by; your learning leads the age and is esteemed by all — no one with the least knowledge but would cherish you — how could one suppose that in so public a place there should be a wicked man who dared to attempt an assassination! Men's hearts are treacherous — where is law and discipline? I only pray that Heaven favours the good man, and that you recover under treatment; do not speak words of decline and feed mere pessimism. Besides wiring orders to the Jiangsu military governor, the civil commissioner, the Shanghai commissioner of foreign affairs, the district magistrate and the general manager of the Shanghai–Nanjing Railway to put up a heavy reward and arrest the culprit within a time limit, I send you these first words of comfort."

After Song Jiaoren's death, Yuan Shikai:

• on the petition of Feng Ziyou, the Kuomintang member who headed the provisional bureau of merit, wrote in his own hand: "grant him a generous pension, and send his life's achievements to the National History Bureau for a biography";
• at Tan Renfeng's request, allotted an extra 100,000 silver dollars to build Song Jiaoren's burial ground.

On one hand "arrest the culprit within a time limit"; on the other, a biography for the dead man and money to build his grave. That contradiction is why the "Song case" has remained a mystery for a century.

What happened after his death

• Sun Yat-sen, then in Japan, at once telegraphed the Kuomintang headquarters in Beijing and the Shanghai communications office from Nagasaki, demanding that the revolutionaries do all they could to find out why Song was killed;
• on 25 March, Sun Yat-sen returned to Shanghai from Japan and that same night met at Huang Xing's residence to discuss how to deal with the Song case; present were Chen Qimei, Ju Zheng, Dai Tianchou and others;
• Sun Yat-sen's illusions about Yuan were utterly shattered, and he argued for quick war; Huang Xing held that now that the Republic existed the law was not without force, and that "the south's armed strength is no match for theirs; to start a rising would only throw the whole situation into chaos" (Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen, vol. 3, p. 165) — the two argued fiercely;
• in April, Yuan Shikai signed the Reorganisation Loan, preparing to start a civil war;
• in July, Li Liejun declared Jiangxi independent and telegraphed a call to resist Yuan; revolutionaries in the south answered one after another and went to war with the Beiyang army — known to history as the "Second Revolution";
• in September, Nanjing fell and the "Second Revolution" was declared a failure; Sun Yat-sen and Huang Xing fled to Japan.

A single bullet cut short China's first experiment with parliamentary politics, and directly set off the Second Revolution.

A passage worth copying out

A narration circulating online sums it up very well:

Song Jiaoren in the Republic of his day was elegant and dashing, high-spirited, eloquent, a man of rare talent and far sight, without private ambition, seeking only to create a republic and lead the country into civilisation and strength; and just when he was about to show what he could do, he was assassinated — this is the most heartbreaking thing in modern Chinese history, and for a hundred years since, where could you find another man like Song Yufu?

How to go and see him today

• Address: Zhabei Park (1555 Gonghexin Road), around the west gate, in the park's western section;
• Don't miss: the "Yufu" on the front of the seated statue's base (Zhang Taiyan's seal script), and Yu Youren's inscription on the back;
• Also don't miss: the eagle with the serpent under its claw atop the tomb;
• One observation: as visitors have pointed out on the ground, the park's commemoration of Song Jiaoren is in fact fairly restrained, and there are few signs. You can stand a while longer before the grave — this is, after all, one of the heaviest graves in modern Chinese history.

Sources: the account of the assassination, the last wishes, the telegrams and the Second Revolution follow the historical material cited in a Ctrip community travel piece (including the Complete Works of Sun Yat-sen and the Minli Daily); Tan Renfeng's remarks and the building of the burial ground follow that material and the Jing'an District Greening and City Appearance Bureau's "So That's Why the 'Park': Zhabei Park, Preserving the Old While Renewing"; Yuan Shikai's telegrams and pension follow the relevant historical material. The full bibliography is in Appendix 4.