A Railway Dispute and a Massacre: Who Forced the Shot at Wuchang
《神州大地》第 13 集 · 語言：English · 時長：27:59
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.

In the summer of 1911, in the

city of Wuchang, not a single person

had received any order to rise up.

Yet by October, this provincial capital had

set itself ablaze. No commander-in-chief, no battle

plan, not even a single coordinated signal

gun. What loosened the foundations of a

dynasty that had ruled China for more

than two hundred and sixty years was

not a carefully plotted revolt, but a

railway, and an accident.

In this episode, we will not yet

say who finally won.

We will only show how this fuse

was lit. Because once you understand this

fuse, you will see why the upheavals

that followed came so fast, and why

they cost so much.

The fall of a dynasty is never

a matter of a single night.

It begins by loosening, one by one,

the nails in the everyday lives of

countless ordinary people. In the teahouses of

Wuchang, on the heated brick beds of

the barracks, throughout those years there were

always people talking in hushed voices:

what can be done about the way

things are? The court could not hear such

talk, yet it carried more force than

any imperial edict. Which railway, which piece

of paper, finally lit this fuse?

In the next section, we begin with

a road.

.

The story begins with a railway.

The late-Qing government wanted to build two

trunk lines: the Sichuan-Hankou, from Chengdu to

Hankou, and the Canton-Hankou, from Guangzhou to

Wuchang. The government had no money of

its own, so it let the people

along the route buy shares.

In Sichuan this was called the land-rent

shares, apportioned by acreage; Hunan, Hubei and

Guangdong each had their own methods.

The Sichuan-Hankou railway's popular subscriptions amounted,

according to fiscal records of the late

Qing, to roughly fourteen million taels of

silver — saved coin by coin by countless

farming households. In May 1911, the Minister of

Posts and Communications, Sheng Xuanhuai, announced that

both lines would be nationalized; only a

small portion of the people's shares would

be repaid, and a shortfall of about

three million taels would simply not be

acknowledged. At the same time, the ministry

borrowed six million pounds from the four-nation

banking consortium of Britain, France, Germany and

the United States, to redeem the railways.

On one side they took the people's

hard-earned money; on the other they borrowed

from foreigners. Any literate villager could work

out that arithmetic. More galling still:

once the railway rights were taken back,

the work of building the line was

handed to foreigners. From the day the

railway rights were seized, a deeper thought

spread among the people: does this court

still act for the Chinese at all?

Beyond Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei and Guangdong were

drawn in as well, only with differing

degrees of fury; along the Canton-Hankou line,

Guangdong's merchants and gentry reacted just as

sharply. Sheng Xuanhuai was the architect of

this scheme. He thought official management plus

foreign loans would get the line built

faster, but he failed to foresee that

what was taken was not only railway

rights, but the last shred of millions

of people's faith in the court.

This was not the anger of any

one man. It was an entire society's

collapse of trust in a regime.

As for the land-rent shares, nominally apportioned

by acreage, what they actually collected was

the food money of the lowest farming

households. In the Sichuan-Hankou share register,

the overwhelming majority were small holders who

could not produce more than a few

taels; they had never in their lives

seen a train, yet paid into this

line year after year.

When Sheng Xuanhuai ran this scheme,

he reckoned in terms of the national

treasury: official management for unified dispatch,

foreign loans delivered in one go,

the line built faster.

What he did not reckon was another

ledger — that the court reached into its

own people's pockets and then turned to

borrow from outsiders; once that news reached

the villages, it did more than any

revolutionary pamphlet. When the May 1911 edict came

down, Sichuan, Hunan, Hubei and Guangdong nearly

exploded at once. Provincial assemblies, chambers of

commerce and schools held meeting after meeting;

even the usually steady gentry-merchants could not

sit still, because what was taken was

not some distant state affair but the

banknotes in their own cabinets.

In those years the Chinese still dressed

by an old code: men in long

gowns and magua jackets, a queue trailing

down the back; officials in rank badges

and coronets, the embroidered square on the

chest depicting birds or beasts that betrayed

their rank at a glance; villagers in

short tunics and straw sandals, a cloth

wrapped around the head; women in jacket

and skirt, their feet bound small,

needing support to walk far.

The money in circulation was also a

jumble: large sums in silver ingots,

graded by fineness and weighed on differing

scales, often discounted; daily trade in copper

cash, strung coin by coin on a

cord, a thousand cash making a string;

and at the treaty ports the silver

dollar grew popular. Silver ingots, copper cash

and silver dollars running side by side

itself a portrait of that era.

When the court reaches into its own

people's pockets and then turns to borrow

from outsiders, the avalanche begins here

but what truly carried the spark to

Wuchang still lies ahead.

.

The fiercest reaction came from Sichuan.

In the summer of 1911, Chengdu formed

the Railway Protection Society; gentry like Luo

Lun and Pu Dianjun stepped forward,

hundreds of thousands signed, and they knelt

before the governor's yamen to petition.

What they wanted at first was simple:

give back the share money we pooled

ourselves. The society also published a newspaper,

reading the court's proclamations aloud to the

villagers line by line; the more they

read, the hotter the anger.

What the petition brought was a massacre.

On the seventh day of the ninth

month, Sichuan governor Zhao Erfeng, under the

pretext of coming to the yamen to

discuss affairs, lured and arrested Pu Dianjun,

Luo Lun, Deng Xiaoke, Yan Kai,

Zhang Lan and others.

As the news spread, one man from

each Chengdu household poured out, tens of

thousands surging toward the yamen demanding the

prisoners' release. In their hands they held

tablets of the Guangxu Emperor; in their

raised hands a stick of incense

the clearest signal of that era:

these were petitioning civilians, not rebels in

revolt. The crowd pressed to the gate,

and Zhao Erfeng ordered his troops to

open fire and charged the lines on

horseback — this was a massacre of unarmed

civilians who had come holding tablets to

petition. According to Xinhai accounts from Sichuan

and Hubei, thirty-two dead were registered on

the spot, the wounded beyond count;

among the dead was a thirteen-year-old child

who fell still clutching a tablet.

After the massacre, Zhao Erfeng ordered that

no bodies be collected for three days.

It was summer, and the rains came

without cease. This was the Chengdu Blood

Case — a massacre of peaceful petitioners.

People of the time gave Zhao Erfeng

a nickname: Zhao the Butcher.

He gave the order to fire;

his troops pulled the triggers; the three-day

ban on collecting the dead was also

his command. To whose account this is

charged, the historical records state plainly.

Before the firing, these were petitioners holding

tablets and incense; after the firing,

no one in Sichuan went to petition

again. Men like Pu Dianjun and Luo

Lun who stepped forward were gentry the

court itself had tolerated; that even they

were arrested showed that discontent had already

outgrown the bounds of petition.

After the Blood Case, volunteer armies rose

in every county; Qin Zaigeng and Hou

Baozhai led men to besiege Chengdu,

and within seven or eight days a

hundred thousand or two gathered beneath the

walls. Long Mingjian, Zhu Guochen and Cao

Du wrote on wooden slips, Zhao Erfeng

first arrested Pu and Luo, then pacifies

Sichuan — comrades everywhere rise quickly to save

yourselves, coated them in tung oil,

wrapped them in oiled paper and cast

them into the Jin River — these were

the water telegraphs, by which the lower

counties learned the provincial capital had erupted.

On the twenty-fifth day of the ninth

month, Tongmenghui members Wu Yuzhang and Wang

Tianjie declared Rong County independent — the first

county regime established by the Tongmenghui.

The Qing court urgently transferred the Hubei New Army

into Sichuan. This move would later be

raised again and again: the best fighters

in Wuchang had been drawn away,

and those left in the city were

mostly recruits who had never seen battle.

The best fighters of Hubei were transferred

away. What remained in Wuchang were recruits

who had never seen battle, yet had

long since made contact in secret

the spark for the next episode is

buried in this very step.

.

What was drawn away was the longest-trained,

best-equipped contingent of the Hubei New Army;

yet among those who stayed, many had

secretly joined revolutionary groups.

This brings us to Zhang Zhidong.

His New Policies in Hubei — training a

new army, founding schools, opening factories

inadvertently planted another seed in Wuchang.

The new army he trained had an

abnormally high literacy rate; many soldiers were

farm boys who could read, some even

xiucai degree-holders. These men could read newspapers

and take in new books; their disappointment

with the court came earlier and ran

deeper than others'. The schools and new

army Zhang Zhidong founded in Hubei were

meant to give the court a usable

force, yet they placed literate men and

rifles under the same roof — a consequence

he never foresaw. At the time Wuchang

had two main revolutionary organizations: the Literary

Society, its core mostly junior officers and

soldiers of the new army; and the

Gongjin Association, with broader outside contacts.

In their daily rounds they made contact

through barracks, teahouses and schools.

Walk into Wuchang today and you can

still touch those traces: the Chu Wang

Tai arsenal, the city's central storehouse of

guns and ammunition; the old Engineering Battalion

site, by Ziyang Lake.

Whoever held Chu Wang Tai held the

whole city's bargaining chip — a point clearer

to people then than to anyone since.

The Hubei New Army was organized into

divisions and brigades, some fifteen thousand men,

and in several battalions the Literary Society's

members made up a considerable share.

Zhang Zhidong's New Policies in Hubei also

included the Hanyang Iron Works, the Hanyang

Arsenal, and a cluster of academies such

as the Lianghu Academy and the Ziqiang

School. The factories made guns, the schools

made men — and neither ended up serving

the purpose the court intended.

The troops stationed in Wuchang were scattered,

while the ammunition was concentrated at Chu

Wang Tai; between the two lay a

distance of a whole night — this geographic

mismatch would later decide the course of

that night. The new army's dress was

utterly unlike the old Green Standard soldier's:

queues cut off, or coiled up inside

the cap; on top, a Western-style standing-collar

uniform with rank badges on shoulder and

collar; on the feet, leather shoes;

at the waist, a leather belt;

and slung on the shoulder, mostly the

Hanyang Make rifle from the Hanyang Arsenal.

Life in the barracks had its own

rules: drill at dawn, roll call at

night, pay at month's end, the silver

arriving on time. In those years a

farm boy who got full meals and

monthly pay already counted as a man

of standing. Off duty their favorite haunt

was the teahouse — a pot of tea

for a few coppers, and news spread

across the table. Chu Wang Tai was

the city's central arsenal, yet the troops

were scattered and the ammunition lay a

whole night away — that distance would later

decide the course of that night.

.

The Literary Society and the Gongjin Association

were not really one family; their minds

even ran differently. Jiang Yiwen of the

Literary Society was silent and pragmatic,

with deep roots among the soldiers,

his words heeded; Sun Wu of the

Gongjin Association was hot-tempered and full of

schemes, with wide outside connections.

Liu Gong put up the money,

Sun Wu worked the outside, Jiang Yiwen

managed the barracks — three men, three sets

of ideas. Men like Ju Zheng and

Liu Gong, some handling documents, some supplies,

all nominally given posts; yet when the

moment of truth came, who would heed

whom, no one below felt sure.

Had the Sichuan upheaval not forced the

situation to a crisis, this hand might

never have clasped. They agreed to make

Jiang Yiwen commander-in-chief and Sun Wu military

chief, yet those below understood clearly that

who would heed whom was still unsettled.

This looseness later became a fatal flaw:

the moment a command went astray in

transmission, the whole game fell into disorder.

Yet it was precisely this looseness that

made it unlike a conspiracy, more like

the stacked wagers of countless ordinary men.

Two organizations, three sets of minds

a hand that could never have clasped

was forcibly pressed together by an upheaval

far away.

.

Speak of revolution and many think first

of Sun Yat-sen. But before October 1911,

Sun Yat-sen was not in Wuchang,

nor even in the country; he was

abroad, traveling to raise funds.

On the fund-raising there is a matter

later much disputed. Several participants recorded that

before several uprisings Sun promised comrades at

home that arms, ammunition and pay would

be procured from overseas, yet many promises

were never fulfilled, and the front often

faced overwhelming odds, losing men for nothing.

Zhang Taiyan, between 1907 and 1909, publicly criticized the Tongmenghui's

opaque fund-raising; such accounts appear in his

collected works and contemporary letters.

The later break between Sun and Zhang

was sparked, among other things, by how

the money was raised and spent.

From the 1895 Guangzhou uprising to the

1911 Huanghuagang, Sun launched more than ten

uprisings over a dozen years, most failing

before a shot was fired.

The front repeatedly came up empty;

a recurring story: the guns, ammunition and

pay promised before the rising arrived late,

and when the men showed up and

the plot leaked, they found themselves empty-handed.

What Zhang Taiyan cursed was precisely this

disconnect between fundraising and dispatch.

The above accounts come partly from participants'

memoirs and opponents' records; the original sources

await further verification. We present them as

they are, without judgment.

One thing is clear: for those far

overseas, every penny raised bore on the

life and death of the front at

home. And the one who truly charged

the front line, who poured in his

life, was another man.

The man placed at the very front

was not present; the one truly charging

the front was another name — yet this

man, too, was still on his way.

.

Huang Xing was among the few revolutionaries

who truly stood on the front line.

In his early years he founded the

Huaxing Society in Hunan, later becoming the

military mainstay of the Tongmenghui.

In 1904 he plotted an uprising in Changsha;

when it leaked he fled, and from

then on staked everything on the front.

Rather than sit and theorize, he chose

again and again to stand before the

guns. On 27 April 1911, at the Huanghuagang battle

in Guangzhou, he led men against the

governor's yamen; his finger was shot off,

yet he kept directing the retreat.

That battle is commonly called the Seventy-Two

Martyrs, though eighty-six are verifiably counted,

many young scholars who went and did

not return. The following year, at the

Yangxia campaign, Huang Xing held the front

at Hanyang and Hankou for over forty

days. In armed uprising, Huang Xing's practical

role was more direct and more forward

than Sun Yat-sen's, who raised funds far

overseas. Yet in October 1911, Huang Xing was

not in Wuchang either; he was still

on his way. This fire in Wuchang

was lit by those at the bottom,

at a time when neither of the

two great men was present.

Neither of the two great men was

in Wuchang. Then who lit this fire?

The answer is those whose names never

made it into the textbooks.

.

On 9 October 1911, at Baoshan Lane on the edge

of the Russian concession in Wuhan,

a Gongjin Association hideout ran into trouble.

Sun Wu and Deng Yulin and others

were there rushing the manufacture of explosives

and flags, preparing to rise.

While mixing explosives, Sun Wu set off

an accidental detonation, wounding himself on the

spot and blowing the whole conspiracy into

the open. Others in the hideout,

Deng Yulin among them, scattered to hide

once it happened, but the flags and

seals on site were too late to

clear. Later the arrested Liu Tong,

unable to withstand interrogation, betrayed the hideout

and a number of comrades, making the

search suddenly precise. The Russian concession police

came at the sound, and seized the

uprising's flags and seals, and a name

roster. That roster listed who in Wuchang

had taken part. The police handed the

things to the Huguang governor-general, Rui Cheng.

In an instant, an uprising still hidden

in the shadows became an open hand.

According to records, it was the arrested

Liu Tong who, unable to withstand interrogation,

betrayed the hideout and comrades, making the

search suddenly precise. One explosion blew the

hidden conspiracy into the open; and that

roster would next be delivered into the

governor's hands.

.

Rui Cheng got the roster, and that

night the whole city was placed under

martial law; arrests by name began.

Rui Cheng was a man who,

when trouble came, thought first of saving

himself; normally leaning on the Beiyang clique,

at the critical moment he could not

make up his mind.

He ordered the Wuchang gates closed and

a house-to-house search for those on the

roster; suddenly the whole city lived in

terror. For those on the roster,

only two choices remained: wait to be

arrested, or rise tonight.

This is the cruelest logic of an

uprising: when a secret can no longer

be hidden, not to rise is to

die. A group still hesitating was pushed

by a single roster to the edge

of the cliff. The roster in Rui

Cheng's hands had been compiled by the

revolutionaries themselves — names, native places, units,

all complete — in effect handing the governor,

in one move, everyone in the city

who had taken part.

That night the Wuchang gates were shut

tight; those inside could not get out,

news from outside could not get in.

It is recorded that several battalions issued

cartridges that very night, yet no one

knew whom to fire on.

In official circles, Rui Cheng's first thought

was self-preservation: he pushed the arrest duty

onto subordinates and stayed in the yamen

awaiting Beijing's reply. But however fast the

telegram, it could not outrun the smell

of gunpowder already spreading through the city.

Once the roster reached the governor's hands

and the Wuchang gates were shut,

for those on the list only two

choices remained: wait for death, or rise

tonight.

.

Late on the night of 9 October,

Jiang Yiwen issued the uprising order,

agreeing that a gunshot would be the

signal and all battalions would act together.

But the order, half delivered, was interrupted

by a search; most units never received

it at all. Yang Hongsheng's transport of

explosives was also exposed; Liu Fuxing,

in a panic at the hideout,

threw a bomb to cover his comrades,

yet exposed still more.

The agreed time passed; the gun did

not fire, yet the men were already

alarmed. Jiang Yiwen himself escaped; what he

left behind was a group of junior

officers and soldiers who knew not whether

to advance or retreat.

The plan was in disarray; the uprising

seemed about to die unborn.

Yet the roster was already in the

governor's hands, and time was no longer

on their side. The uprising order was

cut off mid-delivery, most units never received

it — the plan seemed about to die

unborn, yet time was no longer on

their side.

.

Those on the roster could no longer

hide. Peng Chufan, a clerk in the

military police, was captured without losing his

composure; according to accounts he denounced his

accusers even before execution — a stubborn,

hardened man. Liu Fuxing, a core member

of the Gongjin Association from Changde in

Hunan, of the fiercest temper, after arrest

spoke openly and never concealed his convictions.

Yang Hongsheng, a Hubei man responsible for

transporting explosives and ammunition, was caught when

the plot failed and under interrogation would

not implicate others. The three were taken

to the Huguang governor's yamen, interrogated through

the night, and before dawn dragged outside

the yamen gate and beheaded.

From arrest to martyrdom was but a

few hours. The order was given by

the Huguang governor-general, Rui Cheng.

In the small hours of 10 October 1911,

the three were killed — these are the

later-called Three Martyrs, Peng, Liu and Yang.

They were no great men; only ordinary

people whose names had been written into

that roster, yet at that moment they

left their lives in Wuchang.

Peng Chufan was in his twenties when

he died, with an aged mother at

home; Liu Fuxing had been married only

recently; Yang Hongsheng left behind a child

just learning to walk.

These details appear in later compilations of

the martyrs' biographies; we record them as

they are, without comment.

That night the governor's yamen followed old

routines: torches on the hall, bailiffs standing

to either side, the interrogation by the

stale formulas of the penal code

first the accomplices, then the instigator.

The townspeople only learned at dawn that

men had been killed outside the yamen;

the bold came to look and saw

three bodies no one dared claim.

A Wuchang morning should have begun with

the stevedores' calls at the docks,

the opening of the teahouses.

That day those sounds were still there,

only the people of the city already

knew something had changed.

Three ordinary men died, yet those still

alive on the roster all understood one

truth: wait any longer and the next

would be oneself. That night, it was

truly coming.

.

The blood of three men thoroughly doused

the hesitation. Those still alive on the

roster all understood one truth: wait any

longer and the next would be oneself.

On the night of 10 October, the mood

in Wuchang was like a string pulled

to its limit. In whose hands this

string would snap, we leave for the

next episode. Come to Wuchang today and

you can still touch the traces of

that night on Peng-Liu-Yang Road, at the

Red Building, at Chu Wang Tai.

The Red Building is the former site

of the Wuchang Uprising military government;

the old Engineering Battalion site still stands

by Ziyang Lake. One city, one railway,

three names — they pushed an era to

its turning point. And beyond the turning

point lay longer turmoil, and countless ordinary

people who paid the price for this

revolution. We tell of this fuse not

to glorify any side, but to make

clear: when a regime repeatedly disappoints its

own people, what comes loose is not

only trust but the very base of

the whole order. The price that followed

was, for the most part, silently borne

by the most ordinary people of that

time.

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