Have you ever wanted to understand this ancient and mysterious land? Last time: Beijing fell into chaos -- Fen
《神州大地》系列 總第 25 集：「He borrowed foreign money and guns for his presidency | 1920s Guangzhou (Shorts)」是本集影片的完整圖文轉錄，可逐字閱讀，也可前往影片頁觀看對應畫面。
Have you ever wanted to understand this ancient and mysterious land?
Last time: Beijing fell into chaos -- Feng Yuxiang''s guns toppled both the emperor and the president.
This time, a thousand miles south: another man, using foreign money and guns, to chase his own "presidential dream."
Last episode, the sky
over the old capital
changed. Feng
Yuxiang''s guns
dragged the last
emperor, Puyi, out of
the Forbidden City
and forced
President Cao Kun
from power; Duan
Qirui and Zhang
Zuolin then took
hold of the North. Yet
at that very same
moment of upheaval
thousands of miles
south in Canton
another man was
quietly
reassembling an
army and a party. His
name was Sun Yat-sen
（One aside, so no one
is confused: "Sun" was
his given name
Yat-sen" his
courtesy name. In his
era one addressed a
respected elder by
the courtesy name
not the given name
much as the northern
strongman Duan
Qirui was spoken of
as "Zhiquan." So when
you hear "Sun Wen" and
Sun Yat-sen" used
interchangeably
they are the same man
.） Remember this name
Sun Yat-sen. All his
life he cried "save
the nation." Yet
strangely, all his
life he also
borrowed from
foreigners — money
guns, advisers, and an
entire method for
rebuilding a party
In 1924, in Canton, he
suddenly held all at
once: a brand-new
party, a brand-new
military academy
and endless roubles
and rifles. Yet just a
few years before, to
borrow his first
coin and his first
gun, he had already
pledged away a
stretch of national
territory to a
neighboring power
Was this man a
patriot, or a traitor
This episode draws
no conclusion for
you — it simply lays
the matter out, one
piece at a time
To say "borrowed from
foreigners" is no
metaphor. He truly
traveled far to
write letters and
borrow. He borrowed
from Russia in the
north, and from Japan
in the east. What he
borrowed became
bullets, or the seal
of power, or rights
surrendered on a
signed agreement. A
man who cries "save
the nation," whose
bargaining chips
were so often
foreign money and
guns — that picture
alone is worth a long
look
This episode is not
about a cartoon
villain. Sun had his
obsessions, his
resilience through
repeated failure
and his disgust for a
rotten age. Yet the
same man, to fulfill
his own
presidential dream
also did things
later generations
find hard to excuse
Let us take them one
by one. First, that
letter sent to Tokyo
▶ 觀看本集影片（含畫面與地圖）：He borrowed foreign money and guns for his presidency | 1920s Guangzhou (Shorts)