He was born to a peasant family inCuiheng Village Xiangshan County of Guangdong Province,
in southern China The county has been renamed Zhongshan in his honor.
At age 13 he went to live with an older brother, who had immigrated there as a laborer and
become a prosperous merchant, in Hawaii. He subsequently practiced medicine in that city. His
years in the west induced in him a dissatisfaction with the Qing government of China and he
began his political career by attempting to organize reform groups of Chinese exiles in Hong
Kong. In October 1894 he founded the Xing Zhong Society to unveil the goal of prospering
China and as the platform for future revolutionary activities.
In 1895 a coup he plotted failed, and for the next 16 years Sun was an exile in Europe, the United
States, Canada, and Japan, raising money for his revolutionary party and bankrolling uprisings in
China. In Japan he joined dissident Chinese groups and soon
became their leader. He was expelled from Japan to the United States.
On October 10, 1911, a military uprising at Wuchang in which Sun had nothing to do with,
began a process that ended five thousand years of imperial rule in China. When he learned of the
successful rebellion against the Qing emperor from press reports, Sun immediately returned to
China from the United States.
On December 29 at Nanking, a meeting of representatives from provinces elected Sun as the
President of the Republic of China and set the New Year's Day of 1912 as the first
day of the First Year of the Republic.
After the swearing in, Sun Yat-sen telexed all provinces to elect and send new senators to
establish the National Assembly of the Republic of China. Then the government
organizational guidelines and the law of...