Scholars › Philosopher / Thinker
Zou Rong
Young pamphleteer from Ba county in Sichuan whose 1903 tract The Revolutionary Army called for the overthrow of the Qing, and who died in a Shanghai prison after the Subao case
A thatched pavilion open on three sides stands among tall bamboo; one person sits with their back turned at the veranda rail beside a zither and a stack of bamboo slips, while a stone path runs to a calm pond reflecting clouds and distant hills.
Also known as Zi Weidan
Zou Rong, originally named Shaotao and with the courtesy name Weidan, was the son of a merchant in Ba county, Sichuan. In 1902 he went to Japan at his own expense to study in Tokyo, but returned the next year after he and fellow students cut off the queue of Yao Wenfu, the official supervising Chinese students there. In Shanghai he befriended Zhang Binglin and in 1903 wrote The Revolutionary Army (Geming jun), a tract calling for the overthrow of the Qing and a republic, published with Zhang's preface. When the newspaper Subao promoted the book, the Qing pressed the foreign settlement authorities to act; Zhang was arrested and Zou gave himself up to the police. In 1904 the Mixed Court sentenced him to two years, and he fell ill and died in prison in April 1905. In 1912 the provisional government in Nanjing gave him the posthumous rank of general.
Life and times
Dates 1885 CE–1905 CE