Mavericks › Uprising Leaders
Lu Haodong
Boyhood friend of Sun Yat-sen from Cuiheng who joined the Revive China Society, designed the blue-sky white-sun flag, and was executed after the failed 1895 Guangzhou plot
A mountain camp at night, with a beacon fire burning on a wooden platform at the upper left, several white tents on the slope and a red cloth tied to a rope; a wooden palisade with a gate stands at the right beyond a timber bridge over a rough river, under a clouded moon.
Also known as Ming Zhonggui · Zi Xianxiang · Xiang Shan Cui Heng Cun Ren
- Roles
- Uprising Leaders
Lu Haodong, personal name Zhonggui, courtesy name Xianxiang, came from Cuiheng village in Xiangshan, Guangdong, and was Sun Yat-sen's neighbour and boyhood friend. He trained at the telegraph school in Shanghai and then worked for the telegraph service. In 1883 he and Sun broke the images in Cuiheng's temple to the Northern Emperor and were denounced by the villagers. In 1894 he went north with Sun to Tianjin to present a reform petition to Li Hongzhang, which was ignored, and afterward he helped organise the Revive China Society and designed its blue-sky white-sun flag for the planned rising. When the society's plot to seize Guangzhou in 1895 was betrayed, he went back to its headquarters to destroy the membership list, was arrested, refused to name anyone under interrogation, and was executed on 7 November at twenty-seven by Chinese reckoning. Sun later called him the first person to die for the republican revolution.
Life and times
Dates 1868 CE–1895 CE