Mavericks › Uprising Leaders
Xiong Bingkun
Hubei New Army squad leader and Common Advancement Society member who led the engineer battalion's mutiny on 10 October 1911 and seized the Chuwangtai arsenal
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 Zi Zaiqian · Yuanming Xiangyuan · Jiang Xiaren
Xiong Bingkun, born Xiong Xiangyuan, courtesy name Zaiqian, came from a poor family in Jiangxia, Hubei, worked as a labourer, and enlisted in the Hubei New Army, becoming a squad leader in the Eighth Engineer Battalion. A member of the Common Advancement Society, he was chosen as the revolutionaries' chief delegate in his battalion. After the plotters' headquarters were raided on 9 October 1911, shots were fired the next evening in a quarrel between soldiers and an officer in the engineer barracks; Xiong blew his whistle to assemble his comrades, led them to take the Chuwangtai arsenal, and then asked the company officer Wu Zhaolin to take overall command while a volunteer squad attacked the governor-general's office. Under the Republic he held military posts, became a major general, and took part in the 1913 campaign against Yuan Shikai. After 1949 he served on the Hubei provincial government council, and he died in Wuhan in 1969.
Life and times
Dates 1884 CE–1969 CE