Mavericks › Uprising Leaders
Tao Chengzhang
Zhejiang revolutionary, a founder of the Restoration Society, who organised secret societies with Xu Xilin and was assassinated in Shanghai in January 1912
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 Huanqing · Taoer Shanren
Tao Chengzhang, courtesy name Huanqing, came from Taoyan in Kuaiji, Zhejiang. He studied in Japan from 1902, returned the next year, and in the winter of 1904 founded the Restoration Society in Shanghai with Cai Yuanpei and others. He then travelled on foot across Zhejiang to win over secret-society leaders, and in 1905 he and Xu Xilin opened the Datong school in Shaoxing to train them. After Xu and Qiu Jin were killed in 1907 he fled to Japan and later raised funds in Southeast Asia. At odds with Sun Yat-sen, he re-established the society's headquarters in Tokyo with Zhang Binglin in 1910 as its vice-president. His Record of the Zhejiang Cases (Zhe'an jilue) recounts its risings. After the Wuchang rising he returned to Shanghai to help bring Zhejiang over to the revolution, and on 14 January 1912 he was shot dead while recovering in a Shanghai hospital; the killing is generally attributed to Chen Qimei, military governor of Shanghai, with Chiang Kai-shek among the planners.
Life and times
Dates 1878 CE–1912 CE