When the Wuchang revolt of Oct. 10, 1911, the military launching of the Xinhai Revolution, broke out, Sun Yat-Sen was in America. He learned of these portentous events by reading about them in a newspaper while traveling by train from Denver to Kansas City. That the "Father of the Chinese Revolution" was abroad for one of the most momentous events in modern Chinese history is one of the many ironies of his revolutionary career. Titular leader of a revolution begun in his absence, Sun was destined to be forced to live outside of China for 16 years after the failed 1895 Canton uprising made him a criminal with a price placed on his head by the Qing authorities he was trying to overthrow.
But far from being a mere accident of history, Sun's foreign sojourn was tied in with his destiny as a participant in the overseas Chinese diaspora. Born in southern China, Sun, like millions of Chinese before and after him, had his life intertwined with the historical forces attracting Chinese to foreign shores with hopes for prosperity, education, freedom, and all the other lures prompting often desperate people to "temporarily" forsake the homeland for a better life elsewhere. America has and continues to play an important role in this history of overseas Chinese (huaqiao), and we in Hawaii particularly celebrate the unique role our islands have weaved into the story of San Yat-sen and his relationship with America. In terms of time alone, Sun, before he was 46 years old at the time of the Revolution, had spent, on and off, over nine years in the United States and the kingdom, republic, and territory of Hawaii. These stays involved seven visits, the earliest and most formative having been spent exclusively in Hawaii (1878-83, 1884-85, 1894-95, followed by stopovers in 1896, 1903-04 and 1910).
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