Soundbonus - Popular Chinese Folk Song 'The Beautiful Nandu River', By Unknown Chinese Artist.
Asia Report - Map Image of South China, Gulf Tonkin, Hainan Island, North Vietnam
This Satellite Image provides a clear overview of Hainan Island Province of China, The Gulf of Tonkin, large parts of Guangdong Province, Yunnan Province, Guanxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Guizhou Province, Sichuan Province and Hunan Province of China; as well as parts of Northern Vietnam, Laos and Myanmar.
Marked on the map for orientation are the names of major National and Provincial Capitals, cities, several towns and villages, oceans, sea's, lakes and rivers, as well as mountains, national borders, and locations of interest. Browse the map and follow the links to more information, maps and photos of each location.
and naval base, controlling to some degree the coastal waters and access to ports on the South Chinese Coast. The Chinese fleet however was no match for the industrial age
war fleets of the Colonial Powers of Britain and France.
Opium war.
Gulf of Tonkin. Waters entirely dominated by Qing Dynasty China.
After the Opium War in 1840, Hainan was invaded by foreign imperialists -the British, in case- who, as the Xinhua Official Newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party would have it, brought untold sufferings to the local Li and Han people. Naturally, this was the reason why the Li People, in the aftermath of the Opium War who rose repeatedly against feudal lords and foreign invaders.
More likely, the Li, who had always been restless and who had revolted against mainland authorities numerous times throughout the past centuries, saw yet another chance to break away and run their Island as they saw it fit, without influence from unwanted outsiders, particularly the Han.
The response from the Central Government was predictable, and as usual crude. Instead of entering into negotiations and hearing the griefs of the clearly dissatisfied Li, the Government instead made use of very old and lingering feuds between rivalling ethnic clans on the island by shipping in mercenaries especially selected among the Miao people in the border regions of Guizhou Province. There, on the current Vietnamese-Chinese border, there were many who would go and fight the hated Li, especially when handsomely payed in cash. In Guizhou utter poverty was the norm, opium addiction a plague and people lay dying or dead in the street. It was quite normal to starve to death in a particularly bad season or year. Those who regarded themselves as veterans of the long simmering Sino-French conflict over Cochin and Annam (Indo-China and Vietnam) could be found in relative abundance, and were shipped out with expedience.
Thus, a new influx of Miao People from Guizhou enriched the already varied mix of ethnic peoples on the Island. Many of the Miao settled on the island and their descendants live in the western highlands to this day. The uprising was once again bloodily suppressed and
Hainan became administered as Qiongya Dao (Qiongya, or Jade Cliff Island) in 1912 AD under the administration of China's first Republic, which however sadly disintegrated shortly thereafter, plunging China into what today is known as its warlord era (1912/13 AD - 1928 AD).
Today's Provincial Capital, the City of Haikou was proclaimed a city in 1926 AD, under the new revolutionary attempt to unify the Nation under one National Government took off in South China, once more nominally led by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. In the next years this National Government, a 'united front' of Kuomintang and the Communist Party fostered by Russia would sweep the Nation establishing a National Government of sorts in Nanjing (Jiangsu Province) in 1928 AD, solidifying the new titles and administrative arrangements for Qiongya Island.
The Hainan Island Operation, or Kainan-tō sakusen (海南島作戦?) in Japanese was part of a campaign by the Empire of Japan during the Second Sino-Japanese War to blockade the Republic of China to prevent it from communicating with the outside world and importing needed arms and materials. The actual operation itself, which involved taking control of the Island by ways of amphibious assault, started on February 10 of 1939 AD. Japanese Forces advancing on the Island were impressive, including 3 major Cruisers (Myoko (5th Fleet flag ship), Nagara and Natori, the 23rd Destroyer Group, the 45th Destroyer Group, the 28th Destroyer Group, Minesweepers, the 1st Air Sentai with aircraft carriers Akagi and Chiyoda and their 1st Air Unit (14th Kokutai,16th Kokutai), as well as the necessary infantry units to take control of the entire main Island of Hainan and nearby minor isles. These were the 4th Base Force, the 5th Garrison Unit and the so called Taiwan Mixed Brigade. The latter was under orders of Major Gen. Iida and consisted of the Taiwan 1st Infantry Regiment, Taiwan 2nd Infantry Regiment and the Taiwan Mountain Gun Regiment. The overall command for the assault on- and take-over of Hainan Island was in the hands of Vice Admiral Kondo Nobutake.
For the Chinese side there was but a pittiful force, hardly up to the task of defending the Island against any serious military threat. Officially, these were mainly the 5th Security Brigade led by Wang Yi, 2 additional Security Regiments totalling around 1,600 men and a further 7 Guard Battalions, the latter nothing more than a hastilly assembled militia formed from willing male residents but bringing some 1,750 men into the field. The best defenses on the Island were however still being organized and trained. These were the Xiuying Fortress and its Battery Garrisons, some 250 men in total.
Needless to say, there was little hope for the Chinese Commander and his forces to hold on to the Island. The only wildcard involved, a secret underground force of some 300 organized communist guerillas, was equally ill equipped to face the Japanese.
The Island of Hainan was taken in a matter of a few days, Chinese Resistance obliterated by the Japanese Air attacks against which there was no defense.
Control of Hainan Island gave Japan the perfect base for a Naval blockade of all south Chinese ports. It further provided a base of operations for the later invasion of Guangdong Province and attack on French Indochina in 1942/43. After a military airbase had been constructed on Hainan, the island also provided airbases to permit long-distance air raids at routes into China from French Indochina (Vietnam) and Burma (Now Myanmar).
After the Japanese surrender in 1945 the Nationalist Party (KMT) which had its main strongpoints and support in the South quickly moved to re-establish control of the island(s). Once returned into Nationalist hands, the remote outcorner would go on to become famous as one o.t. last areas of China controlled by the Republic of China. Initial attacks from the mainland towards Hainan Island started in late 1949 AD, but failed due to the complete lack of amphibious assault vessels, support ships and the like.
Historic Map - China (Qing) Empire in 1910 AD
An obviously non-Chinese but western-inspired and made Map of the Ching Dynasty Chinese Empire in the year 1910 AD, a year in which China's sovereignty has been under threat and siege for over 70 years.
In this Map of 1910 AD, made one year before the abdication of Last Ching Emperor and the final end of China's Feudal History, China is depicted as in it's smallest boundaries and definition. Most notably Manchuria, and Inner Mongolia, both territories nominally under Chinese Control and under Chinese Sovereignty are depicted as separate area's. Indo-China, Vietnam is now a French Colony. Manchuria, the ancestral home of the Ching Dynasty is eyed by Russia, Japan and others. Other interesting features of the Map and geography of the Time : after the Sino-Japanese war of 1899 AD, both Korea and the Island of Formosa (now Taiwan / ROC) have been annexed by Japan.
Thus, the expected French tide came in 1884 and '85 AD.
After some initial sea battles further up the Chinese Coast, destroying crucial parts of the left-over Chinese Navy, French forces landed on the island of Formosa (now Taiwan, ROC). The intended take-over however failed in the face of unforeseen and unusually effective Chinese counter-attacks. Only one town, Keelung, was taken and held by the French. Subsequently, not being able to muster and transport large numbers of troops to the region, the French resorted to a full naval blockade of Formosa, hoping to pry open the door to Indo-China through intransigence.
Meanwhile, a full battle between French troops, black flag members and Chinese Qing Dynasty troops raged in the red river valley in Northern Vietnam (Annam).
Although the 84/85 Sino-French war is considered to have been an overall military victory for the French, in effect the Northern half of Vietnam remained far from under French control. The war was undecided, and would no doubt continue at a later date.
The limited conflict however drastically changed the position of Hainan Island. With the Chinese Fleet now further damaged, and the Gulf of Tonkin militarily under control of the colonial powers, France and Britain, Hainan was effectively cut of from the mainland. Strategically it became even more vulnerable, requiring measures for the defense of the island. These would be taken in due time.
In 1890 AD the Island of Hainan was used as a staging area and military outpost, specifically used to combat the French invasion of Cochin, today known as Vietnam. For this purpose a fortress now known as Xiuying Fort or Fort Barbette was built in 1891 to defend the southeastern corner of China during the 2nd Sino-French War. The Xiuying Fort Barbette still exists today, its remains a tourist venue that covers about a third of an acre. It has five large cannons which are still intact and left viewable at the site.
In 1906, the Chinese Republican leader Sun Yat-sen, First President of the 1st Republic, proposed that Hainan should become a separate province although this did not happen until 1988 when the current Hainan Island Province was formed.
Not much after the departure of father “Charlie Soong“ the French made use of the lack of Chinese maritime powers after the crushing defeat in the Opium Wars by claiming naval control over traffic in the Gulf of Tonkin, thereby replacing China's official claims and maritime powers there. The Sino-French War of August 1884 AD and April 1885 AD was but the initial phase of a much larger maneuver, the intended invasion the southernmost province of Qing Dynasty China, Cochin, Indochina, or what today is Vietnam, carving out its own influence sphere on the fringes of the dwindling Chinese imperial holdings. In 1862 AD, the French had already annexed most of South Vietnam, creating Cochin-China, and now they were playing for more.
Troubles had started again by 1882 AD, when a French Force sent to investigate North Vietnamese (Annamese) complaints against French merchants wound up charging and taking over the citadel of Hanoi on 25 April 1882. Although the whole incident was smoothened out and the citadel relinquished back into Vietnamese control, everyone in Vietnam and regions beyond was alarmed over the ease with which the French had used their superior military force to get their way.
Since, the region and China was prepared to resist the French military, for which China turned to an illicit army known as the Black Flag, which operated in Yunnan (Province) as well as Northern Vietnam. Throughout 1882 and 1883 AD both powers maneuvered for the best position for the coming conflict, which was nearly ensured by the failure of negotiations in Paris in 1883.
To return to the story of Charlie Soong, father of the Soong Sister and founder of what has been dubbed the ’Soong Dynasty’ (Sterling Seagrave), his father was thus in fact not a destitude farmer, but rather a leader of a secret society of traders, pirates and smugglers.
Charlies name was not Soong but Han, and he was known as Han Chiao-shun.
As the story is usually portrayed today, the smuggler-trader Grandfather had other plans for his son than to remain on the Island and trawl the sea’s as generations had done earlier. Thus, Han Chiao-shun was sent abroad on one of the trading ships, to work at an apprentice ship provided through a family member, somewhere in the Indonesian Islands (East Indies).
Han Chiao-shun, only stayed there for a short stint Charlie before he left his meager placement, having been given the chance to join his uncle on a voyage to the West, meaning ’America’.
Once on the United States, in Boston, Han Chiao-shun’s name was eventually turned into the much more managable and patriotic name Charlie Soong.
The events that played out in the United States are of little consequence to the story of Hainan Island, however it should be noted that Charlie was taken in by Christian Missionary Families, who eventually had him converted and baptized, later giving him opportunity to return to China as an accepted member of the modern Chinese society in that city as well as a friend of the Foreigners. The position suited him excellently. According to the ’Soong Legend’, Charlie then started a Bible Publishing House and made his fortune, by distributing Bibles to a modernizing Shanghai and China, eager for Foreign idea’s and fresh viewpoints.
It was in this way, and through some others far less mentioned, that the family became one of the richest and most succesful in recent Chinese History, allowing among things for Charlie to return to Hainan Island and buy himself a huge mansion outside of Wenchang (County). It is this mansion, the Soong Family Mansion on Hainan Island, that features in the film ’the Soong Sisters’. Today it serves as a Museum dedicated to the Legend of the Soong Family and Dynasty. Apart from the sandy beaches and the now modernized harbor, it is the main tourist venue in Town.
China Report - Colonialism - Growth of Colonies & Japan after 1801 AD
A Map drawing of the Eurasian continent , parts of North-East Africa and the Middle East in the 19Th Century between 1801 AD and 1900 AD. Focal points are the expansion of western colonial posessions of Portugal, Britain and France, as well as Russia moving from West to East. Labeled seperately is the later Rise of the Empire of Japan in the East.
Included in this Map are the main cities across the continent with their brief histories and events during the 19Th Century. Marked in Colors for clarity are the various colonial and imperialist Nations. As relating to China; special attention is payed to so called Treaty Ports. The First Treaty Ports were forced open by Britain in the year 1841 AD, but counted over 80 in total by the end of the 19Th Century. The most important Treaty Ports in China are marked and described with a short history where the map allows.
Hainan remained under the umbrella of the shrinking Chinese Empire.
During this period of turmoil and decline in a still Feudal but disintegrating China that Hainan Island’s historically most famous and influential native citizen was born.
This most famous person was Charlie Soong (Sòng Jiāshù), who -himself obscure- was the father of the Shanghai born Soong sisters and founder of a financial Empire. His three daughters all married influential Men, and his Son, known by most as H.H. Soong would become the Minister of Finance and number one banker in all of China. To be exact: Soong Ai-ling, the eldest and least mentioned sister became the wife of H. H. Kung (once China's richest man); Soong Ching-ling, the second and most unusual sister went on to be the loyal wife of the much older Sun Yat-Sen -now recognized as Father of the Republic (, she also became a secret communist agent for the KomIntern); and finally, Soong Mei-ling, the prettiest little sister married none other than Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, between 1928 AD and 1949 AD, the official albeit much disputed President of Nationalist China led by the Kuomindang Party, which claims the legacy of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen.
According to modern Legend, father Charlie Soong was born the son of desperately poor peasants on Hainan Island which was then still part of Guangdong Province. However, more recent investigations have brought to light that father Charlie actually came from a reasonably well to do family. That is, instead of ignorant and suffering farmers portrayed by the stories of American Missionaries, Charlie's father was in fact a owner of several ships, a trader and merchant, but also a secret society member and thus likely at times a pirate and quite certainly an opium smuggler. This in itself makes for an interesting tale about the Island of Hainan.
The family however was by no means rich, they were merely relatively well off in a time and place where abject poverty was the norm. Anyone who managed to rise above that should consider himself reasonably luckily. Especially, if they did on the remote and underdeveloped Hainan Island.
As missionary reports from the time show, Hainan was at the time a thorough backwater where no one really wanted to go spread the gospel. Its innerlands and mountains were still mostly undeveloped, its confines the home of the traditional Miao and Hmong Mountain People (who today still live on the Island, in northern Vietnam and along the Chinese Borders in Yunnan Province, Guizhou Province and Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region).
Where stations such as Macau, Hong Kong and Canton (Guangzhou) had a thriving social life, plenty of entertainment, good overseas connections and a colony of Foreigners to befriend, Hainan island had virtually no such thing. The only official station on the island was a British customs post located at the Harbor of Haikou on the narrow Qiongzhou Straight between the coast of Guangdong Province (Leizhou Peninsula) and the island itself. According to Kevin Menzies, at most times only 2 customs officers were assigned to this remotest of customs offices.
Accepting a post to spread the gospel on Hainan Island, or any other, thus meant accepting a simple life in virtual isolation from anything considered part of the modern world. The only flock to try and convert were the Han Chinese peasants who had migrated to the island of Hainan over the centuries, either to flee from political persecutions - there had been countless over time-, or to escape from hunger and disease, tilling the land in the coastal plains of Hainan. The villages of the Hill tribes were rarely visited by foreigners, and the floating villages of fishermen annex pirates were mostly off limits to the missionaries, lest they wished to take the chance to be found murdered. The hill tribes were growing opium in the hillsides and many of the islands inhabitants found little need for prying eyes.
Not only was the island remote and cut off, the more so by recent British, French and other power’s naval actions, it was also rather dangerous. In fact, Hainan itself was a haven for pirate ships, pirates and their extended families. Foreigners, especially unwanted westerners found themselves regularly at the hands of pirate raids, not merely resulting in robbery and material loss, but regularly resulting in several deaths. Needless to say, the Foreign Colony on Hainan Island never really materialized. Nothing much ever materialized on Hainan it seems, except perhaps the rice harvest.
The things that did flourish on Hainan mainly involved the opium grown in the mountainous inland, the famous seaborn traders with their secret societies of pirates and the powerful trade guilds which had connections throughout southern Chinese ports, Malaysia, and beyond. Especially, the east side of the Island and the natural harbor of Wenchang, was a Pirates lair. The Fleets from Hainan, famed for their Hainan modelled three masted Junks, sailed far and wide maintaining a unique and often secretive network of ’insiders’.
To be more precise, according to historic sources, Hainans merchant fleet sailed to nearby ports on the Chinese Coast such as Macau, Hong Kong and Canton (Guangzhou), to Hanoi and Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) in Vietnam, throughout the Malaysian Harbors and Islands to the Indonesian Islands of Java, Sumatra and Borneo. Dominating the trade through clan systems, mutual favors, bribery, trickery and even murder if need be, the clans of Hainan, represented in the larger secret society of Hakka People (literally translated; Guest People), known as the secret society of the ’Chiu Chao’.
Apart from monopolizing all varieties of legal trades through their Trading Guilds which were well established in large ports such as Shanghai and Hong Kong, the Chiu Chao were also known to be the main suppliers of opium throughout the regions. Not only was it grown on Hainan Island, the Chiu Chao were the facilitators who transported the opium produced in south-east Asia’s notorious ’Golden Triangle’ to the large coastal cities where rich and destitute alike could be addicted to its potent powers. They, the Chu Chiao were the smugglers behind a gigantic illicit trade that continued behind the scenes of more acceptable practices. It made them rich, powerful and feared.
’Grandfather Soong’, the father of Charlie Soong was a member of the Chu Chiao and one of the ’middle cadres’ in this gargantuan illicit network.
