Tse Tsan-tai (1872–1938) was born in Sydney to a family from Kaiping, Guangdong. His father Tse Yat-cheong had been a general of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and an elder of a Triad lodge, and after the Taipings fell he fled to Australia, where his son's anti-Qing convictions took shape. Tse moved to Hong Kong with his father in 1887 and studied at the Central School (later Queen's College), then worked for nearly ten years as a clerk in the government's Public Works Department and later as a comprador and manager for foreign firms. In 1892 he and Yeung Ku-wan founded the Furen Literary Society in Pak Tsz Lane, Sheung Wan, regarded as the first anti-Qing revolutionary organisation in modern China. Joining the Revive China Society in 1895 as its third-ranking figure after Yeung and Sun Yat-sen, he handled its external affairs and helped plan the 1895 Guangzhou uprising, staying in Hong Kong afterwards to deal with the aftermath; he wrote the society's first declaration in English, with an open letter to the Guangxu Emperor. In 1898 he drew The Situation in the Far East, exposing the scramble for concessions; it is considered China's first modern political cartoon. An aviation pioneer as well, he produced in 1899 the design for a 'China' airship, the earliest such plan in Chinese history. In 1902 he joined Lee Kai-tong and Hung Chuen-fuk in organising secret-society networks for the Datong Shuntian Kingdom plot to seize Guangzhou, which failed after a leak. With Alfred Cunningham he founded the South China Morning Post in 1903 and served as its editor. After the Republic was founded he was appointed an honorary adviser to the bureau for rewarding revolutionary merit, but soon left public life for farming and mining and later for the study of ancient Chinese literature and the origins of mankind; in 1924 the South China Morning Post published his English memoir The Secret History of the Chinese Revolution, sharply critical of Sun Yat-sen, which helped erase him from official Kuomintang history. He died at his home on Hennessy Road in Wan Chai on 4 April 1938, aged 65.
Tse Tsuan-tai drove the organising and external affairs of the Furen Literary Society and the Revive China Society, pioneered China's first modern political cartoon and earliest airship design, and helped found the South China Morning Post; his critical memoir of Sun Yat-sen long kept him out of official histories.
Achievements
- 1892 · Co-founded the Furen Literary Society in Pak Tsz Lane, Sheung Wan, with Yeung Ku-wan and others
- 1898 · Drew The Situation in the Far East, regarded as China's first modern political cartoon
- 1903 · Co-founded the South China Morning Post with Alfred Cunningham and served as its editor