Yang Quyun, style names Siu-chun and Ku-wan, was born in Dongguan, Guangdong in 1861 to a family from Haicheng, Fujian. He came to Hong Kong as a child and studied at St Paul's College; at fourteen he entered a shipyard to learn engineering, lost three fingers of his right hand in an accident and turned to English studies, teaching at St Joseph's College before becoming secretary of the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company and deputy manager of Sassoon & Co. Around 1892 (some accounts say 1890) he and Tse Tsun-tai and a dozen others founded the Furen Literary Society in Pak Tsz Lane, Sheung Wan, with Yang as its head and the aim of 'enlightening the people' - regarded as one of the earliest anti-Qing revolutionary bodies in modern China; he also joined the Triads. After Sun Yat-sen came to Hong Kong in early 1895 and was introduced by Yau Lit, the Honolulu Revive China Society merged with the Furen Literary Society to form the Hong Kong head office of the Revive China Society, formally established in February, and Yang was elected its president (then called chong-pan), with Sun as secretary; the firm Hong Heng was opened in Central as a front, and on 10 October 1895 a meeting elected Yang provisional president of the projected 'republican government' should the rising succeed. In October 1895 he commanded the Guangzhou uprising from Hong Kong; the plot leaked, more than seventy men were arrested, and both Yang and Sun were proscribed, with the Hong Kong government ordering them out of the territory for five years. He fled via Singapore to Johannesburg and then to Japan, building the society abroad. In January 1900 he resigned the presidency to Sun; that year he came from Japan to Hong Kong to launch the Huizhou uprising and, after its failure, returned at the end of the year and opened a tutorial school at 52 Gage Street, teaching English to support his family. On 10 January 1901 the Qing assassin Chan Lam shot him in his flat above 52 Gage Street; he died the next day, aged 39. Tse Tsun-tai arranged his burial in the Hong Kong Cemetery and designed a nameless broken-column marker bearing only the number 6348 to protect it from the Qing authorities. In September 2011 the HKSAR government installed an information plaque at the grave recognising his role in the revolution.
Yang Quyun founded the Furen Literary Society and became the first president of the Revive China Society, commanding the 1895 Guangzhou uprising from Hong Kong. After being proscribed he organised the movement from South Africa and Japan, and was shot by a Qing assassin in Gage Street in 1901. The nameless gravestone arranged by Tse Tsun-tai, and the biographical plaque installed by the HKSAR government in 2011, keep his role in the revolution on record.
Achievements
- 1892 · With Tse Tsun-tai and others, founded the Furen Literary Society in Pak Tsz Lane, Sheung Wan, and served as its head.
- 1895 · Elected president of the Revive China Society and commanded the Guangzhou uprising from Hong Kong.
- 1900 · Resigned the society's presidency and returned from Japan that year to launch the Huizhou uprising.