晚晴园

In Apr 2023, Ma Ying-jeou visited China for 12 days, ostensibly to visit his ancestral graves, but his itinerary read like a where-and-where of locations that held significant importance to the Republic of China.

Yet seemingly, the Chinese Kuomintang party appear hardly to recall the vast amount of support (both monetary and otherwise) of overseas Chinese in Malaya for Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People.  

There lies still, places in what was then Malaya and Siam, where Sun Yat-sen canvassed support for his cause, raising huge sums of money and gold for his cause in the last days of the Qing Dynasty. 

 Mentally and morally committed to the homeland they left in search of better lives, the overseas Chinese in Malaya and Siam continued their huge contributions to the Chinese war efforts when Japan invaded China.  This resulted in huge numbers of the Chinese population in Malaya especially being slaughtered in retaliation when the Japanese came ashore in Malaya.

There lies one such place in what is Singapore today, where Sun Yat-sen stayed at while he canvassed for support in many cities and towns in Malaya.  Renamed as the Sun Yat Sen Nanyang Memorial Hall, this villa was bought by Chinese businessman Teo Eng Hock in 1905 originally meant for his mother to spend her last years.  This was where Sun Yat-sen planned uprisings that were the precusors of the Wuchang uprising in 1911 that end the rule of the Manchus.