Madame Yang


Madame Yang, also known as Lady Yang, was the mother of Sun Yat-sen.

Biography

She gave birth to Sun Yat-sen in the village of Cuiheng, Xiangshan County, Guangdong, in 1866, when she was 39 years old.
In 1878, when Sun Yat-sen was 13 years old, she brought Sun Yat-sen from Macau to Honolulu via boat, so that he could live with his elder brother, Dezhang. Madame Yang returned that same year to China.
In 1883, Sun Yat-sen finished his schooling in Honolulu and returned to Cuiheng, where he shortly got in trouble for breaking a statue inside of a temple, and fled to Hong Kong.
After the failure of the Guangzhou Uprising in 1895, Sun Yat-sen was placed on the wanted list by the Qing court and his family became at risk of being captured. Lu Muzhen, Sun Yat-sen's first wife, took her children and Madame Yang to stay with Dezhang in Honolulu. Later, Dezhang fell into bankruptcy as a result of funding Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary activities, and all of the members in Honolulu moved to Ngau Chi Wan in Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Madame Yang and Dezhang eventually lived at No. 24 Tung Tau Tsuen.

Grave

Madame Yang died at the Tung Tau Tsuen home on July 19, 1910, at the age of 83. Sun Yat-sen was fundraising in Singapore at the time, and a member of the Tongmenghui arranged the burial. The grave is located near Fei Ngo Shan Rd, in Pak Fa Lam, Sai Kung, New Territories.
In May 2000, the government contacted Sun Yat-sen's descendants to form long-term maintenance plans for the site. Emergency repair works were carried out in October 2000, and the Antiquities and Monuments Office was tasked with monitoring the grave, and repairing it when necessary. The Antiquities Advisory Board also undertook studies to determine whether to consider the grave a declared monument.
In 2017, markers pointing to her grave were vandalized. The Sun Yat-sen Institute's president, Lee Sung-wai, had his friends repair the markers.

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