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Behind-the-scenes: Research field trip for the upcoming Sun Yat-sen series
🕑 Added 2018-11-26 17:01:02 +0000 UTC CORRECTION: The dress-up room and the museum that had the exhibit on the Beiyang Warlords was not at the Memorial Hall in Taipei, it was at the Sun Yat-Sen Museum in Hong Kong. These are pics from two different museums.Back in October, writer Rob Rath visited the Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall in Taipei, Taiwan. Here are the photos he wanted to share with the patrons!
He also visited the Sun Yat-Sen Museum in Hong Kong seen in part below.
He adds: "There is a new exhibit on the Beiyang Warlords and it contains a dress-up portion, so of course I dressed up like Yuan Shikai. For those who don't know, Yuan Shikai is a reviled figure, basically the ultimate villain of our Sun Yat-sen series. He killed the revolution, declared himself emperor, and began the warlords period. The museum guards thought this was the funniest thing they’d ever seen."
Comments
Thomas Alfred Weaver
Thanks Robert!
Robert Rath
Hey Ryan! As I mentioned above, Sun is the closest thing you can get to a universally-admired figure in modern Chinese culture. He's considered a hero both in Beijing and Taipei, as well as overseas Chinese communities across the globe. (As you'll see in the series, he also traveled a lot while raising money for the revolution, so many cities can claim historic buildings or civic organizations with a link to Sun.)
Robert Rath
Both the Memorial Hall in Taipei and the SYS Museum in Hong Kong have English translations.
Robert Rath
Hi Thomas! These are actually from two separate museums. The one with the Beiyang Warlords exhibit and the dress-up station is at the Sun Yat-Sen Museum in Hong Kong. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to make it to any of the Sun museums in mainland China, which is a shame because some are quite close. The Memorial Hall in Taipei is interesting because it's less a museum and more a shrine—it's definitely suffused with the cult of personality that the Nationalists built around Sun after he passed away. However, it was *very* helpful in collecting visual references for our art team, since it includes a lot of photos that were not available at Hong Kong's Sun Yat-Sen Museum. By far HK's Sun Yat-Sen Museum is the better of the two if you're looking for more of a museum experience with less—it's hard to say this in any other way—propagandizing. It also has a reading room that's available to researchers. Sun is really the only person who remains a respected figure in both Beijing and Taipei. In Taiwan he's frequently referred to as the "Father of the Nation," whereas the Chinese Communist Party prefers to call him the "Forerunner of the Democratic Revolution." This is also true in many Chinese overseas communities across the globe—you'll find statues of him in Chinatowns everywhere from Malaysia, to Hawaii, to Toronto.
Ryan Wojciechowski
So i'm admittedly oblivious to what maybe an obvious issue but how is Sun recognized on mainland China as opposed to Taiwan? (Since the two tend to have, let's say, conflicting attitudes about certain things.)
Erin Brioche
What's the point of dressing up if you can't play the villain?
Thomas Alfred Weaver
Did you visit any similar locations in PR China? Do the two nations see Sun Yat-sen differently? What did Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai Shek say about Sun?
Quinlan Vuong
Are you multilingual or does the museum have English translations for everything?
