114 China in World History
revolution against both the Manchus and the traditional Chinese fam-
ily system. She returned to China in 1906 to work for the end of Qing
rule. In the second week of July 1907, she heard that her cousin had
been arrested for plotting to assassinate a Manchu provincial governor
and knew they would soon be coming for her. She refused to fl ee and
instead wrote these lines to a friend: “The sun is setting with no road
ahead / In vain I weep for loss of country. Although I die, yet I still live
/ Through sacrifi ce I have fulfi lled my duty.”^6 Qiu Jin was soon arrested
and beheaded for treason. Her death made her a national celebrity and
only intensifi ed the populace’s growing anger at their Manchu rulers.
When the Qing dynasty fi nally fell, after a century of decline, rebel-
lion, and humiliation, it seemed almost accidental. The examination
system was abolished in 1905, leaving many upper-class Chinese uncer-
tain how they could relate to the Qing government, which had prom-
ised a constitutional monarchy but seemed to be dragging its feet. The
empress dowager died in 1908, one day after the Guangxu Emperor
(whom she was rumored to have poisoned so that he would not be able
to assume power himself). The throne was passed to the three-year-old
imperial prince, Puyi, who became the Xuantong Emperor. The court
was now at its weakest point in two and a half centuries.
On October 9, 1911, in the central Chinese city of Wuchang on the
Yangzi River, a group of revolutionaries loosely affi liated with Sun Yat-sen
were preparing to rise in revolt when one of them carelessly set off an explo-
sion as a live ash from his cigarette fell into the gunpowder he was putting
into rifl e shells. The explosion brought the authorities to investigate, and
they found revolutionary tracts and plans for a rebellion. Facing immediate
arrest and execution, the revolutionaries in the Wuchang vicinity decided
to declare themselves at war with the Qing state on October 10. The local
governor-general had recently sent his best troops west to Hunan to sup-
press riots over disputed railroad rights in the area. Rather than calmly
commanding the suppression of this ramshackle uprising, he fl ed Wuch-
ang, and the rebels found themselves in control of a major city.
Word of this local revolt spread quickly, and some provincial assem-
blies began to declare their independence from Qing rule, while some
troops, newly trained in the Western style, refused to support the Qing
and instead began fi ghting for the rebels. Sun Yat-sen read about the
Wuchang uprising on a train outside Denver, Colorado, where he had
been raising money among overseas Chinese in America. Knowing the
battle for China was just beginning, he headed east to London, where
he hoped to raise more money for his cause. At this point, the Manchu
court looked to the top Chinese military offi cial in the empire, Yuan