On the 31st of October 1887, a boy named Chiang Jui-yüan was born in the small town of Xikou. This place sat at the foot of the Wuling Mountains in Fenghua, Zhejiang province. His father worked as a salt merchant and died when the child was only eight years old. The young boy grew up under the strict guidance of his mother, who embodied Confucian virtues for him. He cut off his queue, the long braid required by the Qing dynasty, in early 1906 to signal his revolutionary spirit. That act shocked people back home but marked the start of his military career. He traveled to Japan in April 1906 to study at Tokyo Shinbu Gakko. There he ate simple meals of rice with salted fish or umeboshi. He learned English and Japanese while studying mathematics and physics. By 1908, Chen Qimei brought him into the Tongmenghui brotherhood. This organization aimed to overthrow the Manchu rulers. Chiang served in the Imperial Japanese Army from 1909 until 1911 before returning to China.
Blood In Shanghai
Sun Yat-sen died on the 12th of March 1925, leaving a power vacuum within the Kuomintang party. A struggle emerged between Wang Jingwei, Liao Zhongkai, and Hu Hanmin. On the 20th of March 1926, Chiang declared martial law to crack down on Communist influence. He became commander-in-chief of the National Revolutionary Army on the 5th of June 1926. The Northern Expedition began on the 27th of July 1926 to conquer northern warlords. By January 1927, Wang Jingwei had taken Wuhan with Soviet agent Mikhail Borodin advising him. Chiang set up a rival government in Nanjing later that year. On the 12th of April 1927, he carried out a purge of thousands of suspected Communists in Shanghai. More than five thousand people were killed during that month alone. Over three hundred thousand deaths occurred across China in the following year due to anti-Communist campaigns. One famous quote attributed to him stated he would rather kill one thousand innocent people than let one Communist escape. This event drove most Communists into rural areas where the KMT held less power. The killings marked the start of the Chinese Civil War.