Residence

The Residence

The Residence is located at Sunwu Pai, Facang, Zhongba Town, and served as the original settlement of Sun Yat-sen’s ancestors when they first entered Guangdong. In the late Ming Dynasty, Sun Dingbiao, the eleventh-generation ancestor of Sun Yat-sen, established a martial arts training hall here, then known as the Martial Arts Hall. Later, Zhong Dingxian, a top scholar, raised troops to support the Ming court. He once appointed Sun Dingbiao as a military officer (qianzong) and, in his efforts to overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming, stationed troops in Aoxia Mountain of Zhongba. Soldiers were trained at Sunwu Pai, which led to the place being renamed the Residence.

Legend has it that during the Yongle era (1403–1424) of the Ming Dynasty, Sun Yousong, the founding ancestor of the Sun family who migrated to Guangdong, along with his younger brother Youyi, relocated southward from Changting, Fujian to Changle, Meizhou (then part of Jiaying Prefecture). They settled at the foot of Huangniu Aimo Mountain in Facang Village, Shangzhenyue, at that time just outside the newly established county of Zijin. The political situation was unstable, marked by frequent peasant uprisings and raids by bandits. Government forces often carried out “suppression raids,” and conflicts—both between families and due to religious differences—often led to violent clashes. To protect their clan’s interests, the Sun family built a martial arts hall at Sunwu Pai in Facang, where young and able-bodied members of the clan gathered to train in weaponry and combat skills. In the late Ming period, Sun Dingbiao, the eleventh-generation ancestor of the Sun family, harbored deep resentment toward the corrupt rule of the feudal dynasty. From a young age, he dedicated himself to martial arts, honing exceptional combat skills. He took charge of the martial arts hall and recruited many disciples. Later, to avoid the potential annihilation of the clan, Dingbiao sent his descendant Sun Lianchang to relocate first to Zengcheng and later to Xiangshan—that descendant being the twelfth-generation ancestor of Sun Yat-sen and the family’s earliest forebear to settle in Xiangshan. The martial arts hall once led by Dingbiao is what came to be known as the Residence. It is said that when Sun Yat-sen spoke with his American friend Homer Lea, he mentioned: “My family temple is in the village of the Residence, upstream on the Dong River.”