Fujian Ails

The rocky and mountainous topography and island-dotted coastline of the province of Fujian, which made farming difficult, set it apart from the more agriculturally productive provinces of the so-called heartland. Its unique location and geography pushed its residents – who were primarily Hakka and Hokkien people – to take to the seas as fishers and traders.Footnote ¹ The Quanzhou, Xiamen, Zhangzhou arc in the southern area of the province, known as Minnan, or southern Fujian, became a nexus of maritime activity as early as the Song dynasty.Footnote ² Before and between Ming and Qing dynasty maritime bans, these cities anchored a lucrative long-distance trading system that linked the region to the Philippines and areas beyond.Footnote ³

Dark days plagued Fujian in the Ming and Qing dynasties. According to historian Zheng Zhenman, by the Qing dynasty, “overpopulation and the shortage of arable land made it objectively difficult for the natural subsistence economy to be sustained.”Footnote ⁴ This fact, coupled with a “bureaucratic government in the Ming and Qing” that was powerless to “exert effective control over society,” led to the proliferation of extra-governmental family- and village-oriented organizations and enterprises that stepped in to support and sustain numerous seafaring and overseas business ventures.Footnote ⁵ Overpopulation, poor job prospects, and inconsistent and often counterproductive government policies in southern Fujian, mixed with ample opportunities overseas, led many residents of the province to pick up shop and move to Southeast Asia by the turn of the twentieth century.

Most Chinese who migrated to the Philippines came from a handful of villages in southern Fujian.Footnote ⁶ As they moved to the Philippines and elsewhere around the world, they maintained ties back “home” through native-place associations, clan or surname organizations, and trade or guild associations. They also built new institutions such as the Chinese Chamber of Commerce and physical meeting places, like the huay kuan, or huiguan. All these organizations, along with the financial wellspring provided by the China Banking Corporation, which served as the de facto financial arm of the Chamber of Commerce, helped steer the relatively vulnerable Chinese community in the Philippines through the tempest of the early twentieth century.Footnote ⁷ These organizations, which linked together multiple sites beyond southern Fujian, helped foster and support the “translocal practices” of Hokkien people.Footnote ⁸

Time and again, Fujian transformed into a battlefield as competing outside political entities, be they the Beiyang Army and Kuomintang forces, Japanese and Chinese adversaries, or the Communists and Nationalists, sent in occupying armies. The 1920s and 1930s, which historian Arthur Waldron describes as an epoch of “perennial and inconclusive quests for power,” proved particularly taxing for residents of southern Fujian and their families abroad.Footnote ⁹ In 1917, the nominal leader of Republican China, Duan Qirui (段祺瑞), appointed Li Houji (李厚基) the military governor of Fujian.Footnote ¹⁰ In that position, Li Houji launched an attack on Kuomintang-controlled Guangdong, which led to large-scale fighting in both provinces. Then, the so-called King of Minnan (闽南王), militarist and fellow Beiyang partisan Chen Guohui (陈国辉), entered the fray with his strong-handed anti-communist and anti-overseas meddling agenda.Footnote ¹¹ In other words, while many Hokkien farmers and laborers left the province in search of opportunity in Southeast Asia, many militarists stepped right in to replace them, leading, in turn, to a greater exodus.

National “reunification” under Chiang Kai-shek and the start of the Nanjing Decade in 1927 likewise “did not lead to peace” in Fujian, as sociologist Huei-Ying Kuo cryptically notes.Footnote ¹² In fact, soon after “reunification,” bandits kidnapped six government ministers, while local military leaders like Chen Guohui continued to call the shots.Footnote ¹³ The establishment of the Jiangxi Soviet in the neighboring province, like the laying of a minefield next to a munitions factory, multiplied the dangers for and increased the anxiety of those in Fujian as the province once again found itself in the crosshairs of conflict. Fujian became a key link in Chiang Kai-shek’s Encirclement Campaign to oust communist forces from neighboring Jiangxi.Footnote ¹⁴

Chiang Kai-shek sent the famous generals of the Nineteenth Route Army, Cai Tingkai and Jiang Guangnai (蔣光鼐), to squeeze out the communists and prevent them from gaining access to the coastline. However, the esteemed generals rebelled against Chiang Kai-shek, establishing a short-lived People’s Revolutionary Government that would ultimately succumb to Kuomintang air raids and yet another invasion from neighboring Guangdong Province. To put it another way, conflict and tribulations defined the lives of those in Fujian, and their sojourning family members in Southeast Asia could not help but look on with consternation. However, they refused to sit idly by while Fujian fell apart. With megaphones in hand, wallets at the ready, and capes rippling over their superhero costumes, the Founders hatched plans for redemption.

Honest Dee and Community

When introducing the lumber and banking tycoon Dee C. Chuan (Li Qingquan 李清泉) to a prominent Shanghai-based banker with the hope of seeing a “closer relationship established,” Albino Z. Sycip (Xue Minlao 薛敏老) wrote, “You will find in him a very loyal and useful friend.”Footnote ¹⁵ Sycip could have said, and likely did say, the same about other colleagues when introducing them to well-connected acquaintances across his vast network. However, Dee, who became something of a spiritual leader for the Chinese community in the Philippines, earned Sycip’s praise as he proved time and again not only his ambition and business acumen, but also his philanthropy, leadership, and reliability.

Although sometimes referred to as the “Lumber King,” Dee C. Chuan dabbled in far more than wood.Footnote ¹⁶ He founded two of the leading Chinese-language newspapers in the Philippines, the Chinese Commercial News and the Fookien Times.Footnote ¹⁷ He led the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in the Philippines for several stints. He cofounded the Philippine–Chinese Banking Corporation, the Fuquan Company, and the Li Minxing Company. He also embodied the new generation of Chinese leaders and entrepreneurs in the Philippines who built relationships with other prominent and connected Chinese, Filipinos, and Americans at the “Cosmos Club, Wack Wack Golf Club, Philippines Carnival Association,” and elsewhere.Footnote ¹⁸

Dee C. Chuan was born in Shizhen Village, a small town in Jinjiang, Fujian, in 1888. When old enough, he studied at the Xiamen Tongwen School, which his father had established, before continuing his studies at St. Joseph’s Anglo-Chinese School in Hong Kong.Footnote ¹⁹ Although relatively brief, Dee’s cosmopolitan education provided him with the requisite skills – English fluency, business acumen, and international connections – to begin his foray into business. Inspired by his education, he later founded, as we discussed in Chapter 3, the Longmen School, the Shizhen Moral Education Girls’ School, the Chengmei Elementary School, and the multifaceted Zhenshan Reading and Publishing Society.Footnote ²⁰

Dee C. Chuan and his well-to-do colleagues in the Philippines swooped into the despondent Minnan, or southern Fujian, with remittances, donations, and direct investments. Dee invested in long-term infrastructure projects, like peers, seawalls, concrete factories, and drydocks, as well as real estate, like shopping complexes and residential buildings.Footnote ²¹ After an initial ¥190,000 investment through the Li Minxing Company failed to secure reliable seawalls for Xiamen in 1927, he invited an expert from the Netherlands to assess and reconstruct the embankments, adding nine additional peers in what Dee envisioned as the first stage of a hundred-year development plan for the city.Footnote ²² And these investments were merely the tip of the investment iceberg.

In 1928, another Chinese entrepreneur from the Philippines invested ¥30,000 in the Anhai Electric Light and Power Company in his hometown of Anhai to electrify the village and spawn new business opportunities.Footnote ²³ A few years earlier, Chinese investors from the Philippines founded two transportation companies, the Quanzhou-Anhai Auto Company and the Quanzhou-Weitou Auto Company, to build roads connecting the modest villages from which they hailed to the nearby international ports of Quanzhou and Xiamen.Footnote ²⁴ YMCA leader and educator Lim Chu Cong (Lin Zhuguang 林珠光) founded the import–export Shengmei Company with a ¥30,000 investment in 1917. However, perhaps no investment topped Zheng Zhikun’s (鄭志坤) ¥270,000 investment in the Xiamen Zhengye Company in 1932.Footnote ²⁵ According to Huei-Ying Kuo, Chinese overseas investment in real estate in Xiamen amounted to 90.2 percent of all investment.Footnote ²⁶

Southeast Asian sojourners supplemented substantial donations and direct investment with equally staggering family remittances. According to the Xiamen Overseas Chinese Bureau, Chinese from the Philippines sent home ¥12.5 million in remittances in 1935 alone.Footnote ²⁷ This monetary lifeline helped many overburdened families, and it doubled as a form of “diasporic Chinese philanthropy.”Footnote ²⁸ Historians Gregory Benton and Hong Liu, who describe the remittance exchange system in the Philippines as “more cohesive and united than elsewhere in Southeast Asia,” link Philippine giving to a range of southern Fujianese projects involving religious sites, educational institutions, and political organizations.Footnote ²⁹ Hokkien people from the Philippines invested in and were deeply invested in the health and well-being of their hometowns.

Chinese living overseas paired hometown investments and philanthropy with strategic spending on massive family compounds. Most built on the protected island of Gulangyu, which sat a stone’s throw from Xiamen Island. James A. Cook notes that the gated Gulangyu mansions, beyond providing a place to live, “presented an unquestioned statement of the wealth and talent of overseas Chinese.”Footnote ³⁰ Among Gulangyu’s big spenders, Dee C. Chuan’s uncle, Li Zhaobei (李昭北), and Dee’s close colleague and collaborator from the Dutch East Indies, Oei Tjoe, shared the crown, having invested in three “extravagant” villas on this island of villas.Footnote ³¹ Despite having lived overseas for most of their lives, many wealthy Chinese from Fujian still desired to retire in Minnan, even if it meant the gentrified island retreat of Gulangyu. At least the foods tasted familiar, the wharfs remained near, and the ocean breeze recalled memories of youth for these melancholic tycoons.

The Founders and other wealthy Chinese from the Philippines invested and donated substantial sums to build and finance schools, industry, infrastructure, and residences in their hometowns and nearby communities. They showed their affection for southern Fujian through their pocketbooks. Naturally, they sought to grow their own fortunes and improve the lives of their own family members in the process, but, based on their investment and donation patterns, Chinese in the Philippines had more than personal well-being in mind. They dreamed of a prosperous and safe Fujian. However, for many, this utopian Fujian felt frustratingly unattainable. The oft delayed and much maligned Xiamen–Longyan Railway epitomized both the audacious aspirations and dashed dreams of Chinese overseas.

Build the Damn Railroad, Pleads Oei Tjoe

Oei Tjoe, the patron, although not a long-time resident of the Philippines like the other founders of the China Banking Corporation, collaborated closely with Dee C. Chuan, Albino Z. Sycip, and other archipelagic acquaintances.Footnote ³² According to his biography, he came up with the idea and pledged the first funds for establishing what would become the China Banking Corporation during a long stay in Manila in 1919.Footnote ³³ The itinerant Oei Tjoe reminds us that the Sino–Philippine web spread far beyond the two polities into what Du Yongtao labels a “multi-place arena.”Footnote ³⁴ Chinese in Southeast Asia tapped into hometown associations, chambers of commerce, and family to expand business and political connections throughout Southeast Asia, across China, and sometimes even elsewhere around the world.Footnote ³⁵

Unlike many of his southern Fujianese colleagues from the Philippines, Oei Tjoe came from a poor and unconnected family from the more rugged, somewhat inland area of southern Fujian. Born in Shisun Village in Nan’an Country in 1868 on the heels of the Taiping Civil War, Oei experienced a childhood defined by hardship. Financial pressures forced him to drop out of school to support his family, and for the next eight years of his life, he became an itinerant barber, traveling first between the villages around his hometown before moving on to cities in the Dutch East Indies.Footnote ³⁶ Eventually, after acquiring a good grasp of Javanese, he cast his scissors and razors into the sea, opting instead to peddle household goods from his shoulder as a hawker.Footnote ³⁷ Then, from his meager savings, he opened a coffee stand, converted it into a grocery store, and transformed the store into a regional chain. From the grocery industry, he expanded into other industries like sugar, transforming into a prominent banker and international businessperson along the way.Footnote ³⁸

In other words, Oei Tjoe exchanged his rags for a quickly expanding bag of riches, which he used to build the aforementioned villas on Gulangyu. He was the quintessential underdog superhero, and like the quintessential underdog hero, he never forgot his roots. Beyond his personal investments, Oei flexed his philanthropic muscles, founding the Dou’nan School in his home county, the Ciqin Middle School for Girls in Xiamen, the Oei Tjoe Charity Hospital in his home county, and the Zhongshan Hospital in Xiamen.Footnote ³⁹ He also supported a library established by Dee C. Chuan on Gulangyu known as the Gulangyu Private Library.Footnote ⁴⁰ Like Dee C. Chuan, Oei invested staggering sums to construct new roads and buildings in Xiamen and Gulangyu.Footnote ⁴¹ And, of course, Oei invested in a railway.

Before Oei entered the scene, however, in the late Qing period, with the support of overseas investments totaling ¥3 million, a famous Qing dynasty official initiated the Zhangzhou–Xiamen railway project.Footnote ⁴² Completion of the railway took much longer than anyone anticipated, however, as new bureaus and new government entities tossed the project back-and-forth like a hot potato. After “over 20 years of great pains to build the enterprise by southern Fujianese,” construction finally began in earnest in 1927 and concluded in 1930.Footnote ⁴³ However, the train operated for less than a year as intended before a car company leased out the failed line. After twenty-four years of off and on construction, and after numerous rounds of investment, the railway failed to consistently carry any actual locomotives or cargo.

Undaunted by the numerous false starts, Oei Tjoe became the project’s most tireless cheerleader and financial backer, but he knew that the modest Zhangzhou–Xiamen line would serve little purpose and garner little support if it did not penetrate deeper into the interior of the province – far past the mountainous village he called home. Countering detractors who argued that it was a folly to invest in Fujian, Oei Tjoe argued, “The conventional wisdom is that the land is barren. In fact, it is the inability of people to explore buried treasures in the ground and to move products sitting on the ground” that prevented significant investment.Footnote ⁴⁴ To solve the problem, Oei proposed combining the rail and mining missions.Footnote ⁴⁵ In 1922, donning his adventure hat, Oei Tjoe set off for the coal mines of Longyan, deep in the Fujian outback, but, before he could make it past Zhangzhou, his Dutch engineer and his sedan-chair bearers mutinied due to the approaching New Year.Footnote ⁴⁶ Oei Tjoe’s heart was in the right place, but he needed organizational support to see his dreams come to fruition.

When Oei Tjoe heard that his banking colleagues from the Philippines were organizing a “save the hometown” meeting on Gulangyu, he knew that a golden opportunity to win over hearts and minds for his railroad had arrived, so he threw in his support.Footnote ⁴⁷ In a speech during the second meeting of the organization in Gulangyu in 1926, Oei compared the railroad to blood vessels in a human body, arguing that one must “first restore one’s vigor before proceeding to treat the illness.”Footnote ⁴⁸ Or, in other words, Chinese overseas must invest in Fujian to restore its vitality before they could “save it” from militarism. To realize his goal, he led a subcommittee within the Save the Hometown Association to raise funds for the railroad.Footnote ⁴⁹ Convincing his colleagues was not the issue, however, because at the meeting “all present agreed that building [the] railway is the basic means of saving the home town.”Footnote ⁵⁰

After the meeting, Albino Z. Sycip and Dee C. Chuan showed their support for the railway with a media blitz.Footnote ⁵¹ Both argued for reallocating Boxer Indemnity funds, which foreign powers had levied after the so-called Boxer Rebellion, to support the construction of the railway.Footnote ⁵² Echoing Oei’s sentiments, Dee argued that the railway would have four benefits: aiding in the transportation of troops and supplies, helping eliminate banditry, supporting new business ventures, and increasing educational opportunities.Footnote ⁵³ Sycip even fished for support within his China network by mentioning the project to his banking colleague in Shanghai.Footnote ⁵⁴ Dee and Oei, meanwhile, took a lobbying trip to Beijing to “see what arrangements can be made with the Ministry of Communication to build a railway in the Province of Fukien.”Footnote ⁵⁵

After the Northern Expedition, Oei Tjoe continued to push for a railway for Fujian, his previous failures having only amplified his ambitions. He began to call for a line that extended not just to Longyan, but all the way to the provincial border in Tingzhou.Footnote ⁵⁶ Oei Tjoe found new allies in his mission in Jiang Guangnai and the Nineteenth Route Army, who had arrived in the province to govern and protect after their glorious battle in Shanghai in 1932.Footnote ⁵⁷ For a brief moment, it appeared as if Oei had struck gold as he stepped into the directorship of the Zhang–Long Railway and Mining Preparatory Committee under the new government. According to accounts, “with the help of the Committee’s technician they proceeded to work on the project in great haste.”Footnote ⁵⁸

However, it turns out that Oei had miscalculated when he called for restoring vigor before treating ailments. The Nineteenth Route Army ended up rebelling against Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government, creating an independent People’s Revolutionary Government that began to redistribute land in western Fujian. Generalissimo Chiang responded to this mutiny by bombing Fujian and sending in yet another trusted general to “restore order” in the province. After supporting Oei Tjoe’s railway and playing a critical role in its construction, the Nineteenth Route Army, to cover their tracks in retreat, tore apart the tracks of the railway, “thus ending” Oei Tjoe’s and other overseas Chinese people’s dream of a railway for Fujian in the first half of the twentieth century.Footnote ⁵⁹

Oei Tjoe used the metaphor of the circulation system as an aid to call for the construction of a railway in Fujian. This part, in turn, uses the railway as a symbol or microcosm of the broader political situation in Fujian. The railroad symbolized the political failure of successive regimes in Fujian and the limits of overseas Chinese philanthropy and investment, but it also provides a glimpse of the interconnected world of the Founders. In the end, despite their best efforts, Oei Tjoe, Dee C. Chuan, Albino Z. Sycip, and other founders of the China Banking Corporation failed to shape policy using only unflinching optimism and a substantial war chest. Superheroes needed more than positivity and deep pockets; they needed power. That is one of the reasons that they began to wade into the fraught realms of politics.

Tan Guin Lay and the Minqiao Moment

As a prominent educator and self-fashioned unpretentious businessperson in the distillery industry, Carlos Palanca Tan Guin Lay, the mixologist, brought an important perspective to the super-wealthy banking team.Footnote ⁶⁰ He was born in Xiamen itself, and he came to the Philippines as a teenager. Like his colleagues, after he had made his fortunes, Tan fulfilled the requisite hometown investment through his participation in a joint venture in a Xiamen-based paper company. Yet he also brought a no-knocks attitude that perhaps came from his long service as head of the Chinese Education Association of the Philippines.Footnote ⁶¹ More than anyone else, he felt he could bridge the worlds of industry and education, or, to put it another way, money-making and community service.

Channeling his supposed class-crossing credentials at the Southeast Asian Hokkien Overseas Save the Hometown Association meeting in 1924, Tan Guin Lay passionately appealed to his less endowed compatriots, saying, “patriotism doesn’t require money, if [you can] sacrifice and try your best, then you have succeeded in the pursuit of patriotism.”Footnote ⁶² Tan’s awkward attempt to connect with the masses betrayed some of the shortcomings and blind spots of the Founders writ large, and we will return to those shortcomings later, but it also hints at the passion and energy of some of the organization’s adherents. So, what was the Southeast Asian Hokkien Overseas Save the Hometown Association, and how did it captivate and divide Hokkien people in the Philippines?

The organization can be traced back to a meeting known as the Chinese Overseas Forum, which took place on Gulangyu Island on October 17, 1920. At that meeting, Oei Tjoe, Dee C. Chuan, Rafael M. Go Tauco (Wu Kecheng 吳克誠), and others gathered to discuss methods to oust the “warlord” Li Houji, unite different Fujianese organizations, and restrict military groups operating in Fujian.Footnote ⁶³ Organizers, including Tan Guin Lay, followed this meeting with another at the Oriental Club in Manila called the Philippine Chinese Overseas Association for the Advancement of Autonomy.Footnote ⁶⁴ This revamped organization developed a more sophisticated platform, calling for provincial autonomy, a provincial constitution, infrastructure and education investments, and local representation. Organizers also sought to grow the reach of the organization by contacting chambers of commerce and native-place organizations across Southeast Asia.Footnote ⁶⁵

In 1924, organizers in Manila rechristened the organization the Southeast Asian Hokkien Overseas Save the Hometown Association (南洋閩僑救鄉會).Footnote ⁶⁶ In a special bulletin that the organizers published after the Manila meeting, members outlined the updated objectives of the organization. They wrote: “The aim of this organization is to connect overseas Fujianese in Southeast Asia, rescue Fujian from its current political situation, relieve the suffering of our compatriots, restore local order, and construct a self-governing enterprise.”Footnote ⁶⁷ Aiming for professionalization and stability, leaders established a permanent headquarters and laid out plans for twenty regional branches across the Philippines.Footnote ⁶⁸

To grow the movement, the organizers of the Save the Hometown Association realized they needed to expose the suffering and desperation of Fujian to residents in the Philippines. After all, many Chinese in the archipelago had not been to the province for some time due to financial and legal constraints.Footnote ⁶⁹ With that goal in mind, one author painted this picture in a bulletin dedicated to the organization: “With the recurring turmoil of war, Zhangzhou, Xiamen, Quanzhou, and Yong’an were the most impacted … looking north to [our] native place, people and spirits all weep.”Footnote ⁷⁰ Educator Gan Bun Cho (Yan Wenchu 顏文初), who appeared in the previous part, wrote, “It is like there is no hometown to which [we] can return.”Footnote ⁷¹ Another contributor described the situation as follows: “Soldiers and bandits, bandits and soldiers, this land of southern Fujian has become a world of soldier-bandits.”Footnote ⁷²

The Southeast Asian Hokkien Overseas Save the Hometown Association, was, needless to say, laser focused on exposing and resolving Hokkien issues. Organizers notably used “Hokkien overseas (閩僑)” instead of “Chinese overseas (華僑)” in the title of their organization, for example, stressing their affinity for and connection to southern Fujian. The authors of the 1924 bulletin ended up using the character “Fujian (閩)” so many times that the publishers at the Philippine–Chinese Printing Press ran out of it, substituting it with a blank circle halfway through the document.Footnote ⁷³ While some scholars dismiss this hometown affinity as “parochial” loyalty or “provincialism,” others, as observed in the introduction to this part, are increasingly recognizing it as a more complete form of imagined community.Footnote ⁷⁴

Save the Hometown Association organizers possessed a shared language, mythical homeland, common “traditions,” shared struggle, and, with the new organization and its bulletin, a political forum and media organ to channel that energy. Perhaps they even had a shared race or ethnicity. Deep in the recesses of the 1924 Save the Hometown bulletin, one contributor wrote, “Saving the hometown is saving the race (type 種).”Footnote ⁷⁵ But to which “race” or “type” did the author refer? Was it Chinese, Hokkien, Asian, or something even more abstract? Perhaps the author sought refuge in ambiguity. However, it is safe to conclude that Hokkien people in the Philippines felt a deep attachment to their ancestral villages or hometowns, and they sought to “save” them through the Association.

Women played a critical role in the pursuit of this mission and the operation of the Association. Although few in number due to the legal impediments highlighted in Chapter 1, Hokkien women hosted a parallel forum at the Asian Theater in Manila in 1924 to promote the cause. Drawing inspiration from her Filipina compatriots, one speaker said, “Women in the Philippines have sacrificed so much energy and spirit for the independence question. They organized meetings, made calls, danced to help secure donations; [I] can’t forget [their efforts].”Footnote ⁷⁶ The speaker drew direct parallels between the Save the Hometown movement and the Philippine independence movement. A Lan (阿蘭), another contributor, argued that women should take charge of propaganda and dissemination efforts.Footnote ⁷⁷ Just as Tan Guin Lay attempted to bridge class differences, organizers like A Lan attempted to bridge gender divisions.

After extensive recruitment efforts across Southeast Asia, organizers from the Philippines deliberately shifted the center of gravity of the movement to southern Fujian itself to make it more representative of and accessible to all Hokkien people. Naturally, however, the Founders still occupied most leadership roles. On March 15, 1926, after several months of preparation, Dee C. Chuan traveled from Shanghai to the Cejin Club at 31 Fujian St. on Gulangyu Island to host the second major meeting of the organization.Footnote ⁷⁸ Because the meeting took place on Gulangyu, Carlos Palanca Tan Guin Lay could not attend, but Dee C. Chuan and Oei Tjoe served as able stewards in his stead. Over the next two weeks, leaders met six more times to lay out the operating rules of the organization, call for new infrastructure projects, like Oei Tjoe’s railway, discuss fundraising strategies, and offer and debate other proposals, such as converting Xiamen into a model city.Footnote ⁷⁹

Dee C. Chuan, in his opening message at the Gulangyu meeting, said, “Fujianese Overseas in the Philippines, due to their ardent enthusiasm, started the Save the Hometown movement, sending representatives to islands across Southeast Asia to spread the message and link together Hokkien overseas, working for common interests.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Even though Dee and others relocated the organization to Fujian, they still granted the Philippines a place of honor as the home of the Founders. And, even though they demonstrated a desire to diversify the leadership and bring in “compatriots of all walks of life,” as they curiously confided when inviting Carlos Palanca Tan Guin Lay to serve as the president of the Association, they still allowed business interests to dominate the organization’s agenda.Footnote ⁸¹

The wording of the invitation to Tan Guin Lay, which Tan Guin Lay himself reported in the bulletin, revealed some of the limitations of the Save the Hometown Association. If other leaders thought that the “Alcohol King” could serve as a link to the masses, or at least a link to students and educators, they were sorely mistaken. In fact, recounting a debate on the organization at a local school, one student noted that many Chinese workers did not have the means to return home, so they had little reason to support the organization.Footnote ⁸² By contrast, in his article in the 1924 bulletin, Tan Guin Lay, describing the vulnerable position Hokkien people found themselves in in the Philippines, argued that Fujianese overseas needed to invest in their hometowns as a backup plan in case the situation in the Philippines took a turn for the worst.Footnote ⁸³ Relocating to Fujian, however, was not an option for many, so his appeal likely fell on deaf ears. Transnationalism might have been a superpower, but it came with side effects, including delusion, callousness, and hubris.

One incident that took place in a village outside of Quanzhou in southern Fujian captures the limits of the Save the Hometown Association. It began with a local dispute between two families over access to burial grounds, but it grew into something much larger when a northern Beiyang government-appointed official responded by sending troops.Footnote ⁸⁴ Village residents, in turn, reacted to this influx of foreign Beiyang soldiers by attacking them, leaving twenty-seven dead. Before this incident, the Save the Hometown Association had emphasized the formation of local societies designed to enhance self-defense and self-governing capabilities at the village level.Footnote ⁸⁵ The formation of these local societies, however, only exacerbated problems as self-defense-trained villagers took up arms against perceived threats.

Needless to say, the loss of his soldiers angered the local Beiyang government official. Seeking to stave off yet another bloody reprisal, Dee C. Chuan, as a spokesperson for the Save the Hometown Association, stepped in to mediate. Dee dispatched several delegates to negotiate with the Beiyang-appointed official, but when the delegates arrived and told the official that they represented the Save the Hometown Association, the Beiyang official grew incensed. According to reports, he retorted, “I have never harmed the town, what [home]town is it that you are saving?”Footnote ⁸⁶ In the end, the Save the Hometown Association delegates would eventually achieve a breakthrough, but not through negotiations, as those were taken over by local officials. Falling back on their primary superpower, Dee C. Chuan, Oei Tjoe, Tan Guin Lay and other members of the Association appeased the Beiyang official by throwing money his way. Problem solved.

The Fujianese political movement began to show cracks just as the Kuomintang began its Northern Expedition to seal the much wider fissures that had torn China apart. Class differences and hubris shook Carlos Palanca Tan Guin Lay and his colleagues from their pedestals, and Kuomintang generals quickly moved in to occupy those vacated plinths. One Save the Hometown skeptic, who outlined in detail the mistakes of previous Hokkien attempts at organization and salvation, captured the contradiction of the organization when they lambasted the rich who “only wanted to protect the fengshui of their ancestor’s graves.”Footnote ⁸⁷ In the pages of the Association’s own bulletin, this critic took the Founders to task for their disingenuousness and haughtiness.

As the organization took on a more controversial political tone in 1926, which increasingly threatened to disrupt investments, the wealthy bankers blinked. Oei Tjoe, for instance, declined an official position as the Deputy of Fujian Province and Head of the Construction Bureau, instead opting to head up the private and unaffiliated Fujian Provincial Railway Association.Footnote ⁸⁸ As we will see, Dee C. Chuan, Albino Sycip, and several others also declined government positions. Decisions like these led the Association to slowly unravel.

I tend to avoid counterfactuals, but it is intriguing to speculate what might have happened to the Save the Hometown Association had the Kuomintang not achieved a semblance of national unity in 1928. Perhaps the Association would have spearheaded a loose Chinese federal union with other provincial leaders, or perhaps it would have pioneered an independent, Hokkien nation. We will never know. With the rise of the Kuomintang and the start of the Nanjing Decade, the Founders temporarily abandoned the Save the Hometown mission, but they experimented with a sequel in 1932 when an unlikely Hokkien hero, the Canton commander Cai Tingkai, arrived on the scene.

Cai Tingkai, the Unlikely Hokkien Hero

Lloyd Eastman, in his 1974 classic The Abortive Revolution, describes how the staunch defense of Shanghai by Guangdong Army veterans Cai Tingkai, Jiang Guangnai, and Chen Mingshu “resounded through the nation,” propelling them to legendary status overnight.Footnote ⁸⁹ While Carlos Palanca Tan Guin Lay, Oei Tjoe, and Dee C. Chuan attempted to buy their way to superherodom, the commander Cai Tingkai, who took over leadership of the Nineteenth Route Army in 1932, acquired his credentials through astounding military feats. Cai, who proved to be equally if not more effective at propaganda than at military maneuvers, leveraged his Shanghai victory to gain sympathy and support throughout China and across the world. During the skirmishes, he invited journalists from the international settlement to the army’s field headquarters to view his carefully curated image of a noble but underfunded army fighting off the “fierce tigers” of Japan.Footnote ⁹⁰

The Canton commander Cai Tingkai was an unlikely hero for Hokkien overseas, but he arrived at the right moment, and he sounded all the right notes for anxious diasporic compatriots. While he did not serve on the board of the China Banking Corporation, he did receive financial support from the bank, and he worked with many of the Founders to achieve their long sought-after goals. Cai was born to a peasant family in Luoding, a small city in the mountainous interior of Guangdong Province, closer to Guangxi than Guangzhou.Footnote ⁹¹ No stranger to poverty, he dropped out of school when he was twelve and helped his family farm and mend clothes before becoming a police officer and eventually a soldier.Footnote ⁹² As a soldier, he rose through the ranks, playing a prominent role in both the Northern Expedition and the Nanchang Uprising.Footnote ⁹³

On January 28, 1932, in the wake of the Manchurian Incident, when the Japanese army invaded northeastern China, the Japanese navy bombed and dispatched troops to northern Shanghai. The Nineteenth Route Army, against the better judgment of Chiang Kai-shek, offered stiff and memorable resistance, but when Japanese forces eventually outflanked them, the Nineteenth Route Army strategically retreated, leading to an armistice.Footnote ⁹⁴ The bravery of the Nineteenth Route Army captured the hearts and wallets of the Founders and others across China and overseas. On February 5, the Founders, through the China Banking Corporation, wired ¥22,000 to Commander Cai Tingkai and the “gallant soldiers of our army.”Footnote ⁹⁵

Later that same year, through the old infrastructure of the Save the Hometown Association, Dee C. Chuan, along with other members of the old crew, requested that Chiang Kai-shek dispatch the Nineteenth Route Army to Fujian to help end the “brutal behaviors of red bandits” and restore some semblance of order in the province.Footnote ⁹⁶ Perhaps recognizing the importance of overseas Chinese support to his bankrupt government, or the threat of the spotlight-grabbing, heavily armed heroes of Shanghai in his backyard outside Nanjing, Chiang Kai-shek complied. Chiang dispatched the army and its charismatic leaders to what some viewed as “exile” to China’s “wild” borderlands, Fujian, to participate in the encirclement campaign against the communists in neighboring Jiangxi province, thereby striking two birds with one stone as he turned two major threats to his power and popularity against one another.Footnote ⁹⁷

Grateful to have the famous war heroes help bring order to their hometowns, Fujianese overseas continued to flood the Nineteenth Route Army’s coffers.Footnote ⁹⁸ Leaders of the army, in turn, reciprocated by implementing a program of opium eradication, bandit suppression, property protection, and infrastructure development, including Oei Tjoe’s railway.Footnote ⁹⁹ They also strategically fostered an image of transparency and openness by hosting a grand meeting in Hong Kong to listen to the needs and aspirations of prominent leaders of the Fujianese diaspora, like Eduardo Co Seteng (Xu Youchao 許友超), who directed the Philippine Chinese Chamber of Commerce at the time.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Nineteenth Route Army leaders even invited Dee C. Chuan and Eduardo Co Seteng to take up positions in the newly organized Fujian government. As alluded to earlier, Dee declined the invitation, but Co Seteng accepted and became mayor of Xiamen.Footnote ¹⁰¹

After multiple decades of chaos and misery, it appeared to many that Fujian was finally on the mend. However, as alluded to earlier, when Cai Tingkai and other Nineteenth Route Army officials began implementing a policy of land reform in western Fujian, and when they declared the independent Fujian People’s Revolutionary Government, the Founders and their wealthy comrades reassessed their support. The newly branded revolutionaries continued to sound all the right notes, however, by acknowledging that China had suffered through the pain of militarism and misrule, and by focusing outwardly on economic issues and resistance to Japan.Footnote ¹⁰² Cai Tingkai himself demonstrated to potential Chinese supporters in Southeast Asia that he understood their plight, describing how people from a “weak country with no diplomatic presence,” or Chinese overseas, faced oppression by local governments.Footnote ¹⁰³

Seeing the tide of public opinion turn against them, leaders of the Nineteenth Route Army attempted to reinvigorate support in Southeast Asia by sending a representative to the region and by doubling down on constructing popular infrastructure projects. However, when potential allies in Guangdong ignored overtures, communists in Jiangxi refused to coordinate, and Chiang Kai-shek orchestrated an aerial bombardment of the People’s Revolutionary Government, Fujianese overseas support quickly evaporated.Footnote ¹⁰⁴ Co Seteng, who had by that time been promoted to the governor of a newly subdivided Fujian, maintained his support initially but submitted his resignation as Chiang-allied troops moved on the province.Footnote ¹⁰⁵

In late 1933 and early 1934, the Nineteenth Route Army suffered a string of defeats on the battlefield before surrendering and dissolving.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ Overall, fighting was erratic and half-hearted, as many of the leaders either submitted to Chiang or moved into exile.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Cai chose the latter, fleeing to Hong Kong, where he continued to champion a proactive and defiant stance toward Japan. Despite his unceremonious departure from Fujian, however, the Canton commander still commanded a following among Chinese in the Philippines. During a brief stopover in the archipelago on his way to Europe in 1935, he delivered a speech at a massive rally in Rizal Tennis Stadium, receiving a thunderous applause from the local crowd.Footnote ¹⁰⁸

Then, in 1936, the editors of a commemorative volume for the Philippine Chinese Chamber of Commerce invited Cai Tingkai to contribute an article. Like an aged rock star singing all the old tunes, Cai described banditry and destitution in Fujian, and he praised how Chinese overseas had created the Save the Hometown Association, comparing it to the sacrifice of the Nineteenth Route Army.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ He called once more for provincial autonomy and substantial investments in infrastructure.Footnote ¹¹⁰ And people listened. A year later, when he traveled back to Manila, Dee C. Chuan, Eduardo Co Seteng, and many others met him at the wharf with open arms and toasted him at the city’s prominent clubs.Footnote ¹¹¹ The Save the Hometown movement might have ended, and the Fujian People’s Revolutionary Government might have collapsed, but the dream of a prosperous and autonomous Fujian, or even independent Hokkien nation, lived on.