Private Secretary to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen
- LC Lee
- CHINA, 1902
submitted by Sherman Gee
Very little is known of Lee Lu Chiao (LC Lee), who served Dr. Sun Yat-Sen as private secretary from 1914 until Dr. Sun’s death in 1925. This article sheds some light on LC Lee based primarily on the many letters he wrote to family and friends.
LC was born on December 12, 1892, in Guangdong, China, in the same Zhongshan home district as Dr. Sun. He and his mother came to America in 1902 when he was ten years old, to join his father who had emigrated to America years earlier and who had eventually succeeded to open an art goods store in San Francisco’s Chinatown. The family had been separated because of the US Chinese Exclusion Law that prevented Chinese laborers from bringing their wives to America. LC attended San Francisco public schools and Indiana University.
LC Lee first met Dr. Sun as a youngster in San Francisco in 1910, when Dr. Sun was promoting the Chinese Revolution among Chinese communities overseas. LC’s father was a strong supporter of Dr. Sun and often entertained him at home. LC also accompanied Dr. Sun on speaking tours in America to recruit educated Chinese to return for China’s reconstruction. After graduating from Indiana University, LC joined Dr. Sun in Shanghai in 1914. An anecdote handed down by family members is that LC introduced the tomato to China at this time.
After Dr. Sun was elected president of the Republic of China in 1921, LC moved with Dr. Sun from Guangdong to Nanjing, the capital city. As private secretary to Dr. Sun with a special ability for decoding messages, LC was put in charge of Dr. Sun’s confidential correspondences and private codes set up with many political leaders in China. Thus LC was in contact with many prominent political leaders, intellectuals, and literary figures of the time. Yet because of his humility, LC eschewed publicity and stayed in the background. Consequently, there is very little record of his official writings. But he undoubtedly had a hand in many official documents that were prepared for Dr. Sun. In fact, one of his duties was speech writing for Dr. Sun. In one instance of readying a speech, he referred to the ancient Confucian saying “Tian Xia Wei Gong” for. Dr. Sun, which means “Land under Heaven is for the Public”. This phrase has since been associated with Dr. Sun’s lifetime struggle to build a united republic of China and is prominently displayed on the gateway to San Francisco’s Chinatown.
LC’s primary loyalty was to Dr. Sun, providing him with essential English translation and interpretation as well as being his constant companion. He accompanied Dr. Sun on many of his military expeditions against rebellious regional governors and warlords in the north. In a letter dated September 5, 1924, when he was getting ready to go on a military expedition against Wu Pei-fu, he tells a friend that his address is always care of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. His many years of devoted service as private secretary prompted Dr. Sun to present LC with a scroll in his personal calligraphy that in English says, “Agriculture is [a nation’s] root”. Dr. Sun wrote these words because LC had graduated from Indiana University with a degree in agriculture before joining him in China in 1914. LC served until Dr. Sun’s death in 1925, after which LC returned to his home province Guangdong. .
Upon his return to Guangdong, LC embarked for the first time on a political career. When asked to summarize his political career, LC writes in a July 25, 1981 letter,"I was appointed Member of the [Guangdong] Kwangtung Provincial Government and concurrently Commissioner of Industries. Then in 1930, [Zhongshan] Chungshan District was designated Model District and I was appointed its first Magistrate. I served a year and then [was] appointed Managing Director of [Guangdong] Canton-Kowloon Railway which I served 8/9 years until the Japanese invasion when we had to evacuate Canton and retired to Hong Kong, where I founded the Asia Book Company under the sponsorship of Asia Foundation."LC considered his work on the Canton-Kowloon Railway to be a most important undertaking because Dr. Sun had always considered building a national railway in China to be of highest priority. A national railway system would help to unite the country and to break down differences in local customs, languages and ethnicities that have historically brought about misunderstandings, political disunity, and regional conflicts.
In the same letter LC mentions that his father returned from America in 1930 because he was very proud that his eldest son was appointed the first Magistrate of his native Zhongshan district in Guangdong. LC also acknowledges in the letter that he could not remember all the positions he held or their dates. Among other positions he held but did not mention were as Guangzhou Finance Minister, Mayor of Huangpu, and ambassador to Mexico. In Guangzhou, he was president of the Rotary Club, and also president of the Ling Nan Return Students’ Club where members were Chinese educated in America.
After the Sino-Japanese war he returned to Guangzhou until the Communist revolution again caused him to evacuate to Hong Kong. He remained in Hong Kong until 1959, when he closed the book business and went to America to visit family and friends, many of whom had already emigrated to America. LC eventually left Hong Kong and retired to Trinidad in the early 1970s to be with his third son who had since started a successful cannery business there. His favorite pastime in retirement was reading, writing personal letters, smoking his pipe and enjoying his coffee.After his health started to fail, LC decided to return to China. In recognition of his years of service as private secretary to Dr. Sun, the Chinese authorities honored him with membership in the Chinese People’s Consultative Conference. LC died just ten days after returning to China at the age of 94. He is buried near his old home village at Nam Long, Zhongshan district in Guangdong province, and is resting next to his father.