Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.5, 2018

 

The “Historical Facts” and “Narratives” of Sun Yat-sen’s 1924 Journey to the North: Public Opinion in the Mainstream Press (Abstract)

 

Yang Rui

 

Sun Yat-sen’s 1924 trip to the north was important for the reorganization of national political arrangements and for the rebuilding of Sun’s own political image. If we go back to that historical era, we find that the facts themselves and the original intentions of Sun’s journey to North China, while partially consistent with the observations and interpretations of southern and northern political factions and with public opinion as reflected in the press, were mostly characterized by distortion and misdirection. Once they had been reshaped by different political factions and newspaper opinion, “historical facts” that should have been unambiguously defined became  puzzling “narratives” that confounded the true and the false. Sifting through the relevant historical sources and, as much as possible, making this event the fulcrum for ordering the relevant historical occurrences enables us to actively seek the logic behind the conversion of “historical facts” into “narratives” and to trace back “narratives” so as to restore “historical facts.” The quest for the intrinsic relationship between the two can stand as an effective key to reading Sun Yat-sen’s original intentions and the domestic and foreign political interaction and evolution of North and South. This paper reveals the intricate interlocking factual connections that different political factions reconstructed around the new political system, together with their internal and external influences.