Tracking and Contextualizing Kang Youwei in Exile: A Workshop on Diversifying Primary Sources and Collaboration, Association of Asian Studies, March 2025

Wan Zhaoyuan, Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson

Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson, the primary co-authors of A Chinese Reformer in Exile (Leiden: Brill, 2025), presented a workshop at the Association of Asian Studies, Columbus, Ohio, on March 13, 2025. Kang scholar Wan Zhaoyuan, author of Science and the Confucian Religion of Kang Youwei, led discussion with the audience. 

We illustrated how opening scholarly collaboration beyond academia and incorporating a variety of textural and non-textural primary sources enriches the construction of complex, transnational histories in Asian studies. This methodology allowed our team of six scholars to document and contextualize Kang Youwei’s fifteen years’ exile from China—particularly his extended visits and political activities in North America—and the evolution of the political organization Kang founded in Canada in 1899 to transform China’s autocratic empire into a constitutional monarchy. View the two PowerPoint presentations (in PDF form) by Worden and Larson and Wan's introductory remarks at the links below:

"A Chinese Reformer in Exile" Published by Brill as Open Access Book

A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899-1911 

By Robert L. Worden and Jane Leung Larson, with Zhongping Chen, Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Chen Xuezhang, and Yang Zheng 

Brill (Leiden), 2025

https://brill.com/display/title/70307

Open Access PDF:

https://brill.com/downloadpdf/display/title/70307.pdf

This complex, transnational history was made possible by . . . 

A team of scholars with different perspectives and areas of expertise.

Outside collaboration with local historians, specialists on topics as diverse as trolley lines in Mexico and Chinese currency, descendants of Kang and Baohuanghui members, and those who interacted with this blog, Baohuanghui Scholarship.

A wide variety of primary sources:

•       Government records, Chinese and foreign language newspaper coverage.

•       Personal correspondence, diaries, poems, publications by Kang and others.

•       Baohuanghui records and ephemera, from menus to membership buttons.

Recent Books on Kang Youwei and the Baohuanghui

A number of notable books in English about Kang Youwei and/or the Baohuanghui have been published in recent years. Given the transnational scope of Kang's life and political organization, his wide-ranging creative endeavors and intellectual output, the range of book topics is not surprising. Kang's concerns and the Baohuanghui's impact on Chinese lives and political aspirations, both in China and overseas, resonate today. 

For each book, there is a link to an Open Access excerpt, book review, or online podcast or book talk. 

The Baohuanghui

Transpacific Reform and Revolution: The Chinese in North America, 1898−1918 by Zhongping Chen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023). Transpacific Reform and Revolution: A Conversation with Zhongping Chen is an interview article by Elisabeth Forster, Made in China Journal: "Zhongping Chen traces the networks in which reformers around Kang Youwei and revolutionaries around Sun Yat-sen operated. Chen focuses mostly on Canada and the United States. . . This is a fascinating study that shows Chinese reformers and revolutionaries of the period in an entirely new, much more pragmatic light. Chen discusses the status Kang and Sun had in their networks and the way these networks operated—from business activities and funding through membership fees, to the lawsuits they levelled against each other, and even assassinations." A recorded interview by Li-Ping Chen with Zhongping Chen is on the New Books Network. 

Mapping the Baohuanghui

This version of Mapping the Baohuanghui is a preview from A Chinese Reformer in Exile: Kang Youwei and the Chinese Empire Reform Association in North America, 1899–1911, a forthcoming book to be published by Brill. The authors are currently editing the final manuscript, and this table of 232 chapters reflects our efforts to provide the most complete and verified accounting of Baohuanghui locations and activities. Baohuanghui chapters in the Americas, Asia, Australia, the Pacific, Africa, and Europe are organized geographically under the original organizational divisions if these are known, led by the headquarter city, followed by an alphabetical listing of locations and all associated businesses, schools, and newspapers.

Please leave a comment with corrections and additions.  

Also see Play the Baohuanghui Guessing Game for chapters whose Chinese names we haven't been able to link with actual towns or cities. 

UCLA Tom Leung Baohuanghui Collection Online

詩手稿 題: 思羅生西湖故宅 "Thinking of My Home in Westlake Park," a poem to Tom Leung by Kang Youwei, March 9, 1906; #107 [Courtesy UCLA Digital Collections]

The full collection of documents saved by Tom Leung (1875-1931) or Tan Zhangxiao 譚張孝, founder of the Los Angeles chapter of the Baohuanghui, is online at UCLA Library Digital Collections found here.  For the first time, it is possible to examine the original documents, many of which were published by Fang Zhiqin in 1997 and 2008 in Kang Liang yu Baohuanghui:  Tan Liang Zai Meiguo Suo Cang Tsailiao Huibian 康梁與保皇會: 譚良在美國所藏資料彙編  [Hong Kong, Xianggang Yinhe Chubanshe].  Thanks to UCLA's Richard C. Rudolph East Asian Library and to librarian Hong Cheng for overseeing this project to completion.

Play the Baohuanghui Guessing Game--Unidentified Chapters

The Baohuanghui had more than 200 chapters, but we are still identifying where they were located. This document lists the Chinese names of chapters in towns found in Baohuanghui documents that we can't identify by their geographical names. Remember that these would be pronounced in Cantonese.   Those in blue have been identified since we first posted this list.

The basis of this list (#1-48) is a 1908 document naming 94 chapters that made donations for a Baohuanghui headquarters building. It is found in 《捐建帝国宪政总会所买地征信录》published in Kang Youwei yu Baohuanghui (pp. 529-537). Thanks to Gao Weinong for pointing us to this list. We have added other unidentified chapters as we have found them. These chapters could be in the Americas, Asia, Australia (although we believe have fully identified Australian chapters), the Pacific, Africa, and Europe. Chi Jeng Chang has composed his own list of chapters based on the 1908 document as well as a March 7, 1904 list in Hong Kong Shang Bao of 134 signatory chapters to a petition supporting the anti-Russian movement and the 1907 donor plaque in the Victoria, BC Baohuanghui building. 

For already identified chapters, see the document Mapping the Baohuanghui. As chapters are identified, they are added to the Mapping table. Especially useful have been the 1901 and 1913 International Chinese Directories, thanks to Philip Choy.

A separate list follows with many Canadian chapters whose place names are still unknown, thanks to the research of Zhongping Chen, University of Victoria and Chi Jeng Chang, Vancouver, BC.

Please leave your best guesses in the Comments field.

Kang's Ideal Southern California Town--Redlands?

On his first day in the city, Kang told the Los Angeles Herald, “I have found Los Angeles one of the most progressive cities I have met during my travels.”  In fact, Kang came to see Los Angeles as a prime example of Western “material civilization” and gave it prominence in his "Essay on National Salvation through Material Civilization" (Wuzhi jiuguo lun), whose preface was written in April 1905 while in the city.  By "material civilization," Kang meant the advancements brought by science and technology, not only convenience and efficiency, but happiness. 

In Kang's view, the steam engine powered steamships, locomotives, factories, and electricity generating stations—and along with other technological innovations like the automobile—were the keys to creating a Datong-like environment where people could enjoy urban affluence close to nature. 

Using Contemporary Newspapers and Magazines to Track Kang Youwei and the Baohuanghui

Coverage in local and national newspapers of Kang, the Baohuanghui and its affiliated businesses and activities was plentiful and widespread in North America, reflecting popular interest in Kang and his organization. This was especially true for Kang's first trip to the United States in 1905, when he visited about 50 towns and cities between February and December. Kang received breathless coverage in the American press, allowing us to trace his travels almost day to day. We can now correct the timeline found in Jung-pang Lo's“Sequel to the Chronological Autobiography," K'ang Yu-wei: A Biography and A Symposium.

For example, Lo ("Sequel," p. 198) writes:“By June 1905 [the fifth lunar month], feeling much better, [Kang] left Los Angeles for Washington, D.C., arriving there on June 10.” From local newspaper reports, supplemented by correspondence, we now know that Kang left Los Angeles on May 8 by train and stopped for speeches and meetings in Kansas City, St. Louis, Chicago, and Zion City, and arrived in Washington, D.C. on June 8. Coinciding with this month of travel was the announcement in Shanghai of a nation-wide anti-American boycott to protest Chinese Exclusion policy. Kang began promoting the boycott and recruiting American support during his trip to D.C.