Qiu Jin

Tongmenghui (Chinese United League) Nationalism 1875–1907 ✕ Executed

Woman revolutionary and poet who led the Tongmenghui in Zhejiang, executed at Shaoxing in 1907

Born in Fuzhou and raised in an official family at Shaoxing in Zhejiang, she wrote poetry as a child and learned to ride and use a sword. Leaving an unhappy marriage, she went to study in Tokyo in 1903, leaving her husband and two children behind, and championed women’s education and anti-Manchu revolution. In Japan she joined the Guangfuhui, and in the Tongmenghui, which it joined, she was responsible for Zhejiang. Back in China she published a women’s journal in Shanghai until it was closed, and in 1907 she headed the Datong School at Shaoxing, founded by Xu Xilin to train revolutionaries. After Xu assassinated the Anhui governor at Anqing that July and was executed, she was arrested at the school and executed on 15 July. She is remembered in China as a martyr of republicanism and women’s liberation.

Also known as: Ch'iu Chin