CHIU CHIN
(Qiu Jin)
She was educated in Japan and was one of the earliest Chinese Nationalists, male or female. She was one of the charter members and one of the very few women who joined the Sun Yat Sen revolutionary party in 1904. She organized a military unit of 1000 under the cover of the school she was running. When Imperial troops discovered weapons at the school, she was arrested and tortured to find the names of the 1000 and their contacts who supplied them. This quotation is the only “confession” that she would give each time the torture was interrupted to give her an opportunity to confess and implicate the others. This was all she ever said despite the excruciating pain. Finally, when the Mandarin authorities could get nothing out of her and realized that she was becoming a hero by not talking, they beheaded her. Her words have come to symbolize great loyalty at personal sacrifice for a great cause.
Qiu Jin was a Chinese revolutionary, feminist, and writer. Her courtesy names are Xuanqing (Chinese: 璿卿; pinyin: Xuánqīng) and Jingxiong (simplified Chinese: 竞雄; traditional Chinese: 競雄; pinyin: Jìngxióng). Her sobriquet name is Jianhu Nüxia (simplified Chinese: 鉴湖女侠; traditional Chinese: 鑑湖女俠; pinyin: Jiànhú Nǚxiá) which, when translated literally into English, means "Woman Knight of Mirror Lake". Qiu was executed after a failed uprising against the Qing dynasty, and she is considered a national heroine in China; a martyr of republicanism and feminism.
