The song of Song

摘要

At 10.40pm on March 20th 1913 a young man who represented one possible future for China stood on the platform at Shanghai railway station, waiting with friends to board a train to Beijing. Song Jiaoren-30 years old, sporting a Western suit and a wisp of a moustache-had just brilliantly led his new political party, the Nationalists, to overwhelming success in parliamentary elections, the country's first attempt at democracy after two millennia of imperial rule. He was in line to become China's first democratically elected prime minister, and to help draft a new constitution for the Republic of China.