History
Sun Yat-sen, a leader of the republican revolution of the early 20th century, was remembered in China with fervour after his death in 1925, and especially after his Kuomintang party re-unified China in 1928. As a result, numerous monuments were erected in his honour throughout China, and a large number of streets, parks and schools, and even his birth city (Zhongshan, Guangdong) were renamed in his honour.
When the Republic of China government took over Taiwan at the end of World War II, the practice of naming streets and parks after Sun, and erecting monuments in his honour, spread to the island as well.
Between 1928 and 1949, in a move designed to parallel the adulation of Sun, a number of roads and institutions were named "Zhongzhen", after Chiang Kai-shek, also known as "Jiang Zhongzhen", who saw himself as the successor to Sun.
In 1949, the People's Republic of China led by the Communist Party of China took control in mainland China. Over the following years, streets and institutions named "Zhongzhen" were renamed, but Zhongshan Roads were not renamed, and survived "revolutionary" name changes in the Cultural Revolution. A conventional practice developed where no streets would be named after a political leader, except for Sun Yat-sen. In mainland China today, Sun Yat-sen remains the only modern politician commemorated in road names: no Communist leader, such as Mao Zedong or Deng Xiaoping, shares this privilege.
In Taiwan, Zhongshan Roads are as ubiquitous, if not more, compared to mainland China. In recent years, the administrative merging of neighbouring towns have sometimes resulted in duplicate Zhongshan Roads within the same locality, and as a result some such roads have been ren-named.
Read more about this topic: Zhongshan Road
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Three million of such stones would be needed before the work was done. Three million stones of an average weight of 5,000 pounds, every stone cut precisely to fit into its destined place in the great pyramid. From the quarries they pulled the stones across the desert to the banks of the Nile. Never in the history of the world had so great a task been performed. Their faith gave them strength, and their joy gave them song.”
—William Faulkner (1897–1962)
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)