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
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