Shi Jianqiao (, 1905 or 1906 – 27 August 1979) was the daughter of the Chinese military officer Shi Congbin, whose killing she avenged by assassinating the former warlord

Sun Chuanfang Sun Chuanfang () (April 17, 1885 – November 13, 1935) a.k.a. the "Nanking Warlord" or leader of the "League of Five Provinces" was a Zhili clique warlord and protégé of the "Jade Marshal" Wu Peifu (1874–1939). Biography Sun Chuanfang ...

. The revenge killing and the legal proceedings that followed were highly publicized at the time and incited public debates over the concepts of

filial piety In Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism, and Daoist ethics, filial piety (, ''xiào'') (Latin: pietas) is a virtue of respect for one's parents, elders, and ancestors. The Confucian '' Classic of Filial Piety'', thought to be written around the lat ...

and the rule of law.

Names

Shi Jianqiao's given name was Shi Gulan, (). She adopted the name Shi Jianqiao around the time she was planning to assassinate Sun Chuanfang to avenge her father's killing. The characters of her adopted name mean "sword" and "to raise" alluding to her planned role as an avenging assassin.

Background

Shi Jianqiao was born in Tongcheng City,

Anhui Anhui , (; formerly romanized as Anhwei) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the East China region. Its provincial capital and largest city is Hefei. The province is located across the basins of the Yangtze River ...

Province, in the small village of Shazigang. While her grandfather had still been a farmer and tofu seller, her father and one of her uncles rose to become decorated soldiers, which led to an increase in the family's social status. She grew up in Jinan, Shandong Province and had her feet bound as a young girl. By the year he was killed (1925), her father had been promoted to director of military affairs in Shandong Province and served as brigade commander under the local warlord

Zhang Zongchang Zhang Zongchang (1881 – 3 September 1932) was a Chinese warlord in Shandong in the early 20th century. ''Time'' dubbed him China's "basest warlord". He was known by many nicknames such as the "Dogmeat General" (), based on the name of his fa ...

. Zhang Zongchang and hence Shi Congbin were aligned with the

Fengtian clique The Fengtian clique () was one of several opposing military factions that constituted the early Republic of China during its Warlord Era. It was named after Fengtian Province (now Liaoning), and operated from a territorial base comprising the th ...

, one of the two main competing warlord factions at the time. By some accounts, Shi Jianqiao graduated from Tianjin Normal College (). In October 1925, during the second war between the Zhili and Fengtian warlord cliques, her father Shi Congbin was leading a brigade of mercenary soldiers in an attempt to capture Guzhen, Shandong. However, he found himself surrounded by troops of the

Zhili Zhili, alternately romanized as Chihli, was a northern administrative region of China since the 14th-century that lasted through the Ming dynasty and Qing dynasty until 1911, when the region was dissolved, converted to a province, and renamed ...

warlord Sun Chuanfang who had been leading a surprise counterattack against the advance of the Fengtian troops. The next day, Sun had Shi decapitated and his severed head displayed in public at the train station of

Bengbu Bengbu () is a city in northern Anhui Province, China. Its population was 3,296,408 registered residents at the 2020 census. 1,968,027 lived in the built-up area made of four Bengbu urban districts and Fengyang County in Chuzhou Prefecture, larg ...

, Anhui. Less than two years later, in early 1927, Sun Chuanfeng was deposed by the

Northern Expedition The Northern Expedition was a military campaign launched by the National Revolutionary Army (NRA) of the Kuomintang (KMT), also known as the "Chinese Nationalist Party", against the Beiyang government and other regional warlords in 1926. The ...

, a military campaign by the

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Tai ...

that was targeted at ending the rule of the local warlords. He retired from his military career and founded the Tianjin Qingxiu lay-Buddhist society () together with his former fellow warlord

Jin Yunpeng Jin Yunpeng (); ; 1877 – 30 January 1951) was a Chinese general and politician of the Warlord Era of the Republic of China. He served as both Minister of War and then Premier of China several times. His ascent to the Premiership was support ...

Revenge

About 10 years after the death of her father, Shi Jianqiao tracked down Sun Chuanfang in Tianjin. Shortly after 3pm on 13 November 1935, she approached him from behind while he was leading a sutra-recitation session at his lay-Buddhist society on Nanma Road. She then killed the kneeling former warlord by shooting him three times with her Browning pistol. After the assassination, she stayed at the crime scene to explain her deed and distribute

mimeograph A mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo, sometimes called a stencil duplicator) is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The process is called mimeography, and a copy made by the proc ...

ed pamphlets to bystanders. Her case drew a significant amount of public and media attention. After a lengthy legal process with two appeals that ultimately reached the Supreme Court in Nanjing and pitted public sentiment against the rule of law, she was finally given a state pardon by the

Nationalist Nationalism is an idea and movement that holds that the nation should be congruent with the state. As a movement, nationalism tends to promote the interests of a particular nation (as in a group of people), Smith, Anthony. ''Nationalism: Th ...

government on 14 October 1936. The assassination of Sun Chuanfang was ethically justified as an act of filial piety and turned into a political symbol of the legitimate vengeance against the Japanese invaders.

Later life and death

In 1949, Shi Jianqiao was elected as vice-chair of the Women's Federation of Suzhou. In 1957, she was appointed to the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. Shi Jianqiao died in 1979, shortly after surgery for advanced colorectal cancer. Her ashes were buried in the West Tianling Cemetery () in Suzhou City.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shi, Jianqiao 1900s births 1979 deaths Year of birth uncertain 20th-century Chinese people Chinese female murderers Chinese assassins People from Tongcheng, Anhui Chinese Communist Party politicians from Anhui People's Republic of China politicians from Anhui Politicians from Anqing