In part 13 of the Ho Chi Minh series, Laura writes about his return to Asia from Russia in 1924.
>>Part 1: Paris, my two worlds
>>Part 2: A journey in search of freedom
>>Part 3: Nguyen the Patriot
>>Part 4: Indochina and little emperors
>>Part 5: The rise of patriotism
>>Part 6: Finding a compass
>>Part 7: Young Ho Chi Minh with Grand Chef Escoffier
>>Part 8: Young Ho Chi Minh in America
>>Part 9: Ho Chi Minh versus Albert Sarraut
>>Part 10: The path of destiny
>>Part 11: Moscow’s resolution on Indochina
>>Part 12: Lenin and Peoples of the East
From Vladivostock, Nguyen Ai Quoc boarded a Russian ship for Canton (Guangzhou). Arriving in November 1924, he saw a large group of peasants marching along the bank of the Pearl River. They shouted their support for Dr. Sun Yat-sen, now head of the Republic of China’s government. In the city center, all streets were fluttering with the Kuomintang’s flag of five stripes in red, yellow, blue, white, and black. Dr. Yat-sen had played a key role in the overthrown of the declining Qing Dynasty in 1911. He established the nationalist party, Kuomingtang, in the same year. Deeply disappointed with Western powers, he would soon form a political alliance with Russia.
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| A street in Canton, in the 1920’s |
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| Canton by Pearl River, in the 1920’s |
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| Pham Hong Thai’s tomb in Canton (now Guangzhou) |
In the city, Quoc was given accommodation at Baogong Guan, a nice villa with gardens, across the Kuomingtang headquarters. The villa’s ground floor was used as offices for Comintern’s representatives from Moscow. The top floor was the residence of Mikhail Borodin, head of the Comintern group. Quoc stayed on the same floor with Borodin. To legalize his resident status, he had secured an employment contract with Rosta, the Soviet news agency, with a work assignment in Canton. One of Rosta’s creations had been the use of posters to disseminate news and propaganda, achieving dynamic and powerful affects. Given Quoc’s artistic skills in cartoon drawings, photo restoration, and sign writings while living in Paris, he would have contributed to Rosta’s poster designing.
In December, Quoc officially changed his name to Ly Thuy. Those who knew him well sometimes called him Ly An Nam - Ly the Patriot, just to tease him.
Quoc was pleased to be in Asia. However, he suddenly felt overwhelmed with homesickness. Breathing the tropical air, memories of his childhood years in Kim Lien village now returned. He was longing to see his father. He observed anything that seemed familiar to him, from rice paddies to cornfields, to banana plantations, to orchid gardens... Even the sound of raindrops and the singing of cicadas at night were familiar to him. Quoc would watch small fishing boats in the Pearl River and observed the movements of people and listened to their voices. These reminded him so much of life on the Perfume River in Hue. Canton was so close to his homeland, yet so far away.
Eight months before Quoc arrived in Canton, a patriotic youth organization was formed by a group temperament young men from the province of Nghe An, where Quoc was born. It was called Tam Tam Xa (Society of Beating Hearts). One of their first tasks was to assassinate the Governor-General Martial Merlin on his official visit to Shamian Island in June 1924. The job was assigned to Pham Hong Thai, who would disguise himself as a journalist with a bomb inside his camera’s case. At the large dining hall of Hotel Victoria, at 8:30pm, on June 19, Thai threw the bomb at someone he thought the Governor-General. Merlin sustained only minor injuries. The Merlin look-alike was killed, along with four others. Thai made his escape by diving into the Pearl River from a bridge and he drowned.
The government of Dr. Sun Yat-sen was most empathetic towards the death of Pham Hong Thai. The provincial chief of Guangzhou arranged a funeral for him. A tomb was erected for Thai at Huanghuagang cemetery in Canton, where seventy-two Guangzhou’s martyrs had been laid during the Chinese revolution. On the arch of the gateway, there is the inscription “A Noble Spirit Will Never Perish” written by Dr. Sun Yat-sen. The cemetery has been well maintained. Along the path leading to the tombs there are rows of evergreen cypress and gardens of many varieties of yellow flowers.
In early 1925, Quoc set up a political training school modeled after the institutes in Moscow. It was located in a building on Ren Xing Street. Quoc lived in a room immediately behind the classroom, with a secret exit to the street. He received the collaboration from senior members of the Kuomingtang, the Indian Comintern, and the Society of Oppressed Peoples of Asia. The school was sponsored by Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s government, with Quoc as its leading instructor. The first group of participants consisted of five patriotic young men from five different provinces in Indochina, who had escaped and arrived safely in Canton.
In June, Nguyen Ai Quoc created the Vietnamese Revolutionary Youth League (Hoi Viet Nam Cach Mang Thanh Nien) under the guidance of Comintern. The League absorbed all members of Tam Tam Xa. Unfortunately, one member of Tam Tam Xa (with the assumed name Lam Duc Thu) was a secret agent for the French.
Quoc would invite many young Vietnamese and Siamese from Thailand to join the organization. It would later be known as the Revolutionary Youth League.