Qin Zhaohuang

Qin Zhaohuang, courtesy name Yunong, was born in the Guangxu era of the Qing dynasty. In his early years he studied at Hangzhou Law School, and later entered the judiciary, his career spanning the social transformations of the late Qing and the early Republic. His official roles included serving as a substitute county magistrate in Zhejiang Province; chief of the Criminal Court in the Local Trial Hall of Wenzhou Prefecture; and director of the Unified Tax Bureau for Yin County and Changxing County. His tenure roughly covered public administration and judicial duties from the late Qing to the early Republic.

In 1916, due to illness, he moved his family back from Shanghai to Wuxi, selling the ancestral residence and renting the three-room old house known as Shende Hall, where his kinsman Qin Zhuoru resided. He died in December of the same year at the age of 46. After his death the family was financially strained; his children were raised by his wife and relied on support from an aunt to make ends meet.

The Qin family is a prominent Wuxi clan, descended from the Northern Song dynasty literatus Qin Guan. The ancestral home “Jichang Garden” had belonged to the Qin family from mid-Ming times until 1952. When Qin Zhaohuang returned home to recuperate, he once rented the “Shende Hall” in his clan-uncle Qin Zhuoru’s residence. His son Qin Bangxian (Bo Gu) spent his childhood studying at the Qin Family School and at the Attached Primary School of Jiangsu Provincial No. 3 Normal School, and this educational experience laid the cultural foundation for his later revolutionary activities.