Yuan Kexiang
Yuan Kexiang was the thirteenth son of Yuan ShikaiYuan ShikaiYuan Shikai (1859–1916) was a Chinese army leader and reformist minister of the late Qing dynasty and the first president of the Republic of China, from 1912 to 1916. The modern army he trained at Xiaozhan, Tianjin, grew into the Beiyang Army; in 1915–1916 he proclaimed a monarchy with himself as emperor, cancelled it in March 1916 and died on June 6 of that year.Open the full entry; a 2019 paper by Nicholas L. Chan says that he was a skilled calligrapher.
Contents2 sections
Key facts
Family and Calligraphy
Chan’s paper states that Yuan Shikai had 17 sons and 15 daughters and spared no expense on their education, and that all the sons had a traditional education as children, so most of them could write verse, though little of it survives.[1]
The paper adds that among Yuan Shikai’s sons, besides the eldest, Yuan KedingYuan KedingYuan Keding, courtesy name Yuntai, was the eldest son of Yuan Shikai; fluent in German and English, he commanded the Army Model Regiment and in 1915 was a core member of the Chouanhui, the society that campaigned for a constitutional monarchy; he came to be called the “crown prince of Hongxian.” After Yuan Shikai’s death he lived for a time in seclusion; under the Japanese occupation he disavowed in print a statement supporting the “New Order in East Asia” that had been published over his name without his consent, and he spent his last years in the household of his cousin Zhang Boju, dying at the end of the 1950s.Open the full entry, and the second, Yuan KewenYuan KewenYuan Kewen (1890–1931), art name Hanyun, was the second son of Yuan Shikai, known as a poet, calligrapher and collector of Song and Yuan printed books, old coins and stamps, and as an amateur performer of Peking opera and Kunqu. He remonstrated in verse when his father prepared to take the throne; the physicist Luke Chia-Liu Yuan was his son.Open the full entry, the sixth son, Yuan KehuanYuan KehuanYuan Kehuan was the sixth son of Yuan Shikai; he went to Europe in 1913 and attended Cheltenham College in England. His son-in-law Bai Junhe says in an oral account that he entered industry in North China in 1926, served as assistant manager and then general manager of Qixin Yanghui Gongsi (the Qixin cement company), and died in 1956.Open the full entry, the fourth, Yuan KeduanYuan KeduanYuan Keduan (died 1951) was the fourth son of Yuan Shikai; a skilled calligrapher, he was a counselor in the Dayuanshuai Fu (generalissimo’s headquarters) of Zhang Zuolin and a nominal director of the Kailuan Kuangwuju (Kailuan mining administration).Open the full entry, and the thirteenth, Yuan Kexiang, among others, were skilled calligraphers.[1]