Ｋａｎｇ Ｙｏｕｗｅｉ’ｓ Ｒｅｓｉｄｅｎｃｅ ａｎｄ Ｔｏｍｂ ｉｎ Ｑｉｎｇｄａｏ

On a sweltering day of June in 2007， my colleagues and I visited Kang Youwei's residence and tomb in Qingdao， a seaside city in eastern China's coastal Shandong Province. The residence was not far away from the hotel where we stayed. Past Lu Xun Park and the famous beach where bathers lounged and frolicked， we turned right and went down a side street for a while before we came to the residence.

A few snazzy limousines parked outside the residence. Inside the complex were three groups of tourists from Taiwan， Hong Kong and Macaw. It was quite a noisy scene. The residence turned out to be a bluish-brown villa in the German architectural style built in 1899. The glistening-silver stairway in front looked wonderful. Above the gate was a stele bearing the Chinese characters Kang Youwei's Former Residence handwritten by Liu Haisu， a master of traditional Chinese painting. The inscription looked respectful and nice.

Kang Youwei (1858-1927) was a prominent reform movement leader in the last years of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). He was a political reformist， educator and noted calligrapher. Over years， he submitted altogether seven petitions to Emperor Guangxu calling for radical national modernization reforms. In 1898， he organized young scholars who were in Beijing waiting for the imperial examination results to sign an appeal to the emperor for drastic national reform. Supported by the emperor， Kang and a group of his elite colleagues started the famous Hundred Days Reform. The short-lived reform was aborted by a court coup and six of the leading reformers were executed. Kang escaped to Japan. What Kang did pushed the progress of China. Mao Zedong regarded him as one of the pioneering Chinese intellectuals who turned to the west for new ideas.

Kang passed away in this villa on March 31， 1927. The villa was originally built for the German commander-in-chief when the German troops occupied Qingdao. During his reign in the city， the commander would leave the villa in the morning and ride a horse to the commander's office. After Qingdao was returned to China， Kang Youwei bought the villa and turned it into a three-story affair. He named the villa \"Tian You Garden\" in connection with his villa residence \"Yi Tian Garden\" in Hangzhou. Though Kang did not stay in Qingdao regularly after he bought and refurbished the villa， he came to Qingdao every year and visited his three children who were studying in an international school in Qingdao.

With a floor space of 1，128 square meters， the villa maintains a look of decades ago. Though the villa itself does not look luxurious， it is elegant， testifying to Kang's good taste. In the sitting room on the first floor， we saw a statue of Kang. His bedroom and study are exactly what they were in the first place. Some furniture supposedly came from the royal family of the Qing. Some of Kang's letters， manuscripts， paintings and calligraphic works were on display. The guides at the residence spoke in Chinese and English.

After the visit to the villa， we went to Kang's tomb at the Northern Hill. The tomb is a grand structure， occupying an area of 1，000 square meters， enclosed by a granite wall. A stairway of hundreds of steps leads up to the tomb. Six pines behind the tomb signify the six martyrs who were executed after the reform toppled. Kang was buried in Qingdao in 1927. His family thought of building a tomb for him at his hometown in Guangdong Province. In 1966， the tomb was destroyed. In 1984， the local government decided to bury Kang Youwei at the present site， with the agreement and approval of the Kang's descendents. A ceremony for reburial and unveiling of the tombstone was held on December 27， 1985.