Spotlight: Sun Yat-sen in U.S. city of Denver at start of 1911 Revolution

When China's revolution started in 1911 to overthrow the imperial Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), Sun Yat-sen, China's founding father, was 11,632 km away, in Denver, a city in the western U.S. state of Colorado.

"He read about the start of the revolution he started in the Rocky Mountain News when he was at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver," retired history professor John Yee told Xinhua in a recent interview. "As soon as he heard, he rushed back to China, and was named the first president of the country."

Yee, 95, born and raised in southwest China's Yunnan Province, remembers well the story of Sun Yat-sen's rise to power. Yee later became a college history professor in Denver.

According to Yee, Sun came to Denver to get funding for his fight against the Qing Dynasty because many Chinese immigrants had settled in the area and become successful businessmen.

"You need money to finance a revolution," said Yee. "Sun Yat-sen knew Denver's Chinatown was filled with hard-working successful Chinese people who would help."

Yee calls Sun China's "George Washington."

"People don't realize how long the Qing Dynasty ruled China," Yee said. "They took over in 1644 and lasted for 268 years -- that's longer than the United States has been in existence," he said.

"Sun Yat-sen was the first president and founder of China, and the story was very romantic and dramatic, just like the start of the American Revolution in Boston, when the British were coming to invade America," Yee said.

In U.S. history, the famous "Midnight Ride" of revolutionary Paul Revere in 1775 warned local settlers that a powerful British army was coming to burn their homes and farms. It was a call to arms.

"Same exact thing," Yee said emphatically. "In China, the all-powerful Qing Dynasty controlled everything and was ruthless. Sun Yat-sen's movement freed China."

Yee said the 1911 Revolution, which started with an uprising in Wuchang, central China's Hubei Province, is a source of great pride and historical lore for the Chinese people, just like Revere's famous ride.

"Thanks to Sun Yat-sen, the Chinese people rose up and overthrew the corrupt Qing," Yee said. "It is a great, storied, part of Chinese history, something all Chinese are proud of. It ended imperial rule in China forever."

Yee was a translator with the famous Flying Tigers -- a volunteer group composed of U.S. pilots -- in Kunming, capital city of Yunnan Province, fighting against Japanese aggressors in WWII.

Yee worked in the control room with legendary U.S. General Claire Lee Chennault from 1941-42 before being transferred to the United States in 1943 as part of then U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt's Lend-Lease Program.

Yee was part of a select group of Chinese officers who were in the United States for advanced military training to fight the Japanese during WWII.

After the war, Yee stayed in the United States, where he earned advanced degrees in history and became one of the first teachers in the West to teach Chinese history, as a professor at the University of Colorado and the University of Denver. Endi