218
Laboratory in 1923. The site was about 200,000 square metres, and the buildings were the government offices in Canton, which were to be sold to the Bank of Canton for a nominal price of just $550,000. This figure was eventually adjusted to only $220,000, being the deduction of the overdue interest that Sun had to pay to the Bank of Canton for all the loans that he had previously borrowed from the Siyi men. Showing their generosity, the Bank of Canton promised to pay $5,000 for the removal of the government offices from the site of the Laboratory. The agent in this purchase was none other than Yang Xian (), the Minister of Finance, a member of the Siyi "thirty men subscription team" and a principal shareholder of the Bank of Canton. After the purchase, the Bank announced its intention to sell the Experiment Station. They asked for a price of $850,000, four times the purchase price.
The sales of "public properties" evoked severe criticism by the press, and by those lineages, temples and monasteries whose properties were being confiscated. The Cantonese expressed their resentment toward Sun in a very satirical way; the Chinese press recorded that a "Sun Yat-sen hairstyle" was then very popular in the province. The Cantonese were abandoning the old method of using vegetable liquor to fix and to gel their hair. They simply let loose their hair. The idea of the "Sun Yat-sen hair-style", therefore, was intended to laugh at Sun's practice of letting loose everything in the province and leaving things in a great mess.
The Coming of the Soviet Influence
The Siyi men's attempts to re-organize the financial situations in Guangdong were never successful. Among other examples, a record in the Shenbao reported that soon after Yang Xian was appointed the Minister of Finance, a small band of Yunnanese soldiers came to his office to cash in a future cheque of $3,000 issued by Sun Yat-sen. When the office failed to pay immediately, Yang Xian was searched, fastened and detained by the Yunnanese soldiers. He was released only after his relatives paid the "ransom" of $3,030.
Sun Yat-sen, thereafter, turned to another alternative. When Sun Yat-sen returned to Canton in 1923, he brought with him two groups of allies from Shanghai. The first group was the Soviet advisors, and