Bai Lang

Bai Lang (1873-unclear) was arrested in 1897 for getting into a fight with a man named Wang Zhen who died during the altercation. After getting out of jail, Bai Lang was only dissuaded from becoming a bandit by his family, instead, turning his martial interests towards a legal outlet (namely, military service). During the last years of Manchu rule, Bai was trained in tactics and weaponry in Japan, known at the time as much for its Chinese revolutionary activity as for its competence in modern military warfare. Upon his return, Bai was appointed to serve in Imperial China's Beiyang Army and, at the outbreak of the Xinhai Revolution at the Wuchang Uprising in 1911, was assigned to the Beiyang 6th Division at Shijiazhuang as an adjutant to Gen. Wu Lu-chen (Wu Luzhen), Commander of the Sixth Division. Soon thereafter, the pro-revolutionary Gen. Wu was assassinated by or Beiyang Army troops loyal to Yuan Shikai and Bai was forced to return home for fear of his life. Wu's assassination, thought to have been at the order of Yuan Shikai, allegedly took place because Yuan could not trust Wu whose presence at Shijiazhuang controlled the vital rail link from Wuhan to Beijing. These events strengthened Bai's resolve against Yuan and those who came to support him.[6][better source needed] After a series of storms ravaged the region's crops in late 1911, Bai and other local people fell in with the bandit Du Qibin. Before Bai Lang defected to the Republicans and became Henan's governor, he was originally a Qing loyalist.[7]