N o v e m b e r   4,   1 9 9 6 The Mausoleum of Sun Yat-sen As the founder of the Republic of China (1911-to-1949) and the spiritual leader of the early Kuomintang nationalist party, Sun Yat-sen is regarded as the father of modern China by both Beijing and Taipei. Sun's mausoleum, at the foot of Nanjing's Purple mountain outshines even that of the Ming Emperor Hong Wu a half a mile away. Swaddled in pines and painstakingly manicured, the tomb stands as grateful tribute to the sleepy imperial city that the physician-turned-revolutionary chose as the capital of Asia's very first representative democracy. The blue and white of Sun's tomb represent the colors of the Kuomintang flag. Above the entrance of the funerary chamber, hangs a tablet inscribed with the Three Principles of the People formulated by Sun himself: Nationalism, Democracy and Livelihood. Inscribed in the walls of the crypt is the full text of Sun's Outline of Principles for the Establishment of the Nation. It was upon this treatise -- which drew upon Locke, Jefferson, the Bill of Rights and other Western political doctrines, that Sun hoped to base the governance of his Republic. Succumbing in 1925 to liver cancer at the age of 60, he never got the chance.