The "White Wolf", rebel Bai Lang, broke through a Chinese Army blockade numbering 5,000 men with his 1,000.
Bai Yung-chang, or Bai Langzai, or Bai Lang, the latter of which was a pseudonym, was a 41-year-old rebel and one time governor of Henan and almost bandit, dissuaded from that fate after killing a man in a fight by his family. He'd been trained in the military arts in Japan and had served in the Beiyang Army after the outbreak of the Chinese rebellion of 1911. The tugid politics of revolutionary China drove him into allegiance with the bandit forces of Du Quiin.
The Revolution of 1911 has never really resolved, sharing therefore a bit of the history of the Mexican Revolution, which didn't resolve until 2000 with the election of Vicente Fox. Fox established that Mexico had evolved from a one party state into a true democracy, one which has a solid middle class, no matter how much Mexicans and Americans refuse to believe it, today. China, on the other hand, fell into an ineffective chaotic republic that collapsed into civil war, from which the Chinese Communist Party emerged as the one party ruler. Ultimately, and likely soon, that party will fall and a true Chinese republic will emerge, but it's taking quite some time to occur. Still, no matter its bluster, the current People's Republic of China, will evolve into something else, just as Revolutionary Mexico did.
Another bandit/rebel was in the news in 1914, José Doroteo Arango Arámbula, but by his pseudonym as well, Pancho Villa.
The Mexican Federal government of Gen. Huerta was collapsing, and as it collapsed the news increasing turned towards the spectacular victories of the rebel Ejército del Norte and its leader, Pancho Villa. And with that, speculation was rampant that Villa would declare himself held of state.
In fact, Villa, who had been fanatically loyal to Modero, was not yet disloyal to Carranza. . . but that day was coming.
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