On May 5, 1923, twelve hundred bandits, mostly former soldiers under General Zhang Jingyao who followed Shandong warlord Sun Meiyao (孙美瑶) after their discharge from the military, attacked and then derailed the "Blue Express" near the town of Lincheng (Xuecheng) on the Tianjin-Pukou Railway in Shandong Province close to the Jiangsu-Shandong border.
[1] The bandits looted the train and killed a number of Chinese passengers [2] as well as a British subject, Joseph Rothman [3] after he refused to surrender his valuables.
B. Powell, editor of China Weekly Review,[6] and Commodore Guiseppe Musso, a wealthy and influential Italian who was the chief attorney in the Shanghai French Concession.
Ultimately the Shanghai Green Gang leader Du Yuesheng secured the release of the remaining hostages on June 12, 1923 [9] with an $85,000 ransom ($1.2 million in today's prices).
Expatriate communities in China feared the episode signaled a new "Boxer Rebellion" and put into question the stability of the Chinese government.