Upon his return from Japan, Wang and his political ally, Tie Liang, happened to be the ones presiding over the examination aimed at testing fresh graduates’ ability.

Sun passed the tests and became an officer of the Beiyang Army and later was recruited by Wang Zhanyuan to join the Zhili clique following the Xinhai Revolution, rising quickly through the ranks.

Then, in the fall of 1925, the chance came: Sun launched a counterattack that drove Zhang Zongchang and his forces out of the Chinese districts of Shanghai.

[3] Shanghai was captured by Communist labor unions allied with the National Revolutionary Army in March 1927 and Sun was forced to flee Nanjing.

Sun relocated to the British concession of Tianjin, where he took the tonsure and announced his retirement from worldly affairs in favor of becoming a Buddhist monk.

In October 1925, during the second war between the Zhili and Fengtian cliques, Shi Congbin had been captured by Sun Chuanfang, who had had him summarily decapitated and his head mounted on a pike.