[3] On 15 July 1922 he inherited the leadership of the Shandong Autonomous Army after his older brother Sun Meizhu (1883-1922)[4] was captured in combat with government troops and shot.
[5] Explaining his motives Sun said "...we have hitherto been law abiding citizens, and that we have no desire to become robbers; but in this troubled era of unreliable government we find ourselves compelled to take risks in order to obtain redress for our grievances" [6] In the early hours of 6 May 1923, Sun's twelve hundred bandits attacked and then derailed the "Blue Express" near the town of Lincheng (Xuecheng) on the Tianjin-Pukou Railway in Hebei Province close to the Jiangsu-Shandong border.
B. Powell, editor of China Weekly Review,[12] and Commodore Guiseppe Musso, a wealthy and influential Italian who was the chief attorney in the Shanghai French Concession.
As a gesture of good faith, the women were released within a couple of days of the kidnapping,[14] while the remaining male hostages were held for over a month[11] as negotiations dragged on.
Ultimately the Shanghai Green Gang leader Du Yuesheng secured the release of the remaining hostages on June 12, 1923 [15] with an $85,000 ransom along with the Chinese government's agreement to accept bandits who wanted it into the military.