Tiandihui

Under British rule in Hong Kong, all Chinese secret societies were collectively seen as criminal threats and were bundled together and defined as "Triads", although the Hongmen might be said to have differed in its nature from others.

The name of the "Three Harmonies Society" (the "Sanhehui" grouping of the Tiandihui) is in fact the source of the term "Triad" that has become synonymous with Chinese organized crime.

Republican-era scholars generally thought that the Tiandihui was founded by Ming loyalists in the early Qing dynasty to resist the Manchu invasion of China.

His interpretation was further developed by his student Qin Baoqi and confirmed by independent research by the Taiwanese scholar Zhuang Jifa.

[3][4] The founders of the Tiandihui—Ti Xi, Li Amin, Zhu Dingyuan, and Tao Yuan—were all from Zhangpu, Zhangzhou, Fujian, on the border with Guangdong.

A century earlier, the Qing dynasty made membership in such societies illegal, driving them into the arms of the anti-Qing resistance, for whom they now served as an organizational model.

The 18th century saw a proliferation of such societies, some of which were devoted to overthrowing the Qing, such as the Tiandihui, which had established itself in the Zhangpu and Pinghe counties of Zhangzhou in 1766.

The Tiandihui began to claim that their society was born of an alliance between Ming dynasty loyalists and five survivors of the destruction of Shaolin Monastery—Cai Dezhong (蔡德忠), Fang Dahong (方大洪), Ma Chaoxing (馬超興), Hu Dedi (胡德帝), and Li Shikai (李式開)—by the Qing forged at the Honghua Ting ("Vast or Red Flower Pavilion"), where they swore to devote themselves to the mission of "Fan Qing Fu Ming" (Chinese: 反淸復明; lit.

When some Hongmen groups based within China could no longer rely on donations from sympathetic locals; being unable to resume normal civilian lives after years of hiding, they turned to illegal activities – thus giving birth to the modern Triads.

[citation needed] Because of the Hongmen's revolutionary character and mysterious quality, their future was unclear after the Republic of China central government moved to Taiwan.