siege for more than two years. When the Xianfeng Emperor was informed of his death, he issued an imperial decree of praise, ordered reparations paid to the family, established an ancestral hall for the family in Huzhou, and recorded Zhao Jingxian's life in the Official Archive of National History. Bei Dao's great-grandfather was director of the Guangdong Manufacturing Bureau and retired as director of the Shanghai Manufacturing Bureau. However, due to war and internal strife in China, the family's fortune declined, and his paternal grandfather earned a modest living selling paintings and scrolls before dying when Bei Dao's father was still a child. While his father's side of the family had been defenders and beneficiaries of the Qing Dynasty, Bei Dao's maternal side of the family played a role in overthrowing the empire. His maternal grandfather, Sun Haixia, was a member of the Tongmenghui society founded by Sun Yat-sen, who eventually became provisional president of post-imperial China. During the Wuchang Uprising, Sun Haixia was hailed as a hero for seizing a key telegraph station. In addition to founding a secondary school in Hubei, he later served as director of the telecommunications bureau of Chengdu and then directed the telecommunications bureau of Shanghai. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, one of Bei Dao's maternal aunts was personal nurse to Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing. Among his uncles, one was a deputy mayor of Wuhan, and another was vice chairman of the China Zhi Gong Party, one of eight political parties officially permitted in the People's Republic of China. Bei Dao's father was self-educated and passed a test to gain employment at a bank. He was later a co-founder of the People's Insurance Company of China and a deputy secretary for propaganda for the China Association for Promoting Democracy (CAPD), a political party. Bei Dao's parents married in Shanghai and settled in Beijing the year before the poet's birth. They lived in the city's Xicheng District, which borders the Forbidden City and has been known as a home to the middle and upper classes. Bei Dao grew up on Sanbulao ("Three Never Old") Hutong, a street named for its most famous resident, Admiral Zheng He. Despite his parents' professional status, Bei Dao did not have a carefree upbringing. Due to the "Great Leap Forward" policies of Mao Zedong, which shifted resources toward securing a socialist society, Bei Dao's father