Ceremony held at Beijing temple to pay tribute to Sun Yat-sen

BEIJING, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- A ceremony was held Thursday morning at Beijing's Biyun Temple to commemorate the 160th anniversary of the birth of Sun Yat-sen, one of China's revered revolutionary forefathers, with tributes paid at his cenotaph.

During the ceremony's first round, representatives from the General Office of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang, the Beijing municipal government, as well as Sun's relatives, overseas Chinese and international friends, stood in silence for three minutes, presented floral baskets and bowed three times before a statue of Sun.

It was presided over by Zheng Jianbang, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and chairman of the Central Committee of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang.

In the second round, representatives of people from Taiwan paid their tribute in the same fashion.

Born in 1866, Sun led the Revolution of 1911 more than a century ago to abolish the absolute monarchy that had ruled China for thousands of years.

On March 12, 1925, he died in Beijing and his remains were kept in Biyun Temple at Fragrant Hills in the western suburbs of Beijing before being transferred to the Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum in Nanjing in 1929.