Tan Sitong
In the fifth year of the Guangxu Emperor's reign (1879), Wang opened the Shunyuan Protection Agency just outside Beijing's Zhengyangmen. A secure courier business, Shunyuan, served a broad area, from Shanhai Pass in the north to Huai'an (Jiangsu) in the south. Wang Wu was chivalrous in nature and became friends with members of the reform movement, including a young Tan Sitong to whom he taught martial arts. In 1898 with the failure of the Hundred Days' Reform, Wang and Tan Sitong attempted to rescue the imprisoned Guangxu Emperor, but failed. Following Tan Sitong's execution Wang recovered Tan's body for burial. In some folklore accounts, which have become the basis of subsequent films and dramas, Wang storms the execution ground in an attempted rescue but Tan Sitong refuses to leave, saying that in the past reform in China has failed because no one was willing to make the necessary sacrifices, and that if a sacrifice of blood be needed then it should begin with his own.