God's Chinese Son (3 page)
One could of course argue that heavenly visions of the kind recorded
in these newly found texts are not historical sources in any precise sense
of the term. And yet the visions are fixed in space and time with such
precision, and describe the behavior of specific Taiping leaders and their
followers in such detail, that it seems to me they do illuminate the uprising
in central ways. Furthermore they are so bunched as to offer us insight
into two key Taiping periods: one group (those said to be from Jesus)
being concentrated in the early years of the formation of the Taiping
movement in the mountains of Guangxi province, and the other group
(those said to be from God the Father) being focused on the early years of
the Taiping rule in their New Jerusalem of Nanjing. The visions also
relate to numerous other events in Taiping history: in the case of the two
volumes dealing with Jesus' descents to earth, they give us much completely new information about the rural society of the time; and in the
case of the visions of God the Father they give essential information on
the interconnection of events in Taiping history with the visits of Westerners to the Heavenly Capital. Though to me the main interest of the new
texts lies in the light they shed on Hong Xiuquan himself, they also help
us understand the audience he attracted, and the way he and his followers
responded to that audience. Such questions are of central importance as
we try to grasp how millenarian leaders create a practical base from which
to operate.
13
Writing about Hong, I learned almost immediately, was writing about
texts as much as about a man, and most especially about what many see
as the text of texts, the Bible. Since I am no Bible scholar, and make no
claims to be, this was a daunting prospect. But I was raised for over a
decade in schools where the Bible was read daily, and I could see that there
was no denying the strength, the inspiration, and the sense of purpose that
Hong derived from the Bible, even though his response was intensely
personal. Partly this was because the Bible was mediated for him in the
Chinese language, either through Chinese converts to Christianity or
through Western Protestant missionaries with some knowledge of Chinese who had settled in China's southeast coastal towns. The fact that it
was these random acts of translation, with all their ambiguities, errors,
and unexpected ironies, that brought him to his faith and his sense of
destiny, rather than any formal religious instruction, was doubly intriguing to me.
14
It not only reasserted the extraordinary dangers that may
flow from the unguided transmission of a book so volatile, and thus highlighted the central importance of the West to Hong's story; it also helped
me understand how Hong, when he at last acquired the Bible, made it so
peculiarly his own. And because it was his own, after a period of reflection,
he felt free to alter it, so that he could pass God's message on to his
followers in an even "purer" form.
This book does not attempt to give a total picture of the Taiping movement, its formation, maturation, expansion, suppression, and effects on
China as a whole. Many fine scholars have written on some or all of these
aspects of the story, and I am happy to build on their work rather than
attempt to duplicate it.
15
Instead, I focus on the mind of Hong Xiuquan
and seek to understand
—
as far as I am able
—
how it could be that this
particular man had such an astounding impact on his country for so many
years. It is my belief that Hong's visions were shaped in some fashion by
the overlapping layers of change that the Westerners were bringing to
China along with their Christianity; these constituted an aura perhaps, as
much as an influence, but an aura that was dense enough to give Hong a
range of new feelings about the religious and social beliefs that he had
absorbed at home as a child. When context is combined with vision in
such a way, it seems to me, we can get at least an inkling of the logic that
lay behind Hong's actions. This is not to deny that Hong's attempts at the
social and religious transformation of China were often both muddled
and inept. But it should help us to understand why he pursued the dreams
he did, and why so many were willing to follow and die for him as he
sought to make the dreams reality.
Many questions remain unanswerable, perhaps most crucially those
linking Hong's own character to the Apocalypse he helped to cause. Did
he have the faintest inkling, as he began during the 1840s to preach to
small groups of farmers and migrant workers in the hills of Guangxi
province, that the trail of events set in motion by his visions would lead
to the deaths of millions of people, and would require a decade of the
concentrated military and fiscal energies of some of China's greatest statesmen to suppress? It seems unlikely, for by identifying himself with the
heavenly forces, Hong came to believe he removed himself from the ordinary judgments of humankind. But if he
had
reflected on it, the Book of
Revelation, which he studied with great care, would have told him that
such catastrophes had been long foretold, and that the chaos and horror
were just a part of the glory and peace to come. I cannot find it in me to
wish that Hong had succeeded in his goals, but neither can I entirely deny
that there was true passion in his quest. As the epigraph to this book
suggests, in the words of Keats, which themselves build on those of the
Book of Revelation, Hong was one of those people who believe it is their
mission to make all things "new, for the surprise of the sky-children." It
is a central agony of history that those who embark on such missions so
rarely care to calculate the cost.
West Haven, Connecticut
May 15, 1995
The great seal of the Taiping.
This version of the Taiping state seal, measuring
20.5 centimeters square, was probably made in 1860 or 1861 during the last
years of Taiping rule over their Heavenly Kingdom. The seal is in the form of
an acrostic, and Chinese scholars have long debated the exact order in which the
characters on the seal were meant to be read and interpreted. The most definitive recent interpretation, offered by Wang Qingcheng, suggests starting with
the central characters at the top of seal, proceeding with alternating lines in the
bottom half of the seal (fanning out from the center and reading from right to
left) before concluding with the smaller outside characters in the top half. This
yields the following reading:
The Taiping state seal:
[Of] God the Father,
The Heavenly Elder Brother Christ,
The Heavenly King Hong, the sun, ruler of the bountiful earth,
[And] the Savior and Young Monarch, the True King, Guifu.
Exalted for a myriad years, eternally granting Heaven's favor,
Eternally maintaining Heaven and earth in gracious harmony and convivial
peace.
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God's Chinese Son
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It's hard to be always on the outside, looking in, but these
foreigners have no choice. They live crammed together by
the water's edge, two hundred yards or so beyond the southwest corner of Canton's crumbling but still imposing walls.
They climb often to the roofs of their rented residences, and gaze from
there across the walls to the close-packed streets and spacious landscaped
residences of the Chinese city that lie beyond. They are allowed to stroll
along the west wall's outer edge and peer, past clustered Chinese guards,
through the long dark tunnels that form the city's major gates. If times
are peaceful, a group of foreign men by prearrangement meet at dawn
and walk the city's whole outside perimeter, a walk that takes two hours
or so if no one blocks the way. During the fire that raged all night near
the end of 1835, and destroyed more than a thousand city homes, one
Westerner clambered onto the walls to watch the flames; initially turned
away by Chinese guards, he was allowed to return the next afternoon, and
walk along the walls at leisure. But this was exceptional grace, and not
repeated. Some, with permission, visit rural temples in the hills, which
from their upper stories give a different angle to the view across the dis
tant walls. Others scan old Chinese maps that let them place the city's
major landmarks in the context of the unwalked streets.
1
In their frustration, the foreigners pace out the dimensions of their
allotted territory. It takes them 270 steps to cross the land from east to
west, and fewer still from north to south. Along the southern edge of their
domain, where the Pearl River flows, there is a patch of open ground, and
this the Westerners call their "square" or "esplanade." But 50 paces from
the shore rise the solid fronts of the buildings where they live, and these
fill almost all the space remaining, save for three narrow streets that intersect them from north to south, closed at night by gates. Here, in 1836, live
307 men—British and Americans, in the main, but also Parsees and Indians, Dutch and Portuguese, Prussians, French, and Danes. No women are
allowed to be with them, and the 24 married men must leave their wives
in Macao, one hundred miles away, three days by sampan on the inland
waterways where travel is the safest. Twice, in 1830, defiant husbands
brought their wives and female relatives to visit them. But even though
the women came dressed in velvet caps and cloaks to hide their sex, and
stayed indoors all day, when they went out at night (a time chosen because
the shops were closed and the streets seemed empty) to see the sights,
excited shouts at once announced the arrival of the "foreign devil women."
The local Chinese lit their lanterns, and blocked the roads till all the
foreigners retreated back to their homes. And the authorities, threatening
to cancel all foreign trade unless the women returned to Macao, won their
point.
2
Not that the life lacks compensations. There is money to be made, by
old and young alike, two thousand dollars in a few minutes if one deals
in opium and a buyer is in urgent need, smaller but still steady sums from
trade in tea and silk, furs and medicines, watches and porcelain and fine
furniture. The foreign community publishes two weekly newspapers,
printed on their own presses, which cover local news and feud and bicker
over trade and national policy. There is a fledgling chamber of commerce,
and two hotels where one can stay, for a dollar a night, in a four-poster
bed, with hot water for shaving, but no mirror. There is fresh milk to
drink every day, from the small herd of cows that the foreigners keep
always nearby, either in local pasturage or aboard specially adapted boats
that moor in the River. There is a small chapel that seats a hundred, a
dispensary, and a branch of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. There is even a new mail service, between the factories in Canton
and the city of Macao, collected Wednesdays and Saturdays, five cents a
letter and twenty cents a parcel, to replace the old letter boats, whose
volatile crews sometimes tossed the mailbags overboard, and left them
bobbing in the water until they were rescued (if they had not sunk).
3
The thirteen rows of buildings, known as "hongs," or "factories," rented
from the small circle of Chinese merchants licensed by the state to deal
with the foreigners, are spacious and airy. Many of them were destroyed
by the great fire of 1822, but they have been well rebuilt, of granite and
local stone and brick, two stories high near the waterfront, rising to three
stories in the rear, and are better protected from fire than before, with
well-designed fire pumps ready in the yards. Arched passageways give
access and privacy within each of the thirteen lengthy structures, which
are divided into contiguous apartments, storerooms, and offices, and
shaded from hot summer sun by long verandas and
Venetian
blinds; the
men sleep well, despite the heat, on clean, hard rattan mats, or mattresses
filled with bamboo shavings, unnostalgic for the feather comforters of
home.
Each building is named for the foreign nation that rents most of the
space within it. So one finds the Spanish and the Dutch, the Danish and
the Swedish hongs, the English, the Austrian Empire's hong, and, most
recently, the American. But these national labels are not exclusive, and the
small community is interlayered among the thirteen hongs. Some of the
buildings have billiard rooms and libraries, spacious terraces jutting out
toward the river to catch the evening breeze, and grand dining rooms with
gleaming chandeliers and candelabra shining on the silverplate and spotless
table settings. Meals can be sumptuous, with solemn Chinese servants in
formal hats and robes, silent behind every chair.
4
The inventory of one
young American's personal possessions, as tabulated by watchful Chinese
clerks, shows glimpses of this life: thirty knives and thirty forks, thirty
glasses and decanters, one trunk of woolen clothes, shaving kit and mixed
colognes, mirror, soap and candles, hat and spyglass, framed pictures, a gun
and sword, fifty pounds of cheroots and 542 bottles of "foreign wine."
s
There is friendship among the foreigners, and sometimes music. A red-coated band from a visiting ship plays in the square, to the delight of the
Westerners, but to the astonishment and tonal anguish of the listening
Chinese.
6
Or—a novelty first seen in 1835 at Canton—a steam-driven
pleasure boat with band aboard takes parties down the river and into the
beautiful, isle-filled sea.
7
And out beyond the harbor one can scramble up
the narrow track to the top of Lintin Mountain, aided by fifteen bearers,
and picnic there on a large flat rock, laid with a repast of poultry, fish,
pastry, ham, and wine, while again a band that accompanied the climbers
plays. Replete and rested, one can, if one chooses, slide back down the
hillside on one's bottom through the long dry grass.
8
Language might seem a problem, since in all of Canton and the foreign
hongs there is no Chinese who can read or write in English or other
European languages, and only a few Westerners who know enough Chinese to write with even partial elegance. This has not always been the
case. In the 1810s and 1820s, when the East India Company was at its
peak of power, there were a dozen or more young men from England
studying Chinese in the Canton factories. They translated Chinese novels
and plays, and even the Chinese legal code, so they could assess the equity
of the government's rules more carefully. Though the local officials on
occasion imprisoned Chinese for teaching their own language to foreigners, and even executed one, and Chinese teachers often had to shelter
privately in their pupils' lodgings, the East India Company representatives
fought back. By tenacity, they won the right to submit commercial documents in Chinese translation, rather than in English, and to hire Chinese
teachers, for study of classical texts as well as Cantonese colloquial dialect.
And though the company directors never won official acknowledgment
of their right to hire Chinese wood-carvers, they went ahead anyway and
block printed an Anglo-Chinese dictionary using Chinese characters; in
addition, they managed to accumulate a substantial library of four thousand books, many of them in Chinese, which they housed in their splendidly appointed hong, with the company's senior physician doubling as
the librarian.
9
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With the termination by the British government in 1834 of the company's monopoly of China trade, these glory days were over. Most of the
language students and experts were reassigned to other countries; their
finest teacher, Robert Morrison, died the same year; and the great library
was scattered. Only three young men, who had been classified on the
company's roster as "proficient" enough to receive an annual student's
allowance, are left in Canton by 1836, and their main role is to be caretakers of the company's former buildings and oversee their closing down.
10
Nor are there any established bookshops to be found in the foreigners'
restricted zone of residence, for specific laws forbid the sale of Chinese
books to foreigners, and even make it a crime to show them one of China's
local histories or regional gazettes. Those who wish to search out books
must walk some distance to the west, where two bookshops on a side
street (a street with gates locked and barred at night) will break the law
to the extent of selling novels, romances, and "marvellous stories" to the
foreigners, and sometimes arrange for purchases of other titles from the
larger stores within the city."
