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lished there in a responsible position, he wrote to Li Tsin-kau inviting him to join him. Tsin-kau set off for Nanking but turned back before arriving there, because, as he claimed, he had heard alarming accounts of the religious and moral aberrations of Hung Hsiu-ch'uan. On his return to Hong Kong, he was taken on by Lechler as a helper in his ministry to the Hakka population in Hong Kong.
Li Tsin-kau continued as a valuable assistant in the Basel Mission in Hong Kong, serving as a catechist until his death in 1885. For some years in the 1860's he was a travelling preacher, using Hong Kong as his home base. His mother, wife and children, and a younger brother joined him in Hong Kong and all of them became members of the Basel Society congregation on High Street, Saiying-poon. In 1858, he mentions a brother, Schiu-siu, in California. The Eighth Report of the Berlin Society, for the years 1861 and 1862, mentions A-tat the unbaptized brother of the Basel Mission helper Lichenko.
Li Tsin-kau after his initial efforts to join the Taiping forces spent the remainder of his life serving the church in Hong Kong. However, his friend Hung Jen-kan became an important figure in the Taiping government under the title Kan Wang. Before assuming this political role, he also was a valued assistant in the Protestant Mission work in Hong Kong. While Li Tsin-kau worked among the Hakkas under the direction of the Rev. Rudolph Lechler, of the Basel Missionary Society, Hung Jen-kan worked with the Rev. Dr. James Legge, of the London Missionary Society, among the Cantonese speaking population.
Dr. Legge took an interest in the Taiping movement and saw within it a potential for providing a turning point in the relation of the Christian church with the whole of China. In the summer of 1853, he sent two of his assistants to Shanghai to open communication with the Taiping government so as to prepare the way for a missionary to enter Nanking. The delegation consisted of a long-time assistant in the London Missionary Society, Keuh A-gong, alias Wat Ngong A, and a young theological student of Dr. Legge's school, Ng Mun-sow. Their efforts were unsuccessful, so after spending six months in Shanghai, they returned to Hong Kong.4
We have already noted the unsuccessful effort of Hung Jen-kan and Li Tsin-kau to reach Nanking by way of Shanghai in 1854. Upon returning to Hong Kong, Jen-kan became a language teacher