NOTES ON FRIENDS AND RELATIVES OF TAIPING LEADERS 129
movement in China illustrate the impact of the Christian aspect of the Taiping ideology had on individuals connected with it in a peripheral way. The Taiping rebellion upset the even tenor of their former village life. They became refugees. Most had an objective, however: they wished to join their former village clansmen and neighbours at the Taiping capital, Nanking. A few were successful; more, perhaps, were not.
Having been previously influenced by the confused Christian ideas as promulgated by Hung Hsiu-ch'uan and Feng Yün-shan during the period before the outbreak of open hostilities between the Imperial forces and the Taiping revolutionaries, it was natural for them to seek out the missionaries for assistance and employment and also to be receptive to more thorough training in the Christian faith. The missionaries welcomed them as a means of relating to the Taiping movement with its promise of establishing a new dynasty on Christian principles. The promise was never realized and the missionaries eventually were disillusioned, but not before forming close relations with these refugees, some of whom became valuable assistants and contributed to the growth of the Chinese Christian Church.
The Taiping Kingdom had within it, from the Christian point of view, the seeds of a transformation of China, but the end result was largely disastrous for China, and its fall left behind those who had dreamed of a glory that had passed them by. Some, as this article suggests, adjusted to a life devoted to the Christian Church, while others went other ways. But the missionaries maintained a nostalgic interest in those who had been closely connected to the leaders of the Taiping movement.
NOTES
This article first appeared in Ching Feng (*) Quarterly Notes on Christianity and Chinese Religion and Culture, XIX, No. 2, 1976: 105-119, and is reproduced here with permission. Ed.
1 When my sources have not given names in Chinese characters, I have used the romanization of the original manuscript, except for Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, Hung Jen-kan and Feng Yün-shan. There are particular difficulties in determining the proper surname for individuals who appear in the sources as Fung. This was the accepted Hakka form of the surname Hung #, but it was also the Cantonese spelling of the surname Fung.
2 Die Evangelischen Heidenboten, Oct., 1854, Letter of Hamberg, dated, May 1854.
3 Ibid., June, 1868, p. 73.