[
    {
        "id": 207745,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1976",
        "page_number": 133,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "118\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nGovernment, for they hoped that through those converts, whom they financed in their efforts to reach the areas controlled by the Taiping government, they might influence the movement. Since they believed that these converts who had been under their instruction were better grounded in the fundamentals of the Christian faith than the Taiping leaders at Nanking, the missionaries expected their converts to strengthen the Christian element in the movement and correct some of its reported misconceptions in doctrine and aberrations in practice. They also hoped that through the good offices of these converts, once they had established themselves at Nanking, the missionary would, in time, be able to join them.\n\nThe most prominent of these individuals was Hung Jen-kan, a distant cousin of the Taiping leader Hung Hsiu-ch'uan. He became the Kan Wang (Shield King) in the Taiping government at Nanking in 1859 and was executed in November, 1864, after the fall of Nanking.\n\nHe accompanied Hung Hsiu-ch'uan to Canton for Christian instruction under the Rev. Issachar Roberts in 1847. In an appendix to Dr. Margaret M. Coughlin's unpublished doctoral thesis, Strangers in the House: J. Lewis Shuck and Issachar Roberts, First American Baptist Missionaries to China (University of Virginia, 1972), there is a letter of Roberts to Shuck, dated 27 March, 1847, giving details of Hsiu-ch'uan's spiritual development. After a month's instruction, they were sent out on a preaching tour in the course of which they returned to their home district, Hua-hsien, Kwangtung. Jen-kan did not return to Canton with Hsiu-ch'uan for further studies but remained at home to study medicine.\n\nWhile Hung had been preaching near his home in Kwangtung and studying with Roberts at Canton, Feng Yün-shan, a friend of his who had also been influenced by Christian ideas, had been gathering a group of followers in Kwangsi. They adopted the name of \"The Society of God Worshippers\" and were the nucleus from which developed the Taiping movement. The usual accounts of the movement attribute its origins to the activity of Hung Hsiu-ch'uan. This interpretation rests heavily on the account given in Hamberg's booklet The Visions of Hung Siu-Tschuen and Origin of the Kwang-si Insurrection, published in Hong Kong in 1854, and on various documents of the movement which were written after the death of Feng Yün-shan. There are several contemporary references which",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207755,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1976",
        "page_number": 143,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "128\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\nlater to Lilong, where he served under Brother Bellon in the boy's school. Because of his relation to the Rebel King, it was difficult on the mainland so he came to Hongkong until 1878, when he emigrated with those of Shaukiwan.\n\n14\n\nA search of the records of British Guiana might provide details of his later career.\n\nLechler's Day Book under date 12 January, 1871, mentions a visit from Tsau-phoi, a member of the Fung family of Tsim Sha Tsui, and on 18 February, 1871, he notes that Fung A-lin from Tsim Sha Tsui returned to the Girl's School at Sai Ying Poon. It is probable that Fung Tsau-phoi and Fung A-lin were the son and daughter of \"a former Rebel King\", who is referred to in the records of the Girl's Boarding School of the Basel Mission at Sai Ying Poon. A report dated 10 July, 1866, lists as a student Lyu Tsya, aged eighteen years, \"betrothed to a son of a former Rebel King, who long has put away the crown, baptized by the Berlin Missionary Hanspach in her home.\" Also listed is Fung A-lin, the small sister of the young man. She had been enrolled in 1865, aged seven years. Her mother was a widow and a Christian.\n\nKeeping in mind that the Hakka version of the surname Hung was written Fung, and that the entries in Lechler's Day Book were written in a very illegible script, it may be that Fung Tsau-phoi is the same as Hung Tsun Fooi mentioned in T’ai-p’ing t'ien-kuo shih-shih jih-chih Appendix, p.24, as present in Hong Kong after the fall of the Taiping government.\n\nTwo relatives of Feng Yün-shan, a twenty-one year old nephew A-sou and his fourteen-year old cousin, accompanied the Rev. Issachar J. Roberts to Shanghai in 1853, in an attempt to reach Nanking. A-sou was baptized by Roberts at Shanghai. The Baptist Missionary Rev. Matthew T. Yates became acquainted with the two boys, but in his book The Tai Ping Rebellion, he mistakenly states that they were brothers of Feng Yün-shan.\n\nFung A-sou found it impossible to reach Nanking, so he came down to Hong Kong. From here he went up to Canton where he became a teacher to an American missionary. But he became ill, and returned to Hong Kong where he died on the 21 August, 1855.\n\nThese accounts of some of the events in the lives of friends and relatives of Taiping leaders and their association with the missionary",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    }
]