New Forces in Old China: An Inevitable Awakening

by Arthur Judson Brown

And so the irrepressible conflict broke out. It had to come, a conflict between conservatism and progress, between race prejudice and brotherhood, between superstition and Christianity, the tremendous conflict of ages which every nation has had to fight, and which in China was not different in kind, but only on a more colossal scale because there it involved half the human race at once. Of course it was impossible for so vast a nation permanently to segregate itself. The river of progress cannot be permanently stayed. It will gather force behind an obstacle until it is able to sweep it away. The Boxer uprising was the breaking up of this fossilized conservatism. It was such a tumultuous upheaval as the crusades caused in breaking up the stagnation of mediaeval Europe. As France opposed the new ideas, which in England were quietly accepted, only to have them surge over her in the frightful flood of the revolution, so China entered with the violence always inseparable from resistance the transition which Japan welcomed with a more open mind.

Though missionaries were not the real cause of the Boxer uprising, its horrors fell most heavily upon them. This was partly because many of them were living at exposed points in the interior while most other foreigners were assembled in the treaty ports where they were better protected; partly because the movement developed such hysterical frenzy that it attacked with blind, unreasoning fury every available foreigner, and partly because in most places the actual killing and pillaging were not done by the people who best knew the missionaries but by mobs from the slums, ruffians from other villages, or, as in Paoting-fu and Shan-si, in obedience to the direct orders of bigoted officials.

And so it came to pass that the innocent suffered more than the guilty. Dr. A. H. Smith[61] concluded after careful inquiry that ``the devastating Boxer cyclone cost the lives of 135 adult Protestant missionaries and fifty-three children and of thirty- five Roman Catholic Fathers and nine Sisters. The Protestants were in connection with ten different missions, one being unconnected. They were murdered in four provinces and in Mongolia, and belonged to Great Britain, the United States and Sweden. No such outbreak against Christianity has been seen in modern times. The destruction of property was on the same continental scale. Generally speaking, all mission stations north of the Yellow River, with all their dwelling-houses, chapels, hospitals, dispensaries, schools, and buildings of every description were totally destroyed, though there were occasional exceptions, of which the village where these pages are written was one. The central and southern portions of the Empire were only partially affected by the anti-foreign madness, not because they were under different conditions, but mainly through the strong repressive measures of four men, Liu Kun Yi and Chang Chih-tung, Governors-General of the four great provinces in the Yang-tse Valley; Yuan Shih Kai in Shantung, and a Manchu, Tuan Fang, in Shen-si. The jurisdiction of this quartette made an impassable barrier across which the movement was unable to project itself in force, but much mischief in an isolated way was wrought in nearly every part of China not rigorously controlled.''

[61] ``Rex Christus,'' p. 210.

So many volumes have been written about the Boxer Uprising that it is not necessary to double the size of this book in order to recount the details. For the full narrative, the reader is referred to the books mentioned below.[62] But I cannot for- bear some description of the scenes of massacre that I personally visited. I was unable to go to the remoter province of Shan-si where so many devoted men and women laid down their lives and where many who escaped death endured indescribable hardships. But in the province of Shantung, where the Boxer Uprising originated, I was witness to the ruin that was wrought in many places, though the iron hand of the great Governor, Yuan Shih Kai, prevented much bloodshed. Then I turned to the northern province of Chih-li where official hands, instead of restraining, actually guided and goaded the maddened rioters.

[62] ``China in Convulsion,'' Arthur H. Smith; ``The Outbreak in China,'' F. L. Hawks Pott; ``The World Crisis in China, 1900,'' Allen S. Will; ``Siege Days,'' A. H. Mateer; ``The Siege of Peking,'' Wm. A. P. Martin; ``The Providence of God in the Siege of Peking,'' C. H. Fenn; ``The Tragedy of Paoting-fu,'' Isaac C. Ketler; ``The China Martyrs of 1900,'' Robert C. Forsythe; ``China,'' James H. Wilson, ``China's Book of Martyrs,'' Luella Miner; ``Two Heroes of Cathay,'' Luella Miner; ``Through Fire and Sword in Shan-si,'' E. H. Edwards; ``Chinese Heroes,'' I. T. Headland; ``Martyred Missionaries of the C. I. M.,'' Broomhall; ``The Crisis in China,'' G. B. Smith and others.

After a delightful voyage of eighteen hours from Chefoo over a smooth sea, we anchored outside the bar, nine miles from shore, the tide not permitting our steamer to cross with its heavy load. A tug took us off and entering the Pei-ho River, we passed the famous Taku forts to the railway wharf at Tong-ku. It was significant to find foreign flags flying over the Taku forts and also over the mud-walled villages near by. Scores of merchant steamers, transports and war vessels were lying off Taku as well as hundreds of junks. The river was full of smaller craft among which were several Japanese and American gunboats. The railroad station presented a motley appearance. A regiment of Japanese had just arrived and while we were waiting, three train-loads of British Sikhs and several cars of Austrian marines and British ``Tommy Atkins'' came in. The platform was thronged with officers and soldiers of various nationalities, including a few Russians.

Nothing could be more dreary than the mud flats that the traveller to the imperial city first sees. The greater part of the way from Taku to Peking, the soil is poor and little cultivated. But as we advanced, kao-liang fields were more frequent, though the growth was far behind that in Shantung at the same season. Small trees were numerous during the latter half of the trip. The soil being too thin for good crops, the people grow more fuel and fruit.

Evidences of the great catastrophe were seen long before reaching the capital. Burned villages and battered buildings lined the route. At Tien-tsin several of the foreign buildings had shell holes. One corrugated iron building near the railway station was pierced like a sieve and thousands of native houses were in ruins. The city wall had been razed to the ground and a highway made where it had stood—an unspeakable humiliation to the proud commercial metropolis. The Japanese soldiers teased the citizens by telling them that ``a city without a wall is like a woman without clothes,'' and the people keenly felt the shame implied in the taunt.

In Peking, the very fact that the railroad train on which we travelled rushed noisily through a ragged chasm in the wall of the Chinese city, and stopped at the entrance of the Temple of Heaven, was suggestive of the consequences of war. The city, as a whole, was not as badly injured as I had expected to find it, but the ravages of war were evident enough. Wrecked shops, crumbled houses, shot-torn walls were on every side, while the most sacred places to a Chinese and a Manchu had been profaned. At other times the Purple Forbidden City, the Winter and Summer Palaces, the Temple of Heaven and kindred imperial enclosures are inaccessible to the foreigner. But a pass from the military authorities opened to us every door. We walked freely through the extensive grounds and into all the famous buildings—including the throne rooms which the highest Chinese official can approach only upon his knees and with his face abjectly on the stone pavement—and the private apartments of the Emperor and the Empress Dowager. I was impressed by the vastness of the Palace buildings and grounds, the carvings of stone and wood, and the number of articles of foreign manufacture. But thousands of Americans in moderate circumstances have more spacious and comfortable bedrooms than those of the Emperor and Empress Dowager of China. All the living apartments looked cheerless. The floors were of artificial stone or brick in squares of about 20 x 20 inches and of course everything was covered with dust. The far-famed Temple of Heaven is the most artistic building in China, a dream of beauty, colour and grace. For a generation before the siege of Peking, no foreigner except General Grant had entered that sacred enclosure, and the Chinese raised a furore because Li Hung Chang admitted even the distinguished American. As I freely walked about the place, photographed the Temple and stood on the circular altar that is supposed to be the centre of the earth and where the Emperor worships alone at the winter solstice, British Sikhs lounged under the trees, army mules munched the luxuriant grass and quartermasters' wagons stood in long rows near the sacred spot where a Chinese would prostrate himself in reverence and fear.