A Woman In China

by Mary Gaunt

We are beginning to look upon China as a land at peace. We talk about her “bloodless revolution,” yet even as I write these words I see, sitting opposite to me, my friend who was one of the rescue-party, the gallant nine, who rode post-haste to Hsi An Fu to rescue the missionaries cut off by the tide of the revolution, and I know the peace of China is not as the peace of a Western land.

Hsi An Fu is situated in Shensi, roughly, about a fortnight's journey from the nearest railway, with walls that rival those of Peking, and like Peking, with a Manchu City walled off inside those walls. There on the 22nd October, 1911, the Revolutionaries, the apostles of progress, shut fast the gates of the inner city and butchered the Manchus within the walls. From house to house they went, and slew them all, old women on the brink of the grave and the tiny infant smiling in its mother's arms. Not one was spared. No cries for mercy were listened to. “Kill, kill!” was the cry that bright autumn Sunday; men, women, and children were slain, the streets ran with their blood, the reek of slaughter went up to heaven, and the Manchus were exterminated.

The movement was not anti-foreign, but the plight of the missionaries well illustrates the danger every foreigner faces in China. The bulk of the people are peaceful. Nowhere in the world, I suppose, is a more peaceful person to be found than the average Chinese peasant. He asks only to be let alone, but, unfortunately, he is not let alone. His rulers “squeeze” and oppress him, bands of robbers take toll of his pittance, and when an unpaid soldiery is let loose upon him, his plight is pitiable. It is certainly understandable, if not pardonable, that he in his turn, takes to pillage, and pillage leads to murder. He is only a puppet in the hands of others. One man alone may be kindly enough but the man who is one of a mob, is swayed by the passions of that mob, or the passions of its leader. So it was at Hsi An Fu. Party feeling ran high. There were really three parties, the Manchus, the Revolutionaries, and the Secret Society, the Elder Brother Society, who are always anti-foreign and who, here in Hsi An Fu, for whatever purpose they might originally have banded themselves together, were virtually a band of robbers, mainly intent on filling their own pockets. The Revolutionaries declared that the foreigners should be protected, but—and again the menace of China to the white man is felt—in the rush and tumult of the battle, many of their followers did not realise this. This was the time to wreak private vengeance, and it was fiercely taken advantage of. When thousands of helpless people, closer akin to the slayers than the foreigners, were being given pitilessly to the sword, who was likely to take much account of a handful of missionaries.

There was outside the city in the south suburb a small school for the teaching of the Swedish missionaries' children, and the head of that school had, some little time before, had a camera stolen. He reported it to the police, and being dissatisfied with the lax way the man at the head of the district took the matter up, went to his superior officer. Now in these disturbed times, the man who had “lost face” saw his way to vengeance, and, being in sympathy with the Revolutionaries, and knowing the exact hour of the outbreak, he ordered the villagers round the south suburb, every family, to send at least one man to help exterminate the foreigners. “It was an order,” and the villagers responded. The school was the first place attacked, for not only did this man seek vengeance, but the humble possessions of the missionaries seemed to the poorer Chinese to be wealth well worth looting. Therefore that Sunday at midnight a mob attacked the school premises. The missionaries, Mr and Mrs Beckman and Mr Watne, the tutor, were helpless before the crowd, and hid in a tool-house, but they were discovered and ran out, making for a high wall that surrounded the compound. Mr Watne got astride of this and handed over Mr Beckman's eldest daughter, a tall girl of twelve, but, before he could get the other children, the crowd rushed them, and he was tumbled over the wall, making his escape with the girl to another village some way off while the mob swept over the rest, scattering them far and wide. Mr Beckman, a particularly tall, stalwart man, considerably over six feet high, had his youngest child, a baby, in his arms, and the people gave way before him, closing in on the unfortunates who were following. It is impossible for an outsider to tell the tale of that massacre, for massacre it was, the people falling upon and doing to death the unfortunate woman and the children who were clustering round her. The darkness was filled with the fierce shouts of the murderers, and every now and again they were broken in upon by the terrified wail of a child butchered with none to help.

“Ta, ta,” cried the people, and they struck mercilessly, with spades and reaping hooks and knives, the weak and helpless, and dodged out of the way of the great, strong man who could fight a little for his life and the lives of those dear to him.

The woman and the children were slain and at last he was hunted, with the little girl still in his arms, into a deep pond of water outside the suburb. The mite was only three years old, and the distracted father, wild with anxiety for his wife and other children, had to soothe the little one and exhort her to be quiet and not to cry, for the pursuers were lighting fires round the pond to find them. They lighted three, and the fires probably defeated their own end, for the fugitive managed to keep out of the glare, and the leaping flames deepened the darkness around. The baby sheltered in her father's arms, and in spite of the cold, never even whimpered, and the water was so deep the mob dared not venture in. Only a man of extraordinary height could have so saved himself. Hour after hour of the bitter cold autumn night passed and the mob dispersed a little. The lust for killing was not so great in the keen Hours of the early morning. Then the first silver streaks, heralding the rising of the moon, appeared in the eastern sky and the distracted man made his way softly to a bank at one side, and reaching up, again only a tall man could have done it, laid his little girl there. But the child who had been so good in the icy water while she was against his breast began to fret when the keen morning air blew through her sodden clothes and she could not feel her father's arms round her, and he had to take her back and soothe her. But at last he persuaded her to lie still till he got softly out of the water, and crept round to her. He was not followed, the pursuit was slackening more and more, and, keeping in the shadows, he made his way to the missionaries in the western suburb. He thought that all but he and his little girl had perished, and sad to say they did not know of the two who were sheltering in a village some miles away in the country. Here, nearly twelve hours later, the pursuers sought them out and stoned them to death.

Meanwhile rumours of what was happening in the southern suburb reached the missionaries in the eastern suburb, and they, taking counsel with their native helpers, divided themselves into three parties, and set out to take refuge in some more distant villages where the people were reputed Christians. They had gone but a little way, when the carts of two of the parties were overtaken by a mob, who handled them somewhat roughly, took all their humble possessions, and drove them back.

“Kill, kill!” cried the pointing people, as the little helpless company, escorted by the shouting, threatening mob passed, and even those who did not directly threaten, seemed to have no hope.

“They go to their deaths,” they said, looking at them curiously as men look upon other men about to die.

The missionaries themselves had small hope of their lives. When they reached the first mission-house they were roughly thrust into a room and there guarded, and they only wondered why death did not come swiftly and cut short the agony of waiting.