But never forgetting the "basic word" was not to mean that one should utter it out loud: rather the brotherhood members broke the character "Hong" into component parts, each of which could be represented by a Chinese number. Thus since "Hong" had three dots on the left-hand side, a two-dot form similar to the Chinese number "8" at its base, the form for "one" at its center, and a shorthand form of "20" at the top, brotherhood members would use the phrase "3-8-21" when speaking or introducing each other, or could combine the three dots and the two dots into the word "five" and identify themselves by saying "five and twenty-one."31
By the time that Hong Xiuquan and Feng Yunshan are preaching in Guangxi, the Heaven-and-Earth Society has spread there both among the Hakkas and the original inhabitants. Just as the society brothers once did in the Canton delta region, they swell their numbers in Guangxi by forcing local farmers—with threats, or murders of those who show reluctance—to join them, and few dare refuse.32 Through their own contacts in Hong Kong and elsewhere, they too have access to Western weapons, which they ship inland by boat. It was a head of the local Heaven-and- Earth Society in Hong Kong, for instance, who bought the rifle off the deserter from the Ceylon Rifles, and other brothers used a house owned by a society member next to the schoolhouse outside the east gate of Canton city as the base for their communications with dealers in Hong Kong.33 On both the main rivers of Guangxi, and the smaller tributaries, they often set up "toll stations" to take their dues from those moving river goods and passengers. Others shift their major gambling operations, once flourishing in the area around Canton, to the towns around Guiping, openly flaunting their control.34 Perhaps it is the brazenness of this conduct that prompts Hong Xiuquan to list gambling as the sixth of his commandments, and to link it to both wine and opium, and Feng to find a ready audience when he repeats the same message.
For those Chinese who bitterly resent the river bandits' power and choose not to join them, one alternative is to form their own militia groups, as local communities have for centuries past, not only in such famous gatherings as the righteous hosts of gentry and farmers assembled against the British troops on the hills above Canton at Sanyuanli, but in countless other regions and communities as well. By 1846 such militias are growing numerous, controlled by Chinese landlords, recruited at the village level from local residents paid in grain, often with village tax money, some of which was also paid by Hakkas.35
The migration of Hakka people to the Guiping region from the area north and east of Canton city has been a steady one for fifty years or more, long antedating the problems with the displaced pirates. But the movement continues as the social order cracks apart, so that in some areas, especially in the hills, the Hakkas now outnumber the original inhabitants. Since these Hakkas are often members of the Heaven-and-Earth Society, feuds become a feature of eastern Guangxi life in the 1840s, as the various groups clash over areas of residence and land use rights. "Revenge against those who speak the Hakka tongue" becomes a popular slogan among the local Chinese families.36 Hakka farmers—both men and women—in their hillside plots take weapons to their work, and rally in groups a hundred strong with hoes or spears if the alarm is given. The local tribal leaders, dispossessed by both groups, and themselves often corrupt or heavily in debt, watch from the sidelines but take no action.37
For beleaguered Hakkas in this tense environment, Hong's message of salvation has a special resonance, and Feng Yunshan's Society of God- Worshipers draws eager converts not only for its religious message but because its numbers and organization give promise of solidarity against threatening forces all around.38 As a poverty-stricken God-worshiper describes this chaotic process of divided and uncertain loyalties: "Bandit raids continued year after year, with unending robbing of pawnshops and attacks on towns. The country people were used to seeing [armed] bands and ceased to be afraid; so when they saw the troops of the God-worshippers arrive . . . they did not flee elsewhere. Because of this, they were oppressed by the militia and therefore joined us in bewilderment."39
If the Hakkas of the Guiping region begin to flock in growing numbers to P'eng's God-Worshipers, it may also be because the ground for Christian faith there has been prepared by Karl Gutzlaff, the German missionary who cruised the Chinese coast in 1836, handing out his tracts with Edwin Stevens. Since that time, Gutzlaff has not only been developing a new technique for spreading his Redeemer's words; he has also been serving as the interpreter and Chinese-language secretary to the newly appointed British superintendent of trade, and so is in an excellent position to know the state of anti-pirate campaigns and the social conditions of the Chinese countryside.''0
Gutzlaff, unlike the more cautious missionaries in China, continues to think that one should do everything possible to understand the Chinese, in order to convert them: to "learn from their own mouth their prejudices, witness their vices, and hear their defence, in order to meet them effectually. ... In style we ought to conform entirely to the Chinese taste.'"" Gutzlaff also believes that "the converts ought themselves to contribute towards the advancement of the blessed work, and the congregations formed become missionary societies to all around them," so he creates in 1844 an organization of Chinese to work with him to achieve their common Christian goals, the "Chinese Union." Claiming 37 members in that first year of operation, by late 1845 he reports the membership has jumped to 210. The following year, as numbers continue to rise, subsidiary posts of the union are formed in Guangxi province, among them one in Guiping county itself, whither Chinese preachers from the union travel in some numbers to spread the word, and report that "lots of people" in Guangxi are becoming "worshippers of Yesu" (that is, of Jesus), among them even converted pirates.42
Gutzlaff himself, as a member of the "Moravian Brethren" of Christians, has a profoundly open view of missionary endeavor. He believes that the Chinese Union, even if composed of largely untrained Chinese converts, can still spread the ideas of a shared spiritual brotherhood and the values of communal life, and that the central goal of conversion to Christ far outweighs any scruples about the specificities of particular denominations or churches, or whether the Chinese Christians still practice ancestor worship or make offerings to God the Father.43
Already in the 1830s, before the Opium War began, Gutzlaff had been publishing pamphlets in Chinese on religious, educational, and scientific subjects, and circulating them both in Canton city and along the coasts as he explored them on his illegal journeys. In the 1840s, as the Chinese Union grows and spreads, he immeasurably increases this production, and uses the considerable cash contributions that flow in to him from European supporters of his missionary endeavors to pay his union members to spread the tracts to inland China, especially Guangxi. These tracts are far smaller and hence easier to carry and distribute than the bulkier version of Liang Afa, even though Liang's nine-chapter text was not always circulated as one volume, but sometimes as four or five bound clusters of two or three chapters, or even as nine separate stitched volumes of single chapters, which would have made them lighter but even harder to follow.44
Each of the more than fifty tracts that Gutzlaff or his Chinese Union members write or circulate in the 1840s has a simple theme. Some cite passages from the New Testament and elaborate briefly on them: "Blessed are the Poor in Spirit," "Blessed are those who suffer for Righteousness' sake," "They that are in the flesh cannot please God," "Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself." Some are on specific elements within the Christian faith: on repentance, prayer, Jesus' love, the resurrection, everlasting life, God's forgiveness of our sins. Some deal with specific verses or chapters from the Bible, such as Genesis, chapter 3, on the fall and expulsion of Adam
and Eve, or the First Epistle of John, chapter 1, on the light and joy brought by Jesus to our lives:
That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you
, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:3-5)
Other passages are chosen by Gutzlaff with special artfulness and pertinence, such as the opening of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, with its message of travel and expansion of the faith: "I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the Barbarians; both to the wise, and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the gospel to you that are in Rome also."45 While Feng Yunshan moves slowly deeper into the mountains of Guangxi, Hong resumes his life at Guanlubu. Tired of wandering, Hong earns his keep by teaching once again, and continues to work on his own tracts, two of which he finishes in 1845 or 1846. In the first, Hong draws on Chinese classical writings such as the Book of Rituals and the Book of Changes to explore how China once shared a vision with the rest of the world that was both compassionate and without local hostilities and divisions. In the time of China's early sage rulers, "those who had and those who had not were mutually compassionate." No one needed to bar their doors, and the world maintained a natural virtue as "men and women walked on different paths." Human love for others extended far beyond the confines of the family: all the young were given the resources they needed to grow, all able-bodied adults received employment, all those disabled by disease were nourished, all the aged were cared for until their deaths.46
One of the human tragedies that broke this harmony was the spread of localism and special interests. Hong Xiuquan uses two lines from the thirteenth hexagram of the Book of Changes, "Human Fellowship," to illustrate this point concisely: "Fellowship with people in the open, success. Fellowship with people in the clan, humiliation."4' The language in which Hong expands on this idea seems full of his experiences both with his own family and community in Guanlubu and with the problems of the Huangs and Zhangs in Sigu village and Guiping on his Guangxi visit. Our lives and ways have become "intolerant and shallow," writes Hong, and we have come to be ruled by selfishness:
Hence, there are cases where this country resents that country, and that country resents this country. Worse than that, there are cases within one country when this province, this prefecture, or this district resents that province, that prefecture, or that district; and that province, that prefecture, or that district resents this province, this prefecture, or this district. And beyond that again, there are even cases within one province, prefecture, or district where this village, this hamlet, or this clan resents that village, that hamlet, or that clan; and that village, that hamlet, or that clan resents this village, this hamlet, or this clan. The ways of the world and the minds of men having come to this, how can they do otherwise than to insult each other, to wrest things from each other, to battle with each other, and to kill one another, and thus perish altogether?48
Since all of us, in all countries and all clans, share the same Great God and Universal Father, why do we keep on with these absurd distinctions and conflicts?
How can it be that this perverse and unfeeling world cannot in a day be transformed into an honest and upright world? How can it be that this age so full of insults and violations, fighting and killing, cannot in a day be changed into a world where the strong no more oppress the weak, the many overwhelm the few, the wise delude the simple, or the bold annoy the fearful?49
In the second, and much longer, tract Hong pursues the same ideas of fractured harmony, but now he concentrates his energies on exploring the reasons that can be gleaned from China's own history for the falling from a grace that all had once shared. Hong's quest is for a continuity between past and present, for all interpretations that deny such continuity must, in their essence, be false. If we are told that something "is applicable to modern times and not applicable to antiquity," then we can be sure that it represents "the false way, the evil way, and the small way."50 The powers of the demon devil king Yan Luo are a case in point. People ascribe the power over life and death to this spirit, but he is only the same old "serpent devil" who deceived Adam and Eve, as he deceives us now by his endless transformations, but his power has never been anything compared to that of God.
The growth of superstitious beliefs of this kind can be traced epoch by epoch, ruler by ruler, says Hong, and he proceeds to draw on his earlier historical studies to do just that. First to slide away from worshiping the One True God were tribes on the periphery of China proper, like the Li and Miao, who began to venerate the demons. Then came early rulers of the founding Qin dynasty, who searched for secrets of immortality among the islands of the Eastern Sea. After them, the rulers of the early Han dynasty sought by sacrificing to the Kitchen God to transmute cinnabar to gold and managed to draw a throng of charlatans to their court; their successors of the later Han, and rulers of the Liang and Tang, sent their magic specialists to India in search of the Buddha and his bones. Most damaging was the ruler of the Song, who changed the name of the True God of All to the "Great Jade Emperor," this being to Hong "the worst kind of blasphemy" of them all. Such absurdities have since been spread and elaborated through such books as the Jade Record.51
In contrast, writes Hong, the books brought by the foreigners to China show clearly enough how God's plan really was conceived, and how erroneous these Chinese aberrations must be seen to be. The vast waters of Noah's flood, proof of God's wrath and spreading over the world for forty days and nights, show clearly enough that it cannot be the dragon devil of the Eastern Sea who brings rain to China, despite the sacrifices so many people make to him. When God called Moses to Mount Sinai, He warned him clearly not to let the people of the world set up any kinds of images, or worship them. The "real nature" of the demon devil evaporates on close inspection, in just the same way as bean curd turns out to be full of water. How ever could such a demon devil as Yan Luo be called divine? Even Jesus himself, our Savior and the Son of God, may be called our Lord (zhu) but not our God (di), even though except for Jesus' Father none are as great as he is. How could one, knowing this, rebel against God's commands and "join with the evil demons in rebelling against Heaven"? Nothing could be more pitiable, more sad, than that!52
While Hong Xiuquan writes and teaches, others are talking about him. It is known to some in Canton city that he has read and believed the tracts of Liang Afa, that he preaches, that he has friends who do the same. These men in turn tell members of the Chinese Union, who work with Issachar Roberts. Roberts came to China from Tennessee at the invitation and under the inspiration of Karl Gutzlaff, and was the first to return to Canton from Hong Kong after the Opium War of 1839-42: living in the suburbs of the city, dressing in Chinese clothes, erecting a small chapel with a bell tower, learning Hakka dialect, and gathering a small group of Chinese converts around him.55 A maverick whose affiliations with mission groups in the United States are often temporary and stormy, Roberts joins up with Gutzlaff s Chinese Union in the mid-1840s, and gratefully accepts the small payments that Gutzlaff makes to him. For Roberts, the heart of Christian conversion and devotion lies in the act of baptism, and his own most lyrical writings describe the joys of thus greeting new Christians in the rolling surf off the shores of Hong Kong or in the flowing rivers of China. For choice, in the hot seasons of the south, Roberts takes the baptismal candidates out into the water at night-time, when the moon is full and bright, immersing each one completely "in the spacious deep in imitation of the death and burial of his Lord," before raising them once again "in imitation of the resurrection of Jesus.'°4
A Christian convert from Canton visits Hua county in 1846, and urges both Hong and his cousin Hong Rengan to visit Roberts at his chapel and hear his preaching. Both Hongs are too busy with their own teaching to accept. But early in 1847 Roberts' senior assistant, a convert and member of the Chinese Union, writes formally to Hong Xiuquan and urges him to visit. This time Hong accepts, and persuades Hong Rengan to accompany him. Roberts receives them cordially, and under his general supervision the two cousins read the Bible, in Gutzlaff s translation, bo
th the Old Testament and the New. Though Hong Rengan does not stay long, Hong Xiuquan perseveres, and asks Roberts (as Liang Afa some thirty years before asked Milne) to prepare him formally for the rites of baptism. Roberts agrees to take him in his care, and sends two of his Chinese converts to Guanlubu, to see what sort of reputation Hong Xiuquan has at home.55 As has happened before in Hong's life, suddenly and without clear explanation something goes wrong. Just a few days before, baptism seemed assured. Hong had written out his statement of faith and purpose for Roberts, as baptists must, to prove the sincerity of their religious call, and Roberts found it satisfactory. Nothing untoward was said about him to the investigators in Guanlubu. Some contemporaries say that Hong falls into a trap, a trap laid by other jealous Chinese converts who work for Roberts. Knowing that Roberts hates those who claim they seek baptism only in order to gain employment or a stipend from the Christian missionaries, and fearing that Hong might be hired by Roberts and thus cost one of them his job, they tell Hong to ask Roberts for financial reassurance about the future. Guilelessly, Hong does just that, forfeiting Roberts' trust and support. It sounds far-fetched, but times are hard for those with or without education living around Canton, and Roberts is famous for his sudden tantrums and zealous adherence—when it suits him—to the articles of his baptist faith. Roberts' only comment on the matter is that Hong chose to leave before Roberts was "fully satisfied of his fitness."56
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