God's Chinese Son

by Jonathan Spence

  Caught between his pragmatic views and his deep and abiding admira­tion for Hong Xiuquan, Hong Rengan cannot but appear ambivalent to foreign missionaries who meet him. As he rises from his sofa to greet them, says "How do you do" in English, and shakes their hands, he is the affable host. Yet he is dressed in a long yellow damask robe, embroidered with dragons, wears a gilt crown set with precious stones upon his head, has crowds of boys to fan him, and rows of his subordinates before him, dressed in green or yellow robes with their flowing hair bound up in silken kerchiefs.24 Hong Rengan does not agree with every one of the Heavenly King's articles of faith, he tells the Western missionaries. The two central revelations of Hong Xiuquan, received in 1837 and 1848, most certainly are "real," says Hong Rengan, though it is not completely clear "how they should be understood."25 He does not, however, believe in the visions of the dead East King, Yang Xiuqing, though Hong Xiuquan "will not allow them to be questioned." As to the meaning of Hong's being the younger brother of Jesus, that is because Hong "regards Christ as the greatest of God's messengers, and himself as second only to him"; and it is in this light that he believes himself to be the brother of Christ and God's son.26

  If offerings—whether of rice, or tea, or meat—are made to God when the Taiping offer up their prayers, they should be seen as "merely thank- offerings, not propriatory," Hong Rengan explains. Similarly, the burning of written prayers after they have been chanted aloud is the action of those still new to the faith, and will eventually be abandoned. The Lord's Supper is not observed in Taiping territory, and wine is never drunk during religious services; baptism—which may be administered by any of the faithful—consists of a sprinkling of water followed by a washing of the chest. When one speaks of the Heavenly King's birth in terms of his "descending to earth," that should be understood as meaning "nothing more than natural birth, with a divine commission." The Heavenly King does not accept that God is immaterial; to Hong Xiuquan, God is material and he "does not brook contradiction on this point." Nor will Hong Xiu­quan change any of the terms for God that he has been using in his works. When Hong Rengan protests that the term "True God" should not be used, since God cannot be called either true or false, the Heavenly King rebuffs him. The Heavenly King reserves the final word on all matters of state, "but on most affairs not connected with religion he looks with con­tempt, remarking that they are 'things of this world' and not 'heavenly things.' "27

  Hong Rengan's own study in Nanjing, which he allows a visiting Englishman to enter, perfectly reflects the overlays of cultures between his former life in Hong Kong and his current life in the Heavenly Capital. Though the Englishman is sarcastic about the condition of the Shield King's possessions, he still manages to capture the mood and the variety:

  Turning through a small door to the left you come into the Shield King's own Sanctum, which is quite a museum in its way. It is a large cheerful room facing a garden of flowers. The principal article of furniture is a large bed of Soochow manufacture, covered with jade and other ornaments, and hung with yellow curtains. The King takes a siesta in this now and again. Tables line the sides of the chamber, and support a most extraordinary con­glomeration of different articles. There is a telescope on a moving pedestal (broken), a gun box (gun gone), three Colt's revolvers (all useless from rust), a box of gun caps, ditto of Vestas, two solar lamps that can't be made to light, and a cake of brown Windsor soap; the Woolwich Manual of Fortification, a book on military tactics, and the Holy Bible; any amount of Chinese books, comprising all those valuable works published by foreign missionaries, quires of yellow paper, five or six clocks, an alarum, broken barometer, heaps of proclamations, ink stones, gold pencils, and dirty rags. On the other side, piles of books suffering from moth, a hat box with the dragon hat inside, fans mounted in silver, jade stone drinking cups and saucers, gold and silver cups, platters, chopsticks and forks, three English Port wine bot­tles, and one ditto of Coward's mixed pickles. At various places are sus­pended an English naval sword, some dragon caps, a couple of Japanese knives, two French plates, and an old engraving of the Holy Well in Flintshire. Lying on the bed is a mass of silver ingots tied up in cloth. Chairs and stools with marble seats are placed round a marble table, and an atten­dant dressed in spotless white crape, with blue jacket pulls a punkah |fan|, and so keeps you beautifully cool. Here the Shield King will give you a pretty dinner and lots of wine. He told me that when the Heavenly King prohibited wine, he applied for a dispensation asserting that unless he drank he could not eat, and that the dispensation was immediately granted.28

  Surprising though the wine drinking may be in the atmosphere of the Heavenly Capital, the Shield King's openness to foreigners stands in stud­ied contrast to the aloofness or hostility showed to the Hermes, Cassini, and Susquehanna five years or so before both by the Heavenly King and by Yang Xiuqing. Trying to express his feelings on this matter, Hong Rengan writes in his memorandum to Hong Xiuquan of the most sensible way to handle foreigners:

  Insulting expressions are used in verbal quarrels; they have no real meaning in high-level affairs and are apt to cause disasters. Even when we apply such expressions to nearby small countries, such as Siam, Annam, Japan, and the Ryukyu Islands, they are bound to be resented, because regardless of their low stations, human beings are not willing to be considered inferior; even if they admit their inferiority, they do so because of compulsion, not out of wholehearted submission. If wholehearted submission is to be won, it must be won not by power but by the perfection of government within and the demonstration of faith without, for that is the only way.'9

  In his same memorandum, Hong Rengan seeks to widen the Heavenly King's knowledge of foreign countries through brief vignettes of their major attributes. The British tend to be intelligent, he writes, though "proud by nature," and have attained their reputation as "the most power­ful nation" through the stability of their institutions and ruling family. They respond well in conversation to such concepts as "equal status, friendship, harmony, and affection."30 The United States of America not only has righteousness, wealth, and power but refrains from encroaching upon her neighbors. Surprisingly, if gold or silver is discovered there, foreigners are allowed to come and dig for it. The country has no beggars, proof of its virtue. Men called "chiefs of the country" serve for five years then "retire to live in comfort" while the various component states choose a new leader by putting the names of their choices into large boxes. It is accepted by the American people that those they choose as rulers will be "worthy and capable," and that the "decisions reached by the majority are considered just."31

  Germans are primitive—they "resemble people of ancient times"—but are devout and conscientious; Scandinavians, "serene" of countenance under their pale hair, are broad-minded and friendly; France, the source of the arts and technologies now adopted by the other foreigners, is itself too steeped in mystical religion to be truly praised; Russia has embarked on great reforms, and given its vast size will soon be a major force. Japan, recently opened to trade with America, has been speedily acquiring new techniques, and "will certainly become skillful in the future."32

  In case the Heavenly King is worried that the foreigners will use the chance of entrance into China to cheat the Taiping out of their wealth, Hong Rengan suggests that the Taiping follow a self-conscious policy of preferential treatment for their own subjects:

  With foreigners, one has to devise ways to hold one's own. For instance, if they and we each open a store, we should not be required to pay rent, whereas the foreigners should be made to pay rent; we should use few work­ers, while they employ many; we should sell our products at a lower price, while they have to sell at a higher price. Thus we shall be benefited, while they suffer losses. We can prosper indefinitely, whereas they will collapse. How long can they maintain themselves in such a situation?

  Following this line of reasoning, Hong Rengan begins to develop the germ of a plan that the Taiping armies should try to make a bold march on the city of Shanghai t
o the southeast. Once in Shanghai, the Taiping should use one million ounces of the silver stored in their common trea­sury to buy a fleet of twenty modern steam vessels. With this fleet at their command, they could steam back up the Yangzi, raise the Qing siege around Nanjing, reopen the campaign to the west, and regain control of the key cities along the riverbank that they had been slowly losing to the Qing counterattacks.34

  As the seeds of this plan develop, the Heavenly King assigns Li Xiu-cheng to direct the military side of operations. The choice is a shrewd one. A skimpily educated farm worker when he joined the Taiping troops on their 1851 march toward Yongan, Li has risen rapidly through the Tai­ping ranks because of his natural brilliance as a military commander in their campaigns in west and central China, till in December 1859 he is named Loyal King, equivalent in rank to Hong Rengan.35 Outspoken and generous—and apparently the only senior Taiping leader who wears spectacles—Li is trusted and admired by his troops and by the foreigners he meets.36 It is not clear whether it is he or Hong Rengan who formulates the exact details for the eastern campaign of 1860, but whoever plans it, it is Li who carries through the most dazzling part: a swift dash with several thousand troops across the Yangzi delta to seize the great city of Hangzhou, and create a diversion to relieve Nanjing. There follows a forced march back to Nanjing, where the great Qing encampments, fatally weak­ened by the transfer of the troops sent to relieve Hangzhou, fall into the Taiping hands. And that accomplished, Li leads a renewed push eastward to seize Suzhou, which falls to the Taiping forces on June 2. And finally, his troops are massed before Shanghai, with every expectation of a quick and easy capture of the Chinese section of the city.3'

  The Loyal King, Li Xiucheng, has an optimistic view of Westerners— which echoes those presented in the memorandum of Hong Rengan— and believes them susceptible to reason. Since the Westerners have expressed their interest in neutrality in the Taiping battles with the demons, and since the Taiping forces have expressed their willingness to trade in all the Western goods save opium, alcohol, and tobacco, there should be no reason for the Westerners to do anything but welcome the Taiping soldiers when they drive the demon Qing from the Chinese city of Shanghai. Li believes that the foreigners in Shanghai will actually wel­come him, and that the Chinese citizens will yield up their city with only minimal resistance, just as the citizens of Suzhou have done.38

  As Li advances on Shanghai in mid-August 1860, with a military force of around three thousand men, he sends letters to the foreign envoys sta­tioned there to clarify his views. All foreign residences, and all foreign merchant buildings, will be left unmolested if they simply post a yellow flag as an identifying mark. Yellow flags should also be hung in all foreign churches—both Protestant and Catholic—so that his troops (who may not recognize the buildings by their architecture) leave them undamaged. As a further proof of his good intentions, Li orders the execution of one of his Taiping soldiers who has killed a foreigner—even though in this case the foreigner was in fact fighting alongside a squad of Qing demon troops. To make doubly sure, however, while the Taiping forces are engaged in storming the Chinese city, all foreigners are advised to stay indoors until the battle is concluded.39

  Li Xiucheng is shocked and bewildered when Western leaders abandon their stated position of neutrality, and during three days of heavy fighting use the concentrated fire of their artillery and small arms to stop his men from taking the Chinese city of Shanghai. Li's soldiers seem equally unprepared for the fire unleashed on them by the Westerners, and stand motionless at first, "like men of stone, immovable, without returning a single shot," while the bullets shred their ranks.40 In a letter ringing with bitterness and disappointment, on August 21, 1860, Li addresses the con­suls of Great Britain, the United States, and other countries:

  I have, however, taken into consideration that you and we alike worship Jesus, and that after all, there exists between us the relationship of a common basis and common doctrines. Moreover I came to Shanghai to make a treaty in order to see us connected together by trade and commerce; I did not come for the purpose of fighting with you. Had I at once commenced to attack the city and kill the people, that would have been the same as the members of one family fighting among themselves, which would have caused the demons to ridicule us.

  Further, amongst the people of foreign nations at Shanghai, there must be varieties in capacity and disposition: there must be men of sense, who know the principles of right, and are well aware of what is advantageous and what injurious. They cannot all covet the money of the demon's dynasty, and forget the general trading interests in this country.41

  The setback before Shanghai marks the moment at which the 1860 eastern campaign, hitherto so brilliant in its execution, turns out to be disastrous in its consequences. By seeking to divert their demon enemies, the Taiping end up by fragmenting their own energies and fatally antago­nizing the foreign powers. Not only do the British and French command­ers now demand that the Taiping keep clear of Shanghai around a radius of thirty miles; they also forbid the foreign merchants to ship any more supplies or arms upriver to the Taiping garrisons. This decision in turn leads to the Taiping loss of their crucial inland river base at Anqing, for as soon as Qing patrol boats assisted by British ships prevent merchants or smugglers from unloading at the Anqing wharves, the ultimate fate of the city is sealed. The well-led and disciplined Xiang army forces, under the command of the former Hunan gentry leader Zeng Guofan and his brother Zeng Guoquan, are able to tighten the siege and starve the city into submission, killing almost every single member of the Taiping garri­son forces, more than sixteen thousand in all. With the fall of the river garrison of Anqing in September 1861, the Taiping lines of communica­tion with inland China to the west and north lose their crucial anchor.42

  But in August 1860 the fate of Anqing is still more than a year away, and Hong Xiuquan himself makes no specific comment on the course of the eastern campaign. He neither praises Hong Rengan and Li Xiucheng for the raising of the Nanjing siege and the capture of Suzhou, nor upbraids them for the setback at Shanghai. Hong does still appear to harbor dreams for a great new "northern campaign," one that perhaps will at last bring down the pillars of the demon's kingdom, for the forces led by Lord Elgin have seized Peking in September 1860, burned the emperor's summer palace to the ground, and forced the emperor himself to flee beyond the wall. But when Li argues that such a northern campaign cannot be undertaken at this time, Hong Xiuquan, though "full of right­eous indignation," lets his general have his way.43

  Neither the problems in Shanghai, the use of force against the Taiping by the Western troops, nor their steady patrolling of the Yangzi River causes the Heavenly King to waver in his absorption with the True Reli­gion. Indeed, Hong has found a new book now to supplement his rewrit­ten Bible, a book that according to the Shield King, Hong Rengan, becomes his favorite reading at just this time. The book is Pilgrim's

  Progress (1678), by John Bunyan.44 One of Hong Rengan's missionary acquain­tances from his Hong Kong days, William Burns, has translated the book into Chinese, and published it in Amoy in 1853. Short summaries of Pil­grim's Progress have been printed in Chinese before, but now the Heavenly King can follow Christian's journey to the new Jerusalem in all its solem­nizing detail, aided by ten carefully rendered illustrations. Possibly Hong Rengan brings the book with him in 1858 and gives it to his sovereign, but Hong may have obtained a copy earlier, for the book has been circulat­ing widely, and besides the 1853 edition there have been others printed in the mid-1850s in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Fuzhou.45

  The man called Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress is presented by Bun­yan as being the product of a dream, but a dream so vivid we can under­stand with all our souls how Christian staggers under the weight of his guilt and sin, till freed by faith and the words of the evangelist who watches over him. To make his way toward his New Jerusalem, he gives up all the comforts of home and wife and children, and risks suffering, torture, and death. Man
y of his closest companions die along the way, and others—feigned companions—turn out to be deceivers, lost in idleness or faithlessness. The illustrations heighten the emotion of various episodes: Christian's baby in his mother's arms, stretching out his hand toward his disappearing father; the burden falling off Christian's back as he prays before the cross of Jesus; and Christian, flanked by the guardian knight and shepherds, gazing through a telescope toward the New Jerusalem.46 Narrow is the gate through which Christian must pass before his adventures are well begun, and many are the distractions and false detours before he reaches it.47 "Earnestly exhort all the people of the world to enter the narrow door," Hong tells his family and his ministers in his proclamation of March 1861, for "this day is the heavenly day of great peace, prophesied long ago in the Gospel, and now proven. The narrow door lies in the Holy Edict of the Father and the Elder Brother."48 Though Hong Xiuquan now never leaves his palace and the shelter of its double row of yellow walls, every morning new edicts in his own hand, in vermilion ink on yellow silk, are posted at one of the gates of his Heavenly Palace, the gate called "Holy Heavenly Gate of the True God." These texts now deal mainly with religion, including the relationship and nature of God and His Son or Sons.49