God's Chinese Son (13 page)

Is their plan somehow to emulate the restless traveling of Jesus, or the far-flung journeying of his Apostles? Or is it mere survival? They do not say, but their initial route betrays their indecision, as if they want to travel far and yet not get too far away from home. First they go to Canton city, re-traveling, for Hong, the route of four examination trips; the open fighting there is over, the cannon stilled, but still the city seethes with bitterness, of Chinese against the Manchus, and of the populace against the British, whom they will not allow to enter within their walls, despite the specific treaty provisions. Unwilling to provoke another war, the Brit­ish continue to negotiate, and build their Hong Kong base. From Canton the four men travel down into the delta region, then curve northwest, re-entering the city via the western gate, exiting through the eastern gate, marching and preaching in a semicircle through the eastern hills until they rest for a while in Qingyuan county, some forty miles north of Guanlubu. Here they are welcomed by the locals, and baptize many in the clan of the Li—relatives perhaps of Hong's first convert—who remain thereafter steadfast in the faith. Heading farther north, then west again, they pause at White Tiger village in early May. They have tramped around their province for thirty-four days, and have ended up a little over a hundred miles from where they started.
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Here, at Hong Xiuquan's own urgings, the little group breaks up. According to Hong's later recollections, he wished to travel on alone, but Feng Yunshan insisted on accompanying him, while Feng's two relations chose to return to their homes and families.
¹⁸
The plan that Hong Xiuquan and Feng devise is bold and potentially dangerous. They will walk all the way to Guangxi province in the west, to the village of Sigu in Guiping county. They choose this destination because it is the home, among others, of that same Hakka family named Huang, distant relatives of Hong Xiu­quan's, two of whose members had visited him the previous year, and been converted and baptized by him before returning home. Hong and Feng know little of the geography of the region, nor even the best route to follow for this journey of 250 miles or more across rather than along the major river routes, and through mountainous regions, many sparsely settled, or inhabited mainly by native Miao or Yao tribesmen with little knowledge of or interest in Chinese government and culture.
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But as it happens, the journey is peaceful. People along the way reach out to help them, especially a Chinese teacher who has made his home among the hills, and runs a school there for the children of the Miao. He entertains them, and believes their message, and they entrust him with spreading their message among the Miao, for neither Hong nor Feng can understand a word of the Miao people's dialect. As they leave, they write out their doctrine for the teacher, and he in turn gives them a little travel­ing money. Often they walk all day with only occasional cups of tea and snacks they buy at roadside village stalls. Despite these hazards, and their shortage of funds, they know that they "travel under the One True God's protection," and reach the Guangxi town of Mengyu on May 21, 1844, after seventeen days of travel, averaging over fourteen miles a day. From there they travel another fifteen miles farther west, till they reach the Huang family home in Sigu village, where they are welcomed by their host, the two men previously baptized in Guanlubu, and five other branches of the Huang and Hong clans, with whom they are able to stay in turns.
²⁰

To reach out effectively to potential converts, and speed the holy work, Hong knows—it is Liang Afa who taught him—that one needs tracts describing the One True God's religion. So while staying either in or near Sigu village, Hong starts to write his own "Exhortations to Worship the One True God," echoing the title of Liang Afa's tracts. These "Exhorta­tions" are Hong Xiuquan's first substantial pieces of writing, except for short poems and examination essays. As the months glide by he continues to write, in paired verse couplets of seven characters each, which will make the message easier to remember for those who cannot read.
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Almost certainly Hong's "Exhortations" are built from material in Hong's head, as he and Feng can have carried few books with them on their two months of marching, and a non-scholar family in rural Guangxi probably had scant library resources. For a man trained for the Confucian examinations for twenty years or more, China's basic Confucian texts are firmly lodged, as are the basic outline and major figures in China's long recorded history. In any case, Hong keeps most of the allusions simple.
²²
And though we cannot tell if he has taken Liang Afa's text with him on his journey, with his mental training he will have committed all the major parts to memory, and recall them at his own volition.

Hong may have written several "Exhortations," but only one complete example has come down to us, the "Ode on the Origin of the Way and Our Salvation." As Hong explains in his preamble to this ode, China has fallen away from a basic belief that once was shared by all:

God the Father and Lord of All belongs to all people.

The idea that the world is one dates from long ago.

From the time of Pan Gu
^[2]
through the first three dynasties

Rulers and subjects alike revered the Lord of Heaven.
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In that ancient time, such faith and belief were automatic: Heaven and humans, in those earlier days, saw as one. So how could God then have needed anyone to supplement Him? Certainly not the Buddha, who did not even exist in those far-off days. Our central task is to shun the evil spirits, and cleave to the way of moral Tightness—those who cleave to such Tightness will be embraced by Heaven—those who do not will be abhorred by Heaven. And so, writes Hong, we must follow six command­ments that will keep us on the path of righteousness: The first of these is never to follow the path of lust. The second is always to obey our parents. The third is never to kill people. The fourth is not to steal. The fifth is to stay away from all witchcraft and magical arts. The sixth is never to gamble.
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In glossing each of these, Hong uses his years of reading to emphasize the moral point. Lust changes us to demons and thus enrages Heaven, he argues in explaining the first commandment. Debauching others and debauching ourselves are equally outrageous. How much better it would be to chant the poem in the Confucian
Odes
about the footprints of the Lin. Hong is confident that anyone of any education knows this poem from China's earliest anthology:

The feet of the Lin— The noble sons of our Prince, Ah, they are the Lin.

The forehead of the Lin—

The noble grandsons of our Prince,

Ah, they are the Lin.

The horn of the Lin—

The noble kindred of our Prince,

Ah, they are the Lin.

Hong and his readers know the "Lin" is a fabulous female creature, sym­bol of the good, made up of parts from other creatures of good omen: she has the body of a deer, an ox's tail, a single horn, a horse's hooves, a fish's scales. Confucius told us to remember the footprints of the Lin because the Lin can move so lightly that it harms no living thing by its tread, not even the grass. Similarly her horn is tipped with flesh, showing that though she stands ready to fight with it if necessary, she much prefers the path of peace.
²⁵

We can see a similar point being made, writes Hong, in the answers that Confucius gave to one of his sincerest disciples, Yen Hui, who asked about the attainment of perfect virtue. Such virtue, said Confucius, lies in restraining the self by means of ritualized propriety. The steps on this path to virtue must be fourfold: by controlling vision, hearing, speech, and
²⁶
actions.

The second commandment, always to obey one's parents, is self-evident and barely needs illustration, writes Hong. Even the animals and birds intuitively understand it, as the lamb kneels down to suck its mother's milk, or the fledgling crow returns to its parents their proffered food. The great sage ruler Shun wept and cried aloud as he worked in the fields at the foot of Li Mountain, because he could not understand why his parents should hate him when he sought only to serve them dutifully. Twice, indeed, they sought to kill him, to get his property, his wives, his flocks and land. Once they fired the storehouse when he was working on the roof, and he would have perished in the flames had he not swiftly extem­porized a pair of wings and glided down to safety. And once, when he was working at the bottom of a well, they filled it with stones to crush him, but he escaped through a transverse tunnel he had cunningly pre­pared. But despite this vivid evidence of their hostility to him, he never wavered in his affectionate regard for them.
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The third commandment, not to kill, is also self-evident in various ways: since in this world all are brothers, killing anyone of our own species must be wrong; since all of us are God's children, to destroy others is to strike at Him. Thus in ancient China people never killed wantonly, and the early rulers wept when they had to punish people and even gave up territory rather than fight. Those who kill are no better than bandits, and those who take up arms to kill those in authority will either end up being driven to take their own lives or will vanish as though they had never been—this is as true for those who sought to destroy the Ming dynasty as for those, long before, who fought against the rulers of the Qin or Tang.
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The fourth commandment, not to steal, is for Hong not a question of social order but one of internal moral stance. It is true that Heaven will withdraw its protection from all who form gangs for the purposes of robbing others, but at the same time the man of moral principle will not dream of taking another's property even if he has the opportunity. He will turn away from those who distress him by their moral failings, just as the old histories show Yang Zhen and Guan Ning took their stance. When Yang Zhen was a senior official, one of his subordinates, in a private meeting at night, offered him ten ounces of gold. Yang Zhen refused it. Angered, the man said, "Twilight has fallen, no one will ever know about it!" To which Yang Zhen replied, "Heaven will know, the spirits will know, I will know, you will know—how can you say no one will know about it!"" The scholar Guan Ning was at home reading when an official of the highest rank, in fancy carriage and hat of state, rode past his door. Guan Ning never even looked up from his book. When his closest friend, with whom he was sitting on the same mat, did look up, Guan sliced the mat in two, saying, "You're no friend of mine."
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To reinforce these first four commandments, Hong has used mainly classical and historical allusions. For the fifth, "not to practice witchcraft," he gives no Chinese examples, but simply invokes the language used by Liang Afa in his tracts—though Hong does not acknowledge Liang by name. Witches and magicians, practitioners of heterodox arts, all work against Heaven, for it is Heaven that decides the rhythms of our life, and when and how death comes. Incantations, processions, fasting, worship of demons have no effect, and one can see all too easily how those who claim to master magical arts themselves live in poverty:

The demons' agents serve the demons and end up possessed by them.

The gates of hell are always open to receive the followers of sin."

With the sixth commandment, "not to gamble," Hong returns to his Confucian texts and histories. Though he has tried to take Confucian tablets out of the schools in which he and his fellow believers were teach­ing, he still does not reject the sage himself. Twice, in listing the reasons against gambling, he praises Confucius and his followers for their patient acceptance of hardship, their simple life, and their upright natures. Whereas gambling represents a "hidden blade" that seeks to cut against the will of Heaven, which distributes wealth and poverty according to God's rules, not man's; it keeps us from being diligent and accepting ade­quate recompense for our work. In this, continues Hong, gambling is like both the drinking of wine and the smoking of opium. Wine wipes out families and has destroyed the strongest of rulers: "With iron they bound rivers and hills; because of wine they perished." Opium smoking makes some men mad and weakens others beyond recourse: "In the present times how many spirited Chinese have ruined themselves by their constant use of the opium pipe!"
^3-

Hong makes no attempt to list any more of the wrongs that afflict the world:

It is hard to list all the other wrongful acts one by one:

Each individual must differentiate between the minute and the vast.

For if they do not think through each specific action, their virtue will be compro­mised.

Before the solid ice has formed, tread lightly on the frost.
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Some time during his first months of living in Sigu village, Hong hears of a local place of worship, the Shrine of the Six Caverns, which seems to draw together all his worst fears and warnings about the society's loss of moral order. When he asks who is venerated in the shrine, he is informed that it is built to the departed spirits of a man and a woman. Hong asks if they were married or not. The reply given by the locals horrifies him: "No, they were not. Long ago those two sang together on this mountain, made love, and died. Later, people believed the couple became immortals, so they erected their images here and sacrificed to them." How could they possibly become immortals, Hong asks, after illicitly running away and living together? Heaven would punish such a couple, not confer immor­tality upon them, and their so-called shrine must be nothing more than a lair of demons.
³⁴
So again, Hong turns to verse to express his feelings: