God's Chinese Son (37 page)
And the Englishmen reiterate, in conclusion, that in all problems of doubtful interpretation Yang should follow Christ's simple injunction: "Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they that testify of me."
44
This letter is sent to the East King on June 29, 1854; next day the
Rattler
leaves Nanjing for Shanghai, where the vessel docks on July 7. The Taipings have not allowed them to ship a single lump of coal, but safely stowed on board are copies of the latest books to have left the Taiping presses, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, which carry the story of the wandering tribes of Israel from the death of their leader Moses to their final entry into the Promised Land, which he was fated never to see. Also on the ship is Hong's revision of the text on the nature of God, with its painstaking attempt to argue for the propositions that the "synod" has just refuted.
45
That same day of July 7, in Nanjing, God speaks again through the mouth of Yang. The message is brief and unprecedented in the history of the Taiping movement:
"Your God has come down to you today for one reason and one reason only: namely to inform you that both the Old Testament and the New Testament, which have been preserved in foreign lands, contain numerous falsehoods. You are to inform the North King and the Wing King, who in turn will tell the East King who can inform the Heavenly King, that it is no longer useful to propagate these books."
46
When God, through Yang, asks the assembled Taiping officials to comment, there is little for them to say. One veteran Taiping general protests that he, being illiterate, can hardly consider the merits of such a decree; another, who has a scholar's training in the old society, and senses what answer Yang really seeks, replies that "there can be no mistakes in the sacred instructions of Our Father or Our Eldest Brother," clearly implying that the messages relayed to earth by Xiao and Yang are the pure revelation, while the written text itself can be seen as suspect. God replies through Yang: "Those books are neither polished in literary terms nor are they fully complete. You must all consult together, and correct them so that they become both polished and complete."
47
The challenge to Hong Xiuquan, and to his followers, is unmistakable: the biblical word of God, which has carried them all so far, is now to be altered by the hands and minds of men. But the words of God as revealed through Yang are correct in every detail, and none shall presume to alter them.
The Bible printing stops, while Taiping leaders start to probe for errors and produce a version that can reconcile their visions with the text. The northern expedition falters, dies. The western expedition, driven from Hunan, consolidates its forces nearer home. Qing forces oust the Triad rebels from Shanghai, and reclaim the Chinese portion of the city as their own. A large Qing army remains assembled near the eastern walls of Nanjing. The Taiping program continues to be preached in town and countryside, but it is hard to collect the tithes or unify the families in their squads as the fighting swirls around them. Harder still to maintain the separation of the sexes; in early 1855 the formal ban is dropped, and married couples begin to meet without restraint, though couples meeting clandestinely out of wedlock still face execution.
1
Even some convicted opium smokers are spared the death penalty by God and Yang if they can show it was the demon devils who led them astray, though the Heavenly King still warns against the folly of addiction in a rhyming edict:
One smoke endlessly follows another; there is never satisfaction.
Why follow this stupid practice, transforming yourselves into living demons?
To sicken or die as you give up smoking is preferable to being executed—
To stop being a ghost and become human again must be the better way.
2
Yang Xiuqing, East King and Comforter, is often ill in 1855. That does not stop his steady accretion of new powers. When he is too ill to move, he issues injunctions from his "golden bed." Sometimes, when God speaks to him, it is not in open revelation but safely in his dreams, and Yang reveals the contents of the dream the next day, treating it directly as the word of God, and expecting all to do the same.
3
When God does come down to speak through Yang directly, the pomp of the occasion grows: now imperial relatives walk on each side of Yang's palanquin in their full court robes of state, for he has formalized the roles of family members, and brought new order to their ranks within his palaces. As well as "golden" gongs and drums, "sacred guns" salute him with their cannonades as he travels on his way. All kneel to greet him, and although in the harshest winter cold, in bitter wind or snow, all need not wait for hours outside the palace for his arrival, none may slight the basic rules of protocol. Terrible is God's anger, expressed through Yang, if on one of His nocturnal visits to earth the Heavenly King's women attendants dawdle in throwing open the mighty palace gates—these being so numerous and so heavy that they sometimes simply cannot open fast enough to please.
4
Sometimes, now, it is Hong Xiuquan who must go to the entrance of his palace and greet the East King there, kneeling at his own threshold to receive the heavenly messages, while Yang stays seated in repose. On occasion Hong even goes himself to Yang's own palace when Yang is indisposed.
5
Yang's interference in Hong Xiuquan's daily life is unremitting. Hong is blamed for lack of filial piety toward his mother by not allowing his palace women to serve her as they should.
6
Yang takes the moral position that the older mothers and wives of loyal Taiping veterans are being neglected, and forced to do the hard work in their lodgings by themselves; he orders women from the royal palaces to be assigned to help them, whether by gathering fuel or tilling in their gardens.' Even the role of Hong Xiuquan's beloved son Tiangui, already named as his heir apparent, is undercut by Yang. For Yang's own young son is allowed to intervene when Yang talks to God the Father, showing conspicuous filial piety by crawling forward on hands and knees to plead his father's cause before his "Heavenly Grandpapa."
8
As has been true for several years, Yang makes political decisions in arbitrary ways. When Hong Xiuquan tries to fill the depleted ranks of his attendant kings, by naming two of the most trusted veteran commanders from Guiping days, Qin Rigang and Hu Yihuang, to be kings in place of the dead Feng and Xiao, at first Yang acquiesces, but when the two are temporarily checked in battle in the west, Yang deprives them of their newly awarded titles.
9
North King Wei is constantly summoned, at any hour of day or night, to hear the relaying of God's instructions, and threatened with public beatings for his laziness if he dares delay. Qin Rigang, one of the new kings so soon deposed, is accused by God of "failure in fulfilling his duties" and threatened with both prison and enslavement.
10
Those decreed by Yang to be guilty of "grossly violating the law of Heaven" meet death as "lighted Heavenly lanterns," being soaked in oil and set afire.
11
Senior military officers are flogged if they fail to pay proper homage to the officials from Yang's household they encounter on the Nanjing streets; and if they refuse to express regret for their behavior, but with "hearts filled with hatred reply in abusive words," they are executed.
12
Members of Yang's palace staff, accused by him of neglecting their duties while he is ill, or of allowing improper conversations in the palace, are also publicly executed.
13
God feels the need to return to earth through Yang, and give a brief explanation for these killings: "These rebels betrayed Heaven and deceived the East King. Didn't they realize that the East King, their older brother, fell ill to atone for their sins? They dared to act with disdain and play deaf in the palace. Now their treacherous hearts have been treated thus!'
14
In military affairs the East King's role—even when he is ill—is also paramount. As senior chief of staff, perhaps in sporadic consultations with Hong Xiuquan, it is Yang who coordinates the far-flung campaigns. He sends massive reinforcements—futilely it turns out-—to try and save the beleaguered northern expedition. He approves the campaigns to recover Wuchang, and advance to Hunan, and in 1855 coordinates the armies sent to Anhui province and Jiangxi. He realizes too the crucial importance of the city of Zhenjiang, on the south bank of the Yangzi River, fifty miles downstream from Nanjing, to guard the approaches to the Heavenly Capital as well as access to the Grand Canal. Thus when the Qing forces launch an all-out campaign to retake Zhenjiang, Yang responds by sending massive reinforcements and all the ammunition that can be spared, as well as generals of outstanding experience and ability. The result, after savage fighting, is a great Taiping victory and the relief and reinforcement of the city.
It is Yang also, when the troops are still exhausted and nursing their heavy casualties from that protracted battle, who decides with great strategic insight that this is the time to launch an all-out assault on the vast Qing base camp that spreads around the eastern flank of the Heavenly Capital itself. Though protesting vehemently, and close to open disobedience, the tired generals rally their soldiers and in three days of savage fighting in the month of June 1856 use the element of surprise and all their battlefield experience to hit the base camps in succession with such impact and success that more than ten thousand Qing imperial troops are killed or routed, their encampments all destroyed, and their discredited leaders sent fleeing scores of miles to safety. The Qing commandant, Xiang Rong, who has been dogging the Taiping's heels since the campaigns in Yongan and Guilin five years before, broken by this last humiliation, falls ill and dies.
15
The East King views these victories as proof of his powers, and his ambitions grow accordingly. It pains him to see his titles less than those of the Heavenly King, whose glory as "Lord of Ten Thousand Years" outshines Yang's "Nine Thousand Years" by what seems to Yang too large a margin. Planning with care, Yang sends the generals most loyal to the Heavenly King on important new assignments, even though they and their troops are still not fully rested up: Shi Dakai to Hubei province in the west, Qin Rigang to Danyang in Jiangsu, and Wei Changhui, North King, to Nanchang in Jiangxi. Once they have left Nanjing city with their troops, Yang tells his Heavenly King that he too would like the title of "Ten Thousand Years." Without his loyal commanders near him, the Heavenly King is trapped, but pretends to accede. He suggests Yang's coming birthday, still two months away, as the time for this auspicious event. And then, somehow evading Yang's omnipresent spies, Hong sends trusted messengers to Shi and Qin and Wei, ordering their instant return to the Heavenly Capital to thwart this design at treason.
16
By the strangest of coincidences, the best description of what happens next comes from a restless Irishman, who can barely read or write, and whose name is no longer even known to us. After the months he spends in Zhenjiang and Nanjing during 1856, the Irishman dictates his story that same year to a ship's officer named Reynolds. Reynolds is a man who knows China well and believes in the truth of the Irishman's strange tale. So do experienced missionaries living in Shanghai.
17
The presence of an Irishman in the Taiping base areas in 1856 can be explained by the desperate nature of the times. The strict neutrality laws that the diplomats try and follow cannot prevent a certain number of rootless men from drifting into the Taiping camp to offer their services to the Heavenly King. From the earliest days of 1853, Westerners have been selling guns and ammunition to the Taiping, along with their services.
18
Amongst such mercenaries one finds "3 black men," perhaps from India, for all are described as British subjects, who have made their way to Zhenjiang to join the Taiping.
19
Some Englishmen continue in the lucrative if risky business of trading forbidden war goods with the various rebels by using false bills of lading, gunpowder being itemized as "Chinese snuff' and Enfield rifles as "umbrellas."
20
Even the simpleminded can play such games, like the Englishman discovered by the mate of the
Hermes,
but not taken seriously, for he seemed "too stupid-looking ever to have been in a ship of war."
21
An American named Drinker begins to recruit a small army of foreign mercenaries—many of whom are British—in the Canton region, till prevented by the joint action of the British and Americans.
22
To the British governor in Hong Kong, these exemplars are only a sampling of "a host of filibustering cutthroats and deserters (subjects of the Queen) who, under the pretence of joining the patriots, are committing every species of robbery and outrage."
23
Such adventurers are not just drawn from British ranks: the French captain de Plas has placed in irons on the
Cassini
a French deserter, who tries to pretend he is an Italian, and observes large numbers of deserters crewing on an American ship, the
Challenge,
where they far outnumber the Chinese seamen.
24
An Italian, known by the name of Antonie, or Antonio, has joined the Taiping as early as 1853. He is a powerful man, whose pride is a sword weighing almost twenty pounds—his specialty lies in pretending to fall down dead on the battlefield till Qing troops approach his body, at which point he leaps to his feet, decapitating several of the astonished enemy. His foreign status gives him special dispensations, for the Taiping allow him "money for his Opium pipe and Grog of which he seemed very fond."
25
There are at least five "Manilamen," longhaired and dressed in Chinese style, and worshiping God the Taiping way, also stationed in Zhenjiang. They serve as executioners for their Taiping masters, one of them being assigned to kill women found guilty of breaking the Taiping laws.
26
The Irishman knows his weapons well, and is flexible in his allegiances, having been fighting for a time with the Triad rebels in Shanghai, and for a period with the Qing. Choosing, for obvious reasons, not to stay on in Shanghai when the Qing recapture the Chinese city, he makes his way overland to Zhenjiang, where, knowing no Chinese, and interpreters being rare, he shows his loyalty to the Taiping leaders by kneeling on the ground before them, and by participating in their religious services, both before each meal and on the Sabbath day.
27
The advent of the Sabbath is announced in a way that even illiterate Westerners and Chinese still puzzled by the new Christian weekly calendar cannot miss, with large flags hung across the main streets of the town.
28
Arriving in April 1856, just after the triumphal raising of the Zhenjiang siege, with an American companion, Charles Thompson from Boston, the Irishman is first assigned to help supervise the collection of rice supplies from Yangzhou on the Grand Canal. For a full month, dressed now in Chinese clothes, he works at this task, estimating that thirty thousand Chinese, men and women, old and young, have been conscripted for the labor. When that area is exhausted, he ranges farther afield with the Taiping troops and a body of one hundred cavalry, throwing up temporary earthworks to defend themselves from Qing patrols as they scour the more distant countryside for stores of grain. He estimates that the colossal foraging party gives the Taiping forces in Zhenjiang two years' food supply. Nanjing itself reputedly has enough grain stored to withstand a six-year siege.
29