God's Chinese Son (41 page)

In Hong's version the family values are preserved, and no central deceit
is practiced. Jacob does not make Esau "sell" his birthright in exchange
for the food to stay alive. Instead, speaking as a respectful younger brother,
Jacob gives Esau a brief lecture on the need to respect his birthright, and
then agrees to "divide" it with him in exchange for the pottage that Esau
⁵⁴
craves.

As to Jacob's betrayal of the wishes of his dying father, all is trans­formed by Hong into an exemplary story of filial piety. Drama is lost, but honor is saved. If there is deceit, it is the fault of Rebekah, Jacob's mother: for it is she who urges Jacob to kill two fine kids from his herds, to make their dying father the meat dish that he loves. Jacob gently reproves her: "My elder brother Esau is the one beloved by my father, and besides that it is correct for the elder brother to be the one who should receive the father's blessing." To which Rebekah replies that what Jacob says is right, but that he in his turn must listen to her words. She makes Jacob wear one of his finest garments, which she scents with myrrh and the fragrance of fresh milk, and gives him the savory dish of goat kid to take to his father.

In the original text of Genesis, the dying Isaac asks, "Who art thou, my son?" and Jacob lies, "I am Esau thy firstborn," completing the deception he has begun by donning Esau's clothes, and placing the skins of the slain kids upon his arms and the soft skin of his neck, since Esau was "a hairy man" and Jacob a "smooth man." In Hong's version, the false hair is gone as well, and Jacob truthfully answers his father's question with the words: "I am your second son Jacob, come to pay reverence to my father. Please sit up, and eat this savory food, and I beg my father to give me his bless­ing." Touched by the fact that Jacob brought the savory meat of his own volition, whereas Esau had to be told to go out and hunt for it, moved by the sweet smell of his clothes, and equally moved by Jacob's kneeling before him and asking his blessing, Isaac bestows the benediction on his younger son. For Hong, the blessing cannot be sealed with wine, so it is sealed with the broth of the savory meat. Similarly Isaac, in the blessing, no longer offers Jacob a lifetime of "corn and wine." Instead he promises him "corn and wheat" forever."

With Jacob's worst duplicity expunged, Hong can tackle the challenges posed by Jacob's fourth son with Leah—Judah, the fourth in the descent line of patriarchs listed at the start of Matthew's Gospel. Lot's drunken incest could be bluntly excised by Hong because it did not seem to affect the main Bible story. Judah's incest with his daughter-in-law Tamar, even if unwitting, cannot be left standing by Hong, but neither can it be simply excised, since the story of Judah is central to the Bible and the fate of the twelve tribes of Israel. Furthermore, the fruit of Judah's loins, Perez, the twin brother of Zerah, is sanctified by Matthew as the ancestor of Joseph, husband of Jesus' mother, Mary, and Judah himself has been favored beyond all his eleven brothers in his father's eyes, with a magnificent final blessing:

Judah, thou art he whom thy brethren shall praise: thy hand shall be in the neck of thine enemies; thy father's children shall bow down before thee. Judah is a lion's whelp: from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he crouched as a lion, and as an old lion. Who shall rouse him up? The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be. (Genesis 49:8-10)

The story of Judah and his daughter-in-law Tamar is a harsh and lengthy one, which takes up all of the thirty-eighth chapter of Genesis. It is also the second of Hong's revisions to deal with three brothers—the first was the story of Noah's sons and their naked father. Like Noah, Judah has three sons, Er, Onan, and Shelah. Er marries Tamar, but angers God in some unstated way, and is slain. Eager to perpetuate the line of his eldest son, Judah marries Tamar to Er's brother Onan. Onan, unwilling to have the offspring of his seed return to his older brother's line, "spills his seed upon the ground" and is also slain by God. Judah then betroths the twice-widowed Tamar to his third son, Shelah, who is still a boy. But while Tamar waits dutifully in Judah's home till Shelah comes to man­hood, Judah forgets his promise, and when his own wife dies he goes up to the mountains of Timnah to supervise the shearers with his sheep. Tamar is left bereft and still unmarried in the valley.

Even thus far, the story causes Hong moral misgivings. He feels the same distaste as he does for the passage in Matthew 22:24-26, where the Sadducees try to trick Jesus by invoking a similar law to suggest that seven brothers in a row marry the same woman after each one dies childless.
⁵⁶
Hong tidies that story by simply substituting the phrase "another man" each time the Bible mentions "brothers." Similarly, with Tamar, Hong drops the words for brother and for sister-in-law, implying that Genesis thus fits with Chinese law, by which the firstborn of the younger son's marriage will be posthumously adopted as the heir to Er, securing for him and Tamar the perpetuation of their line. Hong, after all, has done the same with his own sons, having one adopted out as Jesus' son, and one as
Yang Xiuqing's. But what is Hong to do with this continuation of the story, as found in Genesis 38:13-26?

And it was told Tamar, saying, Behold thy father-in-law goeth up to Timnah to shear his sheep. And she put her widow's garments off from her, and covered her with a veil, and wrapped herself, and sat in an open place, which is by the way to Timnah; for she saw that Shelah was grown, and she was not given unto him as his wife. When Judah saw her, he thought her to be an harlot; because she had covered her face. And he turned unto her by the way, and said, Come, I pray thee, let me come in unto thee (for he knew not that she was his daughter-in-law). And she said, What wilt thou give me, that thou mayest come in unto me?

And he said, I will send thee a kid from the flock. And she said, Wilt thou give me a pledge, till thou send it? And he said, What pledge shall I give thee? And she said, Thy signet, and thy bracelets, and thy staff that is in thine hand. And he gave them to her, and came in unto her, and she conceived by him. And she arose, and went away, and laid by her veil from her, and put on the garments of her widowhood. And Judah sent the kid by the hand of his friend, the Adullamite, to receive his pledge from the wom­an's hand: but he found her not. Then he asked the men of that place, saying, Where is the harlot that was openly by the wayside? And they said, There was no harlot in this place. And he returned to Judah, and said, I cannot find her; and also the men of the place said that there was no harlot in this place. And Judah said, Let her take it to her, lest we be shamed: behold, I sent this kid, and thou hast not found her.

And it came to pass about three months after, that it was told Judah, saying, Tamar, thy daughter-in-law, hath played the harlot; and also, behold, she is with child by harlotry. And Judah said, Bring her forth, and let her be burned. When she was brought forth, she sent to her father-in- law, saying, By the man, whose these are, am I with child: and she said, Discern, I pray thee, whose are these, the signet, and bracelets, and staff. And Judah acknowledged them, and said, She hath been more righteous than I; because that I gave her not to Shelah, my son. And he knew her again no more. (Genesis 38:13-26)

Hong can see no solution except to scrap the whole story. As with all his other retellings, Hong writes his new version to the same length as the excised passages, so most of the blocks can be reused, unchanged, with the same pagination. In Hong's version, Judah sees a veiled "young woman" (not a harlot) sitting at the roadside. As he enquires after her, she identifies herself as his daughter-in-law Tamar. Startled, he asks what she is doing there, when she should be at his home, in mourning. Plaintively, she tells Judah that she came all this way to remind him of his promise to marry off Shelah, so Shelah's firstborn could continue Er's line. She was begin­ning to doubt if Judah would ever carry out his word. Judah apologizes— having lost two sons so young, he naturally, out of father's fondness, had delayed the moment when he should make his third son marry too. But he promises redress at once. Tamar and Judah return home, he arranges Shelah's marriage to a local woman, and soon the new bride announces she is pregnant. Joyfully, Tamar thanks the Lord her God. Hong can now return to the original text of Genesis 38, and continue the story with this new young daughter-in-law of Judah's bearing—as it turns out—twins to Shelah:

And it came to pass in the time of her travail, that, behold, twins were in her womb. And it came to pass, when she travailed, that the one put out his hand: and the midwife took and bound upon his hand a scarlet thread, saying, This came out first. And it came to pass, as he drew back his hand, that, behold, his brother came out: and she said, How hast thou broken forth? This breach be upon thee: therefore his name was called Perez. And afterward came out his brother, that had the scarlet thread upon his hand: and his name was called Zerah. (Genesis 38:27-30)

Hong just has space at the end to add a sentence of his own to the last verse: "And so Judah chose Perez to continue the elder brother's line, and Zerah to be the son of Shelah."
⁵⁷

When Hong gets to work on Exodus, he tries to tidy the present and the future by altering the law of Moses as it relates to these family matters. Hong finds that God's words to Moses concerning physical passion are too broad-minded to act as moral guidelines for the Taiping. According to the original version of Exodus, what Moses recorded ran as follows:

(v. 16) And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he shall surely endow her to be his wife.

(v. 17) If her father utterly refuse to give her unto him, he shall pay money according to the dowry of virgins. (Exodus 22:16-17)

Hong rewrites artfully, starting with the same words in verse sixteen, but then switching the passage in a new direction, so that God's words will fit Hong's own definition of the seventh commandment, that against adul­tery, which he has promulgated as deserving of death for all his Taiping followers:

(v. 16) And if a man entice a maid that is not betrothed, and lie with her, he is breaking the seventh commandment.

(v. 17) If her father knows of the matter, then he must hand over both the woman and her seducer to the officials, to be executed; on no account may he, knowing what has happened, attempt to conceal it.
⁵⁸

It is exhausting labor. The Bible is so long, and there are many other changes to be made. But the main story is now more cleanly told and, as much as it can be, the family honor is saved. Hong's own children, his entourage of palace women, and all the future generations of Taiping followers will never know there once was disagreement between Hong and the Bible on these matters of sex and alcohol, nor now can there ever be. On these matters it has been made clear for all to see that Moses, God, and Hong Xiuquan think fruitfully as one.

On July 2, 1857, just after Shi Dakai has left the Heavenly Capital forever, and while Hong Xiuquan is hard at work with his revisions of the Bible, James Bruce, eighth earl of Elgin and twelfth earl of Kincardine, steams into Hong Kong harbor on the
Shannon,
steam frigate of Her Majesty's navy. The
Shannon
is a magnificent ship, not only one of the swiftest sailing vessels afloat when the wind is fair, but also equipped with a powerful steam- driven propeller that will enable her to travel five days under full steam against the wind on a single hold of coal. She is also the most massively armed ship in Far Eastern waters, carrying no fewer than sixty 68- pounder guns, as well as a complement of 24-pounders, and a large com­pany of well-trained and armed Royal Marines. To Lord Elgin, viewing her among the massed sails of smaller Asian ships is like looking at "a triton among the minnows."'

Lord Elgin has been sent from England with a comprehensive assign­ment as special plenipotentiary of Her Majesty the Queen. He carries instructions from his government either to negotiate with the Qing gov­ernment or to fight against it if no negotiation seems feasible. Either way, he is to make five "demands": for "reparations of injuries" suffered by British subjects in China and for compensation of financial losses during the recent destruction of the foreign factories outside Canton; for Chinese compliance with the treaties of 1842; for permission to allow the British ambassador to reside in Peking, and communicate directly with Chinese ministers there in writing; and for an increase in trade with China and in Chinese trade with Hong Kong. He is also empowered to explore the Qing government's interest in legalizing the trade in opium in return for the payment by foreign traders of a fixed tariff, and to see if the Qing will agree to allow unrestricted emigration of Chinese women as well as men from her shores, so that Chinese laborers settling overseas could lead a normal family life. Should the Qing be unwilling to discuss these points, then a "measure of coercion" should be adopted, by blockading China's northern ports, blocking the Grand Canal at its Yellow River or its Yangzi River junction, and occupying either Canton itself or other suitable ports and islands.
²

Lord Elgin—whose father, the seventh earl, had been both praised and execrated for removing the friezes from the Parthenon and selling them to the British Museum—-is a proud and talented man. A brilliant classical scholar at Oxford in his youth and later a successful public servant, he has already served as governor of Jamaica and governor-general of Canada by the time he receives his posting to China.
³
Distracted from his assignment during 1857 by the crises of the Indian mutiny, and by diplomatic maneu­vering with Japan, in the summer of 1858 he returns to southern China to resume his mission. When the Qing fail to respond to his demands to open up the city of Canton, he shells it thoroughly, attacks and occupies Canton, capturing the governor and shipping him off to imprisonment in Calcutta. Like a wrathful presence he then steams northward with the British fleet, blasting his way past the Dagu forts that protect the approaches to Peking, and forcing the Qing to negotiate terms of abject surrender. Flushed with his string of victories, in October 1858 he returns to Shanghai with his fleet, determined to be the first representative of the British crown to sail the whole way up the Yangzi River to Wuchang, to assert his country's newly won treaty rights, wrested by force from the Qing emperor Xianfeng, and to open trade with China's interior ports.
⁴

Ten years before this time, in the Thistle Mountain region, when Jesus descended for the second time to speak to his younger brother Hong Xiu­quan through the mouth of the West King, Xiao Chaogui, Hong asked him a simple question: "Heavenly Elder Brother, when the time of the Taiping comes, who will be the commanding generals of our armies?"

The Elder Brother replied, "Feng Yunshan, Yang Xiuqing, Xiao Chaogui all shall be commanding generals. . . . And one of your commanding gen­erals will come from a foreign country." Hong Xiuquan asks, "What is his name?" And Jesus replies, "His name is Cai." Hong asks, "Has he come to China yet or not?" And Jesus answers, "At the present time he is still in his foreign land."
⁵

Almost two months later there is a related dialogue: Hong has had a dream that demons with guns attacked him, and he is rescued by angels and heavenly generals. Recounting the dream to Jesus, he asks if it is accurate or not. Indeed it is, says Jesus. Those were troops and generals sent by Heaven who rescued him. And what is the name of that general? Hong asks. "We will let you know later," Jesus replies.
⁶

None of the foreign visitors to Nanjing on the
Hermes, Cassini,
or
Sus­quehanna
seems a fitting candidate for the designation of the foreign gen­eral to be sent by God. And certainly neither the Irishman known as Canny, the Boston mercenaries, nor even the tough Italian Antonio is quite of general's stature. But based on his record of destruction of the Qing, Lord Elgin just might be the one.

Steaming with his armed fleet of five warships past Nanjing on Novem­ber 20, 1858, "on a lovely evening" as "the sun was sinking rapidly," hav­ing sent a smaller gunboat ahead to alert the Taiping to his peaceful intent, Elgin has his vessels mistakenly fired on by Taiping gunners, leaving one British sailor dead, and two badly wounded, one losing an arm and another a leg.
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Elgin's view on this matter is, as he later tells the foreign secretary in Whitehall, "that no human power, and no physical obstacle which could be surmounted, should arrest my progress. It was obviously essential to the prestige of England, that a measure of this description, if undertaken at all, should be carried out; I could not, therefore, recognize in the rebels a right to stop me, nor could I take any step which they might construe into such an admission." Instead therefore of echoing the comparative restraint of the
Hermes
in 1853, Elgin orders the fire returned.
⁸

As Elgin explains his state of mind in a journal entry that night, "We have passed the town, but I quite agree with the naval authorities, that we cannot leave the matter as it now stands. If we were to do so, the Chinese would certainly say they had had the best of it, and on our return we might be still more seriously attacked. It is determined, therefore, that to­morrow we shall set to work and demolish some of the forts that have insulted us. I hope the Rebels will make some communication, and enable us to explain that we mean them no harm; but it is impossible to anticipate what these stupid Chinamen will do."
⁹
Elgin's secretary, in his own jour­nal, records his own thoughts somewhat differently: "It is accordingly arranged that at daylight tomorrow we drop down abreast of the batteries, and hammer them into ruins and their garrisons into submission."
¹⁰

At dawn on November 21, the weather "shrill and biting," the British ships slip silently downriver through the mist to their allotted battle sta­tions. Moving, in some cases, to within fifty yards of the Taiping gun emplacements on both the left and the right banks of the river, the British vessels "pour such a storm of shot, shell, grape, and rockets into the batter­ies, that our fire of the previous evening seemed mere child's play." From his vantage point up in the "topgallant crosstrees," Elgin's secretary can look right down into the Taiping forts, and "see the men in bright dresses clustering round the guns" and watch the effects of the newly invented "Moorsum shells" as they burst amidst the Taiping troops, scattering their deadly fragments. After an hour and a half, the last Taiping batteries fall silent." Late that same evening, impressed by this startling show of force, a Taiping commander of the Heavenly King's "gun vessels" writes to "Your Excellencies the Foreigners" asking them to help him with their fleet, so that he can destroy the Qing naval forces; in exchange for these services, he would petition the Heavenly King to grant them Taiping noble rank.
¹²

In his own message to Lord Elgin, written on yellow silk in the vermil­ion ink reserved for the Heavenly King's proclamations, Hong greets Lord Elgin in his own way. His message, addressed to "Our foreign younger brother of the Western Seas," consists of 172 lines of seven-character verse, arranged into stanzas, but with the names for God and Jesus raised, as in Taiping practice, two spaces above the text, and Hong's own name raised one. It is true that Elgin's Chinese name is Lai, not Cai, but Hong lives his life by coded rhymes. To set the scene, Hong first offers to Lord Elgin a summary of the Taiping revelation, and a description of Hong's role as Jesus' younger brother and his founding of the Heavenly Capital in Nan­jing. The suffering and death of Yang Xiuqing—who always dealt with foreigners in the past—is then spelled out in graphic detail:

The Father and the Elder Brother led me to rule the Taiping [dynasty]. The Father has deputed the East King to redeem sickness. Thus he was blind, deaf, and dumb, and suffered infinite misery, and while fighting the demons, he was wounded in the neck and fell. The Father had declared beforehand in his sacred decree that when our warriors went forth, [Yang Xiu]qing would be afflicted, and that when they arrived at the court [Nanjing], he would be assassinated. [The words] of the Father's sacred decree were all accomplished. The Elder Brother gave his life to ransom sinners, so that he
became a substitute for myriads and myriads of people of the world. The East King, in ransoming the sick, suffered equally with the Elder Brother, and when he fell with the pestilence he returned to his spirit-nature to thank the Father for his goodness.
¹³

Almost casually, Hong mentions, "The sacred decrees are numberless. I select one or two of them for declaration," for it is always "impossible to know exactly what is in the hearts of the Father and the Elder Brother." For forty-four lines, without identifying them, so familiar are they to him, Hong recalls for Elgin God's prophecies and decrees from the far-off days of Thistle Mountain and Yongan. All these decrees have proved truthful, writes Hong. "Come soon to Heaven, and you will be aware of this." In the realm of prophecy, "the First Elder Brother, Jesus, is the same as the Father," and therefore "not a sentence of his sacred decrees shall be changed."
¹⁴

Still in a verse form of seven-character lines, at line 119 the Heavenly King comes to the heart of his message:

Foreign younger brother from the Western Sea, heed my royal proclamation: Let us together serve God and our Elder Brother, and destroy the hateful insects. All that happens on earth is controlled by God, or Elder Brother, and myself. My brother, join us joyfully, and earn incalculable rewards.

In former days, when I traveled in Guangdong, I gave a proclamation to Luo Xiaoquan [Roberts] in his chapel. On that occasion I proclaimed my ascent to Heaven

Where my Heavenly Father and Elder Brother conferred great powers on me. At this time, has [Luo] Xiaoquan accompanied you or not? If he has come, let him visit my court and confer with me. . . .

The Kingdom of Heaven is near at hand, yea it is come! Foreign younger brother from the Western Sea, be of good heart. When I traveled up to Heaven, I saw my Father's plan: That the myriad nations would help me mount the altar of Heaven.

What the Father foretold has now come to pass.

On Heaven's behalf put forward all your strength, for it is destined to be so. For our Father and our Elder Brother, slay the demon devils, And thus requiting your Father who gave life to you, return victorious from your battles.
¹⁵

How could Hong be clearer on the need to work together to extermi­nate the Qing demons, as Elgin has so spectacularly done already? As to the British also firing on the Taiping positions, that was under provoca­tion, and the Taiping gunners responsible have all been executed. Besides, the Taiping casualties have not been as great as it seemed to the observers on the British ships—only three officers and some twenty men have died.
¹⁶
Hong's message is sent upriver, to reach Lord Elgin as soon as possible; but since Elgin's flotilla is under full steam, the message fails to reach him before he has passed beyond the areas of the Yangzi River controlled by Taiping forces, and has entered territory recaptured by the Qing. Here the Taiping emissaries with their yellow scroll cannot hope to follow him.
¹
'

It is only in late December 1858, as Elgin returns from his upriver explorations and his state visits to Qing officials in Wuchang, and re-enters Taiping waters, that the Heavenly King's message is presented to him, in an envelope now marked "To our Elder Brother Lai, Special Commis­sioner from the Great Nation." In a covering note, the senior Taiping official delivering the message says it was entrusted to him by the Heav­enly King himself, for delivery to Lord Elgin.
¹⁸
Elgin, who has passed bleak days of sleet and snow jammed with all his staff in one of the small gunboats after his flagship ran aground, finds it a "strange document," written "on a roll of yellow silk, about three fathoms long," "a sort of rhapsody, in verse, with a vast infusion of their extraordinary theology."
¹⁹
It would, he feels, "be awkward for me to have any intercourse with the rebel chiefs, so I do not, as at present advised, intend to land." Though a missionary has indeed accompanied him, the man is Alexander Wylie, and not Issachar Roberts, so there is no need to respond to Hong's query over that.