by Max Howell
The Love Ring
by
Professor Maxwell Howell and Dr Lingyu Xie
Copyright © 2013 Howell & Xie
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9781481940788 Pbk
ISBN: 9780987434944 ePub
ISBN: 9780987434951 Kindle
The rights of the authors Professor Maxwell L Howell and Dr Lingyu Xie are asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and other Acts worldwide.
No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any other electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the Publishers.
Typesetting and origination by the publishers Howell-Xie.
THE LOVE RING
The story begins in Peking (now Beijing) and portrays accurately the Australian naval presence in the Boxer Rebellion. A young officer falls in love with a Chinese girl, and buys her a beautiful jade and diamond ring. He endeavours to obtain permission to marry her, but is killed in the last days of the Rebellion. The girl find herself pregnant and goes to an American Mission (the Society of the Propagation of the Gospel) to have the child and is accepted as one of the family. When the Mission is closed the ring is given to the wife of the head of the Mission, because of her love for the girl. It is to be a love ring, only given to a person deeply in love.
The Love Ring goes from China to the United States, then to Oxford and Greece, and back to China. Finally, the ring is taken to the young officer's family in Australia. Essentially, there are three love stories as the ring is passed by one deeply in love to another deeply in love.
These love stories are set in an historical framework, the authors having doctorate degrees in history and being familiar with each of the societal settings of the novel.
CONTENTS
Introduction
Chapter 1. An Australian in Peking
Chapter 2. From Peking to the USA
Chapter 3. The Hand of Fate
Chapter 4. A Marriage Of Love
Chapter 5. La Belle Helene
Chapter 6. The Olympic Years
Chapter 7. Oxford and Wei-min
Chapter 8. Wei-min Is Gone
Chapter 9. Tragedy and Happiness
Chapter 10. To Beijing and Tengehow
Chapter 11. The Family United
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Dr Lingyu Xie would like to express her thanks to her mother and father for encouraging her to study despite difficult times in The People's Republic of China; and the authors acknowledge the outstanding contribution of Kathy Shelton in learning the intricate problems of self-publishing and e-books. A special thanks goes to Les Chambers, who gave us sage advice when it was needed.
INTRODUCTION
This is a work of fiction, the idea of which began when the authors Professor Howell and Dr Lingyu Xie bought a ring in an antique shop in Argentina for five dollars. We were informed it was glass, but it did not appear so to us. A few weeks later we were at H.B. Stern jewellers in Brazil, one of the most famous jewellery stores in the world. Their experts verified that the ring was made up of one of the most beautiful amethysts they had seen, supplemented by six small diamonds. They estimated its value at approximately $14,000.
We were pleasantly surprised about this estimate, to put it mildly, and it set us wondering about how the ring ever got to that antique shop in the first place. It obviously was at some time or other the possession of a wealthy woman. Did the woman die and had the value of the ring not been realised? Was it stolen? There was no way of knowing. If only, we conjectured, the ring could tell us its story.
Many years ago we saw a movie entitled The Yellow Rolls Royce. The movie consisted of three parts. They were three individual stories surrounding a yellow Rolls Royce, and what had happened to it as it was owned by three different owners. We decided to use our own imagination in relating stories about the history of the ring that we had found.
We changed it from an amethyst and diamond ring to a jade and diamond ring, and our story begins in China, not Brazil. As we travelled through South America and Easter Island after finding the ring we constructed a plot, and enclosed herein is the novel relating to the jade and diamond ring.
Though a work of fiction, this work is placed in an authentic historic setting. For example, a N.S.W. and a Victorian navy force were sent to China to assist in the quelling of the Boxer Uprising. The N.S.W. ship was the Wallaroo, and it was under the command of Captain Hixson, whose two sons were aboard. These actual names and others have been retained because we felt that any of the family would be proud to see the names of their forefathers brought to life in a military action that is now essentially forgotten. Few Australians would know that they ever had a military presence in the Boxer Uprising.
We are indebted to Justin Corfield’s excellent publication, The Australian Illustrated Encyclopedia of the Boxer Uprising 1899-1900, published by Slouch Hat Publications in 1999.
A famous Australian, George (‘Chinese’) Morrison is placed in the novel, and he was actually there in the Uprising as The Times reporter. Australia’s author and poet, ‘Banjo’ Paterson, was also in Peking, as was movie star-to-be, Tom Mix. We are also indebted to the work of Peter Thompson and Robert Macklin, who did an outstanding piece of work in The Man Who Died Twice: The life and adventures of Morrison of Peking, published by Allen and Unwin in 2004.
The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Mission in Peking was in actuality run by Mr. and Mrs Alcaster of Cornwall, and the Mission in Tengehow was run by Henry and Elizabeth Luce. They had a son, Henry, who would incredibly publish Time, Life and Fortune later on. We have retained their names because we feel it provides them with overdue recognition, and their son Henry figures prominently in our novel. This is not the Henry of Time, Life, and Fortune, however, but a Henry of our imagination.
As for Sir Arthur Evans, Heinrich Schliemann, Oscar Broneer, Howard Carter, Austen Henry Layard, Sir Leonard and Lady Woolley and James Thorpe, their biographies and various publications were utilised. When it came to the 1932, 1936 and 1948 Olympic Games, the official histories of each of those Olympics were consulted, and the actual names of the athletes were retained wherever possible.
Last, the authors visited Beijing, Massachusetts, London, the British Museum, the Ashmolean Museum, Rome, Pompeii, Athens, the 1896 Games site and the Acropolis, the Isthmus of Corinth, Isthmia, Mycenae, and Tiryns, Nemea, La Belle Helene de Menelaus restaurant at Mycenae, Epidaurus, Sparta, Olympia, Delphi, the Island of Crete, Heraklion, Knossos, Gournia, Hagia Triada, Phaestos, Troy, Pergamon, Ephesus, the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, Babylon, Nineveh, Ur, Cairo, the Egyptian Museum, the Pyramids and Sphinx, Luxor, Karnak, the Valley of the Kings, Aswan, Oxford, Eynsham, Mexico, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Chile, the Galapagos Islands, Maccu Pichu, San Francisco, the Berkeley Hills, the Berkeley Women’s City Club, the University of California at Berkeley, the archaeological sites of the four Corners States of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico, Los Angeles and the Colosseum, Berlin and the Olympic Stadium, the Museum of Peking man in Beijing, the archaeological sites in Etruria, Hawaii and of course Sydney and Melbourne, Australia. Each of the sites mentioned in the novel, then, was visited by the authors.
M. L. Howell
L. Xie.
CHAPTER 1.
AN AUSTRALIAN IN PEKING
From early childhood Robert Pride had loved the sea. Born in Double Bay, a suburb of Sydney in the then colony of New South Wales (NSW), his father always had a sailing boat at the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron, and there was nothing Robert desired more than to sail whenever the opportunity presented itself. In his ‘t
eens he would take the family boat out alone or with his younger brother Bill, glorying in the wonder of the sea and the unchanging beauty of Sydney Harbour.
It was no surprise that after completing high school at Riverview he would join the NSW Navy in 1885, and by dint of hard work was promoted to Lieutenant in 1899. These were the years before Confederation, Australia not becoming a nation until January 1901. Only NSW, South Australia and Victoria had separate Navies of any significance.
He was appointed to the naval ship Wallaroo under Captain Hixson. Two of Hickson’s sons, Michael and Francis, were also lieutenants on the Wallaroo.
Robert had visions of seeing the world with the NSW Navy, but was provided little opportunity. There were jaunts to the other states occasionally, however, and these whetted his appetite.
Little did he realise that events were taking place elsewhere in the world which would have a marked influence on his life.
Over the years China had been occupied by various countries which sought to exploit the immense market there. Peking, as it was called then, was divided up into various foreign Legations, with the Empress Dowager and the Imperial Palace situated on their perimeter. The Legations were occupied by the British, French, Japanese, Italians, Russians, Dutch, Germans, Austro- Hungarians and Belgians. The Imperial City, the Forbidden City and the Legations were all part of the walled inner City. The Outer City, also walled, was south of and adjacent to the Inner City. In all there were only about 250 expatriates in the various legations, and approximately that same number in Peking itself.
There was even a sign on the water frontage in Shanghai, in the area occupied by the British Legation, which was similarly carved up by foreign influences, which read: “No Chinese or dogs admitted!” The Chinese were denied access to the very land within their own country, and it forever rankled them that they were equated with dogs in the minds of the British.
As well as foreign diplomats and staffs, there were a very limited number of ground troops and navies in Peking, while there were thousands of missionaries throughout China who continued to expand the perimeters of their influence, moving further and further into the countryside of China spreading the gospel of Christianity.
Secret societies went as far back as 1747 in China, and caused the expulsion of the Jesuits, who had been making similar incursions into China endeavouring to Christianise or Romanise the people. From that time on, however, missionaries of various faiths had arrived in increasing numbers.
In 1898 a group of Chinese formed a society which was originally set up to practise the traditional martial arts, but it soon became a secret society, called the Society of the Righteous Fists, or sometimes the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists. The Western press nick-named its followers the ‘Boxers’, though boxing was never one of the Chinese martial arts. The avowed goal of the ‘Boxers’ was to rid China of foreign influences.
The society had widespread support among the Chinese as a whole. The Germans in particular had been ruthless while expanding its zone of influence, many Chinese deaths resulting. This coincided with the expansion of the railroads, the builders of which paid little respect for peasant land holdings and even Chinese burial sites. The Christianising of thousands of Chinese also had its complications, as many converted Chinese refused to pay the normal local temple tithes. Much of the temple money had traditionally been given by those who could afford it to assist the poor, as well as providing financial assistance to various theatrical and artistic troupes that traditionally travelled from community to community.
Coupled with the foreign influences was the continuation of serious droughts which had a catastrophic effect on peasant unrest.
In 1898 and 1899 there were uprisings in both the Shanshi and Shantung provinces, and the first missionaries were killed. A William Fleming of the China Inland Mission was killed in 1898, and in 1900 the first Protestant was murdered, a Mr. S. M. Brooks of the Society for Propagating the Gospel.
The Boxer Uprising, often called the ‘Rebellion’, was underway in 1899.
The Empress Dowager and her court were caught trying to play the middle of the road politically speaking, but in most respects they actually favoured the uprising, and on 11 January 1900 the Empress ruled that secret societies were not criminal but rather a part of traditional Chinese life. The Dowager’s reign, incidentally, coincided with and approximated in length that of Queen Victoria. At the beginning of the twentieth century, Queen Victoria and Dowager Empress Tzu-Hsi ruled more than half of the world’s population. The Empress Dowager openly disliked the foreigners in her domain.
The foreign legations soon felt the full meaning of the Queen Dowager’s announcement, as 70 Chinese Christians were massacred at Paoting-fu, perilously close to Peking. Things moved rapidly from this point on, as the foreign legations gave the Chinese government a mere twenty-four hours to quell the Boxer Uprising or they would call in their own military forces.
Foreign troops were already in China, and there was a large fleet of warships which controlled the river access to Peking, near the Taku Fort. By the 11th of May an additional 340 British marines and soldiers arrived in Peking and an another 90 were sent from Tientsin.
After the Boxers attacked foreign property in Peking, Sir Claude McDonald, a former soldier who was the British Minister to Peking, requested that the military head, Sir Edward Seymour, send a large military presence to the city. Murders of the Japanese Chancellor and the German Minister and the cutting of the telephone lines reinforced the seriousness of the situation. Foreigners were asked to leave China at this time, and on 20 June 1900 a 55-day siege of Peking by the Boxers began.
The 2100 military force under Seymour was intercepted by the Boxers and for a time was forced to retreat to Tientsin, but an allied flotilla, made up of British, French, Russian, Japanese, Italian and Austro-Hungarian ships attacked Taku Fort and relieved Seymour at Tientsin. Eventually the troops got to Peking. The Empress Dowager and her court then fled the Imperial City.
The Boxers, with antiquated equipment, were no match for the allied forces in the long run, but had a measure of success with commando-like, hit-and-run tactics.
In the early stages of the Uprising there were serious attacks on the various foreign legations themselves in the Inner City, and it was touch and go in their frantic efforts to repel such attacks. The legations were almost overrun, buildings, shops and houses were burned down, hundreds of individuals were slaughtered, particularly those Chinese who were employed by foreigners. The Catholic Church, and some of the London and American Missions, were levelled to the ground. The cry of the Boxers, “Kill! Kill!” rent the air. Panic and fear reigned.
The Boxers were after the elimination of three types of ‘Hairy Men’, hair being considered repellent by the Chinese. ‘Primary Hair Men’ were male and female foreign devils; ‘Secondary Hairy Men’ were Christian converts and Chinese employed by foreigners; ‘Tertiary Hairy Men’ were those who used foreign products. It was ethnic cleansing of a high order, as death was proclaimed for all among these categories.
The Times reporter, Australian-born George Morrison, wrote in his diary of these early days: ‘Attack of Boxers. Cries of Boxer incantations. Passing the French Legation I found all on guard. ‘The Boxers are coming’. Then rush home… Kept watch all night… Awful cries in the west part of the city all through the night. The roar of the murdered. Rapine and massacre.’
He went on in another entry: “[In a temple we found] 45 [Christians] killed – butchered; and Christian captives, with hands tied, being immolated. [We caught them] while actually massacring: 5 were already dead; we rescued three. One was accidentally killed. All the Boxers were killed, only one dared to face us. I killed myself at least six… witnessed devastation in many places.”
The Dowager Empress actually declared war on all the great powers early on in the siege, so that the Boxers were supplemented by the Chinese Army which was under her control. The fate of all foreigners was now in the balan
ce. Virtually everyone was exposed to bullets from the Chinese Army, and no house or building was safe as fires spread easily, as most of the structures were wooden. It was estimated that 200,000 bullets were fired in one night alone by the Chinese Army.
When the Siege of the Peking Legations commenced in June 1900, the British requested additional military assistance from Australia. An auxiliary Squadron ship, the Wallaroo, under Captain Hixson, with Lieutenant Robert Pride aboard, and two other Squadron ships, were sent. Eventually there were 263 personnel from the NSW Navy, 197 from the Victorian Navy, and 103 from the South Australian Navy. The NSW contingent was based in Peking, the Victorian in Tientsin.
Most of the fighting had concluded and certainly the main siege had ended by the time the Australians arrived, but there were still sporadic outbursts by and skirmishes with the Boxers. The task of the Australians was not an enjoyable one, as it was to round up and capture Boxers for summary execution. Many of the Boxers resisted to the death.
The Australian contingent was quartered just outside the British Legation, Australia being a British colony and very much a part of the British Empire at the time. Robert Pride soon found out the British were rather cool towards fraternisation, even among their own race, the British officers even maintaining social distance towards their lower ranks. Australians at the time were in conflict with the ‘Mother’ country on such notions as class, one of the espoused credos of the emerging country being that of mateship. The Australians judged a man by what he did and what he was rather than what his rank was. The British and many of the other foreigners never ventured out of the Legation area, and knew nothing of the local Chinese and what they really thought. They lived the life of expats existing in an enclave with tennis, fives and horse racing their main activities outside of work. They frequented their own bars and eating establishments within these enclaves. The Diplomatic Corps even had a Chinese orchestra, which played all the latest British and other foreign ditties. It was called ‘IG’s Own.’