God's Chinese Son

by Jonathan Spence

  And the first-born said unto the younger, Our father is old, and there is not a man in the earth to come in unto us after the manner of all the earth. Come, let us make our father drink wine, and we will lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night: and the first-born went in, and lay with her father; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. And it came to pass on the next day, that the first-born said unto the younger, Behold I lay last night with my father: let us make him drink wine this night also; and go thou in, and lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night also: and the younger arose, and lay with him; and he perceived not when she lay down, nor when she arose. Thus were both the daughters of Lot with child by their father. (Genesis 19:31-38)

  Faced with the moral implications of such a passage that they have no means to explain away—especially given their own insistence on the force of the seventh commandment—the Taiping leaders cut the verses alto­gether, continuing the Bible story with Genesis 20. In practical terms, the cut is easy, for the offending verses fall at the end of a chapter, and there is no problem of continuity between Lot's flight from Zoar and the story of Abraham and Abimelech, which follows.18

  With at least four hundred men in Nanjing employed in the job of transcribing the characters and carving the blocks, the Taiping work moves swiftly forward. The rest of Genesis is published, and Exodus too, by the summer of 1853. By winter, with the numbers working on the printing project grown to six hundred craftsmen, the Taiping complete Leviticus and Numbers from Gutzlaff s version, faithfully transcribing the long lists of odd-sounding names and the minutest dietary and sacrificial details, and making no further cuts, for there is less that they find shock­ing here. Amidst the maze of technical details, one can find important reinforcement for the Taiping's own precise regulations for the listing and organizing of the faithful, even though in the Bible the troops are older, and women are not included:

  And the Lord spoke unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai, in the tabernacle of the congregation, on the first day of the second month, in the second year after they were come out of the land of Egypt, saying, Take ye the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel, after their families, by the house of their fathers, with the number of their names, every male by their polls; from twenty years old and upward, all who are able to go forth to war in Israel: thou and Aaron shall number them by their armies. And with you there shall be a man of every tribe, every one head of the house of his fathers. (Numbers 1:1-4)

  Also that winter the Taiping publish the first of the Gospels, that of Mat­thew, in its entirety.19

  Nanjing is, for now, the Heavenly Capital, and to protect it the great Taiping armies are divided into three: one to defend the city itself, one to sail and march back up the Yangzi River to recapture and consolidate control over the cities bypassed—or captured and abandoned—in the headlong rush downriver in the spring of 1853, and one to march overland to the north, cutting through the heartland of China and threatening Peking itself.20 In either December 1853 or January 1854 those with enough education to write a polished essay who have stayed on in Nanjing are invited by the Taiping leaders to submit essays on the three major strategic decisions that Hong Xiuquan has taken: the selection of Nanjing as the capital, the Taiping printing and publishing program, and the alter­ing of place-names in China.

  In praising the choice of Nanjing as the Heavenly Capital, the various scholars assemble a range of reasons: the direct intervention and support of God and the Elder Brother Jesus are of course central factors. But also emphasized by many are more mundane topics: the city's high, thick walls, its full granaries, its favorable topography—"like a crouching tiger and a coiling dragon"—the "elegant, simple, and generous" customs of its inhabitants, and the prosperity of its markets and its agricultural hinter­lands. Others write of Nanjing's admirable river communications, the city's reputation as a "realm of happiness," its "concentration of material wealth" and location as a prime grain-producing area, the wideness of its streets, its historical resonance as a prosperous and fortunate city, and its natural role as the end of a geographical and temporal sequence that brought the Taiping armies from Thistle Mountain through Yongan to Wuchang.

  Riskily but boldly, one of the scholars, a native from the Guiping area of Guangxi who once passed the licentiate's examination that Hong Xiuquan failed, brings up the problem of the right to rule. Across all time, he writes, since God first created Heaven and earth, there have been those who have turned against their rulers; thus "regicide and usurpation were frequent, and chaos and change continued until the present." But this process, far from being repeated by Hong, was by his goodness brought to a close. For "our Heavenly King personally received God's mandate and will eternally rule over the mountains and rivers. The righteous upris­ing in Jintian signaled the formation of a valiant and invincible army, and the establishment of the capital in Nanjing lays an everlastingly firm foundation. The capital is called the Heavenly Capital in accordance with Heaven's mandate, and our country is called the Heavenly Kingdom in consonance with God's will."21

  In praising the printing in Nanjing of an official list of Taiping publica­tions, each marked with the royal seal of approbation on the title page, the scholars serving the Taiping again speak much of divine will and of Hong's majesty. "When Heaven produces an extraordinary man, it must have an extraordinary task for him to do. When Heaven has an extraordinary task, it must have an extraordinary treasure to facilitate its completion." But some talk with more precision of the need to purify the Chinese language after its corruption by the "demonic language and barbarian words of the Tartar dogs."22 Other scholars praise the use of such seals on the books as a proof of authenticity at this early period of the Heavenly Kingdom when "authenticity and falsehood of books are hard to distinguish." Particularly when such books are circulated among the armies in the field, "suspicion may be mixed with belief and the demons use all sorts of tricks." Further­more, since the restructuring of literature and of culture is one of the prime proofs that a true leader has once more emerged on earth, spreading such clearly authenticated books will show all people, great and small, near and far, that such a new leader is now come.2' Yet other scholars link the word of God on earth as exemplified in three books especially, the Old Testa­ment, the New, and Hong's own proclamations. With these three circulat­ing in authenticated editions, "the road to Heaven is now in sight," and the day of their "secrecy" will be over; all other works such as those by Confu­cius and his follower Mencius, along with the "various philosophers and hundred schools," can be safely "burned and eliminated, and no one be per­mitted to buy, sell, possess, or read them."2'1

  The third public task given to the scholars assembled in Nanjing is to comment on Hong Xiuquan's proclamation that henceforth the city of Peking be named the "Demon's Den," and the province of Zhili, in which Peking is situated, be called the "Criminal's Province." At once arcane and direct, Hong's purpose here is to brand the very language given to the region where the Manchus dwell as tainted and improper. Peking, the administrative capital of the Manchu empire, is set in the northern prov­ince of Zhili, a name that can be interpreted as "correct" or "attached." Since "the demons have defiled that region," writes Hong, "and the ground they tread is involved in their crimes," the name must be changed to "Zuili," "criminally attached province." Similarly Peking, "the northern capital," must also be abandoned as a name, since there can be no capital other than Nanjing, the Southern and Heavenly Capital. In all military reports and future orders, the former Peking shall be called Yaoxue, the "Demon's Den." When all the demons have been exterminated, the origi­nal name of Peking will be restored. And when all in the Criminal's Province "have repented of their sins and begun to worship God our Heavenly Father," then the Criminal's Province too will have its name changed. But in honor of this transformation it will be given, not its old name, but a
new one, "Province Restored to Goodness."25

  The scholars all praise the celestial wisdom of this proclamation, and their arguments complement each other and overlap. In condemning the more than two hundred years in which the northern region has been occupied by the Manchus, they point to the region's perversions, its dis­honesty, its love of idolatry and rejection of the One True God, its gam­bling and opium smoking, and the slavish nature of the Chinese living there. They also imply that the Manchus are now driven into a corner, and that this is the last area left to them. "With such a small territory," they ask, "how can the demons resist the heavenly troops?" In "their ludi­crous self-importance" the Manchus have named their "caves and dens" as an upright province. But having behaved so unpardonably, they have been condemned for all time by the Heavenly Father and Heavenly Elder Brother, Jesus. "Their crimes are too flagrant to be tolerated, and their viciousness is so excessive as to make their extermination certain." Thus the area that the Manchus think they can call their own is in fact "a prison erected by Heaven."26

  Behind Hong's proclamation, however, lies a deeper truth, a truth about language. Almost all the writers acknowledge in a general way the importance of changing the names to "Demon's Den" and "Criminal's Province," and praise Hong for his wisdom in doing so. But only one, Qiao Yancai, later to be rewarded with the highest honors in the Taiping's newly instituted examination system, gives a slightly fuller explanation of why this should be so: "The world has long been deluded by these demonic Tartars, and it is imperative that they be soon destroyed. But before we destroy these people, we must first destroy their bases. And before we can destroy the power of their bases, we must first destroy the bases' names."27 It is not only place-names that have this kind of force and resonance. When the presence of the devil demons runs through other names, then they too are changed. Thus Xianfeng, the reigning emperor and by defini­tion leader of the earthly demons, whose name in its correctly written form means "united in glory," has his name rewritten with a dog component added to the original characters, so all can see his dog-like nature. And the word Ta, used unflatteringly already as a way to refer to barbarian nomads or "Tartars," is also given a dog component so that all Manchus are mocked alike. The temples where both the Manchu demons and the Chinese idola- tors worship their false gods are also given their own mocking character, a new coinage that shows that the truth is absent within them.28

  Other words are freshly created because certain components are too tainted to be used. The words for "soul" and "spirit" fall into this category, whether their basic meaning concerns our animal, sentient, or inferior souls that bind us here on earth, or the spiritual, upward-tending divinely oriented souls that are ours throughout eternity. When the component in such words is gui, used commonly for the dead, the spirits and the demons, it is removed, and the simple component for "human being" is used instead. Thus it is our human nature, not our demonic one, that urges us toward our God.29

  Some characters that represent the forces of the highest good must of course be retained, if no impurity adheres to the composition of the char­acter, but they must then be forever tabooed for any other use. Ye, huo, and hua are three of these, for they are the ones used to represent the word Jehovah; the characters used to transliterate "Jesus" and "Christ" are also banned from all other use, and accepted substitutes are clearly stipu­lated, as are those for "Heaven," "holy," "spirit," "God" and "Lord," and "elder brother." The words for "sun" and "moon" must also be written in an altered form, for the original characters in all their purity are reserved for Hong Xiuquan himself, the Sun, and his true wife in Heaven, "the First Chief Moon." The personal names of all five Taiping kings are tabooed from other use, whether like Feng Yunshan and Xiao Chaogui they have left this mortal life, or like Yang and Wei and Shi Dakai they still lead the Taiping troops in earthly combat. The family name of Hong Xiuquan himself, the Heavenly King, also is forbidden to others, replaced by different characters with the same pronunciation.50

  Yet Hong's name can be incorporated in newly coined characters when their majesty is great enough. The character for the "rainbow" of God's covenant with Noah, pronounced "Hong," like the Heavenly King's own name, is banned from general use. But the new character created in its place, of a rain cloud above and a flood (or Hong) beneath, reminds all who read of the disasters striking earth before the covenant was made. Other characters that can be ambiguous or even sound obscene if pro­nounced with the Cantonese, Guangxi, or Hakka accents of many of the God-worshipers are changed accordingly. Three of the terms for cyclical days in the calendar are changed for these reasons, and euphemisms are designed for certain basic human functions. For the government of the Heavenly Kingdom, too, certain new words are created: a word for "true unity," another for "pure justice," one for "glory," and one for "distribu­tion by boat of needed food supplies."31

  The inclusion of a word for "food supplies" in such a list highlights a material problem for the Heavenly Kingdom. Since Yongan, or even ear­lier, the Taiping have been drawing largely on contributions—some given from religious fervor, others coerced—and from the loot of captured cities put into the common treasury. The huge city of Nanjing, lying in the midst of fertile farmlands, densely cultivated, offers ample food for a time, but there are too many Qing armies in the area to enable the Taiping faithful to establish the units of five families led by their corporals and guided in morality by their sergeants in any permanent form. And ques­tions still remain about the permanence of the Heavenly Capital. If the northern armies overthrow the Qing, will not the Demon's Den, as Hong has promised, be freed from its opprobrium, and the Criminal's Province blossom anew as Province of Restored Goodness?

  To highlight the differences between the Heavenly Capital and the Demon's Den, Yang Xiuqing, the East King, has told the Taiping faithful that it is not yet time to end their period of sexual separation.32 Men who force themselves on women, even if they are veteran soldiers from Guang­xi with accumulated merit, must be executed, and even married couples arranging for clandestine reunions, when caught, are sternly punished. Some will seek to avoid these prohibitions by resorting to prostitutes, but that too is strictly forbidden, and enforcement backed by group involve­ment; those who work as prostitutes, or those who use them, will not only themselves be executed but so will their families. Anyone in the commu­nity reporting such improper acts to Taiping authorities, however, will receive special rewards.33 Male homosexuality is punished with similar severity; if the partners are both aged thirteen or older, both shall be beheaded. If one is less than thirteen, he shall be spared and his partner beheaded, unless the child was an active partner, in which case he too is killed.34 Even the sending out of clothes by the men to be washed or mended by women in the town is carefully scrutinized and may be harshly punished, for "with this type of intimate contact, love affairs between them cannot be prevented." To avoid the chance of sin, all men should wash and mend for themselves.35

  Like Wuchang, the city of Nanjing is divided into blocks of men's quarters, and those for women and their children. Within these blocks, as far as practicable, people are arranged, by sex and occupation, into their groups of twenty-five, called guan. The world of city life is naturally dif­ferent from the countryside, and within Nanjing itself the dream of labor shared in common yields to specialization, to keep the people and their leaders sheltered, clothed, and fed. Thus among the guan are those for bricklayers, carpenters, and decorators; for tailors and shoemakers; for millers, bakers, soy sauce and beancurd makers; and, in a sense overarch­ing all others, those for medical care, fire fighting, and the burial of the dead. All these workers are meant to labor for the public good, and draw their food from the common treasury.36 The women are marshaled under their own female leaders—older Guangxi veterans—and clustered in buildings near the Xihua Gate in squads of around twenty-five also called guan. The numbers of women under Taiping control grow dramatically, as the cities around Nanjing are seized and occupied by Taiping troops.3'r />
  To make these newly captured cities true bastions of defense, all com­merce and traveling merchants are forbidden inside their gates, and the women and children are shipped off to the Heavenly Capital, leaving the teenage boys and fighting men to guard the walls of the garrison towns. The common treasury sees to the maintenance of these uprooted people in Nanjing. In the stripped-down cities, as also in Nanjing, to preserve security all regular trade and markets are forbidden within the city walls. Whatever supplies can be found must be bought at the stalls clustered around the city gates, where the local farmers soon set up stands for meat and fish, and even teahouses; though the Taiping officers, always watch­ful, often order that even these little shops be separated by sex, some for male and some for female customers. These stocks can be supplemented by foraging or purchase in the countryside, and by privately arranged barter or trade.38

  The people of the Heavenly Capital react to these new impositions in many ways—some stay in hiding, some plan to flee, some plot to poison or overthrow the occupiers, others join the Taiping ranks with varying degrees of passion, yearning for the restitution of some family life.3' There are extra employment opportunities for many people, since though the lieutenants, sergeants, and corporals supervise the lives of their dependent families at the local level, the Taiping kingdom now has a growing bureaucracy of men and women, all with their own staffs and assistants. As the East King explains the situation in a message to Hong Xiuquan: "As a consequence of the great mercy of the Heavenly Father and the Heavenly Elder Brother in sending our ruler, the Second Elder Brother, down into the world to be the true ruler of the ten thousand countries under Heaven, and to establish the Heavenly Capital, heavenly affairs have daily increased in complexity and in number, and people are needed to assist in the administration."4"