Sources of Chinese Tradition, Volume 2

by Wm. Theodore de Bary

  17. Waley, Songs, no. 271; cf. Legge, The Chinese Classics, 4: 511.

  18. Cf. Legge, The Chinese Classics, 4: 339.

  19. Cf. Tsunoda, de Bary, and Keene, Sources of Japanese Tradition, ch. 24.

  20. “Aigong wen,” Liji jijie 27: 93.

  21. Cf. Legge, The Chinese Classics, 4: 521.

  22. So stupid they cannot make a nest for themselves.

  Chapter 29

  THE HEAVENLY KINGDOM OF THE TAIPINGS

  In the writings of Lin Zexu and Wei Yuan we have seen the impact of the West on two men who exemplified the finest traditions of Chinese statecraft and Confucian scholarship—representatives of that elite group that had served for centuries as the custodians of the Chinese government and of Confucian values in thought and scholarship. On another level of society, in these years just after China’s defeat in the Opium War, there are signs of an even more powerful and striking reaction to the West in the great Taiping Rebellion, a mass movement so remarkable that it has continued to excite and perplex historians in recent years almost as much as it did Chinese and Western observers in the mid-nineteenth century. If on closer acquaintance this popular uprising has seemed to reflect less of Western influence than of native traditions and internal unrest, it remains a fascinating example of the interplay between Chinese and Western ideas in a historical event of the first magnitude.

  Hong Xiuquan (1813–1864), the leader of this rebellion that swept up like a whirlwind from the southernmost regions of China, was the son of a peasant family belonging to the Hakka minority group and living not far from Guangzhou. Hong had enough promise as a student that his family joined together in providing him with an education and sending him on to take the provincial civil service examinations. Though repeatedly unsuccessful, on one of these visits to Guangzhou (1836) Hong heard a Christian missionary preach and picked up some religious tracts. When he failed again at the examinations the following year, he seems to have suffered a nervous collapse and during his illness to have had certain visions. In one of them a fatherly old man appeared to him and complained that men, instead of worshiping him, were serving demons. In another, Confucius was scolded for his faithlessness and repented his ways. In still another, a middle-aged man appeared and instructed Hong in the slaying of demons. These apparitions he later understood as signifying that God the Heavenly Father (whom he identified with the Lord-on-High, Shangdi, of ancient Chinese tradition) and Jesus Christ, his Elder Brother, had commissioned him as the Younger Brother to stamp out demon worship. To some Hong might have appeared to be the victim of his own fevered imaginings, but others were impressed by his quiet earnestness and deep sense of conviction. Perhaps most significant from the Chinese point of view was his ability to persuade members of his own family of the rightness of the cause.

  These ideas continued to ferment in Hong’s mind, yet it was not until seven years later that he took the trouble to read more carefully the tracts given him in Guangzhou, containing translations and summaries from the Bible and sermons on scriptural texts. Later still, he spent two months studying in Guangzhou with the Reverend Issachar J. Roberts, an American Southern Baptist missionary, whose fundamentalist teachings provided Hong with what limited knowledge he gained of Christianity. In the meantime, Hong, who earned a livelihood teaching in village schools, had been joined by some of his relatives in idol-breaking missions that aroused local feelings and the displeasure of the authorities. Forced to shift their activities westward, these prophets without honor in their own country met with a far better reception among the Hakkas of Guangxi. By the late 1840s Hong found himself the leader of a growing band known as the God Worshipers. Here, too, however, the iconoclasm and strange teachings of the God Worshipers provoked official intervention and attempts at suppression.

  It seems that in the mind of Hong the Manchu regime became identified quite early with the demonic forces that had to be destroyed in order to establish the Kingdom of Heaven on earth. But it was more than Hong’s iconoclasm that led this new religious movement increasingly to take on a political and military aspect. Famine and economic depression in the late 1840s, burdensome taxation, the decline in dynastic prestige as a result of the defeat at the hands of the British, and the consequent impairment of governmental functions, especially in the more remote regions like Guangxi, contributed to a situation in which the survival of any group depended upon its ability to defend and provide for itself in the midst of confusion and lawlessness. The God Worshipers were only one such group, but they proved better organized and possessed of a greater sense of purpose than most. Under pressure of constant official harassment, Hong and his closest collaborators finally worked out a plan for full-fledged revolt. In effect, it put the God Worshipers on a total-war footing. A military organization was created that would mobilize all of the resources of the community for prosecution of the war effort. Personal property had to be turned over to a communal treasury (the “Sacred Treasury”), religious observances were strictly enforced, and a detailed code of military discipline and ethical conduct was established, with heavy penalties for any violations.

  Systematically the leaders of the uprising set about consolidating their forces, making weapons, indoctrinating their followers, and training the militia. By December of 1850 the new army was able successfully to withstand a full assault by government troops, and in the flush of this first victory Hong formally proclaimed, at the start of the new year, his rebel regime, the Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace (Taiping Tianguo). He himself assumed the title of Heavenly King, and others of the leaders, including several with military and organizational talents probably superior to those of Hong, were ranked as subordinate kings or princes.

  The name of the new regime suggests that it was meant to fulfill the highest ideals of the Chinese political tradition (Taiping, or “Great Peace,” designated a period of perfect peace and order invoked by earlier reformers and millenarian movements), along with the realization of a Kingdom of Heaven in which all worshiped the one True God. It was thus to be a theocratic state with military, religious, and political authority concentrated in a single hierarchy. Such an all-embracing, monolithic structure was congenial enough to the Chinese political scene and particularly suited the requirements of a revolutionary situation. As a political venture the Taiping movement appealed to anti-Manchu, ethnocentric sentiments. As a program of economic reform, it was meant to attract the overburdened and the destitute, particularly among the peasants. As a new community—indeed a great family in which all the members were “brothers” and “sisters”—it had an appeal to rich and poor alike who suffered from the social dislocation and insecurity of the times. The Taiping cause, in other words, became a rallying point for many elements that traditionally have attached themselves to a new dynastic movement.

  Even in the powerful appeal of its religious mystique the Taiping Rebellion had something in common with peasant uprisings and dynastic revolutions in the past. Where it differed, however, was in the intensity and sectarian fanaticism with which Taiping religious teachings were insisted upon. Great importance was attached to the indoctrination of new recruits. Moreover, the extraordinary discipline of the Taiping armies, the heroism of many in battle, and their readiness to meet death—for which there could be no earthly reward—all suggest that this motley assemblage of malcontents and misfits, missionaries and messiahs was inspired by a deep sense of religious purpose.

  From the military standpoint the rebellion enjoyed startling success in its early years. It had the advantage of tight organization, firm discipline, talented commanders, and a high degree of mobility that derived from the cutting of all personal ties to home and property. Nevertheless, if Taiping progress northward was devastatingly swift, through Hunan to the central Yangzi valley and thence eastward to Nanjing, this rapid advance came about only by the adoption of a strategy that had its own limitations—notably the bypassing of large centers of resistance. The Taipings concerned themselves little with organizing the
countryside as they passed through. No permanent envelopment of these bypassed strongholds and eventual reduction of them was seriously attempted. Local opposition and temporary setbacks, instead of suggesting the need for caution and consolidation, were interpreted as signs from God that they should push on in other directions toward new and greater triumphs. The chief military commander, Yang Xiuqing, who had the title of Eastern King, frequently claimed direct revelation from God the Father in support of his strategic moves, and Taiping accounts of the campaign make it appear that the triumphal course of the rebellion reflects the direct intervention of God in history through the instrumentality of chosen deputies like Hong and Yang.

  Once established in their capital of Nanjing, occupied in March 1853 and renamed “Heavenly Capital” (Tianjing), the Taipings sent out an expedition to take Beijing. The effort again made striking gains initially but was eventually slowed, isolated, and defeated. A similar expedition to the West was more successful in enlarging the area under Taiping control, but for the most part the new regime found itself engaged in a protracted struggle to maintain its position in the lower Yangzi valley, a rich and populous region that posed formidable problems of defense and administration. For ten years the fortunes of war waxed and waned, with the exploits of some Taiping commanders resulting in heavy defeats for imperial armies, while, on the other hand, increasing pressure was exerted against them by the reorganized and revitalized forces of regional Han Chinese leaders loyal to the Manchu cause—leaders such as Zeng Guofan, Zuo Zongtang, and Li Hongzhang, who were to play a dominant role in the subsequent history of the dynasty.

  A significant loss for the Taipings was their failure to enlist the support of the West. There was early sympathy for the rebel cause on the part of some Westerners in the treaty ports, based on a favorable impression of Taiping morale and discipline, as well as the hope that the Taiping religion might prove to be genuinely Christian. Contacts with the leaders of the revolt soon disillusioned and alienated them, however. The fanaticism, ignorance, and arrogant pretensions of the revolutionaries to a special divine commission, to which even foreigners must submit, quickly dispelled any illusions that the Taipings would be easier for the Western powers to deal with than the Manchus. Subsequently, Taiping moves threatening Shanghai brought the active intervention of the West against them.

  A far more serious weakness of the movement was internal—a failure in political leadership. The Taiping “kings” paid little attention to systematic organization of the countryside, preferring to establish themselves in the larger towns and cities. Moreover, educated men with experience in civil administration, whose services might have been highly useful, were repelled by the Taipings’ uncouthness, their superstitious adherence to a “foreign” faith, and their apparent repudiation of Confucianism. A civil service examination based on official Taiping literature did little to remedy the lack of trained personnel. Increasingly, too, the cohesion and capacities of the Taiping leadership were severely strained. After the capture of Nanjing, Hong steadily withdrew from active direction of affairs and assumed a role reminiscent of the Daoist sage emperor who ruled by his magic potency—in this case his divine virtue. Yet, in fact, Hong’s whole personality disintegrated rapidly, as he devoted himself more and more to the pleasures of the palace. There, in violation of the strict sexual morality and monogamy enjoined upon the Taipings, the Heavenly King kept a virtual harem.

  In the meantime, the Eastern King, Yang Xiuqing, steadily arrogated greater powers to himself and even aspired to the imperial dignity before he lost his life in the first of a series of bloodbaths that deprived the regime of several top leaders and many of their adherents. Thereafter, Hong tended to place his own relatives in key positions, being more concerned about trustworthiness than ability. One such relative was Hong Ren’gan, prime minister in the last years of the regime, who had far more acquaintance with Christianity and the West than the other “kings” but who proved unable to effectuate any of his plans for the reorganization of the regime along more Western lines.

  One of the great ironies of the Taiping Rebellion was revealed at the time of its final collapse in the summer of 1864. Nanjing had been in danger for months when Li Xiucheng, an able general whose military successes had not turned his head from a devoted loyalty to Hong, advised abandonment of the capital and escape to the south. The Heavenly King chose to remain, insisting that God would protect and provide for the Taipings. Yet by June 1864 Hong had himself despaired of his cause, apparently taken poison, and died; his body was found later, draped in imperial yellow, in a sewer under the palace. Hong’s faithful followers held out another month in the midst of the worst privation and suffering, and when finally overwhelmed by the Manchu forces, gave up their lives in a great slaughter rather than submit. Zeng Guofan, leader of the victorious armies, is the authority for the statement that not one surrendered.

  In the religious faith of the Taiping movement, the most distinguishing feature was its monotheism. In the past, China had not lacked for popular religious movements, nor had the imperial court been without its own cult linking dynastic rule to the authority of Heaven. But it was Hong who first proclaimed a belief in one God who was the Father of all, a God who was at once accessible to the prayers of the individual and actively concerned with the governing of the world. In Taiping documents, as will be seen from the selections that follow, this point is particularly stressed: whereas the old cult of Heaven was, ritualistically, a one-family affair, jealously guarded by the ruling house, the True God of the Taipings was the ruler, father, and friend of all. His direct accessibility to men, however, proved both a boon and a bane to the Taipings. For if this conception stimulated a genuine piety in many, it also provided a dangerous weapon to a few of their leaders who claimed divine inspiration for their actions and God’s sanction for their own ambitions.

  Western influence can be seen in some of the practices adopted by the Taipings, such as a calendar with a seven-day week and observance of the sabbath. It may have been responsible in part also for the greater equality accorded to women, the condemnation of polygamy and adultery, and the bans on slavery, foot binding, gambling, wine, and tobacco. The coincidence, however, of a straitlaced Protestant fundamentalism and a degree of native puritanism among the Chinese peasantry (the latter reflected also in the avowedly anti-Christian Communist movement of the mid-twentieth century) suggests that convergence more than simple external influence is at work here.

  The peasant Chinese who so largely made up the forces of Hong Xiuquan were already deeply imbued with ethical and religious traditions rooted in the past. Moreover, the Taipings were compelled, in spite of their early hostility to Confucianism, to compromise with many of its customs and values or—more likely—unconsciously to accept them without sensing any incompatibility between traditional ethics and the new faith. Such accommodations, nonetheless, proved insufficient to bridge the gap between Taiping ideology and the Chinese tradition or to equip the revolutionary leadership for the stupendous task of ruling a mature and complex society. In the end it was the defenders of tradition and those schooled in Chinese statecraft who emerged victorious to guide China’s destinies for another half-century.

  THE BOOK OF HEAVENLY COMMANDMENTS (TIANTIAO SHU)

  This text, officially promulgated by the Taipings in 1852, was probably written several years earlier to serve as a basic statement of the God Worshipers’ creed and religious practice when they were first organized. It bespeaks a simple and unpretentious faith, constantly reiterating the hope of Heaven and fear of hell. Much of it is devoted to forms that are to be used in the saying of prayers, grace at meals, and so on, and to an explanation of the Ten Commandments. In the last category we find provisions for segregation of the sexes and prohibitions against opium smoking and gambling.

  When a translation of this work by W. H. Medhurst appeared in the English-language North China Herald on May 14, 1853, the editor commented: “We cannot help thinking that this is a m
ost extraordinary document, and can see in it little to object against. Two things strike us on reading it carefully through: the one is that with the exception of occasional references to redemption by Christ and apparent extracts from the Lord’s Prayer, the ideas seem to be generally taken from the Old Testament, with little or nothing from the New; the other is that it appears to be mainly a compilation drawn up by the rebels themselves, for if a Christian missionary had had anything to do with it, he certainly would not have directed the offering up of animals, wine, tea, and rice even though these offerings were presented to the Great God. As it is, we repeat it is a most extraordinary production, and were the rebels to act up to everything therein contained, they would be the most gentle and moral set of rebels we ever met with.”

  The translation given here is adapted and revised from that of Medhurst as emended on the basis of other early editions of the text by members of the Modern Chinese History Project, Far Eastern and Russian Institute, University of Washington, as a part of The Taiping Rebellion: History and Documents, by Franz Michael, published in 1971.

  Who in this mortal world has not offended against the Heavenly Commandments? If one was not aware of his offense in former times, he can still be excused; now, however, as the Lord God has already issued a gracious proclamation, henceforth whoever knows how to repent of his sins in the presence of the Lord God, not to worship false spirits, not to practice perverse things, and not to transgress the Heavenly Commandments, shall be permitted to ascend to Heaven and to enjoy dignity and honor without end. Whoever does not know how to repent of his sins . . . will most certainly be punished by being sent down to hell to suffer bitterness, and for thousands and myriads of years to suffer sorrow and pain without end. Which is gain and which is loss, we ask you to think over. Our brothers and sisters throughout the mortal world, ought not all of you to awaken from your lethargy? If, however, you continue unroused, then are you truly base-born, truly deluded by the devil, and truly is there bliss that you do not know how to enjoy. [1a]