In the fall of 1894 the English and American missionaries at Ku Cheng, in the Chinese province of Fu Kien, of which Foochow is the capital, began to be threatened by a sect or party called the "Vegetarians" (Siah Chai), who were violently hostile to foreigners, and said to be revolutionary in their aims. The hostile demonstrations were repeated in the following April, and the missionary party started upon a retreat to Foochow, but were stopped on the way by news that the Mandarin at Ku Cheng had pacified the Vegetarians and that they might safely return. They did so and were apparently secure for some months. In July they retired from the city to a mountain sanatorium, named Hua Sang, 12 miles from Ku Cheng, and there, on the 1st day of August, without warning, they were surrounded by a Vegetarian band of some eighty savage men, armed with swords and spears, who performed a rapid work of murder, killing eleven persons, including six women and two children, and then disappeared. "These men did not belong either to Hua Sang or Ku Cheng, but came from some villages at a considerable distance. … The city authorities at Ku Cheng had no hand in the outrage. It was evidently the work of a band of marauders, and the district magistrate seems to have done all that could be done under the circumstances." _D. M. Berry, The Sister Martyrs of Ku Cheng._ The British and American governments joined in sending a consular commission to investigate the crime, and with difficulty compelled the Chinese government to execute twenty of the ringleaders of the attack. At Fatshan, near Canton, there had been mob attacks on the missionary station, with destruction of buildings, but no murders, during the same month in which the massacre at Hua Sang occurred. CHINA: A. D. 1896. Tour of Li Hung-chang in Europe and America.