New Forces in Old China: An Inevitable AwakeningBrown, Arthur Judson
History
New Forces in Old China: An Inevitable Awakening
Brown, Arthur Judson
China -- Commerce; China -- Foreign relations; China -- Politics and government; Missions -- China
We rode past innumerable ruined buildings and through
motley throngs of Manchus, Chinese, German, French, Italian,
British and Japanese soldiers to the Presbyterian compound at
Duck Lane, which, though narrow, is not so unimportant a
street as its name implies. But where devoted missionaries
had so long lived and toiled, we saw only shapeless heaps of
broken bricks and a few tottering fragments of walls. At the
Second Street compound there was even greater ruin, if that
were possible. Silently we stood beside the great hole which
had once been the hospital cistern and from which the Japanese
soldiers, after the siege, had taken the bodies of a hundred
murdered Chinese. Not all had been Christians, for in that
carnival of blood, many who were merely suspected of being
friendly to foreigners were killed, while foes took advantage of
the tumult to pay off old scores of hate.
The first reports that had come to New York were that four-
fifths of the Chinese Christians and three-fourths of the boys and
girls in the boarding-schools had been killed or had died under
the awful hardships of that fatal summer. But as the months
passed, first one and then another and another were found.
Husbands searched for wives, parents for children, brothers
for sisters, until a considerable number of the missing ones had
been found, though the number of the lost was still great.
About two hundred of these surviving Christians and their
families were living together in native buildings adjoining the
residence in which we were entertained. Their history was
one of agony and bereavement. Including those who fell at
Paoting-fu, 191 of their fellow Christians had received the
crown of martyrdom, so that almost every survivor had lost
father or mother, brother or sister or friend. The Chinese are
supposed to be a phlegmatic people and not given to emotion.
But never have I met a congregation more swiftly responsive
than this one in Peking as I bore to them kindly messages from
many friends in other lands.
The Roman Catholic Cathedral was immortalized by Bishop
Favier's defense during the memorable siege. The mission
buildings occupy a spacious and strongly-walled compound in
the Manchu city. Hundreds of bullet and shell holes in the roofs
and walls were suggestive evidences of the fury of the Boxer
attack, while great pits marked the spots where mines had
been exploded.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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