God's Chinese Son Read Online Free
were often both muddled and inept. But it should help us to understand why he pursued the dreams he did, and why so many were willing to follow and die for him as he sought to make the dreams reality.
Many questions remain unanswerable, perhaps most crucially those linking Hong's own character to the Apocalypse he helped to cause. Did he have the faintest inkling, as he began during the 1840s to preach to small groups of farmers and migrant workers in the hills of Guangxi province, that the trail of events set in motion by his visions would lead to the deaths of millions of people, and would require a decade of the concentrated military and fiscal energies of some of China's greatest statesmen to suppress? It seems unlikely, for by identifying himself with the heavenly forces, Hong came to believe he removed himself from the ordinary judgments of humankind. But if he had reflected on it, the Book of Revelation, which he studied with great care, would have told him that such catastrophes had been long foretold, and that the chaos and horror were just a part of the glory and peace to come. I cannot find it in me to wish that Hong had succeeded in his goals, but neither can I entirely deny that there was true passion in his quest. As the epigraph to this book suggests, in the words of Keats, which themselves build on those of the Book of Revelation, Hong was one of those people who believe it is their mission to make all things "new, for the surprise of the sky-children." It is a central agony of history that those who embark on such missions so rarely care to calculate the cost.
West Haven, Connecticut May 15, 1995
The great seal of the Taiping. This version of the Taiping state seal, measuring 20.5 centimeters square, was probably made in 1860 or 1861 during the last years of Taiping rule over their Heavenly Kingdom. The seal is in the form of an acrostic, and Chinese scholars have long debated the exact order in which the characters on the seal were meant to be read and interpreted. The most definitive recent interpretation, offered by Wang Qingcheng, suggests starting with the central characters at the top of seal, proceeding with alternating lines in the bottom half of the seal (fanning out from the center and reading from right to left) before concluding with the smaller outside characters in the top half. This yields the following reading:
The Taiping state seal:
[Of] God the Father,
The Heavenly Elder Brother Christ,
The Heavenly King Hong, the sun, ruler of the bountiful earth, [And] the Savior and Young Monarch, the True King, Guifu. Exalted for a myriad years, eternally granting Heaven's favor, Eternally maintaining Heaven and earth in gracious harmony and convivial peace.
God's Chinese Son
1 WALLS
It's hard to be always on the outside, looking in, but these foreigners have no choice. They live crammed together by the water's edge, two hundred yards or so beyond the southwest corner of Canton's crumbling but still imposing walls. They climb often to the roofs of their rented residences, and gaze from there across the walls to the close-packed streets and spacious landscaped residences of the Chinese city that lie beyond. They are allowed to stroll along the west wall's outer edge and peer, past clustered Chinese guards, through the long dark tunnels that form the city's major gates. If times are peaceful, a group of foreign men by prearrangement meet at dawn and walk the city's whole outside perimeter, a walk that takes two hours or so if no one blocks the way. During the fire that raged all night near the end of 1835, and destroyed more than a thousand city homes, one Westerner clambered onto the walls to watch the flames; initially turned away by Chinese guards, he was allowed to return the next afternoon, and walk along the walls at leisure. But this was exceptional grace, and not repeated. Some, with permission, visit rural temples in the hills, which from their
Many questions remain unanswerable, perhaps most crucially those linking Hong's own character to the Apocalypse he helped to cause. Did he have the faintest inkling, as he began during the 1840s to preach to small groups of farmers and migrant workers in the hills of Guangxi province, that the trail of events set in motion by his visions would lead to the deaths of millions of people, and would require a decade of the concentrated military and fiscal energies of some of China's greatest statesmen to suppress? It seems unlikely, for by identifying himself with the heavenly forces, Hong came to believe he removed himself from the ordinary judgments of humankind. But if he had reflected on it, the Book of Revelation, which he studied with great care, would have told him that such catastrophes had been long foretold, and that the chaos and horror were just a part of the glory and peace to come. I cannot find it in me to wish that Hong had succeeded in his goals, but neither can I entirely deny that there was true passion in his quest. As the epigraph to this book suggests, in the words of Keats, which themselves build on those of the Book of Revelation, Hong was one of those people who believe it is their mission to make all things "new, for the surprise of the sky-children." It is a central agony of history that those who embark on such missions so rarely care to calculate the cost.
West Haven, Connecticut May 15, 1995
The great seal of the Taiping. This version of the Taiping state seal, measuring 20.5 centimeters square, was probably made in 1860 or 1861 during the last years of Taiping rule over their Heavenly Kingdom. The seal is in the form of an acrostic, and Chinese scholars have long debated the exact order in which the characters on the seal were meant to be read and interpreted. The most definitive recent interpretation, offered by Wang Qingcheng, suggests starting with the central characters at the top of seal, proceeding with alternating lines in the bottom half of the seal (fanning out from the center and reading from right to left) before concluding with the smaller outside characters in the top half. This yields the following reading:
The Taiping state seal:
[Of] God the Father,
The Heavenly Elder Brother Christ,
The Heavenly King Hong, the sun, ruler of the bountiful earth, [And] the Savior and Young Monarch, the True King, Guifu. Exalted for a myriad years, eternally granting Heaven's favor, Eternally maintaining Heaven and earth in gracious harmony and convivial peace.
God's Chinese Son
1 WALLS
It's hard to be always on the outside, looking in, but these foreigners have no choice. They live crammed together by the water's edge, two hundred yards or so beyond the southwest corner of Canton's crumbling but still imposing walls. They climb often to the roofs of their rented residences, and gaze from there across the walls to the close-packed streets and spacious landscaped residences of the Chinese city that lie beyond. They are allowed to stroll along the west wall's outer edge and peer, past clustered Chinese guards, through the long dark tunnels that form the city's major gates. If times are peaceful, a group of foreign men by prearrangement meet at dawn and walk the city's whole outside perimeter, a walk that takes two hours or so if no one blocks the way. During the fire that raged all night near the end of 1835, and destroyed more than a thousand city homes, one Westerner clambered onto the walls to watch the flames; initially turned away by Chinese guards, he was allowed to return the next afternoon, and walk along the walls at leisure. But this was exceptional grace, and not repeated. Some, with permission, visit rural temples in the hills, which from their
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