1868 - Samuel Johnson & Wan Taiping

1868

Huailiu, Anhui

It is difficult enough for family and friends when news comes through of a martyrdom, but perhaps a much worse fate befell the loved ones of missionary Samuel Johnson, and the Chinese evangelist Wan Taiping, who disappeared without a trace in the interior of China in 1868. For the next 18 years there was no news whatsoever about their fate.

Little is known about Johnson. What is known is that he had been a missionary in China for three years—serving as the first European colporteur with the British and Foreign Bible Society in Shanghai—when in late 1867 he planned a monumental journey by boat into China’s interior provinces, intending to distribute Christian literature along the way. Johnson was accompanied by a Chinese colporteur named Wan Taiping. Johnson wrote his final letter to Alexander Wylie, the leader of the British and Foreign Bible Society:

“I intend to make another journey west into Anhui, and visiting all the places I can, if possible, as far as Kaifeng, the provincial capital of Henan, and thence into Jiangbei, and as far north as Shandong or Hebei, if my books will permit, making a long and last journey, and returning about spring.”[1]

After leaving the seaside port of Shanghai, Johnson and Wan successfully made their way westward to the large river port of Zhenjiang in Jiangsu Province. From there they seemed to drop off the face of the earth. No word was heard of their whereabouts, and for almost twenty years nothing was known about what had happened to them.

In 1886 Robert Burnet of the National Bible Society of Scotland made a journey in the general direction that Johnson and Wan were meant to have taken. When he returned to the safety of Shanghai he penned an article in a prominent missionary magazine. Burnet wrote,

“In the course of a boating journey from Zhenjiang, across the province of Anhui to the Henan border, it was our lot, at four p.m. on May 8, to cast anchor at a small town, commonly called Huailiu. The people almost immediately showed an unfriendly spirit. At first books were purchased, but ere long were taken by force. Stones fortunately were not at hand, but we were pelted with wet clay from the river-side, until some of us appeared as if brick-making was our business….

The keeper of the shop, an old man, stated as follows: ‘Twenty years ago there was another foreigner here selling books. During the day a fire broke out, and burned a large part of the place. The people attributed this fire to the evil influences of the foreigner. At dead of night, a body of men went on board and killed the foreigner, his assistants, and all on board. The boat likewise was destroyed.”[2]

Finally a glimmer of light was shed on the martyrdom of two bold and zealous Christians, Samuel Johnson and Wan Taiping. They joined the ranks of those who endured to the end, and received the crown reserved for those who have tasted martyrdom in the service of the Lord Jesus Christ.

1. Foster, Christian Progress in China, 126.
2. Chinese Recorder (July 1886). Also see British and Foreign Bible Society, A Brief Account of the Work of the British and Foreign Bible Society for and in China (London: Spottiswoode & Co, 1891).