1900 - Li Chouzi & Family

June 6, 1900

Li Chouzi & Family

Beijing

One of the Chinese martyrs associated with the Christian Missionary & Alliance work was a young lady named Li Chouzi. Her given name, Chouzi, means “a stench, putrid, disreputable!”[I] In those days (and in some rural areas of China today), babies were given horrible names, in a bid by the parents to trick the demons into believing the child is ugly and detestable, and therefore not worth their attention. Despite this disadvantageous start to life, by the age of seven Li Chouzi was an attractive and lovely little girl, the spark of her family. She came into contact with missionaries and enrolled in the mission day school. Her mother was upset when she found out her daughter was in regular contact with the ‘foreign devils’ and forbade her from attending the school. Slowly, however, Chouzi’s mother changed her opinion until she, too, believed in Jesus Christ. Chouzi and her mother were baptized on the same day.

Chouzi proved to be a good soul-winner for Jesus because of her outgoing and attractive personality. One day she went to the chapel to find nobody had come to hear the gospel. She told the leaders not to worry, she would bring some people in to hear God’s Word, and she immediately left the chapel. She returned just minutes later with a string of women behind her. When asked how she had managed to find so many women in a such a short space of time she replied, “Oh, I just went out and asked them how they could dream of buying and sewing, or, in fact, doing anything else, when anything so important as a gospel meeting was being held.”[II]

On June 6, 1900, what proved to be the final prayer meeting was held at the small chapel. The Bible study that day was appropriate, from the 14th chapter of John: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me. In my Father’s house are many rooms…. I am going there to prepare a place for you.”[III] Before the women headed home, Li Chouzi asked to sing the hymn, “God be with you till we meet again; till we meet at Jesus’ feet.”

Little did they know that most of the women would be heaven-bound that very day, for after the mission premises were ransacked and burned to the ground, the Boxers entered the Christians’ homes and dragged them off, hacking them to pieces. Li Chouzi, her father, mother, and brothers were all massacred.