1900 - Li Deren & Family

June 1900

Li Deren & Family

Changping, Beijing

The coastal province of Shandong has produced many of China’s greatest church leaders, and also many of its martyrs. Li Deren attended a missionary school in Beijing while he was still a young teenage boy. Extremely small in stature, Li was a skilled artist, and the classroom was soon adorned with his hand-drawn maps and illustrations of Bible stories.

Just prior to the summer break from school, in the year 1900, Li and the other Christian students attended the annual church conference in Beijing. At the conclusion, Li, with his beloved wife and their young child decided to visit friends in the town of Changping, approximately 30 miles (49 km) north of Beijing. A short time later the Boxers reached Changping, and immediately set about killing as many foreigners and Chinese Christians as they could find. The local people were eager to volunteer information to the blood-thirsty bandits. Exactly what happened to the Li family is unclear. One report stated that Li

“…fled to the mountains and with his wife and child was butchered in a cave where they were in hiding; while another says that he was returning to Beijing in a cart and outside the An Ding Gate the carter reported that he was a Christian, when he was taken by the Boxers and, with his whole family, put to death.”[I]