1900 - Shu Shan & Family

June 1900

Shu Shan & Family

Fuho, Beijing

Gao Xin with his wife Shu Shan, two of their children and family members.

Gao Xin was an evangelist in charge of the mission station at Fuho, a village just four miles (six kilometres) north of Tongzhou in the present-day Beijing Municipality. On June 5, 1900, the Boxers set up a sacrificial altar in Fuho, in honour of the demonic spirits they worshipped.

Gao Xin’s household consisted of his mother, his wife Shu Shan, an eight-year-old son, a three-year-old daughter who was deaf and unable to talk, and a baby boy aged 15-months. On June 7th, news arrived that the Christians in Tongzhou had been butchered, and Gao Xin decided to flee into the mountains north of their home. It was impossible to take the three children with them, so Gao Xin’s mother advised that he flee, with a Christian boy named Li Rui whose entire family had already perished. Shu Shan and the three children were sent to stay with non-Christian relatives, believing this would provide a measure of safety from the Boxers. Gao’s aged mother was asked what her plans were she replied, “I shall stay here. Can we not bear a little suffering for Jesus? If it is his will, we shall meet again; if not, let us trust him, even unto death.”[I]

The next morning Gao Xin and Li Rui left Fuho. For weeks they survived in harsh conditions, walking long distances in order to stay ahead of the Boxer chaos. On one night Gao Xin had a horrible dream of someone covered with blood streaming from wounds. He knew something terrible was happening down on the plains, but had no alternative but to press on. He later learned that his entire family had been slaughtered by the ruthless Boxers, among a total of 42 Christians slain in Fuho.

Shu Shan and her three children had gone to the house of her grandmother. Just a few days later a crowd of Boxers surrounded the house. They knelt in a circle and cried out, “Kill! Burn!” The grandmother was no longer willing to shelter her Christian relatives and told them to leave. In despair, Shu Shan

“…made her way across the fields, carrying the heavy fifteen-months’ old baby, sometimes carrying, sometimes leading the three-year-old girl, while the eight-year-old boy walked by her side. Without food, without money, without a roof in the whole world to shelter them, her woman’s instinct turned her to the spot which she had once called home.”[II]

Tenderly, Shu Shan tried to spare the life of her oldest son by sending him to stay with some other relatives, but he calmly said, “No, mother, if we are to die, let us all be together. I am not afraid.” When they were a short distance from their home in Fuho, the besieged family sat down under a tree for a short rest. The faithful and loving Christian mother

“…was faint with heat and thirst, and her eyes were so swollen with days of weeping that she could hardly find her way. She sank down exhausted under a tree. A peddler whom she knew passed by on his way to the town. ‘Please ask my aunt to come and bring me some water,’ she gasped. ‘Don’t ask for water,’ the man replied, ‘jump into the river yonder. Your mother-in-law is dead. The Boxers cut her to pieces yesterday. They’ll kill you if you go into the village.’ ‘I shall go home,’ she said; ‘If they kill me, let it be at our own home.’”[III]

The Boxers watched from the village as the brave Shu Shan gathered her three children and trudged, one painful step at a time, towards her home. Inside the gate they found the mangled corpse of Gao Xin’s mother. A mob of Boxers, along with dozens of villagers, stared at the pitiful family. Shu Shan turned to them and asked, “If you kill me, kill all my children. Don’t keep them alive to suffer after I am gone.” The Boxers, however, announced that the three-year-old girl had not been destined to die by the spirits, and told the crowd if anyone wanted her to come and take her away. A young man named Ho came and took her. Another man knelt and requested that the life of the baby also be spared, but the Boxers refused. Suddenly, like a lightning bolt, Shu Shan was dragged out of the house into the yard. She stood,

“…her baby in her arms, and saw her dear boy slowly stabbed to death. A cruel spear thrust through his back, then as he ran screaming round and round the tree, one after another cut at him with swords and spears. A wild thought came into the mind of the frenzied mother as she clasped her doomed baby close to her heart; perhaps she could save him from that slow torment. With the strength of a maniac, she dashed the child against the tree, killing him instantly. The Boxers took their revenge by slowly doing the mother to death.”[IV]

A shallow grave was dug in the backyard, and the corpses were flung into it. Poignantly, some burnt pages from a hymn book blew into the grave before it was covered up.

It was some months before Gao Xin was able to safely return to his home in Fuho. His running from the Boxers had taken him far, even outside the Great Wall and into the Mongolian deserts. After he returned to his home, Gao recorded, “I can not tell you how I felt when I stood by the charred ruins of my once happy home, looking at the rude heap of earth, under which lay the bodies of mother, wife, and two sons.”[V]

I Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 317.
II Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 326.
III Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 326.
IV Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 327-328.
V Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 325.