1900 - Protestant Martyrs in Hebei

June – July 1900

Hebei

The Martyrs’ Memorial Pavilion, erected at Baoding in Hebei Province to commemorate the Christian martyrs of the Boxer Rebellion.

Hebei was one of the worst affected parts of China during the Boxer Rebellion. Many missionaries were slaughtered, while the number of Chinese martyrs numbered in the thousands. The trouble for the missionaries in Hebei started in the summer of 1900 when the provincial Governor issued a proclamation declaring:

“All foreign teachers of religion are deceivers and propagators of devilish and injurious doctrines. All who have joined their churches must recant at once, or they and their families will be killed, their houses burned, and property confiscated. Missionaries must get back to their own countries, and will be protected as they proceed to do so.”[1]

Many of the Hebei martyrs have been profiled individually in this book, but some of the others who were faithful unto death include a young preacher from Cangzhou. He was captured by men who accused him of being a preacher. He did not deny the charge. They cut off his ear and mockingly asked, “‘Are you still a preacher?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I am. I’ll preach to you if you’ll listen.’ But they would not wait for more, and killed him on the spot.”[2]

A pretty young schoolgirl and her mother were seized by the Boxers. They managed to escape, but were pursued. The mother was “speedily overtaken and killed, but the girl got on a bit further before she, too, was overtaken. Facing her pursuers boldly she said, ‘You can kill me if you like, but first let me sing and pray.’”[3] She was then hacked to death.

A Chinese believer named Dong was teaching in Beijing when the Boxer trouble started. He was a member of the church at Nanmeng in Hebei Province, about 50 miles (81 km) south of the capital. Immediately, Dong made plans to return home, much to the dismay of his Beijing friends, who pleaded with him to remain in the capital where his chances of survival were greater than in his hometown. When a missionary urged him to stay, Dong said, “No, I must go home; I am not afraid to die for the Lord.” He had been in his home no more than half an hour when the Boxers received word of his return. After they seized him, “he talked to them so earnestly about the religion which he believed that, in a rage, they cut his body into many pieces, sending one to each Boxer altar in the neighbourhood.”[4]

A sad story unfolded about the fate of the leader of the church at Nanmeng, Pastor Hong. He was in Beijing on June 13, 1900, the night when the Boxers slaughtered the Christians at Nanmeng. Unable to find his loved ones and

“…wild with grief, he was seen in one of the city gates the next morning…. Nearly a year after the massacre began, a man came from Central Asia and reported that he had met a man there named Hong, a Christian, who when asked why he did not return to his home in China replied, ‘My friends have all been killed; the Christians and missionaries are exterminated. Why should I go back?’

All efforts to reach this heartbroken wanderer in those dreary wastes have failed. If he ever returns to Beijing he will find there his wife and children.”[5]

In and around the remote town of Kalgan (now Zhangjiakou) in the northwest part of Hebei,

“thirty-one members of the Congregational Church were slain…. Most of the victims were from Yuzhou, nearly seventy miles [113 km] away. There six women found a common grave in a well, into which the Boxers threw them, burying them under stones and earth. Among those who ‘witnessed a good confession’ was Wan Xin (Wan Hsin).”[6]

All across Hebei the same story of death and destruction was repeated. For some, it was months before they discovered the fate of their loved ones. One young Christian lady named Zhang was studying in Shanxi Province at the time of the Boxer attacks. Only in March the following year did she learn that her “father, mother, and younger brother had been killed at their home”[7] in Hebei.

1. Green, In Deaths Oft, 36.
2. Luella Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs: A Record of Heroic Martyrdoms and Marvelous Deliverances of Chinese Christians During the Summer of 1900 (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1903), 193.
3. Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 193.
4. Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 291.
5. Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 291.
6. Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 412.
7. Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 431-432.