1900 - The Widow Deng

June 1900

Yanshan, Hebei

The Widow Deng.

One of the preachers of the Yanshan Church in 1900 was a young man named Deng Yuzhen. His mother was highly respected by everyone who knew her because of her kind and charitable spirit. Her husband had been killed during the Taiping Rebellion in the early 1860s. Despite being a young and pretty woman, she decided not to remarry.

When the Boxer trouble commenced, the Widow Deng decided to take refuge in her elderly mother’s home. This soon proved to be no safe haven, as the thorough Boxers searched door-to-door for Christians, so she relocated to another relative’s house in an even more remote location. When she arrived at the village, however, the inhabitants refused to let her enter, fearing dire consequences would befall them if the Boxers discovered their village had harboured a Christian.

Not knowing which way to turn, she nestled among some ruins just outside the village. Deng’s son felt anxious for his mother’s well-being and travelled to the village to help her. Every night he visited her hiding place, “carrying her food and trying to cheer her sad heart. But she implored him to flee for his life. ‘If you love me,’ she said, ‘leave off coming to see me. I can but die; I have no strength to flee; but you must live and preach the gospel to others.’”[1]

For days Deng Yuzhen refused to do what his mother had told him, but finally, seeing the distress his continued presence was bringing her, he brought a supply of food and drink and left it next to his exhausted mother. He escaped to the coast, surviving the Boxer Rebellion and later returned to preach the gospel, just as his mother had hoped.

For another week or two the Widow Deng remained among the ruins, along with a few other Christians in a similar predicament. Finally, their presence was brought to the attention of the Boxers, who roughly dragged them to a temple and kept them in a tiny room for five days. The Widow Deng was taken to the Temple of the City god and ordered to burn incense and give honour to the idol shrine. Refusing to do so, “she was taken out to the execution ground with many others, and there they suffered a violent death at the hands of the Boxers.”[2]