1900 - The Yanshan Massacre

June – July 1900

Yanshan, Hebei

Christian women at Yanshan before the Boxer outbreak.

Yanshan County, with a present-day population of around 400,000 people, is located in the eastern part of Hebei Province, approximately 80 miles (130 km) south of Tianjin, and near the provincial border with Shandong. At the time of the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, Yanshan was a small town containing no more than one-fifth of the population it does today. Most of the Christians in Yanshan fled when the Boxer onslaught commenced. One report reveals the pitiful state the believers were faced with,

“They lay down in ditches by the way-side, the fierce summer sun almost blinding them with its incessant glare. In the night they lay down in the great millet furrows and poured out their hearts in an agony to their Lord, cheering one another with words of hope and faith and thoughts of the heavenly home that was now so near. No one but God knows what they suffered during those weary weeks of wandering and persecution.”[1]

Two factors combined to save the lives of many Yanshan Christians, for there is no doubt the intention of the Boxers was to completely exterminate every follower of Christ living in the county. The first factor was the close proximity of Yanshan to the Shandong border. The governor of Shandong refused to partake in the attacks on Christians, and many of the believers managed to make it across the border to safety.

The second factor was that the summer millet crop was nearly ready to be harvested at the time of the attacks. The millet was so tall “that it enabled people to walk about the country without being seen from a distance, as they otherwise must have been, on a plain so vast and completely treeless.”[2]

Some of the slain Christians included a 16-year-old boy named Hao Shude, who was a student of the boarding school operated by the missionaries. With his hands tightly bound behind his back, the young man boldly exclaimed, “‘I am not afraid to die! Though you may kill this body of mine, you can do no harm to my soul.’ This lad was killed with spears. His body was buried by friends, but soon after the Boxers disinterred it and burnt it to ashes, fearing that the lad would rise again.”[3]

Ruins of the London Missionary Society’s chapel at Yanshan.

On June 16, 1900, the beloved Pastor Shao of the Yanshan Church and his wife and daughter were butchered by the Boxers. Their stories are recounted elsewhere. In the same incident the ‘Bible woman’ of Yanshan, Mrs. Wang, was hacked to pieces inside the mission compound of the London Missionary Society. Her remains were mutilated and burned, as the Boxers attempted to placate their demonic bloodlust.

By the end of the summer, the Boxers had slaughtered nearly 250 Christians in Yanshan. Many of the dead were young boys and girls from the missionary-led schools. One source notes that this figure “takes no count of the large numbers who died soon after from the results of the time of horror and suffering, having themselves received cruel treatment or died from the shock of hearing of the agonies endured by their dear ones.”[4]