1900 - The Zunhua Massacre

June – July 1900

Zunhua, Hebei

Zunhua today is a medium-sized city of approximately 700,000 people, located in Hebei Province about 60 miles (97 km) east of Beijing. On May 14, 1900, an alarm went up that the Boxers were about to attack the city. The Christian school—containing more than one hundred boys and girls—was immediately closed, and the missionaries received a telegram from their headquarters ordering them to flee to the coast at the first opportunity. Chinese believers were advised to leave their homes and go into hiding. In response, “Seven Methodist missionaries and their seven children were spirited away in the dark of night in covered Chinese carts. Not a half hour later the mob broke into the mission compound, fired the buildings, and began rounding up the Christians.”[1]

Two days later the Boxers dressed a small boy, whom they said was possessed by a spirit, in a long red robe. They took him to a temple and placed him on the throne of the ‘goddess of mercy’. The boy pretended to be a messenger from heaven, and told the Boxers there were nine large guns hidden at the mission compound, and that if the Christians were not all destroyed, calamity was sure to befall the town. Hundreds of people flocked to the temple from surrounding villages, burning incense to the boy. The Chinese pastor of the Methodist Church was taken to a temple and

“mocked in the presence of the idols, then tied to one of the pillars for the night. Boxers and even his friends urged him to recant to save his life. He did not. Much more, he spent the night preaching to his enemies. In the morning a mob of over a thousand descended upon him, and literally tore out his heart.”[2]

Liu Wenlan was the matron of the school. Along with 17 of the students, she had nowhere to flee to when the Boxers came. One person who watched Liu grow up explained that she seemed “to have been selected by the Lord for his own work as a teacher. She was good and upright as a girl, enthusiastic as a Christian, diligent as a student, and faithful as a worker.”[3] Afflicted with an illness, Liu Wenlan was forced to leave the dusty climate of Beijing and relocate to the more rural town of Zunhua. She proved to be an invaluable teacher at the Christian Girls’ School, and was deeply loved by both students and fellow teachers. When the Boxers swept into Zunhua, Liu Wenlan and seventeen girls were captured and immediately taken to be killed. On the way to the execution ground, Liu

“reminded the girls how the Master was persecuted, and killed, and afterwards ascended into heaven; how the disciples one after another had met death because of their faith, and she continued ‘though we are not worthy to die for him we are ready and willing to do so, and will depend upon his grace to save us’.”[4]

The Boxers were furious at Liu’s exhortations, for not only did her words strengthen the Christian girls, they also exposed the wickedness of the Boxers’ hearts. When they arrived at the execution spot, Liu Wenlan calmly offered her head, and the flash of a sword sent her into eternity with her Lord and Saviour. All seventeen girls were killed, having been emboldened by the faithful and courageous witness of their beloved teacher.

Another source speaks of two female teachers who were captured and offered the chance to deny Christ. They refused, and subsequently “one had her feet chopped off and then was killed with a sword. The other, shouting encouragement to her pupils, was wrapped in cotton, soaked with kerosene and burned alive.”[5] Throughout Zunhua many believers were slaughtered. Dou Bin, the father of one of the schoolteachers, was taken to the mission compound and executed. One witness recounted how

“He said he never thought he should have the good fortune to die as a martyr at the place where he first heard the gospel and received baptism…. They cut out his heart and took it to their headquarters, where it was put up in a conspicuous place for some days. His third, fourth, and fifth sons, with his daughter-in-law, were all killed, as they were unwilling to renounce their faith.”[6]

Others to die because of their devotion to Christ included a bookseller named Fu Duan, who was butchered with He Chuansheng because they refused to deny their Lord. Yang Fujin, his wife, and a Mrs. Wang were captured by the Boxers. One observer said, “They were covered with mud, and looked tired and hungry, while the hair of each was clutched by a Boxer by whom they were led to the mission compound and there put to death.”[7]

Near the village of Baoziyu, a group of 24 Christians led by a man named Jia somehow managed to hold a company of Boxers at bay on a mountaintop despite being armed with just one spear, a pistol, and some carrying poles. They achieved this by placing “the women and children in the center with thirteen men around them. The Boxers attacked them with swords, spears and guns, and they would have held out longer but for the fact that the children clung to their legs and garments.”[8] In the end, just two men managed to escape with their lives. The other 22 Christians were slaughtered by the Boxers.

Although no thorough list of martyrs was published from Zunhua, a total of 163 Methodists were killed in the town in the summer of 1900, and at least that many Catholics perished there.[9] An even worse massacre of Christians in Zunhua was averted due to the local police chief, who was sympathetic to the believers. He managed to save the lives of a number of Christians by paying money to the Boxers.

The Satanic plan to obliterate Christianity from Zunhua failed miserably. Within a few years following the Boxer Rebellion the church attendance in the city surpassed the pre-1900 levels. Today at least 20,000 people in Zunhua follow Jesus Christ.[10]

1. Baker, Ten Thousand Years, 87.
2. Baker, Ten Thousand Years, 87.
3. Isaac Taylor Headland, Chinese Heroes: Being a Record of Persecutions Endured by Native Christians (New York: Eaton & Mains, 1902), 168.
4. Headland, Chinese Heroes, 168.
5. Baker, Ten Thousand Years, 87.
6. Headland, Chinese Heroes, 211.
7. Headland, Chinese Heroes, 211.
8. Headland, Chinese Heroes, 212.
9. Another source says, “In the Zunhua region, one hundred and seventy-eight perished for their faith. Many of these were tortured, as only heathen Chinese know how to torture. They now wear the martyr’s crown.” Forsyth, The China Martyrs of 1900, 365-366.
10. There are 24 government-sanctioned Three-Self churches in the city today, plus numerous house churches.