1900 - 80 Chinese Martyrs at Taigu

July – August 1900

Taigu, Shanxi

A Boxer standard-bearer, armed with spear and shield.

An announcement was made that the missionaries at Taigu were to be slaughtered on June 28th, but the day passed without any disturbance. On June 24th there had been a riot in the streets surrounding the mission station. An angry crowd threw bricks and rocks and screamed, “Kill! Kill!” The missionaries were shocked at the sudden and dramatic change in the locals, many of whom had been kind to them just a few weeks before. They decided to try to diffuse the tense situation by calmly opening the gates, inviting the crowd in as they stood by nervously smiling. The mob crowded into the chapel and other buildings and did not leave until the evening.

The first Chinese Protestant martyr in the Taigu region was a shepherd named An, who lived in Dongfang. While out tending his sheep, “thirty men and boys pounced on him, tied him up, and cut him to pieces; afterwards they burned his body.”[1] A Christian woman named Gao Weihua, whose husband was imprisoned and tortured, was betrayed by her own brother. The Boxers “hacked Mrs. Gao to death on South Street and burned her home.”[2] The Boxers were relentless in their pursuit of the Chinese Christians. One account stated:

“They roamed the countryside, searching for converts, attacking anyone who showed the least indication of being Christian or being sympathetic to Christians, or who worked for the missionaries. They killed five converts in Li Man, including the mother-in-law and daughter of medical helper Li Yu, and Louise Partridge’s servant, Guo Xiaoxian, and his blind, eighty-year-old mother. Francis Davis’s helper at Ren Cun, Zui Hendai, tried to hide with his family in a thicket of thorn bushes, but a relative revealed where they were, and Boxers killed the entire family, seven persons in all.”[3]

Guo Xiaoxian, the martyred servant of missionary Louise Partridge.

Among the many Chinese martyrs at Taigu were Fei Qihao’s sister and her little baby. Fei later revealed that “Ten or fifteen…Taigu scholars were among the martyrs, five of six of them young men of my own age. I mourned them, saying: ‘My loved scholars, I had hoped that you would be pillars in God’s church, but now in your youth you have left me.”[4]

Liang Xidai was a member of the Taigu church. He had been saved from addiction to opium and gave his life wholeheartedly to the cause of Christ. Liang gave up a profitable business in order to live on the mission compound at Taigu, so he could better grow in his faith. He was later sent to a remote area more than 60-miles (97 km) away, where he preached the gospel with great zeal and effectiveness.

When the Boxers captured Liang and ordered him to denounce Jesus Christ he replied, “I am a disciple of Jesus; I cannot worship your gods. If you want to kill me, do it, for you can only kill my body; you cannot hurt my soul, and I do not fear you.”[5] He was viciously hacked to death just moments later.

Liang Jidai—who was also known by his childhood name Er Lai—was captured by the Boxers at a town near Taigu. He had been an assistant to missionary Howard Clapp. The Boxers “dragged Liang to a temple, gave him incense sticks to hold, and told him to bow down before the idols. He threw the sticks away and wept. The Boxers took him out and killed him.”[6]

Liu Chenglong and his family, seven people in all, were killed in early August. They had fled into the mountains and for a few weeks endured terrible hardship and deprivation. Liu was a graduate of the Theological Seminary at Tongzhou, and his wife was described as “a woman of rare loveableness.”[7] The whole group were captured and taken back to Taigu, where the Boxers ruthlessly ended their lives.

Earlier, on July 17th, Boxers had attacked the village where the Lius were from. The family was warned in advance, but Liu’s daughter-in-law remembered that she had left some money in the house and foolishly returned to retrieve it. The Boxers killed her. A young blind woman named Lois was also killed. She had been the first student in the girls’ school at Fenyang.

Wu Sanyuan was an old man when he first heard the gospel, but he wasted no time in making the remainder of his life count for God. He once told the missionaries at Taigu of his deepest desire: “I want to see the face of Jesus.” When the Boxers came to Taigu, Wu Sanyuan left his home and moved into the mission compound. Some well-meaning people from his village wrote a statement on his behalf, claiming he had denounced Christ. They brought the certificate to the mission gates, telling Wu that it was now safe to come home. The old Christian rebuked his friends for their misguided efforts and announced that he would stay with the missionaries regardless of the consequences. When the Boxers broke into the compound they launched themselves at Wu, slicing him with their razor sharp swords. In the twinkling of an eye Wu Sanyuan saw the face of Jesus.

Wang Baorong and five family members were killed near Taigu. Wang had been a notorious gambler, drunkard and adulterer, but after believing the gospel in 1895 his life was thoroughly transformed. He and his 18-year-old son were among six members of the Wang family who tried to hide in a sorghum field. The Boxers surrounded it and flushed them out. “They ripped out his [the son’s] bowels. His father’s head was chopped into bits and, with his heart, ground into pulp on a stone mill.”[8]

Li Hengzhang was a blind 70-year-old man who lived in the village of Nanzhang. An unfriendly neighbour told the Boxers he had seen Li with two Christian books. They came and asked him if he had any Bibles. He replied truthfully that he hadn’t, so the Boxers decided to ask the spirits whether he should live or die. To determine Li’s fate, they burned an incense stick. If the smoke went straight up without wavering, it was evidence that he was a good man and his life would be spared. If the column of smoke was inconsistent, it proved his guilt and he would die. The smoke “wavered. They took Li into his yard and chopped off his head with a straw knife.”[9]

Cheng Zhongren found Christ after receiving help from the missionaries for his addiction to opium. The widower later became a child of God. When the Boxers gathered in Taigu, Cheng left his four children with non-Christian relatives and moved into the mission compound to help his beloved missionary friends. When the compound was attacked, he managed to escape over a back wall and hid in grain fields nearby. When darkness fell he rushed to the house of an uncle, where the Boxers captured him. They told him, “If you are a Church member we will kill you.” Cheng replied, “‘Then kill me.’ His body was cut into fragments.”[10]

One of the thousands of Chinese Christian women killed by the Boxers in 1900. Many were unable to flee because of their bound feet.

Other martyrs at Taigu include Mrs. Kang and her daughter, who was a student at Louise Partridge’s school; and a wealthy Christian landowner named Li, of Wujiabu village, ten miles (16 km) west of Taigu. Li was thrown from his roof and dragged through the streets until he died. Shi Shouji was murdered at Xiao Bai village, while Yang Jianzhong, who served as the gatekeeper of the Clapp family’s home, was slain with his mother and two younger brothers, both of whom were students at the Christian school. Many other believers perished at Taigu, but their names were not recorded this side of heaven. One of the anonymous victims was the gatekeeper who worked for missionary George Williams. He was caught “with his Bible wrapped in a bundle of clothing; Boxers hacked him to pieces and burned his body with millet stalks in a temple courtyard.”[11]

Before the Boxer carnage there were 120 Chinese Protestant Christians in Taigu and surrounding villages. By the end of the summer, 80 had been spitefully murdered and just forty remained alive.[12] Of the 40 who survived were left alone by the Boxers because, unknown to the Christians at the time, friends and relatives had gone to the magistrate and obtained certificates stating they had recanted their faith.

Almost a year after the gruesome massacre at Taigu, the local officials expressed their sympathy for the Boxer brutality. Elaborate ceremonies were held, and proper burial given to many of the slain Christians. A park was given to the Church to be used as a cemetery, and in every way people in Taigu tried to expunge the deep-seated guilt and shame they felt for the activities of the previous year.

1. Brandt, Massacre in Shansi, 240.
2. Brandt, Massacre in Shansi, 240.
3. Brandt, Massacre in Shansi, 254.
4. Luella Miner (ed.), Two Heroes of Cathay:  Fay Chi Ho and Kung Hsiang His, An Autobiography and a Sketch (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1903), 89.
5. Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 182.
6. Brandt, Massacre in Shansi, 254.
7. Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 471.
8. Brandt, Massacre in Shansi, 255.
9. Brandt, Massacre in Shansi, 255.
10. Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 479-480.
11. Brandt, Massacre in Shansi, 256.
12. Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 447.