1900 - Yen Lipan & His Wife

July 1900

Ji Xian, Shanxi

Faithful Yen and his family.

One of the Chinese converts at Ji Xian in southwest Shanxi was a man named Yen Lipan. After his baptism he read Pilgrim’s Progress and was so impressed by the testimony of Faithful that he was thereafter known to all as Faithful Yen.

When the Boxer storm broke over Ji Xian, Yen and his wife fled to the mountains where they hid with some other Christians. They were eventually captured and dragged back to the town, where the magistrate accused them of ‘practicing magic.’ After being severely beaten they were handed over to the Boxers.

Yen and his wife were taken to a local temple and presented with a choice—bow down and worship the idols or lose their heads. When they both refused to compromise, their hands were tightly bound behind their backs, and they were suspended by their thumbs from a beam in the temple. Even then they refused to worship the idols, so “they were beaten with rods while still suspended in this excruciating attitude, the crowd meanwhile mocking and taunting them because their Jesus in whom they trusted did not save them.”[1] When the excruciating and unrelenting torture still failed to procure the desired results, the Boxers removed their captives’ shoes and inflicted even more barbaric treatment. After several days the Yens were more dead than alive, yet they still would not recant. After again beating them with rods,

“The Boxers lit a fire behind them and burned their legs raw. Although they still would not deny Christ, Mrs. Yen was set free. But Mr. Yen was thrown to the ground and firewood stacked around him. The fire was lit. After a few minutes of roasting in agony, he tried to roll out of the fire. A Boxer began to heap his body with hot ashes and coals. A soldier standing by could stand it no longer and cursed the Boxer. The Boxers leaped on the soldier and cut him to pieces. At that, the other soldiers rushed on the Boxers and chased them out of the temple. They then took the pitifully burned Chinese Christian from the fire and carried him still alive to the magistrate’s house, only to see the official throw the man in a dark prison cell.”[2]

Faithful Yen would have soon died if not for his loving wife, who found a way to bring food to him. She died shortly afterwards from her injuries, while Faithful Yen Lipan never recovered from the demonic ordeal. He lost his mind and later died a broken man.