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Updated: June 3, 2025
Every Chinaman knows, that if it had not been for the personal aid of this god, General Gordon could never have succeeded in suppressing the Taiping rebellion. In the present rebellion of the Japanese, the god appears to have maintained an attitude of strict neutrality. The City Temple is near the drill-ground.
In December, its fall being obviously imminent, the Taiping leaders agreed to surrender it on condition that their lives were spared. Gordon was a party to the agreement, and laid special stress upon his presence with the Imperial forces as a pledge of its fulfilment. No sooner, however, was the city surrendered than the rebel 'Wangs' were assassinated.
The Taiping rebellion, which caused the death of millions of innocent creatures, is but a specimen of what might go on throughout the world did not skilful, well-trained soldiers throw in their lot with the side of law and order. Had the Chinese Government only possessed an able general, and a proper army, that rebellion would never have made such headway as it did.
At the end of the sixty-mile journey, the English station-master at Taiping proved a veritable friend in need, arranging for a hot breakfast at the station, chartering rickshaw coolies, and greatest blessing of all directing the route, with a menacing pantomime concerning any shirking of duty, which saved all further trouble.
Money alone formed the bond of union; so long as questions of taxation were not involved, Peking was as far removed from daily life as the planet Mars. As we are now able to see very clearly, fifty years ago that is at the time of the Taiping Rebellion the old power and spell of the National Capital as a military centre had really vanished.
It was built, says Hobson, during the Taiping Rebellion; it existed, says the missionary, before the present dynasty; discrepant statements characteristic of this country of contradictions. But, whether thirty or two hundred and fifty years old, the fort is now one in name only, and is at present occupied by a garrison of peaceful peasantry.
It did not take place rapidly or completely, and it was accompanied by grave disturbances, notably the Taiping rebellion, which was only suppressed by the aid of the British General Gordon, in command of a Chinese army. But though the process was slow, it was fully at work by 1878. The external trade of China, nearly all in European hands, had assumed great proportions.
Embroidery, bronzes, carving, and dyeing in both pottery and silks are, in my opinion, their best artistic productions, although it is said that the famous colouring of chinaware is now a lost art, as those clans which held the secrets were almost extirpated during the Taiping rebellion.
Whether the original Taiping chief, 'Hung-Seu-Cheun, is still alive or not, we have not been able to discover. Some say he remains shut up with about 300 wives. At any rate he is invisible.... The only thing remarkable which I have observed to-day is the quantity of wildfowl. I saw one flock this morning which was several miles long. It literally darkened the sky.
Money alone formed the bond of union; so long as questions of taxation were not involved, Peking was as far removed from daily life as the planet Mars. As we are now able to see very clearly, fifty years ago that is at the time of the Taiping Rebellion the old power and spell of the National Capital as a military centre had really vanished.
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