God's Chinese Son Page 5

  The Hongs live in Hua county, thirty miles north of Canton by land, forty miles by river. Hua is a new county by the region's standards, created in 1685. Originally, this area was known as the Hua Mountains, a wild and rugged belt of forested highland that was subdivided between five separate counties. This made it a natural base for bandits and marauding gangs, for by moving only a few miles they could slip easily from jurisdic­tion to jurisdiction without ever leaving their mountain fastness, and the chances of five separate county magistrates coordinating an attack on ban­dits all at once were slim indeed.

  The chaos of the period from the collapse of the Ming dynasty in the 1630s through the civil wars that marked the Manchu conquest of the south from 1645 to 1680 made this situation bleaker than ever, and the area became a no-man's land. Representatives of local scholarly families petitioned the government for redress and, after being once rebuffed, were finally rewarded by the creation of a newly named Hua county, a block of land about forty miles by thirty, carved out of the northern sections of the two large and populous counties between which Canton was subdi­vided. Hua received its own magistrate and staff, its county school, its clerks and tax inspectors, its grain storehouse and orphanage, a wall with four gates, and a force of four hundred men, half of them to guard the county seat and half scattered in garrisons among the surrounding villages. Thus reassigned were a total of 5,223 households, comprising 7,743 men and 6,775 women, working between them taxable farmland of around forty thousand acres.4

  Hong's ancestors migrated here from the northeastern part of Guang­dong province in the 1680s, just as the new county was being formed. They settled and farmed in Guanlubu, to the west of the county town, on a stretch of well-watered level land, with mountains rising at their backs as they faced the sun. Guanlubu had been nothing but a couple of shops on the road when they first arrived, but by the time Hong Huoxiu was preparing for the exams a century and a half later, it was a good-sized village, dominated by people of the Hong lineage, with at least three streets of homes and a large pond in the front.5

  The Hongs are Hakkas—"guest people"—as they are called in the local dialect of Canton, or "Nyin-hak," as they call themselves in their own dialect. To be a Hakka is to be not quite a local, and Hakka are granted two special slots in the local examinations, to help in their assimilation. The Cantonese whose ancestors settled in the area earlier emphasize their own priority by calling themselves the "original inhabitants."6 But to be a Hakka is not to be purely an outsider. It is not to be like the Miao tribes­men from Guangxi province to the west, who sometimes travel in their boats down the West River to Canton, to sell their oils and trade for city goods. These are truly strange-looking men, their religions all their own, their language unintelligible to Hakka and Cantonese alike, their hair not neatly shaved in front and braided at the back, in obedience to the style imposed on all Chinese by their Manchu conquerors in 1645, but piled in wild profusion upon their heads.7 Nor is it to be socially inferior, forbid­den to take the examinations and kept out of prosperous marriage ties. Such stigmas are reserved for the actors, or barbers, or the restless Tanka boat people, so named from the rounded twelve-foot boats like severed eggs in which they live, who pass their whole lives on the water and are forbidden—even if they had the means—to buy land and build a home on shore, or marry there. The greatest difference between Hakkas and other Chinese families in the region is that by Hakka custom their women do not bind their feet to make them small. Thus Hakka women can walk freely, and work in the fields with their men; they will also always marry Hakka men, since the other Chinese will find them unattractive.8

  The Hakkas as a people place their origins in the central China plains to the south of the Yellow River, below the former capital of Kaifeng, and through their oral histories and their written genealogies trace their successive movements south across the centuries, in response to outside invasions, civil wars, and economic deprivation. The language they speak—"foreign" to many around Canton—is seen by themselves as in direct descent from the purest language of ancient Chinese civilization. Indeed, not long before Hong's birth Chinese scholars of linguistics have begun diligently tracing Hakka words and diction to illuminate their own historical past.9

  Hong's lineage traces its roots back through scholars and ministers of the Song dynasty, in the twelfth century, to more shadowy figures in the Tang dynasty, and, even earlier, to the period of the later Han dynasty in the second century, when the Hong name can first be found. Across the centuries, too, they could point to members of the Hong line who passed the higher examinations, and in one case even the highest of all, which led to appointment first in the Hanlin Academy of Confucian scholars in Peking and later, after a successful bureaucratic career, to promotion to vice-president of the Board of War.10 The branch of the family from which the Guanlubu Hongs trace descent had moved to northeast Guang­dong province near the Fujian border during the Song dynasty, and were based mainly in Meixian—the greatest center for Hakka people then and now—though other members of the lineage had scattered far and wide across the country.11

  The move to the hitherto unknown region of Hua by Hong Huoxiu's great-great-great-grandfather was a bold one, for Hua was not the center of Hakka life and language that Meixian had been. And though the region of Hua was prosperous, with plentiful crops of rice and wheat, hemp and beans, cabbages and greens, peaches, peas, melons, oranges and dates, as well as liquor and honey and edible oils, fish and shrimp, chickens, ducks and dogs,12 it is unlikely that the Hongs were able to get prime land to farm, even though they saw themselves as pioneers, and they had to move in isolated family groups rather than as a whole lineage. For the land was settled already by the original inhabitants, and as in many other parts of South China the Hakkas were different enough not to be fully welcome. But even when isolated, they kept their numbers up and their solidarity intact through their dialect and language ties; and a bride from outside the village, even if speaking other dialects, would be compelled to learn that of her husband's family, and their children of course would do the same.13

  From the seventeenth-century period of the family's move down to Hong Huoxiu's own time of schooling, none of the Hongs in Hua county are recorded as having passed the state examinations, even at the local level. And though Hong Huoxiu's father was described in the family genealogy as well respected, a leader and mediator of disputes in the vil­lage of Guanlubu, the house in which he raised his family was simplicity itself: it was on the western end of the third row of houses, set back from the pond, with a small courtyard dominated at the back by a largish family meeting room, quite open to the air, flanked by small rooms for the family members, the whole one story high, with floors of beaten sand and lime, walls of clay and lime, and a roof of laths laid with interlocking tiles.14

  It is the magistrate of Hua who leads his county residents to the rhythm of the rituals dictated by the state. The opening and closing of the year, the changing of the seasons, all have their solemn ceremonies in the county temple, as do the founding teacher—so they call Confucius—and the emperor, empress dowager, and heir-apparent, duly honored in far-away Peking. The emperor's "Sixteen Instructions" on virtuous behavior must be both venerated and read aloud, and for such events the successful degree candidates gather with the local officials to offer ritual sacrifices and hear the ritual music.15 As written by the emperor, these sixteen max­ims—later amplified by the commentaries of other emperors and distin­guished scholars—summarize the behavior expected in each town and neighborhood. They extol respect and obedience to the state and one's senior relatives, harmony in each community, thrift and industry, scholar­ship and education, good manners, prompt payment of taxes, and mutual security. A few hold warnings—to reject strange and heterodox religions, to avoid all false accusations, and not to hide fugitives from justice.16

  Three other gods receive the assembled dignitaries' worship in spring and autumn, and their prayers for Hua's protection: the god "of clouds a
nd rain, wind and thunder"; the god of the district's mountains and rivers; and the city god of Hua. For each the offerings are calibrated, to show their ranking: four ritual vessels of wine and four bolts of white silk for the four forces of the weather; three vessels and two bolts for the gods of space; three vessels and one bolt for the god of the city, even though it is to him that the most urgent prayers for rain in time of dearth are first addressed, and it is he who controls the routes to the lands of the dead.'7 These are the gods and spirits that have force for all the community, so it is meet to sacrifice to them with bureaucratic style. As for the middle range of human families, the magistrate is content to let them worship their own past ancestors in their burial grounds, with their own assembled relatives. But below these departed shades, who have families to honor them, are those who have been lost to sight and history, and here the state asserts itself again. For these are "orphan ghosts" who have no one to pray for their spirits after death. Individuals of compassion often remember them collectively at the All Souls' festival, where they burn paper clothes for the spirits, and make them offerings of wine, fruit, and rice in the ceremony called "burning the street clothes." Still, their ability to harm the community remains disquieting, and therefore the magistrate holds ceremonies on their behalf at a specially erected altar in the north of the county town. The litany of the fates of these orphan ghosts, written by a local scholar long before, remains an echo of the present world in Hua:

  These are those who died for reasons that we can no longer know: Amongst them are those who died from cruel wounds in battle, those who died from flood and fire and bandits, those who saw their property seized and so took their own lives, married women and young girls seized by force and killed, those who while being punished died unjustly, those who fled from natural calamities and died from illness on the road, those destroyed by wild animals or poisonous snakes, those who died from famine or exposure, those who were caught up in wars and lost their lives, those who killed themselves because of danger, those crushed to death when walls or houses collapsed on them, or those who after their deaths left no sons or grandsons.18

  For such souls, and all others gone before and still to come, the founding magistrate of Hua in 1686 had carved this prayer in stone: "Let cruel animals stay away, the nests of robbers never more be formed, the people henceforth live decent lives, the tax quotas to the state be always met, and people's spirits all be good. From this will come our happiness, a golden age in heaven and earth."19

  Even these solemn ceremonies can be slighted by exaggeration, or dis­jointed into carnivals. During the protracted drought of 1835, the gover­nor abandoned the regular sacrifices to the city god, and offered vast rewards to any "extraordinary man" or "wonderful scholar," no matter from what district or believing in what faith, who could use his arts "to drive away the dragon" that was blocking off the clouds, and thus cause the rain to fall. The citizens mocked him publicly, with poems written in bold characters and posted on the walls. Yet they gathered in great crowds when a volunteer came forward to drive away the dragon. He was a man claiming to be a monk from Sichuan province and he stood three days before the altar in the governor's yamen, three days under the burning sun, an upright staff pushed into the ground by his side, with no sign of weakness, no sign of perspiration on his face, with candles burning stead­ily on the altar, next to a bowl of pure clear water. Again the people mocked, until suddenly the rains came, and they were silenced. Only to mock again when the governor, to thank the gods, ordered ten married women to sacrifice a sow at the south gate of the city, and burn off its tail.20 Less than a month later, as epidemics followed the drought and the sudden rains, the people brought the image of the famous second-century god Yingtuo out from his shrine inside the Great South Gate of Canton city, and paraded it through the street, escorted by drummers and by crowds of young girls chosen especially for their looks.21

  Predators often prowl at such scenes of petitioning or rejoicing, encour­aged by the expensive preparations and the flocks of people, and attempts to keep decorum sometimes fail in curious ways. At the autumn festival of All Souls, allegedly the most solemn ceremony of the ritual year, held in 1836 at a village in the western suburbs outside Canton, the bamboo structures, the booths, the glittering displays in the temple ground were so astonishing, funded by subscriptions from local merchants and worthies totaling seven thousand ounces or so of silver, that the magistrate ordered two parallel roads built out to the temple grounds, one to be used only by men and one by women. But this prompted two young men to dress as women, so they could join the women on their walk, and rob them there at leisure. At last their looks betrayed them, and they were arrested and "made a show to the assembled multitude."2"

  Hong Huoxiu is twenty-two years old in 1836. As he mingles with the crowds of fellow students on the road outside the lieutenant governor's official residence near the examination halls, two men catch his attention. One of them is a Cantonese, and acts as interpreter for the second, a foreign-looking man who does not speak good Chinese. This second man is strangely dressed: as Hong later remembers him, he has a "coat with wide sleeves" in what appears to be the style of the former Ming dynasty, and his hair is "tied in a knot upon his head." Through his interpreter, this second man tells the bystanders "the fulfillment of their wishes," even if they have not yet questioned him. To Hong he says, "You will attain the highest rank, but do not be grieved, for grief will make you sick.""3

  The next day Hong sees the same two men again, standing on Longcang Jie, the "Street where the dragon hides," or "Street of potential wisdom," some way south of where they were the day before, but still near the exami­nation halls. This time no words are uttered, but one of the men reaches out to Hong with a book in his hand. Hong takes the book. It is Liang Afa's collection of religious tracts, "Good Words for Exhorting the Age."24

  Hong's description of the foreign man is vague, and the words he ascribes to him elusive. But everything about this stranger points to Edwin Stevens, returned a few months before from the longest of his coastal trips. In the early spring of 1836 Stevens has taken on a new calling in addition to his formal title of chaplain for the Seaman's Friend Society—that of "missionary to the Chinese"—and a friend lists "distributing Bibles and tracts" as now foremost among Stevens' interests.25 And yet despite his several years in China, Stevens still needs an interpreter, for he finds the language vexingly hard. There are two views on learning Chinese, he has written recently, "One, that the attainment of the language was next to impossible; and the other more modern, that its acquisition is as facile as the Latin or Greek. While we subscribe to neither of these extremes, we confess ourselves inclined more towards the former than the latter opin­ion."26 As one who knew him well in Canton was to write after his death, though Stevens "made considerable proficiency in the study of the Chinese language," it was always true that "accuracy rather than rapidity charac­terized his progress." And only the pure language will do in this context. One can hardly use the merchants' and sailors' Pidgin English to spread the word of God.27

  Certainly Stevens has lived long enough on the edge of Canton to know that the guards at those imposing city gates—despite the brave show that they make, in their red-and-yellow jackets with the character for "cour­age" writ large on front and back—are often lazy, and that bribing them is common.28 Furthermore, he has recently gained the experience, from his shoreline journeys, to compare the Chinese of the north—"suspicious and reserved"—with those among whom he lives in the south, who mani­fest what he now perceives by contrast to be a "ready cordiality" and a "roguish" wit.29

  Hong's description of the Cantonese interpreter is as vague as his description of the foreigner. We know that it cannot be Liang Afa, for Liang left Canton the previous year, after being arrested once again by the Chinese authorities, on charges of illegally distributing Christian tracts. Though bailed out by the Westerners in Canton, he felt he could no longer endure the risks to himself and his growing fami
ly, and retreated to the safer realms of Malacca. Nor is it Liang's friend Agong, the one who earlier on distributed tracts with Liang to the examination candidates. Agong has also left the city, forced to flee after local enemies denounced him to the authorities for dealing too closely with the foreigners.30 Nor is it either of those two men's sons, for Liang Afa's son has fled to Singapore, and Agong's son is held in jail in the place of his fugitive father. The closest we can come to his identity is through a letter written that same spring by a British resident of Canton, in which he states that all the Chinese Christians who once consorted with Liang Afa are scattered "except one, a man of some literary acquirements, who corrects many of our tracts for the press, improving a little the style, etc."31 But if this Chinese man does pluck up the courage to go and spread God's word with a Westerner inside Canton's walls, he is unlikely to write about it publicly. Nor does Stevens reminisce about the moment, or share his thoughts on it with others. For at the end of 1836, while on a trip to Singapore, Stevens is struck by blinding headaches and by a raging fever that the doctors cannot reach. Within three weeks, aged thirty-four, he is dead.32