Foreign Devils in the Flowery Kingdom by Carl Crow

Author:Carl Crow
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Earnshaw Books
Published: 2007-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

XII

Two missionaries and two soldiers

“Each cup of wine and each bite of meat is destined from aforetime.”

There was something just the least bit suspicious about the enthusiasm with which Americans helped Robert Morrison start his missionary work in China after the Honorable East India Company had blocked all his attempts to buy a ticket on a British ship. The war for independence was still fresh in the memories of all but the youngest ones, and the country was full of veterans who would sniff the air and declare they had smelled the blood of an Englishman. The great company was the concern that had gouged the colonists on the price of tea. The Americans now had ships of their own and it was soon arranged to smuggle Morrison into Canton. James Madison, who was then Secretary of State, wrote Morrison a letter of introduction to the American consul in Canton which was, in effect, a special passport. The missionary arrived there in 1807 and was the guest of one of the pioneer New York firms that was exporting Chinese tea and trying to sell wild ginseng roots. Because he remained in seclusion there were stories in America that he had to keep out of the way of the British officials in Canton for fear of being arrested and deported.

A much more plausible reason for his seclusion was the fact that he was at work on the compilation of a dictionary and a Chinese translation of the Bible; and as he completed both of these tasks in a very few years, he could have spent very little time outside his study. The Bible and the dictionary prepared the way for the work of other missionaries who were to follow him and he did not live to see the holocaust of civil war for which he was indirectly and innocently responsible. His one convert was a Chinese type cutter from Malacca who was employed to help him in this work, and tracts written by this convert played an important part in launching the great Taiping Rebellion nearly a half-century later.

These poorly written tracts might have slipped into the oblivion that they deserved but for the somewhat superstitious reverence with which the Chinese regard their written language. Many Chinese will carefully preserve all printed matter that may fall into their hands. In a village about thirty miles from Canton, Hung Siuetsen, a young Chinese scholar, picked up a few of these tracts and put them away with other papers without looking at them. He was at the time preparing himself for the civil service examination, which he failed to pass after years of study. The disappointment following his failure and the exhaustion caused by the rigorous examination brought on a protracted illness during which his fevered brain was harassed by images so vivid that they remained with him long after he had recovered his physical health. These disordered dreams affected him so seriously that his neighbors thought he was just a little crazy, in which they were undoubtedly correct.

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