Zhang Ming | The Truth About the Boxer Rebellion

I was very moved when I received Professor Zhang Ming’s new work. At that time, I asked him for an old article about the Boxer Rebellion for publication in Mocun. I knew that his doctoral dissertation was on the Boxer Rebellion, and the amount of Boxer Rebellion archives and case archives he had read might not be matched by any other scholar today. As a result, he said directly, I will write a new one for you to clarify this matter. Then he quickly sent me a newly written article, and I felt clear after reading it. I have also read some papers and monographs on the Boxer Rebellion in the past, but none of them can be as in-depth, easy to understand, and eloquent as Professor Zhang Ming.

It is said that the Boxer Rebellion originated in Shandong, which is true. However, the general domestic scholars believe that the origin of the Boxer Rebellion is the folk religion of the White Lotus sect, which is actually unreliable. It cannot be said that there were no people from folk religious sects in the Boxer Rebellion, but the Boxer Rebellion did not originate from these sects. Taiwanese scholars tend to believe that the Boxer Rebellion originated from the local militia, which is also not well-founded. It can only be said that during the heyday of the Boxer Rebellion, the local militia participated, but they were certainly not the origin of the Boxer Rebellion. Therefore, the American scholar Joseph W. Esherick simply regarded the society and culture of Shandong in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as the origin of the Boxer Rebellion. This is very safe, but for those who want a solid answer, it is still disappointing.

Speaking of which, the Boxer Rebellion initially consisted of people who practiced divine boxing. These people were of mixed origins, including ordinary people, people from folk boxing associations, and some from the local militia. As for people from folk religious sects, individual participation cannot be ruled out. Their origins were people with their own inheritance. For centuries, several provinces in northern China have always had people who taught divine boxing, that is, the method of invulnerability to swords and guns, and they were called teachers. This skill is actually a simple method, through some simple mysterious rituals, drinking talismans, reciting incantations, and then teaching people how to use qi. When it reaches a certain level, they can ‘排刀’ (pai dao), that is, use a large knife to cut the part where the qi is used, usually the belly, and a white mark will appear with one cut. Then, they would ‘退法’ (tui fa), return to the state of ordinary people. In the beginning, when someone taught this skill in the Shandong Big Sword Society, the Qing government’s secret agents, undercover agents had already found out the situation. At that time, someone pointed out that these were all fake tricks, and the knife could not cut in, but a cut with a knife would make a cut.

This kind of people appeared intermittently during the Ming and Qing dynasties, and even caused such a big event as the Boxer Rebellion. In the Republic of China, there were still people doing it. The Red Spear Society of the Republic of China was a replica of the Boxer Rebellion. However, this kind of people generally did not make a big fuss. Only when there were a lot of people who wanted to learn and there was a corresponding soil could they become a force. The Boxer Rebellion could make a big fuss because of the needs of political current affairs. The Red Spear Society in the Republic of China made a big fuss also because the warlord melee really forced the northern rural society to have no way to live.

It should be particularly noted that, no matter when and where, the teachers who taught kung fu did not play any role in the local organizations that practiced this set of simple methods, and did not participate in their activities at all. The organizers and leaders of the activities were others. The teachers were all outsiders, while the organizers were all locals, who were more or less important figures, but not considered elites. Therefore, the organizations of the Boxer Rebellion were all in groups. It was already very remarkable to be able to unite several villages. Therefore, leaders like the senior brother and the second senior brother were enough.

Before the戊戌变法 (Wuxu Reform), the people who practiced these skills did not show any obvious political tendencies. They did not even associate with those who usually made things difficult for the rural churches. However, there was a trigger that led these people to the track of opposing foreigners. This was the Germans building the Jiaoji Railway. Due to the wide range of involvement, the friction between the Germans and the rural society of Shandong increased. They hated the Germans, and then hated all foreigners. The churches in Shandong originally had conflicts with the folk society, and this time it was all mixed together. Therefore, slowly, because the method of invulnerability to swords and guns had a strong instrumental deterrent, some people who made things difficult for foreigners also began to learn this method. This is why the Boxer Rebellion organizations were so different and mixed, but the only common point was their magic. No matter what kind of Qianzi group or Kanzi group, the kung fu they practiced was the same, because there were only a few teachers, and the methods they passed on were the same.

These organizations that had learned divine boxing did not initially call themselves the Boxer Rebellion. They were called all sorts of things, including Divine Boxing and Righteous and Harmonious Boxing. Gradually, these two names became popular.

At that time, any organization that opposed foreigners and fought against and destroyed churches was to be suppressed by the Qing government. Conservative officials, Yuxian and Li Bingheng, who were in charge of Shandong, had suppressed Divine Boxing and Righteous and Harmonious Boxing. In the face of government suppression, these organizations basically did not resist, but because they were very scattered, they dispersed in a rush, so they could not be eliminated.

When the Wuxu Coup happened, Empress Dowager Cixi once again took over the reins, abolished all the new laws, and reversed the course of history. However, this inevitably caused a deterioration of relations with the Western world, including Japan. On the specific issue of abolishing Emperor Guangxu, the relationship between Empress Dowager Cixi and the West reached an irreversible state. From a deeper level, the reform at the beginning, learning from the West, was nothing more than to save the crisis of national subjugation since the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Now that the new laws were all abolished, but the crisis remained, how to deal with it was also a problem that Empress Dowager Cixi had to face. Although the Westernization Movement in China had been going on for many years at that time, Empress Dowager Cixi knew very little about Westernization. For her, as long as she could drive the foreigners out and not let them in, the crisis of national subjugation would naturally disappear.

Therefore, finding a good way to confront the West and save the crisis was a realistic subject facing Empress Dowager Cixi. Therefore, some conservative officials put forward the suggestion of ‘民气可用’ (the people’s spirit can be used), and the specific example was the Righteous and Harmonious Boxing in Shandong, and they said that they had the magic of invulnerability to swords and guns. Although Empress Dowager Cixi did not immediately adopt it, she was still moved by it. Once there was this intention from above, then the policy below immediately changed. Therefore, the Righteous and Harmonious Boxing immediately expanded like air being blown into it. In order to echo the grace from above, the Righteous and Harmonious Boxing became the more official Righteous and Harmonious Fists. The slogan of ‘扶清灭洋’ (support the Qing and eliminate the foreigners) was also shouted loudly.

When tens of thousands of Boxers poured into Tianjin and Beijing, and everywhere they killed foreigners and destroyed churches, and slaughtered more than 40,000 new Christian believers, here, some Western missionaries and engineers who came to China to build railways were also killed or threatened, and the chaos became bigger, and the whole world was in an uproar. And Empress Dowager Cixi’s affirmation of the Boxer Rebellion also rose a level, officially recognizing them as righteous people. Before this, Empress Dowager Cixi had sent Gangyi and Zhao Shuqiao from the Grand Council to the Boxer Rebellion headquarters in Zhuozhou to investigate. They both affirmed that the Boxer Rebellion’s invulnerability to swords and guns was true. Therefore, after the Boxer Rebellion entered Beijing, the Boxer Rebellion was given a Grand Commander by Empress Dowager Cixi, who was to replace the Guangxu Emperor’s elder brother, Puyi’s biological father, Prince Duan Zaiyi, and also allocated some money and grain. The Boxer Rebellion also knew how to get closer to the organization, claiming to ‘奉旨练团’ (train the group by imperial decree), and all the boxing rings were marked with the banner of the Imperial Righteous and Harmonious Fists. They took the initiative to catch traitors everywhere, and very consciously drew a line with the White Lotus sect. In Beijing, they once arrested a so-called White Lotus sect gang (actually some people who were selling art), and killed them all.

Although, during this period, Zaiyi and his men were thinking of using the Boxer Rebellion to force or kill Guangxu, so he gave the Boxer Rebellion a new slogan, to kill one dragon, two tigers, and three hundred sheep. The dragon was Guangxu. Although Empress Dowager Cixi did not want to be so hasty for the time being, during this period, the Boxer Rebellion was the hope of this woman, so any criticism of the Boxer Rebellion was not allowed. Even if the Boxer Rebellion caused trouble and burned down the Qianmen Tower, which was the face of the imperial court, no one dared to say a word. Those who said no lost their heads, and five ministers died at that time.

Despite this, what Empress Dowager Cixi hoped for was that the Boxer Rebellion would deal with the Westerners, mainly the army. But these boxers from the countryside were most willing to fight against those believers, who, because of their faith, were in the same rural world, and had been separated and in conflict with them for decades. The believers not only had different beliefs from the common people, but also the believers held mass, baptism, and other behaviors that the common people did not like. In particular, the believers did not participate in ancestor worship, nor did they pay for the performance activities of the usual welcoming gods and temple fairs. Therefore, the conflicts between the two sides were not a matter of one day. The reasons for all the church case conflicts from the common people were mostly misunderstandings, such as that they were collectively engaging in sexual promiscuity, that they were destroying idols, or even that the church’s nurseries were gouging out children’s eyes to make medicine. However, as long as the church was destroyed, the believers were killed, and a case was made, the official had to make the common people pay with their lives and money under the intervention of the West, but they never told the common people the truth, making the common people feel that the church was indeed heinous, and the government had to succumb because they were afraid of foreigners. Therefore, every time a church case occurred, the hatred between the people and the church would rise one level. In this sense, the Boxer Rebellion movement was a total church case.

It needs to be pointed out that after the Boxer Rebellion became a big deal, because the teacher’s original method was actually a simple method, even if they drank talismans and recited incantations, there was not much mysterious color. Therefore, after it became a big deal, the boxers began to invent and create on their own, saying that the process of drinking talismans, reciting incantations, and using qi was the possession of spirits. And the boxers usually immersed themselves in the theatrical culture with religious colors, so the gods they possessed were all the characters in the plays, especially the characters of the Three Kingdoms, Journey to the West, and also the Eight Immortals, as well as Huang Santai and Huang Tianba in the public case plays. In addition to the original incantations, it was just a cover, so the later incantations were all sorts of things, and had nothing to do with religious incantations. When the boxers were on the method (possession of spirits), they would also imitate the characters in the drama and make some performance gestures, which made people look very funny.

In addition, the Boxer Rebellion really did not have much religious, or even folk religious color. Hanging the name of the Eight Trigrams on their own groups, such as the Qianzi group, was all there was to it. In fact, the Boxer Rebellion did not put all eight names on it. Everyone was all Qianzi groups, probably feeling that Qianzi was the boss. The rest, wrapped in red or yellow cloth, was nothing more than borrowing the auspicious colors of the folk.

Of course, when Empress Dowager Cixi really used the Boxer Rebellion to resist the foreigners, it didn’t work. Whether it was attacking the Xishiku Church or the embassy district, or resisting the Eight-Nation Alliance, it was still the Qing army that could really pose a little threat to the foreigners. Later, some Chinese scholars moved flowers and grafted trees, and put the Qing army’s achievements on the heads of the Boxer Rebellion, but in the end it was of no avail.

A point that needs to be particularly explained is that the very popular Red Lantern, in fact, there was no such so-called female Boxer Rebellion organization, nor did women practice the Red Lantern. The so-called Red Lantern was imagined from the lanterns that floated in the air during the Lantern Festival. Some people imagined that girls were like these lanterns, flying around, flying to foreign countries, and burning down the capital of the foreigners. The Boxer Rebellion was very conservative and extremely discriminated against women. The women in the Boxer Rebellion, such as Huanglian Shengmu (Lin He’er), were nothing more than the Boxer Rebellion’s magic weapon for resisting the so-called foreigners (it was said that the Boxer Rebellion’s magic was not effective because the foreigners used naked women, or the female genitalia). Therefore, they looked for Lin He’er, a prostitute, the dirtiest woman, to use poison to fight poison, to fight against the foreigners. In the end, they could not resist, and Lin He’er was abandoned by the Boxer Rebellion, and as a result, she was captured alive by the foreigners and used for exhibition.

When the siege of the embassy had been going on for more than a month, Empress Dowager Cixi had already realized that invulnerability to swords and guns was useless, but at this time she had gone too far and could not turn back immediately. However, when she fled Beijing and just arrived in Shanxi, barely escaping the danger, she issued an imperial edict in the name of Guangxu, ordering the Qing army to suppress the Boxer Rebellion. After that, the Qing army actually killed the most Boxers. Such a backlash, although there was Jing Tingbin leading the way (he was not a real Boxer Rebellion, but a gentry involved by the Qing army that was suppressing the Boxer Rebellion), resisted a little, and it basically disappeared. It needs to be mentioned that during the heyday of the Boxer Rebellion, because the Shandong governor was replaced by Yuan Shikai, Yuan Shikai relied on his ten thousand newly built army to drive away and kill the Boxer Rebellion in Shandong, and they were all suppressed. Therefore, the Boxer Rebellion, which caused a major incident, was only concentrated in Zhili and Shanxi, mainly in the Beijing-Tianjin area.

Later, the farmers who had been in the Boxer Rebellion, if they were not dead, generally returned to their hometowns, and many of them even believed in Christianity. What is the reason? The carter who pulled the cart for Qian Xuantong, had been a senior brother, but also converted to Christianity. He said that the reason for this was because their Bodhisattva was effective, and our Bodhisattva was not effective.

The Boxer Rebellion was gone, but the teachers who taught kung fu were still there, because they had not participated in any killing of foreigners and destroying churches. They had their own inheritance, passed down from generation to generation. In the second half of the Beiyang period of the Republic of China, due to the extremely frequent warlord melee, it caused great destruction to the northern rural society. Therefore, the Boxer Rebellion of that year reappeared under the name of the Red Spear Society.