A Boxer rhyme--A bit of prose--Roman Catholics and the
Boxers--Mistaken beliefs of the Boxers and their origin--Malicious
placards--Buddhist priests and hypnotism--Massacred Europeans--The
magic mirror.
An interesting rhyme was circulated among the members of the
Ih-hwo-Ch’uan, and I give here an almost literal version in English:
God assist the Ih-hwo-Ch’uan (Volunteer Unionists)
The Volunteer United trained bands (Ih-hwo-t’uan).
It is because the foreign devils disturb the Middle Kingdom,
Urging the people to join their religion,
To turn their backs to Heaven,
Venerate not the gods and forget the ancestors.
Men violate the human obligations,
Women commit adultery.
Foreign devils are not produced by mankind:
If you doubt this,
Look at them carefully.
The eyes of all foreign devils are bluish.
No rain falls,
The earth is getting dry.
This is because the Churches stop the heavens.
The gods are angry,
The genii are vexed;
Both are come down from the mountains
To deliver the doctrine.
This is not hearsay:
The practice will not be in vain,
To recite incantations and pronounce magic words,
Burn up the yellow written prayers,
Light the incense sticks,
To invite the gods and genii of all the grottoes (halls).
The gods will come out of the grottoes,
The genii will come down from the mountains,
And support the human bodies to practise the Ih-hwo-Ch’uan.
When all the military accomplishments or tactics
Are fully learned
It will not be difficult to exterminate the foreign devils then;
Push aside the railway tracks,
Pull out the telegraph poles;
Immediately after this destroy the steamers.
The great France
Will fall cold and down-hearted (be vanquished).
The English and Russian will certainly disperse.
Let the various foreign devils
All be killed.
May the whole elegant
Empire of the great
Ching dynasty be ever prosperous.
This curious rhyme, in which the Chinese seemed confident of making
short work of all the foreign devils, not only in China, but all over
the world, is followed by a bit of prose quite as extraordinary to
European minds, but absolutely in keeping with the ideas and beliefs of
the majority of uneducated Chinamen.
“The relations and friends of all around notice recently that members
of the Protestant and Roman Catholic religions poison the wells with
poisonous powder, and that all who drink the water leave their lungs
and intestines rotten within eighteen days. Two men have been arrested
by us at Lin-li-Chuang, and we find they have down (hair) all over
their bodies. They are silent when questioned and bold when tortured.
Those who smell the poison will die immediately. You must be very
cautious in drinking the water.
[Sidenote: COMMON BELIEFS]
“Those who see this notice must make it known. It will avert calamity
befalling the people. It must by all means be done.”
[Illustration: CHINA FROM BEHIND]
The causes of these beliefs among the Chinese are rather amusing to
analyse. Any resident in China will tell you that these are merely a
few of the more common opinions. The idea of the poison that kills when
you smell it originated from the presence of Chinamen in a mission
hospital when chloroform was administered to a patient before an
operation.
Roman Catholics have probably, though unconsciously, done more
towards producing ill-feeling than any other missionaries in China,
though it must be said for them, on the other hand, that they have
also accomplished ten times more good than all the others taken
together. Roman Catholic missionaries occupy an official position in
the Heavenly Empire, and they often exert their rights by unduly
protecting their converts (not the best class of Chinese by far) to an
extent that is somewhat vexatious to the non-Christian population. In
Roman Catholic villages, for instance, all persons of other creeds are
excluded, and the missionaries have not only the spiritual guidance
of the community, but become absolute rulers. The converts cherish
the belief that to pay the taxes to the nearest mandarin is about all
that is required to make them good citizens, the priests taking care
to protect them in case of any offence against the law of the country
other than non-payment of taxes.
Again, the Catholic priests, with their fatherly love for their
converts, constantly interfere in rows between their folks and
neighbouring villages, or between their people and officials. This is a
constant cause of friction.
It is believed by the ignorant Chinese that the consecrated wafer given
by Roman Catholic priests in communicating converts has the magic power
of taking away will from the person unwise enough to swallow it, and
that by this means the priests get natives absolutely at their mercy.
The holy water, too, the Chinese contend, is simply a magic medium by
which those who dip their fingers into it, and who are not Christians,
become possessed by demons.
Moreover, the usual malicious stories were circulated in Boxers’
placards of foreigners kidnapping children to turn them into soup or
pound them into jelly, which, as a medicine, became endowed, after it
had undergone the further process of drying in the sun, with marvellous
strengthening qualities. Foreign doctors were also accused of plucking
out the eyes of people unawares. Foreign devils, it was declared, then
ground these eyes into dust and used them in their occult arts. Most
of these absurd rumours were probably originated by natives who had
seen surgical operations performed in mission hospitals. The kidnapping
of children was invariably the first accusation brought against
foreigners, and whenever riots occurred against “white devils,” the
instigators maliciously did away with a number of little unfortunates,
and then held foreigners responsible for their disappearance. The
Buddhist monks, however, in the Boxer movement, had devised a slight
variation in this detail. They were very adept at hypnotism, and
availed themselves of this power to impress the masses. They hypnotised
young boys, and then at night left them in a state of catalepsy in
some thoroughfare. When a sufficient crowd had collected around these
insensible creatures, the monks duly appeared and pointed out “the
actual proof of the evil doings of foreigners.” The crowd having
been worked into a state of frenzy, the boy, apparently dead, would
be restored to life by the monks (they said “resuscitated”), and the
bystanders would be thus further convinced that, whatever devilry
foreigners might perpetrate, Buddhist monks had always the power to
make things good.
[Sidenote: FOREIGN DEVILRY]
[Illustration: A MONK OBJECTING TO BE PHOTOGRAPHED]
It was this simple hypnotic expedient, carried on on a large scale,
that induced Boxers to fling themselves in the field against modern
rifles, under the belief that the Buddhist monks had made them
bullet-proof.
Naturally, those that have suffered most in the Boxer movement have
been the native converts. Hundreds have been terribly tortured, burnt
alive, massacred. Many Europeans, too, in the interior, have suffered
atrocious tortures, such as the “death by the thousand cuts,” and “the
slow death.” European women have suffered shame, and have eventually
been impaled or beheaded. Their heads have been swung in cages, to
serve as an example to others.
In their hunt for native Christians, the Boxers adopted a singular mode
of identifying them. Over the head of the unfortunate captive a magic
mirror was held in which a cross (said the Boxers) was to be plainly
reflected were the prisoner a Christian. As the magic mirror was made
of silvered metal slightly convex, a luminous cross was invariably
visible in a powerful light, so that the poor devils arrested on
suspicion were always mercilessly put to death.