For the purposes of this listing, in the
case of Western or ‘foreign’ individuals, the surname is given first and in
capitals; Chinese and other Oriental individuals’ names have been left in their
more recognisable form (to Western readers) but with the family name
capitalised for reference, except in the case of individuals who are Manchu in
origin: such people never used their real names in adulthood and went by public
titles instead. Fictional characters are designated with an ‘F’. The spelling
of Chinese and other non-Western names follows the accepted Nineteenth Century Anglicisation
format.
*****
BURGEVINE,
Henry Andrea (1836 - 1865)
An American adventurer, Burgevine
supported Frederick Ward in his efforts to create a defense force to protect
the city of Shanghai and its surrounds. The Ever
Victorious Army (EVA) as it became known attracted many European adherents
and the ability and glamour of this unit grew over time. Burgevine usually
acted as quartermaster during the engagements led by Ward and was intimately
acquainted with the force’s finances.
After the death of Ward, Burgevine was
promoted to leader of the unit and immediately demanded more money both for
himself and his men. The financing Patriotic
Association headed by Li Hung-chang, had already arranged to reduce the
wages of the EVA after Ward’s death in response to shifting attitudes from the
Imperial Court and refused to accede to the demand. In response, Burgevine took
a contingent of men into Shanghai and attacked the Association’s bank, striking a banker and making off with a
substantial amount of money, which they took back to the EVA’s headquarters. He
was inevitably dismissed from his post after this and replaced by a Captain
Holland, who had been Burgevine’s Second-in-Command. Burgevine, immediately
went to Nanking where he signed on as a commander in the Taiping Army. Meanwhile,
the British offered the Patriotic
Association the services of George Gordon as the new leader of the EVA, an
opportunity which they leapt at enthusiastically.
Burgevine served several more years with
the Rebels and was known as a daring if somewhat erratic commander. The tide of
Chinese antipathy against foreigners was against him however and he was
ultimately flayed alive by the very troops he’d chosen to lead.
Dr
Fu Manchu (F) (1840 - ?)
“Imagine a
person, tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare
and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyes of the
true cat-green ... one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past
and present ... Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr.
Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man.”
–Sax Rohmer, The
Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
Arch-villain of a long series of
thrilling novels by the British author Sax Rohmer, the ‘Devil Doctor’ is an
archetype of the sinister Triad leader and eminently suitable for Keepers to
establish as a nemesis for their Investigators. The name ‘Fu Manchu’ gives an
indication as to the character’s heritage and has been suggested to actually be
a title of honour, meaning ‘the Warlike Manchu’.
In the early novels Fu Manchu works as a
subordinate leader in a deadly secret society called the Hsi Fan. As the stories progress, he rises in rank until,
ultimately, he rules the tong
completely and commits their efforts to the expulsion of the Communists and the
reinstatement of the Ch’ing Dynasty. During the Boxer Rebellion, Fu Manchu is tentatively identified as part of the
Imperial household and disappeared as the Dowager Empress fled Peking at the
lifting of the Siege.
Fu Manchu’s schemes are byzantine and
terrifying, slow to unwind but deadly in their effect. He spends much time
outside of China plotting to overthrow governments and to destabilize
economies. He targets his foes with a bewildering array of subtle weapons - "pythons
and hamadryads... fungi and my tiny allies, the bacilli; ... my black spiders" – and regularly recruits such
assassins as the Thugs and the Dacoits, along with his own tong minions. Notorious amongst his arsenal are the ‘Zayat Kiss’
and the ‘Flower of Silence’ both of which reveal his dominance over the arts of
Chinese alchemy and herbalism. Fu Manchu is supposedly one of very few
practitioners to have unlocked the secrets of the life-extending Chinese elixir vitae, as revealed in the ancient
texts.
Whether Investigators would encounter the
‘Devil Doctor’ himself in Shanghai is up to their Keeper; however, the
insidious presence of the Hsi Fan is
a constant threat hanging over the treaty port.
GILES,
Prof. Herbert Allen (1845 – 1935)
Professor Giles was a sinologist and
diplomat educated at Charterhouse; his greatest contribution to Anglo-Chinese
relations was the modification of the Romanisation system of Chinese
transliteration, initially established by Sir Thomas Wade, into the Wade-Giles System of Romanisation. This
system was later rejected as too cumbersome for use by anyone not in academic
circles but a modified system is still in use today in Taiwan.
Giles arrived in China in 1867. He was
British Vice-Consul at Pagoda Island from 1880 to 1883; Vice-Consul at Shanghai
from 1883 to 1885 and Consul at Tamsui and Ningpo from 1885 to 1891 and 1891 to
1893 respectively. He later returned to Aberdeen in Scotland and then became
Cambridge’s second lecturer in Chinese after Wade’s retirement. In 1902 he
moved to Columbia University to lecture there in Chinese until his death.
GORDON,
Major-General ‘Chinese’ Charles George, CB (1833 - 1885)
Prefiguring Thomas Edward Lawrence
(‘Lawrence of Arabia’), Gordon was one of those British officers who skated
somewhat too close to the wind in terms of his seeming to ‘go native’ for the
complete comfort of his superiors. Gordon always seemed to exist on a somewhat
loftier plane than his fellow mortals and this garnered him no shortage of
enmity. It also gave him uncanny insights into the Chinese mind.
After the death of Frederick Ward and the
dismissal of Henry Burgevine, the British legation in Shanghai offered to
engage Gordon as leader of the Ever
Victorious Army (EVA). This offer was gratefully accepted by the Chinese
backers of this force and Gordon was diverted from his current activities,
building defences near Shanghai for the Royal Engineers. The first thing he did
was to insist on regular payment for himself and his men: since, under Ward and
Burgevine, the men took their own wages by looting after their victories - a
situation that the Chinese enjoyed because essentially their fighters came for
free - the Patriotic Association
under Li Hung-chang began a protracted negotiation with Gordon that saw him
increasingly frustrated and angry with the arrangement. After some of his men,
whom he’d had arrested while looting, were summarily executed instead of being
brought to trial, Gordon resigned his commission with the EVA. At the last
minute however, while waiting to catch his ship home to England, word reached
him of the impending defeat of the EVA at the hands of the Taipings; he raced
back to the front, took over command and saved the day. This act earned him the
rank of titu, the highest military
rank in the Chinese Imperial army; he was also awarded the yellow jacket of
nobility. At no point during his career in China did he wield anything other
than a riding crop while in battle.
Gordon returned to Britain shortly
afterwards and was greeted with the nickname ‘Chinese’ Gordon. He was promoted
to Lieutenant Colonel and placed in command of the Royal Engineers building
defences for the River Thames in Gravesend in Kent, where he also set up a
Boy’s Club. Gordon was the archetypical ‘muscular Christian’ adopting dozens of
homeless boys across the world during his life, with whom he kept up
correspondence and financed their educations and careers. His evangelical
outlook was tempered by the fact that he was a probable alcoholic, shipping
crates of brandy with him wherever he went in the world. He was an eccentric
who believed, amongst other things, that the Earth was enclosed in a hollow
sphere with God's throne directly above the altar of the Temple in Jerusalem
and the Devil (Cthulhu?) inhabiting the opposite point of the globe near
Pitcairn Island. He also believed that the Garden of Eden was sunk in the sea
near the Seychelles (R’lyeh, anyone?). He was killed in the massacre that broke
the Siege of Khartoum and his severed
head was placed in the fork of a tree, where it became a favourite target for
stone-throwing boys.
HART,
Sir Robert, 1st Baronet, CMG, KCMG, GCMG (1835 – 1911)
Robert Hart was born in Ireland and attended Queen’s University in Belfast
from where he graduated in 1853. He left for Hong Kong as a student interpreter
in the China consular service where he served as secretary to the Governor, Sir
John Bowring, in the Superintendancy of
Trade. He was sent from there to Ningpo where he worked as supernumerary
interpreter to the British vice-consulate. Owing to a dispute between the
Portuguese and the British Consuls, he was placed in charge of the Consulate
for several months and proved himself a level-headed and efficient
administrator. He was sent to Canton to work under Sir Harry Parkes and
subsequently was promoted to work as Interpreter for the British Consulate
under Sir Rutherford Alcock. He quit in 1859 to assume the post of local Inspector
of Customs, working up through the ranks until his appointment to
Inspector-General of Foreign Customs, his role until his retirement in 1907.
Whilst leading the Imperial Maritime
Custom Service (IMCS), Hart
worked to improve the port and navigation facilities at many of China’s busiest
ports including Shanghai. He was known for his managerial and diplomatic
capabilities and made many friends within and without the Chinese Court and
amongst the foreign delegations. To some people he was seen as perhaps too
friendly with members of the Manchu Court, especially Tzü Hsi the Empress Dowager, who, it was
intimated, could bend him to her will: he is blamed almost entirely for the
foreign legation’s inability to anticipate the threat of the Boxer’s rebellion,
accepting wholeheartedly Tzü Hsi’s assertions that the foreigners in
Peking were safe from them. Ultimately, he was one of the besieged during the Rebellion and conducted himself with
honour throughout.
Along with the titles awarded to him by
his own country, he was effusively decorated by the Chinese Court, receiving a
red button and peacock feather, along with the Order of the Double Dragon and the title, Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent. He was offered the role of
plenipotentiary minister to Great Britain in 1883 after the retirement of Sir Thomas
Wade but, as this would have been a conflict of interests, he declined. He
retired from his post in 1907 and returned to Queen’s College in Belfast where
he took up tenure until his death in 1911.
Jong
Lu (1836 - 1903)
A Grand Councillor and military
administrator in the Manchu Court, Jong Lu was a moderate voice in opposition
to the Empress Dowager’s strident anti-foreign sentiments. During the
mobilisation of troops in the lead-up to the Siege at Peking, he spent a deal
of time crossing the Chihli Plain attempting to reign in a full-scale
opposition to the foreign occupants. Consequently, he was absent from the
Council wherein war was declared against the foreign Legations in Peking and
was not there to lend his opposition to the plan; luckily for him, as other
moderates who expressed such intent were ordered to their deaths by the Empress
Dowager.
War being declared, it fell to Jong Lu to
pass the order along to the generals beneath him, including Tung Fu-hsiang.
After the Boxer Rebellion, Jong Lu
was not sought by the foreigners for punishment and in fact got off relatively
lightly. This was for the single reason that, although the Chinese had more
than enough newly-purchased heavy artillery in Peking to wipe out the Legations
and their defenders utterly, Jong Lu forbade any of his generals to use it. By
thus preventing outright slaughter of the foreigners to take place and giving
time for their reinforcements to arrive, he allowed the possibility of a
negotiation for the end of hostilities.
LI
Hung-chang, Marquis Suyi of the First Class, GCVO (1823 – 1901)
A noted and highly decorated diplomat
within the Ch’ing courts, Li Hung-chang was instrumental in many important
negotiations with the West during the latter half of the Nineteenth Century.
His rise to power began with his attempts
to oppose the Taiping rebels in his home province of Anhwei by raising a
military force: his efforts brought him to the attention of his superiors and
he was given greater responsibilities and scope for action. He was sent to
Kiangsu to marshal that province’s defence which brought him into the presence
of the foreign Legations at Shanghai. After seeing the possibilities of
Frederick Ward’s Ever Victorious Army
(EVA), he formed a Patriotic Association
to raise funds from both Imperial and foreign sources with which to bankroll
the unit. Problems with the force’s second leader Henry Burgevine and later,
with George Gordon, arose from the Manchu’s decision to distance themselves
from Western organisations; the EVA was disbanded after Gordon’s retirement as
leader. As a reward for his efforts he was made governor of Kiangsu.
These experiences instilled in Li the
idea that China needed to become a stronger, more militarily-capable nation if
further negotiations with the West were to be successful. He saw that the
foreigners felt less than intimidated by Chinese armed might and decided upon a
long-term policy of ‘self-strengthening’ for his country. The way to do this,
he felt, was to shore up relations with the Westerners and begin a process of
modernisation for his people. His efforts in this regard were often hampered by
the actions of the Imperial Court.
His life was chequered by a series of
delicate negotiations and the defusing of serious diplomatic breaches, for
which History has largely condemned him as a collaborator. He negotiated the
end of hostilities with the French after the Tientsin Massacre, in which an orphanage of French nuns were
murdered by a mob led by a Manchu mandarin and his bodyguard and he signed and
helped to ratify the Chefoo Convention
of 1876 with Thomas Wade resolving an incident prompted by the murder of an
English businessman in the province of Yunnan. He successfully arranged
treaties with Peru and Japan and effectively ran all Chinese foreign policy regarding
Korea; all this despite a rising swell of anti-foreign sentiment within the
government and at the highest levels of the Imperial Court.
His efforts towards foreign appeasement
were oftentimes derailed by his need to shore up his connexions with the Dragon
Throne and this occasionally makes his actions seem erratic to the outsider.
For instance, his decision to depose the Tung Chih Emperor with the assistance
of the Dowager Empress Tzü Hsi seems bizarre, given that the
Emperor’s views about modernisation and reform largely coincided with his own.
At one stage he executed a group of EVA troopers whom Gordon had had imprisoned
for looting, against Gordon’s express wishes; in one of the few instances where
Gordon picked up a weapon, Li Hung-chang was forced to flee when the EVA’s
incensed commander came after him with a rifle. The incident says more about
Chinese views on the value of human life and Li’s concerns with expediency than
his willingness to work with the ‘foreign devils’.
Militarily, Li was never very successful
when it came to fighting invading forces. This has made him seem ineffectual in
the eyes of historians but closer inspection reveals that he was, for the most
part, not at fault. His engagements with the Japanese in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, for
example, were woefully unbalanced: the Japanese had a modern navy and
precision-drilled soldiers; Li was fielding a force largely armed with bows and
arrows and his fleet consisted of worn out, hand-me-down ships purchased from
the foreign powers. Along with this, bureaucratic corruption saw most of his war
funds diverted into the pockets of Court officials, most notably the budget
which was apportioned to buy bullets. When at war with internal forces, on the
other hand, Li’s military record is a resounding success, with clear wins
against the Taipings and with General Yüan Shih-k’ai in the Nian Rebellion.
In his role as diplomat he visited
America and England to negotiate foreign policy and to represent his nation.
Queen Victoria conferred upon him the title of Knight of the Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order. In China he
was raised to the position of Royal Tutor,
awarded the rank of Earl along with the yellow jacket of nobility and decorated
with many-eyed peacock’s feathers. After the Boxer Rebellion his services were invaluable for negotiating the
cessation of hostilities; sadly, two months after his work there, he died from
exhaustion.
LITTLE,
Mrs Alicia (nee BEWICKE) (1845 – 1926)
Alicia Helen Neva Bewicke was born in Madeira
in 1845. She spent her childhood abroad, later returning to England, where her
first novel, Flirts and Flirts; or, A Season at Ryde (1868), was
published when she was only 23. Writing as A E N Bewicke, she produced nine more
novels in the next seventeen years, the central theme of them being the
position of women in a society where their chief concern was finding someone to
marry them and in which men had little occupation other than simply being
‘gentlemen’. The importance of meaningful work for both sexes is central to all
her works of this period and those of her characters who are not searching for
this are doomed to hollow existences.
In 1886, at the age of 41, Alicia Bewicke
married Archibald Little (1838-1907), a long-term resident of China and a
successful taipan; he was the first
to navigate the Yangtsze by steamship in 1898. Like his wife, he was also a
noted writer on China, completing a number of non-fiction titles, including Through
the Yangtsze Gorges: Or Trade and Travel in Western China (1888).
Alicia Little arrived in Shanghai in 1887 but
she didn’t stay there long and so did not lead the life of a typical expatriate
wife in a large city. She moved with her husband to Chungking, in the far west
of the country, where she studied Chinese, taught English, took up photography
and travelled extensively with her husband up and down the Yangtsze river,
visiting parts of the interior of China not normally accessible to foreign women
other than missionaries. Unusually for a Westerner in China, she made an effort
to get to know the Chinese people with whom she interacted and whose domestic
lives interested her greatly. She also made a study of the Chinese political
and education systems.
She began to write again in the mid-1890s,
this time publishing under the nom-de-plume
of ‘Mrs Archibald Little’. She wrote ten books about China during the twenty years
she lived there, three of them novels. The first and best, of these was A
Marriage in China (1896). As in her earlier books, she uses the novel to
explore women’s work and took the opportunity to savage expatriates who did not
get to know the country in which they were guests. More importantly, she
examines the prevailing attitudes towards race, exposing the hypocrisy
displayed by expatriates towards the offspring of mixed race couples and the
cruelty of the Eurasian schools in insisting that such children be taken from
their mothers before being allowed attendance. Only the most sincere missionaries
escape her criticism; even then, she sharply questions the overall value of
their work.
It was during this time that she began to
campaign vigorously against the Chinese custom of footbinding. She and a group
of other expatriate women founded the Ti’en
Tsu Hui, or ‘Anti-Footbinding Society of China’ in 1895, with Mrs Little as
its first president. Until then, anti-footbinding had been largely a missionary
effort; Mrs Little was determined to establish a secular organisation that
would consequently be more widely influential.
The Society began producing anti-footbinding
tracts translated from English into Chinese; a number of Chinese officials
immediately lent their support by writing tracts in Chinese. Poems by Chinese
women about their footbinding experiences were also published and the Society
sought to gain the support of the Empress Dowager and the Emperor by sending
them a petition. Mrs Little spoke all over the country at gatherings of Chinese
officials and to the general public, even managing to enlist the support of the
widely respected and influential viceroy Li Hung-chang, which undoubtedly
helped the cause. The Society was eventually handed over to a committee of
Chinese women in 1908 and ceased to function shortly after that, its work at an
end as the custom fell into widespread disfavour and was outlawed in 1912.
The Littles left China in 1907 and returned to
Britain. Archibald Little died in Cornwall the following year and his widow
moved to London, where she continued her active life. She died on 31 July 1926,
at the age of 81, after a full and active life as a writer, traveller and
social reformer.
MORRISON, Dr George Ernest ‘Chinese’ (1862 – 1920)
“He combined
flair with unscrupulous accuracy to an extent which sometimes irked the Foreign
Office in London; it was he who provoked Lord Curzon to coin his phrase about
‘the intelligent anticipation of events before they occur’ which (wrote The Times), ‘though not primarily intended as a
compliment, was perhaps the most genuine tribute ever wrung from unwilling lips
to the highest qualities which a correspondent can bring to bear upon his
work.”
-Peter Fleming, The Siege at Peking
Born in Geelong, Australia, Morrison
proved himself to be an adventurer par
excellence. At the age of eighteen he began the first of many extraordinary
walks, the first from Melbourne to Adelaide (about 600 miles) shortly after
completing his first year of medical training. Failing his next exams he
shipped out to the South Seas as a journalist and wrote a scathing exposé of
the kanaka or ‘blackbird’ slave trade
there. After this he walked across Australia, covering 2,043 miles in 123 days
before leading an expedition to New Guinea where he was attacked by natives and
left for dead with two spears in his body. Finding his way back to
civilisation, he recovered and completed his medical degree, shipping out to
the Rio Tinto copper mines in Spain shortly afterwards to work as a company
doctor. After a short stint as personal physician to a Moroccan sheikh, he took
to walking again, this time walking from Shanghai to the Burma frontier. In
1895 he joined The Times, in
Shanghai, becoming its Peking correspondent two years later. In 1900, he fought
his way to Peking through Boxer-protected lands, entering the Legation quarter
shortly before the Siege began.
Believed killed during the fighting in Peking, he was able to read his own
death notice in The Times.
After the Siege,
Morrison devoted his life to the emerging Chinese nation. He fought with the
Nationalist troops during the Northern
Expedition and later took up the role of foreign representative to China in
many diplomatic summits including the Treaty
of Versailles. He continued to travel extensively across China, Russia and
Europe, managing to find time for his wife and three sons, to write medical
papers on the hereditary nature of disease, fight to halt the spread of plague
in Manchukuo and amass the largest collection of books in Chinese in the world
(which later became the basis of the Oriental
Library in Tokyo). At the end of a very full life, he died and was buried
in Devon, England.
NAYLAND
SMITH, Commissioner Sir Denis (F) (1883 - ?)
“...A tall, lean man, with
his square-cut, clean-shaven face sun-baked to the hue of coffee, entered...it
was Nayland Smith – whom I had thought to be in Burma!”
-Sax Rohmer, The
Mystery of Dr. Fu Manchu (1913)
Nayland Smith is the implacable opponent
of the ‘Devil Doctor’, Fu Manchu. He holds a roving government commission to
unearth the evil international machinations of the Hsi Fan and is able to commandeer a wide array of resources to help
him in his work. Less of a brilliant deductive genius than a doggedly
determined plodder towards the truth, he and Fu Manchu both share the belief
that their word, once given, cannot be foresworn, a trait that inclines them
both towards a grudging, mutual respect.
In the early novels, Nayland Smith comes
off as a racist and a jingoistic mouther of platitudes; his biases tone down
somewhat later on but the modern reader is forewarned before embarking upon
background research. The Commissioner is a great one for going forth in
disguise, in the ludicrous fashion of fin
de siecle detective novels and, as such, the Keeper may wish to embroil his
Investigators in Nayland Smith’s midnight wanderings ‘on assignment’ whilst in
Shanghai...
PARKES,
Sir Harry Smith (1828 - 1885)
Sent to China as a diplomat after the war
of 1860, Parkes undertook the ratification of the treaties outlined in the Second Opium, or Arrow War, which allowed the extraterritorial
powers to establish embassies within the walls of Peking. To this end he set
off to Peking from Shanghai with Sir Thomas Wade (who left him at Tientsin) and
endeavoured to establish a camping ground outside of Peking to accommodate the
Foreign Legations and their troops. En
route to Peking, Parkes and his aide
de camp, Loch, were captured and imprisoned, tortured and left to rot in a
Chinese gaol. Due to an internal disagreement within the Imperial Court, they
were quietly released an hour before their execution orders arrived in Peking
and made it back to safety.
The harsh treatment experienced by Parkes
and Loch, as well as the atrocities committed at the Tientsin Massacre led to the ratification of all outstanding
treaties with the foreign powers at the Chefoo
Convention attended by Wade and Li Hung-chang in 1876.
PETRIE,
Dr Dexter Flinders (F) (1884 - ?)
Dr Petrie plays ‘Watson’ to Nayland-Smith’s
‘Holmes’ throughout the series of thrillers penned by Sax Rohmer which detail
the outlandish plots of Fu Manchu. Petrie narrates the exploits of the other
characters with the same wide-eyed naiveté that Watson brings to Holmes’ adventures
and is arguably just as annoying and pompous. He encounters and falls in love with,
an agent of Fu Manchu’s, an Egyptian slave-girl named Kâramanèh, whom he eventually marries and with whom he
has a daughter, Fleurette. Note that, in none of the canon material is Petrie’s
first name ever given; the
name above is derived from Rohmer’s correspondence and interviews. In various
television and movie incarnations, he is known as ‘John’.
Rohmer’s splashy narrative is truly
world-spanning and individual Keepers may wish to have their Investigators consult with Dr Petrie either in London, or on
the trail of the Hsi Fan in Shanghai,
as they see fit.
SASSOON, David
(1792-1864)
“Early in 1871, the Sassoon
group was acknowledged to be the major holder of opium stocks in India and in
China; they were owners and controllers of 70 per cent of the total of all
kinds..."
- Edward LeFevour, Western Enterprise in Late Ch'ing China
Following in his father’s footsteps, David Sassoon a
Sephardic Jew, built up a huge enterprise in Baghdad around a counting house,
carpets and opium. A scandal forced him to move to Calcutta from where he took
the opium trade to China, exporting in the realm of 30,000 chests per year.
Sassoon dealt heavily with the East India
Company and gained many accolades back in England. He gained a baronetcy
and allowed his sons to adopt Western fashions, his eldest son, Abdullah,
marrying into the Rothschild family (after changing his name to ‘Arthur’). With
the English decision to step down opium importation after 1860, Sassoon and Co. took up the
responsibility of providing the ‘foreign mud’ and went from strength to
strength. More than anyone else by the end of this period the Sassoon Company
was the main provider of opium to China.
Dr
SUN Yat-Sen (1866 - 1925)
Born into a farming family in Kwangtung,
Sun Yat-sen was sent to a Christian Boy’s School in Honolulu and earned his
medical degree in Hong Kong where he practised for many years while plotting to
overthrow the Ch’ing Imperial Dynasty and replace it with a modern form of
government. He fled from China in 1895 after an abortive coup and spent several
years touring the world, drumming up financial support and refining his views
of a new Chinese Republic. In 1905 he
organised a revolutionary party in Japan – the T’ung Meng Hui – and crystallised his political theory, the ‘Three
People’s Principles’, around mainstays of democracy, nationalism and the
people’s livelihood. During the Revolution
in 1911 he was named president-elect of the Chinese
Republic (despite being absent) but was ousted two months later by Yüan Shih-k’ai. Sun
returned to his colleagues at the T’ung
Meng Hui which had been transformed in the interim into a federated
political party called the Kuomintang;
Sun became its director.
Opposition to Yüan’s dictatorial
rule prompted Sun to launch a revolt in 1913 which failed; he was forced to
seek asylum in Japan where he reorganised the structure of the Kuomintang and awaited the chance to
return to China. While in exile he courted Soong Ch’ing Ling of the famous
Shanghai Soong dynasty, eventually marrying her in 1914; they returned to China
in 1917. In 1921 he was named leader of a self-proclaimed national government
in Kwangtung and established the Whampoa
Military Academy, with Chiang Kai-shek as its commandant, to hone the
military might which they needed to oppose the strength of Peking. In 1924 Sun
also accepted the assistance of the Chinese
Communist Party, with their connexions to the USSR, to help further refine
the Kuomintang and to aid in the
takeover of China.
After his death, the Communists and the Kuomintang parted ways and an uneasy
ideological tension lay between them. Nevertheless, both organisations revered
Sun Yat-Sen and claimed to be his ideological heirs, the Kuomintang supporting almost cult-like reverence around his tomb in
Nanking. His widow, Ch’ing Ling, went on to become a high-placed leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
TUNG
Fu-hsiang (1839 – 1908)
A Moslem, Tung Fu-hsiang commanded the
second army of the North China military forces achieving this post in 1898. The
majority of his forces were also Mohammedan, mainly deriving from the province
of Kansu. They were renowned for their unruly and disorderly conduct. Openly
anti-foreign in sentiment, Tung quickly became a favourite of the Empress
Dowager and was even allowed at one stage, during the lead up to the Boxer Rebellion, to appear before her
seated on his horse within her court. Acting on her implicit encouragement,
Tung’s men murdered the Japanese Chancellor, Mr Sugiyama, hacking him to pieces
in a crowded street: they sent his heart to Tung Fu-hsiang as evidence of the
deed. Two days later, Tzü Hsi allowed the Boxers to enter and sack
Peking by royal assent, accompanied by Tung’s troops.
On June 20th when the Dowager
Empress formally declared war on the foreign legations, overruling any moderate
voices in the Tsungli yamen (who were
all later decapitated for their disloyalty), Tung led the charge and torched
the Hanlin Library which abutted the
British Legation: this thousand-year-old library which held the irreplaceable
jewels of Chinese learning was lost forever, save for a handful of charred
texts which the besieged British sinologists manage to save. Only the fact that
Grand Councillor Jong Lu kept modern heavy artillery from Tung Fu-hsiang’s men
spared the lives of the foreign legatees. After the Rebellion, Tung fled into Mongolia and was not pursued; his
official sentence for crimes committed during the Rebellion was lifelong banishment, a fate considered unacceptable
by the foreign delegations but one which they wore in the light of other gains
to be made during reparations. He died in exile in 1908.
Tzü Hsi (Yehonala), The Dowager Empress (1836
- 1908)
“When her young son became
Emperor, she encouraged him in the debaucheries which hastened his death and
her return to power; his pregnant widow died, in mysterious circumstances,
shortly afterwards. When her sister and rival ‘ascended the fairy chariot for
her distant journey [to Heaven]’, Tzü
Hsi was strongly suspected of having helped her into it. She deposed her nephew
and ... is thought to have practised on his life with poison.
These are some only of the
more unnatural crimes imputed to the Empress Dowager. There is not a shred of
proof that she committed them. There can be almost equally little doubt that
she was capable of them.”
-Peter
Fleming, The Siege at Peking
Before the age of twenty, Yehonala was
brought to Peking as one of the 28 girls selected from the eight noble
households of the Manchus to form part of the harem of the Emperor Hsien-feng.
Starting as a third-grade concubine she strove to become a favourite of the
Emperor and, in time, bore him (or otherwise produced) a son. She was promoted
to the first rank and soon, although barely in her twenties, became a force to
be reckoned with in the Court. She assumed the name ‘Tzü Hsi’ which means
‘motherly and auspicious’.
With the death of the Emperor, Tzü Hsi stepped in as
Regent for her infant son Kuang Hsü; she thereafter
indulged his life of debauchery, ensuring that his reign was short and that
power returned to her after his death. On the question of succession, Tzü Hsi used her influence to deflect the claims of Hsien-feng’s
adult nephew, who had a legitimate claim to the position, and installed her
adopted infant son Tung Chih instead, again ensuring her status as Regent. With
Tung Chih’s ascension to the Dragon Throne in 1889, Tzü Hsi conspired with Li Hung-chang to
depose him and had him confined to the royal city. She continued to reign
unopposed as Empress Dowager for the last nineteen years of her life.
Essentially a political opportunist, Tzü Hsi was gifted
political tactician with the ability to smile in the faces of her enemies while
slipping poison in their cups. She sided, tacitly at first, with the Boxers and
later, openly directed the Imperial troops to support their efforts;
simultaneously, she held tea parties and other diplomatic functions with the
foreign legatees in Peking right up until the Siege. In her later years, her superstitious nature came to the
fore and she had become convinced of the supernatural powers of the Boxers to
the point where she saw them as invaluable in the fight to force the foreign
powers from China.
Tzü Hsi was a renowned beauty and possessed
of a powerful personal magnetism. She loved pug dogs, boat picnics and
theatricals and felt a common sympathy with Queen Victoria, whose portrait
graced her private apartments. The British diplomat Sir Robert Hart was a great
admirer of the Empress Dowager and was largely her creature: his complete
acceptance of Tzü
Hsi’s statements of benignity towards the Legations most likely contributed in
the foreign powers being so unready for the possibility of the Boxers’ attack.
She fled from Peking during the breaking of the Siege (throwing, it is said, her son’s favourite concubine down a
well en route) but, such was the
force of her personality, she was accorded a standing ovation by the occupying
forces – the very people she had ordered to be massacred - upon her return a
year later.
Given her insidious dealings, the baroque
nature of her lifestyle within the Forbidden City and her association with
black magical forces, individual Keepers may wish to portray Tzü Hsi as an
incarnation of Nyarlathotep, spreading madness and destruction across the land;
or even that avatar known as the Bloated Woman, shielded behind a mask of
beauty by Mythos magic. As such she may be the ideal focus for a long-term
campaign of unfolding horror. Other Keepers may feel that the Empress Dowager as
a character is already bizarre enough...
WADE,
Sir Thomas Francis, GCMG, KCB (1818 - 1895)
Sir Thomas Wade was an important diplomat
for Britain in China at the end of the 19th Century as well as being
the foremost sinologist of his day. He wrote the first syllabary of the
Mandarin language which began the system of Romanisation of the Chinese
language that was later refined by Herbert Giles and which became known as the Wade-Giles System of Romanisation. He
was married to Amelia Herschel (1841 - 1926), daughter of the astronomer John
Herschel.
Born in London to a military family,
Wade’s father bought him a commission in the 81st Foot Regiment in
1838 but he transferred to the 42nd Highlanders who were stationed
in Greece in 1839. He spent his spare time there learning Italian and Modern
Greek. After his promotion to lieutenant in 1841 he transferred to the 98th
Regiment of Foot at that time stationed in China at the end of the First Opium War. He saw battle at Chinkiang
in the advance towards Nanking.
In 1845 he was sent to Hong Kong as an
interpreter and then became secretary to the Secretary for Trade, Sir John
Francis Davis. Shortly thereafter, in 1852, he was appointed as the British
Vice Consul at Shanghai. The collection of Customs duties was in disarray in
the city at this time due to the Taiping
Rebellion and Wade undertook to form a committee to ensure that the
collection and processing of these taxes and levies continued unabated. The
committee consisted of three members with Wade as the chief; it later became
the Imperial Maritime Customs Service.
In 1855, Wade went back to Hong Kong to
act as Chinese secretary to Sir John Bowring who had succeeded Davis as Trade
Secretary. With the outbreak of the Second
Opium War he was attached to Lord Elgin’s staff and was present at the
negotiations leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Nanking. He was attacked with Sir Frederick Bruce the
following year while travelling back from the Taku Forts to Peking, to ratify
the treaty. Thereafter, he was indispensable in facilitating embassies and legations
in Tientsin and Peking and accompanied Sir Harry Parkes on his first journey to
Peking. He was knighted in 1875.
After the murder in Yunnan of Mr Raymond Margary,
Wade undertook the negotiations with Li Hung-chang to outline a cessation of
hostilities and reparations: this treaty was known as the Chefoo Convention. He also advocated the cessation of the execution
method of ‘slicing’ by Chinese officials and campaigned strenuously for its
termination
Wade returned to England in 1883 and began
a career as an academic. He donated over 4,000 works in Chinese to the
libraries at Cambridge and was appointed their first Professor of the Chinese
Language, a post he held until his death in 1895.
WARD,
Frederick Townshend (1832 - 1862)
"He
was a brave, clear-headed man, much liked by the Chinese Mandarins, and a very
fit man for the command of the force he had raised."
-Major-General
Charles ‘Chinese’ Gordon
Born in Salem Massachusetts, Ward was an
adventurer who arrived in Shanghai just as the rising tide of the Taipings
seemed set to overthrow the city. Ward approached the taipans and offered to raise a fighting force to oppose them if
only they would bankroll the endeavour. They agreed and Ward set out to deliver
the goods: his first engagement at Songjiang, south of Shanghai, was an
exercise in farce as his troops had drunk too much the previous night. The
majority of his force survived however and in later actions, Ward’s troops
became instrumental in maintaining the 30-mile radius exclusion zone around the
city. The Imperial Army officials and the Empress Dowager were so grateful for
his efforts that they conferred upon the force the title of the ‘Ever Victorious Army’ (EVA), a name
which had little to do with the unit’s initial track record but which conveyed
a certain glamour nonetheless. In later years the Army became funded by Li
Hung-chang through a Patriotic
Association which received contributions from Chinese and foreign sources
alike.
Within the foreign legation settlements Ward’s
force caused a frisson of anger: the
Americans, whose policy had been to adopt a stance of neutrality in dealing
with China, were uncomfortable with Ward’s aggressive activities; the British
were incensed because the glamorous reports of the EVA began to lure British
sailors away from their ships. At one stage Ward was dragged before an American
military tribunal to answer charges of inciting desertions amongst the British
troops but he escaped prosecution by claiming Chinese citizenship. By this
stage he had ‘gone native’ completely, dressing in native style and marrying a
Chinese woman. Like Gordon, he only ever rode to battle carrying a riding crop.
In 1860, he received a wound to his face – a bullet pierced his jaw and exited
through his right cheek – leaving him scarred and with a speech impediment for
the rest of his life.
Towards the end of his career, his Manchu
supporters began to distance themselves from Ward, distrusting his decision to
not shave his head, wear the queue or
to wear his Chinese military garb into battle. At the age of 30, Ward was
killed by a stray bullet to the abdomen in an engagement at Tz’u-ch’i south of
Shanghai. He was buried with his dog in a lavish temple raised to his memory at
Songjiang; however this grave was removed at a later stage and today, the
whereabouts of his remains are unknown.
General
Yüan
Shih-k’ai (1859 - 1916)
“Sometimes [the Emperor,
whilst in exile after the Siege
at Peking,] would draw a large tortoise, write the name of Yüan
Shih-k’ai on its back and stick it on the wall. With a small bamboo bow he
would shoot at the picture, then take it down and cut it to pieces with
scissors, and throw it into the air like a swarm of butterflies. His hate of Yüan
Shih-k’ai was apparently very deep.”
-Wu Yung, The
Flight of an Empress
A notable Manchu general in the war with
Japan over control of Korea, Yüan Shih-k’ai was a protégé of the
Empress Dowager and used her support to advance himself politically at the end
of the 19th Century. Working with Li Hung-chang in the Shantung
area, he was a ruthless administrator who enacted widespread military reforms
and, while tacitly supporting the Manchu court, suppressed the Boxers in the
areas under his control, supporting the foreigners in his territories. With the
death of Li and the Dowager Empress, he openly switched sides and supported the
Reform movement for the modernisation of China, eventually replacing Sun
Yat-sen as First President of the Chinese
Republic. He is infamous for acceding to all but the most radical of
Japan’s ‘21 Demands’ in 1915 and for attempting to establish a new Imperial
dynasty with himself at its head: time has shown that, in the light of the
twelve years of chaos that followed his death, his reforms might have been a
better alternative for the nascent Republic.
Inevitably however, he is remembered as a cunning, turncoat strategist, with
designs on the Dragon Throne...
*****
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