THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 24, 1996 TAG: 9603210587
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY ARNOLD R. ISAACS
LENGTH: Medium: 85 lines
GOD'S CHINESE SON
The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan
JONATHAN D. SPENCE
Norton. 400 pp. $27.50.
The Taiping rebellion that swept across China in the mid-19th century was in some ways a precursor of the Communist revolution almost exactly 100 years later.
Both uprisings began with radical visions shaped by a foreign ideology - Christianity for the Taipings, Marxism for the Communists. Each started from remote, mountainous regions in southeastern China, drew supporters from among the masses of poor peasants, and gathered strength in long, circuitous campaigns through the hinterland. Each attempted to transform Chinese society down to the roots, rejecting thousands of years of custom and tradition. And, even though one revolution conquered and one was crushed, both fell victim in different ways to ancient ills: intrigue, treachery and the corruption of absolute power.
In God's Chinese Son, Yale University historian Jonathan D. Spence refers only glancingly to those parallels. But they give a resonance to his account.
Spence tells the Taiping story mainly in terms of the religious vision that inspired it, and the visionary who became its leader.
Hong Xiuquan, the future Heavenly King, encountered Christianity in 1836 when, at 22, he was given a text called ``Good Words for Exhorting the Age,'' written by a Chinese Christian convert in the southern city of Canton. Some years later, rereading the text and connecting it to a strange dream he had once experienced, Hong concluded that he was actually the Christian God's younger son, sent to earth, as he had written in a poem after his dream, ``to behead the evil ones, spare the just, and ease the people's sorrow.''
Beginning with a handful of followers in a remote corner of Guangxi province, Hong formed an army, proclaimed himself ruler of the Heavenly Kingdom and, beginning in 1851, marched north into China's heartland, the great Yangzi river plain. By 1853 the Taiping army had captured the important city of Nanjing, where Hong ruled for the next 11 years while his forces ranged out of the city in successive campaigns reaching as far as Sichuan, a thousand miles to the west.
In Nanjing, Hong attempted to create his ideal society - featuring prohibition of opium and alcohol and strict separation of men and women. But he became increasingly isolated, communicating with his people only through edicts written ``in vermilion ink on yellow silk,'' and posted on one of the gates to his palace.
Inside the ruling circle, feuds and intrigue flourished, while outside the city walls, years of warfare brought ruin to vast areas of the countryside. In mid-1864, with Nanjing under siege by Qing Dynasty troops, Hong died; seven weeks later, imperial forces captured the city.
Spence sketches in some of the surrounding historical landscape - particularly the penetration of Chinese society by Westerners, who brought the religion that inspired Hong Xiuquan's uprising but who, in the end, distrusted his revolutionary vision and sided with the Qing campaign to crush him.
Spence's central theme, though, is Hong's religious experience, which he traces mainly through the Heavenly King's own writings - among them a fascinating rewrite of the Book of Genesis, edited to conform with Hong's Chinese view of the world.
This is interesting material, but it does not fully bring Hong Xiuquan to life. The Heavenly King remains elusive and indistinct in this narrative, as in one of those Chinese shadow-puppet plays in which heroes and villains are seen only as silhouettes on an illuminated screen.
Whether this is the fault of the author or his material is hard to say. Spence's earlier books, including such marvelous works as The Gate of Heavenly Peace and The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, won him a well-deserved reputation as one of the most imaginative, original and illuminating writers in his field.
In God's Chinese Son, it may be that the records that have come down from a far place and a distant time simply didn't give Spence the necessary material for a fully rounded portrait. Even if it does not succeed completely, however, this is still a well-told account, rich in detail, that will reward any reader interested in China's long, turbulent passage into the modern era. MEMO: Arnold R. Isaacs was a journalist in Asia and taught at Chinese
universities in Shanghai and Xi'an. A longtime editor and reporter for
The Baltimore Sun, he is now a free-lance writer in Pasadena, Md. by CNB