China by Edward Rutherfurd (historical books to read TXT) 📕

the best of them was Hong. Hong was a Hakka. As a young village schoolmaster, he’d been attracted to the Taiping, then given that up and worked for several missions before finding Legge. “I’ve taught him well,” the Scotsman observed. “Doctrinally, he’s sound. A few more years, and he’ll make converts of his own.”

When Hong attended the Bible classes that Cecil gave up at his house, the Whiteparish family soon adopted him. In his mid-thirties, strongly built, friendly, always glad to play with the children, he became like their favorite uncle. The family even gave him a private nickname—Daniel—after the Old Testament hero. Everyone was delighted when he married one of the Chinese converts, a lovely young woman, and they had a baby son.

“I believe our Daniel has got everything a man could want,” Cecil remarked to Minnie at the time. But Minnie was not so sure.

“I have a feeling,” she replied, “that there’s something we don’t know about him. Something in his past.”

“I’m sure it’s nothing bad,” said Cecil.

—

Another pleasure in Cecil’s life had been the development of a new relationship with his cousin Trader. Naturally, this had all been done by letter. And so interesting did the two men find each other’s letters that as time went on, the social differences that had divided them in the past were practically forgotten. More than once Cecil had remarked to Minnie: “We haven’t seen John since he came to our wedding. I’d be so glad if he came to see us here again.”

Most surprising to John Trader had been how well informed his missionary cousin had become about all matters relating to trade. Yet it wasn’t really so surprising. For as the Hong Kong colony grew and living conditions got better, not only Western merchants gathered there, but the big Chinese operators of Canton had been coming to the island to live beside them. Missionaries, merchants, and professional men from many nations were living side by side, and an intelligent fellow like Whiteparish could not fail to be well informed about most of the things that were passing in that world.

Cecil had been especially flattered to receive a letter from John asking for his opinion: “My two partners are suggesting,” he wrote, “that we should take on a fourth, a junior partner who might in due course be based in the port of Shanghai. What do you think?”

He’d replied at once:

As it happens, I visited Shanghai recently. At the time of the Opium War, it was only a walled fishing village, near the mouth of the Yangtze River, with a little fort to protect it from pirates. But now it’s growing fast. Some Triad gangs got control of the place for a while, but they’ve been kicked out. The local Chinese mandarins and the British get along rather well—we help the Chinese keep order and collect the taxes. Outside the old walled town, new French and British quarters are building fast. Quite handsome.

The Taiping have devastated the Yangtze valley. Since their advance on Peking failed, however, they’ve been contained by the emperor’s army in the Nanjing area. But they still disrupt the river trade. They’d like to break out of Nanjing; and the emperor’s men would like to break in. But this stalemate can’t last forever. And once China is at peace and open for trade, I predict the huge wealth of the Yangtze will flow through Shanghai.

So the South China trade will be conducted in Hong Kong, the Yangtze trade in Shanghai. You’ll need a man in each.

With so much progress already evident in Hong Kong, and more to be hoped for, at least in China’s future, why should Whiteparish, a thoughtful missionary, be troubled by a sense of foreboding?

He didn’t like to say it, but the truth was that he had misgivings about his own countrymen and their friends.

For the West was growing impatient with the East. The reports he received from Trader confirmed the fact. The treaties made after the end of the Opium War—not only with Britain but with France and America, too—were not eternal. They came up for renewal during the following decade, and those renewals were now overdue.

“The politicians say they want free trade and Christianity,” he remarked to Minnie.

“By which they mean free trade,” she replied.

British merchants still believed, correctly or not, that they could sell huge quantities of cotton goods to the vast population of China—which might be four hundred million people, though nobody knew.

But it was the profounder issue that really made the men of the West impatient. It was time China entered the modern world, they insisted. Time to stop treating other countries as ignorant barbarians and servants; time to live in a world of free men and equals. They wanted change, and they wanted it now. History was on their side. The Chinese had had a whole decade to think about it. What was wrong with them?

The new treaties would end all this nonsense. British, French, and American representatives were ready. British troops had been earmarked to accompany the diplomats. They might not be used, but they would show that the envoys meant business. The British delegation was led by Lord Elgin, a seasoned diplomat.

Before they could go to Beijing, there were two interruptions. The first came in 1857, the sudden outbreak of violence in India against insensitive British domination, known as the Mutiny, which almost threatened Calcutta itself. The troops due to come to China had to deal with this first.

“The one salutary result of this bloodletting,” Cecil wrote to Trader, “is that the British Empire has learnt it must seek a better understanding of the customs and religions of the local people. A useful lesson in humility.”

The second had been the local dispute down in Canton over illegal shipping between the British and the cantankerous Chinese governor of Guangzhou, which resulted in the governor being booted out and the British, French, and Americans, for the moment at least, running the city themselves. No one showed any humility