The Taiping Rebellion ended with the death of Hong Xiuquan. Taiping, meaning great peace was a rebellion of Chinese peasants to overthrow the Manchu rulers and bring peace to China. The Chinese forces with help from the Europeans recaptured the town of Nanjing and destroyed the rebel force. It is a sad day for some people and a great day for others. The rebellion went on for about thirteen years and left about twenty to thirty million people dead. I spoke with people who met Hong Xiuquan and they told me everything they knew about this person who killion millions of people. Hong Xiuquan was a Christian convert who believed he was the younger brother of Jesus. He believed he was sent by his older brother to eradicate all the demon worship. Hong Xiuquan started a group called the God Worshippers about fourteen years ago, and they went around destroying idols and getting rid of demon worship. Hong Xiuquan and his small group of followers believed that the Manchu rulers were the main propagators of demon worship. He believed that the overthrow of the Manchu rulers would help bring in the Kingdom of Heaven on earth (1). When the rebellion began thirteen years ago, it was a time of chaos for China. China was having problems with the Europeans, and this internal problem in China did not help at all. He gathered together troops that would follow him and armed peasant groups to form his large army. I talked with two different people with two very different opinions of the rebellion. I first talked with a peasant:

"I am deeply saddened by the death of Hong Xiuquan. It is a sad day for many peasants in China. He was a great leader and I was one of his followers. When the rebellion first started, it sounded great to a lot of peasants because we were all so tried of the rules of the Manchu rulers. Hong Xiuquan promised a reconstitution where peasants owned and tilled the land in common. He also said slavery, concubinage, arranged marriage, opium smoking, footbinding, judicial torture, and the worship of idols would all be eliminated. This all sounded great to many peasants (2)." I also talked to a government official of the Chinese government:

"Today, I am overjoyed with the death of Hong Xiuquan. His rebellion caused many problems with our country. His rebellion came at the exact wrong time so we had major internal and external problems with our country. He killed more than twenty million people. In 1853, Hong Xiuquan and his rebels took over Nanjing and made it his capital where he ran his 'kingdom'. Now that Hong Xiuquan is dead, we can find some way to restore China and deal with other problems. This rebellion definitely was not a small attack on China (3)."

The rebellion that went on for thirteen years is now over. Leaving millions of men, women and children dead, some people do not see how Hong Xiuquan thinks of himself as the king of heaven on earth. His kingdom was supposed to be a peaceful kingdom, yet he and his army murdered twenty to thirty million people. This rebellion was one of the largest rebellions in China, and it will be remembered for the rest of China's existence.

Sources

1.Richard Hooker, "Ch'ing China The Taiping Rebellion," ed. Frederica M. Bunge, Rinn-Sup, http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~dee/CHING/TAIPING.HTM

2.Shinn, China a country study (New York: First Printing, 1981), 19-20

3."Taiping Rebellion", The Columbie Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, http://www.encyclopedia.com/articlesnew/12597.html

Images

Chinese flag, http://www.bama.co.uk/useful.htm, 31 January 2002

Dragon, http://www.garrison-clubs.org/clubs/TAIPING/TR_Main.htm, 1 February 2002

Taiping Royalty, http://www.lcsc.edu/modernchina/u3s1p3.htm, 31 January 2002

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