God's Chinese Son by Jonathan Spence Read Free Book Online Page A

Gutzlaff speak their dialect, baffled Chinese would peer under his hat, to see if he did not have concealed there the long queue of hair that all Chinese wore. 21 Such ambiguity bore advantages and dangers. "If the Chinese costume were adopted," wrote Stevens after one of his trips, "this might prolong the time of detection, but would much more diminish personal safety"—for discovery was inevitable, and heavy punishment would follow. 22 News of the illegal coastal journeyings had swiftly reached the emperor, who issued a strict denunciation of those who sought "to distribute foreign books, designing to seduce men with lies,-—a most strange and astonishing proceeding!" and likened their actions to those who earlier "clandestinely brought foreign females to Canton." 23
    Suppose, whether in disguise or not, one were to penetrate the walls of Canton? There were some Chinese inside who would be sympathetic— that was certain—though it was hard to tell how many. The English- language newspaper Canton Register in the spring of 1834 had noted in detail how Gutzlaffs continuation of the Chinese Monthly Magazine, a journal first conceived and written in Chinese by Milne and Liang Afa almost twenty years before, was flourishing still. Each new issue of this journal, "written in the Chinese language by a foreigner" and "printed withinside the city walls," was "delivered from the Chinese press to the agent of the editor; sent by him to the subscribers; and by them distributed gratuitously" to the Chinese, thus "making its way among the native pop­ulation of Canton." Private initiative then took over and speeded circula­tion, for "portions of their contents have been copied, and hawked about the streets for sale. Parties of Chinese have been observed clubbed together reading and explaining them." The Canton Register editor focused on the scientific and commercial information that the Chinese were thus acquir­ing, and speculated that by such means the West could "get a hold of the Chinese mind." How could the missionary not reflect that by such means one might also get a hold of the Chinese soul? 24
    By 1836 the pressures are mounting along with the sense of growing opportunities. Partly because of the emperor's edict attacking the illegal voyages, and also because of new activities by Catholic missionaries operating out of Macao, the local Canton officials have felt the need to act. In early 1836 their staff raid the workshop of a leading printer in Macao, and seize there "eight kinds of foreign books." The printer has been thrown in jail, his stock confiscated. The Chinese residents of the Macao and Canton region have been given six months in which to hand over to the magistrates all foreign books that teach the religion of "Yasoo" (Jesus) or of the Lord of Heaven. If they meet this deadline, they will not be punished, but after the deadline punishment will be severer 1
    And there is a final factor. Even if one enters the city and hands out religious books, the motives of the Chinese accepting the books will be mixed; that much Stevens knows. For there is always idle curiosity and greed along with good will, as he has noted on his two coastal journeys. As if to balance those Chinese with open countenance, who seemed to understand the purpose of the books and offered little presents in return— white grapes, for instance, or pears, a pinch of tobacco, a handful of millet or a little mound of salt-fish roe—others fought among themselves to add a red-jacketed book to a brown-bound one, though each was otherwise the same, or offered the books they had just received for sale in the village streets before Stevens had even left; some pressed around, wheedling, beg­ging for opium (which the brigs indeed had carried), or for medicines from the supplies the missionaries had with them, showing that desire for cash or fear of potential sickness might be their motive more than any spiritual need. 26
    But in summation, reflecting on the