Hakka Chinese Confront Protestant Christianity, 1850-1900

With the Autobiographies of Eight Hakka Christians, and Commentary

Jessie Gregory Lutz, Rolland Ray Lutz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9780765600370
• eBook ISBN: 9781317469216
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This work focuses on the 19th-century mission conducted by Chinese evangelists among the Hakka, an ethnic minority in south China. The principal part of the text comprises the autobiographies of eight pioneer missionaries who offer insight into village life and customs of the Hakka people.

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Introduction

The reconstruction of the lives of several early Chinese evangelists and their Protestant converts offers an unusual opportunity to look at village life and customs in mid-nineteenth century China. Missionaries came to China with the intention of displacing Chinese beliefs, values, and rituals with Christianity, an institutionalized religion in many ways at variance with Chinese teachings and practices. Confrontation between East and West at the local level is, therefore, reflected in the lives and work of the evangelists, both Chinese and Western.

In this study the subject is a special ethnic group, the Hakka. The Basel mission society’s work among the Hakka of Guangdong represents one of the more successful Protestant missionary efforts of the nineteenth century.¹ The first Hakka congregations were, however, founded by Chinese evangelists rather than missionaries. These Chinese evangelists came principally from small towns and villages and they had their greatest success among kinsmen of their own rural communities. Though the majority of the Protestant missionaries resided in the treaty ports or nearby, a high proportion of the Basel missionaries were stationed in the rural interior. The lives and work of the early Chinese evangelists and the relevant Basel missionary reports enable us to view Hakka peasant life in the interior of south China and at the village level.

The Hakka, today considered an ethnic group within the Han Chinese nationality, derived their appellation, “guest people” (kejia) or “stranger families,” from the fact that they had migrated southward relatively late and had generally settled in less fertile, underpopulated regions. By the mid-nineteenth century the majority were located in adjacent regions of northeast Guangdong, southern Jiangxi, and southwest Fujian. This is the area where they formed the overwhelming proportion of the population and which is considered the Hakka heartland. Other Hakka sojourners could be found mingled among local populations in coastal Guangdong, Sichuan, Guangxi, Hunan, Taiwan, Hainan, Hong Kong, and overseas. Many Hakka communities in the nineteenth century retained their own dialect, social patterns, distinctive dress and architecture, though a conscious, articulated sense of ethnicity seems to have been a late nineteenth century and early twentieth century phenomenon, at least for most Hakka of northeast Guangdong.

In the nineteenth century the term “Hakka” was often used loosely and pejoratively. Not all Chinese were as vague in their definition of the Hakka as S. Wells Williams, but his one reference to the Hakka in The Middle Kingdom accurately conveys the attitude of many, both Westerners and Chinese, toward the Hakka. “Parties of tramps, called hakka, or ‘guests,’ roam over Guangdong province, squatting on vacant places along the shores, away from the villages, and forming small clannish communities; as soon as they increase, occupying more and more of the land, they begin to commit petty depredations upon the crops of the inhabitants, and demand money for the privilege of burying upon the unoccupied ground around them. The government is generally unwilling to drive them off by force, because there is the alternative of making them robbers thereby.…,”² Since the Hakka are today considered Han Chinese rather than a minority, Chinese population censuses do not provide a statistical breakdown for Hakka by provinces. It has been estimated, however, that in 1987 there were fifteen million Hakka in Guangdong, including Hainan (24 percent of the total provincial population), six million in Fujian (24 percent), seven million in Jiangxi (22 percent), with an estimated total Hakka population in China and overseas of over fifty-six million.³

During the early 1850s Jiang Jiaoren, a Hakka Chinese evangelist associated with the Evangelical Mission Society at Basel, proselytized in the Lilang area of Baoan district (now Shenzhen), Guangdong. Here, he made converts among his family and kinsmen belonging to the powerful Jiang lineage; in turn, several of these Christians became evangelists employed by Basel. Congregations were founded; chapels rented, and eventually Western missionaries were stationed in Lilang.⁴ Also during the early 1850s, Zhang Fuxing, another Basel evangelist, reported the first tiny clusters of Protestant converts in northeast Guangdong. Most of these initial converts were located in Wuhua district. Though not yet baptized, they had formed a community which met regularly for instruction and worship, observed the Sabbath, and were acquainted with the Lord’s Prayer, Apostles’ Creed, and Ten Commandments, which they regularly recited. Many were familiar with favorite stories of the Old and New Testament and enjoyed listening to their recitation by Zhang Fuxing and his corps of evangelists. Less than a decade later there were over two hundred Christian believers located in twenty-one villages. In 1862–63 the first Basel missionaries visited Wuhua and baptized one hundred converts.

Karl Gützlaff, a visionary Prussian missionary, had persuaded the Basel and the Rhenish mission societies to send their first two missionaries to China in 1846: for Basel, Rudolf Lechler from Württemberg and Theodor Hamberg from Sweden; for the Rhenish, Heinrich Köster and Ferdinand Genähr from Prussia. Like Gützlaff, Hamberg, Lechler, Genähr, and Köster, the Basel and Rhenish mission societies were products of the European pietist movement, which furnished an impetus to missions during the early nineteenth century. The Basel society was interdenominational and international, despite loose ties with the Lutheran and Reformed churches of Germany, Switzerland, Alsace, and Sweden. A personal conviction of sin, a revival experience, and love and faith in Jesus were emphasized more than dogma or denominational practices. The Bible was looked upon as the standard by which to formulate and test creeds, ethics, and organization and so the great commission meant first and foremost making the Sacred Book available to all peoples. Many pietists, holding to a strict morality, also idealized the village community and sought to preserve traditional village society.

Karl Gützlaff (From Lee Chee Kong [Li Zhigang], “Guo shili mushi. zui juzheng yixing di jiaoshi,” JinriHuaren jiaohui 146 [May 1991]: 35).

As Gützlaff envisioned it, the four missionaries were to aid him in his plan to bring Christianity to all of China via a Chinese Union which employed Chinese evangelists under the supervision of Western missionaries. Guided by missionaries stationed in the interior despite imperial prohibition, Chinese Union members would preach the Gospel of salvation and distribute religious tracts and Bibles in every province of China. Converts, after resolving to lead a new life and receiving baptism, would receive further instruction and form congregations. Gtitzlaff insisted that each of his European assistants adopt Chinese dress and cuisine, live among the Chinese and learn a specific Chinese dialect to enable him to communicate directly with the various language groups of China.⁵ Genähr and Köster were assigned to learn Cantonese for work among the bendi; Lechler to learn Hoklo, and Hamberg to learn Hakka.⁶

Though Gützlaff s Chinese Union met a speedy demise amidst scandal over the venality of a high proportion of Chinese Union workers, the Basel Hakka mission was a legacy of Karl Gützlaff. Gützlaff and Hamberg had worked among the Hakka in Hong Kong and the adjacent mainland territories during the 1840s, and by February 1851 Hamberg had initiated regular Sunday services in Hong Kong for a Hakka congregation ranging between thirty and sixty. Members of the Chinese Union had evangelized in Baoan and Meizhou during the late 1840s and the founders of the first congregations in Lilang and Wuhua were former Chinese Union members who had received further instruction and support from Basel’s initial China missionaries. Basel mission methodology built on and refined that of the Chinese Union, especially its concentration on the rural interior and its dependence on Chinese evangelists. By the early 1850s the Hakka of Guangdong had become the primary focus of the Basel Mission.

The missionaries customarily distinguished the two principal Hakka mission areas as the Oberland, referring to the northeastern territory, and the Unterland, referring to Hong Kong and the mainland region opposite the island.

The Unterland was the site of the first enduring Basel station on the mainland. Founded at Buji in 1852, it was managed by Gehilfen (preaching assistants) for a year. In April 1853 Hamberg moved his residence from Hong Kong to the village complex. He was joined shortly by Philipp Winnes, who established a school for boys. Following an unhappy experience with the Buji villagers during the Arrow War of 1856–60, Buji was demoted to a substation and the main station, together with the school, was transferred to Lilang. Soon three more schools were added: a girls’ school, a middle school, and a seminary for cate-chists and evangelists. For several decades Lilang remained the principal educational center of Basel’s China mission.

Though the Oberland was originally identical with Wuhua district, it eventually came to designate the whole northeastern sector of Guangdong where Hakka were concentrated. Growth of Christian communities in the Oberland soon surpassed that in the Unterland and intermediate stations linking the two regions were founded. From Wuhua, evangelists had fanned out in all directions so that by 1897 the Hakka Oberland mission embraced five districts with eight central stations and thirty-three substations, almost three thousand Christians, and thirty-nine mission schools enrolling 694 pupils. With 921 Christians, the district of Xingning north of Wuhua had become one of the largest Basel stations. Meizhou reported one of the highest percentages of Christians of any comparable administrative unit in China and in the early 20th century it was the locale of a Basel hospital, a school for Bible women, a preparatory institute for seminarians, and a home for sisters along with primary and secondary schools for boys and girls.⁷

Theodor Hamberg, China Missionary, 1846–1854 (From Basel Mission Archive)

The church in the Unterland had not prospered accordingly and missionaries frequently lamented that the young people drifted away, leaving elderly women as the backbone of the church. Young men turned toward the urban culture of Canton and Hong Kong. A steady outflow of emigrants depleted congregations. Many of the Hakka Christians who went overseas, however, founded Christian churches in their new homeland and often these overseas Chinese Christians remained in communication with the China Basel mission, some congregations sending annual contributions and employing graduates from the Basel seminary in Lilang as their pastors. In recent decades Basel has formed “partnerships” with independent Hakka churches in Hong Kong, Singapore, Sabah, Sarawak, Hawaii, Indonesia, India, Taiwan, and nations in Africa, South America and the South Pacific.

What lends especial interest to the origins of Christianity in Lilang and Wuhua is the fact that Chinese converts, not Western missionaries, initiated proselytism there, plus the fact that the Christian communities they founded consisted of Hakka. Scholars have remarked upon the religious eclecticism of the Hakka and the missionaries also noted that the Hakka, particularly those in the rural interior, were more accessible to foreigners and more open to unconventional teachings than most Chinese.⁸ On the other hand, Lechler and Hamberg were at that time reporting: “All missionaries agreed that as of now there is no hope for the creation of a self-sustaining Chinese Christian church in the interior. In the absence of the missionary for any length of time, the Chinese Christian communities tend to revert to paganism.”⁹ Even after Basel missionaries were stationed in the interior, however, Chinese evangelists continued to conduct most of the day-to-day personal work. Concentrating initially on language study and on administrative and educational work, the Europeans left to the Chinese much of the actual proselytizing and itineration from village to village. Dysentery, malaria, and other illnesses often reduced the efficiency of Westerners, and with distressing frequency, health problems cut short their tenures, often before they had acquired the necessary language facility for effective work.¹⁰ Chinese could claim credit for a high proportion of the conversions.

Rudolf Lechler, China Missionary, 1846–1899 (From Basel Mission Archive)

We examine the origins of Hakka Protestantism, therefore, through the lives of eight early Chinese Christians: Jiang Jiaoren, Dai Wenguang, and Li Zhenggao of the Unterland and Zhang Fuxing, Lai Xinglian, Zhang Zhongm...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Note on Romanization
• Abbreviations
• List of Maps and Tables
• Map of Mission Stations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Biography of Jiang Jiaoren
• 3. Biography of Zhang Fuxing
• 4. Biography of Dai Wenguang
• 5. Biography of Xu Fuguang
• 6. Biography of Zhang Zhongmu
• 7. Autobiography of Lai Xinglian
• 8. Biography of Zhang Yunfa
• 9. The Life of the Departed Deacon Li Zhenggao
• 10. Poverty in the Highlands
• 11. Geomancy, Spirits and Souls, Death and Burial Rituals
• 12. Social Disorder, Lineage Feuds, and Banditry
• 13. Hakka Women
• 14. Appeals of Christianity and Chinese Religious Sects
• 15. Deterrants and Hardships
• 16. Arrival of Westerners and Persecution
• 17. Challenges to Confucian Society: Women
• 18. Parochial Education
• 19. Autonomy, Expansion, and Indigenization
• 20. Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Glossary
• Index