"A Model for All Christian Women"

Candida Xu, a Chinese Christian Woman of the Seventeenth Century

Gail King

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9780367682903
• eBook ISBN:
  9781000333565
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This biography of Candida Xu (1607–1680), granddaughter of the prominent Chinese Christian convert and statesman Xu Guangqi (1562–1633) and foremost Chinese Christian woman of the seventeenth century, is based on the biography of Candida Xu titled Histoire d'une dame chrétienne de la Chine (Paris, 1688) written by her confessor Philippe Couplet, S.J. (1623–1693), an obituary of his mother and other writings by her eldest son, and the Xu family history. Using these as well as other relevant European missionary and Chinese language sources, Candida Xu's life as daughter, wife, mother, and generous contributor to the Christian Church is recounted. Events in her life are set in the context of historical and religious circumstances in China at the time. Consideration of the situation of women, particularly Christian women, draws out how Candida Xu's faith helped her and other believing Christian women to gain greater freedom of choice and action.

CHAPTER ONE

Roots of the Xu Family: The Generations before Candida Xu

Candida Xu was the granddaughter of Xu Guangqi, one of the foremost of Chinese converts to Christianity in the late Ming dynasty. A scholar and statesman known for his honest, simple life, Xu Guangqi rose briefly, just before his death, to the high office of Grand Secretary of the Ming dynasty. His service to the Church and to his country made him the outstanding member of the Xu family, so that after him, generations were reckoned in relation to him. Soon after his conversion, his father, wife, son, and daughter-in-law were also baptized. Hence, Candida Xu was born into a family with Christians in the three generations before her: great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents. This heritage was a defining influence in her life.

The generations of the Xu family before Xu Guangqi stretch back over four hundred years to the close of the Northern Song dynasty (Bei Song 北宋, 960– 1127). Family records from this time were lost in the mid-sixteenth century, but a tradition passed down in the family locates them at that time in the city of Bian 汴, splendid capital of the Northern Song.¹

¹ XSJP, frame 2; Liang Jiamian 1981, p. 15.

Bian was located south of the Yellow River near its junction with the canal that linked the Huai 淮 and the Yellow Rivers. An old city that had been a center of government and commerce for centuries, Bian, renamed Kaifeng 開封, was chosen by the founder of the Song dynasty to be his capital and became the economic, military, industrial, and political center of the Northern Song. ² By the early twelfth century, three ranks of walls enclosed Kaifeng: the imperial city in the center, an inner city, and the outer city wall more than forty feet high and sixty feet thick at the base with a perimeter of over fifteen miles.³ Outside this outer wall a moat over hundred feet wide and fifteen feet deep with willows lining its banks surrounded and protected the city.

² See Kracke 2002, pp. 49-77; Ebrey 1999, pp. 33-65; de Pee 2010, pp. 149-184.

³ Zhou Baozhu 1992, p. 50.

To the north of the Song dynasty during the first two hundred years of its existence was the empire of the Khitan (Chinese Qidan 契丹), the Liao 遼 dynasty (907–1125). In the late eleventh century the Jurchen (Chinese Nüzhen 女真), a Tungusic people from Manchuria, rose swiftly to power and established the Jin 金 dynasty (1115–1234). Formidable horsemen and archers, they demolished the Liao in 1125. In 1127, despite its great wealth, size, and formidable walls, Kaifeng fell to the Jurchen.⁴ A brutal sack of the city followed. The city walls were destroyed, the imperial palaces were razed and burned, women abducted, temples plundered, and businesses looted.⁵ The Song court fled south from Kaifeng, and eventually, in 1138, set up a new capital at Hangzhou 杭州, where, as the Southern Song (Nan Song 南宋, 1127–1279) the dynasty was able to continue for another 150 years.⁶

⁴ Lorge 2005, pp. 50-54. For an overview of the Jurchen, Jin, and Northern Song, see Mote 1999, pp. 193-288 and Franke – Twitchett 1994, pp. 215-235.

⁵ Wu Tao 1984, pp. 169-170.

⁶ For an overview of the Southern Song, see Mote 1999, pp. 289-374.

From Kaifeng South to Suzhou

Thousands of refugees fled south in the political and social upheaval that followed the Jurchen takeover of northern China. Tradition asserts that the Xu family left Kaifeng just at the time of its fall to the Jurchen and moved south to Suzhou 蘇州, an old city on the Grand Canal.⁷ Most likely their move occurred as part of the mass migration to the south of refugees fleeing from the Jurchen. With the transfer of the Song capital to nearby Hangzhou, Suzhou also benefitted and grew. More fields were drained and developed for agriculture, commerce expanded, and by the time of Marco Polo’s visit in the thirteenth century, Suzhou was, in his description, “a large and magnificent city.”⁸ Over the years Suzhou became a center of trade, textile production, grain processing, and finance.

⁷ XSJP, frame 2.

⁸ Marmé 1993, p. 19.

Suzhou to Shanghai

The Xu family lived in Suzhou for approximately three centuries. We know nothing about their activities during these centuries. The extant family history begins with the statement that their ancestor Xu Zhuxuan 徐竹軒 (fl. ca. 1450) moved from Suzhou to Shanghai county in Songjiang prefecture sometime in the mid-fifteenth century and founded the branch of the Xu family in Shanghai.⁹ The move might have occurred during the Zhengtong 政統 reign period (1436–1449) of the Ming dynasty,¹⁰ and we may wonder if the relocation was connected to family adversity in Suzhou during those years. The area of Suzhou, a rich agricultural district and prosperous center of production and trade, was heavily taxed. In addition, foul weather plagued China in the mid-fifteenth century.¹¹ Of the region around Suzhou during the Zhengtong reign period, a local gazetteer recorded,

⁹ XSJP, frame 37.

¹⁰ XGJS, p. 20, n. 1.

¹¹ See Atwell 2002, pp. 83-113, especially pp. 92-96.

In the eighth month of 1438, Lake Tai suddenly overflowed, submerging the foothills of Dongting to a depth of four feet. In the seventh month of 1439, a great wind uprooted trees and destroyed grain standing in the fields; the following month, water drowned large numbers of men and women. […] In 1443 a great wind and rain injured the crops; there was famine the following spring. In the seventh month of 1444, the wind and rain returned. The waters of Lake Tai rose ten to twenty feet, submerging men and beasts, as well as cottages and houses by the edge of the lake, and uprooting huge trees in both East and West Dongting.¹²

¹² Marmé 2005, p. 109, citing the passage from Minguo Wu xian zhi 民國吳縣志 (Republican Period Gazetteer of Wu County), (1933 ed.), 55:7a.

Did the burden of heavy taxation in addition to years of disastrous weather lead Xu Zhuxuan to relocate? We do not know. But at some point in the mid-fifteenth century, he sought a new life in Shanghai.

Shanghai began as a marshy coastal village in the eighth century. Over the centuries, seawalls were built to prevent the ocean from washing inland, and canals and dikes raised the level of the fields so farmers could grow wheat, barley, beans, and hemp to exchange for rice grown in the richer soil of the western part of the region. By the time Shanghai was designated a market town in 1094, it was already a busy trading center. Its streets were lined with shops trading in goods shipped from other parts of China, and scattered about the city were military guard posts, government offices, a Confucian village school, Buddhist temples, Daoist halls, and farmers’ markets.¹³ Small merchants and peddlers abounded, selling handicrafts, salt extracted from the sea, food grown in the bogs, and fish taken from the canals that crisscrossed the region. By the end of the Southern Song, Shanghai was the main shipping port of the area.

¹³ Zheng Zu’an 1984, p. 77, citing the Hongzhi 弘治 (1487–1522) edition of the Shanghai xian zhi 上海縣志.

In 1292, the market town of Shanghai was designated county seat of the new Shanghai county, formed of five counties in the northeast part of Songjiang prefecture at the eastern tip of the Yangzi Delta.¹⁴ The government offices of the county seat were in the northern part of Shanghai, and the core of the early development of the city grew up around them. The Huangpu River (Huangpu jiang 黃 浦江) flowed through the southeast section of the town, and shipping establishments were located there.

¹⁴ Zheng Zu’an 1984, p. 77.

Early Years of the Xu Family in Shanghai

In the lively commercial atmosphere of fifteenth-century Shanghai, the Xu family business prospered briefly, but the taxes were too heavy, and in the end the business failed. In what would become a characteristic coping strategy for them, the family turned to farming. Unfortunately, the move was unsuccessful...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface by D.E. Mungello
• List of Abbreviations
• Map: China in the time of Candida Xu
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Roots of the Xu Family: The Generations before Candida Xu
• Chapter Two: Childhood and Married Life
• Chapter Three: The Widowed Years
• Chapter Four: The Legacy of Candida Xu
• Appendices:
• Bibliography
• Index with Glossary