The Deadliest Civil War in History, Part One: The Rise of the Taiping

Did you know that Jesus had a Chinese brother, I bet you didn't. And did you know that he started the bloodiest Civil War in all of human history, probably not. So get ready for one of the most epic and weirdest episodes of Learn Chinese Now! When we think of Civil Wars we usually think of the 1860s: Union versus Confederate. But at that same time China was going through a civil war even bigger than America's. The Qing dynasty was fighting for its life against a Christian theocracy run by a man who thought he had a direct line to God. But before we start be sure to like and subscribe. So this thing all starts with a man named Hong Huo Xiu. Now Hong was a scholar in southern China during the 1830s. Back then China was still on the Imperial examination system, which meant that if you wanted a government job, which often had great pay and benefits and exempted you from manual labor. You had to pass the Imperial exam, so Hong takes the exam and fails. But he takes it again and still fails. On the third time that he goes to the examination hall, someone hands him a book of excerpts from the bible translated into Chinese. Let's stop there for a minute. How did Christianity get into China way back then? Well the answer is that Western missionaries had been trying to get into China to convert people for centuries, but they were prohibited from going anywhere outside of certain designated zones for foreigners. Canton, which was where Hong was taking his exams, had its own special section for foreigners. But eventually those foreigners converted Chinese into Christians and those Chinese helped them to slip out of the zones and convert more Chinese. So Hong got his Bible excerpts from a western preacher and his Chinese translator. Now at first Hong just kind of flips through the book and puts it aside he goes to take the exam for a third time. And this time he actually still failed. After that he gets really sick and falls into a state of delirium. He dreams of an older man with a great golden beard, who in the dream is his father. And he also dreams of an elder brother. They tell him that he has to eradicate demons and they give him a great sword called "Snow in the Clouds" to carry out this mission. Hong goes through level after level from Heaven down to Hell slicing demons until he gets to the king of Hell himself: Yan Luo. Hong is about to kill Yan when the father asks Hong to spare him. Father tells him that Yan Luo has many demon minions in the mortal world and Hong has to find and eliminate them. Hong's father tells him one other thing: He has to change his name from Hong Huo Xiu to Hong Xiu Quan. Because the character Huo or "fire" is taboo. Hong wakes up from his dream screaming and ranting. He eventually comes to his senses, but he does change his name anyway. He tries to take the exam a fourth time and fails. He decides that he isn't going to try again. After this a friend who is into the Bible recommends that he reads it more deeply. He reads it again and everything suddenly clicks for him. When he gets to the section on the great flood he realizes the first character of great flood which in Chinese is Hong Shui is the same character as the first character in his name. When he reads the word Jehovah, which the book translates as Ye Huo Hua he says: "Oh now I get why I had to change my name. The middle character of Jehovah is the same as the middle character of my old name. Of course it's taboo to have the same character as Jehovah." Then he starts making even more connections: the father who gave him the sword must have been God, and the brother must have been Jesus, which makes Hong Jesus's brother. There was another mystery in the dream: Hong's father tells him to wipe out demons in the human world. Who were they: Well now Hong had the answer. The Qing Dynasty had been propping up Pagan Confucianism instead of the One True Faith. The Manchus are all demons. With this vision Hong starts spreading his version of Christianity, he wins a number of converts and they eventually start moving to a compound on a place called Thistle Mountain. There they have many strict rules: All money has to be put into a joint treasury to be distributed as needed. Opium is strictly prohibited. And perhaps most importantly, all men and women are separated into different dorms and can barely contact each other even husbands and wives. Now you may wonder how do they have kids? Well they didn't. Hong's idea was to first build the ideal country, and then once that's established they can figure out how to let people have kids. So what exactly is Hong trying to build the country he wants to found is called the Tai Ping Tian Guo which means: The Heavenly Nation of Great Peace. Now as much as this is a Christian Movement, there's a Taoist element to it as well. You see starting from the 2nd Century AD, Taoists in China talked about a Tai Ping Dao or: Way of Great Peace. The idea was that a messiah like figure would come to the world, free it of its miseries, and institute an era of great peace. So it's pretty obvious how this lines up. Hong being Jesus's brother is the Messiah figure. And through his Heavenly connections he's going to lead China out of its misery and humiliation under the rule of the Qing. And maybe that's why Thistle Mountain grows so fast. People keep coming to despite the rules. Men and women both form army regiments and are ready to die for the cause. But the government soon starts to see it as a threat. And soon the Qing come to root out this sect from their compound. The Qing come first with a small force of a few hundred people. Hong's army drives them off. They come back with a fairly larger army of 7,000 people. Hong's army defeats them again. Wait the Taiping just defeated the Qing. How is this possible? Well let's take a step back for a moment and talk about Hong's military advisers, because this is possibly the weirdest part of this whole story. Hong has two close advisers among his early converts. Yang Xiuqing, who's a charcoal maker. And Xiao Chaogui, who's a farmer. Yang is the voice of God and Xiao is the voice of Jesus. They go into a trance for hours, and whatever they say is taken as the divine word. Yet somehow these prophets are also two of Hong's top generals. And even crazier, these two people, without any military experience, are really good at organizing an army. Hmm, maybe there's something to this. The Taiping have an innovative system of army communication. Each section of the army has a banner with little triangular Flags. So if the right flank needs reinforcement they put a little white flag on their Banner. The next regiment that saw them puts a flag on their Banner too and all the way to the other side of the army. So the whole Army knows to reinforce the right flank. This makes the typing a flexible and Rapid fighting force and helps it fight and defeat much larger armies. Anyway with the help of these two heavenly generals the Taiping are able to defeat the Qing twice. But the Qing won't be denied they come back with an even larger force with the intent of suffocating the Taiping on Thistle Mountain. So the Taiping have to escape Thistle Mountain with about 40,000 men. They go north along the Xiang River where they take over Yong An. They stay there for a few months but then the Qing push them out again. They go up to Guilin, and try to take it it over, but fail. They try to take over Chang Sha, but fail. They do take over Wuchang, but then abandon it to move East on the Yangtze river towards Nanjing. And it goes on like this for a while. The Qing chasing the Taiping and the Tailing going from place to place, trying to find their Earthly Paradise, as Hong calls it. But the Taiping actually gets stronger and stronger. They keep picking up new recruits everywhere they go. When they take over cities like Wuchang, they rob all the banks and come out rich. And as they keep moving up the Xiang and Yangtze rivers they keep accumulating boats to the point that they end up with a massive Fleet. Now they're a naval power too. Finally after years of effort, they arrive at Nanjing, one of China's biggest cities. So you'd think after all the Taiping's difficulties in taking smaller cities, they would have no chance of conquering Nanjing. It's such a massive city after all. But that's the problem it's too big. The city has over 25 miles of walls far too much for the city's Defenders to man all of the time. And the Taiping have gotten really good at secretly digging tunnels under walls and then laying bombs to demolish the walls from below. They find an undefended spot tear down the wall and soon they're in the city. They overwhelm the remaining Defenders and Nanjing is theirs. Outside of the regular Han inhabitants there are 50,000 Manchus still remaining in Nanjing. The Taiping kill every last one of them, they're demons after all. After they take over Nanjing the typing rename it Tianjing or Heavenly Capital. This is going to be their Earthly Paradise, where they show the world their inspired way to run a country. The Qing always called the Taiping a rebel group, but it's not a rebellion anymore. It's now a full-on Civil War. The Taiping have their own State and they're coming straight for the Qing. So that's it for this episode in our next episode we'll be talking about what the Taiping did once they finally found their Earthly Paradise. Until next time Zai Jian [Music]