How to Order

The story of A Marriage in China takes place against a background of civil unrest and attacks on foreigners, particularly missionaries, in the Yangtze region of China in the 1880s/1890s. This unrest heralded the series of events running up to the Boxer uprising in 1900.

From the mid-1880s onwards, several Christian missions and churches in Sichuan province were attacked and sometimes burned down. By the early 1890s, the attacks had spread to Wuhu, Nanjing, and Yichang. A secret society known as the Ko Lao Hui (Elder Brothers Society) was widely believed to have been behind these riots – it was thought that, by attacking foreigners, they were trying to attract the wrath of overseas governments towards the Chinese rulers, which in turn would create sufficiently unsettled conditions for an internal rebellion.

In 1894, the action escalated with the killing of a number of missionaries at a Church rest house in Fuzhou. In 1897 many Catholic churches in Shandong province were destroyed, and some priests were killed. These incidents were attributed to groups affiliated with the White Lotus, a secret society that had been instrumental in the downfall of Mongol rule in the 14th century and had become active once more.

The Boxers – so-called because their Chinese name, I-ho Chuan (pinyin: Yihe quan), translates as ‘Righteous and Harmonious Fists’ – began to attack the Christian missions in northern China from 1897/8, widening their activities to include other foreign organisations. In 1898/9, they joined forces with members of the Qing (Manchu) ruling class when the Empress Dowager Tzu-hsi (Cu Xi, or Ci Xi) – who had deposed her nephew the Kuang-hsu (Guangxu) Emperor in 1898 after his attempt to impose some much-needed political and social reforms on the country – encouraged the Boxers to murder resident foreigners in the hope of ridding China of their presence.

The Boxer’s campaign of terror culminated in a siege of the foreign legations in Beijing. The siege, which lasted four months and resulted in the deaths of thousands of Chinese Christians, was finally brought to an end by a foreign expeditionary force that captured Beijing and caused the Empress Dowager to flee.

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To read more about the Boxer uprising and other Chinese secret societies, visit the Historical Background pages for another Read around Asia title,
The Vermilion Pencil.