In the Sino-Japanese War, China was defeated by the small japanese state of Suier, and the prestige accumulated by Li Hongzhang over decades, along with his Huai army, was buried in Korea and the Yellow Sea. Once a famous minister of ZTE, he became a national sinner overnight.
Compared with the Lu Division, although the Beiyang Marine Division was also a failure, few people blamed them. The vast majority of the officers and men of the marine division fought until the last moment and completed their mission, and the performance of the entire marine division at least did not insult the country.
The Beiyang Marine Division can be said to be the most modern army in the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and due to the particularity of the Navy itself, it also makes the Qing army that eats empty salaries and fish soldiers a common drawback, and rarely appears in the marine division. In the Sino-Japanese Naval Battle, the Beiyang Marine Division was not weaker than the Japanese army in terms of training and morale.
According to the statistics of the Japanese side after the war, the artillery hit rate of the Beiyang Marine Division was higher than the average standard of the navies of the great powers. If the Beiyang Marine Division can update its equipment in time, as for whether it can be level with the Japanese army, whether it will rewrite history is uncertain.
In addition to diplomats and international students, the Chinese of large-scale public dispatch should be the Beiyang Marine Division. The warships ordered by the Manchu Qing Dynasty required Chinese officers and men to sail back to China on their own, so the officers and men of the marine division would often come to Britain, Germany, and other countries in an organized manner to participate in the training of receiving ships. This gave the officers and men of the marine division the opportunity to have real contact with European society and have more interaction with European civilians.
For the Chinese of that era, a hundred miles away from home was a long way out, not to mention britain thousands of miles away. Some Chinese soldiers were sick or even incurable due to the water and soil, and eventually stayed in this land forever. Due to the loss of a large number of archives after the fall of the Beiyang Marine Division, we can only infer from the remains left in Britain that at least five Beiyang sailors were buried in Britain.
In St. John's Cemetery in Newcastle, England, there are five graves of Beiyang sailors. On June 30, 1887, it was probably the qing consulate that the personnel paid for the purchase of these five tombs to bury the Chinese sailors who died in a foreign land. Their names were Yuan Peifu, Gu Shizhong, Lian Jinyuan, Chen Chengkui and Chen Shoufu.
In 1881 and 1887, the Beiyang Marine Division came to Newcastle twice, the first receiving the two ships "Chao Yong" and "Yang Wei", and the second receiving the "Zhiyuan" and "Jingyuan" ships. There were nearly a thousand sailors and sailors in front of and behind, and those five sailors were one of these officers and men who received the ship.
Unlike the other tombstones in the cemetery, these five are all Chinese style and face the Chinese direction, which is the last attachment of the sailors to their hometown. In 1911, on the last round-the-world visit of Qing warships, they came to Britain to rebuild these five cemeteries.
In 2016, Chinese living in the UK discovered the monument, and some of the tombstones have been badly damaged. As a result, the local Chinese raised funds to rebuild the cemetery to show respect for these sailors who sacrificed their lives for the country. During the repair process, someone found that in front of the sailors' tomb, a cluster of yellow daffodils bloomed. The moral is for those who will never be able to return home. From this, a cross-border love affair from a hundred years ago was introduced.
Chi Joong-woo, a marine officer who received the "Super Yong" ship in 1881, met a local girl Annie in England and then fell in love. It is a very pure love, and they do not care about the worldly eyes, nor do they pay attention to the surprise and shame of others. Although they all know that this love is destined not to last long, there is no result.
The disobedience of the water and soil caused Yuan Peifu and Gu Shizhong to become seriously ill, and eventually the treatment was ineffective and they died. Soil and water incompatibility is a common disease in ancient times, especially the poor people who are malnourished are prone to this disease. Ancient magistrates often changed every three years, and the ends of the earth could go, but they were rarely heard of.
It was a great sadness to die in a foreign land, but at that time, it was impossible to transport the body back to the motherland thousands of miles away, and it could only be buried locally. Before the Chao Yong ship returned home, Chi Zhongyou entrusted Annie to take care of the cemetery of the two sailors, often planting some flowers so that their cemetery would not be too lonely.
Annie made cakes and cookies for her Chinese lovers to bring back to his homeland and give them to his mother. The Chao Yong ship was besieged by enemy ships in the Battle of Dadonggou and sank in the Yellow Sea. Fortunately, Chi Zhongyou lived until the Republic of China, and his diary is rare, studying the precious historical materials of the history of the Beiyang Marine Division.
Even after getting married, Annie still did not forget her promise to her Chinese lovers, and often planted beautiful flowers in front of the cemetery. The British, who are also entrusted with the care of the cemetery, are also irresponsible.
From the base of the tombstone, a line of writing is engraved, proving that the Beiyang Admiral once deposited a sum of money into a local bank, entrusted an Englishman named Thomas Khalid, and used the interest of the money to maintain the cemetery.
But the cemeteries apparently have not been maintained for a long time, and by the time they were discovered, three of the tombstones had been destroyed. I don't know if this Khalid deliberately forgot, and there are other hidden feelings. The chances of finding him are also very slim.
At present, the cemetery of these Beiyang sailors has been renovated, and I hope that they can rest in peace. And new China has a powerful navy, which is the best consolation for them!
[Reference: Diary of a Journey to the West, etc.]