Hong Xiuquan (1814-1864), a native of Huaxian County (present-day Huadu District), Guangdong, was the leader of the Peasant Movement in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Founded the God Worship Society, launched the Jintian Rebellion, established the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and proclaimed himself the Heavenly King. In 1853, the "Tianchao Tianmu System" was promulgated, and the method of dividing the land equally among the population was formulated. Strive to achieve the ideal of "everywhere uneven, no one is not full". In March 1864, after the siege of Tianjing, the city was cut off from grain. Hong Xiuquan took the lead in eating "sweet dew" (grass balls) to fill his hunger. On June 1, 1864, Hong Xiuquan died of illness in Nanjing. The evaluation of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Movement and its leader Hong Xiuquan is still mixed in the historical circles and is widely disputed.
In this regard, our view is that Hong Xiuquan must have abandoned his original ideals, and "everywhere is uneven, no one is not full" was eventually turned into a funny situation of "everyone is crowned an official, and everyone wants to become a king". In the early days of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, there were only kings of the East, West, South, and North, Yang Xiuqing was the King of the East, Xiao Chaogui was the King of the West, Feng Yunshan was the King of the South, Wei Changhui was the King of the North, plus Hong Xiuquan, the King of Heaven who seemed to be able to reach the heavens, and Shi Dakai, the wing king who had wings and could fly up to the sky or the "Wing Heavenly Dynasty", but later, things were not like this, and in the later period, there were actually more than 2,700 kings, and even Ma Fu was crowned as kings! Everyone rebelled against the Qing Dynasty together, and finally it became a fishing for the "king" together, and finally the "king" was indiscriminate and had no value, and the general trend fell and the uprising failed.
In the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", it is said that Xiuquan advocated revolution with a puppet, changed the yuan and changed clothes, established the name of the capital, established the country for more than ten years, used troops to more than ten provinces, fought between the north and the south, and concealed the enemy country. At that time, the strength of the world was exhausted, and the yuan qi was already injured. China's peril is a sign of this. If you become a king, if you lose, you will be cursed, so you don't have to judge it by the right and wrong of the moment. Only in the beginning it will be said that God will be proclaimed, that there will be missionary missions, that the false "Father" shall be called "Red Sheep", that if the name is not correct, it will not go well, and the world will be suspicious; and the siege of the city and the land, the killing will be too much, and the strict racial view, the people's hearts will not belong. Why is this defeated?
The "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty" was edited by the Beiyang government in the early years of the Republic of China, and recorded the unfinished history of the Qing Dynasty, which is a chronicle of history, which does not exist in the later insurgents who have the same fate and pity for the previous insurgents, and should be a relatively objective and true evaluation. After the failure of the Taiping Rebellion, most of Hong Xiuquan's family members were killed by the Qing court, and Hong Xiuquan's body was also dug up by Zeng Guoquan, dragged to the edge of the Yangtze River to pour oil and burn it, and then filled the ashes into artillery, burned fuzes, and hit the river. However, there is one person who has become an exception, and he is Hong Xiuquan's nephew Hong Chunkui.
Hong Chunkui, Daoguang was born in Zhengjing Village (now Huashan Town) in Huaxian County, Guangdong Province in the 16th year (1836), and later transferred to Hongwuwei Village, Huangdong, Fenggang Town, Dongguan. He lived with Hong Xiuquan in Guangxi. After the outbreak of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Revolution in 1851, he followed Hong Xiuquan to rebel against the Manchu Qing government, marched north, and fought in the provinces of Gui, Xiang, Hubei, Anhui, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, and was enfeoffed as the Left Heavenly General and the King of Ying, known as "Three Thousand Years Old".
After the failure of the Taiping Rebellion, Hong Chunkui fled to Hongwuwei in Fenggang, Dongguan, but the hong clan patriarch did not let him enter the ancestral hall, which was obvious that the Hong family did not have him as a person. Hong Chunkui was very angry, and he split the land on the east side of Xiangshan Mountain, built ten houses, built a small ancestral hall of the Hong Clan Ancestral Hall, and purchased a batch of fields, and since then he has established a family. The meaning is also obvious: you don't want me, I'll go it alone. However, this "going it alone" did not last long, and the Qing court's pursuit of the rest of Hong Xiu's troops made Hong Chunkui flee to Hong Kong alone.
At this time, Hong Chunkui changed his name to Hong He and was much safer, but life in Hong Kong was not good, there was no way, Hong He crossed the ocean to Cuba to work as a bird droppings worker. It should be said that this is also a long way to fly, but a few years later, Hong He returned to Guangdong and became a chef on a foreign ship under the name of The Yihetang Boat Hall in Hong Kong. Cooking is a manual worker, as he grew older, Hong He felt more and more difficult to do, at that time, he had some savings, he settled in Hong Kong, changed his profession to become a doctor, specializing in the treatment of difficult diseases.
Fleeing and being able to survive in the process of escape requires skill, and fleeing and being able to survive in the process of escape can also learn the skill, Hong He learned the skill is to escape and be able to survive in the process of escape to master the language of the Seven Kingdoms, this skill allows Hong He to have a certain prestige, and in the prestige has the idea of "restoring the country".
On November 19, 1899, Hong He visited his old friend Xie Richang, and at the Xie family he met Xie Richang's son, Xie Yitai. Hong He did not expect that Xie Yitai was his "fan", and he knew the name of Hong He (Hong Chunkui) at a very young age and admired Hong He. Seeing Hong He, Xie Yitai's eyes lit up, praising Hong He for his extensive knowledge, his deep understanding of human feelings, and his good military training, believing that Hong He "had great ambitions and was doing things to restore the old things every day." Later, everyone consulted, and the Honghe Liaison Association Party once again revolted to fight for Guangzhou.
The matter was thus settled, but what if the uprising needed silver? Xie Miaotai thought about going and thought of a person,-Li Jitang. Guangdong Xinhui Qibao people. Born in 1873. The third son of Wealthy Hong Kong businessman Lee Shing-chi. At the age of 20, he was a Chinese manager at The Hong Kong branch of Japan Post Shipping Corporation. Sexy, good to tie up the secret party. In 1896, his father died of illness and received a million dollars in the inheritance. In 1900, he joined the Xingzhong Association and was appointed as the financial director of the association. Since then, he has often donated to revolutionary activities with family funds. On September 26, 1901, Xie Yitai visited Li Jitang and proposed to raise half a million funds. Li Jitang generously agreed.
The funds are in place, so let's do it. After that, Hong, Xie, and Li met and discussed many times, and after more than a year of meticulous preparation, they set the time of the uprising—the night of the Chinese New Year's Eve in 1903—and wanted to gather all kinds of people and horses at the Wanshou Palace while everyone was celebrating the New Year, and when the Civil and Military Officials of Guangzhou were performing ceremonies at the Wanshou Palace, they would gather all kinds of people and horses and launch an uprising at the same time. To this end, they also set the name of the country - "Daming Shun Heavenly Kingdom". During this period, Hong He also changed his name to Hong Quanfu, calling himself "Great General of the Southern Yue Xinghan Dynasty of the Great Ming Dynasty" and issuing the "Anti-Qing Restoration han Text" in the name of "Revolutionary Great General": "Every single drop of our Han people is heavily taxed, while the People of Pi Manchu are still full of food and warm clothes, do not cultivate and do not weave... General Ben mingled his grievances, loved comrades, raised the banner of righteousness, and supported the Han Chinese. ”
In this passage, it is also not difficult for people to see the rhetoric of allowing the followers to live a good life, but what Hong Quanfu did not expect was that the uprising activities they had conspired against were secretly accused, and the uprising headquarters raided the first three days of the Chinese New Year's Eve, and the party rosters, correspondence, equipment needed for the uprising and weapons in various strongholds were intercepted and confiscated. In this regard, the Annals of Sun Yat-sen recorded in the 1903 entry: "From January 25 to 28, Xie Miaotai and Li Jitang of the Xingzhong Association and the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom general Hong Quanfu conspired to revolt in Guangzhou, establishing the 'Daming Shun Heavenly Kingdom', and scheduling Rong Hong as the president of the provisional government." Yes, the leak fails. ”
Hong Quanfu escaped and lived in seclusion in Kowloon, Hong Kong, where he later took refuge in Singapore, returning to Hong Kong for medical treatment due to illness in 1910, and died in July of that year at the age of 74. He was buried in Tomb No. 6,781 of the British Cemetery in Hong Kong. Hong Quanfu's uprising died before it began, somewhat stillborn, but some people may ask: If no one informed him at that time, could Hong Quanfu succeed? This question is not easy to answer directly, but there is a detail that is very telling, that is, some people say that the seal letter engraved by Hong Quanfu has the words of the Heavenly Father of heaven on it, and the letter of appointment to his subordinates is also written on yellow silk, following the old custom of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.
Because it is hearsay, we are not good to evaluate this detail, but if we return to the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's ideal of "everywhere is uneven, no one is not full", it makes people feel a lot of emotions - Chen Sheng's Wuguang uprising was the first large-scale civilian uprising in Chinese history, and Chen Sheng said to his companions who farmed with him before the uprising: "Gou is rich and noble, and there is no forgetting." After the uprising, Chen Sheng developed and became king, and his companions went to look for him again, but they were killed by him. For more than 2,000 years, the reason why China's peasant uprisings have not succeeded again and again may be here - the leaders of those uprisings, when the uprising was almost in full swing, became kings and hegemons, all became "officials", forgot their original mission, even the brothers' righteous "rich and noble, no forgetting each other" have been forgotten, what can we talk about the ideal of "everywhere is uneven, no one is not full"? In this sense, once the so-called ideal is used to deceive people, it will become a very frightening thing, and this should not be limited to the uprising, but to do everything.