On December 28, 1904, the Beijing Dialect Daily published "Congratulations to the Chiefs of the Embassy Guards of Various Countries for the New Year", hoping that the embassies of various countries will discipline the soldiers during the New Year of the Western Calendar and not harass the Chinese people. Two weeks later, a reader wrote a letter praising the power of public opinion in the Beijing Dialect Daily, and sure enough, during the New Year, no foreign soldiers entered the Chinese world to cause trouble.
From the destruction of the city on August 14, 1900, to August 15, 1901, the Eight-Power Alliance was withdrawn except for those who remained in the embassy. For a whole year, the citizens of Beijing lived a life that was nothing more than a colony. In addition to humiliation, panic, and famine, they also slowly changed the psychology of "contempt and hatred" for foreigners for hundreds of years.
"'Belonging to Japan' appeared as an unveiling in a dilapidated hut at the Hada Gate, with another poster reading: 'Noble good sir, we are good people, please don't shoot us.'" What's more, on the door of a temple that once served as the mouth of the Boxer altar, there is a surprising inscription 'Man of God'. ”
Foreigners in the city, who were recently attacked by gunfire, are now putting up advertisements in the middle of Chinese telling locals where there are schools that teach English, French, Russian or Japanese. A huge billboard is nailed to the wall at the entrance to the Forbidden City, informing the address of the reading room, writing room and café room opened by the YMCA. Notices in uppercase letters can be seen in Xijiaomin Lane. Advertisements in French and German are everywhere, and the Southern City is filled with notices written in the languages of major European countries and Japanese. (China in Turmoil, Chapter 28)
Jiaomin Lane - West ArchWay
After three or four years, Peng Yizhong thought of the people's wisdom and would be barbaric and xenophobic. In order to educate the people, so that Gengzi would not reappear in Beijing, and in order to let Chinese have the right to speak, he and his brother-in-law Hang Xinzhai and his friend Liang Ji and others founded the "Beijing Dialect Daily".
One day Peng Yizhong took a car home, at the mouth of Dongjiaomin Lane, far away saw two German soldiers rushing back to the camp to transport goods, thinking that a rickshaw in front of him was too slow, jumping down and hitting, hitting the driver, and also beating the old man sitting on it. Peng Yizhong was furious and immediately asked the foreign car to follow the German soldier car, but unfortunately, the two German soldiers along the way did not turn back and entered the barracks. Peng Yizhong had to face the German barracks guards, remembering that it was two o'clock in the afternoon.
Entrance to the German Embassy
The next day, Peng Yizhong wrote an article about the incident, denouncing the unreasonableness of the German soldiers and warning the German barracks that they should punish the beaters, which was published in the Beijing Dialect Daily. On the third day, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs invited him to go.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the German minister had written a letter asking the Beijing Daily to identify the person who had beaten him, otherwise it would be considered a false accusation. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked the Beijing Dialect Daily to settle the matter on its own.
Peng Yizhong is no longer the Peng Yizhong who went to sue the American soldiers. He did not go to the German barracks again, but replied in the newspaper that he did not see the faces of the two soldiers, but the time and place of the accident were so clear, and the rules of the barracks were strict, could not the murderer be found? It is said that the German barracks actually pursued and punished the soldiers who beat people.
For a time, Peng Yizhong was scolded as a "traitor" and the grievances of "foreign newspapers" seemed to have disappeared.
Beijing Dialect Daily