Film:Warlords (投名状;
tóu míng zhuàng; 2008; 127 min.): A big budget, award winning film
which tells a story of conflict between 3 warlord blood brothers
(played by Jet Li,
Andy Lau and
Takeshi
Kaneshiro) during the Taiping
Rebellion in late 1800s. The dramatic historical events of the time
are left as background while the film focuses on the story of the 3
main characters and the tragedy of war. To better understand the
film, the historical background will be covered in class and in the
reading assignment.
Background
The
film Warlords is set toward the end of the
Taiping
Rebellion (太平天囯;
Tai Ping Tian Guo; "Kingdom of
Heavenly Peace") which was one of the bloodiest civil
wars in history.
The war pitted the
Qing Dynasty
against an army of Chinese rebels, led by
HongXiuquan(洪秀全;
Hóng Xiùquán), the self-proclaimed
younger brother of Jesus Christ. Hong believed that he was
chosen by God to revolt against the Qing Dynasty in order to
establish a heavenly kingdom on earth.
Warlords
Film Trailer
The Taiping
Rebellion, which lasted for 14 years,
resulted in the loss of over 20
million lives (possibly
even as high as 100 million by some estimates). While many of these lives were
lost in battle, many more resulted from the slaughter of
prisoners and civilians, famine and disease.
Jesus Christ's Chinese
Brother
Religion (or more
accurately, disputes over religion), has led to many wars and
atrocities committed throughout human history. So maybe it
shouldn't come as much of a surprise that the bloodiest civil
war in Chinese (and the world's) history had something to do
with religion. What is surprising though is the religion
that ended up causing so much bloodshed in China. No, it wasn't ancient
ancestor worshippers fighting over "my ancestor is better
than your ancestor." It wasn't
Chinese
Buddhists beating non-Buddhists in their quest to achieve
nirvana. It
wasn't Taoist kung fu masters from
Shaolin kicking the butts of
non-believers who failed to follow "the way" (道; Dao). It wasn't
even
Islam although
Chinese Muslims (mostly in Western China) have rebelled
against the
Han Chinese majority at times. Instead, it was
Christianity. Christianity is not a natively originating
religion in China and has never caught on to a huge extent
there. As in many other areas of the world, Christianity was
imported by European and later American
missionaries.
It all started with a young
man named
Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全;
Hóng Xiùquán) who was born
in Guangdong
in southern China. He
had received a pretty good education in his childhood and when
he was 22 years old, he took the Imperial
civil service examination. He failed
the exam and although he took it 4 more times, he was never able
to pass. Since the pass rate was only about 1%, many smart
people failed. However, Hong was very depressed and supposedly had a
nervous breakdown as a result. Hong had previously met and studied with an American
Southern Baptist missionary, Reverend
Issachar Roberts, from whom he learned about Christianity.
Hong
Xiuquan
Taiping
Old Testament
While recovering from his
breakdown in 1837, Hong claimed that he started having
visions in which he saw and spoke with God and which led
him to believe that he was Jesus Christ's younger brother.
In one of his visions, God
complained to him about men worshiping demons rather than him.
In another, God gave him a sword and instructed him to get rid
of the demons in China. From these visions, Hong believed that
his destiny was to
overthrow the corrupt Qing Dynasty (his "demons").
After studying the
religious tracts he had been given by Roberts, Hong started to
preach about his visions and his destiny to
purify China. He started getting converts, mostly from the
Hakka
minority of which he was a member. Much of his preaching
involved ideas of equality which
especially appealed to poor peasants and other poor workers who
lived very tough lives with no hope of improvement. Hong
initiated some social reforms,
including ending the practice of foot binding for women, strict separation of the
sexes, land socialization, elimination of private trade, and replacing
Confucianism and Chinese religions with Christianity.
Fortunately for Hong, while
the Qing government was not crazy about him and his preaching,
they had other pressing matters to deal with such as the
increasingly demanding foreign powers (see
last week's material). Gradually, Hong attracted followers and by
the late 1840s, he
was the leader of a large group which he named the God
Worshippers (拜上帝會).
The
Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864)
Hong led
his followers in a revolt against the Qing in southern China's
Guangxi Province
beginning in 1950 and his Heavenly
Kingdom forces had some success against the poorly trained and
undisciplined Qing army. By 1853, Hong's forces numbered around
700,000 led by
Yang Xiuqing.
Yang led the Taipings in a battle for the city of
Nanjing in which 30,000 Qing soldiers
were killed as well as thousands of civilians. The Taipings made
Nanjing their capital, calling it
Tianjing (Heavenly Capital).
Taiping fight
Qing Army at Jintian
The Taipings continued their revolt and
conquered a large part of southern and central China. The
Taiping army failed in an attempt to take
Beijing which would have put an end to
the Qing. By this time, Hong had become largely reclusive,
living in a huge palace in Nanjing with a large harem of women
(kind of like an emperor). Although he wasn't taking an active
role in the Taiping military campaign anymore, he became
suspicious of many of the Taiping military leaders. Finally,
issuing a decree from God (himself), he ordered Commander Yang,
his family, and all his troops to be executed. Killing off your
best general and his troops wouldn't seem like the best way to
win a war, but by this time, Hong seemed to have completely lost
touch with reality.
Taiping
Equality: Male & Female Soldiers
The Taipings made another major assault in
1860 and successfully took over the cities of
Hangzhou(杭州) and
Suzhou (苏州).
From Suzhou, they planned to take
Shanghai(上海),
but this posed a problem since Shanghai was the home of all of
the foreign powers' (England, France, United States) operations
in China and the Taipings did not want to fight them in addition
to the Imperial army. The tried to reach an agreement with the
foreign powers, hoping that countries who had sent missionaries
to China would be sympathetic to a new China ruled by Chinese
Christian converts. However, the Europeans and Americans were
more concerned about trade and maintained a policy of neutrality
so they could end up on the side of whoever won. They were also
wary of Hong Xiuquan's unorthodox form of Christianity by this
time.
Since their foreign fellow Christians
weren't being too Christian, the Taipings decided to attack
Shanghai despite the foreign resistance they knew they would
encounter. In the meantime, the Imperial Army had gotten itself
together a bit and sent better prepared troops south to fight
the Taipings. With assistance from Western troops, the Imperial
Army was able to prevent the Taipings from capturing Shanghai
which changed the course of the rebellion although the fighting
continued for 4 more years.
After defending Shanghai, the Imperial
Army began to retake areas under Taiping control. By 1864, the
Imperial Army had made substantial progress and had Hong's
capital of Nanjing surrounded and isolated. With food running
out and knowing that the Imperial Army would be invading Nanjing,
Hong poisoned himself and died (although an alternative theory
is that he died of accidental food poisoning). In July 1864, the
Qing Army took control of Nanjing after brutal hand-to-hand
combat with the Taiping soldiers. Although the Taiping rebellion
was ultimately unsuccessful, it was a devastating blow to the
Qing Dynasty and would be an omen of things to come in China's
not too distant future as we will see next
week.
Qing
Attack Taiping Capital at Nanjing
American Involvement
Among the many men who fought
against the Taiping rebels, there was at least one American.
Frederick Townsend Ward (1831-62) was essentially a mercenary who
came to China in 1860. He became the commander of an army which was
put together to defend Shanghai from the Taipings. Ward's army
consisted mostly of Chinese soldiers, but with some European officers
that trained the Chinese in western military methods as well as a few
hundred
Filipino soldiers. After a few early victories, the Qing
government gave his troop the name Ever
Victorious Army (常勝軍;
cháng shèng jūn) although the name wasn't quite accurate as Ward's
forces suffered some serious defeats as well. Ward was shot in the stomach during a
battle and ultimately died from the wound. After his death, British
Major-General
Charles Gordon (nicknamed "Chinese Gordon") took over The Ever Victorious Army and led it in some
important victories that helped defeat the Taiping rebellion.
Frederick Ward
Chinese Gordon
Ever
Victorious Army
The Warlords Film
Jet Li plays
Pang Qingyun, a Qing army general who is the sole survivor of a
battle against the Taipings in the opening scene of the film. An
army led by another general was supposed to join the battle, but
double-crossed Pang and failed to show up for the fight. Pang is
helped by a peasant woman (played by Xu Jinglei) who leads him
to an encounter with a local warlord, Zhao Erhu (played by Andy
Lau) and his protégé Jiang Wuyang (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro).
To survive, their bandit army steals and sometimes ambushes Qing
and Taiping troops. Pang saves Zhao Erhu’s life during a battle
and the three men become "blood brothers."
After the Qing Army retaliates by taking
back everything the bandits stole from them, Pang is able to
convince Zhao and Jiang that they would be better off by joining
with the Qing government to fight against the Taiping rebels.
They agree, then make a pact as blood brothers. The brothers
lead their army in successful battles against the rebels and
ultimately reclaim the city of Suzhou after a long
blockade. This leads to a disagreement between Pang and Zhao
which tests the limits of their blood brotherhood. To further
complicate the relationship, Pang is attracted to who is Zhao's
wife.
The plot of the film is based on an actual
assassination in 1870 of a Chinese general,
Ma_Xinyi (馬新貽) in a similar
fashion to the final scene in the film. The assassin,
Zhang Wenxiang (張文祥), said he
killed Ma because Ma was a blood brother
(不仁不義) who betrayed his
brothers in order to achieve greater personal
power. Ma had been a student of famed General
Zeng Guofan
(曾国藩)
who ended up presiding over the sentencing of
Zhang and ordered that he be executed by the torturous
death by a
thousand cuts (凌遲處死).
After Zhang's death, rumors spread of other possible reasons for the
assassination, including involvement of the Heaven and Earth
Association (天地會) a
powerful Chinese
triad (secret society) opposed to the Qing as well as rumors
of secret Taiping treasures.
The Warlords is not the first film
to tell this story. In 1973, the famous
Shaw
Brothers Hong Kong film
studio made a film called
Blood Brothers (刺马; Cì Mǎ - Assassinating Ma),
directed by
Chang Cheh.
, Jonathan
Spence (one of the best books on Chinese history)
,
Jonathan Spence 
,
Thomas H. Reilly 
,
Hsiu-ch°êng Li, translator
,
Carr, Caleb 
,
Gray, Jack