The History of China - #324 - Taiping 1: The Second Son of God

Episode Date: April 7, 2026

Even in the fallout of the Opium War, dreams endure—but what happens to a dream deferred? In Canton, one young man’s starry-eyed visions of success run headlong into the brutal wall of the Imperial Examination system. And when that dream finally shatters, it neither dries up, nor festers.... it explodes into prophetic visions so awesome and so terrible that they will shake the very foundations of Heaven itself. Time Period Covered: 1827 – 1844 Major Historical Figures: The Daoguang Emperor (Aisin-Gioro Minning) [r. 1820–1850] Hong Xiuquan (Hong Huoxiu), failed examination candidate, Second Son of God[1814–1864] Li Jingfang, friend, relative, first convert [fl. 1840s] Hong Rengan [1822–1864] Feng Yunshan [1815–1852] Liang Fa (Liang Afa), author of Good Words to Exhort the Age [1789–1855] Major Sources Cited: Hong Xiuquan. Taiping Heavenly Chronicle (Taiping Tianri). Kuhn, Philip A. "Ch. 6, The Taiping Rebellion” in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 10. Liang Fa. Good Words to Exhort the Age (Quanshi Liangyan) Platt, Stephen R. Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom. Spence, Jonathan D. God's Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom of Hong Xiuquan. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media podcast. When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to WestJetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years.

Hello and welcome to the history of China. Episode 324, The Second Son of God. Turning back is how the Tao moves forward. Lao Tzu, the Tao Da Da Jing. Ever tried, ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again.

Fail better. Samuel Beckett. Westward Ho. God has given me a sword. Hong Xiu-Cen, awakening from his fever dream, 1837. The Pearl River Delta in 1836 was not so much a city with rivers running through it, as an endless urban sprawl built atop where all those rivers yawn wide and became the sea. And not just any city, but one far more a dame.

day-to-day free-for-all, then a polity. Every inch of it contested, cargo junks three or four deep on both banks, ferries cutting across the current from Hunam Island to jackass point at two copper cash a passenger, floating theater boats drifting between engagements, complete with full-service opium bar available to anyone who could pay. Barber's sampans weaving between the hulls, fortune tellers, patrol junks, boats selling food and clothes, household notions, and if you knew the right boat, considerably less legal things beside.

The cacophony was continuous and non-negotiable. On the South Bank, crammed into a strip of ground 270 paces wide between the river and the city wall, sat the foreign factories. Thirteen long stone buildings, each named for the nation whose merchants rented most of its space. The English Hong, the American Hong, the Dutch, Danish, the Swedish Hongs. 307 foreign men lived within, no women permitted, and with no access to the city behind them. Confined only to their esplanade and their three narrow streets, the widest of which just 12 feet across, like a splinter that couldn't quite be worked loose.

On the esplanade, vendors set up their rows of stands each morning. fruits and cakes, slabs of meat, fowl, horse, dog, cat, all with the hooves or paws still attached. Strings of dried duck tongues shaped like awls and hard as iron. Rat catchers pass with their days catch dangling in rows from bamboo poles. Healers press fire-heated bamboo cups to men's bare backs to draw the blood to the surface as a form of medicine. Two blind girls, maybe nine years old, holding hands and feeling their wiseries. toward the sound of coins, laughing and chatting despite their rags and bare feet. A traveling librarian working the crowd, banging his rattle, 300 novels and boxes on his shoulder

pole, just the ones still remaining from his over a thousand currently out on loan. In the shops along the narrow streets, among the ivory carvings and the lacquerware and the silks, you could also buy paintings. Popular subjects included insects, fruits, famous landscapes, and battles. Paintings of famous battles, in which red-coated Englishmen and cocked hats sit in rigid rows beneath the relentless fire of Chinese guns. The British were always shown as losing.

Such paintings enjoyed brisk sales. From one of these rooftop terraces, on one of the upper floors of the Hongs, a westerner gazes across the wall into the city proper. The close-packed streets, the tiled rooftops, spacious landscape gardens of the wealthy. He can look, but he can't touch. The city behind the wall is China proper.

The strip of ground he stands on is something else. An asterisk inserted into China's sentence by two centuries of grudging commercial necessity. Tolerated, surveilled, and as of four years and one very unpleasant war ago, considerably more permanent than anyone on either side of that wall was entirely comfortable admitting. Out there, 30 miles to the north, in a village in Hua County that foreigners had never heard of and would never visit, a young Hakka man was preparing for the journey south. He was making his second attempt at the Xiu Tai, the entry-level examination, the first and lowest gate in a system that had many such gates, each one harder than the last.

Pass this one, and you are a Shang Yuan, a degree holder, a somebody, the first rung on the only ladder that mattered. He'd been studying since he was seven. His family had spent money that they couldn't afford. His teachers had worked without pay. Everything was supposed to come down to this. His name, well, one of them anyway, certainly the one that history would come to know him by,

is Hong Xiu-Cuan. He's 23 years old, and he has absolutely no idea what's in store for him. To understand what failing the Imperial Civil Service examinations meant in Qing China, we need to understand what passing them meant. The examination system, or Keju, was roughly 12 centuries old by the time Hong Xiu-Chue first sat down in his cubicle in Canton as of 1827. It was the spine of Chinese civilization, the mechanism by which a vast empire recruited its administrators.

The closest thing that Confucian society had, to a meritocracy. Birth helped. Money helped more. But an especially brilliant boy from even a poor Haka village out in the sticks could, in theory, sit the same examination as the son of a mandarin, write the same eight-legged essay on the same classical texts, and if his brush moved well enough and his memory held up,

walk out the other side as a degree holder, an official, somebody with a future. The system had produced genuine social mobility across the centuries. It had also produced, by 1827, a competition so ferocious, so ritually demanding, and so astronomically difficult, that the passing quota for this entry-level Shiot's high degree in Canton stood at roughly 1% of candidates. The vast majority of the men who devoted their lives to it would fail and fail and fail again. Many died without ever passing, some even during the examination itself. The rewards for those happy few who managed to pass were lavish to the point of ostentatiousness.

Once the results were posted, the successful candidates assembled in their red caps, blue outer garments, and black satin boots, and processed together in sedan chairs to the Confucian Temple of Canton to pay homage to the great sage. thence to the offices of the educational director to receive their investitures, two gold flowers in their red hats, a red wreath, and a cup of celebratory wine, and then home, escorted by drums and music and streamers to worship their ancestors and pay homage to their parents. The next day, presents prepared, formal visits to the tutors who made the success possible. Any young man could nurture dreams such as these. Realizing those dreams was something else. The process began, for Hong as with most candidates, at the county level. Even this entry-level exam was no casual affair.

It meant three days locked in a dank, musty individual cube in the examination compound in the eastern part of the old city, alone with his brush and his ink and everything that he had memorized since the age of seven. The four books, the five classics, the histories, the poetry, and the particular torture that was the eight-legged essay, a rigidly structured composition form demanding perfect formal symmetry in exactly eight sections, with parallel sentences of matching length,

demonstrating not just knowledge, but a kind of intellectual gymnastics so refined that it had become almost entirely divorced from any sort of practical usefulness. It was less an examination than an initiation, and like most initiation writes, Its primary function was maintaining its own exclusivity. Hong Xiu-Cen was by every account, genuinely brilliant.

None of his clan in Hwa County had passed the state examinations in the century and a half since his family had settled there. Hong's father was a respected man, a leader and mediator of disputes in the village of Guan Lu Bu, but the house he raised his family in was simplicity embodied. One story high, floors of beaten sand and lime, walls of clay, and a roof of interlocking clay tiles. From this simple domicile, Homes family had nonetheless decided to bet everything on this one son. By 16, he was supporting himself as a schoolteacher, paid mostly in rice, lamp oil, salt, and tea. By 1827, at age 14, he traveled to Canton for the first time to sit the examination. He placed high in the rankings on the first day, then over the following three-day span, his name slipped.

By the final day, he'd fallen out of the circle of winners entirely. He went home disappointed, of course, but just one of many. The examinations ran on a fixed cycle, just once every three years, and between pre-qualifying steps and financial considerations, nine more years in total would pass before Hong got his second chance. He returned in 1836. There had been an omen that spring. Snow had fallen on Canton, the first in 46 years, and two full inches at that, briefly bedecking the rooftops and the foliage in crystalline white.

It could easily be seen as a sign, and Hong certainly did. He was 22 now, and this would be his second try at breaking into the big time. On the road outside the examination halls, moving through the crowd, of fellow candidates, two men caught his attention. One was a fellow Cantonese who was acting as interpreter. The other was a foreign-looking man in a coat with wide sleeves, his hair tied up in a knot, dressed Hong would later remember it, in the style of the old Ming Dynasty, rather than the current Qing. Through his interpreter, this second man addressed Hong directly. You will attain the highest rank, he said, but do not be grieved, for grief,

will make you sick. The next day, Hong saw the same two men again, standing on Long Chang Ji, the street where the dragon hides, south of where they'd been before. This time no words were spoken. The foreign man simply reached out and pressed a book into Hong's hands. It was a collection of nine slim volumes, cheaply but neatly printed in Chinese, religious tracts. The title read, Quan Shih Liang Yan, good words to exhort the age.

The author, a man named Liang Fa, though he, like many in South China, typically went by the friendly nickname Afa. Hong was obviously rather preoccupied. He accepted these proffered papers, but gave them no more than, as he would later put it, quote, a superficial glance, end quote. But in that glance, something caught his eye. There in the table of contents was a character, his own name, Hong, the Chinese character. for flood. And the heading stated that the waters of a Hong had destroyed every living thing upon the earth, ordered by a deity called Yeh-Hua Hua. A brief note on names here, because it does matter. The man that we know as Hong Xiu-Quan was not always called that. He was born Hong-Hu-Hu-Hu-meaning

fire, shou meaning elegant or refined. He would later reassemble that name to become Xiu-chuan, the name that history remembers him by. But in 1836, he was still Hong Ho Xiu. And the middle symbol of that deity's name, Yehua Hua, was Ho, Fire, sitting right there in his own name, staring back at him. Flood and Fire. His name was right there in the book on the very first page, handed to him by a stranger on the street where the dragon hides.

He failed this examination, but he did keep the book. 1837, Hong Xiu-Cuan travels to Canton for the third time. He fails again. This time he took ill, so ill that he couldn't even make the walk home. He was forced to hire a sedan chair and two bearers, and was carried the 30 miles back to Guan Lu Bu, arriving on the first day of the third month, which happened to be, according to the Chinese ritual calendar, the birthday of the King of the Second Hell, the one who punishes the purveyors of false hopes. Whether or not Hong noticed this coincidence, the sources don't

really say. He arrived home, went to bed, and told his family that he was pretty sure that he was dying. He wasn't just being a drama queen either. He really believed that he was dying. He was seeing visions. A great crowd had assembled in his mind. He could see them even as he looked at his family. These incorporeal figures gathered about his bed, summoning him down to face King Yan Lowe in the courts of hell. He called in his brothers and told them, quote, My days are counted. How badly I have returned the favor of your love.

I shall never attain a name that may reflect its lustre upon you. Then to his wife, who was pregnant at the time with their first child, quote, You must not remarry. If it is a son, let my elder brothers look after you. If it is a daughter, do likewise. end quote. He then lay back, closed his eyes, and lost all strength. To all outward appearances, he had indeed died. What happened next occurred over 40 days. And we know of what Hong experienced, because he later recounted it in his Taiping Qianzhe, the Taiping Heavenly Chronicle.

That incorporeal procession gathered in assembly. Men played music, children in yellow robes, a cock, a tiger, a dragon, and a sedan chair in which Hong now took his seat, borne aloft into the east. The procession halted at great gates, bathed in light. Attendance in dragon robes and horn-brim hats slit him open, just as the fiends of hell would slit open the bodies of sinners. But this was not punishment. They removed what was inside of him,

the soiled mass of his earthly self. and replaced it with new organs, red in color, and sealed the wound as though it had never been there at all. A woman then greeted him, calling him son, and washed him in a river. And then, Hong saw his father. He was tall, erect, hands upon his knees, clad in a black dragon robe, high-brimmed hat, with his mouth almost hidden by a golden beard that reached down to him. his belly, and his eyes were full of tears. Father spoke, quote, Which of those people on earth did I not give life to, and succor? Which of them did not eat

my food and wear my clothing? It is the demon devils who have led them astray. The people dissipate in offerings to the demon devils, things that I have bestowed on them, as if it was the demon devils that had given life to them and nourished them." End quote. Hong offered at once to go and enlighten the people, but his father pressed, quote, That will be hard indeed. End quote. He showed Hong the myriad ways the demon devils were harming those below.

The father turned his head away, unable to even bear the sight of it. Yet Hong pressed on. If you find it so intolerable, said the father. Then you may act. Two gifts then were presented, a radiant golden seal and a holy demon-slaying sword called Yun Zhong Shea, Snow in the clouds. Thus with sword and seal, Hong went to war. Up through 33 levels of heaven he fought, his elder brother beside him holding the seal,

its blazing light dazzling the demons into terrified flight. When Hong's arms grew weary, the women of heaven revived him with gifts of yet, yellow fruit. Together, they drove the demons down through every level of heaven, down into the earth itself, where Hong's army beheaded them in great numbers. The demon king Yanlo transformed himself endlessly trying to escape, now a great serpent, now a flea on the back of a dog, now a flock of birds, now a lion. But he was driven down and down, until at last he was in Hong's grasp. The father ordered him released. a captive would pollute heaven itself.

Protesting but obedient, Hong spared the devil king. With this great cosmic battle at last over, Hong was able to rest in his palace in heaven's eastern reaches, with his wife, the Zheng Yue Gong, or queen of the First Moon Palace, who bore him a son. His father guided him patiently through the moral texts. His elder brother grew furious at his slowness to understand. while his elder brother's wife acted as mediator. And then, before Hong was returned to Earth,

father told him something else, his name. The name that he had called himself Hong Ho Xiu was no longer fitting. It violated divine naming taboos. The Ho, fire, must be cast out. In its place should be Chen, meaning completeness. He could keep his original given name and be called Hong Xiu Chen, or he could style himself otherwise. It was his choice. His father gave him two poems, whose meanings, he said, was shrouded in mystery.

One day, though, they would become clear. And then, Hong was returned to his earthly form. Did archaeologists discover Noah's Ark? Is the rapture coming as soon as the Euphrates River dries up? Does the Bible condemn abortion? Don't you wish you had a trustworthy academic resource to help make sense of all of this? Well, I'm Dan Beecher, and he's a award-winning Bible scholar and TikTok sensation, Dr. Dan McClellan. And we want to invite you to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where our mission is to increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and also to combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

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Wherever you subscribe to awesome shows. His family, or at least his family down there, have been watching over his unconscious form for the last last 40 days, as he slept and woke and then slept again. Sometimes he laid deathly quiet. Sometimes he shouted and slashed at the air. Slash the demons, slash the demons, he would say, pointing at invisible things wheeling past him. He leapt from his bed and ran around the room, shouting battle cries. He addressed himself as the Emperor of China and was pleased when others did the same. He wrote out his new title in red ink, Taiping Ti-Ti.

Kianwang, Da Da Wangcheng. Heavenly king, lord of the kingly way, Cuan, and posted it on his door. He sang aloud what he called the sounds of high heaven. He did the unthinkable in Confucian society. He contradicted his own father, even denying that he was his father's son, he argued with his brothers, spoke to every visitor about his duty to judge the world and to separate the demons from the virtuous. He made a real nuisance of himself. His brothers took turns keeping the door to his room locked. Chinese law was clear on this point. If a madman killed anyone, his whole family had to pay the price. The neighbors came in to gawk, looking in through the door at this suddenly famous

local madman. Slowly, over a period of weeks, he calmed down. His wife gave birth to their daughter. In time he went back to teaching. He went back to his Confucian texts, and he prepared once again for the examination. The dream was beyond interpretation, and therefore by common consent it must mean nothing. It was just a dream. Those nine volumes of cheap religious texts sat on their little shelf and gathered dust in his room. Six more years would pass. Hong Xiu-Cuan, as he had now come to stop,

himself in life as well as dreams, taught his classes and prepared to try, try again. In 1843, he sat the examination in Canton for a fourth time and failed it again. Something had shifted, though. Not an inward emotional collapse this time, no fever dreams, just a cold silence. For nearly two decades, he had treated the imperial examination as a divine ledger. If his name was not on the list, it must mean that he was deficient. He was the soiled mass that he had seen in his dreams. But as he stood in the humid air of Canton in 1843, watching the red-capped winners process toward the Confucian temple, the logic of his world suddenly inverted. He looked at the examiners, their scrolls, their eight-legged essay requirements, and no longer

saw a meritocracy at all. He saw a husk, an empty shell. The system is not the scale that weighs me, he thought. It's the weight that crushes the world. The internal sense of guilt that had nearly killed him in 1837, what he called the, quote, grief that makes you sick, end quote, evaporated altogether. In its place grew a terrifying, cold-blooded clarity. He wasn't the failure. The empire was the failure. The demon devils weren't just in his dreams. They were the ones wearing the silk robes and grading his papers. They were the ones calling him a failure. He returned to his schoolroom in Guan Lu Bu village. There the Confucian Talbot still sat, demanding their usual veneration. To a 19th century Chinese

scholar, these tablets were the literal anchors of the moral universe. Yet now could look at them and see only cheap wood and false promises. His duty, his moral prerogative, came into a crystalline focus. There was only one thing to be done with such a corrupted and hollow corpse of a system of a world. Shattering the Confucian tablets then was no mere fit of rage, It was exercising a 1200-year-old demon who called himself a sage. Obviously, he was fired that very same day. Such an outburst was unacceptable, obscene. In the space of a single afternoon, he lost his job and is standing in the community,

going from pillar to pariah. Yet, none of that really mattered to the man who had been Hong Ho Xiu, but was now Xiu-Cuan. for the very first time in his life. He felt entirely in line with his new name. He felt complete. That summer, a friend and distant relative named Li Jing Fang, whose family Hong had been teaching part-time, dropped by the house,

and noticed the odd-looking book that had been sitting on the shelf this whole time and asked to borrow it. The book had been sitting there for seven years since 1836, neither read properly nor thrown away. Sure, take it, who cares? Yet the words within would capture Li Jing Feng's rapt attention. In short order, he returned and urged Hong that he'd had to read it too. The book was, again, Yang Apha's good works to exhort the age, or perhaps one might be inclined to call it the good news. And now, finally, Hong Xiu-Tuan sat down and read it through.

What he found within was a message that fit the lock of his mind, like a key, the way that nothing had before. Not the four books, or the five classics, not 20 years of exam preparation. Liang's tracks spoke directly to the world inside Hong's head, and to the world outside of it as well. The world that had, for the past four years, been lit ablaze. Late 1842 and the devastating end of the Opium War. The pride of the Qing Navy lay at the bottom of the sea, the city itself under British guns from both sea and land, forced to submit in humiliation to barbarian outsiders.

Red-coated soldiers trotting through the rice paddies of Hong's own Hua County. Property destroyed, food stolen, women violated, sacred tombs desecrated. The empire itself forced to kneel before its conqueror in abject humiliation. And then the abominable treaty that had come as a bolt from the underworld itself. The world as Hong had always understood it had been overthrown violently and absolutely. And worst of all, it seemed that no one could even explain why. But in Liang's first tract, a voice Hong had never heard before seemed to have foreseen all of it. It was a foreign sage called Isaiah, and this is what Isaiah said.

quote, Your community is desolate. Your cities are burned with fire. Your land, strangers devour it in your presence, and it is desolate as overthrown by strangers. End quote. That was Canton. That was the empire.

That was here, now. There now, in that single verse from a man dead 2,000 years, was the signature of Hong's own soul. The desolation of the flood the Hong of his family name. The burning was the ho, the fire of his given name that he'd been commanded to cast aside. To the wider world, the opium war was a geopolitical catastrophe. To Hong Shocheng, it was his own name written in the smoke hanging over the Pearl River.

The book wasn't just describing China. It was describing him. And then, a few pages further in, another voice. This one from a speech delivered on a mountain top. Translated by Liang from a text called Ma Doe, or the Gospel of Matthew. Quote, Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you,

and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely for my sake. Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for great is your reward in heaven. end quote. Hong Xiu-Cen read these words and understood them to be directed personally at him. He was the blessed. His reward would be heavenly. He was God's peacemaker. Or at least would be.

For the first time in his life, he felt seen. Further reading of Liang's text pressed even further. Quote, this practice of Confucian teaching is often full of vanity and absurdity. Many people have been studying and taking the exam since their childhood and reached the age of 70 or 80 without even passing the very lowest levels. Haven't these men prayed to the examination gods every year? Why didn't they win their protection? From this, we can see that these Confucian scholars are bewildered and obsessed by their ambitions,

so they cling to their delusions. End quote. Hong Xiu-Chen failed his fourth and final examination at the age of 30. he would never so much as attempt to qualify for another. He had instead achieved clarity. There was simply no point in the son of the Heavenly Father beseeching the recognition of an earthly tyrant whose power stemmed from demonic origins. Such was no power to be sought, but destroyed utterly.

And now those inexplicable dream visions, those 40 days of fever dreams, he'd carried for six years, vividly enduring but still inexplicable, began to resolve piece by piece into a picture, almost as if of stained glass. The man with a golden beard, who wept for humanity, was God the Father, the Lord Yehua Huo Huai, who had created earth and heaven. The elder brother who had fought at his side with the blazing seal, Yee-Su, Jesus, the son of God, killed on the cross, and returned to heaven. The evil one, Yan Lo, the enemy, who had transformed in the serpent, flee and lion, the demon-devil serpent of the garden, who had ruined the happiness of the first man and woman.

The sword, snowing the clouds, that guarded the eastern gate of paradise, the raging flood of his name, Hong, a sign of his own destiny. He'd not been merely renamed, he'd been inducted into his new heavenly family. His new name, Chen, reverberated again and again through the Psalms that Liang had translated. Their word to the ends of the world, Chen's world. The judgments of the Lord are true. Chen is righteous. Who can fully understand his errors?

Understand like Chen. And the last piece, the one that made everything else fall into place, if the Lord Yehuahua was God the father, and the elder brother who had fought beside, side Hong was Jesus, the Son of God. Then, Hong Shoe Quan was literally what his father in the vision had named him, the second son of God. He baptized himself that afternoon with water from a basin, piecing the ritual together from Liang's scattered references, since nowhere did the tracks give a clear account of how exactly baptism was supposed to function. His friend Li Jing Fang baptized himself, too,

Then Hong went and converted his cousin, Hong Rengan, and his neighbor, Feng Yun Shan, and the four of them went down to a nearby stream and immersed themselves completely. Then, together, Hong and Li commissioned a local craftsman to forge them two swords, double-edged, three feet long. In the records they are described as weighing nine gin, or about nine pounds of steel apiece. For some context here, a standard of soldiers' blade weighed barely. These were not built for a duelist's finesse. They were massive, overbalanced cleavers,

ritual executioner blades for the apocalypse itself, and with three prophetic characters carved into each, Zhang Yao Jian, sword for exterminating demons. They had work to do. The first targets were those closest to hand. In each of the village schoolrooms, where Hong and his converts taught,

Confucian tablets stood in the place of honor. The centerpiece of each shrine, a replica of four characters written by the Kangxi Emperor in 1686, quote, model teacher of a myriad generations, end quote. Bright vermillion background, gold lettering, two sun and two chetal are about 7.3 feet, by imperial decree. Around it, in graded sizes, the names of Confucius' disciples, and every scholar that the emperors had honored across two, thousand years. Hong had spent his entire life bowing to these tablets. Now he took them down,

one by one, schoolroom by schoolroom. The parents of his pupils heard what was happening and withdrew their children. The local village noteworthies, who had respected his learning even as they shook their heads at his religious conversion, sent him a verse chiding him for throwing away his gifts. Hong sent a reply message, matching their rhyme scheme and reversing their argument, quote, Not because we were convinced by slanderous words did we turn down your request, but because we only follow the true God's commandments, end quote. It was an elegant exchange between educated men,

but the anger beneath it was not elegant at all. Before the spring of 1844 was over, Hong and his cousins had been fired. What should they do now? They decided, as Hong later put it, to travel throughout the world and teach all people the doctrine of repentance. They had little money. Hong's wife had just born their second child, another girl. Their plan was therefore to sell ink and writing brushes as a means to pay their own ways. Five of them intended to go together, but before they left, Hong Rangan was forced to abandon the group.

His parents and elder brother absolutely forbade him. from going with these weirdos. Though he was already past 20, they had beaten him severely and torn his clothes for defacing the Confucian tablets, and he knew that their words had to be taken seriously. So it would just be the four of them, Hong Xiu Quan, Feng Yun Shan, and two of Fung's relatives, who took their leave of Guan Lu Bu in early April 1844. Hong Ren Gan could only watch them go. This journey of the fellowship was peaceful enough.

People along the way reached out to help them. A Chinese teacher in the hills welcomed them, believed their message, and gave them a little travel money in exchange for a written summary of their doctrine. They walked all day on occasional cups of tea and roadside snacks, averaging about 14 miles per day, and reaching Guangxi province after 17 days. Their destination was the village of Sagu, in Guayping County, where the Haka family of Huang, distant relatives of Hongs, converted

and baptized the previous year, now awaited their arrival. Hong preached. He wrote, he distributed tracts of his own composition among the scattered Haka communities of the Guangxi Hill country. For several months, this whole situation worked, but then he was forced to return home. He left Feng Yun Shan in Guangxi back for Guangdong for entirely practical reasons. He had no money and a wife and two daughters who needed him, obligations that were closer to home. But he would return. He swore it. Over the next three years, what exactly Feng Yun Shan got up to in the verdant Guangxi hills among those same scattered Hakka communities?

Well, that's for next time. For now, it's enough to leave Hong Shihu, Tso Tuan where he is, 30, back living at home, writing religious tracts of his own, preaching in villages, and now more certain than ever of his divine mission, but of almost nothing else about his life. No job, no income, no institutional standing of any kind, just nine slim volumes of a dead Cantonese printer's religious screeds that had somehow, against all probability, become the axis around which his entire universe now turned. Oh, and a sword inscribed with the power to kill demons.

So he's got that going for him, which is nice. The second son of God has returned home again. And now it's the world's turn to have no idea what it's in for. Thanks for listening. Every Tuesday, we talk Apple on Mac Break Weekly. Hi, this is Leo Lipport, inviting you to join me this week with Jason Snell, Andy, Anaka, Christina Warren, and a very special guest, David Pogas. here to talk about his new book, Apple, the first 50 years. We celebrate Apple's 50th birthday

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