God’s Chinese Son: The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Of Hong Xiuquan

Hardback

Condition: Good

Whether read for its powerful account of the largest uprising in human history or for its foreshadowing of the terrible convulsions suffered by twentieth-century China or for the narrative power of a great historian at his best God's Chinese Son must be read. At the center of this history of China's Taiping rebellion (1845-64) stands Hong Xiuquan a failed student of Confucian doctrine who ascends to heaven in a dream and meets his heavenly family: God Mary and his older brother Jesus. He returns to earth charged to eradicate the "demon-devils" the alien Manchu rulers of China. His success carries him and his followers to the heavenly capital at Nanjing where they rule a large part of south China for more than a decade. Their decline and fall wrought by internal division and the unrelenting military pressures of the Manchus and the Western powers carry them to a hell on earth. Twenty million Chinese are left dead.