In 1868 Mesny landed a job of arms instructor with the Sichuan Army, and went off to Guizhou province to fight against ethnic Miao rebels. He spent much of the next two years around the town of Chong’an in southeastern Guizhou, teaching the Chinese soldiers how to use modern firearms and field guns, fighting in several battles, and watching the …
Mesny in China’s Millions
On 19 February 1877, British missionaries Charles Judd (Zhu Mingyang, 祝名扬) and James Broumton (Ba Zicheng, 巴子成) arrived at Guiyang, capital of Guizhou province, to establish the city’s first Protestant outpost. They recorded their impressions of the city – including their welcome from Mesny – in China’s Millions, journal of the China Inland Mission. On their way to Guiyang, Judd …
Miao embroideries
Southwestern China’s Guizhou province is home to the Miao (Hmong), an ethnic minority who originated a thousand miles away in the Yellow River valley and migrated here millennia ago after being chased out of their homelands by the Yellow Emperor, ancestor of the Chinese people. Miao from different regions of Guizhou have developed their own distinct dress patterns. Both men …
China’s First Rollercoaster
During the late 1880s, a new craze swept foreign colonies in southeast Asia. Switchback railways – an embryonic form of rollercoaster – had appeared in the Philippines, Japan, Singapore, Java and Hong Kong, and were raking in huge profits (well, except for Hong Kong’s, which somehow managed to go bankrupt within a year). In 1890 a French consortium, led by …
A True View of Sichuan (Road)
Back in March 2019 I made quick trips to the Chinese woodblock printing centres of Zhuxian (Henan), Wuqiang (Hebei) and Foshan (Guangdong), partly to get some idea of the current state of this folk art. Of course I took the opportunity to stock up on prints too… Asking at a shop outside the Wuqiang Woodblock Printing Museum if they had …
Mesny’s Bronze Drum
In 1874, Mesny donated some ethnic artefacts to the Royal Asiatic Society North China Branch at Shanghai, who were talking about opening up a museum. Most of the items were spoils from six years spent fighting Miao and Muslim rebels in Guizhou province, and included a bronze drum: “Guiyang 3 March 1874 To the President of the R.A.S. I now …
Summoning the Dragon
Summoning the Dragon (召龙节) is a male-only celebration held every twelve years at Miao villages in the Leigong Shan region of southeastern Guizhou. The ceremony is usually closed to outsiders but in March 2019 a friend managed to wrangle special permission for me to attend the event at Xiao Kaitun in Yongle county (永乐镇小开屯村) – though have to say that …
Was Mesny a Liar?
Reading the Miscellany, with all its action, great claims and grandstanding, you have to wonder – how much of it is true? After all, there’s no doubt that the Miscellany was written as a piece of propaganda, designed to restore Mesny’s reputation at a time that his life was unravelling. Could anyone have led such an adventurous life, and yet …
Warlords and Rebellions: Dali, 1877
On his 1877 journey across southwestern China with Gill, Mesny spent about ten days at the historic town of Dali. It’s in a beautiful location in western Yunnan, on a richly farmed plain between the dark green Cang Shan range to the west and “Ear-Shaped” Er Hai Lake to the east, but they arrived in pouring rain to find the …
The Battle for Changshu, 1863
During one of his smuggling operations along the Yangzi river in November 1862, Mesny was captured by Taiping rebels off Fushan, a small village notorious for its pirates and gun-runners. First threatening him with execution, then planning to ransom him for $100,000, the rebels eventually decided to keep Mesny alive as a bargaining chip. Mesny was escorted 16km south along …