In late summer 1868, Mesny travelled down through northern Guizhou to rendezvous with the Sichuan Army at Niuchang town. There are over fifty places called Niuchang (“Bull Market”) in Guizhou; before China adopted Western days of the week, markets rotated from village to village on a twelve day circuit, each day named after Chinese zodiac animals. It took a lot …
The Road to Weng’an
In 1870, facing a collapse in morale, exacerbated by in-fighting amongst his own generals, the Sichuan Army commander Tang Jiong had no option but to abandon his eighteen-month-old campaign against the Miao at Chong’an. Mesny joined in the Sichuan Army’s dispirited withdrawal northwest from Chong’an to Weng’an along gu yidao, the old granite-flagged post road. Today a stretch of the road …
Tang Jiong and Mesny’s Farm at Shuitian
According to Mesny’s Chinese Miscellany, in the early 1870s Mesny bought a farm in the vicinity of Shuitian village (水田), 18km to the northeast of Guiyang. Around 1879 he sold the land at cost price to his former commander, Tang Jiong (唐炯), who was looking for a good burial spot for his mother-in-law. In 2015 my local contact, Mr Li Maoqing, located the …