“Rediscovery” of Liang A-Fa: From a Perspective of the 1911 Revolution and Reinterpreting the Taiping Rebellion

Abstract

This paper analyzes how the Christian community (exclusively the Protestants in this case) in Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau coped with social transformations after the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and the advent of the 1911 Revolution. There is an accumulation of English-, Chinese-, and Japanese- language research about the relationship between the 1911 Revolution and a history of Christianity in China. However, while previous researches focus on the direct impact of Christianity on the Revolution, the current paper analyses how missionaries and Chinese Christians attempted to adapt to social transformations during the Republic era. Given particular attention is the “rediscovery” of Liang A-Fa's (a Chinese Christian in the early 19th century) grave after the 1911 Revolution. These historical findings reveal that the historical reality of Christianity's influence on the Taiping Rebellion was constructed in Guangdong local society after the 1911 Revolution. Also, such construction provides additional insight for interpreting Taiping history.