Shanghai is a special place, and the people in this place seem to be different from people in other places. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 ｉｎｆｏ

After the Opium War, the five ports traded, and there was a vigorous anti-entry movement in Guangzhou, in fact, several other ports also had some similar movements, and the conflicts between Chinese and foreigners continued, such as Lin Zexu's anti-entry into the city in Fuzhou, encouraging Fuzhou people to learn from the Cantonese people, such as the violent confrontation in Ningbo, Hurd was even beaten and injured because of this.

Among the five treaty ports, Guangzhou did not allow foreigners to enter the city until the Second Opium War, but there is one place where the foreigners have been happy from the beginning, and there has never been any confrontation, and this place is Shanghai, perhaps it is this attitude that makes Shanghai surpass Guangzhou, which has a monopoly for 80 years, and dominate the big cities in China in just a few decades.

But why didn't the Shanghainese have a conflict with the foreigners, the conflicts in other places are mostly due to ignorance, Shanghai was much more closed than Guangzhou before the opening up, but why were they able to accept the arrival of the foreigners so calmly, and also rented land to the foreigners, and finally formed a concession.

From a cultural point of view, some people believe that Shanghai is located in the south of the Yangtze River, the humanities in the south of the Yangtze River are prosperous, and the people are relatively weak and tolerant, so it is easy to accept different cultures.

However, Zhu Jinglun felt that there might be another reason, and the last time he stayed in Shanghai for a short time, he found that there were so many foreign missionaries in Shanghai, some of which he expected.

Originally, I thought that most of the people who were willing to come to China in this era were the kind of mercenary businessmen who were crazy with a fanatical pioneering and adventurous spirit, dreaming of making a fortune, and being crazy about the bright prospect of free trade for a population of 400 million, but Zhu Jinglun did not expect that the businessmen were only a small part, a very small part, but the missionaries accounted for the majority, and in this era, it was the interests that lost to the faith.

He chatted with the French envoy in the French Concession and inquired about the interests of French merchants in Shanghai, but the French envoy was extremely annoyed, because at this time there were less than 100 expatriates in the French Concession in Shanghai, but there were only three real merchants, and most of the rest were missionaries.

Later, the French made a statistic that on March 30, 1873, there were 88 French expatriates in Shanghai, including only 3 merchants, only 21 out of a total of 213 French expatriates in 1875, and only 10 to 12 merchants out of a total of 150 French expatriates in 1882.

The French Catholic Church also made a statistic and found that the number of missionaries accounted for more than half of the total number of French expatriates: in 1874 there were 97 missionaries out of a total of 191 French expatriates; In 1877 there were 200 French expatriates in Shanghai, 104 of whom were missionaries.

Zhu Jinglun felt that religion might be the biggest cultural reason why Shanghainese people did not clash with foreigners, and Zhu Jinglun also heard an enthusiastic missionary say one thing.

As early as the Ming Dynasty, the missionary Pan Guoguang established the first Catholic church in Shanghai's history, and successively developed 40,000 believers. The result was a concern for the Qing court, and in 1720 Kangxi banned Westerners from proselytizing in China.

However, after the ban, some missionaries hid in Pudong, and then there were many missionaries who sneaked from Macao to Pudong to secretly carry out religious activities, and as a result, after the Opium War, after the missionaries came to Shanghai, they were surprised to find that there were many generations of old believers in Shanghai, and it may be that with the help of these people, the foreigners did not have cultural misunderstandings with the locals.

After the first opium war, in fact, the door of China was not really opened, the five ports of trade only Shanghai was good, and other ports were making trouble, so the Western church was still relatively deep on mission, after the second opium war, they began to be bold, it is a coincidence that what makes the church hope for China is the rise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, when the Western church heard that there is an armed force in the name of God, sweeping through Chinese mainland, directly from the southern border to the Yangtze River valley, radiating a population of more than 200 million, This gave the church too much room for imagination, so the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was a hot word in the West for a while, and many churches were full of hope to exclude missionaries from coming to Shanghai, hoping to be able to contact the Tianping Heavenly Kingdom.

Therefore, from the 1860s onwards, a wave of missionary enthusiasm was set off in Shanghai, and the missionary cause of Christianity in Shanghai continued to develop, and the Anglican Church, Presbyterian Church, Baptist Church, and Supervisory Council soon became the four major denominations of Christianity in Shanghai.

Compared with Christianity, Catholicism is more active, they took root in Shanghai as early as the Kangxi period, France fought the Second Opium War, and the treaty stipulated that the Catholic churches that were seized during the Kangxi period would be returned to the church, so many missionaries did not need to build churches, and they could open directly.

As early as July 1842, the first French Jesuit missionaries such as Nang Laude Francis arrived in the Shanghai area. Christian missionary Maddox said that while the London Church was still doubting whether Shanghai should be built as a permanent base, the Catholic Church had sent no less than 10 European missionaries to Shanghai in the past six months, and five more French Jesuit missionaries had arrived in October. In May and August of the following year, eight and four Jesuit missionaries were sent to Shanghai. Today, there are nearly 100 Catholic missionaries in Shanghai, and there were 132 Catholic missionaries in 1875.

Some propaganda says that these missionaries are accomplices of imperialist aggression against China, and some also say that they objectively promote China's cultural and educational undertakings, but if we look at them purely personally, no one can deny the enthusiasm of these missionaries who have traveled thousands of miles to devote themselves to China's religious circles, and many of them have even stayed in China to preach the gospel of the Lord, and they have a strong sense of mission to spread the gospel of the Lord, hoping to influence 400 million infidels.

For example, Tianjing.

When Xu Rongcun, the minister of the Ming Kingdom who had not yet been recognized, but was extremely active, told the missionaries in Shanghai about something, several well-known Christian missionaries immediately responded and rushed to Tianjing together, Joseph Shi, Xiaowen Huilian and Guo Feiwei of the Anglican Church, Fan John, Jiang Beili, and Fei Qihong of the Presbyterian Church, Yan Matai, Wan Yingyuan, and Le Lingsheng of the Southern Baptist Church, Jin Kaili of the Northern Baptist Church, Lin Lezhi and Pan Shenwen of the Supervisory Committee, and other well-known missionaries, a total of 12 missionaries, plus 4 nuns.

"This is Tianjing City!"

A priest drew a cross, it was really a majestic ancient city, he had seen this ancient city for the second time, but he still couldn't help but sigh, this kind of building can not be seen in the United States, this priest is called Lin Lezhi.

Lin Lezhi is a native of Georgia, USA, believed in Christianity when he was a teenager, participated in the Christian Southern Supervisory Council, and wanted to dedicate himself to religion, in June 1860, he was sent by the American Christian Supervisory Committee to come to Shanghai to preach, just arrived in China, in 1861 he began to act, because the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom at that time gave the missionaries too much imagination space, he was also unusually interested in the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and wanted to open a gap by the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom to promote the missionary cause.

He invited his friends and traveled to Nanjing after a long journey to meet with Hong Renji, but the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom was too busy dealing with the siege of the Qing army to become interested in Lin Lezhi's missionary request.

Historically, individual missionaries such as Lin Lezhi have proposed a liberal way of preaching.

This method requires missionaries to, first, carefully understand and study Chinese society and transform China according to China's cultural characteristics; Second, it is necessary to skillfully integrate the doctrine of Christianity with the dominant Confucian culture in China, and gradually replace Confucian culture with Christian culture; The third is to use the dissemination of advanced Western science and technology culture as a means, such as running education, building hospitals, and running newspapers, to improve the quality of Chinese, expand the market for Christian culture, and attract more Chinese to the church.

He believes that in China, "scholars are the heads of the four people", and officials and merchants are derived from "scholars", and conquering "scholars" is equivalent to conquering Chinese culture and society. Therefore, in the sixties and seventies of the 19th century, he made friends with a number of "scholars" and "officials", such as Feng Guifen, Yan Liangxun, Wang Fengzao, Chen Lanbin, Shen Yugui, Ying Baoshi, Li Hongzhang, Ding Richang, Zhang Zhidong, Zhang Yinhuan, Lu Haihuan, and so on.

In fact, this is comparable to the method of Matteo Ricci and John Thompson, who were the first to come to China, although it is not accepted by fundamentalists, but the effect is relatively better.

It is with this mentality that Lin Lezhi was the first to respond to Xu Rongcun's invitation, he wanted to come to Tianjing, baptize the newly ascended heavenly king Hong Xiuquan, and make a mass for him, so that he could go to heaven as a true Christian, instead of falling into hell because of superstition, he thought that his actions were noble, and of course he also admitted that baptizing Hong Xiuquan was likely to affect tens of millions of people in the Taiping Army-ruled areas in the Jiangnan region, so that they could accept the faith of Christ.

"Distinguished missionaries, welcome to you, but at the moment we are in great trouble. As you know, Tianjing is currently a city under siege, and the enemy may attack at any time, but the king of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom is sadly dead, and the king of heaven wants to become a true Christian, so he invites you to baptize him, but our enemies will attack us at any time, and I don't know which of you is willing to negotiate with the enemy on behalf of God, hoping that they will suspend military operations during the baptism of the king. ”

At the gate of the city, Xu Rongcun said to several missionaries with a sad face.

Everyone discussed: "It's better for me to go, I speak Chinese better, and I know Chinese officials better, so it's easier for me to convince them." ”

Lin Letian stood up and said that he had a point in saying this, because when he was in Shanghai, he had a good relationship with some Chinese officials, because of the American Civil War, the Southern Supervisory Council could not provide him with financial support, and his good friend Feng Guifen invited him to join the Shanghai Canton Dialect Museum run by the Qing court as a teacher, and temporarily make a living from it. (To be continued.) )