scorching hot, the numbers grow: five thousand, seven thousand, seven thousand five hundred. Combat, when it is joined, is chaos, in a sudden swirling rainstorm that ends all visibility, makes swamps of paths and lakes of paddies, soaks muskets so they will not fire, leaves commanders helplessly looking for their troops. The British lines hold firm, although some of their men are literally hooked out of the rain-soaked ranks by Chinese wielding weapons like enormous shepherd's crooks attached to bamboo poles, and badly wounded. The sepoys dry their sodden muskets with the linings of their turbans, or are issued new muskets with percussion caps, less sensitive to moisture, that let the fire resume. The scattered troops are rounded up and reunited: the toll for the British, one dead and fifteen wounded. Deaths to the Chinese, many but unknown. 8
By the end of May 1841, each side feels poised for victory: the British, with their discipline and heavy guns, could blitz or occupy the city; the village militiamen, grown now to almost twenty thousand, from 103 different villages, could overwhelm the British with their numbers and their righteous wrath. Above the heads of both, a deal is struck by diplomatic means: the city will be saved, but pay six million taels in indemnity; the militias will disperse; the British will leave the hills. The prefect of Canton, She Baoshun, makes sure the terms are met. Grudgingly, the Chinese irregulars disperse. But, as they see the British also file away, the city spared, the ill-armed villagers claim a total victory. 9
After this settlement, in the examination halls of Canton, the staid environment is filled for a moment in 1841 with flying ink stones, hurled by the enraged scholars at officials they have come to fear and hate. This too is an aspect of the war, one that begins to divide the Chinese against themselves. For as a result of the fighting the belief is growing that the country is full of traitors, Chinese traitors to their race. New kinds of angers flare as the blame for humiliation and defeat is parceled out among the vanquished. To the examination candidates in Canton, as they shout their anger and hurl their only available projectiles, the carved ink stones, often of great beauty and antiquity, that constitute one of the scholars' "four treasures"—the others being the brushes, brush holders, and the ink itself—the enemy is their chief examiner, the prefect She Baoshun. For in persuading the militiamen at Sanyuanli to disperse, even though he doubtless also saved the city from destruction, he seems to the educated candidates to have gone too far in appeasing the voracious foreigners. When he retreats, mortified, before the barrage, other emboldened students try to smash the sedan chair in which he flees. 10
At other times it is the officials themselves who spur the local Canton hunts for traitors, seeking out those who trade with foreigners, translate or teach Chinese, row or sail their boats, or-—most heinous crime of all— guide the British officers and their vessels through the ill-charted and shifting mud flats of the creeks along the Pearl River. Some of those accused of such collaboration are punished by means of sharpened wooden sticks thrust through their ears, the ends sticking straight up above their heads and topped with tiny flags, as they are hustled through the streets. 11 The militiamen of Sanyuanli and elsewhere kill more than a thousand of their own countrymen as they seek out anyone who collaborated with the British; and the Banner troops of the Qing state, the "regular army" that was of little service in the fray, now roam across the countryside accusing of treason those whose property they covet. 12
As the British fleet moves northward, massing by the Yangzi River delta, probing Hangzhou Bay, attacking Shanghai, and finally laying siege to Nanjing, a new element enters the story. For now it is the Manchu officers of the ruling dynasty, fearing
By the end of May 1841, each side feels poised for victory: the British, with their discipline and heavy guns, could blitz or occupy the city; the village militiamen, grown now to almost twenty thousand, from 103 different villages, could overwhelm the British with their numbers and their righteous wrath. Above the heads of both, a deal is struck by diplomatic means: the city will be saved, but pay six million taels in indemnity; the militias will disperse; the British will leave the hills. The prefect of Canton, She Baoshun, makes sure the terms are met. Grudgingly, the Chinese irregulars disperse. But, as they see the British also file away, the city spared, the ill-armed villagers claim a total victory. 9
After this settlement, in the examination halls of Canton, the staid environment is filled for a moment in 1841 with flying ink stones, hurled by the enraged scholars at officials they have come to fear and hate. This too is an aspect of the war, one that begins to divide the Chinese against themselves. For as a result of the fighting the belief is growing that the country is full of traitors, Chinese traitors to their race. New kinds of angers flare as the blame for humiliation and defeat is parceled out among the vanquished. To the examination candidates in Canton, as they shout their anger and hurl their only available projectiles, the carved ink stones, often of great beauty and antiquity, that constitute one of the scholars' "four treasures"—the others being the brushes, brush holders, and the ink itself—the enemy is their chief examiner, the prefect She Baoshun. For in persuading the militiamen at Sanyuanli to disperse, even though he doubtless also saved the city from destruction, he seems to the educated candidates to have gone too far in appeasing the voracious foreigners. When he retreats, mortified, before the barrage, other emboldened students try to smash the sedan chair in which he flees. 10
At other times it is the officials themselves who spur the local Canton hunts for traitors, seeking out those who trade with foreigners, translate or teach Chinese, row or sail their boats, or-—most heinous crime of all— guide the British officers and their vessels through the ill-charted and shifting mud flats of the creeks along the Pearl River. Some of those accused of such collaboration are punished by means of sharpened wooden sticks thrust through their ears, the ends sticking straight up above their heads and topped with tiny flags, as they are hustled through the streets. 11 The militiamen of Sanyuanli and elsewhere kill more than a thousand of their own countrymen as they seek out anyone who collaborated with the British; and the Banner troops of the Qing state, the "regular army" that was of little service in the fray, now roam across the countryside accusing of treason those whose property they covet. 12
As the British fleet moves northward, massing by the Yangzi River delta, probing Hangzhou Bay, attacking Shanghai, and finally laying siege to Nanjing, a new element enters the story. For now it is the Manchu officers of the ruling dynasty, fearing
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