A failed exam candidate decided he was Jesus's younger brother and shook China
Hong Xiuquan failed China's imperial examinations four times, in a system passing fewer than one candidate in a hundred. After a breakdown he dreamed of a heavenly father and elder brother, later identified them as God and Jesus from missionary pamphlets, and went on to found the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, ruling much of southern China.
Born into a Hakka farming family near Guangzhou, most scholars accept 1 January 1814 as his birth date, although at least nine dates circulate. His family scraped together money for his schooling; he could recite the Four Books after five or six years and came first in the local entry-level exam. The provincial exams in Guangzhou were another matter. On his 1836 attempt he heard the missionary Edwin Stevens preach and was handed pamphlets by the Chinese convert Liang Fa, which he barely glanced at.
A third failure in 1837 brought days of delirium. Convalescing, Hong dreamed of a celestial family, including a golden-bearded father in a black dragon robe who gave him a sword and seal to fight demons and told him to change his name. Only after a fourth failure in 1843, prompted by a cousin, did he read the pamphlets properly and conclude that the father was God, whom he equated with the ancient Chinese deity Shangdi, and that he himself was Christ's younger brother. He began smashing Confucian and Buddhist statues.
His relative Feng Yunshan built a following in Guangxi called the God Worshipping Society, which by 1850 had more than 10,000 members. Hong studied briefly with the American Baptist Issachar Jacox Roberts, who declined to baptise him, and later produced his own adapted Bible. The movement preached sexual equality while segregating men and women, and asked followers to hand their property to a common treasury.
In January 1851 Hong's army defeated Qing forces at Jintian, and he proclaimed himself Heavenly King. His followers took Nanjing in March 1853, renaming it the Heavenly Capital, and Hong withdrew into his palace to govern by proclamation. Suspicion of his co-leader Yang Xiuqing led to Yang's murder in the 1856 Tianjing incident and a wider purge. Hong died after an illness in June 1864, and Nanjing fell a month later. Britannica notes claims that the upheaval killed more than 20 million people.
Source: Hong Xiuquan
