ho could walk in the air if they held a handkerchief in one hand
and a red lantern in the other, which could help the Boxers to burn the
"Most of the people did not believe this, and considered it superstitious
conduct, as others could not see them when they were walking in the air.
Till then, none of the Pekinese practised boxing. Shortly afterward a merchant
of the Chinese city, a native of Chi-Chou, came back from home and learnt
how to box. The young men, or rather boys, knowing him, asked him to teach
them to box for playing purposes.
"In Chuo-Chow, Chi-Chou, and some other districts round Peking
the Boxers prepared altars, which were composed of matsheds, in which they
placed tablets with names of spirits written on. In each shed, or altar,
there was a certain number of men, and each man got a sword or a spear.
Before boxing, the men first knelt down in the yard toward the southeast,
burnt a 'piao' (which was composed of three sheets of yellow paper) incense,
and knocked their heads.
"After doing so, they again all kneeled down before the tablets,
and each made, on purpose as I supposed, a strong breath with a great noise;
after one or two minutes all stood up and began to box. Before finishing
the boxing, every man had to expose his back for several cuts given by
another man with the blade of a sabre.
"The Empress-Dowager knew that it would be harmful, and wanted
to suppress them, but did not like to kill all of them, as there were among
them good people, who had no real intentions of attacking foreigners, and
who were simply induced to do so owing to their want of wisdom, so she
sent Kang-Yi and Chao-Shu-Chiao, the leaders, and advised the accomplices
to stop boxing.
"During these days the Dowager was living in the Imperial Garden,
and was amusing herself as well as possible.
"Since then the Boxers gave more trouble. One of my friends told
me that he saw a few Boxers who were admitted to the city, and destroyed
two people near the Imperial River bridge. A rumor said that some old women
were sent out by the missionaries to put dirty blood on the doors of some
of the houses, and that if it were not cleaned by the Boxers the inmates
of the house would all become fatally mad.
"Such superstitious power had never been heard of in foreign countries,
so I thought it was the Boxers' design to make people know that they could
dissolve such calamities.
"Outside the Hai-Tai Gate two women, who were considered to put
dirty blood on the door, were killed at once. A rumor said that the red
lantern girls could pull down high-storied houses with thin cotton strings,
and could set fire to the house simply by moving a fan, and also said they
had the power of hanging a rock of several pounds on a hair.
"Upon a certain day there were several Boxers passing along Chia-Min-Hsiang,
among whom a young one was captured by the German guards. It was then rumored
that this Boxer was so well exercised that he was not slightly wounded,
though the Germans tried to dig his eyes out.
"In the evening shortly after my arrival at my house, large numbers
of persons, carts, and horses were running eastward from the main street
inside the Hai-Tai Gate; all the men of the shops were hurried to shut
their doors; some one cried out that the Boxers had entered the Hai-Tai
"After a moment some concentrated smoke rose to a great height
and a noise of firing guns was heard. By judging the noise and direction
of the smoke, I knew it was the American missionary building near the entrance
to Hu-Tung, inside the Hai-Tai Gate, which was burnt down by the Boxers.
"The Boxers as they were walking northward ordered every shop
to burn incense. Then the English hospital, the house of Yu-Keng, present
Chinese Minister in France, all the shops thence southward to the entrance
of Teng-Shi-Kou, the American church in Teng-Shi-Kou, the French church
at Pa-Mien,-Tsao, the dwellings of the professors of the imperial college,
were burnt one after the other.
"According to what the people said, the way in which the Boxers
burnt the churches was that they only used a bundle of in