50 Fun Facts About Boxer Rebellion

Georg von Trapp, a naval officer decorated in the Boxer Rebellion, later inspired which Broadway show?

The Sound of Music tells the story of the family he went on to raise. In 1900 he was a young officer on an Austro-Hungarian cruiser and joined the assault on the coastal forts guarding the road to Beijing.

Which future US president, then a young mining engineer, was trapped in a besieged Chinese port city in 1900?

Herbert Hoover and his wife Lou were caught in the foreign settlement for weeks. He helped build barricades while she nursed the wounded and carried a pistol.

What supernatural protection did Boxer fighters believe their rituals of spirit possession gave them in battle?

Immunity to bullets was the Boxers' great promise. Leaders staged proof for new recruits by firing guns loaded with blanks at one another.

Kaiser Wilhelm II urged German troops sailing for China in 1900 to fight like which ancient warriors?

The Huns under Attila were the model Wilhelm named, telling his men to take no prisoners. British propaganda later turned the word into a wartime insult for Germans.

Which American author called the Boxer a patriot and attacked clergy who seized reprisals from Chinese villages?

Mark Twain wished the Boxers success, and in a scathing 1901 essay he went after a respected American churchman who had led soldiers through villages collecting fines.

Why did Westerners in China nickname the anti-foreign rebels of 1899–1900 the 'Boxers'?

Their martial arts drills, known in English at the time as Chinese boxing, earned the label. It was probably coined by Americans living in North China.

Which ruler of China, dominant at court since the 1860s, backed the Boxers and defied the foreign powers in 1900?

Empress Dowager Cixi had crushed a reform drive two years earlier. When foreign armies took Beijing she fled the capital, then came back and held power until her death in 1908.

The siege of the foreign legations in Beijing in 1900 lasted how long before an allied army broke through?

55 days passed, from 20 June to 14 August, while nearly 900 foreigners and roughly 3,000 Chinese converts held out behind barricades.

The Boxer Protocol fined China 450 million taels, a traditional unit of weight, of which metal?

Silver was China's working currency, and the bill, payable over 39 years, came to more than the government's entire annual tax revenue.

Which country, though its legation in Beijing was besieged in 1900, stayed outside the Eight-Nation Alliance?

Spain sent no army, yet the Boxer Protocol of 1901 was signed in its Beijing legation, where its minister served as doyen of the diplomatic corps.

Which Beijing university grew from a school funded by America's refunded share of the Boxer indemnity?

Tsinghua began in 1911 as a preparatory school for students headed to American colleges, paid for with money Washington handed back.

American troops were rushed to China in 1900 from which territory the United States had only just annexed?

The Philippines held thousands of US soldiers fighting a local independence war, so the first regiments could sail for China in June.

Which actor played the US Marine major in the 1963 Hollywood epic about the siege of Beijing's legations?

Charlton Heston starred opposite Ava Gardner and David Niven. Director Nicholas Ray suffered a heart attack during the shoot, and two other directors finished the film uncredited.

The Boxers' best-known slogan vowed to destroy the foreigners and to support which ruling house?

The Qing dynasty was never the Boxers' target, which is why historians call the word rebellion a misnomer. The court ended up fighting alongside them.

Which natural disaster in North China, blamed by villagers on foreigners and their churches, swelled Boxer ranks?

A severe drought followed the Yellow River floods of 1898, leaving young farmhands idle, hungry and ready to blame outsiders.

Which US president sent about 5,000 troops to China in 1900 without asking Congress to declare war?

William McKinley acted on his own authority against a recognised government, a step the historian Walter LaFeber called the origin of modern presidential war powers.

In which diplomatic compound, the largest in Beijing's foreign quarter, did most civilians shelter in the 1900 siege?

The British legation was the biggest and most defensible compound, and a crew of clergymen nicknamed the fighting parsons took charge of fortifying it.

In which Chinese province, the birthplace of Confucius, did the Boxer movement first take root in the late 1890s?

Shandong had watched Germany seize a naval base on its coast in 1897, and resentment of foreign churches and railways there fed the first Boxer bands.

Russia used the Boxer crisis as a pretext to flood which Chinese region with troops to guard its new railway?

Manchuria ended up fully occupied by the tsar's armies, and the tensions that followed led to war with a Pacific rival in 1904.

Whom did the Boxers brand the 'primary devils' to be driven out of China or killed?

Christian missionaries topped the list, with Chinese converts labelled the secondary devils. Villagers resented clergy who shielded their flocks in local lawsuits.

How did the first allied relief column set out for Beijing in June 1900 before Boxers forced it to turn back?

By train: about 2,000 sailors and marines filled five commandeered trains, but Boxers tore up the track ahead and behind, and the column had to fight its way back.

To which ancient inland capital, home of the Terracotta Army, did the imperial court flee from Beijing in 1900?

Xi'an lay beyond mountain passes that the foreign armies had no orders to cross, so the court could bargain over peace from a safe distance.

Why did the besieged legations' makeshift cannon of 1900 earn the nickname 'the International Gun'?

Parts from several nations went into it: a British barrel sat on an Italian carriage and fired Russian shells, served by an American crew.

Which diplomat's killing on a Beijing street in June 1900 persuaded the foreign legations to dig in?

The German minister, Baron Clemens von Ketteler, set out in a sedan chair to protest at the foreign office and was shot dead by a Manchu army captain.

What name was given to the teenage girls' units, dressed entirely in one colour, that supported the male Boxers?

Red Lanterns were said to fly, walk on water and set enemy houses ablaze, powers the male Boxers never claimed for themselves.

Villagers in North China accused foreign-built churches of deliberately upsetting which traditional Chinese practice?

Feng shui, the art of siting buildings in harmony with the land, was thought to be flouted by churches raised where temples had stood.

Which distant colonial war tied down Britain's army in 1900, limiting the troops it could send to China?

The Boer War in South Africa was absorbing much of the British Army, so London relied heavily on its China Squadron of warships and on its allies.

France's first troops to reach China in 1900 were marines already stationed in which nearby French colony?

Indochina was France's closest base, and the force it supplied included many Vietnamese and Cambodian conscripts with little experience.

Which Russian novelist praised the Boxers and blamed the tsar and the German Kaiser for atrocities in China?

Leo Tolstoy, by then a celebrated pacifist, held Nicholas II and Wilhelm II chiefly responsible for the killing and pillage carried out by their soldiers.

Which port city, the gateway to Beijing, did allied troops storm in July 1900 at the cost of their heaviest losses?

Tianjin fell on 14 July, opening the road to the capital about 120 km away. Italy later came away with a concession of its own in the city.

Soldiers from which British-ruled land were the first relief troops to enter Beijing's besieged legations in 1900?

India supplied much of Britain's 10,000-strong force, drawn from Sikh, Rajput, Gurkha and Punjabi regiments.

Besieged foreigners in Beijing's legations in 1900 lived largely on musty rice and which unfamiliar meat?

Horsemeat kept the foreigners going, but the Chinese converts sheltering beside them fared far worse and were starving by the end.

Why was the indemnity imposed on China in 1901 set at roughly 450 million taels?

One tael per Chinese subject was the rough arithmetic, since the population stood near 450 million. With interest the bill came to almost a billion taels.

Which 1911 uprising, a decade after the Boxer crisis, finally swept away China's last imperial dynasty?

The Xinhai Revolution fed on a mood that hardened after 1900, when the foreign occupation of Beijing drained the court's authority and support for revolution grew.

Which general, who crushed the Boxers in his own province in 1900, later became president of the Republic of China?

Yuan Shikai turned his modern army divisions on the Boxers. In 1915 he went further and declared himself emperor, a reign that lasted only 83 days.

Which centuries-old institution did China's chastened imperial court abolish in 1905 during its post-Boxer reforms?

The civil service exams had selected China's officials for about 1,300 years. The same reform drive promised consultative assemblies and new army and police forces.

How did the governors of China's southern and eastern provinces respond to the court's war decree of June 1900?

They refused to obey it, calling the decree illegitimate and opening their own talks with foreign consuls, which kept most of China's armies out of the war.

Chinese critics in the 1890s said the foreign powers were carving up China like which fruit?

A melon sliced into pieces was the image. After Germany took a naval base in 1897, rival powers rushed to claim spheres of influence of their own.

Which Chinese port, now famous for the beer first brewed there under German rule, did Germany seize in 1897?

Qingdao was occupied after two German priests were killed inland, and the land grab set off a scramble for concessions that fed anti-foreign anger. Its brewery opened in 1903.

The imperial court insisted its hurried departure from Beijing in August 1900 was no retreat but what?

A tour of inspection was the official line, though the party left with so little preparation that the journey west became an ordeal lasting weeks.

What did Britain's diplomats in Beijing hold almost daily at their front gate after the city fell in 1900?

Auctions of plunder ran every day except Sunday, with diplomats and journalists among the bidders, and many of the treasures ended up in Europe.

Alarmed by Chinese Muslim troops, Kaiser Wilhelm II asked which Islamic ruler to talk them out of fighting?

The Ottoman sultan, Abdul Hamid II, agreed and dispatched an envoy, but the man only reached China in 1901, after the fighting was over.

Which Nobel Prize-winning Chinese novelist set Sandalwood Death among villagers caught up in the Boxer Uprising?

Mo Yan published the novel in 2001. Eleven years later he became the first Chinese citizen to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Which Beijing institution, home to a priceless imperial library, burned during the 1900 siege of the legations?

The Hanlin Academy stood right beside the diplomatic quarter, and each side blamed the other for the blaze that destroyed its irreplaceable books.

Besides the Legation Quarter, which other Beijing site withstood a Boxer siege through the summer of 1900?

A Catholic cathedral, the Beitang, sheltered more than 3,000 Chinese converts guarded by just 43 French and Italian soldiers. It was relieved two days after the legations.

Which German field marshal was named supreme allied commander in China but arrived after Beijing had fallen?

Alfred von Waldersee reached Beijing in October 1900, two months after the relief, and made the absent ruler's own palace quarters his headquarters.

Which US Marine, later author of War Is a Racket, was wounded fighting the Boxers as a teenage lieutenant?

Smedley Butler was cited for saving a wounded man under heavy fire and was made a captain two weeks before his 19th birthday.

How was the British minister dressed when he greeted the general who relieved Beijing's legations in August 1900?

In tennis flannels, and spotless ones, Sir Claude MacDonald welcomed the relief force, flanked by a crowd of cheering ladies in party dresses.

Which 1898 modernisation drive, ended by a palace coup, came two years before the court embraced the Boxers?

The Hundred Days' Reform ended with the emperor under house arrest and six leading reformers executed, leaving conservatives in charge at court.

The allied storming of which river-mouth stronghold on 17 June 1900 pushed the imperial court into open war?

The Taku Forts guarded the river route inland, and their capture by foreign warships was the act that tipped a wavering court onto the Boxers' side.