Exposure of severed heads of alleged perpetrators of the ‘Kucheng massacre’, Huashan, near Gutian, Fujian

Exposure of severed heads of alleged perpetrators of the ‘Kucheng massacre’, Huashan, near Gutian, Fujian

Notes

University of Bristol - Historical Photographs of China reference number: Os04-083. Photo from an album (UoB reference Os04) kept in the School of Oriental and African Studies Archives, London (SOAS reference MS 380 876/4). No caption in the album for this photo, but reversed out of the negative is the caption: ‘Vegetarian Heads at Wha Shan.’ The photograph shows five receptacles (presumably containing the heads of executed men) hanging high in a pine tree. Wha Shan = Hwa Shan (Huashan). Related to the killing of eleven missionaries and Chinese Christians on 1 August 1895, at the mission houses in Huashan (华山), near Kucheng (Gutian), Fujian Province, by ‘Vegetarian’ rebels, who were part of a religious movement called zhaijiao (‘fasting school’), so called because they took vows of vegetarianism. This image was reproduced in an article entitled ‘The Martyrs of Ku-Cheng’ by Henry Mostyn, published in ‘The Wide World Magazine’, August-September 1899, page 80, and captioned: ‘The heads in baskets hung on a tree as a warning to others’.

Caption in album or on mount

Vegetarian Heads at Wha Shan.

Location

Gutian

Estimated Date

September 1895

Material

Paper

Media

Black and white photograph

Repository

Archives & Special Collections, SOAS Library, University of London

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