1911 - Bloodbath in Xi'an

October 23, 1911

Xi’an, Shaanxi

The newly built mission school at Xi’an which was destroyed during the 1911 massacre.

The Scandinavian Alliance Mission quickly grew from its humble beginnings in 1890 to become one of the largest Protestant organizations working in north China. In 1909 the work in the west suburb of the ancient capital of Xi’an was taken over by E. R. and Ida Beckman. They constructed a schoolhouse for the purpose of offering a Christian-based education to the children of missionaries. Unfortunately, the school was not destined to operate for very long. The 1911 Revolution, which brought an end to the Qing Dynasty, brought tragic results for this mission.

For decades a growing resentment against the Manchu rulers had grown among the Han Chinese. Strangely, China had been controlled by two minority dynasties—the Yuan Dynasty of the Mongols from 1271 to 1368 and the Qing from 1368 to 1911—a total period of 640 years. The Emperor and Empress of China had both died in 1908 and left their two-year-old son on the throne. The Chinese seized the opportunity to bring about a revolution which ended with China becoming a republic. Manchu people throughout China were slaughtered by angry mobs, and those considered friends of the Manchus were also in grave danger.

E. R. Beckman and family in 1904.

Xi’an had long been a centre of Manchu power. An anti-Manchu and anti-foreign sect called the Ancient Society of Elder Brothers had hundreds of secret members in the city. In the Manchu quarter in the northeast corner of Xi’an lived the imperial troops and their families, some 20,000 Manchus in all. A stash of new weapons and ammunition had recently been delivered for their use, but these were carelessly stored in the southern part of the city. The Elder Brothers seized the weapons before the Manchus had time to respond.

On the night of October 23, 1911, a mob rushed into the missionary school, setting fire to the gate as they attempted to break down the wall. The missionaries and their children were huddled together on the second floor of the school building. E. R. Beckman and a young teacher named Wilheim Vatne fetched a rope and a wheelbarrow to help the children escape over a back wall. Vatne went over the wall first, and Beckman had just helped his eldest daughter Selma over when shots rang out. The mob had gained entry to the compound. Beckman, his wife Ida, and six remaining children tried to hide in a small room of an out-building. E. R. Beckman later wrote:

“I sat down and took our smallest girl in my arms. We began praying, and asked God to prevent the mob discovering where we were, if it was His will to deliver us. At the same time we committed ourselves into His hand, to live or to die. My wife took our youngest girl from me for a moment, pressed her to her bosom, and kissing her tenderly said, ‘I must say goodbye to you, my darling.”[1]

Moments later their hiding place was discovered. One account said:

“They all dashed out, trying to run through the crowd milling around the yard. Beckman, carrying little Thyra, became separated from his wife and the others. Oblivious to blows from the fanatics who saw him, he rushed through the gate and ran into a grove of trees on the south bank of a large pond. Hearing voices behind him, he jumped in and waded to the middle of the pond where he and his child huddled in the thick vegetation which had grown out of the shallow water.”[2]

Beckman and his daughter went through their Gethsemane experience as mobs of bloodthirsty pursuers crowded around the pond waiting for the prey to emerge from the dark. Beckman recalled, “I sat there for an hour or more until my arms were numb from exhaustion, and the little girl’s legs dropped into the water, still she did not cry or make a noise.”[3]

Ida Beckman (left); Ruth Beckman standing behind her sister Thyra (right).

Just before daybreak they carefully made their way out of the pond and back to the mission station, where they were told that the beloved mother of the family, Ida Beckman, and five children had been killed by the mob. The murdered children were Ruth Beckman (aged 8), George Ahlstrand (10), Hilda Nelson (15), Hulda Bergström (12), and Oscar Bergström (13). Apart from the Beckman girl, the youngsters were the children of missionaries stationed in other parts of the province. E. R. Beckman painfully recalled how he felt:

“Behind me lay our own place a prey to the dying flames, and there lay my wife and little Ruth, as well as the other dear children, slain! How the hearts of the parents of these children would bleed, as well as mine, when they should learn to know what had happened—the thought of this called forth deep pain. With the addition of the uncertainty concerning Mr. Vatne and Selma, I was nearly overcome.”[4]

A Chinese seminary student later told how the martyrs had died. He told Beckman that his wife’s body was lying outside the gate to the mission compound. Beckman later wrote that he found his dead wife

“clasping our girl Ruth with one arm, while on the other side Hulda Bergström had sought refuge. The other children had pressed through the gateway but had not come far before they were slain. Hilda Nelson had run a short distance towards the south, seeking refuge among some graves. Oscar Bergström had reached halfway to the place where I leaped into the water. George Ahlstrand had fallen in the road a short distance from the gate, and at his side lay his pet, the big dog, keeping watch. One of the boys had been shot. Judging by their appearance they must have had a quick death.”[5]

George Ahlstrand with his parents (left); and Hilda Nilson (right).

Ida Beckman (neé Klint) was born in Sweden in 1865. She was converted at a Salvation Army meeting, and afterwards became an active Christian worker on the streets of Stockholm. After emigrating to the United States in 1888 she settled in the city of Brooklyn. Soon after she heard the famous preacher Frederik Franson speak on the need for missions. Franson is considered the Scandinavian equivalent to Hudson Taylor for the tremendous influence he wrought for the mission enterprise. Ida attended training classes and soon felt called to go to China. On one occasion, she “found herself amidst a crowd in the street and couldn’t get away. Some Chinese women then suddenly opened a door and pulled her inside to get her away from the bloodthirsty mob.”[6]

Ida and E. R. Beckman were joined in marriage on Christmas Eve 1896 in Shaanxi Province. When the Boxer Rebellion broke in 1900 the Beckmans were on furlough in America. With China in a state of upheaval, it seemed unlikely the missionaries would be able to return soon, so E. R. Beckman accepted an appointment as a pastor, which he held until his family’s return to China in 1905.

E. R. Beckman was in a state of shock at the death of his beloved wife and daughter, but wanted to know what had happened to his 13-year-old daughter Selma Beckman and the 21-year-old teacher, Wilheim Vatne, both of whom had scaled the wall before the mob broke down the gate to the mission station. Three days later it was discovered the pair had escaped into the night and taken shelter with a Chinese family. The grieving E. R. Beckman was once again called upon to tell what happened:

“As the people had heard that all foreigners in the city had been killed, they dared not let these alive. They constantly pelted them with broken bricks and hard lumps of earth. Mr. Vatne, taking hold of Selma’s hand, was occasionally knocked to the ground, but sprung to his feet again, still holding her fast. About noon they were separated. Mr. Vatne was killed first, and shortly after, darling Selma, my eldest child, breathed her last. They passed through severe suffering. Their pierced bodies were found buried in a field.”[7]

Wilheim Vatne (left); and Selma Beckman (right).

Wilheim T. Vatne was born in America of Norwegian parents. He grew up in Cooperstown, North Dakota, placing his trust in Jesus Christ at a young age. After graduating from high school early, Vatne became a schoolteacher himself at the age of just 18. A few years later the mission school in Xi’an was looking for a consecrated Christian to teach the missionary children. Vatne wilfully accepted the call, arriving in China in September 1910. After hearing of his son’s martyrdom, Vatne’s aged father wrote:

“You can hardly believe how we feel these days. It was a hard stroke when we heard that our beloved Wilheim has already been taken away from us. How strange that his day of work should be so short! Oh, Wilheim was a dear son to us! …. I am weak and weary, and this heavy sorrow is weighing me down, but sweeter will be the rest when I reach Home…. I could have written this letter with my tears! Yet, the Lord had the greatest claim to him: He gave him to us, and He took him. Blessed be the name of the Lord!”[8]

The mob thoroughly destroyed the new school and all the adjoining buildings at the Xi’an mission. On the day following the bloodbath, Beckman experienced

“a reactionary feeling of remorse, which, together with dread of further terrible experiences, crushed me to despair. All possible ways of escape now came to my mind, but too late! Why had I not attempted this or that method by which I could probably have rescued them all? …. During the forenoon little Thyra cried bitterly. No words could comfort her, save when I prayed. As soon as I ceased praying she wept again. This continued until the afternoon. I continually called on the Lord, paying no attention to whoever came or went. I resigned myself wholly to the Will of God, to live or to die. Thus I regained peace and calmness of mind.”[9]

When Beckman told his little daughter that her mother and sisters had gone to be with Jesus, she asked, “Did they go to our Jesus?” When her father replied “yes,” she said, “Then I am glad, for I can go to them.”

Beckman and the other Scandinavian Alliance missionaries decided to seek vengeance for this cruel act—vengeance not on the mob, but on the satanic forces that orchestrated the killing. One report stated:

“The hope of meeting their loved ones again, and God’s gracious consolation removed the feeling of vengeance upon the murderers, but intensified their desire for vengeance upon the Prince of Darkness so that many might be delivered from his power and laid as saved and victorious souls at the feet of their Saviour, Jesus Christ; that this soil of China, made wet with the blood of these dear martyrs might be as seed falling into the earth and dying to bring forth a harvest of souls saved for eternity.”[10]

The mission school in Xi’an was rebuilt in 1915 on the same spot where the martyrs had spilled their blood. The missionaries “returned and went bravely on with their work, teaching and preaching the Word of God, the Gospel of Christ as the Saviour of all men.”[11]

The grieving E. R. Beckman and his young daughter Thyra after arriving back in Sweden.

E. R. Beckman and his daughter Thyra returned to Sweden to recover from the ordeal. There Thyra developed “measles, croup, diphtheria and inflammation of both lungs,”[12] and was close to death. Doctors held little hope for her recovery. Many Christians prayed fervently, and she experienced a complete recovery. Years later she married a missionary and returned to serve in China, the land that had taken her mother and sisters from her. Such an act of grace and forgiveness amazed all Chinese who heard about it.

1. Beckman, The Massacre at Sianfu, 67.
2. Hefley, By Their Blood, 48.
3. Beckman, The Massacre at Sianfu, 70.
4. Beckman, The Massacre at Sianfu, 73.
5. Beckman, The Massacre at Sianfu, 76.
6. Beckman, The Massacre at Sianfu, 34.
7. Beckman, The Massacre at Sianfu, 74-79.
8. Beckman, The Massacre at Sianfu, 84-85.
9. Beckman, The Massacre at Sianfu, 74-75.
10. Grauer, Fifty Wonderful Years, 43-44.
11. Grauer, Fifty Wonderful Years, 44.
12. Beckman, The Massacre at Sianfu, 136.