The Rise of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom:A New Study Based on Hong Xiuquan's Early Thought
"Ding You(1837)Vision"which was recorded in Taiping Heavenly Kingdom official books mixed with reinterpretation of the previous dreams made by Hong Xiuquan and Taiping Heavenly Kingdom in the new situation,which was away from the original facts.Furthermore,there is mutual proof of the significance of divinity in various documents.Taiping Tianri written in the winter of 1848 is a complete religious myth and at the same time an anti-Qing manifesto.Only then did Hong Xiuquan and his party formally set out to oppose the Qing Dynasty.Hong Xiuquan's failure to pass the examinations,being refused to be baptized in Guangzhou,missionary frustration in Guangxi and other experiences made him extremely dissatisfy with the real society.On the other hand,the prosperous development of Zijingshan God's Church encouraged him to acknowledge himself to be ordered by God to come down to earth to cut off the evil.Especially,after the second entry into the Guangxi in 1847,Hong Xiuquan changed a lot subjectively.The time points of Hong Xiuquan's ideological change and the establishment of anti-Qing ideology as reflected in the existing documents coincide with the time of the collapse in Guangxi,which indicates that the unprecedentedly intense social contradictions and conflicts drove Hong Xiuquan to finally embark on the way of anti-Qing.