Mavericks › Uprising Leaders
Feng Yunshan
Co-founder with Hong Xiuquan of the God Worshipping Society who built its following in Guangxi's Zijing Mountains and died of wounds as the Southern King in 1852
A mountain camp at night, with a beacon fire burning on a wooden platform at the upper left, several white tents on the slope and a red cloth tied to a rope; a wooden palisade with a gate stands at the right beyond a timber bridge over a rough river, under a clouded moon.
Also known as South King
- Roles
- Uprising Leaders
Feng Yunshan, from Hua county in Guangdong, was a village schoolteacher and a friend of his neighbour Hong Xiuquan. Around 1843 the two founded the God Worshipping Society, and from the following year Feng spent several years preaching among charcoal burners and poor farmers in the Zijing Mountains of Guiping, Guangxi, where Yang Xiuqing and Xiao Chaogui were among those who joined. Late in 1847 the local gentry leader Wang Zuoxin had him arrested; released the next year and sent home under escort, he soon went back to Guangxi. After the Jintian rising of 1851 he was made Southern King at Yongan with the title Lord of Seven Thousand Years, and the movement's new Heavenly Calendar is said to have been drawn up under his direction. In 1852, during the attack on Quanzhou, he was hit by cannon fire and died soon afterwards near Suoyidu.
Life and times
Dates 1815 CE–1852 CE