page_title: Wang Tao (19th century)
section_title: Refuge in Hong Kong
hierarchical_section_title: Wang Tao (19th century) / Life / Refuge in Hong Kong
caption_attribution_description: English: Hong Kong in 1887 中文（简体）‎: 1887 年的香港
context_page_description: Wang Tao was a Chinese translator, reformer, political columnist, newspaper publisher and fiction writer of the Qing dynasty. He was born Wang Libin in Puli Town in Suzhou prefecture.
context_section_description: The middle of the 19th century was a period of turmoil in China. In 1860, the Taiping Rebellion had captured  Suzhou, Changzhou, and was threatening Shanghai.  During this period, Wang Tao was in contact with the leaders of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. In 1862, he even wrote a letter under the pseudonym Wang Wan to a Taiping leader, proposing tactics against the Qing military and suggesting that westerners were not the enemy of Taiping.  He stated that the real enemy was the Qing government; if the Taiping army could achieve victory over the Qing army led by Zeng Guofan, then the westerners might take side with the Taiping Kingdom.
  When the Qing army captured Shanghai, this letter fell into the hands of the Qing government, and the Tongzhi Emperor ordered Wang Tao to be arrested.  He took refuge in the British Consulate, remaining there for more than four months. In October 1862, a disguised Wang Tao, escorted by several people from the British Consulate, boarded an Ewo  ship 怡和 for Hong Kong. This is how he left his homeland to which he was not to return for twenty-two years. In Hong Kong, he changed his name from Wang Libin to Wang Tao.
  In Hong Kong, James Legge, the principal of the Anglo-Chinese College invited Wang Tao to stay at the London Mission Society hostel and to assist him in the translation of The Thirteen Classics. By 1865, Legge and Wang had completed the translation of Shang Shu and The Bamboo Book Annals.
  In this period, Wang Tao also took on the job of editor in chief of a Chinese newspaper Hua Zi News in Hong Kong, this was the beginning of his journalism career.
caption: Drawing of Hong Kong in Wang Tao's 1887 travelog
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