The Last Heavenly King

'The Last Heavenly King' is the first part of Triptych of Times, a trilogy spanning a period of more than 260 years, in which members of the Persoon-Hong family migrate from China to the Guianas, from the Guianas to the Netherlands and from the North Atlantic region to Namibia. The second part is Waiting Can Wait, a (near-)contemporary novella which is both playfully tragicomic and philosophically serious, and the third part Legends of the Future, a novella of ideas 'written by Sondaha Persoon'. Parts Two and Three are not (yet) available as ebooks.

'The Last Heavenly King' is a historical novella whose real writer may be Vincent van Mechelen, but whose fictional writer is Hong Kuiyuan, an equally real person who was born near Guangzhou (Canton) in 1848. Hong Kuiyuan tells his personal story of the collapse, in 1864, of the Taiping ('Great Peace') Heavenly Kingdom, founded by his uncle Hong Xiuquan, the first Heavenly King. The Chinese and foreign enemies of the Heavenly Kingdom used to refer to it as 'the Taiping Rebellion', and this unparalleled episode in human history is still generally known by that name today.

The story starts with the fall of Nanjing, which was called "Tianjing" or "Heavenly Capital" by the God-worshipers. When the last town, Huzhou, is lost to the imperial Qing too, the survivors flee in the direction of their Hakka homeland, but in the end they fare no better then the ones they left behind. Kuiyuan's father, the Shield King, and his fourteen-year-old cousin, the Young Monarch, are also captured and executed. The sixteen-year-old Kuiyuan himself escapes but is later captured and abused by pirates. When he finally arrives in Hong Kong, his hopes are shattered again.

Yet, while the first Heavenly King's attempt to found his own Christian theocracy on Earth led to the deaths of more than 20 million people, Kuiyuan manages to survive and to start a less divine and less royal, but much more peaceful life in one of the Guianas. (The basics are fact.) In Part Two of Triptych of Times, Hong Kuiyuan will live on as the great-great-grandfather of the new protagonist 'Nancy' Hong Waiting.

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