Liang Fa

Liang Fa (1789–1855), also known by other names, was the second Chinese Protestant convert and the first Chinese Protestant minister and evangelist. He was ordained by Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary in the Qing Empire. His tract Good Words to Admonish the Age was influential on Hong Xiuquan, who went on to lead the Taiping Rebellion. Name Liang Fa is the pinyin romanization of Liang's usual Chinese name, which his father used. is the Jyutping romanization of the same name in Cantonese, the usual spoken dialect of Guangdong's natives. His personal name is the common Chinese verb for "to send" but in Chinese grammar can also be understood as its past participle, "[he who is] sent". He is also known as , "", "Afa", "" or "" from the Southern Chinese habit of forming affectionate nicknames using the prefix Ā- (now , formerly ). was apparently his complete name, although it was used less often. It variously appears as "Leang Kung-fa", "Leang Kung-fah", and "Leong Kung Fa". Life Liang was born in the village of Gulao (then known as "Lohtsun"), Gaoming County, in Sanzhou ("Samchow"), Guangdong, in 1789. Although he came from a poor family, they made an effort to give him a classical Chinese education at the village school. This consisted of the Four Books, three of the Five Classics, and the Sacred Edict. They were unable to afford his schooling until he was 11; at age 15, he was compelled to seek work as a brush-maker in Guangzhou (then known as "Canton"). He soon left this to apprentice as a printer, for whom he carved characters onto wooden blocks. After four years, he left to a nearby village to ply the trade. He returned to Gulao in 1810 to mourn his mother's death and then returned to the area around Guangzhou. In 1811 and 1812, Cai Luxing (, known at the time as "Tsae Low-heen") was helping Robert Morrison to publish his Chinese translation of the New Testament and in one of those years Liang began to assist in carving the work's printing blocks. An imperial edict of 1812 prohibited the publication of Christian texts in Chinese; it declared that Christianity was a menace to Chinese culture as it "neither holds spirits in veneration nor ancestors in reverence". Nonetheless, Cai's younger brother—probably named Gao—became the Protestants' first Chinese convert, baptized at a secluded seaside spring on July 16, 1814, and Liang became their second.