Honghuzi () were armed Chinese robbers and bandits who operated in the areas of the eastern Russia-China borderland during the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. Their activities extended over southeastern Siberia, the Russian Far East, and Manchuria/Northeast China. The word honghuzi has been variously transliterated as hong huzi, hunhutsi, hong hu zi, hunghutze, hun-hutze, etc. There is also a common transliteration from Russian, khunkhuzy (), and a back-formation for the singular, khunkhuz (). Korean immigrants to Manchuria in the 20th century called the honghuzi ma-jeok (마적,馬賊). Groups of honghuzi were recruited as guerrillas by the Imperial Japanese Army during the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 into sabotage units.
Resistance to foreign occupation
Near the end of the 19th century the honghuzi harassed Russian efforts to build the Manchurian Railway and in general plagued the Russian troops in Manchuria. The Honghuzi participated in the Boxer Rebellion against the Eight-Nation Alliance, and after the Russian invasion of Manchuria carried on guerrilla warfare against the Russian occupation. The origin of most Honghuzi was China proper. Many Honghuzi were former Chinese soldiers or unemployed laborers.
Boxer Rebellion
Louis Livingston Seaman wrote about an incident in which the Honghuzi, who were also Boxers, ambushed, tortured and executed an Eight-Nation Alliance force consisting of Sikhs: In January 1900, during the Boxer campaign (and the Hunghutzes were all Boxers in those days) I chanced to be on the Great Wall of China at Shan-HaiKwan, when a party of five Sikhs, with two coolies and a cart, went through a gateway on a foraging expedition for wood. Shortly after one of the coolies rushed back, so frightened he could hardly articulate, and reported that a party of mounted Hung-hutzes had swooped down on the Sikhs, who had carelessly neglected to take their arms, and had carried them off and stolen their ponies. The coolies had escaped by hiding in a nearby nullah.LONDON SIDNEY APPLETON COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Original from the University of California Digitized Nov 21, 2007
It was "boots and saddles," and in less time than one can write it, the Royal Bengal Lancers, Beluchis, and Gurkas were swarming over the hills in a vain hunt for their comrades and the Boxers. But they were late. Several hours after, they came upon the scene of torture. All was over. There remained only the mutilated remains of their companions and the inhuman instrument that had accomplished its deadly work.
The death instrument was a sort of iron cage..The rods were closed round the victim much as they are round the handle of a closed umbrella, and a rudely constructed nut or screw at the top forced them tightly together. In this infernal device the unfortunate Sikhs had been forced, one after another, and as the screw was tightened and the flesh of the victim protruded between the bars, these fiends had sliced it off with their swords until the end came, and it came quickly.LONDON SIDNEY APPLETON COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Original from the University of California Digitized Nov 21, 2007 The Honghuzi also participated in the battle of Blagoveshchensk, where the Russians carried out a massacre of Chinese civilians.
Resistance to the Russian Empire
Many parts of the country were infested by the Honghuzi.Original from Harvard University Digitized Jun 29, 2007
The term Hong huzi itself may have originally been applied during the 1600s to the Russians by the Chinese, since it meant "red bearded". Indigenous peoples of Amur were attacked by these Russian red beards, but the name was later changed to apply to Chinese bandits only.
Honghuzi raided Russian settlers in the Far East region during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In one incident, the Honghuzi attacked the Heeck family, kidnapping Fridolf Heeck's son and killing his servant and wife in 1879.
The war-correspondent Douglas Story mentioned an incident where one Honghuzi killed several Russian Cossacks before succumbing to return fire: "I have seen a solitary Hunghutze, pursued by a Cossack patrol, calmly dismount from his pony and engage an entire sotnia with his solitary rifle. Kneeling in a field of kiaolang stubble, alone and unsupported, he deliberately picked off the men with his Mauser until the Russians pulled themselves sufficiently together to end his sharp-shooting with a volley."LONDON GEORGE BELL & SONS Original from Harvard University Digitized Oct 4, 2005 This Edition is intended for circulation only in India and the British Colonies
During the Russo-Japanese War, the Honghuzi took advantage of the conflict to carry out attacks against Russian forces: There was also at the end of February a report that a land mine had exploded at the Russian station at Hayuenkow, on the south coast of Liaotung, between the Yalu and Port Arthur. The Russians had expected the Japanese would try to land here, as it was one of their principal landing-places in the war of 1894 against China; so the place was mined, and it was said that the Hunghutze attacked the Russians in force, and managed to blow up the mine, with a loss of 200 Russian soldiers. There were numerous other outbreaks of the Hunghutze, who seem to have carried on a sort of guerrilla warfare against the Russians all the time.SECOND IMPRESSION LONDON EDWARD ARNOLD 41 & 43 MADDOX STREET, BOND STREET, W. 1905 Original from the University of California Digitized Sep 17, 2010 Dr. Seaman observed the Chinese Honghuzi in action against the Russians during the war, as described in The Nation magazine: "He had some amusing and exciting experiences with the Hung-hutzes (Chun-chuzes), ex-bandits, now nominally Chinese soldiery, many of whom were operating as guerrillas on the Russian flank and communications under Japanese officers, as is charged."(NEW YORK EVENING POST COMPANY) The Japanese had in their employ Zhang Zuolin (Chang Tso-lin), a famous Honghuzi leader who led his men against the Russians.
One Russian position was swarmed by around 500 Honghuzi. Russian casualties reached 20 wounded and dead before the Honghuzi were driven away.
The Chinese Imperial troops let the Honghuzi roam freely, since many of them used to be comrades, as described by Dr. Seaman: "They can not be caught, the plain truth being that the best of fellowship exists between them and the imperial troops, their old comrades of yore."LONDON SIDNEY APPLETON COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Original from the University of California Digitized Nov 21, 2007 Seaman also mentioned the reason for the Honghuzi hatred towards the Russians: The Chinaman, be he Hung-hutze or peasant, in his relation to the Russians in this conflict with Japan has not forgotten the terrible treatment accorded him since the Muscovite occupation of Manchuria. He still remembers the massacre at Blagovestchensk when nearly 8,000 unarmed men, women, and children were driven at the point of the bayonet into the raging Amur, until—as one of the Russian officers who participated in that brutal murder told me at Chin-Wang-Tao in 1900— 'the execution of my orders made me almost sick, for it seemed as though I could have walked across the river on the bodies of the floating dead.' Not a Chinaman escaped, except forty who were employed by a leading foreign merchant who ransomed their lives at a thousand rubles each. These, and many even worse, atrocities are remembered and now is their moment for revenge. So it was easy for Japan to enlist the sympathy of these men, especially when emphasized by liberal pay, as is now the case. It is believed that more than 10,000 of these bandits, divided into companies of from 200 to 300 each and led by Japanese officers, are now in the pay of Japan.LONDON SIDNEY APPLETON COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Original from the University of California Digitized Nov 21, 2007
Zhang Zuolin's forces Zhang Zuolin (Chung Tsor Lin) commanded a large army of Honghuzi, who were allied to the Japanese during the war. Louis Livingston Seaman wrote an account of his meeting with Zhang and his army: While we were in Newchwang reports of raids by the bandit Hung-hutzes (commonly spelled Chun-chuzes in American newspapers), literally the "Red Beards," of Manchuria, although not one of them has a red beard, or any other kind of a beard, became so frequent that my companion, Captain Boyd, and myself determined to try to visit them. We hoped to see for ourselves something of the characteristics and methods of those 10,000 or more guerrillas that on the west infest the border of the fighting zone in Manchuria, harrowing the rear and right flank of the Russian army, compelling it to quadruple its Cossack guards in that region in order to protect its supply-trains, as well as the refugees from Port Arthur in their efforts to reach Mukden by way of Hsin-Min-Tung.LONDON SIDNEY APPLETON COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Original from the University of California Digitized Nov 21, 2007
We both had Chinese passports, and Captain Boyd had received credentials from Minister Conger and the Peking authorities to visit General Ma, and the Chinese troops in his command assembled on the borderland, ostensibly to see that no invasion of Chinese neutral territory should occur from either of the great belligerents. General Ma is the commanderin-chief of the Chinese troops in that region and by an envious turn of fate is the commander of the 10,000 Hung-hutzes now wearing the imperial uniform of China as part of her army.
The Hung-hutzes are excellent horsemen, well mounted and armed, who for centuries have lived as outlaws and brigands, defying the authority of the Imperial Government, roaming at will, levying tribute, and hesitating at nothing in the calendar of crimes in the accomplishment of their nefarious purposes.
The head robber of these bands for several years has been one Chung Tsor Lin, now holding the rank of colonel in the Chinese army. Within two years Chung and his band of followers obtained so complete a mastery over theLONDON SIDNEY APPLETON COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Original from the University of California Digitized Nov 21, 2007 entire border region of Manchuria for some hundreds of miles that the Government, in true Chinese fashion, ceased to oppose them and made terms with them by adopting them into the Chinese army. They are now troops in good standing, with highway robbery semiofficially recognized as one of their perquisites.
The adoption of bandits into the army has not changed their habits in robbing and murdering, if need be, and occasionally the soldiers keep up their work as individuals, when they are not plundering Russian refugees en route to Siberia, or worrying the Cossacks. In addition to these uniformed robbers, practically every peasant in the region at this time of year becomes a robber on his own account. It is when the crops are nearly full grown, and the kaoliang, a kind of broom corn, is from twelve to fifteen feet high, that the peasant turns marauder and outlaw. This staple crop, kaoliang, affords a perfect cover for troops or cutthroats, and one has a frightful ordeal in riding through it in August, with the thermometer in the nineties and its high growth cuts off the free circulation of air. The alliedLONDON SIDNEY APPLETON COPYRIGHT, 1904, BY D. APPLETON AND COMPANY Original from the University of California Digitized Nov 21, 2007 armies, among whom were the American troops, realized this in 1900 in their toilsome march from Taku to Tien-Tsin and Peking, when many dropped on the way from heat prostration.