clothing In the late 18th century, the Chinese government had closed all of China to visits or trade by foreigners except for Canton (modern
Guangzhou). in June 1831, Gützlaff violated that prohibition on his first visit to China, traveling up and down the coast by sailing ship as far north as
Tianjin and defying Chinese government edicts. He spoke
Fujianese (a Chinese dialect) fluently and wore Chinese dress. In November 1931, he took up residence in Macau and later in Hong Kong. In 1832, along with
East India Company staff
Hugh Hamilton Lindsay, Gutzlaff joined a six-month long clandestine reconnaissance by sea that visited
Amoy,
Fuzhou,
Ningbo, Shanghai and the
Shandong coast. In late 1833, he acted as naturalist
George Bennett's Cantonese interpreter on his visit to
Canton. In these visits to Chinese cities, Gützlaff served as a translator, interpreter, and medical doctor. One of the purposes of these trips was to open China to trade with Britain. While it failed at that, Gützlaff's book, published in 1834, titled
Journal of Three Voyages along the Coast of China in 1831, 1832 and 1833 excited interest in expanding trade with China. Gützlaff's book furthered the opinion that China, if pressed hard, would yield to demands that trade be allowed. Gützlaff's experience and expertise attracted the interest of Scottish traders
William Jardine and
James Matheson in Canton. Britain had, at the time, a trade deficit with China. The British purchased large quantities of Chinese tea but the Chinese had little interest in purchasing any British products -- except opium which was grown in British
India. Jardine and Matheson hired Gützlaff as an interpreter on its opium trading ships clandestinely plying the China coast. They agreed that Gützlaff could distribute Christian literature while on the opium voyages, inspiring the wry comment that while the opium dealers distributed opium off one side of the ship Gützlaff distributed Bibles off the other. Moreover, in addition to the generous, profit-sharing remuneration given Gützlaff, Jardin and Matheson agreed to pay for the publication of Gützlaff's religious tracts and to purchase medicine imported from Britain for Gützlaff to distribute to the Chinese. Thus, an "opium trading, gun and gospel-carrying vessel" owned by a British company with a missionary as an interpreter began trading up and down the Chinese coast in violation of Chinese law. In the minds of many Chinese the opium trade and Christianity were linked. Gützlaff worked on a Chinese translation of the Bible, published a Chinese-language magazine,
Eastern Western Monthly Magazine, and wrote Chinese-language books on practical subjects. In 1840, Gützlaff (under the anglicized name Charles Gutzlaff) became part of a group of four people (with
Walter Henry Medhurst,
Elijah Coleman Bridgman, and
John Robert Morrison) who cooperated to translate the Bible into Chinese. The translation of the
Hebrew part was done mostly by Gützlaff, with the exception that the
Pentateuch and the
Book of Joshua were done by the group collectively. This translation, completed in 1847, is well-known due to its adoption by the revolutionary peasant leader
Hong Xiuquan of the Taipingtianguo movement (who started the
Taiping Rebellion) as a reputed doctrine of the Taipings. He was interpreter to the British Plenipotentiary in negotiations during the
First Opium War of 1839–42, then magistrate at
Ningbo and
Zhoushan. He was appointed the first assistant Chinese Secretary of the new colony of Hong Kong in 1842 and was promoted to Chinese Secretary in August of the following year. Unfortunately, Gützlaff's ideas outran his administrative ability. He wound up being victimized by his own native missionaries. They reported back to him glowing accounts of conversions and New Testaments sold. While some of Gützlaff's native missionaries were genuine converts, others were opium addicts who never traveled to the places they claimed. Eager for easy money, they simply made up conversion reports and took the New Testaments which Gützlaff provided and sold them back to the printer who resold them to Gützlaff. The scandal erupted while Gützlaff was in Europe on a fundraising tour. Shattered by the exposure of the fraud, Gützlaff died in Hong Kong in 1851, leaving a £30,000 fortune, equivalent to over 5 million pounds in 2024. He was buried in
Hong Kong Cemetery. ==Legacy==