The Governor of Shanxi province in North China orders the execution of 45 foreign Christian missionaries and local church members, including children.
The Taiyuan massacre took place during the Boxer Rebellion, July 9, 1900, in Taiyuan, Shanxi province, North China. Reports at the time alleged that Yuxian, governor of Shanxi, ordered the killings of 45 Christian missionaries and village Christians, including children.
Recent research, however, raises questions. Roger Thompson, in his article about Yuxian, the supposed "Butcher of Shanxi", found that there were no eye-witnesses accounts and that both the missionary sources and the Chinese official reports hide the full truth. Nevertheless he concludes, "The weight of the evidence leads to a conclusion that mob violence, not Yuxian, was responsible" for the massacre. Another study finds that the accounts from the time offered different accounts of the executions, though agreed on the skeletal narrative.
Shanxi (; Chinese: 山西; formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-level cities are Changzhi and Datong. Its one-character abbreviation is "晋" (pinyin: Jìn), after the state of Jin that existed there during the Spring and Autumn period.
The name Shanxi means "West of the Mountains", a reference to the province's location west of the Taihang Mountains. Shanxi borders Hebei to the east, Henan to the south, Shaanxi to the west and Inner Mongolia to the north. Shanxi's terrain is characterised by a plateau bounded partly by mountain ranges. Shanxi's culture is largely dominated by the ethnic Han majority, who make up over 99% of its population. Jin Chinese is considered by some linguists to be a distinct language from Mandarin and its geographical range covers most of Shanxi. Both Jin and Mandarin are spoken in Shanxi.
Shanxi is a leading producer of coal in China, possessing roughly a third of China's total coal deposits. Nevertheless, Shanxi's GDP per capita remains below the national average. The province hosts the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center.
The province is also known for having by far the largest number of historic buildings among all Chinese provinces, by possessing over 70% of China's surviving buildings built during or predating the Song dynasty. Also notable are the Yungang Grottoes, which date back over 1500 years.