{"id":3270,"date":"2015-02-22T05:00:36","date_gmt":"2015-02-22T13:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/?p=3270"},"modified":"2015-02-21T20:17:04","modified_gmt":"2015-02-22T04:17:04","slug":"the-great-tiger-hunter-of-fujian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/the-great-tiger-hunter-of-fujian\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Tiger Hunter of Fujian"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"2012<\/a>

“2012 Suedchinesischer Tiger” image courtesy of J. Patrick Fischer<\/p><\/div>\n

Man from Tennessee Kills 48 Amoy Tigers.
\n<\/strong><\/h3>\n

When Harry R. Caldwell lived in China during the first half of the Twentieth Century, no one worried about the extinction of the Amoy tiger. In those days it was a point of pride for any man to kill a tiger, and Harry Caldwell killed four dozen of the beasts. In the villages he served, he was a hero. People called him the \u201cGreat Tiger Hunter.\u201d<\/p>\n

None of them could have predicted that eighty short years later there would be no wild tigers left in Fujian Province and we would be mourning their loss.<\/p>\n

Harry Caldwell did not go to China to carve out a career as a tiger killer. He was a Methodist missionary from Tennessee who preached the gospel in China and raised his family there.<\/p>\n

\"by<\/a>

image courtesy of B_cool-from-Singapore<\/p><\/div>\n

When he arrived in China in 1900, there were thousands of tigers in Fujian Province alone. They prowled the villages at night, snatching away goats, pigs, and dogs. Some tigers became man-eaters who stalked and killed people who were tending their herds or walking the trails. Once a particularly brazen tiger burst into a house through an open door while the men of the house were having an after-dinner smoke. When the dust cleared, the tiger was gone \u2026 and so was a child who\u2019d been sleeping under the table.<\/p>\n

The reputation of this man-eating tiger spread. Afraid of encountering him, people began to neglect their crops. Finally, when church attendance fell, Reverend Caldwell decided it was time to go after the man-eating tiger. The reverend was an experienced hunter. In his younger days, he\u2019d spent many hours hunting in the mountains of Tennessee. While in China, he\u2019d supplied wild geese, silver pheasant, muntjac deer and wild boar for the family dinner table. But until then, he\u2019d never shot a tiger.<\/p>\n

China Coast Family<\/h2>\n

\"China<\/a>The story of Harry Caldwell\u2019s first tiger hunt is told in China Coast Family, <\/em>a memoir written by his son, John Caldwell. John tells of a childhood in which he frequently heard the frightful low roar of tigers or spied their tracks. His amah scared him with stories of bad little Chinese boys and girls who were killed by the dreaded \u201clao hu.\u201d Above all, he remembers his father\u2019s victorious return from the hunt with a dead tiger draped over a bamboo pole and carried by eight coolies.<\/p>\n

In one recollection, the younger Caldwell tells of the day his mother saw three tigers \u201cbasking in the sunlight across the road.\u201d She told his father, and though Reverend Caldwell was skeptical, he grabbed his gun and took off in search of the tigers. Within ten minutes he\u2019d found them\u2014not three tigers, however, but five.<\/p>\n

He should have taken his wife\u2019s sighting more seriously and brought sufficient ammunition. As it was, he had only six shells with him. He used five of them to kill the first tiger and one to kill the second. Then, all his ammunition gone, he hid in the grass, listening as the remaining three tigers sniffed the bodies of their dead companions and hoping they would leave. He was lucky. After an hour or so, the tigers wandered off.<\/p>\n

John Caldwell\u2019s book has many stories about tigers in Fujian Province. It\u2018s amazing now to think of so many tigers roaming the hills of southeastern China not so many years ago.<\/p>\n

When I wrote my novel, Tiger Tail Soup,<\/em> I knew only one tale about tigers in China, the one my late husband, Eugene, told me. I\u2019ve recounted that story in an earlier post, \u201cWhere Have All the Tigers Gone?<\/a>\u201d and told it in greater detail in my novel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

China Coast Family <\/em>was published in 1953, but it\u2019s still available. You can buy it from Amazon<\/a> and barnesandnoble.com<\/a>. You can also get a free download from the Universal Library<\/a>, or you can read the third chapter, \u201cOur Friend the Tiger,\u201d on the website of Amoy Magic<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"my<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 Man from Tennessee Kills 48 Amoy Tigers. When Harry R. Caldwell lived in China during the first half of the Twentieth Century, no one worried about the extinction of the Amoy tiger. In those days it was a point of pride for any man to kill a tiger, and Harry Caldwell killed four dozen […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[343,13,6,689],"tags":[696,47,926,695,165,690,691,694,693,692,10],"class_list":["post-3270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-china","category-tiger-tail-soup","category-tigers","tag-amoy-magic","tag-amoy-tiger","tag-china","tag-china-coast-family","tag-fujian-province","tag-harry-caldwell","tag-john-caldwell","tag-man-eating-tiger","tag-methodist-missionary-from-tennessee","tag-methodist-missionary-in-china","tag-tigers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3Kn1e-QK","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3155,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/tiger-tail-soup\/where-have-all-the-tigers-gone\/","url_meta":{"origin":3270,"position":0},"title":"Where Have All the Tigers Gone?","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"January 18, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"During the holidays my family\u2014seven adults, one child and a teenager\u2014visited the Indianapolis Zoo. Despite the unwieldy size of our group, we succeeded in staying together for a while. (The shark-petting pool with its small hint of danger appealed to us.) Before long, though, some of us rushed through the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "China"","block_context":{"text":"China","link":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/category\/china\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"2014-12-23 tiger3","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/2014-12-23-tiger3-e1420585890529.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9817,"url":"https:\/\/nickichenwrites.com\/wordpress\/china\/year-of-the-tiger-what-will-it-hold\/","url_meta":{"origin":3270,"position":1},"title":"Year of the Tiger. What Will It Hold?","author":"Nicki Chen","date":"February 6, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"For the past two years we\u2019ve been asking our scientists and doctors, politicians, stock-and-bond gurus, and friends to predict the future. 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