Historical Context
The Boxer Rising (Boxer Rebellion) of 1900 was an anti-foreign and anti-Christian movement in Qing-dynasty China. The Russian Spiritual Mission in Peking, where Metrophanes Chang served for roughly fifteen years under Archimandrite Flavian, became a target: its church and print shop were destroyed on June 1, and its Northern Compound was looted.
The Orthodox community at the mission was largely Chinese converts. Of the some 222 who perished, many gathered in the dwelling of the priest Metrophanes seeking protection in the days before they were killed.
The Family of Metrophanes Chang
Metrophanes Chang (also Metrophanes Chi Sung; birth name Chang Yangji), born in 1855, was ordained to the priesthood at the age of twenty-five by Bishop Nicholas (Nikolai) of Japan, becoming the first Russian Orthodox priest of Chinese descent. He was remembered as a humble, quiet, and peaceable man.
His wife Tatiana was beheaded on June 12. His eldest son Isaiah, a soldier of twenty-three years' service, was beheaded on June 7. His youngest son John, a child of about seven or eight, suffered severe mutilation and died of his wounds. Maria, the nineteen-year-old betrothed of Isaiah, was also among the martyrs. One son, Sergei Chang, survived and later became an archpriest.
Ia the Teacher
Among the martyrs was Ia, the head teacher of the Orthodox mission school. By the accounts gathered, she was seized on June 10, beaten and slashed nearly to death, and buried alive, but was rescued by a sympathetic non-Christian. Arrested a second time, she was tortured to death with the Name of Christ on her lips, and is therefore remembered as 'Ia the Twice-Martyred.'
Relics & Shrines
The hieromonk Avraamy recovered the body of Metrophanes. In 1903, at the first commemoration of the martyrs, his relics and those of the others were placed under the altar of a church built in their honor in Beijing.
The Church of All Holy Martyrs in Beijing later housed the relics of the Chinese martyrs. It was demolished in 1957 during the construction of the Soviet embassy.
