Britain soon forgot a diplomat murdered in China, but locals in Yunnan remember story of his killing 125 years later
- In 1875, British consular official Augustus Raymond Margary was killed near the backwater town of Tengyue close to the border with then British-ruled Burma
- More than a century later, a writer hunts down the remaining traces of the incident in and around modern Tengchong
On January 3, 1875, 28-year-old Augustus Raymond Margary arrived at Tengyue, a small fortified town in China’s western Yunnan province, close to the border with British-controlled Burma.
Margary was a British consular official from Shanghai and his six-month cross-country journey, by boat up the Yangtze River and then overland through territory he was perhaps the first European to see, was remarkable. His task was to meet a trade delegation from Burma, travelling on passports provided by China’s Qing overlords, and to act as interpreter.
His own Qing passport had been sufficient to cow a hostile populace and provide safe passage, but the British authorities had so little confidence in Margary’s success they sent a backup interpreter by sea.
They were wise. A few weeks later, Margary was murdered on the orders of local officials.
Now long-forgotten, his death had major political repercussions. The British minister in Beijing, Sir Thomas Wade, took the opportunity to demand financial compensation and to press for the opening of more treaty ports to foreign residence.
The British determination to promote trade between Burma and China meant backwater Tengyue (now Tengchong) would become one of China’s more improbable treaty ports. From 1899 it had a British consul and then a foreign-run customs office to manage commerce that never materialised, and Tengyue’s foreign population remained in single figures. Invading Japanese forces closed the consulate in 1942.
