YDS READING PASSAGES / TEST 6 13. Soru

-5.I-HO CH'UAN

In the summer of 1900, members of a secret society roamed northeastern China in bands, killing Europeans and Americans and destroying buildings owned by foreigners. They called themselves I-ho ch'uan, or "Righteous and Harmonious Fists." They practised boxing skills that they believed made them impervious to bullets. To Westerners they became known as the Boxers, and their uprising was called the Boxer Rebellion. Most Boxers were peasants or urban thugs from northern China who resented the growing influence of Westerners in their land. They organised themselves in 1898, and in the same year the Chinese government — then ruled by the Ch'ing Dynasty — secretly allied with the Boxers to oppose such outsiders as Christian missionaries and European businessmen. The Boxers failed to drive foreigners out of China, but they set the stage for the successful Chinese revolutionary movement of the early 20th century.

The Boxers had little fear of guns because ------.