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The whirlwind wedding was planned around the sailing of the ship on February 10th. They wore identical brown traveling suits that neither knew that the other had purchased. After a wedding luncheon of broth, a meat course with plenty of vegetables, and a chicken salad, Lou and Bert caught the 2:00 train to San Francisco where they would sail on the 11th of February for China.
The Hoovers settled in the city of Tientsin. Here Lou busied herself making a comfortable home for Bert. This was the beginning of a commitment that she would carry through on in many locations all over the world. She also explored the city, and was interested in Chinese culture. Lou described the foreign settlement at Tientsin as "a series of plots assigned to different nations."
Lou Hoover spent her time exploring Peking, Tientsin, and the countryside around her. She visited markets and palaces, and she developed a keen sense of what represented the best of Chinese artistry. She also learned the Chinese language. She secured a tutor and learned to speak and write Chinese. Herbert Hoover said that "the English speaking Chinese in town always addresses her in Chinese and me in English." (HH about LHH in Personal Correspondence File, LHH Papers).
In early June of 1900, reports told of Boxers within a few miles of Tientsin. This uprising came about because the reforms ordered by the young Emperor did not sit well with the old ruling class in China. The Empress Dowager was prevailed upon by the angry Mandarins to remove the young Emperor from the throne. At the same time an anti-foreign sentiment sprang up in China. The Chinese believed that there was too much encroachment of foreign powers on China's territory and on Chinese life. Floods and crop failures also plagued the Chinese at this time that they also blamed on foreigners. Thus the Ei Ho Chiang movement (The Closed Fist) arose. The name was loosely translated into Boxers. Their objective was to drive all foreigners into the sea, and kill the Chinese tainted by association with the foreigners.
During this Boxer uprising, the Hoovers were in Tientsin with about 800 people. Lou Hoover took her turn patrolling the settlement at night; she also volunteered to work in the hospital, and helped to build barricades. She was given the duty of, "Chief Cowboy and Dairy Maid," since she took charge of some cows and calves brought in from the countryside before the uprising. Lou supervised the distribution of milk for children and the wounded. She rode her bicycle around Tientsin. Once her front tire was struck by bullets, but Lou didn't get upset. She took everything in stride. "Lou exuded a casual everydayness in times of danger or trouble." (Dare Stark McMullin speech to establish Lou Henry Hoover memorial Forests and Wildlife Sanctuary, for Girl Scouts, 1944. In Hoover Scrapbooks Album 46.) She even wrote to her friend Evelyn Wight Allan that she had really missed something by not being in Tientsin that summer!
During the siege in the summer of 1900, the Boxers killed 233 foreigners, mainly missionaries and their children, and 30,000 Chinese Christians. It was no wonder that Charles Henry was relieved to receive the one word telegram which proclaimed that Lou and Herbert were "Safe." Their deaths had already been published in a New York paper.
The Hoovers left China in August of 1900 when relief troops came. They sailed to London. Most people would have tried to put the experiences of that China summer out of their minds, but Lou began instead to organize her notes and diaries in order to write up her experiences while they were still fresh. She wrote a manuscript on her China experiences during the Boxer rebellion but she never published it. She did however publish an article entitled, "The Late Dowager Empress."
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Last updated: August 15, 2007