He believed himself to be reincarnated as a famous military or martial monk which he shared with his new Chinese allies. Knowing that China had a long history of secret societies, he joined Chinese secret societies located in the Chinatowns of Los Angeles and later in San Francisco. With such access and membership he further refined his Chinese language and cultural skills. He believed in China and his own future in China, that he would have an opportunity to attain military glory. He often visited Chinatown, taking his young friends along, and he befriended the Reverend Ng Poon Chew, a local Chinese Presbyterian missionary friend of his parents. He met other Chinese through Ng Poon Chew and furthered his learning of Cantonese. In 1899, while recuperating from a bout of smallpox, he learned of a recently organized Chinese society called the Bao Huang Hui (Protect the Emperor Society; also known as the Chinese Empire Reform Association), which Kang Youwei, a former adviser to the Chinese emperor, helped establish to restore the Guangxu Emperor to his throne. The emperor had been deposed in 1898 by Empress Dowager Cixi for instituting Western reforms. Lea saw an opportunity for adventure in China with the Bao Huang Hui rather than returning to Stanford. He convinced local Bao Huang Hui leaders that he was a military expert who could greatly benefit their cause, in part, by falsely claiming Confederate army general Robert E. Lee to be a relative. Chinese officials were also impressed by his extensive Stanford education. The Bao Huang Hui welcomed him into their ranks with promises of becoming a general in their upcoming military campaign to restore the emperor to power. He traveled to China in 1900, while the Boxer Uprising was underway, with high hopes of playing a major role in the military campaign. He became a lieutenant general in the Bao Huang Hui makeshift military forces, but had a relatively unimportant assignment that involved training rural volunteers away from any active military operations. After the Bao Huang Hui main military forces were defeated by the imperial army, his military adventures in China came to a virtual end. Lea would later tell varying and high embellished versions of these events, claiming that his forces were at Beijing in close pursuit of the fleeing Empress then surprised by an attack from the rear, and that he had to escape China disguised as