schools and introduced medical techniques from the West. The mission schools were viewed with some suspicion by the traditional Chinese teachers, but they differed from the norm by offering a basic education to poor Chinese, both boys and girls, who had no hope of learning at a school before the days of the Chinese Republic. Opposition Local affairs in China were under the control of local officials and the land-owning gentry. They led the opposition to missionary work.Jean-Guy Daigle, "Challenging the imperial order: The precarious status of local Christians in late-Qing Sichuan." European Journal of East Asian Studies (2005): 1-29. According to historian Paul Varg: The Chinese hostility to the missionary was based first of all on the fact that Western Christianity was utterly strange and incomprehensible to the Chinese. There was also the opposition based on what they did understand, namely the missionary's revolutionary program. The literati sensed from the very beginning that Christianization would deprive them of their power. So intense was their hostility that few missionaries considered it worthwhile to make any effort to win them over. In December 1897, Wilhelm II declared his intent to seize territory in China, which triggered a "scramble for concessions" by which Britain, France, Russia and Japan also secured their own sphere of influence in China. After the German government took over Shandong, many Chinese feared that the foreign missionaries and possibly all Christian activities were imperialist attempts at "carving the melon", i.e., to colonize China piece by piece. Local gentry published hate literature against the foreign missionaries. One tract featured foreign missionaries praying to crucified pigs—the Catholic term for God was Tianzhu (Heavenly Lord), in which the Chinese character "zhu" had the same pronunciation as the word for "pig". The pamphlet also showed Christian clergy engaging in orgies following Sunday services and removing the placentas, breasts, and testicles from kidnapped Chinese. It concluded with repeated calls for their extermination by vigilantes and the government. The Boxer Uprising was in large part a reaction against Christianity in China. Missionaries were harassed and murdered, along with tens of thousands of converts. In 1895, the Manchu Yuxian, a magistrate in the province, acquired the help of the Big Swords Society in fighting against bandits. The Big Swords practiced heterodox practices, however, they were not bandits and were not seen as bandits by Chinese authorities. The Big Swords relentlessly crushed the bandits, but the