What happened to the adherents of Taiping beliefs after their defeat. Surely it could not have completely disappeared immediately following their defeat. Did it undergo any metamorphoses afterwards or did it actually just disappear.
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It's entirely likely that the Taiping belief was never very strong to begin with. Even at its very beginning in Guangxi the Taiping movement was always clustered around a very small group of fanatics augmented by tons and tons of bandits, pirates, peasants, minorities, and suchlike. This became increasingly the case once the early bloody battles at Yongzhou and Changsha decimated the core Taiping groupings (especially Feng Yuxiang). So over time it's likely that the Taiping 'essence' was being diluted by the introduction of various native beliefs, superstitions and so on, while the 'form' of the Taiping Government still remained in place.
After the Taiping fell the remaining rebels would probably have dispersed and a) either joined the other revolts in Qing China during this period, or b) resumed lives as peasants under the watch of Confucian landlords. Neither choice, especially b), was likely to result in the rebels maintaining their original faith (assuming they had any to begin with).
Interesting question. I do wonder if there is anyone (anywhere) who believes that Hong Xiuquan really was the brother of Jesus. There must be at least some.
You'd think someone must. This was a movement with millions of adherents, and if there are still Asians worshiping Roman Ungern Von Sternberg as a god...
These kinds of things just cropped up periodically in Chinese history. The Taiping were abnormally large and successful, but bandits and angry peasants rallying around faith healers, zealots and weirdos is a bit of a recurring theme. You had the Boxers not long after, and although they're not currently violent movements East Asia is still chock full of weird cults with inspirations ranging from Christianity to Buddhism to local religion.
