By the mid-1860s Qing officials sometimes felt that the Muslim Rebellion on China's western frontier posed as great a threat to the dynasty's survival as the Taiping Uprising.
He is widely assumed to be the Peabody Essex's biggest donor among his gifts, according to published reports, was the purchase, importation and restoration of a complete Qingdynasty merchant's house, which sits on the museum grounds as it was in southeastern China in the 1980s.