义和团

It grew out of the 义和拳 ('Righteous and Harmonious Fists'), a martial-arts movement of Shandong and Zhili, which is why foreigners called its members Boxers. Under the slogan 扶清灭洋 ('support the Qing, wipe out the foreigners') they killed missionaries and Chinese Christians (教民) and in 1900 besieged the foreign legations in Beijing, until the Eight-Nation Alliance (八国联军) took the city.

The uprising itself is the 义和团运动 (Boxer Rebellion). Chinese textbooks call it an anti-imperialist movement while also pointing to its superstitions, such as the belief that rituals made its fighters 刀枪不入.