Gong Xiuquan and Zeng Guofan as cultural heroes
In China's revolutionary history, characters on both sides of the war have been reclaimed as heroes. Sun Yat-Sen drew connections between himself Hong Xiuquan during the Chinese revolution that overthrew the Qing in 1911. Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai did the same during the Communist revolution three decades later. In the early days of the 20th century revolutions, Zeng was remembered as a traitor to Han Chinese and a capitulationist to the despotic Manchu. However, scholarship has emerged since attempting to reclaim him as a Han hero.
The war and the century of humiliation
30 million people died in this war so it would be impossible for it to be forgotten in the cultural memory. The many years of subjugation from the west influenced the anti-imperial ideology behind Maoism that has shaped Chinese national identity ever since. The redestributive politics of the Taiping are also highlighted by scholarship hoping to draw connections between that movement's egalitarianism and the current communist regime.
Further reading
Guo, Y. & He, B. (1999). Reimagining the Chinese nation: The “Zeng Guofan phenomenon.” Modern China, 25(2), 142–170. http://www.jstor.org/stable/189452
Modongal, S. (2016). Development of nationalism in China. Cogent Social Sciences, 2(1), 1235749-. https://doi.org/10.1080/23311886.2016.1235749
Weller, R. P. (1987). Historians and consciousness: The modern politics of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. Social Research, 54(4), 731–755. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40970481