Page 160 - Three Score Years & Ten
P. 160
“THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN” MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA
Amy Moore
morning tea and lock it away afterwards. All this was because pilfering by servants was so common
and it was better to lock everything up which might be a temptation to them. Maud King was in charge
of our baths! We only had a bath once a week, and the water had to be brought in by carrier off the
street. It cost 16 coppers per bath, and as it was always beautifully hot, it seemed well worth it. Maud
had to keep track of whose bath night it was, collect the money and usher the bath man up the stairs
to the right bathroom where he tipped the two buckets of water that he carried on a carrying pole into
the tin tubs.
The Language School at Yangzhou, February 1932. Amy is in the centre (a biro
line is drawn to indicate her position). The staff are immediately behind Amy.
(From left to right) Miss Okey, Miss Griffith, Mrs. McFarlane and Miss Wilson.
Our sixty or so girls came from about a dozen different countries, and it was an education in itself to
mix with them and begin to understand something of the culture of other nations. I made some good
friends whom I continued to keep in touch with even after we were scattered to the four corners of
China. Betty Scott was the child of American missionaries and born in China, so she was in a more
advanced class than those of us who had never been in China before, and she, like Dorothy, was
engaged to be married. Her fiancé, John Stam, would not be coming out till the following year. She
told me all this as we walked round and round the large garden to get some exercise. Faith
Leeuwenberg was Pennsylvanian Dutch from Michigan in the USA also, and we studied together and
became good friends. Then there were two Canadian girls in one of the rooms next to us, Bertha
Silversides and Nettie Waldner. Another girl whom I liked very much was a tall, stately, Swedish girl
called Birgate Branden-Ollsen. Dorothy and I were often invited to have afternoon tea in somebody
else’s room, so we got used to American coffee and Swedish coffee as well as tea with the English or
the Welsh or the Scottish. The German girls were just that little bit different from the others, and we
found them fascinating.
The mornings were filled with classes with teachers. Each of us had an hour with a Chinese teacher
by ourselves, where we had to follow him as he read a Chinese word from our Primers. We were not
supposed to look a man in the eyes, so it was quite an effort to watch his lips, try to make my lips form
the same word in exactly the same way, and not lift my eyes to his to see how I was faring. My
teacher was a very dignified Chinese teacher who kept a straight face however badly I ruined the
language, and sometimes he would shake his head half a dozen times before he gave a nod at my
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Amy Moore
morning tea and lock it away afterwards. All this was because pilfering by servants was so common
and it was better to lock everything up which might be a temptation to them. Maud King was in charge
of our baths! We only had a bath once a week, and the water had to be brought in by carrier off the
street. It cost 16 coppers per bath, and as it was always beautifully hot, it seemed well worth it. Maud
had to keep track of whose bath night it was, collect the money and usher the bath man up the stairs
to the right bathroom where he tipped the two buckets of water that he carried on a carrying pole into
the tin tubs.
The Language School at Yangzhou, February 1932. Amy is in the centre (a biro
line is drawn to indicate her position). The staff are immediately behind Amy.
(From left to right) Miss Okey, Miss Griffith, Mrs. McFarlane and Miss Wilson.
Our sixty or so girls came from about a dozen different countries, and it was an education in itself to
mix with them and begin to understand something of the culture of other nations. I made some good
friends whom I continued to keep in touch with even after we were scattered to the four corners of
China. Betty Scott was the child of American missionaries and born in China, so she was in a more
advanced class than those of us who had never been in China before, and she, like Dorothy, was
engaged to be married. Her fiancé, John Stam, would not be coming out till the following year. She
told me all this as we walked round and round the large garden to get some exercise. Faith
Leeuwenberg was Pennsylvanian Dutch from Michigan in the USA also, and we studied together and
became good friends. Then there were two Canadian girls in one of the rooms next to us, Bertha
Silversides and Nettie Waldner. Another girl whom I liked very much was a tall, stately, Swedish girl
called Birgate Branden-Ollsen. Dorothy and I were often invited to have afternoon tea in somebody
else’s room, so we got used to American coffee and Swedish coffee as well as tea with the English or
the Welsh or the Scottish. The German girls were just that little bit different from the others, and we
found them fascinating.
The mornings were filled with classes with teachers. Each of us had an hour with a Chinese teacher
by ourselves, where we had to follow him as he read a Chinese word from our Primers. We were not
supposed to look a man in the eyes, so it was quite an effort to watch his lips, try to make my lips form
the same word in exactly the same way, and not lift my eyes to his to see how I was faring. My
teacher was a very dignified Chinese teacher who kept a straight face however badly I ruined the
language, and sometimes he would shake his head half a dozen times before he gave a nod at my
Return to Table of 160
Contents
