Page 276 - Three Score Years & Ten
P. 276
“THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN” MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA
Amy Moore
“How fortunate they were to find their exile placed them at the
Contento’s door. Whenever I was there the house seemed to be
overrun by students including the infant Isobel Contento. In the years
ahead, Paul and Maida were to play a major role in the emergence of
the China Intervarsity Fellowship, but in 1943 Paul was still in his
apprenticeship for those great days. In the summer of that year I
joined him for a 10 day student conference at Baocheng, 13 miles
from Hanzhong. It was held in a fly-infested temple turned into a
school, and attended by 27 students. Conditions were very rough,
my bed was two desks put together and the only toilet was the banks
of the nearby canal.
Three hours trek south of Chenggu and hidden in the mountains lay
Guluba, a Roman Catholic centre where an agricultural college of 800
students had taken over part of the premises. I paid three memorable
visits there, crossing the Han River by a narrow plank bridge and
climbing up ridge after ridge beyond. Once I did the 24 mile walk
straight from Hanzhong.”
The medical college which was also set up in some of the villages had a strong Christian Union and
both David and Percy enjoyed going out on weekends to lead some of their meetings. In 1993 in
Melbourne, a Chinese doctor paid a visit to the Lodge of the Templestowe Orchards Retirement
Village run by the Templestowe Baptist Church and first initiated by our son Alan when he was a
member of that Church and a successful Christian lawyer. Alan was already in Heaven and in his
memory, one of the wings at the Lodge was called the Alan Moore Wing. The name caught the
attention of the Chinese doctor and he remarked that he had been converted fifty years before in
Hanzhong through a Mr. Moore. He was delighted to learn that Alan was his son, and I was equally
delighted to learn after all the years of silence since we left China, that there was fruit from those
years.
GENERAL JU
In the compound next door to us in Hanzhong lived General Zhu and his wife. He was the chief
military leader in the north west under the Generalissimo Jiang Kaishek. His first wife had died some
time before we moved to Hanzhong and he had married again, a much younger woman from
Shanghai in her twenties. She was about the same age or younger than his grown up children. She
was very beautiful, and always dressed beautifully and she had never known any life except the
sophisticated, modern and westernized life of a wealthy girl growing up in Shanghai. Hanzhong was a
foreign world to her and she had never imagined anything like it. She marvelled that I could go out
and walk freely and without fear on the streets and among the local people. “They’ve got itch” she
said and, of course they did have itch, but I was careful to wash my hands in disinfectant when I came
home as a safeguard. What she didn’t realise was that I was there as a servant of God and I trusted
Him to keep me from the evils of the world around me. She tried hard to be a good wife to the
General and to please him, but his family did not make it easy for her, and she only had her old nurse
in whom to confide and on whose shoulders to shed her tears. Her nurse had been with her from
babyhood and had become her personal maid when she married as was the custom.
Somewhere she had been introduced to my mother-in-law Esther and she often came in to visit and
confide in her. After we moved to Hanzhong and while Esther was in Lanzhou, she began to come in
to me every afternoon for help with English. This was quite a tie as I was involved in Church work and
276
Amy Moore
“How fortunate they were to find their exile placed them at the
Contento’s door. Whenever I was there the house seemed to be
overrun by students including the infant Isobel Contento. In the years
ahead, Paul and Maida were to play a major role in the emergence of
the China Intervarsity Fellowship, but in 1943 Paul was still in his
apprenticeship for those great days. In the summer of that year I
joined him for a 10 day student conference at Baocheng, 13 miles
from Hanzhong. It was held in a fly-infested temple turned into a
school, and attended by 27 students. Conditions were very rough,
my bed was two desks put together and the only toilet was the banks
of the nearby canal.
Three hours trek south of Chenggu and hidden in the mountains lay
Guluba, a Roman Catholic centre where an agricultural college of 800
students had taken over part of the premises. I paid three memorable
visits there, crossing the Han River by a narrow plank bridge and
climbing up ridge after ridge beyond. Once I did the 24 mile walk
straight from Hanzhong.”
The medical college which was also set up in some of the villages had a strong Christian Union and
both David and Percy enjoyed going out on weekends to lead some of their meetings. In 1993 in
Melbourne, a Chinese doctor paid a visit to the Lodge of the Templestowe Orchards Retirement
Village run by the Templestowe Baptist Church and first initiated by our son Alan when he was a
member of that Church and a successful Christian lawyer. Alan was already in Heaven and in his
memory, one of the wings at the Lodge was called the Alan Moore Wing. The name caught the
attention of the Chinese doctor and he remarked that he had been converted fifty years before in
Hanzhong through a Mr. Moore. He was delighted to learn that Alan was his son, and I was equally
delighted to learn after all the years of silence since we left China, that there was fruit from those
years.
GENERAL JU
In the compound next door to us in Hanzhong lived General Zhu and his wife. He was the chief
military leader in the north west under the Generalissimo Jiang Kaishek. His first wife had died some
time before we moved to Hanzhong and he had married again, a much younger woman from
Shanghai in her twenties. She was about the same age or younger than his grown up children. She
was very beautiful, and always dressed beautifully and she had never known any life except the
sophisticated, modern and westernized life of a wealthy girl growing up in Shanghai. Hanzhong was a
foreign world to her and she had never imagined anything like it. She marvelled that I could go out
and walk freely and without fear on the streets and among the local people. “They’ve got itch” she
said and, of course they did have itch, but I was careful to wash my hands in disinfectant when I came
home as a safeguard. What she didn’t realise was that I was there as a servant of God and I trusted
Him to keep me from the evils of the world around me. She tried hard to be a good wife to the
General and to please him, but his family did not make it easy for her, and she only had her old nurse
in whom to confide and on whose shoulders to shed her tears. Her nurse had been with her from
babyhood and had become her personal maid when she married as was the custom.
Somewhere she had been introduced to my mother-in-law Esther and she often came in to visit and
confide in her. After we moved to Hanzhong and while Esther was in Lanzhou, she began to come in
to me every afternoon for help with English. This was quite a tie as I was involved in Church work and
276
