Page 333 - Three Score Years & Ten
P. 333
“THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN” MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA
Amy Moore
FAREWELL TO CHINA
Within a few days we were packing and preparing to go down the hill again. The boys were back into
school life and sadly we said goodbye for another nine or ten months, but with the promise we would
have another month with them at Guling before we returned to Hanzhong. The two elder boys were
more mature and could understand and accept the things that happened to them as children of
missionaries, but my heart was a little concerned about how Frank was taking another parting. So
before we set off, I slipped across with Percy to take a peep at him in his school just to be sure he was
alright. His teacher, Maud Hullah, was standing at the blackboard with her back to the class. We
could see her through the glass door outside which we were standing. Frank was sitting in the front
row and as we watched, he was lifting his ruler and with one eye watching in case Miss Hullah turned
round, and with a wicked grin on his face, he gave his best friend immediately behind him a crack over
the head with his ruler! Smothering our laughter till we were out of hearing, we started off for our climb
down those thousand steps satisfied that our youngest son was not breaking his heart over our
leaving him.
Back to Shanghai and it was not long before we were on the ship which was to take us to San
Francisco, from where we would go across America by train to Chicago and then up to Toronto. Had
we known that we would never see China again, it would have been with very different feelings that
we watched its coastline receding in the distance. For Percy it had been his home for most of his life,
for Dorothy all her life, and for me the home where I had married and had my children and where I
learned to know God through bad times and through good times, and where I expected to spend the
rest of my life with the people I had learned to know and love.
But it was not to be.
EPILOGUE
By the time Percy and Dorothy and I were ready to return to China in 1949, the Communist Party had
set up their government under Mao Zedong in Beijing and we were not able to get visas to return. It
was the end of 1950 before we were able to get our boys home to where we were living in Sydney,
Australia.
Esther Moore and Percy, both of whom were born and grew up in China, never did return and at this
date in 1997 I too have never been back. The door to China was closed for 30 years with little news
coming out or going in, and only after Mao died in 1976 did it become possible for other nationals to
obtain visas. Our boys finished their education in Australia, Raymond becoming a Baptist minister,
Alan a solicitor and Frank the Headmaster of a private school. China was in their blood and both Alan
and Frank returned soon after it became possible to do so, but never to Hanzhong which remained
closed to tourists until about 1989.
It was in 1995 when Dorothy went back for three weeks to teach basic hygiene and baby care in an
orphanage in Xi’an. Before she returned home to England where she had been married for nearly 30
years to Dr. David Stephens who at that time was the Head of one of the largest comprehensive
schools in the north of England, she went with a friend, who could speak fluent Mandarin, to
Hanzhong. She saw the house where we had lived and where she was born and was welcomed
warmly by the church people who, after 47 years, remembered us all. The church building had been
destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but after Mao died the land had been returned to them and a
333
Amy Moore
FAREWELL TO CHINA
Within a few days we were packing and preparing to go down the hill again. The boys were back into
school life and sadly we said goodbye for another nine or ten months, but with the promise we would
have another month with them at Guling before we returned to Hanzhong. The two elder boys were
more mature and could understand and accept the things that happened to them as children of
missionaries, but my heart was a little concerned about how Frank was taking another parting. So
before we set off, I slipped across with Percy to take a peep at him in his school just to be sure he was
alright. His teacher, Maud Hullah, was standing at the blackboard with her back to the class. We
could see her through the glass door outside which we were standing. Frank was sitting in the front
row and as we watched, he was lifting his ruler and with one eye watching in case Miss Hullah turned
round, and with a wicked grin on his face, he gave his best friend immediately behind him a crack over
the head with his ruler! Smothering our laughter till we were out of hearing, we started off for our climb
down those thousand steps satisfied that our youngest son was not breaking his heart over our
leaving him.
Back to Shanghai and it was not long before we were on the ship which was to take us to San
Francisco, from where we would go across America by train to Chicago and then up to Toronto. Had
we known that we would never see China again, it would have been with very different feelings that
we watched its coastline receding in the distance. For Percy it had been his home for most of his life,
for Dorothy all her life, and for me the home where I had married and had my children and where I
learned to know God through bad times and through good times, and where I expected to spend the
rest of my life with the people I had learned to know and love.
But it was not to be.
EPILOGUE
By the time Percy and Dorothy and I were ready to return to China in 1949, the Communist Party had
set up their government under Mao Zedong in Beijing and we were not able to get visas to return. It
was the end of 1950 before we were able to get our boys home to where we were living in Sydney,
Australia.
Esther Moore and Percy, both of whom were born and grew up in China, never did return and at this
date in 1997 I too have never been back. The door to China was closed for 30 years with little news
coming out or going in, and only after Mao died in 1976 did it become possible for other nationals to
obtain visas. Our boys finished their education in Australia, Raymond becoming a Baptist minister,
Alan a solicitor and Frank the Headmaster of a private school. China was in their blood and both Alan
and Frank returned soon after it became possible to do so, but never to Hanzhong which remained
closed to tourists until about 1989.
It was in 1995 when Dorothy went back for three weeks to teach basic hygiene and baby care in an
orphanage in Xi’an. Before she returned home to England where she had been married for nearly 30
years to Dr. David Stephens who at that time was the Head of one of the largest comprehensive
schools in the north of England, she went with a friend, who could speak fluent Mandarin, to
Hanzhong. She saw the house where we had lived and where she was born and was welcomed
warmly by the church people who, after 47 years, remembered us all. The church building had been
destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, but after Mao died the land had been returned to them and a
333
