Page 73 - Three Score Years & Ten
P. 73
“THREE SCORE YEARS AND TEN” MISSIONARY WORK IN CHINA
Amy Moore
great Han River on its way to join the Yangtze (Chang Jiang) at Hankou (now called Wuhan). The
climate was semi-tropical. David Bentley-Taylor remembers that, as he approached the city from the
north one evening, he saw great flocks of crows fly towards the city from the surrounding hills to take
roost in the trees inside the city for the night. We learned that nobody was allowed to kill them
because, years before, when an enemy was quietly approaching the city to take it, it was the sudden
alarm that the crows gave which warned the city guards and saved Hanzhong.
As the young men approached the city which was to become their first home in the interior of China,
they felt they were in real old China. City walls and guarded gates, narrow streets crowded with
simple country people and shops selling every variety of local products. The population was probably
about 150,000 and the CIM property was not far inside the West Gate down a quiet lane and with an
even bigger Roman Catholic property on one side and the Roman Catholic cathedral just up the
street. The Roman Catholics also had big vineyards out in the foothills where they made their own
wine.
The two storey Mission houses were only a part of the big complex of buildings which made up the
Mission compound in Hanzhong. The big tiled roofed church could take about a thousand people at
conference times, and round it were guest rooms and Pastor's home as well as a room for the
gatekeeper, an office for the CIM local secretary and other rooms for storing church equipment and
stocks of Bibles and other literature for sale. The baptistry was not in the church but out in the centre
of the main church courtyard.
One of the two Mission homes was occupied by Miss Haslam who was in charge of a small girls'
school. She could also accommodate missionary guests passing through or those coming in for
shopping or other business in Hanzhong. The other house, which was an exact replica of the first,
came to be known as "The Super's House" as it was where Arthur and Esther were to live for the
twelve years they spent in Shaanxi before retirement in 1944. Here they would need to
accommodate the five young men until the summer heat was over and they could be sent out in pairs
to some of the unreached villages that abounded in the mountains surrounding the Hanzhong plain.
Those first days in Hanzhong were busy ones for Arthur as he set about buying extra furniture, beds,
desks, chairs and all the other things necessary for the sudden expansion of the household. He had
to find teachers and servants while Esther was coping with trying to understand a new dialect different
again from either the Gansu one or the Shanghai one. She had to visit the market to find out for
herself what was available for feeding her big family and how prices compared with other places. On
her too fell the burden of housekeeping, no easy task in the middle of summer with young workers not
yet acclimatised to the new conditions and different food of South Shaanxi. Tummy upsets, heat
rashes and other ailments kept her busy making special meals or dispensing medicines as advised by
Dr. Xiao whom they soon came to rely on as a friend indeed.
Dr. and Mrs. Xiao with his old mother and their five boys and two daughters (one of them his sister's
child whom he adopted) soon became close friends of Arthur and Esther, and through all the coming
twenty years when either they or Percy and myself, or both, were living in Hanzhong, they never failed
to be our greatest friends and trustworthy advisers through the good times and the bad.
Dr. Xiao's parents had worked for some of the early CIM missionaries. On one occasion when the
young Mr. Xiao, Dr. Xiao's father, had accompanied the missionaries down the river, he had been
washed overboard and drowned. Determined to help the young widow, the missionaries had taken
upon themselves the responsibility of the education of her son and eventually sent him to the Christian
Hospital in Gansu to train under Dr. King. He did well and later returned to Hanzhong to set up
practice for himself, using both Western and Chinese methods and medicine.
73
Amy Moore
great Han River on its way to join the Yangtze (Chang Jiang) at Hankou (now called Wuhan). The
climate was semi-tropical. David Bentley-Taylor remembers that, as he approached the city from the
north one evening, he saw great flocks of crows fly towards the city from the surrounding hills to take
roost in the trees inside the city for the night. We learned that nobody was allowed to kill them
because, years before, when an enemy was quietly approaching the city to take it, it was the sudden
alarm that the crows gave which warned the city guards and saved Hanzhong.
As the young men approached the city which was to become their first home in the interior of China,
they felt they were in real old China. City walls and guarded gates, narrow streets crowded with
simple country people and shops selling every variety of local products. The population was probably
about 150,000 and the CIM property was not far inside the West Gate down a quiet lane and with an
even bigger Roman Catholic property on one side and the Roman Catholic cathedral just up the
street. The Roman Catholics also had big vineyards out in the foothills where they made their own
wine.
The two storey Mission houses were only a part of the big complex of buildings which made up the
Mission compound in Hanzhong. The big tiled roofed church could take about a thousand people at
conference times, and round it were guest rooms and Pastor's home as well as a room for the
gatekeeper, an office for the CIM local secretary and other rooms for storing church equipment and
stocks of Bibles and other literature for sale. The baptistry was not in the church but out in the centre
of the main church courtyard.
One of the two Mission homes was occupied by Miss Haslam who was in charge of a small girls'
school. She could also accommodate missionary guests passing through or those coming in for
shopping or other business in Hanzhong. The other house, which was an exact replica of the first,
came to be known as "The Super's House" as it was where Arthur and Esther were to live for the
twelve years they spent in Shaanxi before retirement in 1944. Here they would need to
accommodate the five young men until the summer heat was over and they could be sent out in pairs
to some of the unreached villages that abounded in the mountains surrounding the Hanzhong plain.
Those first days in Hanzhong were busy ones for Arthur as he set about buying extra furniture, beds,
desks, chairs and all the other things necessary for the sudden expansion of the household. He had
to find teachers and servants while Esther was coping with trying to understand a new dialect different
again from either the Gansu one or the Shanghai one. She had to visit the market to find out for
herself what was available for feeding her big family and how prices compared with other places. On
her too fell the burden of housekeeping, no easy task in the middle of summer with young workers not
yet acclimatised to the new conditions and different food of South Shaanxi. Tummy upsets, heat
rashes and other ailments kept her busy making special meals or dispensing medicines as advised by
Dr. Xiao whom they soon came to rely on as a friend indeed.
Dr. and Mrs. Xiao with his old mother and their five boys and two daughters (one of them his sister's
child whom he adopted) soon became close friends of Arthur and Esther, and through all the coming
twenty years when either they or Percy and myself, or both, were living in Hanzhong, they never failed
to be our greatest friends and trustworthy advisers through the good times and the bad.
Dr. Xiao's parents had worked for some of the early CIM missionaries. On one occasion when the
young Mr. Xiao, Dr. Xiao's father, had accompanied the missionaries down the river, he had been
washed overboard and drowned. Determined to help the young widow, the missionaries had taken
upon themselves the responsibility of the education of her son and eventually sent him to the Christian
Hospital in Gansu to train under Dr. King. He did well and later returned to Hanzhong to set up
practice for himself, using both Western and Chinese methods and medicine.
73
