Some background thoughts.
People will immediately view Western involvement in China during the 1800s in terms of the colonial struggle for political and economic power. While that is an important part of the story, I tend to approach some of this history in terms of interesting personalities and their contribution to personal, social and even cultural development. Times do change, and while there is always good and not-so-good resistance to change, the nature of individuals and cultures everywhere is a story of adapting to changing environments and conditions.
I find China amazing in terms of its continuous history, its geographical isolation for much of its history and the sophisticated culture and technologies that led the world for such a long time. However, the good times for most nation states and cultures do ebb and flow historically. The period of my interest in East/West relations in China includes the latter years of the Qing Dynasty and the tumultuous period following the declaration of the Chinese republic (1912). It was a time of intense interest in China by people of the West, and it represents a time of forced re-thinking within China of traditions and ways of life as foreign powers engaged it at a time of relative weakness. The period from mid-1800s to mid-1900s forced China to come to terms with its need for change in the face of new ideas and technologies that were part of the broader International world. As a result of devastations caused by both external and internal conflicts, China has emerged with an amazing ability to take from other cultures and traditions what it wishes, while choosing to reject what it does not wish to incorporate into its own system. In this sense, it now functions with a level of maturity that is, in many respects, the envy of nations that have much less control over their own destiny.
It is in this context that I approach and analyze the history of Hudson Taylor and certain other Westerners in China.
The missionary zeal of Hudson Taylor
Motivated by an intense awareness of God in his life, and of his understanding of a very literal interpretation of the Christian Bible, Hudson Taylor sensed what people often describe as a “call from God” to share this knowledge and understanding (commonly called the Gospel) with people who had never heard it before. This motivation and activity, of course, is strongly rooted in the biblical accounts of the chief early spokesman for Christianity, known as Saint Paul.
In contrast to the times of St Paul, however, where Paul and the other early apostles (leaders of the early Christian movement) were minority people with little poawer at the time of Roman occupation. But in the 1800s, Britain was a world superpower. Missionary efforts at the time were integrated into Western culture in a much different way than they are today. Christianity was viewed as foundational to much of the seemingly successful way of life in the Western World. As always, people carry with them much of their culture and perspectives of their times, whether they wish to distance themselves from such realities or not.
Arrival in China
Taylor first arrived in China in 1854 and took residence in Ningbo. After a few difficult years he returned to England dissatisfied with the administration of his sending organization and its approach to mission work. There were clearly advantages, for instance, for missionaries to be close to the power bases of their motherland (i.e., the trading centres established by the colonial government as a result of provocative wars), but Taylor sensed his call to escape such securities and “in faith upon God” to venture inland so as to relate directly with the common people. The visionary leadership of a man who broke with traditions and security enjoyed by most foreigners overseas provided a kind of inspiration to devout Christians not only in Britain but other Western lands as well. His ability to motivate and recruit, while promising little in the way of material support or security, has evolved into an icon of missionary leadership, surpassed in Christian history maybe only by St Paul himself.
Taylor had some minimal medical training prior to his first entrance to China in 1853 at age 21 and was unmarried. On his return to Britain he completed medical training, found a wife, and laid the foundation for a new missionary organization, the China Inland Mission. Back in China he, and others of his group, practiced Western medicine for the first time in dozens of communities where missionaries settled.
Taylor’s home base in Zhenjiang
The inland home base for Taylor and his family was Zhenjiang, a strategic communications centre at the junction of the great Changjiang (Yangtze River) and the huge man-made Beijing-Hangzhou canal system (the Grande Canal). It was here that he lost his first wife, Maria, and was later (1905) buried there himself after living a dedicated life of 50 years in China.
During the Qing era, Chinese men were forced to adopt a unique hairstyle that involved shaving hair from above the forehead and growing a lengthy pigtail at the back. Taylor and his missionaries chose to follow this style and other local clothing fashions.
While Taylor was well-situated in Zhenjiang for travel on the waterways, overland transportation was commonly by foot, by cart, and wheelbarrow.
The opium wars and the ugly trade in opium
Unknown to most Westerners today, the British trading success in China in the 1800s was dependent on the infamous opium trade and the military battles that Britain won when the Chinese leaders attempted to end the trade. (See my blog article on Lin Zexu here.) Taylor and his missionary agency understood very well the devastation that opium addiction created within families and communities. It is to his credit that he took a strong stand against the practice. His agency office back in London repeatedly appealed to the British government to halt the trade.
Christians and the rebellions
Life in China during those early days was not simple, of course. Foreigners were always regarded with suspicion, and at times with outright hostility. Missionaries were in China during the Taiping Rebellion (which, at the beginning seemed to reflect at least some important elements of Christianity). Some years later (1900), missionaries suffered greatly with the Boxer Uprising. In fact, something like 77 CIM personnel died (including 21 children) as a result of the uprising centered in the north around Hebei and Shanxi provinces. Chinese converts and others seen as followers of the ways of foreigners took the brunt of the anti-foreign anger. Unfortunately, the Eight-Nations reinforcements that moved in to quell the uprising, caused at least a doubling of the casualties in the process. Reparations demanded of the Qing Dynasty were onerous to the extreme. In contrast to the many atrocities on both sides of this conflict, Hudson Taylor and his mission agency is remembered for his refusal to receive any of the reparation money that had been imposed on the Qing government by the Foreign powers. His stand reflected his belief that his people were to be dependent on God for their security. As much as he was a foreigner, he is credited with greater empathy of the Chinese perspective than most others of the time.
Other China Inland Mission locations
(Add photo here.)The China offices of the China Inland Mission were located in Shanghai, the logistical centre for transportation and international communication. In Yantai (Shandong Province), an early medical facility had been established for the treatment of tuberculosis (TB), a common medical problem in the early days. The climate of Yantai, located in the north-eastern part of China on the Bohai Sea, provided a sanctuary for rest and recovery of missionaries and was later chosen as the site for a school for the children of missionaries and other foreigners. Chefoo School was named to simply reflect the early name of the community that later became known as Yantai. Elsewhere I have written about Chefoo School. (Follow my link here.) The school site was forced to close only in 1943 After functioning for some time under Japanese occupation, and after the fateful Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour brought the United States fully into the war with Japan.
The later years
Following the death of its founder, the China Inland Mission continued to attract hundreds of young men and women (including single women, which was not commonly practiced before) to the work of its mission in China. In total, more than 1300 came to China, and they often were the first resident foreigners settled in many cities and towns through China. After a time, converts were made as local people chose to break with the long-standing traditions and religious patterns. Local Chinese pastors were trained even as the foreigners continued to exercise too much paternalism in the control of the church movement in those early years. Indeed, it was not until the time of the new People’s Republic that the foreign influences and control were fully replaced by national leadership.
Some of the legacy of missionary work in China
Missionary work has always involved both teaching and lifestyle practice. The legacy of Christian missionary work in China, as elsewhere, is a mix of different approaches and emphases. CIM missionaries were involved in schools and hospitals along with their religious teaching. Single women missionaries, as teachers and medical personnel, became role models for Chinese girls. Viewed both at the time, and from the standards of today, much of what occurred was done with various degrees of good will, but often with excessive ignorance and arrogance. Of course, viewing such cross-cultural contacts in hindsight allows us to apply different standards and to see things from a more critical perspective. From a Western culture point of view, with its trappings of advanced technologies and attitudes of superiority, it is nevertheless true that CIM and many other such organizations provided a kind of cross-cultural people-to-people contact that was instrumental in infusing a traditional culture with new ideas, with a greater awareness of the larger world, and with the basics of a developing International valuing of modern science and public education. In contrast to those early days, China now has fully entered upon the International world stage and has become a power in its own right. For people like me, I sense that the role of Christian missionaries in this process is not nearly as well understood as it should be, in the West as well as in China.
Memorials to Dr James Hudson Taylor
But in Zhenjiang and in Yantai, I am aware of memorials to the times of Dr Hudson Taylor and his China Inland Mission. These have been developed by the Chinese themselves and I think are promising indications of greater acceptance, involving both the good and the bad, which is part of our shared East/West history. As people we are never perfect. We also need to be reminded that our own feeble attempts sometimes to promote “the good life” will at some time in the future be viewed in an unfavourable light. This does not mean that people of good will ought not to try to do what is good and what is right. Both China and the West have a history of some sense of the “mandate of heaven” that transcends the feeble efforts of both common people and their leadership to live with honour and integrity. That is the “stuff of religion,” the basic beliefs of all cultures, and is part of our common histories.
First published: 2018/01/05
Latest revision: 2020/03/30