The Missionary Review


Book Description




Christianity in China


Book Description

A bibliographical guide to the works in American libraries concerning the Christian missionary experience in China.




Christianity in China


Book Description

A bibliographical guide to the works in American libraries concerning the Christian missionary experience in China.




War and Occupation in China


Book Description

A fresh eyewitness account of the Japanese invasion of mid-China in 1937-1938, these letters by an American missionary in Hangzhou provide a vividly detailed, first-hand account of the spread of war from Shanghai across the Yangzi valley and the subsequent ordeals of military occupation seen against the better-known backdrop of the Nanjing Massacre – one man’s embedded experience in one major Chinese city of one chaotic year of war. Already 25 years in Republican China and fluent in the language when the Japanese arrived, the author was well-placed as both an observer of, and participant in harrowing events – the provost of the Hangzhou Christian College and responsible for its campus, president of the local Red Cross which organized refugee camps and shelter for those displaced by the looting and raping that ensued, and chairman of an International Committee which sought to mediate between Japanese and Chinese forces in an effort to limit destruction and then to negotiate with the occupation regime on a day-to-day basis. The letters – written twice weekly – describe pitched battles and aerial bombing, the fearful conditions of civilian refugees, the exigencies of the missionary enterprise and the experiences of foreign neutrals in wartime China, as well as the practical dilemmas of collaboration that arose under occupation – moving about, protecting refugees, procuring food, tending a dairy herd, and ministering to embattled congregations. The letters are fully annotated to give readers a fuller perspective on places, people, and events that surround the eyewitness accounts. A substantially researched introductory essay provides necessary historical background and situates the author in a longer missionary career that began in 1911 and ended with wartime internment in 1943.







Thomas Cochrane and the Dragon Throne


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In 1897, Tom Cochrane, a young doctor, arrived with his bride in Inner Mongolia, China’s northernmost territory. Three years later, after labouring single-handedly in a mud-floored dispensary, he realized that his work was a drop in a sea of suffering. A radical new approach was needed. He was gripped by the vision of a Western medical college and teaching hospital in Peking. In 1900, the Boxer uprising broke out. Fanatics roamed the countryside crying, ‘Kill the foreigners! Kill them before breakfast!’ The Cochranes and their three little boys fled as thirty thousand Christians and hundreds of missionaries were butchered. Undeterred, Tom returned to Peking in 1901 to treat beggars and lepers in converted mule stables. After bringing a major cholera epidemic under control, he won allies at the imperial court. With the help of the chief eunuch, he gained the support of the dreaded Empress Dowager. In 1906, Cochrane established the Union Medical College in Peking, China’s first Western medical school. It still stands today, a prestigious academic centre, its missionary origins forgotten, but it is one of countless seeds planted by Christians in China.




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