Men Without a Country
Men Without a Country ar we watched the spiritual dawn breaking on the mountains of North Thailand, in that blushing half-twilight of gradually increasing light, we discerned certain figures shuttling back and forth, now appearing, now disappearing, never to be questioned minutely, and yet none so perishing as they.
Dark and hopeless against the pink of growing radiancy, they pierced our hearts as that cry of human need rang out,
"J looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul."
My first encounter with these elusive needy ones was so romantic that it has been printed before, but never in this setting, so I will give it again here.
It was the end of the year 1952, just a few months after we had arrived in Thailand, and we were still at that first house which the Carlsons had procured in Base Camp. It was an evening after Christmas, and we were enjoying a hymn-sing with our friends Dr. and Mrs. Buker. Suddenly a young Chinese soldier was standing on the porch outside our screen door, peering eagerly in at us. There was such intense longing on his face, that, never questioning who he was, I opened the door and motioned him to a seat, which happened to be between John and Don Rulison. As soon as the song which we had been singing ended, he looked up and spoke out in Chinese. "Do you folks know where Pastor
Yang Hui-yin might be?" he asked, searching face after face intensely.
The Lord quickened my wits to guess that he had the name wrong.
"Do you mean Pastor Yang jir-ying?"? I asked, which is John's Chinese name.
"Yes, yes! Yang Jir-ying!"'
"Right here," spoke up John, extending his hand in greeting.
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"Pastor Kuhn of the China Inland Mission?" the man responded, incredulously.
"Yes, said John in wonder.
"Were you in Yunnan?"
Ves,'
"Oh," cried the boy, grabbing the extended hand with such emotion that John quieted him down saying, "Our guests here will soon be leaving, and then we can talk."
As the boy settled back for another song, Don heard him mutter, "I can't believe it. I can't believe it!"'
Dr. and Mrs. Buker took their departure right after that last number, and then we returned to listen to the story which the young guerrilla had to tell.
He came from a Christian family in a small town of western Yunnan, where John had visited and preached just before communism made such trips impossible. The lad had been in school at the time of that visit, so they had not seen much of each other—this being the reason why he had John's given name and that he did not recognize John's face. When the Red régime took over his town, they tried to make all the Christians sign papers of recantation. One man was jailed for five months until he did. All Bibles were collected and burned, he said, except some extra copies which the Christians had hidden in time. "I hid this,' he declared, proudly pulling a small New
Testament from his breast pocket and showing it to us—it was well worn with use. "After they saw what happened to the man in jail," the lad continued, "some of the Christians signed the recantation papers, but they still believed in their hearts and they are reading their Bibles in secret. Our family met together and decided to die if necessary, but not to sign."
Taking this bold stand brought persecution upon them and life became so unbearable that plans were made to flee; they escaped in April, 1952, all but one mother who had so many little children that she would not.
Once they were over the border came the question of how to get a living. Burma would not receive them, neither would
Thailand.
Only one group offered refuge—the Chinese Nationalist guerrillas under General Li Mi. They are the dwellers in No Man's Land, the Burma-Yunnan-Thailand borders. Determined to die rather than become communist,
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they had fled from China, only to find that no other country would have them! "I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me; refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.' These are the people we saw flitting back and forth: now we met them on the mountaintops, now they were gone, and we did not dare question their occupation or whereabouts. Perishing was written over them, and yet personal encounters revealed many a brave and lovable soul.
"We all had to join with Li Mi temporarily, and I was ordered to join the group who marched south forty-sevenand-a-quarter days to Thailand," Ruling Power (for so we roughly translated his name for prayer partners) continued.
His brother was in another group, and when they were parting he said to Ruling Power, ""Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could meet Pastor Kuhn in Thailand? But no, that would be impossible."
"Not impossible if God worked it out for me," replied the laddie, turning away heartsick with many sorrows. So, as they came south, he began to pray that he might meet
John. John's Chinese surname is Yang—about as common among Chinese as Smith is among English-speaking people.
Ruling Power had always called him Pastor Yang and had forgotten to get his Christian name exactly. To hunt for a man called Yang in a country as big as Thailand! No wonder his brother had said it was impossible. Ruling Power had no passport to enter Thailand, he did not know John's address, he did not remember his face, and had his given name incorrectly. But he did have faith that God, who held all these answers, would grant his prayer.
In December Ruling Power became sick. Now next door to that which was our first house in Base Camp was a little hospital, and General Li had made arrangements that any of his men who were wounded might be treated there, if they did not leave the premises. They were brought in trucks, taken away in trucks, and watched all the time. And so God had picked up this laddie, so to speak, and set him down right beside the "needle in the haystack.'' Yet neither he nor we knew.
Being next door, on Christmas Day he heard us singing carols, and thought excitedly, "Christian white people! Maybe they will know where Pastor Kuhn is!'? The night of December
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o17 30, he and some pals were allowed out for a short walk up the street, and again he heard the singing. "'It is in here!'' he said to his friends excitedly. "I am going in here and ask."
"Don't be a fool!" exhorted his companion. 'Vault a shut gate after dark? You with a guerrilla uniform on and no passport in this land! Don't be a f——" but Ruling Power was already over the gate. Before him lay the white man's bungalow on high pillars and a railed-in veranda.
"Wo pa-shang lai-la,"' he announced to us simply—"'I climbed up''—and stood at the screen door through which poured the electric light. The rest you know.
But the time was getting late and he must not be caught with us without permission. "Let us have a word of prayer together," said John, and the lad joined in. When it came his turn to pray, he began, "'O Lord! For Thy grace, for Thy love, and for Thy providential working I th .. ." then he broke down; again and again he tried to continue but great sobs rent him as all the agony of the last two years surged up and would not be suppressed. We stood wet-eyed and hushed in the presence of such anguish.
Arrangements were made and permission obtained for Ruling Power to come and see us daily until his dismissal.
He told us frankly where they were; there were two thousand of them in a deep valley right on the border of Burma and Thailand. The road to their hiding place branched off the Fang road at a certain point which he described to us. We passed it every time we went to Higgledy-Piggledy or to Fang, and always a prayer for Ruling Power went up as we did so.
"Are you the opium smugglers?" I asked him.
'No, we are not allowed to handle opium, nor are we allowed ill-conduct with women; we are very well disciplined," came his simple and straightforward answer. '""There are a few other Christians in our outfit," he went on, ''and last Christmas
Day they met together and had a little meal and remembered the Lord's birth."
"Ts there any way we can contact you?" we asked, eager to be a comfort.
"None," he replied, ''unless more of my outfit are wounded and sent next door."
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And it was so; after he left, silence engulfed him. Out of the night into the glow of Christian love and fellowship for just a few sweet days; then into the darkness again.
And pray for me, my friend When night comes on; God's stars look down upon us both, Apart—alone; Will you, dear friend, before you sleep Pray Him my soul, with yours, ¢ ir ?
We did pray for Ruling Power. And when we discovered the Chinese ward in the hospital next door, where these men were brought and nursed, we often went there and preached the Gospel. Some accepted Christ, and all were cordial. None, however, knew Ruling Power. We did hear of him again, but that will unfold later.
The guerrillas were carefully disciplined, but there was another group in No Man's Land which Ruling Power might have joined, but did not. These were the opium smugglers.
Again and again, in our visits to the Lisu of Ta-Ngo, Edna and I ran into these caravans. Of course we did not ask if they were opium runners, but some of them were very frank, once they grew to trust us. Most of the opium traders were
Moslems, and undoubtedly there were very wicked men among them. But a large number of them were merely refugees out of Red China. They listened eagerly to the Gospel and we always kept a supply of Chinese Gospels and literature at Higgledy-Piggledy for them. We never knew when they would arrive.
One morning, as Edna and I were clearing up after breakfast, the door was pushed open and two heavily armed and fierce-looking Chinese stamped into the room. "It wouldn't do to be of a fearful disposition, would it?'? Edna whispered to me laughingly. We always had to be on the alert, for there were some unfriendly men among them occasionally. This time, the young fellow with the two pistols on his hips turned to me in his rough way and said, "I say, lady, have you any medicine for sores ?"' and he pulled up his trouser leg to show an ulcer. Luckily we had gentian violet with us and gave him a
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good application, whereupon he sat down on the matting floor and began to chat. John was there, that visit, so one of us ran up the hill to Father Wood's and called him down to talk with the two. They nearly fell on his neck when they discovered that he had been to their home towns in Yunnan, and their hearts were very open to the message of Christ as he presented it.
We seldom saw the same men twice. That is why I say they flitted across the breaking of the dawn like shadows; yet for that moment of contact they were hungry-hearted, lonely human beings, responsive and grateful. They paid for everything they bought—not only paid us but paid the tribespeople also—which is more than can be said for the Thai traders. Those moments when they came into the light, showed men who were lovable and honest, trying bravely to accept being pushed back and forth with ferishing written over their future. When they found that some man did care for their souls, their gratitude was touching.
From the Miao, away to the south, Otto Scheuzger heard the Christians testify, "When the mountain Chinese enter our house and see the Christian poster where the demon shrine used to be, they say, "'Are you Christians here? It is wonderful to be a Christian."
And in quite a different part of the mountains from either Ta-Ngo or Yellow Creek, Don Rulison once unwittingly entered a Miao shack and found a group of Chinese there.
One young fellow was sprawled out on the bamboo sleeping floor. But when Don began* to preach Christ in Chinese to them, this boy on the floor sat straight up, turned to his companions and said, "Fellows, this is the Truth. I heard
Pastor Kuhn preach this message at Ta-Ngo. If I could only read I would enter their religion."
We do not know who he was. Lilian Hamer was in HiggledyPiggledy only once, but that first night she led a Chinese to the Lord. A refined and courteous young chap, he had come for medicine and was very grateful to her.
My diary records another contact:
*It is difficult to switch languages; Don had only two years in China, then he had to learn Thai; he had picked up a bit of Karen while living at Khunjem; and had been working on White Miao! To feel his way back to Chinese when he had not used it for the intervening years was difficult.
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This morning John left for Hweiphai for the Field Council meeting. Opium smugglers are in town and taking up Father
Wood's time, so he is not free to study with us. I was left alone a moment on the Woods' veranda when the Chinese Moslem who lives next door to the Woods, seeing the opportunity to speak to me alone, came up and said in a low, confidential voice,
"Just why are you here in this rough-living country?" He expected me to smirk in a manner that would show him that I was in the opium business too, in secret. But I looked at him earnestly and answered, "'For the love of One who loves you," and then I told him of Christ and urged His claims. The Moslem said nothing in return, but backed away from me with amazement and awe on his face.
That afternoon I had a good opportunity to teach Father Wood—he got through one whole page of the catechism!
Then a crowd of opium smugglers gathered around the porch and I preached to them in Chinese. They were from Yunnan, and eagerly asked me what city I had lived in there. On hearing it was Paoshan, they replied, ""Oh, we have a fellow from Paoshan; here you, Yang!''—and they pushed forward a boyish-looking member of the gang.
"'Are you from Paoshan city or a country village on the plain?" I asked.
"From the plain. My mother is a Christian," he replied.
"Oh, then you know the Gospel?" I asked, handing him a tract.
He drew back with a sheepish look. ""No, Teacher, I can't read. I went into the army when I was just a kid. In the Japanese war I was taken as a soldier when I was just twelve.
I didn't like fighting, so—I'm this. Mother became a Christian after I left home, but I've had no news of them for years now. ... Iam twenty."
From twelve to twenty, knowing nothing but army camps and smuggling! Poor laddie! I leaned foward and told him of the Lord Jesus' death for our sins on Calvary. I was deeply stirred. Many a time in the villages of China, I have talked with a country woman about her children and heard her say,
"But my Lao-Er was taken as a soldier years ago and I never hear from him. I don't know whether he is alive or dead, my
Lao-Er,"—and she would wipe away her tears with her worn
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Pee | sleeve. I have wept with them, and yet here was I at the other end of such a story! Here I was with a Christian mother's boy, found, standing in front of me. He assented to all I had to say, but there was no opportunity to deal with him privately.
I told him to come down to the shanty and get some medicine for his eyes.
Edna treated his eyes, but more children and parents clamouring for vaccination had gathered. He stood on the outskirts and watched us wistfully for quite a time. Next morning at daybreak I saw his column lining up for a day's march through the hills—lost sons all of them, but many had Gospel messages in their pockets. I saw them turn and look up at HiggledyPiggledy, the shanty where white people had spoken to them of God's forgiveness of sin, and then bound up their sore feet and put cool medicine into dust-inflamed eyes. Yes, I believe that little shanty looked good to some.
Over in the other prong of the tuning fork, Allyn and Esther Cooke had discovered that there were some of these shuttled-between-the-nations Chinese living at the border town of Maesai. They went to Maesai in their jeep every free week-end they could, and preached to them. Several accepted the Lord, and until Maesai was closed to us for political reasons a little group met on Sundays to listen to the Word and pray together. I will tell the story of just one couple.
Colonel T, a university graduate, heard of the classes which Mr. and Mrs. Dave Harrison of the China Inland
Mission were holding among the students in Kunming city (1936-43) but was not interested then. The girl he had married had also had a previous contact with the Gospel. She had lived in a house in Nanking, opposite a Christian church, and often as a child used to run in and listen to the bright singing; but as her people were Buddhist she had never listened to or accepted the Christian message. They met on one of his visits to Nanking and were married. Then he was thrust into the Nationalist army. He was made a colonel and they were both in the fighting when the Nationalist cause was lost. One thousand officers and their wives rode south on horseback in a desperate escape, with the communist soldiers hot on their heels pursuing them. She told me about it one moonlight night after they had been our guests for supper at Base Camp. We were all sitting
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out on the long veranda which overlooked the Maeping River, with the moonlight silvering its waters and the coloured neon lights of the town mirrored like emerald and ruby jewels in dainty sprays across the silver. Tall palm trees with their fringy fronds were silhouetted dark against the peaceful waters, and behind all rose Chiengmai Mountain, its crest black against the starry sky. All around us was so gentle and beautiful that I have never forgotten its contrast with the story that was issuing from the lips of this pretty young Chinese girl.
We were riding up the sides of a canyon [she said] and the communists had already reached the opposite bank and were shooting at us with their guns. The officer's wife who rode alongside me had her hand, which held the bridle reins, shot to pieces and she fell off her animal, for all were in a mad gallop. I have never forgotten her terrible screams as she realized we were leaving her to her fate, but it was every man for his own life, with the bullets pelting us all. But her cries still ring in my dreams—it was most horrible. We rode for two days and two nights with nothing to eat and nothing to drink, before we dared stop. And so we came to Thailand.
Once across the border into Maesai they were safe, but almost imprisoned. The Chinese were allowed in that border town, but not allowed to leave it. What were they to do for a living? In these desperate circumstances, they met Esther and Allyn Cooke and heard again the Gospel which each had passed by in the days of prosperity. They knew now they needed a Saviour, and gladly accepted Him and were baptized by Allyn Cooke. They still had no passport and no livelihood, but now they could pray! Now they had a Refuge, so they spread their position before Him who worketh wondrously.
And He did wondrously for them. One day there came to Maesai town a Chinese delegation of high officials. Among them didn't Colonel T recognize an old fellow classman at the university! Both were delighted at the encounter, and T put his plight before his old friend. "Sure I will help you," said that old schoolmate. The result was that he was employed to instruct Li Mi's guerrillas in the use of modern weapons, and he was given passport papers to enter Thailand when necessary, and his wife was able to reside with the wife of one of Li Mi's
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officers. But note that the tide of fortune did not turn for them until after they had confessed Christ in baptism! Truly He is a Refuge.
When Li Mi was detained on Formosa and the United Nations ordered the evacuation of the Nationalist guerrillas, the Ts were among those flown to Formosa. This was the political move which fenced Maesai off from us, for the guerrillas entered by that town. We tried to get permission to hand each of them a Gospel in Chinese as they passed through, for their concentration camp was right in our Advance Camp Maechan, where Sylvia and Mary were stationed.
But the politics of the affair were in a very delicate state and no official would take the responsibility of allowing white people to meet with these guerrillas. So the first few hundreds, including Ruling Power and the Ts, went through without our meeting them. Later, it suddenly occurred to us to enlist the help of Mr. Peter Voth, representative of the American Bible
Society and so well known to high officialdom in Bangkok. He obtained permission almost immediately, and from then on our missionaries were informed when a group of the guerrillas were to pass through, and they were allowed to meet them at the airport and give them gospels in Chinese. Many hundreds of gospels were given out this way by Larry Peet, Charles Peterson, Dr. Andrew Anderson, and john.
It was several months later that we received letters from the Colonel Ts, and also one from Ruling Power, telling of their safe and happy arrival in Formosa.
Just one more picture from No Man's Land. One day there walked into one of our Summit Camps a refined, educated young Chinese who even had the English name Robert, as well as his own Chinese names. He was a Christian whose family had been so persecuted by the communists that he, at least, had tried flight and had successfully escaped. On this border land he had heard of Christian missionaries living in the mountains, and with the Lord's help had found his way to their village. Although pitying him from the bottom of their hearts, our missionaries could not shelter him without government permission, and, since he had no passport, that was impossible to obtain. But one of the national Christians in the mountains took him in and greatly profited by hearing him
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read and expound the Bible in Chinese. Robert cleared a little bit of land near to this Christian tribesman and built a little shanty for himself, planted some grain, and started to learn the tribal language. Wherever his Chinese tongue could be understood, he witnessed to the power of the Lord to save.
I had heard of Robert, and when I was asked to make a trip with John in the direction where he was living, I hoped to meet him. And we did. Climbing a hillside, through the green boughs of the woods we caught glimpses of a group descending the trail toward us. Soon they turned the corner of the path and we saw four young tribesmen with carrying baskets on their shoulders. All were dressed in the rough homespun blue of the mountain tribes, but there was a taller one who had an undefinable air and poise that marked him as superior. These ingrained refinements of mind and soul are like a perfume; they reach out and stay your attention, and yet you hardly know where to look for them. It may be the . quick intelligent eye; it may be the unconsciously graceful posture. You cannot put your finger on what it is, but you know instinctively that this person in rough tribal garb has seen better days. I knew it immediately when John called out,
"Ho, Robert!' and broke into Chinese. The lad's face beamed with joy and pleasure at meeting us, and there followed the usual conversation of the mountain path: Where are you going? What is your errand? How long will you stay? and so on.
"T will be back tonight and will drop in and see you!" called out Robert, as finally we pushed on with our journey.
True enough, that evening in Summit Camp just after supper, a tall young Chinese in western style white shirt and bluejeans, hair carefully combed and person shining with cleanliness, walked in. I hardly recognized Robert as the tribal-clad lad of the trail. He was hungry for world news. Obviously his horizons had always been broad and he enjoyed conversation with educated people. As we parted he offered to carry our loads from one point in the mountains to another, and glad to give him the opportunity to earn a little money, we accepted his offer. We pushed on to the next
Summit Camp and were immediately engrossed with the opportunities and problems there. At lunch on the day we
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expected to leave I heard singing far off along the trail and coming toward us. It was a young man's voice, and it was a song of the church, but the notes were so sure and the timbre of the voice so different from the tribesman who is only beginning to learn to sing, that I was struck with it.
"Who is that?" I asked our hostess.
She paused and listened a moment, for the singer was approaching our shanty. "It sounds like Robert,' she said.
"Did you arrange for him to carry your things from here to xr?
A few moments later the singer came into view and we saw that it was Robert, dressed in rough tribal working costume. My heart was stirred again as he swung into the shanty with his tribal basket on his shoulder. We mothers will always think, ""What if this were my son?' Here he was, with his educated mind and refined background, in the coarse clothes of a primitive illiterate, prepared to do the work of such a mountain tribesman, and yet singing the songs of Zion with a lilt and joy that told of an inner freedom over his circumstances which truly was victory.
He had with him a second carrier, a young tribesman who had only recently been converted, and, as we set out over the trail down through the green woods to the other Summit
Camp below us, we heard Robert leading this boy in singing all the hymns which the missionary had been able to translate into that particular tongue. They were not so many, and when they were finished and we still had long stretches of sunlightflecked green forest trail before us, Robert began to sing in Chinese.
Jesus paid it all, All to Him I owe, Sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.
Verse after verse he sang, and then he began, My hope is built on nothing less Than Jesus' blood and righteousness .
. .
I suppose it was hearing the beloved Chinese words again that helped to stir my heart so deeply, but as he sang with such positiveness, AT G
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All other ground is sinking sand, All other ground is sinking sand, I thought of those behind the Bamboo Curtain, and the boy's own precarious and lonely status in Thailand, and my eyes were so moist I could hardly see the path ahead. Truly no man cares for their souls, but their God does. And He had filled the young refugee's heart with song. Let us not forget to pray for the poor refugees all over the earth. The old mystics used to define prayer as the flight of the lonely soul to the lonely God. Let us praise Him that the outcasts of earth are welcome to His loving heart. Elusive shadows they are to the mere onlooker, across the breaking of Thailand's dawn, but if in these brief contacts we can but lead them to Christ, they will find their feet on solid ground, and an inner fellowship will be given them, which will lift them above the depression of their circumstances and give them songs in their night.
He brought me up also out of an horrible pit . .
. and set my feet upon a rock... And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the Lord (Ps. 40:2, 3).
(See Progress Report on the Yunnanese, p. 274.)