8. China at Last
Chapter 8
China at Last
Belle peered over the railing of the Empress of Russia. The sky was battleship grey and melted into the sea at the horizon. So far, eight days into the voyage from Vancouver to Shanghai, China, the sea had been rough and the temperature cool for fall, but Belle did not mind. She was ecstatic to finally be on her way, though it had been sad to say good-bye to her father and brother when the ship made a brief stop in Victoria.
On board the Empress of Russia with her were eleven other CIM missionaries—nine new recruits and two experienced missionaries returning to China from furlough. One of these returning missionaries was Ruth Paxson, who conducted an hour-long Bible study each morning. Belle eagerly attended the Bible study. She loved listening to Ruth’s stories about China and her advice on how to fit in as a missionary. But this particular morning Ruth said something that upset Belle. Ruth looked from the face of one eager young missionary to the next and pronounced, “When you get to China, all the scum of your nature will rise to the top.”
Belle was indignant. Was Ruth Paxson saying they all had scum in their nature? The other missionaries on the voyage seemed like kind, generous people, and Belle felt scum was too strong a word to describe their response to the challenges they would face on the mission field. Belle did not anticipate any major problems adjusting to missionary life; God had called her to the mission field, and that was all she needed to know.
Six weeks after setting sail from Vancouver, Belle stood at the rail of the Empress of Russia and watched as the coast of China came into view. The land was lush and green, and as the ship moved closer to land, Belle could see small villages dotted about the landscape. Eventually the ship passed through the mouth of the Yangtze River, whose water was a muddy brown color. Soon afterward, the ship turned south into the Hwang-poo River. After traveling fifteen miles up the Hwang-poo, it arrived at Shanghai. By now all of the missionaries aboard were lined up along the railing as the Empress of Russia inched her way closer to the dock.
Chicago had been a bustling city, and even Vancouver, but Belle had never before seen anything like Shanghai. The whole city seemed to be a seething mass of activity. The Hwang-poo River was clogged with vessels of all sizes. Ships were coming and going amid hundreds of junks and smaller sampans that zipped up and down and across the river.
Belle could see men everywhere on the dock. Some were waiting to tie up their ship and move the gangway into position, while others were moving freight from ships docked nearby. Men were carrying heavy loads slung from bamboo poles that rested on their shoulders, while others pushed along wheelbarrow-like contraptions piled high with goods. It all looked like total chaos to Belle, but she noted that the hundreds of men she saw seemed to know what they were doing and where they were going with their loads.
Soon after the Empress of Russia had docked, a representative from China Inland Mission came aboard to escort the new arrivals to the CIM guesthouse. As the group made its way through the streets of Shanghai, Belle was once again dumbfounded by all the activity. Western-style office buildings lined many of the streets. Street vendors were selling vegetables that Belle had never seen before, not to mention meat that she had no idea what animal it came from. Flies languished on the meat in the sun, and a stench unlike anything Belle had ever smelled before permeated the air. Amid all of this, children played in the street, men drank tea under the tattered awnings of street-side teahouses, and women haggled with street vendors over the price of goods.
Belle was glad when they finally made it to the CIM guesthouse, a small oasis amid the teeming bustle and activity that was Shanghai. She was also overjoyed to find James Fraser waiting for her at the guesthouse. “Welcome to China at last,” he said.
How wonderful it was for Belle to see a familiar face and someone who knew her parents. James looked a little gaunt, but his eyes were still ablaze with the same enthusiasm she remembered from The Firs and from his weeklong visit with her family in Victoria.
James explained to Belle how on his return to China from furlough he had not been sent back to work among the Lisu people. Instead, he had been appointed as a special assistant to D. E. Hoste, the general director of China Inland Mission. He was disappointed about this decision because his heart was with the Lisu people. Still, he could not escape the fact that he believed God had opened this new door of service for him, and so he had accepted it. Now that the antiforeigner uprising was over, James served as the superintendent of CIM’s work in all of Yunnan Province, which allowed him to be closer to the Lisu.
Two days after arriving in Shanghai, James led a small group of the new missionary recruits, including Belle, who were assigned to work in Yunnan Province to Kunming, the provincial capital. Kunming was located twelve hundred miles southwest of Shanghai, and to get there the group traveled by river and by train.
Exhausted but excited to be in Yunnan Province and closer to the Lisu people, Belle arrived at the CIM guesthouse in Kunming. Waiting there for her was John Kuhn. While the two of them had corresponded faithfully since John left Moody Bible Institute back in Chicago, for the first time since their engagement, Belle was looking into the eyes and listening to the voice of the man she would spend the rest of her life with. For some reason she felt strangely shy.
Belle’s shyness did not last for long. After all, the two of them had a lot to talk about. Mrs. Helms, who ran the CIM guesthouse, served them tea and scones while John told Belle all about his experiences during the antiforeigner uprising. John had fled to Shanghai for a time, but his journey there, while still hair-raising, had been a lot less life-threatening than James’s journey to safety. On the trip to Kunming, James Fraser had told Belle a little about his experience. He had been much farther inland when the call came for foreigners to evacuate to the coast. With so much antiforeigner feeling in the countryside, it was too dangerous for the fleeing missionaries to travel overland to the coast. Instead they took to the Yellow River in three makeshift rafts. It was a harrowing journey: robbers followed them along the riverbank, one of the rafts got caught in a whirlpool for several hours, and one of the missionaries died along the way. But eventually James had led the group to safety in Tientsin.
Sadly, John could not stay long with Belle in Kunming. He had to get back to his work in Chengchiang to the south, and it was time for Belle to begin her language classes. The two parted knowing the plan ahead: Belle would stay at the guesthouse for three months for language study and then transfer to an outlying mission station to work alongside a more experienced female missionary while continuing to learn the language. China Inland Mission had a strict policy mandating that engaged couples in the mission needed to live and work in China for two years before they could marry. That meant that John and Belle could not marry until November 1930, a date that seemed such a long way off. Still, they both had plenty of work to keep them busy until then, and they anticipated seeing each other only a few times before their wedding.
The weeks of language study in Kunming seemed to fly by, and soon Belle had completed her first unit of Chinese language study. Now it was time for her to move out to the countryside, where for the first time she was surrounded by many tiny villages filled with peasants who had never before heard the gospel. Belle was thrilled by this part of missionary life. This was the opportunity she had prayed for. But she had not anticipated her revulsion at living like the locals. On a bad day everything irritated her: Bathrooms were unheard of, and she had to find a private spot in a field to relieve herself. There was no hot water or way to bathe effectively, and soon she was as infested with lice and fleas as everyone else around her. The food was fatty and tasteless to her, and she threw it up more often than she kept it down. In despair she began to wonder what kind of bride she would make. She certainly had not imagined herself trying to delice and soothe mounds of fleabites for her wedding day.
Still, Belle persevered. Her missionary coworker told her that things would get easier, and Belle certainly hoped so. However, she did not have much time to find out. Late one night only nine days into her assignment at the outlying mission station, the CIM supervisor for the district arrived at the door of their mud hut. Belle opened the door, and the supervisor rushed inside, sweat dripping off his brow. “I’ve come to get you both and take you back to the capital,” he said. “The governor has sent his army upcountry to support another army, and a band of guerrillas is trying to take over the countryside in their absence. You are right in their path here. God grant us the speed to keep ahead of them! We must be off first thing in the morning. Pray that they do not overtake us.”
Belle passed a restless night with her ears tuned in to any slight noise outside. Nothing unusual happened, and first thing in the morning the three of them gathered their belongings and set off back to Kunming, managing to stay ahead of the guerilla band. They arrived safely in Kunming to find the CIM guesthouse overflowing with missionaries who had also fled their posts. Many of them, like Belle, were single women working in pairs. Mr. Hoste, CIM’s general director, declared that it was too unsafe for them to work outside the city walls until the situation improved, and that it looked like it might be a long way off. It appeared that Belle would be stuck inside Kunming for a year and a half until she married John and was able to travel outside the city with him.
At the same time that this was happening in Kunming, China Inland Mission reviewed its rules on engaged couples and decided that a couple could marry once they had spent a year in China. Belle was overjoyed when she heard of this policy change. She could now marry John a year earlier and get back to pioneer mission work.
Planning for the wedding began. Belle wanted a small, private ceremony; after all, she hardly knew anyone in Kunming. But Mrs. Helms had other ideas. “It’s not just about you,” she told Belle. “It’s a social event here in China—and a happy one. We all attend our share of fellow missionary funerals, and we need to balance that out with weddings. Of course, you will have to invite all of the Europeans in the town.”
Belle balked at the idea, but in the weeks before the wedding, so many European women she met told her how much they were looking forward to receiving an invitation to the event that she gave in—the whole expatriate population of Kunming was invited to the wedding.
John and Belle were married at the Chinese Church of Kunming on November 4, 1929. A large crowd, half of whom Belle could not even name, gathered to witness the ceremony.
The couple spent a week honeymooning at the luxurious French hotel in town. The honeymoon, a gift from John’s father, was a time to relax before they faced the austere life at John’s mission station in Chengchiang.
After the honeymoon, Belle and John returned to the guesthouse to collect Belle’s belongings. Belle was particularly eager to open the trunk she had brought with her from Canada. The trunk was filled with all sorts of things to make their house in Chengchiang a real home.
Just as the newlyweds were about to leave the guesthouse, Mr. Hoste arrived to pray with them. When he had finished praying, he said to Belle, “You know, Belle, if I had a beautiful quilt, I would throw it in the river.”
Belle felt her face turn red. What a strange thing to say, she thought. How does Mr. Hoste know I brought a quilt with me, and why would he say that anyway? Surely it can’t hurt to surround myself with small reminders of home and a little beauty.
It did not take Belle long to realize why Mr. Hoste had made the comment.