CHAPTER IV—A CITY UNDER THE HILLS
In my wanderings across Shansi I came in contact with two missionary systems run with the same object in view but carried out in diametrically opposite ways. Of course I speak as an outsider. I criticise as one who only looks on, but after all it is an old saw that the onlooker sees most of the game. There are, of course, many missions in China, and I often feel that if the Chinaman were not by nature a philosopher he would sometimes be a little confused by salvation offered him by foreigners of all sects and classes, ranging from Roman Catholics to Seventh Day Adventists. Personally I have received much kindness from English Baptists, from the China Inland Mission and from American Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Amongst them all I—who frankly do not believe in missions, believing that the children at home should first be fed—found much to admire, much individual courage and sacrifice, but for the systems, I felt the American missions were the most efficient, far the most likely to attain the end in view.
The Chinaman, to begin with, sees no necessity for his own conversion. Unlike the ordinary black man, he neither admires nor envies the white man, and is given to thinking his own ways are infinitely preferable. But the Chinaman is a man of sound common-sense, he immensely admires efficiency, he is a great believer in education, and when a mission comes to him fully equipped with doctors, nurses and hospitals, teachers and schools, he, once he has overcome his dread of anything new, begins to avail himself first of the doctor and the hospital, for the sore need of China is for medical attendance, and then of the schools. Then comes conversion. They tell me that there are many genuine converts. I have only noticed that the great rich American missions rake in converts by tens and twenties, where they come dribbling in in units to the faith missions, which offer no such advantages as medical attendance or tuition. The faith missionaries work hard enough. I have seen a woman just come in from a week's missionary tour in a district where, she explained, she had slept on the k'angs with the other women of the household, and she was stripping off her clothes most carefully and combing her long hair with a tooth-comb, because all women of the class she visited among were afflicted with those little parasites that we do not mention. The Chinese have a proverb that “the Empress herself has three,” so it is no shame. She thought nothing of her sacrifice, that was what she had come for, everyone else was prepared to do the same; but when so much is given I like to see great results, as in the American missions. They are rich, and the Chinaman, with a few glaring exceptions, is a very practical person. To ask him to change his faith for good that will work out in another world is asking rather much of him. If he is going to do so he feels he may as well have a God who will give him something in return for being outcast. At least that is the way I read the results. Look at Fen Chou, for instance, where the Americans are thriving and a power in the town, and look at Yung Ning Chou, farther west, where a Scandinavian faith mission has been established for over twenty years. They may have a few adherents in the country round, but in the city itself—a city of merchants—they have, I believe, not made a single convert.
Of course the China Inland Mission does not lay itself out to be rich. However many subscriptions come in, the individual missionary gets no more than fifty pounds a year; if more money comes, more missionaries are established, if less, then the luckless individual missionary gets as much of the fifty pounds as funds allow. The Founder of the Faith was poor and lowly, therefore the missionaries must follow in His footsteps. I understand the reason, the nobility, that lies in the sacrifice implied when men and women give their lives for their faith, but not only do I like best the results of the American system, but I dislike exceedingly that a European should be poor in an Oriental country. If missionaries must go to China, I like them to go for the benefit of the Chinese and for the honour and glory of the race to which they belong, and not for the good of their own souls.
I came into Fen Chou Fu and went straight to the large compound of the American missionaries, three men and three women from Oberlin College, Ohio. They had a hospital, they had a school, they had a kindergarten, the whole compound was a flourishing centre of industry. They teach their faith, for that is what they have come out for, but also they teach the manifold knowledge of the West. Sanitation and hygiene loom large in their curriculum, and heaven knows, without taking into consideration any future life, they must be a blessing to those men and women who under cruel conditions must see this life through. These six missionaries at Fen Chou Fu do their best to improve those conditions with a practical American common-sense and thoroughness that won my admiration.
Fen Chou Fu, unlike T'ai Yuan Fu, is friendly, and has always been friendly, to the foreigner; even during the Boxer trouble they were loath to kill their missionaries, and when the order came that they were to be slain, declined to allow it to be done within their walls, but sent them out, and they were killed about seven miles outside the city—a very Chinese way of freeing themselves from blood-guiltiness.
The town struck me as curiously peaceful after the unrest and the never-ending talk of riot, robbery and murder I had heard all along the road. The weather was getting warm and we all sat at supper on the verandah of Dr Watson's house, with the lamps shedding a subdued light on the table, and the sounds of the city coming to us softened by the distance, and Mr Watt Pye assured me he had been out in the country and there was nothing to fear, nothing. The Chinaman as he had seen him had many sins, at least errors of conduct that a missionary counts sin, but as far as he knew I might go safely to the Russian border. He had not been in the country very long, not, I fancy, a fifth of the time Dr Edwards had been there, but, listening to him, I hoped once more.