Linda and Robert Banks, Through the Valley of the Shadow: Australian Women in War-Torn China. In Studies in Chinese Christianity, edited by Carol Lee Hamrin and G. Wright Doyle. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2019.
One of three volumes by this husband-and-wife team in the Studies in Chinese Christianity series, this book tells five stories of seven Australian women who served in China from the last decade of the nineteenth century through the middle of the twentieth century.
The description on the back cover says it well:
These courageous missionaries lived in the midst of pre-Boxer uprisings, the Republican revolution, clashes between regional warlords, Japanese occupation during World War II, and civil war between Nationalists and Communists. Suffering deprivation and hardship with the Chinese people, they were shot at and bombed, endured capture and imprisonment, and risked their lives to save others. Some were even killed. Working in villages, hospitals, schools, orphanages, and refugee centers, these women helped raised the status of women and helped to develop educational, medical and welfare institutions that exist to this day. Based on first-hand research, visits to various sites in China, and including a number of historic photos, this book is written for anyone interested in the lives of people who made a difference to the world around them.
Though they all worked with the Church Missionary Society, Australia, they were varied in their background, personalities, ministries, and experiences. The composite picture drawn by the authors gives us an excellent description of different types of missionaries and missionary work at different locations during differing times in China’s tumultuous history.
Chapter 1: Eleanor and Elizabeth Saunders. Pastoral works – Kucheng
Eleanor (Nellie) and Elizabeth (Topsy) were sisters who had become interested in the needs of women and children in Chinese through hearing J. Hudson Taylor speak when he visited Melbourne in 1889. Nellie was training to be a professional pianist and Topsy was preparing to be a private tutor. When they sailed from Sydney on October 13, 1893, Nellie was twenty-two and Topsy was only twenty. Both had been accepted by the Church Missionary Association (CMA), the semi-autonomous branch of the Church Missionary Society in Australia, and both had received some theological and medical training before they departed.
The sisters immediately donned Chinese dress and began to learn the local dialect. After gaining some proficiency, they started teaching in Chinese. Nellie taught boys who would become teachers, women on Sundays, a day school on Saturday afternoons, and she visited villages each week. Topsy taught women’s classes and at a girls’ and boys’ school, ran a little dispensary, and was constantly with Chinese women, visiting them and being visited by them.
The missionaries used to go to their summer quarters on Hua Shan, higher up and cooler than Kucheng. On August 1, 1895, an anti-Imperial and anti-foreign band of “Vegetarians” surrounded and attacked the house in which they were staying. Within thirty minutes, eleven women and children had been brutally murdered.
Though many criticized the mission for sending women into the interior, the courage and faith of the martyrs stirred greater interest in missions and brought in more recruits. Local Christians were also strengthened in their faith and dedication to the gospel. Eventually, Kucheng became a vital center of Christianity in the province. In death, the women continued to speak.
The rich harvest of faith seen in the lives of the surviving Stewart children (from the Saunders sisters’ guardian family) is beautifully told by Robert and Linda Banks, Children of the Massacre: The Extra-Ordinary Story of the Stewart Family in Hong Kong and West China. In Studies in Chinese Christianity, edited by G. Wright Doyle and Carol Lee Hamrin. Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2021.
Chapter 2: Victoria Mannett
Victoria Mannett grew up in Melbourne, where she came under the Christian influence of the local Anglican church. After teaching in a high school for several years, she joined the Church Missionary Society for service in China.
Over the next twenty-seven years, she furthered the cause of women’s and girls’ education in Chengdu, Sichuan, both as a teacher and as an administrator and advisor for CMS educational work.
China was wracked by fighting between different warlords, as well as raids by large bandit groups. She had to evacuate her post several times. Once, when her building became the headquarters of a revolutionary army in its fight with another army for control of the city, she and her students had to hide under tables for safety.
She took several furloughs to rest and recover, but she gladly returned to China again and again despite the danger, as her educational roles and responsibilities grew more significant and demanding. Finally, the invasion of China by Japan forced her to return to Melbourne for good in 1937.
During those decades, she worked in various capacities with the Church Missionary Society’s home staff as a valued member.
She died in 1958 after a lifetime of faithful service. Her pioneering work in women’s education in Sichuan left a legacy of strong schools and great affection toward her by her Chinese students and coworkers.
Chapter 3: Martha and Eliza Clark
This chapter opens with a gripping account of a harrowing experience that typified the kinds of danger in which missionaries in the early part of the twentieth century in China faced.
The twins had grown up in a wealthy household whose fortunes fell when their father died, leaving their mother devastated. When she became addicted to alcohol, the girls had to learn to cope with scarcity and to provide for themselves and others.
First Martha and then Eliza, moved by the testimonies about the massacre in Kucheng, traveled to China with the Church Missionary Association, a semi-autonomous branch of the Anglican Church Missionary Society (CMS) in Australia, in 1904 and 1906, respectively. For most of the next two decades, they served with the CMS educational work in Ningbo, with some time spent in Shanghai.
Martha became principal of the Women’s Bible School and Eliza the principal of St. Catherine’s School, both on the CMS property in Ningbo. In addition to their administrative duties, they taught classes, counselled the students, encouraged the staff, and did all they could to keep their schools running in a time of incessant warfare and strong anti-foreign agitation.
While in Ningbo and then in Shanghai with both Chinese and foreign refugees fleeing from the invading Japanese army, they witnessed horrific suffering, which they sought by all means to alleviate. Bombs fell around them, bullets whizzed by their windows, and the cries of the wounded and dying filled their ears.
In 1941, Japan attacked British and American forces in Asia. With other expatriates, the twins were interned in a camp as aliens, first in Ningbo and then, in 1942, in Shanghai. Along with other missionaries, they played a leading role in making camp existence more livable. Overcrowding, illness, shortages of food and medicines, and poor sanitation damaged everyone’s health.
After the war ended in 1945, they chose to return to Ningbo rather than go on a much-needed furlough in Australia. They had to restore not only the facilities of their schools but the entire educational structure they had labored so hard to build. Eventually, Martha’s body broke down and she had to be sent home, accompanied by her inseparable twin as caregiver.
Back in Australia, they assisted in the work of the CMS in various ways. Eliza died of cancer in 1961, and Martha followed her in 1965.
Chapter 4: Rhoda Watkins
Rhoda Watkins grew up with seven siblings on a farm in rural South Australia. As a young woman, though she had planned to marry a man who had gone to Europe to fight in World War I, she responded to what she thought was God’s leading to become a medical missionary among the Chinese. With great reluctance, she broke off her relationship with the man she loved and prepared to serve overseas by training for her life’s work. Arriving in China in February 1922, she first studied the local dialect of Mandarin used in Guilin. She arrived in Guilin in 1923, where she soon replaced the current Matron of the Way of Life hospital.
Immediately, she engaged in a full range of activities, including taking care of the hospital staff, tending to the patients, and visiting dispensaries in outlying villages. Over the next twenty-seven years, she carried on her ministry of mercy in the midst of almost constant political turmoil, warfare, and revolution. First the Anti-Foreign and Anti-Christian movements brought disruption and danger. The conflict between competing warlords, and between the Communists and the Nationalists, along with attacks from murderous bandits, added to the misery of the people and the burdens of caring for the suffering in her hospital.
Then the Japanese invasion of China plunged Guilin into the horrors of aerial bombing that caused massive death, destruction, and deprivation. Finally, the civil war between Nationalist and Communist forces, and the eventual victory of the Communists, made it impossible for her to remain in China.
Rhoda took furloughs throughout these tumultuous years to recover her health and tell people at home about the crushing needs of the Chinese people. Each time, however, she returned to her post in Guilin, despite the difficulties and dangers. She left China for good in 1950, broken in health and suffering from the mental strain of serving others in the midst of violence and horrific suffering.
In 1953, she had recovered enough to go to Malaya to help with a CMS hospital near Kuala Lumpur, but her eyesight had deteriorated such that she had to retire in Australia. She was then diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. She died in 1975 at the age of 81, well-remembered and much loved by Chinese and Westerners alike
Chapter 5: Nora Dillon
The story of Nora Dillon also begins with a graphic description of the suffering inflicted by a Japanese aerial bombing attack on Canton (now spelled Guangzhou). Growing up in the home of an Anglican minister, Nora heard stories of missionaries like the Saunders sisters, the subjects of the first chapter of this book.
Born in 1906, Nora was educated in both public and church schools. In 1927, she experienced what she called “full surrender” to God. The next year she enrolled in the Melbourne Bible Institute, an inter-denominational missionary training center. She joined the CMS in 1930 and sailed for China that same years.
Over the next twenty years, Nora served in various CMS educational institutions for girls, in parish and itinerant ministry, and then as headmistress of Taipo Orphanage in Hong Kong. She identified with the people by donning Chinese dress and spending time with them in their homes, as well as by sharing in their sufferings at the hands of the Japanese and then the Communists. During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, as the head of an orphanage, she was not interned, but she did have to live through years of great scarcity and hardship. Through it all, she was able to share the peace and hope that Christ brings with the children under her care and to encourage the members of the Chinese church in which she served.
After the war, the CMS posted Nora to serve in the CMS school and church in Shaoxing (then Shaohsing) in Zhejiang Province. After they conquered China, the Communists allowed churches to continue their ministries for a while, but eventually took control of them and created conditions that forced foreign missionaries to leave the country.
Returning to Australia, like most of the other women studied in this volume, Nora contributed greatly to the home ministry of the CMS until her death 1974. She did not live to see the lasting fruit of her faithful ministry, but it lives on in the growing church and orphanages where she labored sacrificially under extremely trying conditions.
Evaluation
This slender volume conveys a powerful message of dedication, courage, and sacrificial service by women missionaries from Australia over a period of more than fifty years.
Based on meticulous and wide-ranging research, the volume provides vivid narratives not only of the lives of these women, but of the overall conditions in the China they loved so much. It is written in a lively and often powerful style. There are some errors that more careful editing could have eliminated, a curious use of lower-case letters for “bible” and “christian,” and the kind of dangling and misplaced modifying phrases and clauses that are common in British writing but jarring for American readers.
Overall, the volume serves as an invaluable history of a group of women who represent many more of their sex in the history of missions in China and who evoke our highest admiration.
G. Wright Doyle