Techow, Santung, China
Apri 12, 1939Dear Holyoke friends:
I am here in Shantung, which is sacred soil to the Chinese because of the many famous men who have been born in this province. You know of the greatest of them all, -- Confucius the Master, -- who lived some 2500 years ago. He had a rather heart-breaking time trying to teach various kings who employed him as prime minister, how to be just and kind and a true father to their subjects, and finally settled down to teaching his principles to his 72 disciples who understood at least dimly what a great philosopher he was. --- And Shantung boasts a hoary old sacred mountain, too, Taishan, which was sacred even before Confucius. It rises suddenly out of the plain, and the thousands of worn stone steps of its pilgrim path wind past innumerable shrines and temples to the very top, where a few Chinese characters cut in a rough gray stone mean: "Here once stood Confucius, and felt the smallness of the earth below."
Perhaps you can gather that by thinking back into these few thousand years of Shantung's history, I have been trying to get for myself a sense of historical perspective! As I walk past the alien guards at the high gates of this Shantung city, with their barbed-wire entanglements, or glance at the ragged places in the gray city wall, gouged out by alien cannon-shot, -- or listen to tales of bandits in No Man's Land, robbing or kidnapping the miserable villagers without let-up or hindrance, I tell my indignant and sorrowful self I should imitate Confucius! I should serenely take my stand on the solid 4000 years or so of Shantung's historic record, and consider the true smallness of the past two years.- ........ poor old sacred Shantung!
But it is merely the discouraging present which is depressing me, or is it partly the cold yellow dust that has been blowing forlornly over our flat landscape for the past several days? To be honest, I suppose it is both. It makes me wonder whether the obtuseness of his selfish kinglets seemed to Confucius harder to bear when the choking yellow dust blew in the spring? I must say I cannot recall any sage remarks to his disciples, apropos of Gobi desert dust-storms, in those classic dialogues which we read reverently, our fist days in China. Very well, then, let us emulate Confucius!
I have been breathing Shantung's sacred air and dust, (oh, I forgot!) for about two weeks. I was invited to attend the annual meeting of the Tehchow Congregational Conference, and particularly to tell them something about the Madras meetings, and later to be one of the staff of a Lay Training Institute. The annual meeting has been most interesting, -- chiefly reports and business though it was, -- and its parliametary order would have been a revelation to some of you. These simple rural folk conducted their business with all the dignity in the world, and the delegates from the little scattered churches came forward to give their reports with a full sense of their responsibility. One or two who had never had the honor before, confessed naively enough to their stage-fright. "Dig I can", gasped one sturdy bronzed yougn man, "And plough I can, but I never gave a report in public before, and how can I do this?" Another with an embarrassed grin confessed in a panic, "I know what I want to say, but I can't seem to make my mouth work!" However, there was nothing but smiling encouragement on the faces before him, and his mouth finally worked very well.
I mailed my last letter to you from Singapore, didn't I? Singapore to Shantung is quite a leap! --- You observe that I reached Shanghai safely, together with the hundreds of Jewish refugees from Berlin and Vienna who are pouring into Shanghai on every European ship, Shanghai seeming to be the only city left in a cold-hearted and cautious world where there is a minimum of formality about admittance for these harried thousands. Since they are allowed to bring no money from home, many speak little English and of course less Chiense, the temporary Refuge Committees are getting more and more desperate as boat after boat brings its cargo of frightened, bewildered Jews. Often they are Christians. For those with professional training there is some opportunity. For instance, two splendid doctors are already at work in a couple of our under-staffed Chinese hospitals, coping heroically with an utterly strange country and language, and the lack of many surgical and medical accessories which were taken for granted in the fine hospitals of Vienna. -- We are glad that even in a small way we can make a contribution toward meeting this refugee problem which has been thrust upon the whole world.
From Shanghai I sailed north to Tientsin, and reached Peking and Tunghsien and the dear friends I had not seen for so long, and all the little unfinished jobs and committees which were sitting patiently in a row on my modest front door-steps, waiting to be attended to. So I started right in with the Executive Committee of the North China Council on the day I arrived, and feel as if I had been leaping from one committee to another ever since.
There was a promising Lay Leaders' Training Institute already in session in Tunghsien, and in a few days it was my turn to catch the rhythm and jump in. (Do you remember how we used to do it, skipping rope?) Religious Dramatics was the rope I taught them to skip this time. The Chinese have a flair for dramatics, a lively talent that needs some harnessing and training when it comes to religious and moral drama. --- It was an unsually advanced class of about forty young men and women from several denominations, and we have great hopes of what they will do when they get back to their scattered churches. They have hopes, too. You could hear it in their voices, as well as their timidity, at the final candle-light service, when each one went up to the front and voiced his pledge of work, lighted his red candle and put it carefully in the candlestick placed in front of the niche where the name of his home church was written in big black characters. Thus did Pillar-of-his-country Wang and all his mates vow to be a light in the little town of Willow Village, -- or wherever it was.
This Shantung class is splendid, too, springy, eager, interested. Ready to do as well as to study or discuss. The afternoon before Easter we all went over to the South Church together, to decorate. It is a barn of a place, and the wind had blown all the early blossoms from the available shrubs in any courtyards. Most of the students had never seen a church made ready for Easter before, anyway, and were not haunted by visions of green palms or sheaves of fragrant Easter lilies. But they worked absorbedly at covering old cracker tins so as to be presentable vases for holding long graceful branches of pale-green willow. Pale pink paper flowers skillfully adjusted to evergreen branches gave the touch of color we love in China, and just before the service they were supplemented by the gift of a few exquisite branches of flowering almond. We hung some choice colored pictures of candles on an altar below a high gold-colored cross. And we had a glorious Easter service. Even the rows and rows of darling, round-faced primary school boys in the front seats, so scrubbed and excited, stayed quite still.
I has seemed extraordinary to me how really interested our Chinese and foreign friends have been in hearing about the meeting at Madras and its message, about the Church Universal and about the friends in India and their work and problems. We Madras delegates have been besieged on every side to give reports. Here in Tehchow it was pathetic to see the sturdy Shantung delegates to this annual meeting leaning forward in their seats, faces alight with interest, to hear the very simple story I had to tell. It was especially touching to watch the radiant still intentness of their tanned faces when I showed them a letter that had been forwarded to me that very day from Wai, West India, enclosing a gift to their refugee brothers and sisters in China from the Indian women of the Kolapur Association, -- to help them feel the oneness of the Church Universal than all my eager words. If Madras has done nothing more, it has sent the thrill of our essential oneness, visible and invisible, across the whole wide world and deep into our hearts.
So you see we have had a memorable Easter, after all, even on this dreary, sandy Shantung plain; and a group of work-worn farmers and carpenters, with a few teachers and preachers, have been made glad with the Easter mystery of pale-green willow branches, have glowed to the touch of loving-kindness and sympathy that came straight across the "miles of wind-blown space" between India and China.
Perhaps this swirling dust is not so very important, after all -- not at Easter time, -- not even dust, alien armies, and barbed-wire entanglements. Confucius may have closed his eyes to it. To us it is given to lift our eyes above the dust higher than the broken city wall, and to look beyond it all with an unquenchable hope.
For Christ is risen, and lives forevermore!
Your friend in China,
Alice B. Frame