Ch 2-1: Local West China Missionary News
Map of West China Mission Fields, 1902
1902 map of the West China denominational mission fields assigned by the West China Missionary Advisory Board.
Missionary activities were given official recognition by the leadership among the missionary community by being written up in the West China Missionary News (WCMN), a monthly periodical for Protestant missionaries inaugurated in 1899 by the West China Mission Advisory Board (WCMAB), made up of representatives from almost all the Protestant missions in Sichuan.
In 1902, the WCMAB divided the West China mission field into regions to be worked by its member missions. The WCMN was initially published in Chongqing, but moved to Chengdu in 1907 where it was published by the Canadian Mission Press. Its publication ceased in 1943 due to inability to cover the costs of printing in the midst of spiraling inflation under Chiang Kiashek’s Guomindang government.
This newsletter published theological arguments, personal essays, poetry, scientific articles and travel notes, but also described the social events on various stations, setting expectations for what missionaries ought to do with their free times. The WCMN also published news from the world outside West China, but almost always as seen through a Protestant faith-based lens. The discussions and outcomes of worldwide missionary gatherings in North America and Europe were reported in lively detail, as were accounts of the new theological ideas current in North American and British churches, often submitted by missionaries on furlough.
There is strikingly little discussion in the WCMN of matters which did not have a Christian angle to them. The affairs that might have made the headlines back in New York, Chicago, Toronto or Vancouver were mentioned only glancingly in the WCMN. The missionaries of the West China missions and WCUU were not indifferent to what was going on in the world – indeed, their own spiritual and political identities were closely connected to political and economic changes, such as the rise of socialism and communism, based on information they got from friends back in North America or information picked up on trips to Shanghai or Hong Kong.
There is strikingly little discussion in the WCMN of matters which did not have a Christian angle to them. The affairs that might have made the headlines back in New York, Chicago, Toronto or Vancouver were mentioned only glancingly in the WCMN. The missionaries of the West China missions and WCUU were not indifferent to what was going on in the world – indeed, their own spiritual and political identities were closely connected to political and economic changes, such as the rise of socialism and communism, based on information they got from friends back in North America or information picked up on trips to Shanghai or Hong Kong.
However, the world as seen through the pages of WCMN was a world in which Protestant religious issues in West China were the lifeblood of a global network of people engaged in putting these ideas into practice, stretching beyond the geographical confines of Chengdu and linking the missionaries to like-minded people in India, Jamaica, Angola and beyond.
Missionaries in Chengdu could also locate themselves within the lineage of previous generations of missionaries, whose praises were sung in the WCMN. For example, in March 1908, George Bond, writing about the annual meeting of the West China Missionary Conference, expressed his delight at meeting some of the first Protestant missionaries to go to China, members of the “Cambridge Seven,” whose departure for China from Britain in 1885, at the behest of almost-legendary evangelist Hudson Taylor garnered worldwide publicity:
It was a joy to meet in the Conference three members of the famous “Cambridge seven”: the heroic Beauchamp, the statesmanlike Hoste, the genial and broad-minded Cassels. (16)
Bond added that meeting these famous missionaries was especially exciting for himself as one who was “almost an Englishman” – a sign of the Anglophilia that permeated Canadian missionary culture.
Actors in the Old Lady Shows Her Medals, 1922
West China missionaries stage a play for members of the community, 1922.
Just as with small-town newspapers at home, the WCMN reported on the events within the community, based on submissions from social correspondents. In November 1923, for example, the WCMN informed readers about happenings on the WCUU campus which included the formation of a “Saturday Night Club” in which the men of the community put on a performance with “plenty of local color in song and story”; a celebration of Trafalgar Day at the Canadian School including an address by the British Consul-General; a lecture given at the meeting of the West China Border Research Society (WCBRS) by a visiting Yale professor and his wife concerning a trip through the western desert regions, “over a route never before taken by white travellers”; and “many farewell concerts and teas” for members of the community leaving on furlough (41).
The November 1923 roster was typical in its emphasis on music, discussion groups, theatre, and educational talks about aspects of Chinese life and culture, especially Chinese religions (understood as a triumvirate of Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism) and travelogues of the exotic tribal lands that lay to the west of Szechwan.
In style and format, these talks would have been familiar to missionaries who grew up in North America attending educational events such as magic lantern shows in Presbyterian and Methodist churches and Sunday schools and parachurch organizations. These discourses were presented mainly by foreigners interpreting China for each other, but occasionally by Chinese converts with university educations in English. These talks were reported in the WCMN, alongside articles which developed many of the same themes in more detail.
Many issues of the WCMN can be downloaded as pdfs at the Yale Divinity School archives online at: https://collections.library.yale.edu/catalog?view=gallery&search_field=all_fields&fulltext_search=1&q=West+China+Missionary+News.