China Mission

A Personal History from the Last Imperial Dynasty to the People's Republic

Audrey Ronning Topping

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780807152805
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Biographies
• Index: Literature

When the Reverend Halvor Ronning, his sister Thea, and fellow missionary Hannah Rorem set out in 1891 to found a Lutheran mission and school in the interior of China, they could not have foreseen the ways in which that decision would ripple across generations of the Ronning family. Halvor and Hannah would marry, and their son Chester, born in Hubei Province in 1894, would spend over half his life in China as a student, teacher, and a Canadian diplomat. Chester's daughter, Audrey, studied at Nanking University during the Chinese Civil War and later spent decades reporting on the People's Republic of China for the New York Times, Foreign Affairs, and many other publications. "During the last century, " Audrey Topping notes, "a member of our family was there for almost every event of importance." China Mission presents a personal history of her family's ties to their adopted home and the momentous events that radically changed one of the most powerful countries in the world.
The Ronnings found Imperial China at the end of the nineteenth century to be a nation on the cusp of change, and they were swept up as both observers and participants in these dramatic events. During their years as missionaries, the Ronnings witnessed the Boxer Uprising in 1898, the subsequent Palace Coup and the Siege of Peking, the death of the last emperor, and the collapse of China's dynasty system. They also endured personal challenges -- famine, births, deaths, and the almost constant threat of attack -- that were countered with songs, celebrations, friendship, and a deep appreciation for the culture of which they had become a part.
Later, Chester Ronning would return to China, as would his daughter Audrey, bringing their family's story to the end of the twentieth century. This extraordinary account, compiled from the diaries, letters, and photographs of three generations, offers modern readers a rare and remarkable look at a world long gone.

PART I

ARRIVING
in the
MIDDLE
KINGDOM

Imperial China during the Qing Dynasty
Map by Mary Lee Eggart

1
Destination shanghai

The outbreak against foreigners in China at the close of the Century, like most human events, and all things Chinese, has its roots in the remote past, without some knowledge of which it can by no possibility be understood.

—A. H. SMITH, China in Convulsion (1901)

December 1, 1891, the Year of the Dragon

Three American missionaries braced themselves on the deck of the SS Oceanic as the rising sun exploded across the horizon like a hallelujah chorus lighting up the distant shores of the Celestial Kingdom. The morning sunbeams turned the rough ocean waters into molten gold and reflected off the massive, full-blown sails of the ocean liner as it crossed from the Pacific into the East China Sea on its maiden voyage—half steam, half sail—to China via Japan.

Three weeks earlier, Reverend Halvor N. Ronning, his sister Thea Ronning, and Miss Hannah Rorem had boarded the ship in San Francisco. They were the first missionaries from the Hauge Synod of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church of America to be assigned to the China Inland Mission. On this auspicious day they had risen early, eager to capture the first sight of Shanghai, notorious in the West as “the wickedest port in the Orient.” Their mission: to spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the “heathen” Chinese. Halvor looked forward to the challenge with confidence and complete faith in his mission. To Hannah the experience seemed surreal. She later wrote the first of many letters to her mother, in beautifully formed schoolteacher penmanship, using a fine-point feathered quill dipped in black India ink: When we approached the coastline of China I could feel my heart beating wildly but nothing else seemed real. I still can’t believe we are here. For the occasion Thea and I wore the stylish outfits we purchased in San Francisco. Dear Mama, pray for us.

My grandmother died twenty years before I was born, but because I heard so much about her as a child, I have always felt that I knew her well. When I read her letter a half century later, I imagined her looking at her new suit admiringly and hoping my grandfather, Halvor, whom she still addressed as “Reverend Ronning,” would like it. Before dawn, Hannah had slipped from her bunk and dressed quickly in her brand-new navy-blue serge traveling suit. Shivering from the morning chill, she stepped into the long, discreetly bustled skirt and smoothed it over her white muslin petticoat, leaving just a hint of the lace flounce around the bottom. She hastily pulled the silk lavender blouse over her broad shoulders and tucked it into the narrow waistband. The fitted jacket had fashionably puffed sleeves and a large velvet collar. She swirled her long, auburn hair into a peacock twist on the crown of her head and hurried on deck. Halvor and Thea were waiting for her. “Hurry, hurry!” called Halvor, who was given to drama: “The Celestial Kingdom is rising on the horizon!” He threw his arms wide and shouted to the heavens. “Hallelujah! We are here at last!”

Even if Hannah had wanted to hug him, she would have restrained herself. Norwegians didn’t do things like that, and she did not want to reveal the frightening fact that she was falling in love. Instead, she grasped the ship’s railing with both hands and let the salty wind sting her cheeks. The nearness of Halvor’s strong, tall frame must have given her a much-needed sense of security. My father kept the only photo taken of his parents on the Oceanic on his desk in our house in Camrose, Alberta. The missionaries had posed for the ship’s photographer on the occasion of Hannah’s twentieth birthday, November 6, 1891. Their Nordic ancestry is clearly visible. I thought my grandfather Halvor looked more like a Viking warrior than an ordained minister. He was twenty-nine years old, stood six foot two, straight as a Norway spruce, but he appeared a bit stiff in the white, starched collar he had first put on in honor of Hannah’s birthday. His Prince Albert suit coat with velvet lapels fit neatly over his athletic frame, but his thick wavy hair, not barbered since they left America, was whipping wildly in the wind. There was something clearly contradictory about his appearance that captured an integral aspect of his character. Even in black-and-white photos, his strange blue eyes, set into strong, aesthetic features, sparked with a fervor that was both a strength and a weakness. Even then, his roguish grin and strong cleft chin seemed rather incongruous to the image of piety he aspired to portray. His sister Thea, then twenty-five, had a soft dimple in her chin. Her braided blond hair was coiled twice around her head. A few tresses, dislodged by the wind, floated around her head, forming a halo of silken threads. Her widely spaced turquoise eyes reflected innocence and amazement.

Although I never met my great-aunt Thea, in the photo she appeared too delicate to be a pioneer missionary in such a mysterious and troubled land. Hannah, a bit taller and slimmer than Thea, stood between the two Ronnings. When I was a child, various relatives commented that I looked like my grandmother. This pleased me and stirred my curiosity. I had the same high forehead and a dimple in my chin, but beyond that I could not claim any resemblance. Her deep-set blue eyes had an intense look that conveyed an inner strength and an aura of confidence. To me, the three missionaries looked so pure and noble, so wonderfully young and strong, so painfully innocent. I have always felt sad about the fact that I never met my great-aunt Thea or my grandmother Hannah, but grandfather Halvor lived to be eighty-eight, and I knew him well and loved him deeply. Like all of his seven children and ten other grandchildren, I was fascinated by Grandpa. We all thought he was the greatest storyteller who ever lived—but his stories were not fairy tales.

In Nagasaki the missionaries had transferred to a small steamer called the Kobe Maru to continue their journey to the pilot station of Shanghai, where the rusty waters of the Huangpu River clash with the blue waters of the East China Sea. They lay anchor under the shadow of the mighty Woosung Forts, built by the Chinese to guard this main entrance to China. Armed warships from Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Belgium, and the United States, all flying their own flags, had been stationed at this gateway to China to provide security for the foreign concessions in Shanghai and other Chinese ports that had been forcibly opened by the Allied Powers after the British triumphed in the First Opium War (1839–42).

Halvor surveyed the harbor. This was the site of the famous Battle of Woosung on June 16, 1842, that was waged between the United Kingdom and the Chinese forces of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. Fourteen British steamships armed with cannons mounted on swivels blew nineteen Chinese war junks, with their patched, bamboo-rigged sails, out of the water. While the British suffered two sailors killed and twenty-five wounded, hundreds of Chinese were killed or wounded, and 250 guns, left over from the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), were captured. This inglorious British victory was to have lasting repercussions on world trade and China’s relations with the West as the Chinese Empire was forced through a series of humiliating “unequal treaties” to allow the lucrative opium trade, even though the emperor had banned the “foreign mud” in the late eighteenth century. In the infamous Treaty of Nanking (1842), Britain arrogantly imposed severe financial penalties on the Qing, opened five coastal ports to trade, and forced the ceding in perpetuity of Hong Kong island to the British Empire. This was followed by the 1859 Treaty of Tientsin ending the Second Opium War (1856–60), which legalized opium in China and opened up eleven additional “treaty ports,” including the inland city of Wuhan to which the missionaries were heading. Western residents demanded the right to live in their own protected “concessions” that were not subject to local Chinese law but to the laws of their own countries. The missionaries would soon learn that this principle of “extraterritoriality” was a major infringement of Chinese sovereignty that would become a leading cause of the antiforeign sentiment that culminated in the infamous Siege of Peking and the eventual fall of the Qing Dynasty.

I am amazed by the scene spread before us. This entrance to China looks like a war zone with battleships armed with guns on the decks. We counted flags from seven countries. Fleets of Chinese sailing junks, with high-pooped sterns and bulging eyes mounted on the prows, are flapping their orange sails like wounded monarch butterflies as they maneuver precariously close to the foreign ships. Native crafts are plying busily among the multitude of old tugs and overloaded dredgers. From the moment the Empress dropped anchor she was surrounded by hawkers in sampans advertising their wares in high singsong voices, selling all kinds of goods and curios. The decks are hung with laundry, stacked with crates of squawking chickens and overloaded with cargo and people. I wonder how the boats can stay afloat. Hannah waved to some children who were tied to the decks with rope but the boat people glared back at her grim faced. Some shook their fists and shouted oaths that fortunately Hannah could not understand but she was upset. She is a very sensitive and compassionate woman and is a great comfort to me and Thea. She did not realize that the hostility was directed towards the ships, not us, for a whole generation of Shanghai boatmen are being gradually reduced to stark poverty because the foreign ships are taking their livelihood away by transporting the goods and passengers that had been theirs for centuries.

It was not until they were nearing Shanghai that Hannah began to have doubts about her mission. Dear Mama:… Sailing up the Huangpu to Shanghai we saw miles and miles of grave mounds on the river banks. At first I thought they were haystacks. I can’t believe that all those countless Chinese have died without being saved. But think of all the millions of living souls who have not yet seen the light. It fills me with despair. How I envy Rev. Ronning’s unshakable confidence in his noble vision. Oh Mama, I wonder if I am up to the task. Pray for me.

She had a right to wonder. Hannah had graduated from a Teacher’s Normal School and taught school for three years in Radcliff, Iowa, but she had never received any training to qualify her as a missionary in China. Thea had studied in the Red Wing Lutheran Seminary in Red Wing, Minnesota, but had no training in Chinese studies. Halvor, after graduating from Oslo University in Norway, had studied for four years at the Red Wing Lutheran Seminary and graduated as an ordained minister. While Halvor had received some instruction in Chinese history and philosophy as well as in the basics of the Chinese language, Hannah and Thea had not been required to learn a word of Chinese or study Chinese customs or culture. In fact, the only Chinese person they had ever met was a waiter at a San Francisco restaurant. To be sure, Lutheran Minister Hogland in Radcliff had tried to encourage Hannah, advising her to keep perfect control of herself at all times and to “be kind and considerate in all circumstances and have sweet and gentle manners towards your fellow missionaries as well as towards the Chinese, who are keen judges of character.” The minister, whose knowledge of China was based on his contact with the local Chinese laundryman, seemed satisfied with his words of wisdom, but Hannah felt that his advice hardly qualified her for the tremendous challenge she had undertaken. But at the time she didn’t really care. She was in love and having an exciting adventure.

Through his field glasses, Halvor spotted a wrecked locomotive on the remains of China’s first railway, built by the British fifteen years earlier, in 1876, at a very high cost. It had been meant to carry passengers and freight from Woosung to Shanghai, but the railroad operated for only a short period before Chinese officials purchased the line with plans to dismantle it because they believed it was disrupting local trade while the smoke and noise of the train was disturbing the spirits of the “wind and water” (fengshui). A crafty official had sabotaged the railroad by offering a destitute coolie 100 silver dollars to kill himself by running into the path of the train. The sum would be paid to his family after the deed was done. When his mangled body was finally discovered, an angry mob tore up the tracks, as the official knew they would.

Shanghai

The steam launch carried the missionaries up the Huangpu River, through the turbulent white waters of the “Heaven-sent Barrier” and past the dreaded quicksands of the Woosung, where hundreds of ships had been grounded and swallowed whole. Finally, they reached the delta where the golden waters of the mighty Yangtze poured into the Huangpu, mixing the silt of the two rivers. Over millennia this silting had formed the land where the city of Shanghai was built. The sounds of the waterfront grew louder as the Americans sailed into the harbor: firecrackers, drums, screeching chickens, squealing pigs, horns, soldiers marching, strange chanting, and hundreds of other unfamiliar sounds. Within the pandemonium was gathered the greatest concentration of wealth and misery that any city on earth would know.

The naïve American missionaries were unaware that they had arrived in China during the decline of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. In 1891, 80 percent of the people were illiterate peasants on the verge of starvation while the corrupt and fossilized Imperial Court with the mandarin aristocracy was wallowing in political intrigue and decadent luxury. The notorious Empress Dowager Cixi ruled behind the figurehead of her sickly son, Emperor Tongzhi, who would soon be replaced by her nephew. At this point, the missionaries, like most foreigners, had never heard of a secret society that would become known as the Yihequan, or “Boxers United in Righteousness,” comprised mainly of gangs of youthful rabble-rousers and superstitious peasants. The members excelled in martial arts and claimed to possess magical powers that made them invulnerable to swords and bullets. Their predecessors, the White Lotus, had led a rebellion against the Manchu court beginning in the 1790s, but were defeated and forced underground, only to rise again as the Boxers. By the time the Ronnings arrived in 1891, antiforeign sentiment was spreading throughout the Chinese countryside that would ultimately lead to the horrific Boxer Uprising.*

Hannah was both thrilled and terrified by the vista of Shanghai. It looked as if all of the 400 million people in China were on the Shanghai docks that morning. Small boats immediately surrounded their ship. Through the mass of floating humanity her eyes focused on a rickety sampan being maneuvered by a ragged woman wielding one long oar on the stern. Hannah wrote to her mother: Two naked children looked up at me with pleading eyes. They had bloated bellies and were leashed, like dogs, to the deck to keep them from falling overboard. A small girl… reached up to beg for anything she could get. I threw some American coins as I had nothing else but as the children scrambled for them they were splashed in the waves from the launch. The mother shook her fist and swore at me. I turned to Rev. Ronning but he said that nothing in his power could be done to help those children. We must first establish our mission, he said, and then perhaps we can help them. I have never felt so helpless. May God give us strength!

Among the Chinese on the dock were two foreigners, easily distinguishable by their height, foreign suits, and black top hats. They were Sigvald Netland and Johannes Brantzaeg of the China Inland Mission Society of Norway, who had come from Hankow to welcome the new missionaries. They tipped their hats and introduced their friend and translator Teacher Sen Li-fu, a Chinese scholar and fellow mission worker. Sen wore a teacher’s long, blue silk gown and a black satin skullcap. His smile was genuinely warm. Hannah told her mother that she liked him immediately. A long, braided queue hung down his back. His smooth, bronzed skin stretched tightly over his high cheekbones. Hannah had never seen a man without a trace of whiskers. He was taller than most Chinese but seemed almost frail beside the sturdy, bewhiskered Norwegians. Halvor shook hands with Netland and Brantzaeg and bowed to Sen with his fists together in Chinese fashion. “Ni hao bu hao?” (How are you?), he said in Chinese with a Norwegian accent. Teacher Sen smiled politely and held out his hand. “Oh, you speak Chinese very well,” he said in perfect English. “I am fine, thank you, and how are you?” Sen enunciated every word clearly. Then he turned to the ladies and bowed. “Welcome, welcome. It is indeed a pleasure and honor to welcome you to my country.”

The travelers were soon engulfed in the dockside confusion. Workers were throwing large sacks of rice onto the dock from a barge nearby. Mr. Netland guided the new arrivals to a sheltered corner to make way for the swarm of coolies stampeding onto the dock to carry the sacks for a few pennies. As the Americans coughed and struggled to breathe, a strange new noise rose above the cacophony of city sounds: a high buzz, like the plaintive humming of a thousand bumblebees. It was the song of a thousand coolies. As each man hoisted a sack onto his shoulders and jogged away he joined the chorus: “Hunga dee yodee yodee, yodee hodro hunga”—a meaningless melody of notes in a minor key. It was a sad, resigned, haunting wail, a pathetic lament that rang of drudgery.

When the dust settled, the missionaries brushed themselves off and got on with their unloading. Hannah’s throat constricted in apprehension as she watched her precious organ, their steamer trunks, and carpetbags being lowered by bamboo braided ropes over the side of the launch. As soon as the baggage touched the dock, a great squabble of shouts and shoving broke out among the porters over who should carry the bags. The coolie-master cracked a long whip over their naked backs to keep them in check. Even in the cold December weather, the men wore only loose cotton pants and straw sandals. An ugly red welt rose on the back of a young coolie standing near Hannah. He could not have been more than thirteen years old. The boy’s face remained stoic, but Hannah screamed and implored Halvor to stop the whipping. He raised his arms and shouted, “Stop! Stop! This is not necessary!” The coolie-master paid no attention to Halvor but obeyed when Teacher Sen objected and said he would choose the bearers himself. The coolies tied their burdens onto each end of their yo-sticks and hoisted them across their calloused shoulders to a waiting donkey cart Netland had hired.

Mr. Netland guided the new missionaries to a nearby teahouse from where they could watch the unloading while he informed them about conditions in China. Halvor took notes in his diary: Sigvald Netland informed me of some serious anti-foreign uprisings. He said we ar...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Milestones in the Lives of the Ronning Family
• Author’s Note on Sources and Chinese Romanization
• Prologue: China’s Incredible Find
• PART I. ARRIVING IN THE MIDDLE KINGDOM
• PART II. HOME LEAVE and RETURN
• PART III. SETTLING in CANADA
• PART IV. CHESTER RETURNS TO CHINA
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index