09 Yang Chow and Beyond

Chapter 9 YANG CHOW AND BEYOND The city of Yang Chow is one of the most aristocratic in China. It is famous as the home of great officials. Marco Polo, the traveler, visited it long ago (A. D. 1275), its aspect has hardly changed from that time until to-day. The soft pad, pad, of the feet of the chair bearers and their sing-song as they swing rapidly through the streets, the great brass kettles hissing in front of tiny tea shops, the venders of green vegetables who give their strange cries before the barred gates in high walls, the green scum on the Grand Canal, these are the same yesterday and to-day — will they be forever? The present population of the city is estimated as 360,000, most of the people being crowded together in the closest quarters. Sometimes there is only a single room for a family of six or seven. But inside those walls are also the gardens and rockeries of the wealthy. Winding walks and tea pavilions and lotus ponds are beautiful in chrysanthemum time.

Several missions are at work in the different sections of the city. The Baptist Mission to which the Andersons were attached has a church and a school and a hospital in the southwestern part of the city, just inside the city wall. Here they were joyously welcomed in the fall of 191 7. The story of the busy days in that great and hoary city is told by Mrs. Anderson:

John began his work in Yang Chow with great enthusiasm which grew steadily in spite of many difficulties. With all his old relish for making things comfortable, he spent most of the first few weeks getting our house in order, though helping with operations and making the rounds with Dr. Taylor. The house in which we lived had many conveniences added mostly by his suggestion and often by his own hands. I remember finding him one day digging a ditch in the back yard so that a pipe could be connected with the cistern from our kitchen pump. A Chinese had been at it two days, but the work was too slow for John! All that winter he spent much of his spare time pruning trees and shrubs that had been neglected some time, laid new walks and brought order into what had been a rather dilapidated looking lawn. He was already planning to dig some artesian wells whenever he could secure a well machine. On January first he took formal charge of the woman’s clinic and hospital. This was a great relief to Dr. Taylor’s burdened shoulders and he was never tired of saying how thankful he was for John’s help. John began gradually to add conveniences that Dr. Taylor had not had time to attend to and with his instinct for nursing he soon helped the Chinese nurses to more professional ways of doing things.

I cannot give the exact number of his patients, operations, etc. They were the usual throng of discouraged sick who had tried Chinese doctors to their greater suffering, with occasional patients who knew enough about foreign medicine to come early. These latter were rare.

John was especially anxious for more normal maternity cases. Nearly all who came had undergone untold suffering at the hands of ignorant midwives, often after four or five days’ labor. One I remember especially. I met the stretcher (a Chinese wicker cot) coming along our main street, being heralded by Mrs. Ye, a former patient and one of the hospital’s staunchest friends. John found the poor woman in an awful state. I shall never forget the look on the faces of her two women relatives who stood by, one on either side. How strange it was to them — no wonder their white faces dripped perspiration at every tiny moan from under the ether cone. Finally when John had to tell them that the baby was dead, one cried out: "Oh, Doctor, bring him back to life." The baby was a little boy and would have been the hope of the family, for his father had died shortly before, the parents refusing to let him have a simple operation that would probably have saved him. The mother lay almost lifeless, in great pain from the terrible infection following the treatment she had received. John worked night and day, even carrying dainty broth from our own kitchen to tempt her, trying to coax her into an interest, for he said: "If she dies it’s because she does not want to live." Then an adopted son was suggested and a wee scrap of a baby brought from the foundling home gradually won the listless woman back to life. The baby lived on there for six weeks and grew to be a bonny fat boy, being bottle fed from milk that John prepared most of the time himself. It was in times like these that he sighed so often for an American trained nurse, but he did his work and the nurse’s too, with never failing gentleness. The woman and her mother, a sweet old lady, grew to be great friends of ours.

John loved his children patients best of all and it was no unusual sight to see him swinging along the wards or hospital walks, one on either side chattering away. "Little Apricot" was one of his best beloved, a pretty child of twelve. She used to run to him and snuggle up against him just as if she had been an American child. "Little Ear" came with a terrible fracture of the elbow, the arm swollen for a week. She was so shy that she used to bury her face in the cover when we came around, but in ten days John had coaxed her over home to play with the baby and in less time than that she was the affectionate little friend of the whole place. Still another, almost a beggar, but a bright sweet child of ten or twelve, came with a tubercular ankle. She was there for months and came to seem a part of the hospital. I remember John’s saying as we made the rounds one evening: "I am going to keep that child until she gets well if we never get a penny even for her food."

Then in April came "Little Four" and his family, the most interesting group we ever had. It was a cold, rainy afternoon when John sent for me. I found Dick and John getting a picture of the most desolate family group I ever saw. The woman had dropped wearily on a bench, leaning against the wall in utter abandonment of strength and desire for anything. By her, in a similar state of filth, vermin and dejection, sat her husband, holding a wisp of a six-day old baby, born on the street. A blue rag was wrapped about its body, but legs purple with cold dangled down helplessly. And ten feet away I could see the body lice crawling on the poor little thing.

John started them upstairs, a nurse on either side of the woman. But they handled her gingerly, to say the least. I saw John’s eyes flash with anger. He pushed them aside and helped the woman up himself, straight into the warm operating room. ’’We’ll cut off her hair first," he said, to which the man protested that she would be no longer "hao kan" (good-looking). But the hair was cut, John himself doing the deed. The woman’s lips were so parched from starvation, we could hardly get her to drink tea. She had not had anything to eat in over a week. John asked the man why she had not eaten. The answer was simply: "We had no food." You can fancy how much nourishment she had for the baby. We fed it on a bottle, but the poor little thing had had too hard a start, six days without anything. A week later it died, though John worked literally day and night to save it. I came back from a trip to Shanghai to find John padding and lining a tiny coffin. He had already carried over some of our baby’s clothes for the little body. And then he smashed all precedents for hurrying dead bodies out of the hospital by having a funeral. It is one of the most vivid memories of our life at Yang Chow — the little room growing dark in the twilight, nurses and the carpenter who had made the coffin standing against the wall, father and mother and brothers of the baby seated in stupid wonderment at the meaning of it all — and there by the coffin, Miss Hwang, the woman evangelist, read by the light of a flickering lamp the immortal words of the Bible about the resurrection. Then she prayed and suddenly the father, stirred by some strange new emotions, flung himself on the floor and tried to pray. It was the queerest jumble of longing and need I ever heard, but somehow we all felt as if God took heed. Then he turned and began kow-towing to John.

"Why," he said, "all this waste of heart on a girl baby? It would have been all the same to her if we had just carried her out and thrown her over the wall." But it was not the same to John, nor was it, I fancied, to any of the few who witnessed it.

There were three boys in this family who were almost as badly off as their mother. They were also cared for in the hospital while the father worked on the hospital grounds for a month or more. Restored to health and strength at last, they became homesick and wanted to return to their ancestral village, which was sixty miles east of Yang Chow. They had left there three years before in a time of famine and had not been able to return. John tried to get them to stay in Yang Chow, promising to find work for the father, but they would go. And so John and Dr. Taylor supplied them with money for the journey. It was finally agreed that "Little Four" should stay behind. A little room was fitted up for him in the servants’ quarters, his queue was cut off, and then he was started to school. The first Sunday he went to church, John gave him a penny to put in the collection, and later he was allowed ten pennies a week for which he rendered a weekly account of expenditures. His first purchase was a pair of socks. John put him to learning the Ten Commandments, and as soon as these were learned he set him to other Bible verses. He has since been sent to the mission school in Soochow, and has been given a new name — Peter,

One other funeral John managed in an outside room where a smallpox baby died. "It’s their only chance to know anything of our conception of death," he answered the Chinese who insisted that he was wasting his energies for nothing.

Through the long summer months he worked untiringly, often beginning his operations at five in the morning. I remember a Mrs. Wang who had a very serious operation. She was a valued worker in the China Inland Mission school and three of the missionaries spent the night before with us that they might be there to see the operation and encourage Mrs. Wang. John slept almost none that night and I knew he was praying anxiously for skill to do the operation. I feared he would come to the task worn out and nervous from his night’s vigil, but he was as cool as I ever saw him and did a splendid operation. He said he had never seen so many complications, but the patient recovered fully and was a real blessing to our hospital during her stay.

It should be recalled that this was only the second year of John Anderson’s life in China. Ordinarily, the second year as well as the first, is given up more or less wholly to the study of the language. It is more difficult for a medical missionary to take time for the second year of study on account of the immediate demand for his professional services. John tried to carry on his studies in the language with his other work. At first he set aside three hours a day to be with his teacher. The change from Peking to Yang Chow added the difficulty of a difference of dialect. He had originally gone to the Peking School because he expected to work in Honan. There were excuses enough to simply let the language go, and try to do the best service possible without proficiency in speaking Chinese, as is sometimes done. But it was not his habit to do things half way, especially when a limitation on his speech meant a limitation on his opportunity to speak for his Lord. He set himself the task of leading the hospital chapel in his turn, and though it took more energy than the performance of a major operation he stuck to it. This determination impressed deeply the hospital evangelist who was one of John’s best friends among the Chinese and he spoke of it later. In this first summer at Yang Chow, he gathered the hospital workers into a class in "The Manhood of the Master," using the Chinese translation.

Moreover, he was as faithful as ever in the general work of the church. Note this letter written in the winter time:

Every night this week there has been a meeting in the church. The average attendance has been over two hundred, mostly men. The church has no heat and part of it has no roof, the windows all loose, and the floor is made of dirt brickbats thrown together. I have been three times and I do not see for my life how the Chinese can stand it. It was all that I could do to stand it as it has been so cold this past week. Last night the preacher talked about Christ being crucified and the people would come in off the street while he was talking, stand up, go out, change seats, talk, read, sing, smoke, or anything else they wanted to do. It is so hard to tell them about Christ and His life in a few minutes for all this talk is foreign to them. I do not blame them for they do not know any better, but I certainly do pity them and wish and pray that they may see and believe. It is going to take time and a long time and a great deal of hard work and prayer to Christianize this country, so fixed in its ways and customs. I am not discouraged and I do not believe I am going to be, for I have as near an ideal home as I can to go to after mixing with the filth and dirt and unspeakable diseases.

John’s chief happiness centered in his home. All during the year at Peking he was looking forward to having a home of his own where he would have in his own hands the keys of hospitality and where there would be real quiet and peace and rest alone. When they were at last settled in their own home in Yang Chow, he wrote that Minnie and he had had their first meal alone for many months. But he loved company too. He wrote in one letter:

We had just a few days past a man, his wife, two children and a friend of theirs, to spend the night with us. I am going to copy a portion of the note she wrote us — "We are under life-long obligation to you all for taking us in and giving us such good care. I don’t think I was ever so struck by the hospitality of a lovely Christian home than when we came into your quiet, sweet home after the, dirty, wet, miserable heathen launch and streets." I do believe that a Christian home in China is the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, not only from the hot sun, not only from the dirt and filth, but a shadow against sin in every form. I do hope that we shall always be able to keep our home open. These people we had never met and knew nothing about them except that they were coming through Yang Chow. We want to keep our home open not only to our own countrymen, but to the Chinese as well. We had a Chinese lady at dinner with us to-day who a few years ago was a Buddhist nun.

It was the Andersons’ regular custom to have some Chinese to a meal once a week, sometimes patients nearly well, sometimes hospital assistants and others. Mrs. Anderson tells of two Sunday dinners in particular when An Dai Fu brought over his favorite "Little Apricot" and Tsang Ken Tzu, a little cripple boy. He entertained them with funny stories and post cards of American scenes, just as if they had been children at home. Never a father was happier over the coming of a little son, than John when his boy was born in the autumn that they came to Yang Chow. His letters were always full of him thereafter.

He wrote September 12, 1918:

Mink was gone about six days to Shanghai for dental work. It kept me busy at odd times taking care of Griffith. I had some sick patients and had to go to the hospital at night. One night Griffith was so wide awake that I wrapped him up and took him with me, though it was raining. He enjoyed every minute as we had a red lantern and he enjoys light so much.

About this time the matter of going with the Red Cross to Siberia had to be decided. Both Dr. Taylor and John wanted to go. John had written to his brother who was entering the army:

I hope that you will enjoy military life and that you are anxious to get out and fight for your country and for the right. I have wished that I was not so tied down here or I would be in France with some coolies. Dr. Taylor has an Edison and has two records about the war. The first time I heard them, it certainly did make my heart fairly thrill. You will not find military life easy, but hard, with things that it takes a man to do with the best that is in him. Last spring in Peking we got up at five and went two miles to drill every morning. That was fun beside what you will go through. I am proud of having a brother in the war. The fellow who will not fight for the right has not much red blood in him. The China Medical Board decided finally that Dr. Taylor should go on account of his approaching furlough. The two doctors had a long talk together and John said to his friend:

Dick, I want you to feel that half of me is going to Siberia too, and half of me is staying here, and I want to take care of Anne (Mrs. Taylor) and your children just as I do of Mink and Griffith, if I may.

Dr. Taylor’s family moved into the Anderson home and John even had their piano moved over and upstairs for them. It was quite an undertaking. The piano stuck half way up the stairs in spite of the efforts of about a dozen Chinese, and the ladies begged him to give up for fear that the stairway might collapse. It was thoroughly typical of John’s determination to see things through that he calmly propped up the stairs and took away part of the railing and the piano went up of course, though moving it consumed most of the afternoon. John had a ’’shoot the chutes" built for the Taylor children in the back yard.

Here are some quotations from several of John’s letters written about this time:

It has been a right interesting day for me, dispatching three Chinese whom we have taken on to send to school this year. One will cost us $60, one $8, and the other about $12. We have one more that we are mighty anxious to help through college, about $120 a year. He is such a fine fellow. He was my teacher last summer. This morning it was my time to lead prayers and I talked about twenty minutes on the barren fig tree, as recorded in Mark 11. Christ did not say that this tree had never brought forth fruit, but that it did not have any on it then. How we Christians think that if we do something once a year, or once a month, that it is sufficient. Christ told the tree that it should wither for it had no fruit. If He should come and find our names on the church roll, pretending to be Christians and not bringing forth fruit, I fear that He would treat us as He did the fig tree. At this time also, word came that the China Medical Board had granted $45,000 and the Baptist Foreign Mission Board $15,000 for the erection of a more commodious hospital. Of this John wrote: With this equipment you have no idea how meek and unable I feel to do my part in running this hospital as it should be. I am looking to God for guidance and direction from day to day. In order to get in more time with God I have been getting up at 5:30, but as Mink is getting stronger and I do not have to wait on her, we are going to make it six o’clock. On October 9th, the home letter which was received in Woodruff on November 18th, contained the following: In the last seven days I have had five operations for appendicitis. I have averaged five or six operations a day for nearly a month. I have over sixty patients in the hospital. On top of this four or five of my helpers have been sick, and our chief Chinese assistant who has been here twelve years has gone. Then I have to see after a number of workmen as we are getting ready to build a big addition to the hospital. The Building Committee of the Mission on which I happen to be one of three members, has left all the plans to be decided on by me after I have consulted with the architect. With this I still keep up leading chapel twice a week and attending seven days a week, prayer-meeting once, church once, and the prayer meeting of the missionaries once each week. I could name a number of other things, but from this you can see that I have enough to do to keep me out of mischief. I do not know what we will do to run the hospital much longer if we do not get more help, as drugs are so high. I have had six cases of typhoid recently. I am looking forward to one month’s rest the first of February, as that is Chinese New Year and medical work slacks off at that time. A meeting of the Executive Committee of the Central China Mission called John to Shanghai for the thirteenth of November. Begrudging even a few hours from his work, he planned to take the midnight train on the twelfth. A launch was scheduled to leave Yang Chow at 8:30 P. M. to connect at Chinkiang with the Shanghai train. The day was very full. The hospital accounts were all straightened up in perfect order, and his desk was cleared. A letter was mailed with a check for $25.00 as a contribution. to the Educational Campaign in North Carolina for Wake Forest College. After supper he packed his bag, and then sat around with the two families, laughing and joking in high good spirits. He started out once or twice to walk to the canal, and then decided that he might have to wait by the canal bank for the launch, and so came back to the warmth of his happy home. Finally he and one of the older missionaries went out into the night to catch the launch. Arriving at the wharf they found that it had already departed. The only chance to make the train would be a small sampan, and at that it was a question as to whether it would not arrive too late. For a moment John hesitated and almost decided to go back and go to bed and get a good night’s rest. Then striking a bargain with the boatman for the trip he waved good-by to the missionary and jumped aboard with his old servant, Dzu Da. To speed up the journey, John took turns with Dzu Da and the boatman in towing the boat from the bank of the canal until they reached the mouth of the canal on the north bank of the Yang Tze River. Dzu Da was the last man to do any towing, and when he got aboard the sampan he was perspiring freely. John took his own steamer rug off his knees and, in spite of the protests of the old man, he wrapped it around the servant and put his lantern between his legs to keep him from catching cold in the November night. He told Dzu Da that he himself was already warm. The night was dark and the river was far from quiet as they put out into its swift current to cross to the south bank to Chinkiang. John and Dzu Da were sitting together in the body of the boat, the boatman at the rear sculling with the oar, when a large river steamer loomed up in the darkness. Never thinking of himself, John reached for the lantern and sprang to the bow of the little boat, to give warning lest they be run down. Apparently the lookout on the steamer never saw the swinging light, for the steamer struck the sampan, and John encased in his heavy overcoat was thrown into the river. The boatman heard a cry, but night and the Yang Tze had swallowed him up. The steamer without stopping passed on up the river. Lifting the light in the darkness to save others John Anderson went down into the dark waters. The others clung to the little sampan which was broken in two, and drifted safely to shore in the later morning. They ran at once to the missionaries in Chinkiang with the news, and in the afternoon it was brought to the hospital in Yang Chow.

"Great-heart is dead, they say, —

Fighting the fight, Holding the light,

Into the night.

Great-heart is dead, they say, — But the light shall burn brighter, And the night shall be lighter, For his going: And a rich, rich harvest for his sowing.

Great-heart is dead, they say, —

What is death to such an one as Great-heart?

One sigh, perchance, for work unfinished here, Then a swift passing to a mightier sphere, New joys, perfected powers, the vision clear, And all the amplitude of Heaven to work The work he held so dear.

Great-heart is dead, say they? Nor dead, nor sleeping! He lives on! His name Shall kindle many a heart to equal flame. The fire he lighted shall burn on and on, Till all the darkness of the lands be gone, And all the kingdoms of the earth be won, And one. A soul so fiery sweet can never die, But lives and loves and works through all eternity."