by Bo Caldwell
On the night before Christmas Eve, Katherine and I stayed up late into the night talking about our hopes for our work in China, of how we had felt called, and of how the work fulfilled us. When there was a pause in our conversation, I said a silent prayer—Let her say yes if this is Your will—then I looked at her and what I meant to say was Will you be my wife? but I was so overwhelmed by even the possibility of becoming her husband that nervousness got the better of me and I heard myself say, “Will you be my husband?”
She looked shocked for a moment; then she smiled.
“My wife,” I said hurriedly. “Will you be my wife?”
She smiled again. “Yes.”
She had answered so easily that I thought she must not have understood, so I took a deep breath and tried again. “Katherine, will you marry me?”
This time she laughed and my heart began to tear. Seeing the look on my face, she gently touched my cheek. “Yes,” she said again, and in the late-night quiet of that dimly lit room, we shared our first kiss.
Katherine felt it urgent to tell her sister what she thought was secret, that she was engaged to be married to her brother-in-law’s young recruit, but early the next morning when she joined Naomi in the kitchen, Naomi was not surprised. “I knew long ago,” she said. “It was obvious from the start.”
Katherine smiled. “I certainly found him near me on the houseboat every time I turned around.”
As Naomi had told Edward our news before I had a chance to, I was surprised when he came looking for me at the boys’ orphanage that morning. “You know this changes things, don’t you?” he asked soberly.
I stiffened, certain I had overstepped my bounds. “I didn’t mean—” I started, but Edward waved my words away.
“We’ll be brothers,” he said, and he laughed and embraced me warmly.
Katherine and I felt strongly that we should abide by the custom of missionary organizations in China at that time, which dictated that young people who wished to be married not do so until they had spent two years in the field. Custom also dictated that we must not be alone together. As we lived half a mile apart, and our work kept both of us occupied from sunrise to sunset, this was not difficult.
When less than a year remained to the time when we could be married, I suggested that Katherine choose the date. She chose the fourth of November, her mother’s birthday, and I honored her choice. Because we could not be alone together even to plan our wedding and our future, we wrote notes, and in these notes Katherine repeatedly reminded me that it was not too early to plan for how our household would be outfitted. She was right; supplies from the United States had to be ordered well in advance, and she knew that my father had sent us a small monetary gift as an engagement present. But I was often slow in getting to these sorts of practical tasks, and when I was careless in answering her prompts, Katherine called attention to this in her next note. Still I did nothing. “Kommt zeit kommt ratt,” I wrote back, an old German saying meaning when the time comes, there will be a way. Katherine’s next note was nothing more than a list of what we could afford to order from Montgomery Ward for our first household, and the assurance of her handwriting told me her tone. I placed the order that day.
As Edward had come to China at such a young age, he had not yet been ordained as a pastor in the Mennonite church, and because there was no American minister anywhere near Ch’eng An Fu, we would need to travel to Shanghai, where we could be married by the American consul. On a beautiful clear day in the second week of October, 1908, we left Ch’eng An Fu accompanied by Ruth Ehren, the other deaconess Edward had recruited when we first came to China. She lived at the mission station in Shin Sheng Chou, a day’s journey away, and was willing to accompany us as our chaperone, as was the custom.
I hired a cart to take us overland, and two days after leaving Ch’eng An Fu we reached the Grand Canal then traveled south by houseboat for three weeks. On reaching Shanghai we went to the American Consulate, where we completed the necessary forms and were told by the vice consul that we would need to secure the services of a qualified minister. When we explained that we knew no one in the city, the consul suggested the Reverend Tennant Wright, who was in charge of the Presbyterian bookstore. He agreed to meet us at the consulate, and the next morning Katherine and I stood side by side in Chinese dress before the minister, witnessed by Ruth and the vice consul’s secretary, as we nervously gave our answers when needed. After the ceremony, Ruth treated us to a lunch of fried noodles with shrimp from a street vendor, then tea and dragon beard candy, a sweet made of spun sugar that looked like a white cocoon, and which my new wife enjoyed immensely. It all felt like a celebration feast, and that evening when I held my dear one in my arms in the cramped cabin of our houseboat, I was sure I was the happiest and most fortunate man on earth.
On our journey back to Ch’eng An Fu as husband and wife, we heard historic news: on November 15 the Empress Dowager had died. The Emperor had died the day before, and the heir apparent was an infant, leaving the Ch’ing dynasty in a precarious position. The Middle Kingdom was changing before our eyes.
November 16, 1908
Once again I am on a houseboat traveling north on the Grand Canal. Once again I have spent the day studying and the evening treating the boatmen’s wounds. Once again I often find Will nearby—and I welcome his attention. Twelve days ago we promised each other faithfulness, love, and constancy, and now I am married to a man who is sweet, kind, strong, and most of all good. And he’s funny. When during our vows he said, “With all my worldly goods I thee endow,” he winked at me. We both knew that in my small purse I had eleven cents while in his pocket he had the grand sum of $2.56. After the ceremony he said he had no doubt whatsoever but that I had married him for his money.
I do feel rich. When I was a child, I never thought I would grow up to be married. I wasn’t even certain I would grow up; I knew from overheard conversations between my parents and the doctor that my ill health would most likely prevent me from reaching adulthood; mine would be a brief life. But here I am, twenty-four years old and married to a man I love dearly; perhaps we’ll even grow old together.
The vista of my life has changed, and I marvel at what lies ahead.
Kuang P’ing Ch’eng
1909–1911
When Katherine and I returned from Shanghai, I moved from my room in the boys’ orphanage into Katherine’s small room in Edward and Naomi’s home, and on the surface our lives went on as before: she spent most of her time caring for patients while I worked with Edward. But inwardly I felt changed; I was more whole and more myself, because Katherine was my wife.
We had been married for nearly a year when Edward came to us with a question: Did we feel ready for a station of our own? A city three days to the north of Ch’eng An Fu by cart had no mission, and he felt that with increased funding and new recruits the time was right to expand our work. He cautioned us that how we would be received and how the work would proceed were unknown, but Katherine and I nodded without looking at each other. We had been hoping that just such an opportunity would present itself.
Where mission work was concerned, Edward never delayed. Only weeks after that short conversation, Katherine and I packed our belongings, said our goodbyes, and left Ch’eng An Fu. I was twenty-five; Katherine would be twenty-six in a few weeks.
For two days we traveled north by cart, and on the third day, an overcast afternoon in early October of 1909, we reached Kuang P’ing Ch’eng, City of Tranquil Light. When the city’s huge gray wall was in sight, we asked people we encountered on the road where the main gate was, as it varied from city to city. We were somewhat guardedly told East Gate, and when we passed through it we found ourselves on one of the city’s main thoroughfares, Cheng Chieh, True Street. We found lodging at the Inn of Sweet Water, a damp and dank place whose well gave forth water that was brackish and unpleasant. I later learned that the place had been called Bitter Water Inn, but the people preferred names that were appealing to the ear and t
hat reflected their hopes of good things to come, so the name had been changed. That evening, as Katherine and I sat at a wooden table to eat our dinner of boiled noodles, I thought at first we were alone. Then I saw many pairs of eyes watching us from outside; people were putting their wet fingers to the tinted paper windows so that they could see inside and get a look at the only foreigners for miles.
The next morning we set about finding a place to live. As we walked from the inn toward the center of the city, we saw a storefront on Hsiao Chieh—Filial Loyalty Street—that was available. We were in luck: the owner, a fairly well-to-do merchant, was willing to rent to us, which was a good sign, as many Chinese were reluctant to do business with foreigners. He was of the Mohammedan faith and reassured us many times that he did not worship idols of wood, iron, gold, or silver but that there was one true God, who was Father to us all. We agreed to his price more quickly than we perhaps should have, but we were eager to get settled, and we signed the lease the next day then began acquainting ourselves with our new home.
The city had two main thoroughfares that were paved with long hand-cut stones worn smooth from centuries of use. Cheng Chieh ran for four miles from east to west while Te Chieh—Virtue Street—ran north to south. Neither these streets nor any others in the city were straight but rather curved unpredictably, for it was thought that evil spirits were unable to make turns. It was also believed that a clear path between two gates let evil spirits pass easily through the city, so East Gate and West Gate were not opposite each other. North Gate and South Gate were, which was acceptable because the well in the center of the city lay between them, creating an obstacle.
Nearly the entire length of Cheng Chieh was lined with eating places, tearooms, and shops. Large wooden boards with bright gold characters on backgrounds of deep scarlet, indigo, or emerald announced what each shop sold and who sold it. The silk and medicine shops were similar to traditional stores, but most of the others were like fruit and vegetable stands in an American city—stalls that opened onto the street with narrow benches set out in front so that customers could sit down while bargaining. In the tea shops, professional storytellers entertained customers and boosted business in the process; the longer people stayed to listen, the more tea they drank.
Carcasses of whole pigs with blood dripping to the ground hung in the front of the butcher’s shop, and at the fishmonger’s, live fish circled in large tubs of water. I-yen t’ang—“one-word halls”—were like five-and-dime stores, where everything sold for the same price, and the boiling water shop was a small dingy place with half a dozen hot kettles resting on mud stoves. Children carrying teapots hurried in and out, rushing to get home while the water was still hot; the cost of fuel made it cheaper to pay for boiling water than to heat it.
Near the far end of Cheng Chieh, almost to West Gate, was the tsa-huo-p’u, the variety store that sold what you couldn’t get anywhere else: red paper for invitations, white paper for funeral announcements, paper money for idols, and firecrackers for feast days, weddings, and funerals.
Near the well and close to the center of Cheng Chieh were the city’s official buildings, the yu chen chu—post office—with a professional letter writer sitting in front, and the yamen, a walled collection of spacious courtyards and brick buildings with curved tile roofs that housed the town hall, courthouse, jail, and official residence of the magistrate, who was in charge of the city’s local militia and police and acted as the judge of civil and criminal court. The magistrate’s seal was kept at the yamen, and the keys to the city gates were brought there after the gates were locked at sundown and kept there until dawn, when the gates were opened. Next to the yamen was Cheng-Huang Miao—the City God Temple—the busiest and most important of the city’s several temples, dedicated to the city’s divine defender, who was believed to protect Kuang P’ing Ch’eng from disasters of every kind.
Roughly parallel to Cheng Chieh was Ma Lu, Horse Road, which was used by wheelbarrows and carts because it was less congested. Behind it was a tangle of lanes named for what the shops on them sold—Shoemaker Street, Lantern Alley, Pawnbroker Lane, Jade Street, Lacquer Street, Chopstick Lane—and behind them was a series of curving and nearly identical alleyways that wound their way to the city’s residential areas and eventually out to the city wall.
November 2, 1909
Six days ago we arrived in Kuang P’ing Ch’eng, where, like Ch’eng An Fu, setting foot inside the city walls is like stepping back into another century. There is no plumbing, running water, or electricity, and the smell in the streets can be so foul that I sometimes hold a small piece of camphor wood to my nose so I can inhale its musky scent. I am ashamed of my reaction; my dislike lessens me, not the city, and I pray that my feelings will change. I desperately want to like it here.
Our new home is a typical Chinese shop, with an earthen floor and close-fitting foot-wide boards that form the front wall. At night we put the boards up to close the storefront tight; during the day we take them down so that the shop opens onto the street and presto! our open-air chapel, where Will can preach and where we can hold services. A door at the back of the storefront opens onto a small brick courtyard, on the other side of which are the three rooms where we live. The owner agreed to sell us the few pieces of furniture that were here for a reasonable price, so we are now the proud owners of six long benches (where our visitors can sit), the woven cane and thin pallet of straw that are our bed, a bedside table, and a wooden shelf.
As the place had been empty for months it was filthy, so we have spent these first few days cleaning and whitewashing. As I walk through the empty rooms and into the courtyard, I tell myself that this is home now, and I pray for the grace to accept the details of my medieval life and do the work I’ve been called to do.
Eight days after our arrival in Kuang P’ing Ch’eng was a market day, which meant Cheng Chieh would be busy and attracting an audience would be easy. The people loved to be entertained and were extremely curious, and they were interested as soon as a foreigner began to speak. But as I stood in front of our small shop that morning, my heart thudded in my chest and my voice felt tight inside my throat, for I felt completely unequipped for what I was about to do: preach in Mandarin to a group of strangers who would most likely not be welcoming. I didn’t see how I could make these people understand why foreigners would leave their own homes thousands of miles away to come to their country, where we knew no one.
I started to turn back inside, thinking I could prepare more, but Katherine, standing behind me, put her hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. “Don’t worry about saying anything great. Just be a vessel and speak from your heart.” Then she nodded toward the street and I stepped into the autumn sun.
I wore a scholar’s gray robe and a black satin jacket and cap but was still so conspicuous that people stopped and stared as soon as they saw me. A small group quickly gathered, mostly farmers in padded jackets and wide trousers of dark blue cotton, along with a few scholars and merchants and business magnates in long robes. I closed my eyes, turned my face heavenward, and began to pray out loud in English. “Father God,” I said, “You have brought us here to tell the people of Your love for them. Inspire me and make me wise. Open the hearts of those listening today, that they may know Your Spirit. I ask for this—along with courage, O dear God, please give me courage, and please give it to me now, God—in Your Son’s name.”
When I finished praying I glanced at Katherine and she nodded encouragement. I could see she was amused at my request for courage; it was not something I had planned to say, but one of those blurted-out prayers that are often most real.
I began speaking in Mandarin. “Good day, my friends,” I said loudly, and I heard the trembling in my voice, “I am from Wai-Kuo”—the Outside Kingdom—“a place you call Mei-Kuo. My country is a young country, while yours is many centuries old. Your first emperor, Fu Hsi, lived thousands of years before my country was born.”
A few people nodded.
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nbsp; “I have been told that Fu Hsi tamed the animals and taught his people how to live in families; that he showed men how to fish and wrote songs for them to sing while they did. I have been honored to hear these and other stories about your country.”
I tried to gauge people’s interest and understanding. Perhaps two dozen men sat on the hard benches; another dozen stood at the perimeter, watching cautiously. A few beggars crouched in the corner.
I continued. “I have also been told that many centuries ago there were strict laws for young people who refused to listen to their parents. There is a record of a particular young man who continually refused to obey his parents. This rebellious son was severely punished, but even after everything possible had been done to correct him, he still would not change his wicked ways.”
A few of the older men looked pointedly at whatever younger people happened to be nearby.
“The elders of the village were forced to sentence the disobedient son with the ultimate punishment, in the hope that the threat of this punishment would bring about repentance before the sentence was carried out. They decided to dig a hole and prepare to bury the hard-hearted son alive, with the fervent hope that he would at the last moment plead for forgiveness and promise to change. But when they informed the young man of his sentence, his heart was so hardened that even the threat of being buried alive did not cause him to mend his ways, and he continued to defy his parents and the community. The elders had no choice but to dig the grave and prepare to bury him.”
