Shanghai Faithful

by Jennifer Lin

  With her four daughters and five sons, Lin Heping had a short fuse. Once, she came home and found a valuable vase shattered in pieces on the floor. She immediately accused her eldest son, Ni Shuzu, then sixteen, of breaking it. Despite his denial, she gave him a thrashing.

  But at forty, Lin Heping experienced a spiritual awakening that started when an old acquaintance came to Fuzhou in February 1920. The visitor’s name was Yu Cidu, a popular female evangelist who went by the English name of Dora Yu. A second-generation Christian, she was seven years older than Lin Heping and a well-known preacher in coastal China. Lin Heping had met her as a student at the McTyeire School and attended one of her talks. So inspired was Lin Heping by the preaching that she gave the evangelist a valuable ring that had been a gift from her own mother. She wanted Yu Cidu to use it, if need be, to cover her expenses. The older woman at first refused, but Lin Heping insisted.

  Yu Cidu was part of a generation of Chinese women and men who, at the dawn of the twentieth century, began to preach independently across the country. The early part of the century, a time of great political upheaval and change, was a golden age for missionary work. The ranks of Chinese Protestants numbered about one hundred thousand in 1900, increasing to almost three hundred thousand by 1915. It was during this period that Yu Cidu began conducting revival meetings in Methodist Episcopal churches in Shanghai and other major cities.

  In February 1920, when Lin Heping heard that Yu Cidu was coming to Fuzhou for two weeks, she was both pleased at the prospect of seeing her old acquaintance and somewhat uncomfortable. In the twenty-two years since they had last seen each other, she was a Christian in name only.

  The day of Yu Cidu’s arrival, Lin Heping invited her to her spacious home for dinner. The family lived in a two-story brick house behind a wall in the foreign settlement of Nantai. The other guests included a few church members and some of the gambling friends of the hostess. At the dinner table, Lin Heping kept the conversation between the disparate guests moving along and mentioned the good work of Yu Cidu, who would be holding a two-week revival meeting.

  At the close of the meal, she said, “Tomorrow morning at eight o’clock, Yu Cidu will preach at the Church of Heavenly Peace. Please all go.”

  “And what about you?” a mahjong friend playfully taunted.

  Put on the spot, Lin Heping stammered, “Of course, I will go.”

  On February 15, the Methodist church, built by American missionaries and located on a hillside overlooking the Min River, was filled to capacity and included Lin Heping and her friends. For the day’s lesson, Yu Cidu told the story of Adam and Eve, tempted by the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

  The second day, Lin Heping felt obligated to return to hear her friend talk. Again, the topic was man’s descent into sin from the book of Genesis.

  By the third day, Lin Heping needed a break. She resumed her spot at the mahjong table with her friends. “We’ve wasted two days without playing mahjong,” a friend protested. “Her preaching was unintelligible.”

  Lin Heping kept quiet. While the others laughed and chatted, she felt torn. She surprised herself by deciding after two days of gambling that she needed to return to church for the sake of Yu Cidu. “She came here from a great distance to preach,” Lin Heping explained to her friends. “How can I decline to go?”

  She rose at four the next morning, unable to sleep. When she arrived at church, Yu Cidu immediately asked about her whereabouts for the past two days.

  “I wasn’t feeling well,” Lin Heping lied sheepishly.

  The day’s talk was on lapsed Christians. Lin Heping felt as if her friend were looking right at her. She felt uncomfortable in her gaze and resolved that tomorrow she would not return to church.

  But at the end of the talk, Yu Cidu made a point of asking her whether she would come back for the next day’s session. Lin Heping nodded yes.

  Again the topic was nominal Christians. “It was as if she had seen my way of life with her own eyes,” Lin Heping later wrote. “I sat there as though yesterday she had not scolded me enough.”

  On the following Sunday, the seventh day of her revival meetings, Yu Cidu delivered her main message—that Jesus was the Son of God who endured pain and shame and willingly died on the cross to save man from sin. The preacher’s zeal was so intense and effective that when Lin Heping returned home, she wept uncontrollably. “When people go to worship, they come home happy,” her husband lamented. “You went for several nights and you can’t sleep or eat. After this, don’t go anymore.”

  But she felt compelled to confess all of her shortcomings in an outpouring of remorse and contrition. It was as if she was seeing herself for the first time and disapproving of what she saw. Lin Heping told her husband she regularly skimmed money from household funds to gamble with her friends. And when she finished with him, she turned to her eldest son. She apologized for accusing him of breaking her favorite vase.

  “I confess to you that the time when I beat you unjustly was a sin against you,” she told him. “Please forgive me.”

  “I truly hated you for beating me without cause that day,” her son replied.

  “Please forgive me,” she repeated.

  He did not answer. But the next morning, after seeing how his mother’s demeanor had changed and how her contrition seemed real, he was curious about what this preacher had said and decided to go with her to the revival meeting.

  Her eldest son was a student at St. Mark’s, the high school that was part of the Irish-run Trinity College, the alma mater of Lin Pu-chi. Ni Shuzu was the type of student whose intellect allowed him to coast through school with little effort. The older this son got, the more he developed an aversion to the organized church. He found it pathetic the way Chinese pastors came around, knocking on the door of his family’s home, begging for donations for their foreign-run churches.

  At the revival meeting, he listened to his mother, who stood next to Yu Cidu and interpreted her words into the local dialect spoken in Fuzhou. He returned the next day to hear the preacher again, and then another day, eventually attending every meeting for a week.

  The experience left the seventeen-year-old tormented and changed. He felt repentance, joy, and confusion: was he being called to follow a new path, a religious one? Two months later, as he would later recall for friends, “I was alone in my room, struggling to decide whether or not to believe in the Lord. I pictured his hands stretched out on the cross, and all at once they seemed to be welcoming me.”

  His mother also felt compelled to make decisive changes in her life. She no longer would be a Christian in name only. Every Tuesday at 2:00 p.m., she began to hold Bible study meetings in her spacious home. She played the piano at big revival meetings across the province. She accepted invitations to share her story, testifying to Methodist and Anglican groups as well as members of the Young Women’s Christian Association. Word of her speaking ability spread, and soon Lin Heping received invitations to talk to groups in other towns, including a girls’ school in neighboring Fuqing. In the autumn of 1920, she stayed for a month at the school. No sooner had she returned to Fuzhou than she received another invitation to return. She agreed, even though she knew it overlapped with an important family event: her second daughter’s wedding.

  Facing the prospect of missing the ceremony, Lin Heping asked her husband’s younger sister to fill in for her.

  “Guizhen has a mother,” her sister-in-law clucked. “Why is it necessary for an aunt to help? Don’t be crazy.”

  Even in the face of intense disapproval from the family, Lin Heping intended to follow through with her plans. Her daughter was despondent. Her husband tried to talk sense into his wife, but she would hear none of it.

  Relief came in the form of a letter sent by messenger to the Ni family. Lin Pu-chi had returned to Fuzhou in the summer of 1920 and was not oblivious to the drama unfolding within the Ni household. He wro
te a letter to the patriarch informing him that he was “ill” and it would be better if the families postponed the wedding for a month or more. Lin Heping packed her suitcase and hired a sedan chair for the daylong journey to Fuqing.

  Double Happiness

  In her room, the bride took her wedding dress into her hands, unbuttoned the back, and slipped the column of blush-white satin over her arms. The gown came to just above her ankles, showing off her dainty feet in white silk stockings and white kid pumps. She broke from Chinese tradition, eschewing a red embroidered wedding outfit in favor of this Western bridal gown with a high neck, long sleeves, and a scalloped hem with fringe. It was modern yet modest, just like her. Her hair was pulled into a loose bun that covered her ears and softly framed her face. Her only jewelry was a gold necklace with a locket. On her head she wore a crown of flowers that held a long veil of white tulle. In her hands she clutched a bouquet of daisies with soft tendrils of ferns.

  At his house, the groom put his long arms into the sleeves of a formal morning jacket with a black waistcoat and starched, high-collar white shirt. He used pomade to slick down his thick, black hair in a straight center part. He pinned his boutonniere on his lapel and adjusted his wire-framed eyeglasses. Last, he pulled white gloves over each hand and placed a black bowler on his head.

  Lin Pu-chi and Ni Guizhen pose for their wedding-day portrait. Courtesy of Lin Family Collection.

  The ceremony on March 4, 1921, would be a double wedding. Lin Pu-chi’s younger brother dressed differently for his nuptials. He opted to wear a traditional Chinese black silk coat over a long gown with black felt slippers. He had never traveled beyond Fuzhou and was not about to put on the airs of a westerner like his older brother.

  Hundreds of guests filled all the pews of the stone chapel on the campus of Trinity College. Heads turned as the brides made their way down the aisle—Ni Guizhen to marry Lin Pu-chi, now a deacon in the Anglican Church; and Yu Yujie to marry Lin Buying, a clerk with the postal service.

  After the Christian ceremony, friends and family crossed the campus for an outdoor reception. Coming from such prominent families, the couples drew guests from many different quarters—Chinese and Western, missionary and medical. Directors of the YMCA mingled with doctors from the Tating Hospital; deacons and pastors dined alongside clerks from government offices.

  For the wedding banquet, round tables were set up around the soccer field by the middle school. The North of China may have been reeling from a famine, but the double wedding of Dr. Lin’s sons was cause for a feast. Each table was set with plates of fruit and a sampling of cold dishes, including duck and preserved plums. Kitchen staff brought out a procession of steaming dishes, featuring the bounty of the sea, Fuzhou’s specialty. There were fish balls in broth, shrimp baked in custard, sea urchins, curried fish, and the grand finale, generous bowls of shark’s fin soup.

  For the double wedding on March 4, 1921, both grooms—Lin Pu-chi (right) and Lin Buying—pose with their brides, parents, and siblings. Courtesy of Lin Family Collection.

  Each set of couples posed for photographs with their parents and siblings. Lin Heping, back from her preaching, smiled for the camera; the bride stood over her right shoulder with an impassive expression. Her young brothers and sisters surrounded them.

  Neither the bride nor groom wanted this marriage, but the power of Confucian obedience was stronger than individual will. Lin Pu-chi was twenty-six. He had lived abroad and was building a career in the Anglican Church. He taught at the Union Theological Seminary and ran the small Ming Do Chapel near the family’s home in the foreign enclave of Nantai. Ni Guizhen was nineteen and had only one path in front of her. Her clothes may have been modern, but tradition dictated that her next step was raising a family.

  She accepted her fate. But on her wedding night, Ni Guizhen vowed that if she ever had a daughter, she would not let history repeat itself.

  • 7 •

  Running Dog

  Fuzhou, 1924

  The procession was about to begin. Boys from a home for orphans launched into “Thy Kingdom Come, O Lord” on trumpets and drums. It was All Saints’ Day—November 1, 1924—and the high-noon sun beat down on hundreds of Chinese and foreign guests standing around trenches in a neighborhood a few blocks from the Min River. Western men shielded their heads under pith helmets. Women tiptoed around puddles and piles of rubble. They pressed close to a wooden platform that marked the exact spot of the front door of the future Jidu Tianzhu Tang, or Christ Church Cathedral.

  In a house near the construction site, Lin Pu-chi and other clergy donned their robes before stepping into the sunlight for the laying of the cornerstone. For the twenty-nine-year-old priest, the ceremony marked a personal achievement. The trenches outlined the foundation of a new mother church for the Fujian diocese. The stone and wood structure, which would be shaped like a cross, would have twin square towers and stand as an architectural expression of the aspirations of the Anglican Church. It would have classrooms for a school, a meeting hall, and a sanctuary vast enough to seat a thousand people. And the cleric selected to run it was Lin Pu-chi.

  Addressing the assembled, an elderly Chinese pastor recalled the trials of Archdeacon John Wolfe, the “Moses of Fujian” who died in 1915 after a half century of work in the province. The cathedral was being dedicated in the memory of the archdeacon, who evangelized beyond the walled city of Fuzhou to villages like the ancestral home of Lin Pu-chi’s family.

  Workers pulling on ropes and rigs positioned the massive cornerstone, chiseled with the English words “Glory be to God.” Before it was lowered into place, they placed in a time capsule mementoes of the era: a Chinese Bible, the charter for the Fujian parish, a list of cathedral donors, a bank note worth one thousand yuan in silver, and a copy of a local newspaper.

  If everything went according to plan, the cathedral would be finished in time for a dedication ceremony on May 1, 1927. The national synod for the Chung Hua Sheng Kung Hui, as the Anglican and Episcopal Church in China was called, would congregate in Fuzhou on that day, and church members from all over China could bear witness to how far they had come in Fujian.

  Anglican missionaries needed men like Lin Pu-chi to carry on their work in the province. It had been nearly seventy-five years since they arrived in Fuzhou, and control of chapels, schools, and hospitals was still very much in their hands. Until the church could shake its foreign profile, Christianity would be seen as an alien religion. Bishop John Hind, the head of the Fujian diocese, was not resistant to transferring more responsibility to Chinese Christians, but there were practical matters to consider, such as finances—paying salaries, covering debts, subsidizing budgets for hospitals and schools—and a shortage of capable local clerics. Mission help was still necessary in a diocese with 15,000 baptized members in 316 churches.

  But the slow pace of change made Lin Pu-chi impatient. He recognized the undeniable tide of anti-Christian sentiment rising throughout China, linked to equally strengthening feelings of national pride. The Chinese people, especially those who were younger, urban, and educated, resented how other nations treated their homeland. They wanted to do away with “extraterritoriality,” the right given to foreigners after the Opium Wars to be beholden to the laws of their home countries and not China’s. Increasingly, Christianity and its institutions were viewed as part of the problem—and their Chinese followers as unpatriotic instruments of imperialism. The attacks against them were well organized, with rallies, articles, and slogans. There were even printed instructions on how to organize an anti-Christian campaign: conduct parades to arouse public attention; make speeches to discredit Christianity; distribute attack literature; and recruit sympathizers. Mission schools were singled out for criticism, accused of robbing students of their Chinese identities by perfecting their English at the expense of their Chinese—a form of cultural imperialism that conquered minds and fostered feelin
gs of deference and inferiority.

  Even among Chinese Christians, some believers distanced themselves from the Protestant churches run by missionaries. The brother-in-law of Lin Pu-chi—the oldest brother of Ni Guizhen—was one of these outliers. A self-taught preacher with no denominational ties, he felt no need for these foreign institutions. He openly disparaged Chinese pastors who came to his home to ask for donations from his wealthy parents. Instead, he sought out mentors, Chinese and foreign, to teach him the scriptures, and he voraciously read En-glish works by well-known European mystics and evangelists. He was baptized by immersion in the Min River and took to the streets with a band of friends to spread their beliefs. They dressed in white tunics emblazoned with red cloth characters that translated to “Jesus is coming.” They handed out pamphlets about the Gospels, banged gongs for attention, and played hymns on accordion. So consumed was he with his newfound mission that he changed his name to reflect his spiritual quest. He picked a moniker that was a nod to a popular Welsh evangelist he admired and studied who had penned a prayer for “all the faithful watchmen on the watchtowers.” In a decade, he would be known throughout China by this new name, Ni Tuosheng, or to English speakers, Watchman Nee.

  Watchman Nee rejected denominational churches, but Lin Pu-chi was trying to change the Anglican mission from the inside out. His new appointment as dean of the cathedral would elevate his standing not only within his church but also with the larger foreign community in Fuzhou.