Missionaries honored in China today

Edited by Tony Lambert, Director of China Research, OMF

CHARIOTS OF FIRE HERO HONORED BY THE CHINESE

The residents of a northern Chinese city paid an unusual tribute yesterday to the Scottish runner Eric Liddell, hero of the film Chariots of Fire. As part of a ceremony marking the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Japanese internment camp where he died, Chinese officials, old friends, and fellow inmates laid a wreath at a memorial marking his grave.

Liddell, a devout Christian, became famous for winning the 400 meters at the 1924 Paris Olympics after refusing to run his best distance, the 100 meters, because the heats were held on a Sunday. Less well known is that he was born and spent much of his life in China. He was the son of missionaries in the port city of Tianjin and left Britain the year after his Paris triumph to follow in their footsteps as a missionary.

“He was a great Olympic champion who gave up all to teach the youth of China,” said Stephen Metcalf, 78, a friend and fellow internee. What was once the Weihsien internment camp is now No. 2 Middle School in Weifang, Shandong Province. Thousands of children, teachers, residents and city leaders turned out to greet the former occupants. More than 2,000 people were held in the camp, including 327 children mostly from Chefoo, the China Inland Mission-run boarding school in Yentai. Many were children of missionaries as were some of the older westerners held there, a fact little mentioned yesterday. The huge missionary presence in China at the time is still regarded a symbol of humiliating domination by Western powers.

Nevertheless, the two dozen former internees were touched by the ceremony. At its climax, fireworks exploded into miniature parachutes representing the American servicemen who jumped from a B24 bomber to liberate the camp on August 17, 1945. Then 1,500 pigeons were released, one for each of the inmates.

An exhibition hall showing photos of the camp and a garden of remembrance containing sculptures and the names of all those held were opened. For many of the children, nearly all separated from their parents, Liddell became a father figure. As well as teaching classes, he ran a Sunday school and organized sports competitions.

“He gave me two things,” Mr. Metcalf said. “One was his worn-out running shoes.” It was winter, and like many boys Metcalf had nothing to wear on his feet. “The best thing he gave me was the baton of forgiveness. He taught me to love my enemies, the Japanese, and to pray for them.” After the war Mr. Metcalf spent 40 years as a missionary in Japan.

Liddell died of a brain tumor in the camp hospital on February 21, 1945. “We all trailed along behind his coffin,” said another former inmate, Estelle Cliff Horne. “My brother was one of the pallbearers, and we buried him [Liddell] near where the ceremony was.”

The camp had been a mission school for Chinese children and several of the buildings including the hospital wing, are still standing. The Liddell memorial was erected by Edinburgh University where he studied, after China reopened to the world.

After the Japanese left, the camp’s history was quietly forgotten in China. During the Mao years it was not politically correct to talk of having helped the foreigners. Now the wheel has come full circle, and those Chinese who smuggled food into the camp are also honored. (Daily Telegraph, UK, August 18, 2005)

An attractive biography of Eric Liddell is published for children by Barbour Publishing in their series Young Readers Christian Library for only US$2.50. [Please contact your local Christian bookstore, not OMF, to obtain this!] OMF has also published the Chinese translation of another biography of Eric Liddell entitled Pure Gold. Copies of this can be obtained by contacting your nearest OMF office.

NEW MEMORIALS TO J.O. FRASER

We are sure most of our readers are familiar with the wonderful story of CIM missionary J.O. Fraser, who pioneered gospel work among the Lisu people in Yunnan in the first part of the 20th century. Fraser’s work has not been forgotten by the Lisu church which is flourishing today. No less than two memorials have been erected to his memory!

On March 31, 2002 a special Easter service was held to unveil a new memorial to Fraser on the outskirts of Baoshan City, Yunnan. More than 400 Lisu believers attended. Nobody knew where Fraser’s body had been buried except the man who actually buried him in 1938. This pastor, who is now in his nineties, leads the registered church in Baoshan. The original grave had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. The wording on the new memorial reads as follows:

IN MEMORY OF JAMES O. FRASER, MISSIONARY

James Outram Fraser, English missionary was born in London in 1886. At the age of 22, he left his comfortable home life, gave up good career prospects in engineering and set off across the Pacific Ocean for Shanghai, China. On the way he passed through Hong Kong, Thailand, Singapore, Myanmar and entered western Yunnan Province to preach the gospel and save souls. In 1908 while in Tengchong, Fraser met the Lisu people for the first time. From the beginning he had a deep love for the Lisu. He learned the Lisu language at an astonishingly fast rate and began to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ among the people.

James Fraser traveled all over Tengchong, Baoshan, Longling, Yingjiang, Luxi, Longchuan and the Lisu areas of the Nujiang Valley and Myanmar. He was the first person to establish a Christian community among the Lisu and was respectfully known as an apostle to the Lisu believers.

In his lifetime James Fraser’s four greatest contributions to the Lisu were:

1. To lead the people to know the Everlasting God;
2. To establish a Lisu Christian community in western Yunnan;
3. To help the Lisu people create their own written script and thereby become more civilized;
4. To translate the most authoritative book in the world—the Holy Bible (New Testament)—into the Lisu language and introduce God’s Word to the Lisu people.

On September 25, 1938, while in Baoshan Yunnan, China, James Fraser died at the age of 52. Due to land erosion, West Yunnan’s Christian church decided to move the grave from the mountain slopes of Baoshan to this location, renewing the headstone on behalf of the Lisu church as a way of expressing their cherished memory of J.O. Fraser.

Fraser’s life has reaped a large harvest although many tears had first to be sown through his labours. Rest in peace, J.O. Fraser.

“Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” John 12:24.

The Lisu church at Baoshan plans to commemorate J.O. Fraser every seven years at a special Easter service in the new Bible training center they have started there.

Another memorial to J.O. Fraser has been erected by Lisu believers in Weixi County in far northwestern Yunnan. Inscribed in Lisu, Chinese and English the English reads: “IN LOVING MEMORY. JAMES O. FRASER 1888-1938. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news. WITH DEEPEST LOVE REMEMBER YOU ALWAYS—THE LISU CHURCH.” The Chinese states additionally: “Erected by the Christian Church in the Lisu Autonomous County of Weixi on 15 March 2004.”

The Lisu church has seen spectacular numerical growth in recent decades. In 1950 the Nujiang Prefecture had 14,800 believers. By 1995 that number had risen to over 100,000—most of them Lisu. In the early 1980s the Yunnan Christian Council printed several thousand copies of the Lisu Bible. Then in 1995 a further 45,000 Lisu Bibles were published, as well as 65,000 Lisu hymnbooks. Both printings were in the special script devised by J.O. Fraser. However, the church is still hampered by endemic poverty, illiteracy and lack of trained pastors and evangelists. The rapid development of Yunnan as a tourist region and the tidal wave of emigration of young tribal people from the remote mountain valleys to the cities in search of work are bringing many changes to the Lisu church, not all of them positive. Pray they will stand firm in faith!

(We are grateful to Catalyst Ministries, UK, for providing details of the Baoshan grave.)

WITH THE LORD—PASTOR ALLEN YUAN

Pastor Allen Yuan, Beijing’s best-known house-church pastor, passed away peacefully in hospital on August 16. Twenty-five hundred people attended his funeral and another 1,000 were turned away by police. We hope to publish a full tribute in our next issue.

Copyright 2005 OMF International