Customer Reviews

To China with Love

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Pat Barr wrote several books about Westeners in Asia. None of them are deep and profound, but all are readable and interesting. "To China with Love" is about the trials and tribulations of Protestant missionaries in China. Barr expresses perplexity as to why "the Taylors of Barnsley were so feverishly determined to convert the Wangs of Ningpo" to Christianity. It was a mystery then, and it's still a mystery --but many a good tale can be told of the adventures and mis-adventures of the missionaries going out to China from England and the United States.

It is little recalled that the China missionaries were often the best and the brightest of Western society in the 19th century. Most of them were college educated, many from the creme de la creme of British and American universities, and they often gave up wealth and position for an uncomfortable and dangerous life in China. An early death, failure, and brickbats from the Chinese and many of their countrymen was often their fate.

Focusing on English missionaries, Barr tells the story of Hudson Taylor and the Chinese Inland Mission, the Cambridge Seven, the well-named Dr. Dudgeon, the equally well-named Moule brothers, Gilmour of Mongolia, and other colorful figures who stalked across China in their quixotic quest. I liked most of them. They had a dedication, a drive and a sense of commitment that is rare in this modern, cynical world.

Chinese resentment of the West and its missionaries, soldiers, and salesmen steadily grew and culminated in the Boxer uprising of 1900 in which foreign missionaries and Chinese converts were martyred by the hundreds. Barr ends the book with this watershed event. The story of the missionaries in China is well worth your attention and this book is a good introduction.

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