“I’ve been waiting for you,” he began, as he bowed to her. “The convicts are killing each other, and my soldiers are too frightened to go back inside.”
Gladys nodded weakly. “I am very sorry to hear that, but I am a foot inspector. What does this have to do with me?”
“You must go in and stop the fighting,” replied the governor firmly.
Gladys felt herself getting dizzy. “I must go in there and stop them?” she echoed numbly, thinking of the murderers and robbers inside. “But I’m only a woman. I don’t know anything about fighting. If I go in there they’ll kill me.”
The governor smiled in triumph. “No they won’t. You are always telling everyone that you have the living God in you, so how could they kill you?” he reasoned.
Feeling faint, Gladys reached for the wall to steady herself. “You want me to step into a prison riot because I have the living God in me and you think I can’t be killed?” she gasped.
Her mind whirled. How could she explain to the prison governor it wasn’t that simple. Christians could be killed like anyone else, and Gladys was pretty sure if she went into the prison, that’s what was going to happen to her. The eyes of the governor and all of the soldiers were on her, waiting to see what she would do.
When Gladys said nothing, the governor repeated himself. “You and the living God can go in there together and get the men to stop fighting. Otherwise, none of them will be left alive.”
Gladys had an important decision to make. If she refused to help, word would quickly travel around Yangcheng and throughout the surrounding villages that there was no living God in Gladys. But if she went into the prison? Gladys didn’t even dare think about what might happen to her. But when she thought about the people of Yangcheng and the surrounding villages, she could make only one decision. Gladys turned to the prison governor and said, “I will go in.”
Before Gladys had time to think about what she’d just said, a soldier turned the key in the lock of the huge iron gate that guarded the entrance to the prison. As soon as the gate was open wide enough, the governor pushed Gladys inside. “God, protect me now, and give me strength to do this,” Gladys quickly prayed as the iron gate clanged shut behind her.
In front of her was a pitch-black tunnel about twenty yards long. The tunnel opened out into the prison courtyard at the opposite end. Gladys stood paralyzed with fear for a moment, afraid to go forward and unable to go back. Then slowly she began feeling her way forward through the tunnel towards the screams at the end of it. A few moments later, she was standing in bright sunlight, looking out at a more horrible scene than the one she’d viewed at the execution in the marketplace. Blood was splattered everywhere. Men lay dead or dying all around. Gladys watched in horror as a prisoner with a huge machete lunged at a group of men crouched in a corner. The men scattered, climbing over dead bodies to escape. One of the men ran in Gladys’s direction. The prisoner with the machete raced after him. The fleeing man hid behind a box, but the machete-wielding man saw him. Gladys watched in terror as the machete was drawn into the air over the fleeing man’s head.
Without thinking, Gladys stepped out of the shadows and bravely yelled, “Stop at once, and give me that machete.”
The prisoner turned in Gladys’s direction, his black eyes gleaming with evil. When he saw Gladys, he stopped and held the machete motionless in midair. Then, as if some outside force were controlling him, he let the machete go, and it clattered loudly to the ground. The noise startled everyone in the prison courtyard. All eyes were now fixed on Gladys, who knew she had only a few seconds to gain control.
“All of you,” she commanded, “drop your weapons and come over here.” She pointed in front of her. “Get into a line now.” As she said this, she thought frantically of what to say next. She was an unarmed woman alone in a prison filled with desperate men. If she said the wrong thing, the favor she seemed to have with the men at that moment would be lost, and anything could happen.
The men began to line up in front of her. Gladys looked at them. She’d never seen men in such a sad state. They were desperately thin. They had open, oozing sores all over their bodies and so many lice that Gladys could see them weaving in and out of their hair. No wonder the men had rioted. They had been stripped of all their human dignity. In an instant, Gladys knew what she would say next.
She cleared her throat. “I have been sent in here to find out what the problem is and to help solve it,” she began. “But I do not think I can talk to the governor on your behalf until you clean up some of this mess.”
She swept her hand in the direction of the courtyard. Somehow she knew it was important to get the prisoners to work together, and quickly. “Clean up this mess, and then we will talk about what I should tell the governor for you.”
Obediently, the men began to sweep up the courtyard. One prisoner brought a machete and several knives to Gladys. Others began to move the dead bodies into a pile. One of the men came over to talk to Gladys. He introduced himself as Feng and apologized for the riot on behalf of all the prisoners.
“I don’t know what happened,” Feng said, shaking his head. “Somehow it all became too much, and someone started a fight. We really didn’t mean to kill anybody.”
Something about Feng’s manner caused Gladys to trust him. “What were you all doing when the riot broke out?” she asked.
“Doing?” asked Feng. “We were doing the same thing we do every day—sitting and waiting for the day to end.”
“But don’t you have jobs in here? Things to keep you busy?” asked Gladys.
Feng shook his head. “No, we sit and wait all day. Some of the men starve to death because they have no relatives to bring them food, and others die because there’s no reason to live. I was a Buddhist priest before I was accused of stealing and sentenced here for eight years. I doubt that I shall ever get out. The cold kills many in here.”
Gladys glanced down at the thin rags Feng was wearing. Her body shivered unconsciously as she envisioned how cold the men must get in such clothes, especially in the dead of winter. Just as Gladys was about to reply to Feng, the prison governor walked up behind her. He bowed to her. “Thank you very much,” he began. “You have done a great service to our town. I will take over now.”
The governor took the machete and knives from Gladys’s hand. Gladys turned to walk back through the tunnel towards the iron gate, when she felt an irresistible urge to do something that took as much bravery as walking into the riot in the first place. She turned back to the governor. “This cannot go on,” she said in a loud voice.
The governor looked stunned. “What do you mean?” he asked.
Gladys pointed at the rags Feng was wearing. “It is no wonder these men rioted. You or I would have, too. Look how thin these men are. Some of them are starving, and they have nothing to do day after day!”
“Nothing to do?” asked the governor. “I don’t understand. They are in prison. Of course they do nothing.”
“But they should do something,” said Gladys, pressing the point. “All men need something to do. Get them looms and let them weave themselves some clothes. Let them grow some vegetables to eat. These men need something to do.”
Gladys searched the governor’s face for some sign of what he was thinking. Finally, the governor spoke. “You have given me much to think about. We will talk about this again later.”
Gladys thought of one more thing before she left. Boldly she said, “I have promised the men you will not punish them for this. They have promised not to riot again.”
The prison governor nodded. “As you wish,” he said. “It is amazing you got them to stop, whatever you promised them.”
Gladys smiled and turned to Feng. “I will be back to visit you, and I will see what I can do for all of you.”
Feng bowed deeply. “Thank you, Ai-weh-deh,” he replied.
It was several days before Gladys learned that the word Ai-weh-deh meant “virtuous one.” Only then did she understand that Feng, a Buddhist priest, had paid her, a Christian, a great compliment.
Gladys was true to her word. She began to visit the prisoners every day. She read them stories from the Bible and taught them about basic hygiene. She also visited the prison governor every day until he agreed to make some changes in the way the prison was run. Since there was no money for “extras,” Gladys came up with her own ways of making the prisoners’ lives more useful. Some friends of the governor agreed to donate two old looms to the prison, and Gladys begged yarn from the local merchants. She also begged a miller’s wheel so that the prisoners could grind their own grain. Gladys even taught the men how to breed rabbits for sale. Within a few months of the riot, the prisoners were all warmly dressed and eating well. Gladys had kept her end of the bargain.
News of the changes in the prison spread throughout the district. Soon everyone was calling Gladys Ai-weh-deh. Gladys Aylward, the housemaid from London, who, when she arrived three years before had been viewed as nothing more than a foreign devil, had won a place in the hearts of the people of Yangcheng, first as the foot inspector, and now as a riot stopper and prison reformer. What would be next?
Chapter 11
Vehicles That Flew Like Insects
Gladys hurried along the narrow street past the coal merchant and the candle seller. She was on her way to the yamen to report to the mandarin. She visited him every time she came back from one of her foot-inspection tours. Lately her reports had all been the same: No more girls with bound feet were to be found in the district. The practice had been done away with.
Gladys was thinking of how to make her report interesting, when she noticed an old woman she’d never seen before sitting at the edge of the street. Gladys looked at her closely. The old woman was wearing heavy silver jewelry and jade hairpins, all of which were quite usual in Yangcheng. But her bright green cloth shoes really caught Gladys’s attention. Gladys had never seen anyone in Shansi province with shoes that color. It simply wasn’t a color that was used for shoes.
Curiosity got the better of her, and Gladys decided to find out a little more about the woman. She walked over to her. Just as she was about to say something, a tiny, scraggly child peered around from behind the woman. Gladys was horrified by the child’s condition. The child was dirty and dressed in rags, and her stomach poked out like that of a starving child. The little girl shielded her eyes from the sunlight and looked up at Gladys.
“This child is very sick,” Gladys said to the woman.
“That’s none of your business,” replied the old woman with a strange accent. “Besides, if she dies I can get another one to replace her anytime I want.”
“You’re mistaken,” said Gladys. “It is my business. I am Ai-weh-deh, and I am on my way to see the mandarin himself. You had better do something with that girl. Now!” She put as much authority into her voice as possible.
“Don’t want her, don’t need her,” said the woman in a singsong voice. “Give me two dollars and she’s yours.”
Gladys recoiled in horror.
The woman watched her shrewdly. “All right, you drive a hard bargain. A dollar and a half.” The woman delivered a smile that revealed an almost toothless mouth.
Gladys was upset and angry. This stranger with green shoes was treating the little girl as if she were a goat or a chicken being bought for a feast.
“I don’t buy children. I’m going to talk to the mandarin about you,” Gladys said. And with that, she walked off towards the yamen.
An hour and a half later, after going through all the formalities of greeting the mandarin and telling him about the child seller only a hundred yards from the yamen, Gladys asked him directly, “What do we do about it?”
The mandarin’s eyes fixed on Gladys, and with great emphasis he said, “We do not do anything. I agree it is not good that there are child sellers, but there is nothing we can do about it. The sellers belong to powerful groups of criminals. If we attempt to stop them or interfere in any way, they will make us very sorry.”
