After he had spoken, the mandarin picked up his hammer and struck the gong beside his chair, signaling that the audience was over and that Gladys had been dismissed. As Gladys walked towards the door, the mandarin gave a command. “Under no circumstances are you to go near the child seller again. Nor are you to repeat the conversation we had about it with anybody. That is an order!”
Gladys’s heart beat heavily in her chest. Mandarin or not, she knew she had to speak her mind. She turned to face him, bowed slightly again, and said, “I came to China because God sent me. I did not come to obey your laws if they are different from the laws of my God. I will ask God what I should do about the child seller, and I will do as He says, not as you or anyone else tells me.”
The mandarin’s mouth dropped open. Gladys supposed it was the first time anyone had ever spoken to him like that, and certainly the first time a woman had, and a foreign woman at that. She did not wait for his reaction. She bowed one last time, turned quickly, and walked away.
Gladys was still trying to decide what to do about the situation, when she turned into the street where she had seen the child seller. Sure enough, the woman was still there. As soon as the woman spotted Gladys, she yelled, “Lady, I give you best bargain. Only one hundred and fifty cash.”
“I don’t have one hundred and fifty cash, and besides I don’t want the child,” Gladys shot back.
Even as these words came out of her mouth, Gladys realized she could not leave the little girl to possibly die in the hands of such a heartless person. She stopped and turned and stared at the woman. “I do not have that much cash, but I will give you what I have in my pocket.”
The woman smiled slyly. “And how much would that be?” she asked.
Gladys fished around in her jacket pocket and pulled out a few copper cash coins, equal to ninepence in English money. She held the coins out on her open palm for the woman to see.
“Done,” the woman declared, grasping for the money. “Take her away.”
Gladys took the hand of the little girl, who she decided must be about four or five years old. Together they continued on down the street. By the time Gladys reached the inn, the enormity of what she had just done began to dawn on her. She had just bought, or adopted, as she preferred to think of it, a little girl. Just like that, she had become a mother.
Ninepence, as the girl quickly became known, gulped down every scrap of food she was given. Within weeks she had turned into a healthy, happy little girl. She loved living at the inn, and Gladys never had a moment of regret that she’d followed her heart and not the mandarin’s command.
One day, after Ninepence had been living at the inn about six months, Gladys was standing on the upstairs balcony. Suddenly, she saw Ninepence come running through the gate into the courtyard.
“Ai-weh-deh,” Ninepence yelled, “are you very hungry tonight?”
Gladys thought the question rather odd, but she answered it. “Yes, I am, and Yang is making us a delicious millet stew.”
Ninepence looked up at her. “I’m going to eat a little less for dinner. If I eat a little less, would you eat a little less, too?” she asked.
“Why would we do that?” inquired Gladys.
“I found a boy out here, and he is hungry,” Ninepence said, pointing to the gate. “If I eat less, and you eat less, and we put those two lesses together, we would have enough to feed him, too.”
Gladys smiled to herself. Ninepence was always on the lookout for children in need. “Yes, I will eat less with you, and the boy can eat with us. Bring him in,” she said.
And so it was, that an eight-year-old orphan boy also became part of the family. Gladys named him Less, in honor of their first meal together.
Now that Gladys had two “adopted” children, she felt she should become a Chinese citizen so that no matter what happened, she would not have to be separated from them. She talked to the mandarin about this matter, and even though she had taken Ninepence against his instructions, he agreed to help her. Together they filled out many papers, and in 1936, Gladys Aylward became the first foreign missionary ever to become a Chinese citizen.
About the same time, Mrs. Smith, her dear friend in Tsechow, died. Throughout the six years Gladys had been in Yangcheng, Mrs. Smith had encouraged and supported her. She had been kind and understanding, not to mention the nearest person Gladys could have a conversation with in English after Mrs. Lawson died. Soon after, a Welsh couple, Jean and David Davies, came to Tsechow to take Mrs. Smith’s place. The Davieses were an easygoing couple, and Gladys enjoyed their company, though she sometimes had to be reminded to speak to them in English because she’d become so used to speaking in the Yangcheng dialect.
Life settled into a happy pattern for Gladys. A local convert who was a widow came to live at the inn to take care of the children when Gladys made her foot-inspection tours. Almost every village that Gladys visited now had a small church. Often when she was walking through the fields, Gladys would hear the sound of Christian hymns ringing through the valleys. The local people loved to sing them as they worked.
Gladys had made many friends among the muleteers, and every night the Inn of Eight Happinesses was filled to overflowing with them. Gladys’s family was growing, too. Ninepence had found a toddler wandering alone on a hillside outside the city wall and had brought him home with her. Although Gladys had sent the town crier out day after day to find who the boy belonged to, no one ever claimed him. So Boa-Boa became Gladys’s third child.
That same year, the Yellow River, which borders Shansi province to the south and west, flooded. Many refugees fled to higher ground in the mountains. One of them was a small boy named Francis, who had no one to take care of him, and Gladys took him into her growing family. The mandarin gave Gladys her next child. He and Gladys had become good friends, and he trusted her judgment completely. He had responsibility for an eight-year-old orphan girl, and he decided that Gladys was the best person to look after her. The girl’s name was Lan Hsiang, and she joined Ninepence, Less, Boa-Boa, and Francis at the Inn of Eight Happinesses.
Of course, Gladys had plenty to keep her busy with five children to look after. But as each year went by, the people of Yangcheng district and the mandarin began to rely on her more and more to help solve their problems. When the mandarin had an important decision to make, he would seek Gladys for suggestions. When the prison governor wanted his children to go to school, he asked Gladys to start one, which she did. But there was one problem Gladys could not have solved, even if she’d known it was coming. At first it didn’t seem like anything unusual. The muleteers brought vague news about war. No one thought much of it, because China had been at war with parts of itself or its neighbors for centuries. Gladys remembered not being able to get past Chita on the train because of an unofficial war between China and Russia.
As time passed, however, this war began to sound different from other local wars. It wasn’t just another border war. The Japanese had actually invaded Manchuria and set up their own government there. And they didn’t seem satisfied with just occupying Manchuria. Japanese troops were now moving into more of northeastern China. Still, it all seemed such a long way away from Yangcheng, nestled among the arid peaks and valleys of southern Shansi province.
Then one clear spring morning in 1938, the citizens of Yangcheng heard a strange buzzing sound in the air. They rushed from their houses and into the streets to see what could be making the sound. They scanned the skies. Soon their efforts were rewarded by the shapes of five airplanes glistening silver in the morning sun. A bright red dot on a white square decorated the airplanes’ wings. The townspeople cheered and applauded. None of them had ever seen an airplane before, though many had heard that there were vehicles that flew like insects. As the people watched, hatches on the underside of the planes opened, and what looked to the people like black boxes fell out. The townspeople cheered and applauded some more. Small children were swung up onto their parents’ shoulders for a better look, and the entire yamen guard was given permission to run outdoors to see the magnificent sight. Then the first “black box” hit the ground, producing a loud explosion.
“Bombs,” someone yelled. “Get inside. They’re bombs.”
Hardly anyone knew what a bomb was, but people could see for themselves what a bomb did. The citizens of Yangcheng screamed and dove for cover. Throughout the city, bombs fell, making huge, gaping holes where there had been buildings and leaving people dead in the streets who moments before had thrilled to see their first airplane.
Gladys was upstairs in the inn praying with some new converts when the attack occurred. She’d heard the planes at the last moment, and before she could react, a bomb had landed on the southeast corner of the inn. Gladys heard the deafening noise, the inn shuddered, and the floor on which she was standing gave way. Gladys crashed down to the floor below and lost consciousness. When she came to a short time later, her body was pinned under a crushing weight of bricks and beams. She could hear voices amid the sounds of destruction. She yelled for help. An hour later, the last pieces of timber were lifted off her legs, and she was free. She stood up gingerly; her body was cut and bruised, but she had no broken bones.
After a quick drink of water, Gladys set to work helping to free others who had been upstairs praying with her and were now trapped in the rubble. By lunchtime, they’d all been found and pulled out alive. But on the street outside the inn, another bomb had killed nine villagers.
It was nearly impossible for Gladys and the other townspeople to believe what had happened to them that bright spring morning. A normal morning had turned into a nightmare in the course of a few seconds. No one had had the slightest idea that the Japanese would bomb the village. In an instant, the townspeople’s lives had been turned upside down.
Gladys picked her way through what was left of the Inn of Eight Happinesses looking for her first-aid kit. As she searched, her children, who’d been in school when the attack occurred, came running through the gate. Gladys swept them into her arms and kissed them, thankful that they were all safe. She fought back sobs as she imagined what it would have been like if even one of them had been killed. When they had finished hugging, Gladys told the children to stay near the inn and begin clearing away the rubble while she went into town to see what she could do to help.
Minutes later, gripping her first-aid kit, Gladys turned the corner at the end of the street. The town was devastated. Streets had enormous craters in them. Where there had been shops and houses piles of rubble were smoldering. But it was the sight of the people—bleeding people, screaming people, dead people—that made Gladys stop in her tracks. Gladys looked down at her puny first-aid kit and for a moment considered turning back. She saw so much destruction, and she had so little to work with. Then she heard a groan nearby. She looked around and saw a woman’s head poking out from a pile of bricks. The sight of the woman spurred Gladys into action. Gladys looked around again. People who didn’t seem to be hurt were wandering around in a daze. Gladys recognized the vegetable seller and one of the schoolteachers.
“People,” she yelled. “Everyone over here at once.”
Slowly, as if in a trance, people began to gather around Gladys. “We must work together. There is a lot to do. We will start here,” she said, pointing to the spot where the groaning woman’s head was protruding from the pile of bricks.
“The injured people must be taken to the yamen. The dead bodies must be dragged out the west gate and buried in one big plot in the cemetery. And we must clear a path through the main street.” Gladys sounded a lot more confident than she felt. To her surprise, though, people began doing as she said.
