Gladys met the leaders of the society and learned from them that they had located everyone they thought they could help, everyone who was German, that is. As the leaders talked to Gladys, they became convinced that the last few hundred dollars in their fund should be used to send her back to England. Even though it had been seven years since the trek with the children from Yangcheng to Fufeng, Gladys had never fully recovered. She needed more medical help and lots of rest, but since she had no money for a trip back to England for this, the society agreed to pay for the trip.
At first, Gladys did not want to go back to England. China was now her home, and Gladys intended to live and die on Chinese soil. Eventually, however, she accepted the ticket as God’s way of telling her it was time to return to England.
Two months later, after traveling by ship from Shanghai and then by train, Gladys once again stood on the platform of Liverpool Street Railway Station in London. It was hard for her to believe she was standing where it had all begun seventeen years before when she boarded the train for Tientsin in China. She had experienced the adventure of a lifetime.
Gladys waited as the passengers from the train disappeared down the platform. When they were gone, only she, dressed in a long Chinese dress, her graying hair pulled firmly back into a bun, and an elderly couple were left standing on the platform. Gladys thought the elderly couple looked disappointed, as though the person they’d come to meet hadn’t been on the train. As the couple turned to leave, the elderly woman looked more closely at Gladys and frowned. Then the couple rushed towards her. It was her parents. They had all changed so much over their seventeen years apart that they hadn’t recognized each other at first. With tears streaming down their cheeks, they hugged each other.
Gladys and her mother walked along the platform arm in arm. Anyone watching might have thought the two women were sisters, with Gladys being the older, more frail of the two.
It was many months before Gladys felt comfortable in England again. She often forgot where she was and spoke in Mandarin Chinese instead of English, and always there was an ache in her heart for the people in China. Sometimes she would get headaches and feel disoriented, the result of the blow to her head with the rifle butt in Tsechow. She received some medical treatment for the condition, but it continued to be a problem for the rest of her life.
One thing Gladys hadn’t counted on when she returned to England was being famous. She had no idea that during the time she’d been in China, her mother had been giving talks on “Our Gladys in China.” Also, many people had read the Time magazine article. Gladys was a little embarrassed that so many people knew about her, but this fame was nothing compared to what was to come.
Reporters from the big London newspapers came to interview her, and the BBC included her in a radio series it was producing on war heroes. This led to a radio play about her, which led to a book being written about her life in and around Yangcheng. From there, a Hollywood movie was made starring Ingrid Bergman as Gladys. It was an instant hit, and Gladys Aylward became a household name. Her amazing adventures in China became much more widely known than those of explorer Sir Francis Younghusband, who had employed her as a housemaid many years before.
Whenever she could, Gladys used her fame to help Chinese people. She toured the British Isles and Europe, asking Christians to pray for China. She dined with heads of state and met Queen Elizabeth. She set up collection points for warm clothing, which was shipped to the island of Formosa (Taiwan), where many Chinese people had fled after the Communists took control of the mainland of China. Gladys also worked with the hundreds of Chinese refugees streaming into Liverpool and other port cities in England. She helped them to learn English and invited them to church services in their own language. She wrote constantly to her children and the orphans she’d led across the mountains. Ninepence was married with a son and still lived on the mainland, though many of the others had made their way to Formosa.
All of this was not enough for Gladys, however. She wanted to go “home.” She wanted to be back among the people and culture she loved. After ten years in England, she decided it was time to return to her people. However, she couldn’t reenter mainland China. No foreigners could at that time, whether they had Chinese citizenship before the Communists took over or not. Instead, in early 1957, Gladys left England by ship, headed for Formosa, where she could freely live and work among the Chinese people.
Once again, Gladys Aylward was Ai-weh-deh, the virtuous one. She taught Bible studies, looked after babies and children, and traveled, sharing the gospel message wherever she went. Gladys never stopped working, but, as Mrs. Lawson had been many years before, she was grateful when a young missionary arrived from England to help her.
On New Year’s Day, 1970, when she was sixty-seven years old, Gladys went to sleep and never woke up. Her heart had simply stopped beating. Beside her bed, sleeping peacefully in a crib, was a newborn baby who had been abandoned and brought to Ai-weh-deh to be looked after. Of course, the baby had immediately found a place in Gladys’s bedroom and in her heart.
Memorial services were held all over the world for Ai-weh-deh, and more than a thousand people attended her burial service in Taipei, the capital of Taiwan (Formosa). Gladys Aylward’s earthly body was buried on a hilltop at Christ’s College in Taipei. Her tomb faced the Chinese mainland, where forty adventure-filled years earlier, a young woman had ridden a mule train up the steep trail to Yangcheng, arriving with little more than a Bible and an old, sleeveless fur coat.
