As they stopped under the shade of a flowering plum tree for a rest, Hudson asked Alexander Wylie how the missionaries felt about the siege.
Wylie told him that the situation was a problem for missionaries. Missionaries tended to know the various Chinese dialects better than any other foreigners and so were constantly being asked to spy for both sides. Some did, while others acted as official translators. It was impossible not to be moved by the plight of starving people inside the old city. Yet everyone knew that giving them aid only kept the war going longer. There were no easy answers to the situation for the missionaries living in the International Settlement.
The two men made their way along the edge of a canal that led up to the walled city. The south gate was closed, so they began walking around the outside of the wall. Two minutes later they saw a ladder that had been hung over the wall.
“After you,” said Alexander Wylie, gesturing for Hudson to climb the ladder.
Hudson grasped the bamboo and rope ladder with both hands and began to climb. At the top, he gazed down at the scene on the other side of the wall. As far as he could see, there were houses with their roofs either missing or damaged or with gaping holes in their walls. Some houses had simply been reduced to piles of charred wood and crumbled brick. Even the dirt streets had holes blown in them. In the middle of it all, people wandered around aimlessly. Hudson trembled as he climbed over the wall and down the ladder on the other side. It was one thing to hear the noises of war; it was quite another thing to see its destruction.
Alexander Wylie followed closely behind. The scene did not seem to bother him. Hudson supposed today seemed no more desperate to him than any other day. Together, they began walking in the direction of a Buddhist temple. Along the way, Wylie and Hudson gave out tracts. As they did so, Hudson prayed silently that they would be read before they were burned as fuel or wadded together to fill a hole in a wall. Alexander Wylie stopped often to talk with people, and Hudson envied the way he was able to slip from English to Chinese and back again.
Eventually they reached the Buddhist temple, where a yellow-robed priest greeted them. Inside the temple Hudson could see men and women burning incense and praying to a large stone statue of Buddha. Hudson watched intently. In all his life he had never seen anything other than a Christian church. And what struck him as he viewed the scene was not how different a Buddhist temple was from a Christian church, but the sincerity with which the worshippers worshipped a stone statue. If only they knew of the living God, he thought.
Still thinking about the Buddhist worshippers, Hudson followed Alexander Wylie to the north gate. As they got nearer to the gate they could hear shouting and screaming. Some kind of fight was in progress. Wylie put his hand out and stopped Hudson. It would be dangerous to go any closer to the fighting, he explained. But even if they did not go closer to the fighting, the results of the fighting were paraded right past them, as maimed and dead bodies were dragged away.
It was a relief to Hudson when they finally approached a London Missionary Society chapel and heard singing. They slipped quietly into the back of the chapel, where Dr. Medhurst had just begun to preach a sermon. Hudson concentrated hard on Dr. Medhurst’s Chinese. It was so hard to pick out individual words as the sounds flowed together in what sounded more like singing than speaking. He looked around the chapel. One of its walls had a hole blown in it by a cannonball, and a pile of smashed chairs lay beside the hole.
After the service, the men talked with Dr. Medhurst, who agreed to meet them at the north gate in half an hour. Dr. Medhurst had some errands to run, and Alexander Wylie wanted to show Hudson some backstreets near the chapel.
They had walked a quarter of a mile when a group of yelling men with red turbans came into view. As they got closer, Hudson could see that they were pushing a small cannon. From the satisfied looks on their faces, he guessed they had just captured it from the Imperial Army. Behind them were five men, kicking and screaming, being dragged by their queues. It was plain from the uniforms they wore that they were Imperial Army soldiers. As soon as they saw Hudson and Alexander Wylie, they grabbed at their clothes. One of them got ahold of Hudson’s trousers, but a Red Turban roughly jerked him away. Hudson did not need to understand their words to know they were begging for help; the pleading look in the their eyes said it all.
The two missionaries stood helpless as the group rounded a corner and disappeared from sight. There was nothing they could do for the men in the face of such a mob. Hudson asked Alexander Wylie what would happen to them. Wylie explained that they were captured soldiers on their way to be beheaded. He told Hudson that it was the most feared death a Chinese person could face, because they believed that if a person entered the afterlife without a head, he would have to live for eternity without one. That was why it was so hard to get a Chinese person to agree to an amputation, he added.
Hudson was still trying to put the picture of the pleading man out of his mind when they found a trail of fresh blood right where they had agreed to meet Dr. Medhurst. Fearing the worst, they followed the trail back to the International Settlement. Thankfully, Dr. Medhurst was unhurt, but he had quite a story to tell. While waiting for Hudson and Alexander Wylie, he had begun talking with two coolies. He heard cannon fire and so decided it would be best to walk on alone. He had walked about ten feet when a cannonball whistled overhead and landed right where he had been standing. The two coolies had their ankles smashed. Blood flowed from their legs as they were hurried to the hospital, explaining the trail of blood. The only hope of survival for either coolie was to amputate his legs, which they had both refused. All that could be done now was to make them comfortable as they awaited certain death.
The missionaries arrived back at the London Missionary Society compound, and Hudson went to his room, sobered by all he had seen. How different it all was from Sunday afternoons in England. He had prepared himself for many things in coming to China, but not for being in the middle of a war.
Worst of all, in the midst of all the suffering he had seen, he felt useless. Inside the old city men, women, and children were praying at shrines to their ancestors and stone idols, while he had the knowledge of the true and living God who could really answer their prayers. His heart burned to tell these people about God’s love, but he didn’t know how to speak a word of Chinese. If he was going to fulfill his burning desire to share the Gospel with the people of China, he was going to have to learn Chinese, and learn it fast.
The following morning, Dr. Medhurst suggested that Hudson start learning the Mandarin dialect of Chinese rather than the local dialect spoken around Shanghai. He explained that a mandarin was a government-appointed leader and magistrate. Every city had one, and it was his job to settle problems and rule the people according to the instructions he received from the emperor. It had been that way in China for many centuries, and it meant that a country as large as China was could be ruled quite efficiently. The mandarins, as well as the people of learning and many merchants in the country, spoke a dialect known as Mandarin. No matter what province they were from, they could all understand and talk to each other, and the emperor could easily communicate to the mandarins how he wanted them to rule.
Hudson could see the wisdom of Dr. Medhurst’s suggestion. By learning the Mandarin dialect, he would be able to communicate with people wherever he went, even deep in the heart of China.
Dr. Medhurst arranged for a tutor to teach Hudson Mandarin, so each morning the tutor and Hudson spent several hours studying the dialect. Hudson proved to be a fast learner, and much to everyone’s surprise, it wasn’t long before he was going to the market on his own and bartering in Mandarin with the merchants over the price of his purchases.
Dr. Medhurst could see a lot of promise in Hudson as a doctor, and since it seemed to him that the Chinese Evangelization Society had no real plan for him, he invited Hudson to continue his medical studies at the London Missionary Society hospital.
Hudson accepted the invitation, and soon his days were divided between learning the Mandarin dialect and caring for patients at the hospital.
He was busy, yes, but still not fulfilled. He was in China, but only on the coastal plain. He wanted to be moving inland, but first he needed money and instructions from the Chinese Evangelization Society. Why was it taking them so long?
Chapter 10
One of the Crowd
The other missionaries watched Hudson closely. The Chinese Evangelization Society was a new organization, and they wanted to see how it cared for its only worker. And what they saw was not impressive. To them, the society had sent out an unqualified, unmarried man, without any instructions as to what they wanted him to do and, judging by his clothes and the food he ate, with very little income. What were they thinking?
After several months, Hudson was beginning to wonder the same thing. He became more and more lonely. He didn’t dare tell anyone how difficult things really were for him; doing so would only give the other missionaries more reason to criticize the Chinese Evangelization Society.
Finally, letters did begin to arrive from the society. Hudson received his letter of credit and was able to arrange to get some money to pay his expenses. But the money was never enough. The society paid him a salary of eighty pounds per year, from which he had to meet all his expenses. Single missionaries with the London Missionary Society were paid seven hundred pounds a year, as well as having their rent and other expenses paid. Hudson wrote to the Chinese Evangelization Society and explained to them how the war had driven up the price of everything in Shanghai. He asked if they could possibly increase the amount of money they paid him, in light of the increased costs. The letter he received back was not what he expected.
Instead of increasing Hudson’s salary, the society announced that it was sending another missionary to work in Shanghai, and not just a single person like Hudson, but a man with a wife and two children. In fact, Dr. Parker and his family were already on their way on a ship called the Swiftsure.
Hudson wanted to feel delighted at the thought of having another missionary from the Chinese Evangelization Society with him in Shanghai, but mostly he was filled with a sense of dread. As usual, the society had sent no instructions on how they wanted him to prepare for Dr. Parker’s arrival. He supposed they would want him to rent a house that they could all live in and set up as society headquarters in China. But he kept telling the society in his letters back to them in London that there was not a house to be rented in the whole International Settlement because of the siege. Hudson was twenty-one years old, barely able to survive on his meager income, and now he also had to be responsible for a whole family in a city where not a house or room was available for rent. He wondered how much the Chinese Evangelization Society had told the Parkers about conditions in Shanghai. When they arrived, would they be as surprised at the conditions as he’d been?
Hudson had eaten his first meal in China with the Burdons, a young couple with the London Missionary Society. The Burdons and Hudson had become good friends and spent much time together. Now Mrs. Burdon lay dying of cholera. Hudson spent long hours at the Burdons’ house caring for Mrs. Burdon; her husband, John, who was also ill; and their three-month-old baby daughter. Finally, on September 26, Mrs. Burdon died, and with great sorrow, Hudson made the arrangements for her funeral service and burial. Slowly, John Burdon regained his strength, and at the end of October, he decided to move out of his house and in with the London Missionary Society’s chaplain, whose wife was going to help him look after his small daughter. John Burdon offered to rent the house to Hudson, who gladly accepted.
