The weeks of language study in Kunming seemed to fly by, and soon Belle had completed her first unit of Chinese language study. Now it was time for her to move out to the countryside, where for the first time she was surrounded by many tiny villages filled with peasants who had never before heard the gospel. Belle was thrilled by this part of missionary life. This was the opportunity she had prayed for. But she had not anticipated her revulsion at living like the locals. On a bad day everything irritated her: Bathrooms were unheard of, and she had to find a private spot in a field to relieve herself. There was no hot water or way to bathe effectively, and soon she was as infested with lice and fleas as everyone else around her. The food was fatty and tasteless to her, and she threw it up more often than she kept it down. In despair she began to wonder what kind of bride she would make. She certainly had not imagined herself trying to delice and soothe mounds of fleabites for her wedding day.
Still, Belle persevered. Her missionary coworker told her that things would get easier, and Belle certainly hoped so. However, she did not have much time to find out. Late one night only nine days into her assignment at the outlying mission station, the CIM supervisor for the district arrived at the door of their mud hut. Belle opened the door, and the supervisor rushed inside, sweat dripping off his brow. “I’ve come to get you both and take you back to the capital,” he said. “The governor has sent his army upcountry to support another army, and a band of guerrillas is trying to take over the countryside in their absence. You are right in their path here. God grant us the speed to keep ahead of them! We must be off first thing in the morning. Pray that they do not overtake us.”
Belle passed a restless night with her ears tuned in to any slight noise outside. Nothing unusual happened, and first thing in the morning the three of them gathered their belongings and set off back to Kunming, managing to stay ahead of the guerilla band. They arrived safely in Kunming to find the CIM guesthouse overflowing with missionaries who had also fled their posts. Many of them, like Belle, were single women working in pairs. Mr. Hoste, CIM’s general director, declared that it was too unsafe for them to work outside the city walls until the situation improved, and that it looked like it might be a long way off. It appeared that Belle would be stuck inside Kunming for a year and a half until she married John and was able to travel outside the city with him.
At the same time that this was happening in Kunming, China Inland Mission reviewed its rules on engaged couples and decided that a couple could marry once they had spent a year in China. Belle was overjoyed when she heard of this policy change. She could now marry John a year earlier and get back to pioneer mission work.
Planning for the wedding began. Belle wanted a small, private ceremony; after all, she hardly knew anyone in Kunming. But Mrs. Helms had other ideas. “It’s not just about you,” she told Belle. “It’s a social event here in China—and a happy one. We all attend our share of fellow missionary funerals, and we need to balance that out with weddings. Of course, you will have to invite all of the Europeans in the town.”
Belle balked at the idea, but in the weeks before the wedding, so many European women she met told her how much they were looking forward to receiving an invitation to the event that she gave in—the whole expatriate population of Kunming was invited to the wedding.
John and Belle were married at the Chinese Church of Kunming on November 4, 1929. A large crowd, half of whom Belle could not even name, gathered to witness the ceremony.
The couple spent a week honeymooning at the luxurious French hotel in town. The honeymoon, a gift from John’s father, was a time to relax before they faced the austere life at John’s mission station in Chengchiang.
After the honeymoon, Belle and John returned to the guesthouse to collect Belle’s belongings. Belle was particularly eager to open the trunk she had brought with her from Canada. The trunk was filled with all sorts of things to make their house in Chengchiang a real home.
Just as the newlyweds were about to leave the guesthouse, Mr. Hoste arrived to pray with them. When he had finished praying, he said to Belle, “You know, Belle, if I had a beautiful quilt, I would throw it in the river.”
Belle felt her face turn red. What a strange thing to say, she thought. How does Mr. Hoste know I brought a quilt with me, and why would he say that anyway? Surely it can’t hurt to surround myself with small reminders of home and a little beauty.
It did not take Belle long to realize why Mr. Hoste had made the comment.
Chapter 9
A Naive Missionary Bride
It took a whole day for Belle and John to make the trip from Kunming to Chengchiang. Belle was so exhausted by the time they arrived that she went straight to bed. The next day John showed her around Chengchiang. A large wall with two enormous wooden gates surrounded the town. “The gates close each evening at 6:00 PM, and a watchman keeps guard throughout the night,” John told Belle.
After the tour of Chengchiang, Belle set to work turning their living quarters into a home. She and John shared two upstairs rooms in a house on a market street. In two smaller rooms downstairs lived Yin-chang and his new bride, who served as cook and housekeeper for John and Belle. Before long Belle had the two upstairs rooms repainted, she laid new rugs on the floor, and a new bamboo sofa and chairs adorned the front room. In one corner of the front room Belle placed her trunk, which she covered with a green and crimson travel rug. In the other corner of the room was John’s desk, which doubled as their dining table. Their bed in the second room consisted of a mattress set on planks supported by two trestles, over which Belle spread her new blue and white quilt. Before long Belle had transformed their rooms from the sparsely furnished bachelor apartment it had been into a cozy home the two of them could enjoy.
One day, soon after their new home had been arranged and decorated, John called up from outside the house. “Visitors, Belle,” he said.
Belle looked around and smiled. Everything was as perfect as it could be. The new bamboo couch and chairs contrasted nicely with the brown rug, and the quilt covering the bed hid the variety of boxes that were stuffed underneath it. Belle was excited. She had been in Chengchiang for two weeks now, and these were her first visitors. They were local Muslim women and their children whom Belle had met while out walking. “Welcome,” Belle said in her best Chinese as they reached the top of the stairs, and then she beckoned for them to come in and sit down.
John followed the women upstairs, walked over, and pushed open the folding doors to give them some light in the room. Belle bristled a little as he did so. The upstairs rooms had no windows, only folding doors on two sides of each room that could be pushed open to let in the sunlight. The only problem was that when the doors were pushed open, they exposed to the street below everything going on inside the room. As a result, Belle found herself caught between wanting light and heat from the sun to stream into their rooms and wanting privacy from the people in the street below who stopped to stare up and see what the foreign missionaries were doing. This made Belle feel like an exhibit in a zoo.
Putting her irritation aside, Belle poured the visiting women cups of newly made green tea and spoke with them in her halting Chinese. The women paid attention to what Belle said and seemed to be able to understand most of it. Belle relaxed. Finally she felt as though she was getting somewhere with the missionary business.
Then, as Belle continued to talk, an older woman sitting on the trunk in the corner blew her nose loudly into her hand and then proceeded to wipe the slimy mess onto the travel rug that covered the trunk. Belle set a smile on her face to cover the revulsion she felt at the woman’s action. Then one of the young mothers in the group held her bare-bottomed baby boy over the rug and laughed and nodded as he urinated on it.
Inside Belle wanted to scream, “Get out, all of you, now!” But she held her tongue and continued with the visit, even though her heart was no longer in it.
When the visiting women finally left, Belle surveyed the damage. The travel rug would have to be washed and the floor covering rinsed off and dried in the sun. However, Belle wondered just how many more times this could be done before the coverings were ruined. And then the words of Mr. Hoste came back to her. “You know, Belle, if I had a beautiful quilt, I would throw it in the river.”
Glumly Belle realized that she knew what the general director had meant. If she was going to protect her beautiful things from destruction, she was going to have to scold the Chinese people who came into her home or ask them not to come at all. How could she scold them when they were only doing what they did in their own mud huts? No, she sighed, it was not the Chinese people that needed to change; she was the one who had to change. Did she want a home that was open to all visitors or one where guests felt strange and out of their depth?
Belle knew the answer. She would keep the rug and quilt for as long as they lasted, but she would not worry about how they were treated. And when they were gone, she would replace them with the same type of coverings that the poor Chinese people used. That would make them feel more at home when they visited her.
With that issue behind her, Belle felt more confident that she was turning into a “real” missionary—until she and John were invited to dinner at the house of a poor Christian couple. It was a hot afternoon as they gathered around the table. Flies buzzed in the air, and the stench of the pigsty next door filled the room. Once Belle and John were seated, their hostess brought in several large dishes and placed them on the table. Naturally, one of the dishes contained rice, but it was the content of the other dish that alarmed Belle. The dish contained large chunks of boiled pork fat. Belle could feel her stomach heave as she looked at the boiled fat. “John, do I have to eat this? I think it will make me vomit,” she whispered.
Smiling at their hostess, John took a large chunk of the fat and placed it on the rice in his bowl. At the same time he whispered to Belle, “When our hostess’s back is turned, give your helping of fat to our friend under the table.” John was referring to the mangy dog stretched out under the table.
Belle scooped some rice into her mouth and began to chew. When their hostess turned her back, Belle seized the moment to slip the helping of boiled fat under the table. The dog hungrily gulped it down and then licked Belle’s fingers. Belle let out a sigh of relief at John’s solution to the situation, though John himself seemed to be enjoying eating his portion of the fat. Belle was also sure that it would not be the only time she was served boiled pig fat. John informed her that the dish was a staple among the rural Chinese of this region.
Another food that Belle found difficult to keep down was bean curd. The curd reminded her of a woolen sponge—not something she would ever choose to add to her menu. Yin-chang seemed to cook a lot of bean curd, and Belle tried to eat it when it was put in front of her. She knew that employing Yin-chang and his wife allowed her the time to continue her Chinese language studies and for John to preach and work with the tiny church at Chengchiang.
As the weeks rolled by, Belle became eager to get out into the countryside and begin evangelizing some of the smaller villages nearby that had never heard the gospel before. One such village was Yangtsung, seventeen miles from Chengchiang. John proposed that he go and preach in and around the village, taking Belle, Yin-chang and his wife, and Mr. Yang, a local Christian convert, with him. Belle jumped at the opportunity, and the party of five set out together over the hills and into the valley beyond.
