When her year of furlough was up, Lottie was eager to return to China, though only a few of her close colleagues were still working there under the umbrella of the Southern Baptists. The Hartwells had returned to Tengchow, and the Pruitts were back at their post in Hwanghsien.
Soon after Lottie arrived back in China, a meeting of the remaining Southern Baptist missionaries was called. But by the time the meeting was held, Lottie had received some devastating news. Fannie Knight had written to say that she had decided to marry one of the missionaries in Tarleton Crawford’s group and was moving with them to the group’s new location in Taian-fu. However, Fannie became sick and died immediately following her honeymoon. Lottie could not be consoled at the news. Fannie had been a faithful friend and worker, and Lottie had relied on her to keep the mission going in P’ingtu.
When the meeting was finally held, the question became: How should the eight remaining missionaries—the Hartwells, the Pruitts, the Searses, Laura Barton, and Lottie—position themselves to be as effective as possible? After much discussion, it was decided that Lottie, by far the most experienced missionary among the group, should stay in Tengchow. From there she could help Mrs. Hartwell set up a boarding school for girls and teach the women who came to the church. It was also agreed that Lottie should be free to continue her work visiting surrounding villages and sharing the gospel.
Since Lottie would not be returning to P’ingtu to live, the Pruitts agreed to watch over the work there from Hwanghsein. As well, Lottie was convinced that the Christians there, particularly Li Show-ting, had a strong grasp of the gospel and were dedicated to sharing it with others.
Once the arrangements were made about where the various missionaries would serve, Lottie was ready to settle back into the Little Crossroads. Before she did so, however, she wanted to do one thing. She decided to visit the Christians in P’ingtu and Sha-ling to let them know that she was fine and trusted them to go on alone without her.
The four-day journey by shentze to P’ingtu was just as bumpy as ever. Still, the discomfort was well worth it. And the Christians at Sha-ling were exuberant to see their missionary again. They hastily arranged a baptism service in which eleven new members were added to the rapidly growing church. And that was not all. On property that Lottie had purchased before leaving on furlough, the church members had built a simple Chinese-style church with a school attached to it.
Lottie was pleased by all she saw. She was proud of the way these Chinese Christians were taking ownership of their church and reaching out to others on their own initiative with the gospel. When it was time for Lottie to leave, no one wanted her to go. However, Lottie felt confident that the work would go on without her. As she left the people she had nurtured and encouraged through heartache and persecution, Lottie invited them to visit her anytime they were in Tengchow. Many of them said they would come, and they did.
The Little Crossroads became a hub of hospitality for Christians from all over North China. Christians made their way to Lottie’s house to pour out their troubles and seek advice. Paupers and beggars came, too. Lottie always offered them a place to stay and gave them food and a little money if she had any herself.
As the years rolled by, Lottie’s workload continued to increase. She set up a school for girls, and then later one for boys. She taught Sunday school and tried to visit two villages each day. All the while, she watched and listened as the political climate in China began to darken. By early 1900, Lottie became convinced that the leader of China, the empress dowager, was deliberately stirring up antiforeign feelings among the Chinese people. Lottie wrote to the U.S. consul, John Fowler, about her suspicions. As she carried on with her work, Lottie had the uneasy sense that China was about to explode with anti-Western hatred.
One winter morning, a loud thumping at the door awoke Lottie. When Lottie opened the door, there stood a young Christian man from Laichow, a town halfway between Hwanghsien and P’ingtu. “You must come. There is terrible trouble, and the Christians are asking for you!” he said as he hurried into the warm house.
Soon Lottie was serving the young man lomein noodles and asking what he meant.
“It’s Wai-Sung, the magistrate at Laichow,” said the young man, warming his hands around the bowl of noodles. “He has never liked the Christians, but now there are so many rumors circulating about the evil things Christians do that he decided to punish us.”
“What has he done?” Lottie asked, dreading to hear the answer.
“Three days ago he arrested thirteen Christians on robbery charges. Of course, it is all a lie, and he knows it.” The young man gulped some noodles before continuing. “The soldiers tied the men’s queues (pigtails) onto their horses’ saddles and dragged the men all the way from Laichow to Laichowfu.”
“Did they die?” Lottie asked in a whisper.
“No,” replied her young visitor. “Pastor Li Show-ting heard what was going on, and he demanded the magistrate stop the horses. When I left to come here, the Christians were all in the prison at P’ingtu. You must come and help us. Everyone is asking for you, even Pastor Li.”
Lottie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. What should she do? The roads outside Tengchow had become dangerous to travel in the past few months. Mobs of Boxers, men who were sworn haters of all foreigners, roamed the area. They reveled in destroying anything foreign, including churches and books, but worse, they enjoying hunting down and killing Christians, whether Chinese or foreign. In going to the aid of the Christians in P’ingtu, Lottie would be risking her life. Yet it was unthinkable for her not to go.
Eventually Lottie came up with a plan. It was dangerous, but it might work. “I need to hire a shentze like the ones the city officials use,” she told the young man. “Do you think you could get me one?”
“I will try,” he replied and immediately prepared to go in search of one.
While he was gone, Lottie borrowed some clothing from a local official she knew. She put on the long robe with its dangling cuffs and then the short red jacket all officials wore. She smoothed her hair back, not in the usual bun on top of her head but into a single pigtail at the back. Then she placed a skullcap with a large red button on it on top of her head. Lottie looked at herself in the oval mirror on the wall, hoping that she would be able to pass herself off as an official traveling on business to P’ingtu.
Soon the young man came back with a genuine official’s shentze, complete with heavy curtains.
Lottie gathered some food for the journey and climbed into the shentze. She opened the front flap and folded her arms across the bar, just as she had seen many officials do. “Let’s go with God’s help,” she said to the young man, who then ordered the mule drivers to begin the journey.
For four days, Lottie sat in the shentze keeping up her official pose, staring proudly down at the crowds that greeted her. She saw several mobs of Boxers, but when they saw the official shentze they scattered.
Finally Lottie’s caravan made its way into P’ingtu. Good news awaited. The thirteen Christians were all alive, and Pastor Li Show-ting had managed to get them released from prison. However, all of the men were injured, some from being dragged along behind the horses, others from the various forms of torture used by the prison wardens. Lottie comforted and encouraged the men as best she could with her words, but the fact that she had risked her life to come to their aid was the greatest encouragement of all.
It wasn’t long before Lottie realized that her presence in P’ingtu was putting the Christians there in danger. Boxer informants were in every corner of the town, and anyone who was seen with or around Lottie was immediately singled out as a target for the Boxers to strike at. As much as she hated to admit it, Lottie knew that the Chinese Christians would have a better chance of surviving this persecution if she was not around.
Reluctantly she made her way back through Hwanghsien to Tengchow, where terrible news awaited her. The Boxer uprising had turned bloody. Tales of terror began circulating. In Hebei province, sixteen missionaries had been stoned and then beheaded on June 28, 1900. In Heilongjiang province, a blind Chinese preacher had been beheaded in a temple, along with more than three hundred of his converts.
Even though she had anticipated that bad times were ahead, Lottie was appalled at the loss of life. The Boxers were killing some of the brightest, best-educated, and most honest people in the country.
On July 1, Lottie was hosting a wedding in her home when news of the decree arrived. American consul John Fowler had ordered all foreigners to evacuate the province. Lottie had no problem complying with his order. She knew it was getting extremely dangerous, and just as in P’ingtu, her presence in Tengchow was beginning to place her Chinese friends in jeopardy. Quickly she threw a few clothes and some books into her trunk, locked the door of the Little Crossroads, and headed for Tengchow’s harbor. Waiting at the dock for the missionaries was the Hai-Chi, a gunboat captained by Mr. Sah, a devout Christian who considered it an honor to risk his life to get the missionaries to the relative safety of Chefoo.
As the Hai-Chi steamed out into the harbor, Lottie looked with dismay around her. On the shore she could see Boxers swarming everywhere, waving sticks and guns and yelling threats. On the horizon, Russian gunboats lay at anchor, waiting for their next victim. (The Russians were using the Boxer Rebellion as an opportunity to try to exert more control over North China.) Mr. Sah skillfully guided the Hai-Chi past the gunboats and rendezvoused with the U.S.S. Yorktown. The fleeing missionaries transferred to the Yorktown and were ferried to Chefoo.
Chapter 14
A Growing Mission
Lottie was glad to disembark the Yorktown and get her feet back on dry land. Chefoo was overflowing with displaced foreigners and was awash in rumors about what was happening inland away from the safety of the treaty ports. Lottie’s heart grew heavy as the number of casualties of the Boxer Rebellion grew. On July 9, 1900, George Farthing, an English Baptist missionary, and his wife and three children were beheaded in Shanxi province. Soon forty-six more foreigners had been killed there.
As the grim statistics began to roll in, Lottie realized that it was going to be a while before she or any other missionary would be allowed to leave a treaty port and venture inland again. As she wondered about what she should do, Lottie found her thoughts drifting toward Japan. She decided to relocate to Fukuoka, Japan, and await the end of the Boxer Rebellion. After catching the first available steamer out of Chefoo, Lottie changed ships in Shanghai and was soon steaming her way across the Yellow Sea to Japan. By mid-July 1900, she was a guest of the McCollums, Southern Baptist missionaries in Fukuoka.
In characteristic fashion, Lottie set straight to work. She could not hope to learn enough Japanese to be useful in evangelistic work right away, so she took a job teaching English at a commercial school. There was no set textbook for the class; each teacher chose his or her own reading material. Of course, Lottie chose the Bible. Within a few weeks, her brightest students were able to read passages of it to her. After they had read a passage, she explained its meaning to them as best she could. It wasn’t too long before three of the young men in Lottie’s class had become Christians.
No matter how involved she became spreading the gospel in Japan, Lottie longed to hear news of China and her Christian friends in Tengchow and the surrounding areas.
Finally, after nearly a year, the Boxer Rebellion came to an end when eight nations formed a joint army, invaded Peking, overthrew the empress dowager, and forced the Chinese government to sign a surrender agreement. However, the final toll of the rebellion was high. Over 32,000 Chinese Christians were slaughtered, along with 230 foreign missionary men, women, and children.
