A plague hit soon after the famine, killing even more people and generally unsettling the local population. The thoughts of some people began to turn toward political change. By 1911 most Chinese people had some idea of how foreign countries worked, and they wanted a republic like the United States to replace their ailing Manchu dynasty. Privately, Lottie also hoped for change. She did not see how the old government could adapt fast enough to the changing times, but she never made her views public. As a foreigner, Lottie was careful about what she said. If change came, she knew it would have to come from the Chinese people themselves, and any hint that the missionaries were involved would place every Christian’s life in jeopardy. Instead, she waited quietly to see what would happen in the country.
Chapter 16
Christmas Eve
Lottie was standing outside her back door when Zhang, one of her schoolboys, ran around the side of the house. “Look,” he said, turning his head proudly for her to see.
Lottie gasped. The boy’s queue (pigtail) was gone, chopped off at shoulder length. “What have you done, Zhang?” she asked, even though the answer was obvious.
“I chopped it off,” he replied. “Aren’t you pleased with me?”
Taking a deep breath, Lottie drew herself up to her full four feet ten inches. “Go home quickly and reattach it before you come back!” she said, knowing that cutting off his queue in sympathy with the rebels trying to overthrow the Manchu government could put the boy and his family in danger.
Zhang gave Lottie a hurt look and hurried off the way he had come. When he was out of sight, Lottie sat down in her rocking chair, put her head in her hands, and wept for China. She read the newspapers and took a keen interest in politics and was quite sure she knew what lay ahead for her adopted land. A revolution was under way in the country. A rebel force loyal to Sun Yat-sen, who advocated the establishment of a Chinese republic and a democratic form of government, had engaged the forces of the Manchu dynasty in battle. While the rebels seemed to be making headway in their quest, the fighting was often ferocious, as the imperial forces refused to give up the fight. As a result, the death toll, especially among innocent civilians, was high.
Lottie prayed that Christians in Shantung province would remain strong and would behave in a manner honoring to God during the struggle. Regrettably, some of them did not grasp the full meaning of Christianity, as Lottie found out.
One day, soon after Zhang had visited to show Lottie his chopped-off queue, several other young Christian men came to see her. “Miss Moon, we have been able to defeat the pagan god in the city temple!” they exclaimed joyfully.
“What do you mean?” Lottie asked Huang, the oldest of the group.
Huang stepped forward. “We met the revolutionaries on their way to smash down the idols at the temple, and we decided to join them. We thought about all the times people from the temple have persecuted us, and it seemed like such a good opportunity to rid the city of such evil forever.”
“So what exactly did you do?” Lottie inquired, not sure she wanted to know.
“We entered the temple. You should have seen everyone scatter when they saw the guns,” Huang grinned. “Then we took all the idols down. The soldiers smashed some of them, and so did we. Then we took the rest to my home. What should we do with them?”
Lottie could feel herself ready to explode. “What should you do with them? You should march them right back to where you got them and beg the forgiveness of those poor people,” she announced forcefully.
“I don’t understand,” Huang replied. “Didn’t you want the idols taken down?”
“Sit down,” Lottie said, pointing to the bench on the veranda. “You must think before you act in these times. Today the revolutionaries looted the pagan temple, stealing their sacred objects and harassing the worshipers. That is religious persecution, the very thing we Christians object to. What would you say if they came into our church and did the same thing? Our Lord teaches us to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, not to avenge ourselves and attack those we disagree with. Such behavior is not Christian!”
Everyone in the group hung his head. “What should we do?” asked one of them.
“You must return everything you have stolen and apologize,” Lottie replied, more gently this time. She could see the young Christians were genuinely remorseful.
The young men followed through on Lottie’s advice, and everywhere she went, Lottie made a point of apologizing for the Christians’ behavior, saying that religious persecution was not the Christian way of doing things.
These were not the only incidents that upset Lottie in the fall of 1911. Everyone, it seemed, was stockpiling weapons, waiting for some big and perhaps final showdown. The military came to the Little Crossroads bringing guns to offer Lottie. “The time is coming when you will be needing these,” they told her.
Lottie, however, just hid her head in her hands. She could not imagine any circumstance that would induce her to fire a gun at a Chinese person, friend or enemy. “Take them away,” she ordered, thinking back to the time thirty-eight years before when, after hearing how Tarleton Crawford had threatened an angry crowd of Chinese men with a gun, she had vowed never to do such a thing herself.
The military had been correct, though. Within weeks, Southern Baptist missions throughout the region were under attack. The U.S. consul put out a call for all foreigners to evacuate the area. Lottie’s missionary colleagues in P’ingtu and at the hospital in Hwanghsien flooded into Tengchow. Lottie’s heart broke at the news. How were the Chinese Christian workers in Hwanghsien going to carry on at the hospital without help? She could not bear to think of her Chinese friends battling on alone. Somehow, she decided, she had to get to them.
Without telling her fellow missionaries, Lottie made her way to Hwanghsien. She was the only foreigner going into the war zone, as everyone else was fleeing. When she arrived at the hospital, a number of the workers wept openly. At seventy-one, Lottie had risked her life to stand with them in crisis.
For ten days Lottie lived and worked at the hospital. Casualties from both sides of the conflict were treated. Dr. Ayers and the other missionaries, hearing of what Lottie had done, became so worried about her and the hospital that they risked their own lives to return. When they reached Hwanghsien, they found Lottie calmly dispensing cups of tea and comforting the patients.
Once the missionary staff had returned to the hospital, Lottie felt free to return to Tengchow and the Little Crossroads. The only trouble was that conditions on the road back were worse than ever, with the rebels and imperial soldiers facing off against each other just a few miles from town. Despite this danger, Lottie could not be dissuaded from making the trip. It was time for her to go home, and that was what she was going to do.
When the Christians in Hwanghsien realized that Lottie could not be stopped, they sent word to the commanding generals on both sides, informing them that Lottie Moon, the old woman missionary from Tengchow, would be passing through the battle zone in a shentze at 10 A.M. Dr. Ayers also insisted that a young missionary, Carey Daniel, go with Lottie, even though she did not think it was necessary. Lottie had an unwavering faith that she would make it through the firing line unscathed. And she was right. As 10 A.M. approached, Lottie’s convoy was on its way. Lottie sat tall and proud as she passed between the two armies. Not a single shot was fired, though as soon as her shentze was clear of the area, Lottie could hear the gunfire start up again.
Lottie hurried home to tend to the women and children who had taken refuge in the rooms attached to her house. No matter how stretched her finances were, she always took in anyone who asked and shared whatever she was eating with them.
Conditions in Tengchow continued to worsen. So many people from outlying villages had flooded into the city, thinking it would be safer there, that little food was available, at any price. Despite the food crisis, Lottie battled on.
One old beggar woman had been so hungry she threw herself from a bridge outside town in an attempt to end her life. Instead of falling into the water and drowning, the woman landed on some rocks. As people crossed the bridge, they stopped and looked down at the woman, who now lay motionless below, her life slowly ebbing away.
As soon as Lottie heard of the old woman’s plight, she rushed to the bridge and paid some onlookers to carry the woman to the guest room at the Little Crossroads. Lottie dressed her wounds and gave her food and water. The woman lived in Lottie’s care and comfort for several weeks before she finally died from internal injuries. A number of Christians in Tengchow questioned why Lottie would “waste” time on an old, dying beggar woman. To Lottie the answer was simple: Every life was equally precious to God, and Lottie had come to China to serve anyone He placed in her path.
Lottie had the sorrowful task of watching another person die. Jesse Broadman Hartwell, who had first come to China as a missionary in 1857 and had spent thirty-five of the past fifty-five years serving in China, was suffering from a fatal illness. The Chinese Christians were distraught to see their old teacher dying, but everyone took comfort in the unusual event that accompanied his death. In the hours before his death, J. B. Hartwell seemed to go into a deep coma. From within the coma he would call out to local Christians who had already died, as if he were seeing them in the distance. Everyone around him, including Lottie, was heartened by what they saw. Surely, they told each other, Pastor Hartwell is catching a glimpse of heaven. This idea was dismissed, however, when he called out the name of a local deacon who had recently gone to South China as a missionary. Since everyone knew the deacon was still alive, they decided that J. B. Hartwell’s talk reflected the hallucinations of a dying man.
Jesse Broadman Hartwell eventually died. At his funeral was a man who had just traveled up from South China and had some news for the gathering. The man whom J. B. Hartwell had greeted in his comalike state had died unexpectedly several days before, right about the time his name had been called out by the old missionary. Word of this spread quickly throughout Tengchow, and many people wanted Lottie to tell them more about heaven and the Christian God.
By May 1912, the revolution was over. The forces and ideas of Sun Yat-sen had prevailed. Two hundred sixty-seven years of Manchu rule over China came to an end, and a new Chinese republic was declared. Lottie was secretly delighted by the outcome of the revolution, although drought and famine lingered on. As a result, Lottie wrote many letters to the Foreign Mission Board trying to press on the members the enormity of people’s struggle to survive in China. The board members were overwhelmed by problems of their own, however. That year, the board’s missions budget fell short by fifty-six thousand dollars. As a result, several articles discussing the debt were published in the Religious Herald in the hope they would stir up Southern Baptists to give more money to missions.
When Lottie finally received a copy of the paper by mail in Tengchow, she eagerly flipped it open. She soon wished she hadn’t. She began to encounter the articles about the mission board’s budget shortfall. One article noted, “Perhaps there are no people who watch the result of our campaign with more profound interest than our missionaries. If our people at home could realize what it means to the missionary when he feels that his brethren at home are not sustaining him….” And the editor wrote, “Our Boards must look to such restriction of their expenditures as will make such a stressful campaign as that which has just closed unnecessary.”
A distressed Lottie quickly read between the lines. The Foreign Mission Board was not going to be able to send her any more money for famine relief, nor was it going to send any more missionaries to Tengchow until its finances had been put on a sure footing. To get through the hard times, Lottie and all the other Southern Baptist missionaries were going to have to tighten their belts until more money could be raised.
