The Virtuous One

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The Virtuous One The Virtuous One Like hundreds of other missionaries, weather, preaching to commuters Gladys Aylward went to China with scurrying past London’s Hyde Park nothing but faith and courage. They Corner toward the underground. were all she ever needed. The long‐awaited day finally arrived in By: ELAINE WHITFIELD SHARP October 1930. With her ticket and Bible Gladys Aylward’s report card from the in hand and two traveler’s checks sewn mission training school in London was inside her corset, Gladys set out to join far from impressive. She had failed Jeannie Lawson, a 70‐year‐old self‐ theology and couldn’t speak any supporting missionary in central China. Chinese. Yet as she trudged along Gladys’s proposal that she be the London’s streets to return to her former elderly woman’s assistant had been occupation as a parlor maid, Gladys was warmly welcomed. Gladys arrived in the certain God was calling her, as he had small town of Yangcheng in the Shansi called hundreds of Western Province to find Jeannie bustling about a missionaries since the early 1800’s, to dilapidated inn she’d just rented on an evangelize in China. If no missionary ancient mule‐train trade route. society would back her, then Gladys resolved that she must trust God and go alone. “Got it cheap ‘cause the locals say it’s haunted,” Jeannie explained to Gladys The Roaring Twenties were in full swing. in her Scottish lilt. “We’ll fix it up, open World War I was a distant memory, and an inn, and tell the muleteers Bible London society celebrated its every stories at night. The Chinese love stories whim. For Gladys this meant there was and we’ll tell them for free. We’ll call it plenty of overtime work carrying trays the Inn of Eight Happinesses, and when of champagne and hors d’oeuvres for the muleteers leave here they’ll repeat England’s upper crust at hotels like the the stories we tell them for thousands Savoy and the Ritz. That her feet ached of miles!” constantly did not concern her; Gladys would endure anything until she could But the villagers weren’t so easy to save up the train fare to China, even if it convince. Gladys and Jeannie were would take four years. “foreign devils,” gossiped the locals, who often spat or threw dung at the In the meantime Gladys seized every pair. Word soon spread among the opportunity to memorize scripture, muleteers that the “devils” were living reasoning that if one wanted to spread in the haunted house. The inn was the word of God one must know it. She boycotted. also took every occasion to preach. Her stature barely exceeding five feet, she It was Jeannie’s idea that when a mule would stand on a soap box in all kinds of train neared, Gladys should run out, nab The Virtuous One, by Elaine Court Page 1 the lead animal by the reins, and drag it the job was God’s invitation to tell into the inn’s courtyard. The weary and hundreds of peasants about Jesus. hungry beasts behind would be only too Wherever she went the villagers, who happy to follow. What better way for a had heard she was a gifted and polished young missionary to learn how to be a storyteller, were eager to hear about fisher of men? Jesus and about how he loved and For weeks Gladys, clad in blue quilted protected his followers, even after his pants, jacket, and straw hat, dragged in death. Eventually, converts could be the mule trains with a combination of found in every remote village and prayer and muscle. Soon the inn hamlet. enjoyed a popular reputation. Here Having returned from a foot inspection marvelous stories about Jesus were tour, Gladys was back at the inn with being told nightly around the courtyard the Christian community that had grown fire ‐ and they were free! Gradually up there where the mandarin ordered Gladys learned to tell in Chinese the her to go stop a riot at Yangcheng’s Bible stories she had memorized. prison. But Gladys’s honeymoon year at the inn “But what can I do?” Gladys protested was abruptly shattered when Jeannie, to the prison’s governor when she whose mind and body were failing, flew arrived. “If I go in there the convicts will into a rage over a minor disagreement kill me!” and died some weeks later. “But how can they kill you?” the How, Gladys wondered, could she run governor puzzled. “You’ve been telling the inn alone with no income? “Oh, everybody that the living God protects your plan.” God,” she prayed, “show me his followers.” Gladys’s prayer was soon answered. The Gladys knew that if she refused this mandarin of the Shansi Province challenge she would be finished as a commanded her to become an official missionary. This prison’s heavy door was foot inspector. Gladys was to travel to opened, and Gladys quickly stepped southern Shansi’s remote mountain through. As the large iron key turned villages, enforcing the central behind her, Gladys froze with horror at government’s prohibition against the the scene ahead. In the courtyard the ancient custom of binding infant girls’ dead lay with groaning men in pools of feet, which kept them fashionably small blood and terrified convicts crouched in but caused a lifetime of pain. Gladys corners. An axe‐wielding convict paced was the only woman in the region toward her. whose feet were not deformed‐ the ideal candidate to negotiate the “Oh God, give me strength,” Gladys mountain passes. She accepted the prayed in one breath, before position, realizing God’s plan: The small commanding the next, “Give me that income would keep the inn solvent, and axe at once!” The Virtuous One, by Elaine Court Page 2 The prisoner returned a cold icy stare terror as Japanese bombs sent huge and, stalking closer, raised the axe chunks of masonry flying. Gladys, who toward Gladys. Then suddenly he was leading a small prayer meeting at stopped in his tracks, lowered the axe, the inn, was buried under a pile of and meekly handed it to her. rubble. Soon Gladys learned the cause of the When she was finally rescued Gladys riot. The inmates depended on their ran to the town. The streets were families for food, but often no food strewn with partial corpses, and people came, and they were left to starve. still trapped beneath the debris Sometimes the wardens would come screamed for help. Sick and injured and behead one of their number. All this herself, Gladys prayed, “Jesus help me had become too much to bear. to serve your people now.” Gladys’s anger burned. She knew After rallying the unhurt into first‐aid nothing of prison reform, but she knew teams, Gladys made her way slowly this was God’s next task for her. The through the city, bathing wounds with prison governor, who now held Gladys hot water and Lysol, bandaging with in reverence, was willing to listen to her strips torn from bed sheets, and praying suggestions. Gladys began visiting the for the wounded and dying. In the prisoners and telling them about Jesus. following years, as the fighting raged in She brought them looms and a miller’s Shansi between the Japanese forces and wheel so they could earn their food by Chinese Nationalist, scenes like this weaving cloth and grinding grain. were to be frequently repeated. Traveling over the mountains she was After the prison incident the inmates so familiar with, Gladys opened make and townsfolk named Gladys Ai‐weh‐ deh, “The Virtuous One.” She had won shift hospitals in caves and in people’s went the their confidence, and those who once homes. Wherever Ai‐weh‐deh wounded were taken, for this woman spat or threw mud at her now bowed had a God who protected. respectfully. Gladys wrote to her mother in England, In 1936 Gladys became a Chinese “Do not wish me out of this or in any citizen. Shortly after, the inn’s way seek to get me out, for I will not be muleteers relayed disturbing news: The got out while this trial is on. These are Japanese had invaded China and my people; God has given them to me, Manchuria. Gladys felt uneasy. They would not be interested in a little place and I will live or die for them for his like Yangcheng, would they? They were. glory.” When the silver planes circled over At first Gladys refused when the Chinese Yangcheng one sunny spring afternoon Nationalists asked her to inform them of in 1938, the villagers ran out to greet the Japanese troops’ locations and the “silver birds” with cries of delight. numbers ‐ for often she saw them while Shouts of joy turned to screams of combing the fields and mountains for wounded peasants of the guerrilla The Virtuous One, by Elaine Court Page 3 resistance. China, Gladys told the would have to walk along mountain Nationalists, was God’s land, and she back trails, a journey that would take at was not fighting a human war. But as least two weeks. the torturing and killings escalated, On a March morning in 1940 a long line Gladys longed all the more for a free of chattering children clutching quilted and peaceful China. She began bed rolls, wooden bowls, and supplying the Nationalists with the chopsticks, trailed after Ai‐weh‐deh high information they needed to defeat their into the mountains. For days they enemy.
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