ANDREW YOUNG OF SHENSI ADVENTURE IN MEDICAL MISSIONS BY }. C. KEYTE LONDON: THE CAREY PRESS 19, FURNIVAL STREET TO THE MEMORY OF TWO GALLANT GENTLEMEN : H. STANLEY JENKINS, M.D., F.R.C.S., AND CECIL F. RoBERTSON, M.B., F.R.C.S., Whose passion it was to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ ; whose privilege it was, in His Name, to relieve the suffering ; and who, in prosecuting theirlabour of love, laid down their lives in Sianfu in the year of our Lord nineteen hundred and thirteen. AUTHOR'S PREFACE THE justification for such a volume as the present is to be found in the belief that " the fine is not the abnormal, it is the usual." The thought of' any book written around his life being the glorification of the subject would have distressed Andrew Young greatly, but to its publication he might have at least resigned himself if from a perusal of his story the reader could gather a truer idea of the aims underlying the medical missionary enterprise. The subject of this biography has points of temperament and areas of experience peculiar to himself, yet it is as he is representative that he is most valuable ; and whilst many missionaries fall short of the standard at which he arrived, the reader can yet rest assured that the values in conduct which appear in the pages which follow are not peculiar to this missionary alone. Mission­ aries' faults there are in plenty, easily discovered and described, but the virtues are there also, and, both for the student as well as for the critic of missions, a little honest research in this latter direction will not be time wasted. The above gives the clue to the method of this volume. The first part, treating as it does of the Victorian 'nineties, cannot pretend to be interpretative of African Missions : it is written to reveal the stature of the man, and to trace his course from the medical amateur to the trained medical missionary. The second and third por­ tions of the book attempt a picture of medical missionary v vi AUTHOR'S PREFACE work in Inland China, the scientific side of which has been presented by Dr. Balme in his book, "Medicine and Modern China "-a volume which is a vade-mecum to be consulted by medical missionary officers and their supporters in viewing the whole general problem. The approach here is not from the general aspect but from a particular instance. In considering the life work of Andrew Young the reader is brought to the contemplation of the medical problem in a single province of China in the belief that he who arrives at an understanding of the needs of one province will be advanced in sympathy towards the larger need, medical and otherwise, of the country as a whole. No apology therefore is made for the general picture here given of the Shensi Mission, of the growth of the Sianfu Hospital, or for such a section as that in Chapter Eight, upon " The Horse, the Magistrate, the Gate­ keeper and the 'Lao T'ai-t'ai,'" a section which, whilst true of Andrew Young, is also a key to medical missionary experience generally. One convention is frankly discarded. My intimate connection with the Shensi Mission and the Sianfu Hospital have been so prolonged that in referring to them I have, on occasion, written frankly in the first person. Where quotation marks are used with no reference given the extracts are from Dr. Young's letters; where the initials "C. M. Y." are added, the writer is Mrs. Andrew Young (Charlotte Murdoch Young). Some inaccuracies may have crept into the narrative owing to the long interval between the events and this record. But most of the chapters have been submitted to others in order to minimize error. Almost the entire manuscript has been through the hands of Mrs. Young, AUTHOR'S PREFACE vii apart from whose generous confidence in allowing me access to correspondence spread over many years, as well as to her own dictated impressions, this book could not have been written. To friends in China, Mrs. H. Beckett and Mr. E. Cormack in Peking, and the Reverend John Bell in Shensi, grateful thanks are due for unstinted help and valuable criticism. To my friend, Dr. R. Fletcher Moorshead, the Secretary of the Medical Auxiliary of the Baptist Missionary Society, I am indebted for much help and encouragement during the preparation of the volume. And finally, if for no other reason than that it is the fitting opportunity to record my irrepayable debt to Andrew Young and to the two brave men to whose memory this tribute is dedicated, the writing of the book has been abundantly worth the effort it has entailed. J. c. KEYTE. Peking, 1924. CONTENTS CHAPTIIR PAGR PREFACE V INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER : THE IDLL A~D THE PLAIN - xi PART I.-IN CONGO'S FREE STATE. I GETTING READY 17 II FROM TRANSPORT AGENT TO MEDICAL AMATEUR 37 Ill TEACHING, PREACHING AND HEALING - 83 PART II.-IN CHINA'S EMPIRE. IV EASTWARD HO! - 109 V A MEMBER OF THE MISSION - 124 VI THE MAKING Ol!' A HOME - - 138 Vll THE MEDICAL MISSIONARY - - 147 VIII THE DOCTOR, THE MISSION AND THE WORLD AT LARGE· }89 IX REINFORCEMENTS AND REMOVALS - 213 PART 111.-IN CHINA'S REPUBLIC. X- THE DRAMATIC YEAR : (1) HUNTED ON THE HILLS • 227 XI THE DRAMATIC YEAR : (2) TOILING IN THE PLAINS - 249 XU THE GROWTH OF A SOUL - - 269 XIII IN THE JENKINS-ROBERTSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL - 294 XIV THE SHINING YEAR - 303 ix INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER The Hill and the Plain WRITING these lines on the Western Hills near Peking, with Andrew Young's life and work in mind, I am struck afresh with the significance of these missionary hill retreats in China. There was a crazy little shack I knew on the Shensi hills near Sianfu, there is a cottage on a Shantung hill near Tsinanfu, there are the temple quarters and cottages here near the Pa Ta Chu, and one feature is common to them all : though they are high above the scene of the missionary's work, their face is still towards it ; they are not over the crest of the ridge looking into another world, their view is of the plain where the work lies. Some of us who are restless, roving souls ask for new fields and scenes clear of the routine's memories, but they who, like Andrew Young, came once for all to their haven in the certitude of a great calling, ask only for a little space of quiet on the heights above the plain ; the plain which, with all it represents, aids rather than impedes their recuperation of spirit. God's breezes murmur through the pine trees under which His servant rests awhile; God's children move to and fro on the plain stretched out below. And presently the disciple descends the hill once more and gets him to the place of service which is become anew the place of sanctuary, the sight of which he has never lost. xi xii INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER It was to a place in the hills that, in 1912, there went out from Sianfu one of two surgeons who had laboured in the city and whom the city that day claimed as its own. He was a man whose taste was all for the quiet, unmarked places in life's procession. And on that day he would fain have slipped out of the city quietly to make his way to the hills. But by the Gate of the city there had gathered all that was representative of the city's life : rich and poor, strong and weak, old and young, Christian and Confucian, soldier and civilian, to do honour to a man whom they loved and trusted. And at the Gate they stayed his progress that he might know their mind. Over his shoulders and around his waist they wound a scarf of red silk, and whilst the bands played and the generals saluted, they took him formally into a fellowship which he had already made his own by countless deeds of self-forgetful service. Quite what was wrapped up in this symbol of " The Elder Brother Society," the " Ko Lao Hui " secret society-which dominated the army and councils of Shensi Province at that time-we do not know and had perhaps better not ask. But by the Gate of Sianfu that day the simple ritual represented only gratitude and a whole-hearted belief in two men's gift for "brotherhood." At a later date the recognized Government in Peking might send orders and decorations for these two surgeons from overseas, but for them this was the supreme, the dramatic hour, when· at the Gateway of a one-time capital of the Chinese Empire they had placed upon them the token of the city's faith and gratitude. Of these two men, one, Cecil Robertson, remained for the time being in the city ; the other, Andrew Young, made for the hills. In the chapters which follow we see that quiet, steadfast, kindly figure finding its way from INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER xiii Scottish lowlands to forests of Africa and plains of Asia, on the caravan routes of Congo and the cart-roads of China, in hospital wards and on tented fields, in perils oft and in labours always ; yet never, perhaps, in a scene more significant than that by the Sian gate. For the Gate represented in his life not the recognition which was unsought and unwelcomed, but the right of entry so hardly won into hearts and lives, that comes surely, if very slowly, to those men and women who, in the name of Jesus, live to serve.