This is a complete transcript of the oral history interview with Robert Brainerd Ekvall (CN 92, T2) for the Billy Graham Center Archives. No spoken words which were recorded are omitted. In a very few cases, the transcribers could not understand what was said, in which case [unclear] was inserted. Also, grunts and verbal hesitations such as “ah” or “um” are usually omitted. Readers of this transcript should remember that this is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and even rule than written English. Chinese place names are spelled in the transcript in the old or new transliteration form according to how the speaker pronounced them. Thus, “Peking” is used instead of “Beijing,” if that is how the interviewee pronounced it. Chinese terms and phrases which would be understood were spelled as they were pronounced with some attempt made to identify the accepted transliteration form to which it corresponds. Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence of the speaker. Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence. ( ) Word in parentheses are asides made by the speaker. [ ] Words in brackets are comments made by the transcriber. This transcript was created by Bob Shuster and Sharon Averell and was completed in August 1985. Please note: This oral history interview expresses the personal memories and opinions of the interviewee and does not necessarily represent the views or policies of the Billy Graham Center Archives or Wheaton College. © 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 92, T2 Transcript - Page 2 Collection 92, Tape 2. Oral history interview with Robert Brainerd Ekvall by Bob Shuster on September 18, 1980. SHUSTER: This is an interview for the Missionary Sources Collection of Dr. Robert Ekvall.... EKVALL: Leave off the doc.... I told you, I'm not a doctor! SHUSTER: Oh? Reverend? Mister? EKVALL: I've been Reverend, colonel, I've...everything. I've dropped all of them and I think prefer to be called just Robert Ekvall. [Chuckles] Excuse me. Go ahead. SHUSTER: This is an interview with Robert Ekvall for the Missionary Sources Collection by Robert Shuster. This interview took place at 11:30 in Wheaton. Robert, how did your recent.... What is the origins of your recent trip back to China? EKVALL: Yes. The matter of my going to China was broached about two years ago by the C & MA after William...Reverend William Kerr had been on a tour. That was a tour of...of the...of an airline in the big tour. He and another person were just two people who went along. But he...he arranged to...he arranged materials with the Chinese with great success and he started in leading tours himself. The matter was broached to me and at that time the...the sudden loosening of all pressure against religions had not yet come into the open. SHUSTER: About when was this? EKVALL: This would be...well that came into the open September of last year and this was in the early part of the year [1979]. There was a feeling...the idea was to create...try to have some kind of a...to try to have some kind of a chance to go to the C & MA mission field in the far north-west. It is a unique bit of territory in that it is against the Tibetan border so the Tibetans are included and there are about 3 or 4 other races of people in that area. SHUSTER: What races are they? EKVALL: Well, there's an ancient Chinese race, there are Moslems, there are [unclear] from Samarkand and there's a mixture of religions, there are Moslems who will become Buddhists, there are Buddhists who will become Islamic and this ancient...the ancient Chinese who reached there...almost 3 millennium ago three thousand years ago. SHUSTER: This is the Han? EKVALL: Well, they're called Han, see but they now speak such an ancient dialect of Chinese that the Chinese can't understand them. Now this is a very interesting area. Missionary work on that place...in that area started in the late 80s...19...1880. And then the evacuation... final evacuation took place in 49...47...between 47 and 49. © 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 92, T2 Transcript - Page 3 SHUSTER: And this is the area, is it not, where your family served and you yourself had served? EKVALL: Yes, now that was...evacuation because of the communist coming in. Now, before the...the opening of freedom for religion had started the idea was to find out...well the raison d'etre for going someplace. And, I had been sort of a kind of anthropologist uh...archeologist among other things and even when I was on the field I had a vacation from the Bible school for about two weeks. And I had the privilege and....of going along with the famous Swedish anthropologist G. G. Anderson and in the course of two weeks I learned more anthropolo....I mean, more archeology than you can imagine of course and I was in on several digs. And we discussed whether I should talk about wanting to go back and see the arche...archeology things and then I proposed what I called (this sounds cynical) the Chinese card. And it's all true. That I wanted to go back to see the grave of my father. I wanted to go back to where I spent my childhood up to fourteen years. I wanted to go back to another place where I was born. I wanted to go back to a third place right on the border where my wife was buried. SHUSTER: And what place....what was the name of that? EKVALL: Uh... SHUSTER: What were the names of these places? EKVALL: Name? SHUSTER: ....names of these places? EKVALL: Names of these places. Titao was where my father was buried and I was a child, Min ch-in was where I was born, Taochow was a border station and close to Taochow is a little place where there's a mission cemetery and where my wife was buried. So, with the thinking of that the next step that they wanted to have me take was to get in touch with Chinese officialdom whom....the ones whom I knew. During the Marshall Mission I had become acquainted with Yechien Ying and he is now the oldest man in the government and of course given great honor but I don't suppose he does very much. SHUSTER: How is...how is that spelled; Ye.... EKVALL: Yeh... Y-E-C-H-I-E-N. And Ying. I-N-G. Yechien Ying. I also, at that time, become acquainted with a man named Wang Wah. He was an assistant of Yechien Ying, an interpreter indeed because he spoke English. He now is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of China. And I wrote letters. I didn't hear anything for a long time then I received a very pleasant letter from Wang Wah. And he...to the effect that they wished to expedite my visit and do everything that would make my visit most pleasant and comfortable in China. On that basis, Reverend Kerr in Hong Kong wrote the letter which I had sent...of which I had sent a rough copy of ideas to him saying what that... they...they and I or I would want to go to the area where my parents were and would they fix up visas to that effect. Well, just before I started for Hong Kong the Foreign Affairs office sent back a very polite letter but turned thumbs down on the idea of my going so far and their reason given, © 2017. The Billy Graham Center Archives. All rights reserved. This transcript may be reused with the following publication credit: Used by permission of the Billy Graham Center Archives, Wheaton College, Wheaton, IL. BGC Archives CN 92, T2 Transcript - Page 4 which is a valid reason, that accommodations were very rough...rough and rude. This was outside the routine tour areas and roads and they didn't want to expose me to such, to such hardship. Of course this...this is Chinese politeness. So, I arrived in Hong Kong with the...the matter had been sort of blocked. But, in Hong Kong I met a Chinese scholar, he has a PhD from Columbia, he's a member of the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, Peking, he teaches in Victoria University in Hong Kong when he happens to be around, he knew...was in contact with some people there who were greatly interested in Tibetan and all of them had read some of my books. And they...this man sort of encouraged me. He said, "This idea of you going to where your father was bor...buried...." He said, "This...this is a real Chinese thing, in fact I'm going to try to get the government to make it into a...a show that they'll send a crew there and take pictures and it will be the foreigner coming back to his grand...to his ancestors.” And I said, "Well, that's kind of...." This man has his own long Chinese name his surname is Wang, but he has also a foreign name to ease things up and he's always called Jimmy Wang.