A Tour of the Missions: Observations and ConclusionsStrong, Augustus Hopkins
Religion
A Tour of the Missions: Observations and Conclusions
Strong, Augustus Hopkins
East Asia -- Description and travel; Missions
opportunity to win the multitude to Christ.
Even Swatow is partly Anglicized. We wished to see old China, heathen
China, and Brother Groesbeck gave us the opportunity. Only twenty miles
from Swatow lies the city of Chao-yang, where this pioneer missionary
has for eighteen years been stationed. Chao-yang is a larger city than
Swatow; the Chinese count it as containing a population of three hundred
thousand. It is the converging point of all the trade that reaches
Swatow from a hundred miles to the south and the west. Yet all this
trade is conducted through a narrow canal, so congested with boats that
there are innumerable delays. Even when the boats reach the waters of
the bay, the remaining channel is shallow for lack of dredging, and
launch-progress is very slow. We had ocular proof of this latter evil;
but we at last reached the dock.
Then came a reception entirely new to our experience, and one which we
can never forget. Eighty young men from the mission school met us, all
in white uniforms with sashes of blue. We passed through their lines,
forty boys on each side baring their heads as we passed. Then a
procession was formed. A brass band, with bugles and resounding drums,
led the way. The student escort followed. After the long rows of boys
came an honor-squad of Chinese soldiers, shouldering their guns and
bearing the Chinese and the American flags. This portion of the escort
had been furnished by the Chinese governor, who in this way certainly
showed his friendly regard for the American mission. We concluded the
procession, sitting in our sedan-chairs, each of our party of four borne
upon the shoulders of four men. The band struck up, a great explosion of
firecrackers ensued, and we began our journey of a mile and a half to
the gates of the city, and then two miles and a half farther through its
crowded streets, until we reached the mission buildings and the
residence of Mr. and Mrs. Groesbeck on the other side of the town. The
Chinese are great on ceremonial, and all this reception had been
arranged by the students themselves, in honor of Mr. Groesbeck's teacher
and his teacher's wife. Needless to say that I was astounded at such a
reception, for Augustus Cæsar never made an imperial entry in Rome more
thrilling than the triumphal entry which Augustus Strong made that day
into the great city of Chao-yang.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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