Audrey Ronning Topping - China Mission

CHINA MISSION

Also by Audrey Ronning Topping
The New York Times Report from Red China (with Tillman
Durdin, James Restin, and Seymour Topping) (1971)
A Day on a Chinese Commune (1972)
Holiday in Peking (1972)
Dawn Wakes in the East (1973)
The Splendors of Tibet (1980)
Charlies World: The Improbable Adventures of a Hong Kong
Cockatoo and His American Family (2000)

Audrey Ronning Topping

A PERSONAL
HISTORY
from the
LAST
IMPERIAL
DYNASTY
to the
PEOPLES
REPUBLIC

LOUISIANA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS BATON ROUGE

Published by Louisiana State University Press
Copyright 2013 by Louisiana State University Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
FIRST PRINTING

DESIGNER: Mandy McDonald Scallan
TYPEFACE: Whitman
PRINTER AND BINDER: Maple Press

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Topping, Audrey.
China mission : a personal history from the last imperial dynasty to the peoples republic / Audrey Ronning Topping.
pages cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8071-5278-2 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8071-5279-9 (pdf) ISBN 978-0-8071-5280-5 (epub) ISBN 978-0-8071-5281-2 (mobi) 1. MissionariesChinaBiography. 2. Ronning family. 3. Topping, AudreyChildhood and youth. 4. Chinahistory18611912. I. Title.
BV3427.A1T66 2013
266.0092'2dc23
[B]

2013008352

The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources.

With eternal love and respect
for my grandparents Halvor N. Ronning
and Hannah Rorem Ronning,

whose courageous service as missionaries
and educators in Imperial China has
inspired generations of their descendants.

Time present and time past
are both perhaps present in time future,
and time future contained in time past.
if all time is eternally present
all time is unredeemable.
FROM BURNT NORTON (1936),
BY T. S. ELIOT

Authors Note on Sources and Chinese Romanization

Prologue: Chinas Incredible Find

15. Escaping the Boxers

26. The End of the Imperial Qing Dynasty

31. Nelius

40. Audrey and Top

Epilogue

MAPS

PHOTOGRAPHS

Like any great novel or movie, China Mission, by Audrey Ronning Topping, tells a compelling story filled with drama and a wonderful, if somewhat extraordinary, cast of characters. China from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century confronted a series of domestic and international crises that would ultimately end the Qing Dynasty (16441911) and launch the ailing society into a decades-long struggle of revolution and violent transformation. Into this maelstrom would come the Ronning family and friends, arriving in the early 1890s as devout Christian missionaries who, with personal grit, unending hard work, and enormous courage, would survive and even thrive. Led by the indefatigable Halvor Ronning and his new bride, HannahAudreys grandparentsthe Ronnings would take on the Herculean task of setting up a Christian mission in the central Chinese city of Fancheng. There they would experience exhilarating successes from extending medical care to the indigent, including abandoned female newborns, to breaking the boundaries of outmoded traditions by offering modern education to young men and especially women. Yet with every success and cultural breakthrough came personal tragedy, including the early death of Halvors missionary sister, Thea, while the entire young family would have a series of close calls at the hands of growing antiforeign violencethe Boxers United in Righteousnessspreading like wildfire throughout the Chinese countryside.

Most families on surviving such an ordeal would have thanked their lucky stars and never returned from their new sanctuary back in the United States, where the Ronnings resided from 1899 to 1901. But as Audreys eloquent narrative makes crystal clear, the Ronnings were not your everyday, self-interested clan but from a hardy Norwegian stock that, like their Viking ancestors, could not resist taking on any and all challenges no matter what the risks. Once the savagery of the Boxers was subdued by the equal savagery of the interventionist eight Allied Powers that relieved the Siege of Peking in 1901, Halvor loaded up his wife and brood and returned to Fancheng, picking up where they had left off, offering to any and all willing Chinese spiritual and medical care along with the educational opportunity that defined the Ronnings mission. While local resistance of Chinese elders to his efforts, especially the education of young women, would gradually subside, antiforeignism among the still-suffering Chinese people remained a constant threat, especially when, in 1905, much of the region was hit by a devastating famine that rekindled such sentiments. The source of Halvors persistent trials was not, however, exclusively Chinese: his respect for Chinas traditions and beliefs, especially its ancient philosophies of Confucianism, Daoism, and Mohism, collided with the narrow and often petty views of colleagues within the China Inland Mission. Not westerners, Halvor reminded his newly arrived and untested critics, but the Chinese themselves must bring the gospel of Christ to China under the conditions that already exist or not at all. Unfortunately for Halvor, such noble thoughts would largely be ignored, to the detriment of the future Christian mission.

Assisting Halvor and Hannah were two of their equally tough and often entertaining sons, Audreys father, Chester, and her uncle Nelius, who were born and raised in China. Considering themselves no different from their Chinese brethren, the young and often irreverent boys spent much of their childhood steeped in local Chinese folklore and tales of the Celestial Kingdom, especially as recounted by the wily Teacher Sen Li-fu, who had befriended the Ronnings upon their arrival in Shanghai in December 1891. While both sons would share in the trials and tribulations of the family, Nelius and Chester would, like their father, often respond to the enormous personal risks of their time in China and later in the Canadian wilderness with mirth and a cavalier attitude that offers a contrast to todays standards of youthful angst that is nothing less than inspiring. In what is perhaps one of the most revealing lines in the book, Chester remarked, While my parents were out Christianizing the Chinese, I was in the kitchen being heathenized by the cook. Indeed, upon their brief return in 1899 to the familys native Norway after fleeing the Boxers, both brothers would feel like foreign devils among their own extended family, and later, in Iowa, they would yearn for a return to Fancheng, where they were treated as equals by friends and the family amah alike.

The Ronnings experienced still more personal tragedy after their return to China in 1901 as Hannah, like her lovely sister-in-law, succumbed to one of the mysterious diseases that afflicted so many missionaries, especially women. But even this would not derail the infinitely resilient Halvor (who, in Audreys words, would die in action at the ripe old age of eighty-eight) from his unwavering commitment to his Chinese mission as the Fancheng school prospered and grew into todays largest middle and high school in Hubei Province.

Years later, Chester would display the same grit and determination during yet another family run-in with local antiforeign anger. Speaking in his native Hubei dialect to the great surprise of his Chinese attackers, who wanted to kill the foreign devil, Chester coolly responded, I am just a lump of mud [a phrase identifying himself with the locals] like you are, and then casually walked away, saving himself and his young family. This coolness under fire would serve Audreys father well over the years, from his early adventures with his brother Nelius in traversing the wilds of the Canadian Northwest to reach their fathers Valhalla settlement in the Peace River District of Alberta to his decades of work as Canadas ambassador to India and other world hotspots where a lesser man might have mishandled delicate situations. This was especially apparent when in the late 1960s Ambassador Ronning served as a key intermediary between the North Vietnamese and the Americans in setting the stage for the end of the Vietnam War.