Su Ching
Su Ching
Su Ching
Articles
SU Ching†
Introduction
From the 1790s the Protestant missionary societies of Western nations
continuously sent missionaries to the countries of the world to propagate
Protestant Christianity. If we look at just China alone, we find that from
1807, when the first Protestant missionary arrived in China, to 1905, a
century later, the number of missionaries in China increased to 3,445, and the
number reached an all-time high of 8,158 missionaries in 1925.1
Protestant missionaries were not only numerous, but also engaged in a
number of activities besides proselytizing. They established schools and
taught. They printed and published. They founded hospitals and treated the
sick. And they translated. Through these other activities they became an
important conduit for Sino-Western cultural exchange and had a tremendous
influence on China. All the while, they sent back to their sponsoring
missionary societies letters, journals, reports, and forms, in which they
expressed their thoughts, their ways of managing, and their sundry observa-
tions and understandings of China. Because the missionary societies
preserved these materials, with the passage of time these collections became
vast archives. Today they serve as a valuable treasury of first-hand historical
materials for studying Sino-Western cultural exchanges. We can use these
materials not only to supplement and correct omissions and errors in the
second-hand literature, but also to help reconstruct historical facts in detail
and objectively explain the significance and influence of various sorts of
* This paper was originally presented as a keynote speech at the Eighth Annual Meeting
of the Society for Cultural Interaction in East Asia, May 7, 2016.
† Retired professor, Institute for China Studies, National Yunlin University of Science
and Technology.
1 Donald MacGillivrary, ed., A Century of Protestant Missions in China (1807 1907)
(Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1907), p.674. Stephen Neill, A
History of Christian Missions (London: Penguin Books, 1986), p.429.
4 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 8 2017
cultural exchanges.
Because there are so many missionary archives and their collections are
so diverse, I will here limit myself to the Chinese sections of the European
and American archives that I have used. I will discuss five areas—prosely-
tizing, establishing schools and teaching, founding hospitals and treating the
sick, translating, and printing and publishing—giving concrete examples,
along with illustrations of archives, in order to show the importance of the
historical materials in missionary archives for the study of Sino-Western
cultural exchange.
Proselytizing
Robert Morrison’s first day in China In as much as Protestant mission-
aries were the conduit of Sino-Western cultural exchange, the thoughts and
actions of Robert Morrison, the first Protestant missionary to set foot in
China, have a symbolic and historic significance in the history of such
cultural exchange. For instance, on September 4, 1807, the first day he set
foot in China, what were his thoughts, what did he do, and what sort of
reactions did he provoke? Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert
Morrison, edited and published by his wife after he passed away, is the
authoritative work on Morrison, and most researchers rely on it as their
source of information about Morrison.2 But this memoir begins its coverage
of his stay in China with his arrival at Guangzhou on September 7, the fourth
day of his stay in China. It is as if he thought nothing and did nothing on his
first three days in China.
This, however, was not the case. In the London Missionary Society
Archives is a journal entry for September 4, 1807, which he wrote at an inn
in Macau at 10 p.m. after he had landed.3 There are also entries for the
following few days recording in detail his thoughts and activities for the day.
These journal entries are valuable records for the history of Sino-Western
cultural exchange that can supplement serious omissions in Memoirs of the
Life and Labours of Robert Morrison. They also show that the first three days
of Protestant Christianity’s presence in China were not a complete blank.
2 Eliza A. Morrison, Memoirs of the Life and Labours of Robert Morrison (London:
Longman, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1839).
3 London Missionary Society Archives, China, South China, Journal, Robert Morrison,
4 September 1907.
Missionary Society Archives and Research on Sino-Western Cultural Exchanges 5
of China’s first Protestant Christian, Cai Gao 蔡高. Appended to this biog-
raphy is a chronology of his life, signed by two authors, stating that Cai Gao,
when he was 59 (1846), was imprisoned for his belief in Protestant
Christianity, and that on the 3rd of the Sixth Month he died as a martyr for
his beliefs.4
However, much earlier, on October 12, 1818, John Slater, a missionary
for the London Missionary Society in Guanzhou, wrote a letter to the secre-
tary of the society stating at the end of his letter that Cai Gao, whom
Morrison had baptized several years earlier, had died a few days before.5
One year later, on November 14, 1819, Morrison stated in a letter that
the Chinese authorities sent officers to the dormitory of the East India
Company to arrest a man. That man was none other than the younger brother
of the man whom he had baptized but who had already died.6 When Morrison
wrote his letter, he had baptized only one individual, Cai Gao, who had
already died. The letters of Slater and Morrison thus show that the above-
mentioned chronology stating that Cai Gao lived to 1846 was fabricated.
8 Liang Afa 梁阿發, Quan shi liang yan 勸世良言 (Good Words to Admonish the Age),
9 vols. (Guangzhou: Religious Tract Society, 1832).
9 London Missionary Society Archives, Ultra Ganges, Singapore, box 2, folder 1, jacket
C, Alexander & John Stronach to William Ellis, Singapore, 14 May 1839, enclo-
sure, “List of Ships Distributing Bibles” 分發大小聖書各船開列.
10 Brian Harrison, Waiting for China: The Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca, 1818
1843, and Early Nineteenth-Century Missions (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University
Press, 1979).
11 Harrison, Waiting for China, p.127.
Missionary Society Archives and Research on Sino-Western Cultural Exchanges 7
Dehui did indeed translate notices for Lin Zexu, the quality was rather
lacking, and he used hardly any punctuation, simply adding periods at the
ends of paragraphs. And when The Canton Register published his translation
of the notice, the editor added a note saying that this was not English, that it
was but a use of the Roman alphabet taking on the appearance of a notice.12
Moreover, the missionary Samuel W. Williams, who was also in China at the
time, criticized Yuan Dehui as having insufficient grasp of both Latin and
English and being able to understand only broad outlines of meanings.13
Second, the statement that the Anglo-Chinese College has never produced
any translators, uttered in 1843, came not from Legge but from Henry
Pottinger, the British commander in chief during the Opium War (1839 1842)
and the governor of Hong Kong after the war. After Legge had already
moved the Anglo-Chinese College from Malacca to Hong Kong, he unex-
pectedly discovered that Pottinger had canceled the monthly subsidy that the
East India Company had given the college. Legge asked that it be reinstated.
But Pottinger, in a letter of reply, said that during the war, the British army
could not find any qualified translators in Malacca or anywhere else, and that
canceling the subsidy was quite appropriate.14
English instruction Most people think that church schools invariably teach
English, and that students of these schools are quite proficient in English.
Documents in missionary society archives show that this was not always true.
After the Opium War, some schools founded by missionaries intentionally got
rid of English instruction. For example, when the Ningbo mission of the
Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. founded a boarding school, the mission-
aries vigorously discussed whether to offer English instruction, they estab-
lished an ad hoc committee to study the matter, and the committee produced
a more-than-twenty-page report presenting pros and cons. Finally, the
missionaries suggested not teaching students to read English, and the mission
decided not to teach English.15 A year later the mission reviewed this decision
and reaffirmed that this was the correct decision.16
aries in China in giving education to girls will perhaps surprise us. In 1839
Ira Tracy, a missionary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign
Missions, stated that a strong motive for giving education to girls was to
provide future wives for the boys of the mission school.21
The 1863 annual report for the Ningbo Presbyterian mission stated that
one should not underestimate the value of the mission’s boarding school for
girls, because the girls of the school are the future wives of China mission
assistants and a source of teachers for day schools for girls.22 Even as late as
1876, the secretary of the Presbyterian Church wrote a letter to a missionary
in Ningbo, solemnly declaring that the main work of the school for girls was
to cultivate wives for Chinese ministers and evangelist.23
In the Missionary Society Archives are many more examples of this type
of thinking and doing. As one can see, this type of thinking was rather
widespread among nineteenth-century missionaries in China. They provided
education to girls to cultivate wives for their Chinese male converts, not to
cultivate women capable of independence and self-development.
The reason that Peter Parker was sent to China The first missionary
physician to come to China was Peter Parker. He was sent by the American
Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and he arrived in China in late
October 1834. Why did the board send him? Neither studies nor biographies
of Parker give a clear reason. Even the classic study Peter Parker and the
Opening of China, by Edward V. Gulick, simply states that Rufus Anderson,
secretary for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions,
said to Parker that the board needs men like him to go to China to serve as
missionaries.24
21 Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Unit 3, ABC
16.2.4, vol.1, Ira Tracy to R. Anderson, Singapore, January 4, 1839.
22 Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Board of Foreign Missions, Correspondence and
Reports, 1833 1911, China, Incoming, vol.4, no.397, “Twentieth Annual Report of
the Ningpo Mission for the Year Ending October 1, 1863.”
23 Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., Board of Foreign Missions, Correspondence and
Reports, 1833 1911, China, Outgoing, vol.65, no.49, W. W. Eddy to Miss
Harshberger (Ningpo), New York, June 26, 1876.
24 Edward V. Gulick, Peter Parker and the Opening of China (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1973), p.11.
10 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 8 2017
The nature of Renji Hospital We can also make use of mission society
archives to clarify another historical fact about modern Western medicine in
China, namely, the connection between Renji Hospital 仁濟醫院 in Shanghai
and the London Missionary Society. Renji Hospital was founded in 1844 by
William Lockhart, a missionary physician for the London Missionary Society.
From then until 1950, over a hundred years, the hospital was managed for the
most part by society physicians. Hence, nearly all books on the hospital
regard it as a missionary hospital, a church hospital, or a London Missionary
Society hospital.
But such a description of the hospital is inaccurate. In a letter dated
October 14, 1846, Lockhart clearly stated that the recently completed Renji
Hospital does not belong to the London Missionary Society, that it was built
from funds donated by foreigners living in Shanghai, that donors made up the
board of directors, but that the hospital would be managed by society physi-
cians.26 However, problems arose during 1865 and 1866. Relations between
Renji Hospital and the London Missionary Society took a turn for the worse,
and the trustees of the hospital canceled the agreement of cooperation with
the society and had the hospital managed by foreign physicians living in
Shanghai.27 This arrangement lasted until the close of the nineteenth century.
Then in 1904 the trustees again signed an agreement of cooperation with the
London Missionary Society, and the society sent the missionary physician
Cecil J. Davenport to manage the hospital.28 Hence, from 1868 to 1904, a
25 Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Unit 3, ABC
16.3.8, vol.1, Elijah C. Bridgman to R. Anderson, Canton, July 1, 1833, March 4,
1834, and July 14, 1834.
26 London Missionary Society Archives, China, Central China, box 1, folder 1, jacket
C, Walter H. Medhurst & William Lockhart to the Directors, Shanghai, 14 October
1846.
27 London Missionary Society Archives, China, Central China, box 3, folder 2, jacket
B, James Johnston & R. Maclean to A. Tidman, Shanghai, 2 September 1865; box
3, folder 2, jacket C, William Muirhead to A. Tidman, Shanghai, 22 May 1866; and
box 3, folder 2, jacket C, W. Muirhead to Joseph Mullens, Shanghai, 20 July 1866.
28 London Missionary Society Archives, China, Central China, box 15.1, folder H, jacket
Missionary Society Archives and Research on Sino-Western Cultural Exchanges 11
total of thirty-six years, Renji Hospital had no connection with the London
Missionary Society. So for this reason as well, we cannot say Renji Hospital
was a London Missionary Society hospital.
Translating
Translation is an important part of Sino-Western cultural exchange, and
nineteenth-century missionaries in China ardently engaged in it. Hence, there
are many historical materials related to translation in missionary society
archives.
tively called “Macau News” 澳門新聞紙, but were never published. At that
time the missionary physician Peter Parker wrote about this effort in his
report on the work of the Guangzhou mission to the American Board of
Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and he mentioned the names of the four
translators: Aman 阿曼, Shaou Tih 袁德輝 (the above-mentioned student of the
Anglo-Chinese College), Alum 阿倫, and Atih 梁進德.35 For each translator,
Parker gave a brief introduction of one sentence, but because the Chinese
literature does not mention them at all, were it not for Parker’s introduction,
they would have vanished from the stage of history. In The World as Seen by
Lin Zexu: “Macau News” in the Original and Translation 林則徐看見的世界:
澳門新聞紙》的原文與譯文
《澳門新聞紙 的原文與譯文, I discuss these four translators and their work in
detail, and I preserve in full the hitherto unknown original text of Macau
News.36
35 Papers of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Unit 3, ABC
16.3.8., vol.1A, P. Parker to R. Anderson, Macao, July 4, 1839.
36 Su Ching 蘇精, Lin Zexu kanjian de shijie: “Aomen xinwenzhi” de yuanwen yu yiwen
林則徐看見的世界:《澳門新聞紙
林則徐看見的世界 澳門新聞紙》的原文與譯文 的原文與譯文 (The World as Seen by Lin Zexu:
Macau News in the Original and Translation) (Taipei: Sifuzhai, 2016), pp.3 50.
37 Church Missionary Society Archives, C CH O 22, John Shaw Burdon to John
Chapman, Peking, May 28, 1862.
38 Church Missionary Society Archives, C CH O 22, J. S. Burdon to J. Chapman, Peking,
July 2, 1862.
14 Journal of Cultural Interaction in East Asia Vol. 8 2017
was always sitting in the classroom observing and preventing him from
proselytizing the students.39 Martin, in his 1865 annual report on the Beijing
mission of the Presbyterian Church, stated that college regulations expressly
prohibited proselytizing.40
A medium for disseminating the new knowledge The effect of the publi-
cations of the missionaries far and away exceeded their original intent of
spreading the gospel. Such Western-style publications became a tool for
disseminating the various types of new knowledge. Though most Chinese did
not accept belief in Christianity, they readily accepted the new knowledge that
the missionaries brought to China. Quite a few books by missionaries
enjoyed a ready market. For example, Richard Q. Way’s An Outline of
Geography 地球說略 was originally intended as a textbook for students. From
1847 to 1856 the book was reprinted four times. The first printing was only
200 copies, but the fourth printing was greatly increased to 9,000 copies.42 In
1857, after the fourth print run, copies sold briskly. In 1859 annual sales
reached 3,523 copies, leaving only 3,636 copies in the warehouse.43 Thus, in
just two years the Ningbo Huahua Bible Bookstore 寧波華花聖經書房 sold
most of its inventory of this book, the only Chinese book that it sold rather
than give away. Because it met Chinese demand, this school textbook became
a bestseller among the populace at large.
Another example is A New Treatise on Anatomy 全體新論, by Benjamin
Hobson, a missionary physician for the London Missionary Society. This was
the first Chinese book to systematically introduce modern medical knowl-
edge. For Chinese readers, this work “revealed the hitherto unseen and
discussed the hitherto undiscussed,” to borrow from Wang Tao 王韜, a late
Qing translator reformer.44 In his 1855/56 annual report for Huiai Hospital 惠
愛醫館, which he managed, Hobson asserted that within five years of the
publication of A New Treatise on Anatomy in 1851, he had the work printed
twice and Chinese publishers had printed the work from newly carved
woodblocks at least three times, that there were more than 10,000 copies in
circulation in China, and that this did not include the work’s serialization in
the Hong Kong monthly Chinese Serial 遐邇貫珍 in 1855.45 Chinese buyers
of this book not only used the book themselves, but also gave it to others as
a gift. Even some foreigners did this. For example, when Griffith John in
October 1858 arrived in Danyang, Jiangsu Province, to spread the gospel, he
gave Hobson’s New Treatise on Anatomy to the local official. This official,
being delighted with the gift, sent him tea and cakes in return.46
How did missionaries promote Western printing technology to replace
traditional Chinese woodblock printing? How did these Westerners view their
own works? How did they disseminate their works? What was the Chinese
reaction to such works? Missionary society archives have many documents
useful for answering these and similar questions.
Conclusion
Research in the history of Sino-Western cultural exchange, like other fields
of history, faces two tasks: reconstructing the facts and interpreting the
significance and influence of the facts. Reconstructing the facts needs to be
based on reliable and authentic historical sources. Only then do we have a
foundation for interpreting the facts without getting lost in generalities and
errors. Missionary society archives are a treasure-house of first-hand histor-
ical materials consisting of the thousands upon thousands of documents left
behind by missionaries.
The examples of missionary society archives provided in this paper all
have their value for the historical materials that they contain. Some of these
documents can supplement the omissions of other materials, some can correct
the errors of still other materials, and some are waiting for researchers to
discover and use them. I have reaped many rewards from my use of these
archives over the years. I am glad to share my experience. Should this expe-
rience prove useful to others in the field, this will be my greatest reward.
46 London Missionary Society Archives, China, Central China, box 2, folder 2, jacket
B, Griffith John to A. Tidman, Shanghai, 6 November 1858.