Discoveries From The Book Gift – Part II; Recording Missionary Life

The Chinese Recorder – I had not heard of this publication until I opened the book gift from dear Karin Stålhammar. The package contained quite a few issues of this missionary journal featuring missionary news, articles, obituaries and advertisements – mainly from the years 1920-1923. The journal is in English and was aimed at an English-speaking missionary audience. During those years, it was a monthly publication, edited by Reverend Frank Rawlinson.

The texts are not an easy read – Sinims Land feels like a much more accessible publication to me. But the advertisements are interesting, as they say something about what missionaries needed in China.

This one – learning to speak Chinese with phonographic records of the Chinese language – is a bit fun. It is presented as a novelty, and the promise of overcoming all the difficutlies in finding good tutors and textbooks must have been alluring. I’m thinking about how much my great-grandparents struggled with the language. I have not read anywhere that they used this kind of help though.

Or this one – organs were of course something rather special for a missionary to have. With music you could draw in the congregation, and it was also something that enriched family life. Though I know that my great-grandfather Robert did not have to buy one from Estey. He had arranged to have an organ sent to his mission station from home. His wife Dagny had received a generous gift from the Norwegian mission, and they therefore decided thus to invest the money in the power of music. It was, of course, something quite special – not everyone had access to such a luxury – and both Dagny and Robert expressed great joy at being able to sing hymns accompanied by organ music.

There are also advertisements for everything from bee-keepers outfits to soap and dictionaries as well as typewriters.

Looking through the journals to see if there are any article contributions by my or Karin’s relatives, I cannot find anything. But there are some interesting photographs that offer glimpses of China at the time.

Above: Photographs showing how the Chinese suffered during the famine. This is from the Chinese Recorder, April 1921.

The journals are certainly fascinating historical documents, and I am sure the missionaries in China read them with great interest. I am pleased to have them as part of my collection of China-related material, but I do not think I will read them from cover to cover. They may, however, prove useful if I am searching for specific information from the years 1920-1923, particularly essays about Christianity in China, missionary conferences or the view on ethics and religion at the time. And, perhaps one day, in the midst of another search, they will reveal a story I did not even know I was looking for, as has happened before :-).