ANOTHER furlough over!
How those days at home with the loved ones do fly!
The anguish of "Farewell" to the older children was past, and they had settled down to study far away.
The last hectic days before leaving had arrived, and in less than a week we would be speeding out to catch "The Empress" back to China.
And then the war!
We always knew it might come. Living in China is like living over a volcano. We had heard the rumblings so often that we did not think it would really break out. But it did, and Japan was at China's throat.
They say: Only queer people go to China, and the longer one stays, the queerer one gets: and we had been there fifteen years. However, we still had sense enough to realize that when Japan was attacking Shanghai, it was madness, if not an impossibility, to go there; and a cable saying "Wait" settled the question.
We postponed our sailing a fortnight, till the next "Empress", and from that to the following one; and so the weeks dragged on. We were amazed at the magnificent stand the Chinese made at Shanghai, but we well knew what the final outcome must be; so we were expecting the cable that arrived in November telling us to proceed: the tide of war had rolled over Shanghai, and now was beyond.
Several had expected to travel with us, but it was felt wiser for them to wait; so my wife and I with the two younger children started for Kobe, Japan. No ships were running as yet to Shanghai, but we lived in hope; and after a week in Kobe we found a P. & O. ship that had courage to make the trip, and we booked passage on it, arriving in Shanghai on December 19th, 1937.
As we sailed up the Whangpoo River, on which Shanghai is built, we could all too plainly see the sad wreckage of war that had ravaged this poor city. There were flags everywhere. Never had I seen so many flags: large and small. Houses too, and poor wrecks of factory buildings, even the boats and sampans on the river, had every one its flag: but all were Japanese. It was easy to see who was master in Shanghai.
Bomb craters on Avenue Edward VII, at Wing On's Department Store, and at the Palace Hotel, were now filled in and the streets re-paved. Though people still spoke with horror of the thousands killed by these three bombs, there were also many remarkable preservations.
Barbed-wire, sand-bags, and barricades were everywhere, and the tension of war could still be very plainly felt. Hongkew, a great Japanese district in the north end of the city, had been definitely taken over by the Japanese army and navy forces. They had great barracks here, that were in reality forts, for the Naval Headquarters. Nobody was allowed over the bridges leading to that part of the city without a special pass, and no Chinese at all were allowed to enter it.
Quinsan Gardens, where the Book Room had been located so many years, was in this district.
My sister Helen, and Miss Dorothy Dear, had carried on all through the war in Shanghai. They had rather a bad time getting out of Hongkew; but through God's mercy, we had a very nice meeting-room with a tiny kitchen and small flat attached, on Szechuen Road, only a few hundred feet over the main bridge from Hongkew, and on the right side of Soochow Creek. To this they came. They had some very narrow escapes, and at one time the ambulance arrived to pick up the pieces; but once again God's mercy preserved them. A shell struck the flats over the meeting-room, and some were killed, but again all of "our's" were mercifully preserved. My sister and Miss Dear did not live at the meeting-room, as a friend in the suburbs kindly took them to his home.
The Book Room, being in Hongkew, was of course closed; and indeed it was most difficult to even get in and see it. With the greatest trouble they got permission to move some of the stock to an empty shop that had wonderfully been provided for them, just back of the British Consulate. A friend in the Scottish Bible Society helped them, and they still talk of the difficulties and deliverances of that move. But that was all before we arrived back in Shanghai. Twice, I think, the plate glass window had been blown in by bomb concussion, and finally the owner boarded it up. It had just received its third plate of glass when we got "home".
The location of this shop was good. It was on Yuen Ming Yuen Road, near Hong Kong Road, so was close to the General Post Office for mailing parcels. It was also close to the Bible Societies and other publishers, so that missionaries from the interior, down to buy supplies, could easily find us.
Things were in this position when we arrived again in China. It was hopeless to think of carrying on in Quinsan Gardens, the old home of the Book Room, but the new shop was far too small to take care of the work. Our "business manager", Mr. Chung Chan Lai, found a good empty shop at the corner of Avenue Road and Hardoon Road, below some nice apartments. He strongly advised taking this. It was several miles west of the other shop just rented, and in a more residential part, on the corner of a busy street, with a main street car line passing the door, and was one of the best locations for the Chinese Christians. The China Inland Mission and a number of large independent Chinese Gospel Halls were within a few blocks. We had four nice plate glass windows, where Gospel posters could be displayed, just opposite a street car stop, and close enough for anyone to read. Most important, the rent was very cheap!
Perhaps I should add that the secret of the cheap rent was the fact that when there was a heavy rain, all this part of Avenue Road and Hardoon Road flooded till it became one vast lake, and sometimes there would be almost eighteen inches of water in the shop. And not only was the shop flooded, but all the drains for the apartments above met below our floor (there are no cellars in Shanghai), and would sometimes burst and add their contents to the waters from the street. If then it turned hot, the steam rose from this water, till everything in the Book Room dripped. When at last the flood subsided, no pen could describe the mess in our shop: yet how often and how bravely has our helper there turned cheerfully to the work of clearing up.
The rent was cheap; and we were poor; so we gladly and thankfully closed the deal, and the shop was ours. The agent in charge of the apartments and shops below was an earnest Christian, and he has been a good friend to us ever since that time. There will be more to say about this little shop, but I would like to tell you first a little about Mr. Chung Chan Lai, who was the means (against my more cautious judgment) of taking this place that has proved to be such a blessing and such a help.
Chan Lai (as he always is to us) was a native of Yeung Kong city, in the province of Kwangtung. He was one of the early fruits of my father's labors in that city. His parents were poor, very poor. His father had a hard time making enough to keep soul and body together for his little family. They nicknamed Chan Lai "The sloppy boy", as he was always untidy and slovenly. But he came to the meetings, a boy in his teens, and insisted he believed in the Savior and loved Him, and begged for baptism. My father had no confidence in the boy, and for a long time refused to baptize him. Chan Lai, however, was persistent, and at last he was baptized. From that day there was a change: he stood and walked erectly, he dressed tidily, his hair was neatly brushed; and when I wrote my father to see if he could suggest a boy to help in the Book Room, he sent me Chung Chan Lai. He was unmarried then, and later returned to his old home and brought back his young bride, Shuk Tac, a lovely Christian girl. Six children came to bless that little home, but one dear little girl the Savior took. Then the strain of war laid the beloved husband and father low, and after a year of suffering with tuberculosis, he joined his little daughter in those many mansions, with the Savior he loved so well and Whom he had served so faithfully. Never in any land have I seen a better and more dependable servant and friend. Not only absolutely loyal and altogether honest, but he had also that keen sense of business that so many Chinese from the south possess: he seemed to be like Issachar "that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do" (1 Chron. 12:3232And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do; the heads of them were two hundred; and all their brethren were at their commandment. (1 Chronicles 12:32)). I look forward to that day when I may hear his Master, and mine, say to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant." He was a loss that has never been made up.
My pen will lag, and yet my story is not begun. With great difficulty we finally got out more stock and some bookcases from Quinsan Gardens, and started up in business at 1381 Avenue Road, with Mr. Chung in charge.
But we still had quantities of additional stock, furnishings and printing presses, for which some place must be found. I was in despair. Refugees had poured into Shanghai until there was not an empty nook or corner anywhere at any price; and we were poor. We tried everything we could think of; we offered rewards for information as to any sort of place to rent: but all to no avail. We were at our wits' end (Psa. 107:2727They reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wits' end. (Psalm 107:27)), or, as the margin puts it, "all our wisdom was swallowed up." I need hardly say we had prayed about it, and then in man's extremity came God's opportunity, and He provided us with just what we needed: a large old house, and the rent was cheap. There was room for all our stock, our printing presses, our type (and it takes a lot of room for Chinese type), room for the offices we needed, the translator and the artist, and a little corner for me. There was a little flat, really very cozy, for my sister and anyone helping in the work, and a wonderfully nice room for a meeting room. We were able to give up the more expensive room on Szechuen Road that had proved such a boon through the war, and that saving nearly paid our rent.
I am compelled to confess that the secret of the low rental was again the floods. This place, in a heavy rain, became flooded to an even worse degree than our shop on Avenue Road. I have seen the street deep under water, sometimes for weeks at a time. I have seen a coffin float about, up and down the road in front of this house for days at a time; and to get in and out of the house one had to wade through this water. Through God's mercy I do not think any of us ever took sick from it. (It was a common thing for the poor to put their dead out on the street. As a rule trucks went about every morning collecting them).
This house was about a mile further from the center of the city than the Avenue Road shop, and our residence was perhaps a little over a mile beyond it. It was within walking distance of several of the British barracks, and indeed was remarkably well located for our work.
No Chinese were allowed to go to the old shop to help with the move, though we had a few Russians, but the bulk of the work fell to us. The Missionary Home, Sunday School Union, and Christian Book Room, had occupied four large, old, houses. We had one house entirely to ourselves, besides our retail shop which occupied part of the ground floor of two others. Our printing plant was in a garage that we had enlarged to take care of it.
It was a terrific job to pack and move everything. The conditions of the different rooms reminded me a good deal of what it will be like at the Lord's coming. Our people had no warning to leave. A radio message had been sent out, but we had no radio, so at the last moment they had had to drop everything and flee. There was no time to prepare, or to put their rooms to rights before leaving; and almost every room told its own tale. There were things in some rooms which had no business to be there, and how little the occupants had thought that I would be the one to inspect and pack what they had left. May the Lord grant to us His Own, that the tale we leave behind us when He comes, may be one of which we need not be ashamed.