IT must have seemed almost too good to be true when, some months after these journeys, Mr. Embery came in from the market at Tengyueh with a young Lisu who was willing, it appeared, to take the Foreign Teachers to his home in the mountains. He lived in Pleasant Valley, some twenty miles north of the city, and would return in fortnight’s time to act as guide and carry their load. Fraser’s desire to come into closer touch with the mountain people had never lessened, but there had been several disappointments―when the way seemed opening.
The matter is in the Lord’s hands [he had written]. If He wants me to go He will send me, It would be very unwise to attempt to rush things or force a door which He has closed. But we shall see. God has done great things for us at the other side of the province, and we cannot but hope that He will work effectively for the tribespeople here as well.
But again, when the time came, the Lisu guide did not appear. They could only assume that he, too, had been frightened away by the threats of unfriendly Chinese. Fraser did not say much about it, but even the servants realized his disappointment, and it was with satisfaction that the cook appeared, a month later, bringing with him another tribesman who was ready, then and there, to escort the missionary to his village.
It was a May morning, almost a year from his arrival in Tengyueh, when with no little interest Fraser took the road leading past the waterfall and into the western hills. Crossing the first ridge with its famous temples, he soon found himself on an upland plain backed by higher mountains. The Lisu country at last! How eagerly he looked for Pleasant Valley, the hamlet to which they were going. Though not expected, his guide assured him they would be welcome; and so it proved when, toward evening, they reached the hollow, climbed the fence surrounding the dozen or more houses and came to the open doorway of the home in question. Some excitement seemed to be going on, for, as Fraser made out later, the family was in the midst of betrothal festivities. His arrival only added to the cheerful bustle, and soon straw mats on which to spread his bedding were dragged up to the fire in the middle of the hard earth floor. A meal of rice, eggs and cabbage followed, eaten with chopsticks and basins, and far on into the night there was talking and laughter round the smoky fire. Lamps were not lighted, for they had none, but chips of pinewood lay ready for use out of the circle of firelight.
His first days in a Lisu household were very memorable to the young missionary. He knew already that they were lovable people, but was hardly prepared for the natural way in which they made him one of themselves. It was taken for granted that he would join them at the big feast, the day after his arrival. This happened to be Sunday, and how he longed to give them something better than drunken revelry! But to them it was a great occasion. Preparations were prolonged, and Fraser had time to take in all the details of the situation. The dress of the women struck him as picturesque and becoming―dark blue tunics of common hemp, made into rough cloth, girdled at the waist and reaching to the knees, striped with brightly colored bands of the same material, and decorated with a profusion of white shells and other ornaments. A scarf of the same material covered the head, reaching to the shoulders behind, while bare feet and legs completed the ensemble. By no means shy or embarrassed as Chinese girls would have been, these Lisu maidens joined the group that chatted with their foreign guest. The men wore the dress of poorer-class Chinese, blue hemp knickers and short jacket, with the addition of rough cloth leggings to protect them from the mosquitoes, leeches and brambles of their native hills.
One thing that delighted the crowd was the discovery that the stranger who did not know their language could make pencil and paper speak it! The Chinese, who looked down upon them, had always said that Lisu was a jargon that could not be written. And of course they were right regarding their own complex characters. But Fraser was busy at intervals taking down by means of the English alphabet such words as his musical ear could distinguish, securing a vocabulary of about four hundred phrases. These he read to the onlookers, whose amazement and delight knew no bounds. Laughter comes readily to the Lisu, who are as easy to please as children, so that the dark, smoke-begrimed rooms resounded with merriment, while they waited for the food preparing elsewhere.
By the time the feast was spread I was mighty hungry. Evening had fallen and I had had nothing to eat all day but rice and cabbage for breakfast. So they gave me some food before they actually started themselves―rice and shanchi meat, a sort of mountain goat. This was all they had for themselves, except homemade wine, of which they drank copiously.... There were about fifty at the feast and they sat on boards on the ground in a sort of oblong, the rice and meat being on boards in the center....
The meal was not a sober, ceremonious sort of business, but more like a family party with plenty of jollity. I don’t know who the betrothed people were, but they did not figure specially. After the feeding part (I am afraid the drinking went on all night) there was a bit of a break, and I could not make out any order in the proceedings. It was like the game of croquet in ‘Alice in Wonderland’! I went inside and sat with about a dozen others round the big log fire. One man was recounting an old Lisu legend in a singsong voice, and the rest would break in with a sort of chorus. I could not understand any of it.
Before long I was told that they were ready for the dance, which would be kept up till daylight. What sort of dancing it was to be, I had no idea. My host told me that I could go back to his house whenever I liked, but evidently thought I would wish to stay and see it through.
For a time Fraser sat there in the smoke and firelight, watching one of the strangest sights he had ever seen. The ‘dancing’ proved to be a crude, childish affair―men and women young and old, holding hands in a ring, just swayed to and fro with a peculiar sort of motion, two together on the right foot, then two together on the left, to the accompaniment of weird music. One who seemed to be a leader would sing a phrase alone which was replied to in chorus, the swaying being kept up in a sort of perpetual motion. The strangeness and confusion of the scene is Fraser’s chief recollection.
I was in a corner almost unnoticed. Drinking was going on all the time, while men and women were gobbling, shouting, laughing—some standing up, some sitting down, some going here and there, some outside, some inside, not a few in gaudy-colored clothing—the setting being a dirty old room in a Lisu house, everything smoked and black, huge grimy grain bins here and there, a dog or two running over the earthen floor, and all long after dark, in an aboriginal village in southwest China.
Seeing that it was no time to turn their thoughts to anything better, Fraser went out into the night, where the thatched cottages, empty and silent, stood on either side of the mountain stream, and made his way to his host’s dwelling.
The scene of the festivities was anything but attractive the following morning. Some of the revelers, still drunk, were lying flat on the ground; others were hanging about, ‘eating, drinking, talking, and doing nothing in particular’. They were in no mood to listen to what Fraser had to tell them, and he was making up his mind to wait when a diversion occurred, giving him a better opportunity. A man from another village was seeking him. He had come over early from Trinket Mountain, six miles away, to bring the Teacher to a home where people were eager to learn to read Chinese. Hoping to return in a day or two, Fraser gathered up his belongings and was soon on the way with his new guide.
Through narrow wooded valleys the track climbed westward until it emerged on a mountain slope seven thousand feet high. The surroundings were magnificent, higher peaks enclosing a little plain to the south, from which lofty passes led, still westward, toward the frontier of Burma. And in that remote and beautiful solitude Fraser found a surprising welcome. For the place to which he was taken―the best in a hamlet of only seven houses―proved to be the home of the very man whose failure to turn up at Tengyueh, some weeks previously, had caused so much disappointment. A copy of the Gospel of Mark in Chinese which Fraser had given him, soon produced by the family, led to the discovery of the son’s identity. The young man was not at home at the time, and when he returned from his work at night hardly knew how to face the unexpected guest. Meanwhile Fraser had made friends with the father and other relatives, including two older brothers, and learned that it was fear of the threats of Chinese neighbors which had robbed him of his promised guide.
So it was at Trinket Mountain with the Koh family that Fraser’s dream of living in a Lisu household as one of themselves came true for the first time. And how thrilled he was over it all! Sleeping on the ground at night near the log fire, and without provision save the rough fare his hosts pressed upon him, he had his initiation into Lisu ways and hospitality. For a whole week he stayed on, finding a real response to his message. When the sons were out at work he had good opportunities with the rest of the large household sisters, daughters-in-law, the old people and children. This surely was a happy beginning to the work he so longed to see develop. True, his Chinese was very limited and he could speak no Lisu, but the simple hymn and prayer they were learning helped to fix essential truths in their minds by constant repetition, and they never seemed to tire of singing.
Over there on a dusty shelf at the back of the room were the objects used in demon-worship―a bowl or two in which food could be offered, an incense burner, a dry bunch of leaves regarded with awe as a special haunt of the spirits, and the characters for Heaven and Earth, on red paper, which in Lisu homes take the place of idols. Furtive glances turned in that direction from time to time, as the talk and singing proceeded, until at last, without any urging from Fraser, a wonderful thing happened. After some consultation in Lisu which Fraser could not understand, the father and sons (four of them) made it clear that they wanted to pray to the one true God and to believe in Jesus. So the demon-shelf and other things were torn down and thrown into the fire, Fraser watching for the first time the burning that to him meant so much. He was keenly conscious of how little he had been able to impart to his Lisu friends of the precious truths of the Gospel, but a beginning had been made and he was greatly encouraged.
‘It was all very happy and nebulous,’ he wrote. Yes, both happy and nebulous!
In the weeks that followed, he was surprised that none of the family came to visit him in Tengyueh, as he had hoped they would. He was eager to return their hospitality. But the rainy season had set in, when mountain tracks were almost impassable, and he was too much pressed with language study and new responsibilities to do more than remember them frequently in prayer.
For it was not long after his return from Trinket Mountain that Fraser found himself unavoidably promoted to the position of missionary-in-charge at Tengyueh. He had by this time abandoned his cheerless quarters in the inn, and moved into the enlarged mission premises. The old rat-infested house the Emberys first occupied had been replaced by a much-needed chapel and guest hail, behind which a semi-foreign dwelling had been added on part of the landlord’s property. Clean and quiet, with upstairs rooms opening on a wide verandah, it was a change indeed! Facing west, two windows in Fraser’s room looked out toward the mountains beyond which lay the Lisu uplands where he would fain have been. But on their nearer slopes the Temple of the Winds, famous for its idolatrous pilgrimages, told of needs close at hand. Five hours a day, Fraser was still giving to study.
I do not weary of it for a moment [he wrote at this time]. Every new character I learn, and still more every colloquial expression, is so much more ground eagerly taken possession of. I do not think I have ever been so absorbed in any line of study, not even parabolas!
He was taking increasing part also in guest-hall work, street preaching and regular services in the chapel, greatly appreciating the fellowship with his senior colleagues, Mr. and Mrs. Embery. And then, when he had only been in China. two and a half years, circumstances arose which left him alone, the only missionary in that extensive Tengyueh field.
Had it been possible [he wrote] for someone else to go to Tali, the Emberys would not have been asked to do so, but the shortage of workers is so great that no other arrangement could be made... As far as matters here are concerned, it means that I am single-handed and must remain so indefinitely. I expect Mr. McCarthy will be coming along to stay with me for a time, perhaps next month. I have, however, the responsibility of looking after our comparatively large premises, as well as the much weightier responsibility of preaching the Gospel alone now. So it is no small load which has fallen on my shoulders.
Reading between the lines, one cannot but see how much he felt the parting from his friends.
I went out with the Emberys seven or eight miles, to see them off ... and scored a triumph by the way! For I carried the baby some distance up the long hill, and she fell asleep on my shoulder. So now I can really say I have put baby to sleep.
Brave and steady was the spirit Fraser brought to his new task, but from intimate letters to his mother it is evident that he was often at an end of his own resources. Housekeeping details were new to him, and so was the management of servants whose spiritual welfare he was earnestly seeking. It was one thing to take prayers every morning with the cook, a married man of forty, and the houseboy, a nice enough youth when not provoked, but to still the tempest when quarrels arose was quite another. It was a pleasure to receive callers in the guest-hall when they came at convenient hours, but to be always ready to set aside other claims and make the most of such visits was not easy.
I feel, somehow, that my best opportunity for Chinese study is gone forever [he wrote after a few weeks alone]. Interruptions, visits and attention to details absorb a good deal of my time. Not that I deplore this; on the contrary, I am very glad to be launched into full work as a missionary. It is what we come to China for. But I am finding out that it is a mistake to plan to get through a certain amount of work in a certain time. It ends in disappointment, besides not being the right way to go about it, in my judgment. It makes one impatient of interruption and delay. Just as you are nearly finishing―somebody comes along to sit with you and have a chat! You might hardly think it possible to be impatient and put out when such an opportunity is given for presenting the Gospel―but it is. It may be just on mealtime, or you are writing a letter to catch the mail, or you were just going out for needed exercise before tea. But the visitor has to be welcomed, and I think it is well to cultivate an attitude of mind which will enable one to welcome him from the heart and at any time. ‘No admittance except on business’ scarcely shows a true missionary spirit.
And not only so―I have been feeling lately that this personal work is quite as important as preaching. To have a man come to see you at your own house and be able to talk with him plainly and directly about his soul’s welfare, what could be better?... I feel that there is more force in an appeal under these conditions... Of course preaching to crowds must be done, but it is not the only way, in Scripture or out of it, of bringing men to Christ. It may seem a strange thing for a missionary to say, but I feel that if God has given me any spiritual gift it is not that of preaching.
I know my own clumsiness and so on very well―but the Lord has always helped me in this one-by-one work, and He is giving it to me here.
Interesting details follow in many letters about inquirers with whom Fraser was in touch, each one being commended by name to his mother’s special remembrance in prayer. More and more he was coming to count upon her as a fellow worker in this way. Prayer had previously meant much to the writer, but now he was realizing in a new way his entire dependence for spiritual results on a power not his own. With his former Class Leader at home he sought to share the burden:
It seems a big responsibility to be the only preacher of the Gospel within a radius of about a hundred and fifty miles... I feel my weakness very much, yet the Lord seems to delight in making His power perfect in weakness. May I ask you then to remember me specially in prayer, asking God to use me to the salvation of many precious souls.
I am feeling more and more that it is, after all, just the prayers of God’s people that call down blessing upon the work, whether they are directly engaged in it or not. Paul may plant and Apollos water, but it is God Who gives the increase; and this increase can be brought down from heaven by believing prayer, whether offered in China or in England. We are, as it were, God’s agents―used by Him to do His work, not ours. We do our part, and then can only look to Him, with others, for His blessing. If this is so, then Christians at home can do as much for foreign missions as those actually on the field. I believe it will only be known on the Last Day how much has been accomplished in missionary work by the prayers of earnest believers at home. And this, surely, is the heart of the problem. Such work does not consist in curio exhibitions, lantern lectures, interesting reports and so on. Good as they may be, these are only the fringe, not the root of the matter. Solid, lasting missionary work is done on our knees. What I covet more than anything else is earnest, believing prayer, and I write to ask you to continue to put up much prayer for me and the work here in Tengyueh.
It was well, perhaps, that Fraser could not know that it would be three full years before the return of Mr. and Mrs. Embery, and that for more than half that time he would be alone in the work, An early visit from his superintendent and friend, the Rev. John McCarthy, was no little cheer, but only four months later the veteran missionary passed to his reward and Fraser was more than ever isolated. His interest in the work was so keen that he could truly write, once and again, ‘I have never been so happy’, but it was happiness that was not dependent upon outward circumstances. Some of whom he had the brightest hopes went back in spite of all his care; indifference and opposition often made his outdoor work difficult; and his inability to do anything for the women who had been interested in Mrs. Embery’s day was often a burden. ‘Propriety’ would not allow them to attend the meetings in the absence of any woman missionary to receive them. Once, but once only, he was persuaded to disregard convention. Wedding festivities were bringing many guests to a nearby house and some of the ladies begged their hostess to take them to the chapel to hear the preaching.
Could they come? Well, it is not supposed to be the right thing, you know... but old Mrs. Li and our landlord’s wife were about and could look after them―so, not liking to turn people away who want to hear the Gospel, I consented.
There were a dozen women in this gaily-attired group, besides many babies and children, Fraser took John 3:1616For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. (John 3:16) as his text, finding it necessary to be very direct and simple.
I told them the Gospel story [he wrote] and one or two incidents in our Lord’s life, including His blessing little children. They listened attentively, and Mrs. Li said that they understood me very well. I believe that the Lord was with me, giving me ‘a mouth and wisdom’―I should never have much of either, otherwise.
It is not easy to stick to one’s subject (in a point by point sense) on an occasion like this. I am reminded of that irregular preacher at home who was accused of wandering from his subject. He replied that, whether he stuck to his subject or not, he thanked God that he stuck to his object, which was to bring men to Christ. I hope I shall never lose sight of that.
Among the encouragements of those lonely days, eraser frequently referred to the interest of Mrs. Li, just mentioned, who had been Mrs. Embery’s servant and friend. Well on in years, she was able to come to the Sunday services and to do the little laundry work that Fraser needed. With a confirmed opium smoker for a husband, her life had been full of hardship and suffering. Of her eleven children, only one had lived to grow up, and he, too, did nothing but smoke opium. His unhappy wife was some help in keeping the home together, but the poor mother had no hope in this life or the next until she found the Saviour. To watch her growth in grace was an increasing joy. Within a year of the Emberys’ leaving, Fraser was able to write of her as a bright Christian.
Listen to what she says: ‘I used to be anxious and worried about all these things, besides being angry and resentful at the way I am treated, but it is not so now. If I begin to feel that way I just turn to God, and He brings back peace to my heart.’
When I exhort her to pray, she replies, ‘Yes, I do pray. I am continually thinking about and praying to God as I do my work.’
Just a poor, ignorant woman earning her living by washing clothes, despised and jeered at by many and cruelly ill-treated by her husband, yet daily trusting all to her Saviour and praising her God! She nearly cries sometimes when she tells me her troubles, but as a rule she is bright and cheerful.
That he was able to do so little for his Lisu friends was one of Fraser’s trials at this time. Of the Koh family, about whom he had been so much encouraged, he heard almost nothing. One of the sons came in for eye medicine, and brought sad news of poverty and sickness in the village. Crops had failed and the dreaded spirits were cruel. He told of the death of a neighbor, a very sick man whom Fraser had visited several times. It was a comfort to know that he had remembered some of the Good News.
He used to talk about it sometimes, they tell me. Whether he had any real grasp of the truth, however small, or whether it was more a confused impression, I cannot tell. He seemed quite intelligent in spite of his suffering condition, when I talked with him. If the Emberys had not had to leave, I might have gone up again and seen him before he died. I was wanting to go.
To help young Koh and others from the mountains, Fraser called in the cook, who had come out brightly as a Christian and whose Chinese was more fluent than his own. The joy of hearing him put the Gospel so clearly strengthened the young missionary in the conviction that the best way of reaching outsiders was through the Christians themselves, whether tribal or Chinese. His patient Bible teaching was bearing fruit.
Beyond the mission compound Fraser was now a familiar figure in all parts of the city and suburbs. The preaching shop had been given up in favor of quieter meetings in the new chapel, but open-air work was continued regularly with the help of colored pictures and Gospel posters. Notable changes were coming in public thought and feeling. The ‘new learning’ in the schools and Western methods in military training were much in evidence. The revolutionary doctrines of Sun Yat-sen were permeating the student class especially and events were moving steadily toward the fall of the old regime. Questions were asked of the young missionary and subjects raised for discussion unheard of before. One gentleman called upon him to talk over Socrates and Aristotle, while others came to improve their English. The active part Fraser had taken in subduing a dangerous fire in the city put him in a new light, and his increasing fluency in Chinese secured better attention.
Still, street preaching was no easy matter, and it required courage to keep on day after day with no one to stand by him. Sometimes, in the evening, the cook could be spared to help.
It is dark [Fraser wrote of such occasions] and, just as at home, people are at a loose end and wander about with nothing much to do. I get an old stool and stand on it while the cook holds the lantern....
If there is one native institution I do like it is the ‘tea shop’. You sit down sociably with others round a grimy table and drink your fill of milk-less, sugarless tea, leisurely cracking melon or sunflower seeds.... Tea shop people nearly always seem friendly and let you preach or give tracts to their customers. After nearly having a fight with one man before I could induce him not to pay my tea money (about the eighth of a penny) I found that the proprietor would not let me pay either!
That these opportunities were made the most of is evident from many a letter. More than ever the young missionary was longing to see men turn to the living God.
I should like you continually to pray [he wrote in October, 1911] not only for the salvation of outsiders but for blessing on those who have definitely accepted Christ.... I want to be downright in earnest myself, and to be filled with the Spirit.
‘I want an even, strong desire,
I want a calmly fervent zeal,
To save poor souls out of the fire,
To snatch them from the verge of hell,
And turn them to a pardoning God
And quench the brands in Jesus blood.’
It was his last letter before the Revolution.