{"id":269,"date":"2020-12-28T14:36:44","date_gmt":"2020-12-28T20:36:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.northlat.biz\/?page_id=269"},"modified":"2020-12-28T14:40:20","modified_gmt":"2020-12-28T20:40:20","slug":"interview-with-art-nesse-regarding-danielle-nesse","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/home\/art-and-dorothy-nesse-in-memory\/art-nesses-web\/china-index\/interview-with-art-nesse-regarding-danielle-nesse\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview with Art Nesse Regarding Danielle Nesse"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Background:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art Nesse was born of missionary parents in 1922 in the province of Honan, central China. He was in China until 1936 except for two trips, one to US via Russia and Norway in 1927 and another trip directly from China to US in 1932. Art\u2019s mother died in 1932 when Art was only ten years old. The family wanted to gather what he remembered of her and their time in China. Hence this \u201cinterview\u201d with Art on the occasion of a 1998 visit to his home place in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In September 1998 Art Nesse, son Randy with his wife Margaret and Rolf Nesse (Art\u2019s nephew, #3 son of Art\u2019s oldest brother Gerhard) traveled to China. The trip was arranged by David Edwins, Art\u2019s grade school classmate in China and a retired travel agent. The trip was designed to visit the various places in China where the American School Kikungshan \u201cASK\u201d had operated. The moves were dictated by wars and revolutions that made the school\u2019s primary site on Ki (chicken), Kung (male), Shan (mountain) in southern Honan province unsafe. \u201cRooster Mountain\u201d is the English version of the name.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to the visits to ASK sites, the travel group of some 20 participated in the dedication of memorial granite \u201cMoongate\u201d. The Moongate was built with the participation of local Chinese authorities to commemorate the many years of American presence on Jigong, the ASK school and the missionaries buried in a cemetery on Jigong. A story on the Moongate dedication is attached to this interview document.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Incidentally, Kikung is now spelled \u201cJigong\u201d, Honan is now spelled \u201cHenan\u201d. These spellings in Pinyin\u201d will be used hereafter. Other spellings will also reflect present standards rather than the anglicized spellings of Chinese names, \u201cWade Giles\u201d, that prevailed some 60 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jigong mountain rises some 2500 feet above the Henan plain. A large tract of relatively unused land was purchased on Jigong by missionary interests around 1900. It was purchased as a site for a missionary retreat from the summer heat and disease on the lower land. Missionaries built summer homes there. In 1916 a school \u201cASK\u201d was constructed on Jigong for year round use for missionary children. As a boarding school, with travel both hazardous and costly, many children\u2019s\u2019 \u201chome\u201d was almost exclusively the school. Parents came to Jigong in the summer, and children could be with parents. The rest of the year, if travel conditions permitted, students could travel home for perhaps the Christmas holiday at their parents assigned work location. Except for summer vacation time, Christmas was perhaps the only family time for ASK children. In addition to the school, there was also a missionary cemetery established on Jigong and over the years between 1900 and perhaps 1940 some 30 missionaries or missionary children were buried there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arthur Nesse talks about his mother.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sept. 1998<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: We are on Rooster Mountain in the extreme south of Henan province This is Rolf, together with Randy and Margaret, asking Art about his recollections from this place going back more than 60 years when he was a youngster here. Art is especially going to give us, with a little tiny bit of prodding from the three of us, stories about Danielle, Randy\u2019s and my grandmother, who we could not know because of her death in China long before we were born. Art, just tell us what you know, and if you don\u2019t tell us enough, We will guide you to remember some more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: First, let\u2019s look at your pronunciation, in the Norwegian pronunciation, it is \u201cDan yel leh\u201d although spelled as in French, Danielle. She was born Feb. 28, 1881. As an infant on the day she was to be baptized her father, together with other fishermen, went out into the North Sea for fish. They really hadn\u2019t planned to go out that day, but there was apparently a gathering of birds, which suggested there were a school of mackerel. They went out, they got a lot of fish. They filled the boat, and they also filled the little attached boat that was chained to the boat the men were in. A squall came up. The squall upended the little trailing boat. Since the trailing boat was attached by a chain they could not cut it free from the boat. The weight of the trailing boat swamped the boat where the men were. The net result was that all the men were drowned. The story I tell my grandchildren is that Nesses are fine people, they are brave, they are probably careless, and they aren\u2019t always smart. They should have thought of the chain attachment, but they didn\u2019t. So my mother was baptized with the name Danielle, after Daniel, who was her father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Danielle\u2019s mother Mette was left with an infant daughter and a significant library of history, geography and mission literature. Danielle was an omnivorous reader and even as a young child became tremendously interested in missions. And she was bound and determined, that coming out of a place where there were really no educated folk, she wanted to be educated and serve on the mission field. She was accepted for training as a nurse in the Deaconess Home in Oslo and became \u201cSister Danielle\u201d. She next worked as a nurse in a government facility for old people in Bergen but never gave up her ambition to serve as a missionary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1909 Sister Danielle was called by the Norwegian Missionary Society to be a medical missionary in China and assigned to a hospital facility of the society (Taowhalun) in the city of Yiyang, Hunan province. There she distinguished herself both by her quick facility with the Chinese language as well as her community service activities outside the hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Was it a school for Chinese girls?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Yes, she was involved in a school for girls and I believe was the principal missionary initiator. She also visited Chinese homes working with the women on health, sanitation and what we would now call \u201cfamily values\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy: How did Danielle and Hans get together in China?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Hans, was born in the same little area of Norway in the same year as my mother in 1881 and just a few months after her, on June 6. Their families were neighbors, they played together, went to school together and were confirmed together at Bremnes, a parish on the island of B\u00f8mlo some 2 hours by boat south of Bergen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hans and Danielle met again in 1912 on Jigong where we are now having this conversation and eleven years had elapsed since they last saw each other. Hans went to US at age 17, worked in a piano factory as a carpenter and on steamboats on the Great Lakes. He went to college and seminary in the US and entered missionary service in China in 1910 with the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America headquartered in St. Paul, Minnesota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do have a letter with a Jigong return address from my mother to her half-sister Gertrude in Norway dated in the summer of 1910. In the letter she briefly mentions having a nice visit with some Norwegian-American missionaries but did not mention Hans. Had he been there she surely would have named him as they were family friends from Bremnes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: What was Danielle\u2019s religious emphasis if you can remember anything on that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I can remember little or nothing since I was just 10 years old when she died. I have learned a bit both from reading what she has written and from what has been written about her. I have learned that, although she was much influenced by the pietistic and evangelical movements that swept Norway and other western countries at the turn of the century, her own religious roots were in the established Lutheran church of Norway rather than in the revival movements such as the \u201cHaugianers\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: What were the Haugianers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: A US comparison might be the adherents of D.L. Moody, and the still operating Moody Bible Institute near Chicago. Of course the fundamentalist strain is much in evidence and growing fast today. Although Hauge as a person dates from the early 1800\u2019s his influence was strong later in the century and continues to this day. In Norway on my last visit some of my relatives participated in Hauge-type religious life as well as the state Lutheran Church for baptisms, weddings and funerals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Was she more conservative, or just more Norwegian?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Less born-again pious than perhaps some of the missionaries at the time. I really can\u2019t legitimately state that as a fact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: From the way she acted?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Perhaps from the way she acted and what I can remember of what she would say. The other thing was that when they had Mission Conference she had her say with the men. She had been a professional for a number of years and would speak up, which was not too common for the missionary wives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Lois, dear sister of mine, now we know where you came from!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: A story along this line is kind of cute. The missionary group were extremely pious people and believed in God and God\u2019s guidance in a very personal way. In conferences on Jigong it was decided where different missionaries would serve. My parents would say to each other after a meeting, \u201cIsn\u2019t it just amazing how God always calls missionaries to work at the places with the most spacious and comfortable house?\u201d (Laughter)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Where were your parents stationed?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: My parents first working assignment was to build the mission station at Suiping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suiping was up the railroad about 50 or 60 miles north toward Beijing from Xinyang. He built up that station and it was a conspicuous success both from the standpoint of the physical plant that my father had built, the number of converts to Christianity and the ambitious and successful outreach program to smaller towns in the area. Such towns were called is mission jargon \u201coutstations\u201d. I can just barely remember living there, as we moved when I was about 4 years old or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Is that where you were born?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I was actually born in Kioshan. I do know that our family was stationed for a time at Kioshan and there was a fine mission hospital there. Kioshan is some hundreds of miles south of Beijing, and perhaps 30 or 40 miles north of Xinyang on the railroad line from Beijing to Wuhan which we traveled to get where we are now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: I would say, when people ask me where my father was born, Xinyang, Honan, China. Is that where Gerhard and Henry were born?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Well, I believe Gerhard was born in Xinyang, at the hospital there. I was born in Kioshan, and it\u2019s also possible that your father was born in Kioshan, because Kioshan was nearer to Suiping, so it was shorter railroad time. But when your father was born, there is a story that there wasn\u2019t much of a baby there. The doctor delivered the baby, and said, \u201cI\u2019m very sorry, it\u2019s a still born baby.\u201d And the nurse, I don\u2019t know which one, but I think it was Sister Hilda, said, \u201cNo, you just have to do the right thing with this baby,\u201d and she spanked him and dipped him in hot water, and dipped him in cold water, whacked him around and he came to life. Sister Hilda would always tell this story when I would see her and always claimed the Gerhard was \u201cher baby\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comment from Caroline, Gerhard\u2019s widow. \u201cThe story Gay told me was that his mother was a pre-eclampsic, or was going into eclampsia, I don\u2019t know which. So, he was delivered by Dursten\u2019s incisions, which is a Cesarean done from below. It is a procedure that is no longer used.. He always said that he was born in Xinyang.)\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: When someone asks me where dad was born, I say Xinyang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: When people ask me where I was born, I say Xinyang, too. Just because it is on the map. It is a place people know. That\u2019s why when I\u2019m in China I say that Xinyang is my \u201clao jia\u201d (home place) and the people there are my \u201clao hsiang\u201d (home town people).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Henry was born without any great adventure, as far as I can know, and so was I although I weighed in at ten pounds.. My mother was exactly 40 years old when I was born. I think maybe the happiest times of my father\u2019s and mother\u2019s life were in Suiping and later in Xinyang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Where did your family live for most of your childhood?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: From 1913 to 1918 it was in Suiping. There was a furlough year 1918-1919 where they went to US via Norway with the two boys Gerhard (born 1915) and Henry (born 1918). Upon return they were in Huangchuan, in Kioshan where I was born in 1922, and then in 1924 in Xinyang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: When you were about 2 or 3 years old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: That was Xinyang. That was the place where Gerhard and Henry were at school on Jigong and I was down in Xinyang some 30 miles away with my parents We missionary kids would leave home for boarding school at about age 6 to 7. The war when the southern troops that represented an alliance between Chiang Kai Shek and the communists came through and defeated a coalition of local war lords and northern interests on the way to take Beijing. On Camel\u2019s Hump, just outside our hotel window here, is one place where the defending army decided they had lost it. They threw down their rifles and their ammunition belts and ran away. And so we kids had some wonderful toys to pick up on Camels Hump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I even remember in the early 1930\u2019s finding these unexploded rifle shells. We\u2019d extract the lead bullet and powder charge, find a tree stump and a board with a nail in it, and set off the cap with an impressive bang.. And the police would come and say, \u201cWhat are you doing, shooting?\u201d And we\u2019d say \u201cTrying to have fun.\u201d And they would say, \u201cDon\u2019t do it any more.\u201d These were the Chinese police dealing with the delinquent missionary children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: When you mother was caring for you three children was she still doing missionary work?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: She was still basically teaching. After she married, she always had a clinic of some kind where people would come. But she was not nursing in the hospital. There was of course opportunity for such work because we kids had an amah, there was also a cook and a houseboy or gardener. My mother routinely was teaching either Bible School or something. And working mostly with the women. She felt that the women of China were sadly neglected. She tried to bring them out, and work with them, and make them a more important part of the community. As I have read things, she had a mission in that regard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now in 1926 there is the other story that has been told many times over about Dan Nelson being shot. My mother was the medical person on the site and wrote the story on it that was published in the missionary news magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: You were shielded in the other room?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Yes, I was in another room. They were shooting all the time, and stray bullets would come in to the house. There were hundreds of bullets that hit our house and many came into the house. Daniel Nelson was a person even more careless than my father. He had a big beard, he looked like a missionary, and had kind of fierce eyes. The defending soldiers were dug in the front yard of our Xinyang home. When shooting wasn\u2019t heavy Nelson would banter with the soldiers and make fun of the barricades they had erected. \u201cThat\u2019s not going to do you any good. You know, they\u2019re going to shoot you anyway.\u201d We were in the house just behind their trenches. According to my mother\u2019s published story Nelson had protected the widows with seven layers of sheet metal. This hardly stopped any bullets. The appropriate thing, every time you passed a window when there was shooting going on, you were supposed to duck underneath. The house itself was solid brick and could withstand a rifle bullet. Nelson didn\u2019t duck under the level of the widow, a stray bullet came through the sheet metal, through his head and lodged in the wall. I remember vividly the scene when my father came to my mother and said, \u201cNelson er skut!\u201d (Nelson is shot!). When I was moved from place to place in the house my parents would wrap me in a mattress — probably as useless a safety feature as seven layers of sheet metal!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When shooting was very active, we went down in a little basement. Life was really pretty boring for a little fellow like me. One day my dad brought me out in the yard for fresh air and said \u201cLook up, those are World War I cannon balls\u201d. They were fired from the hills outside Xinyang, arched over our house which was a \u201cprotected\u201d foreign property and crashed into the city behind us. That was his concept of entertainment. To bring your child out in the yard to see the cannon balls go overhead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: So you were in Xinyang some 20 miles north of here in the valley where we got off the train and had lunch. Your brothers were at school here on Jigong experiencing a different battle, the Camel\u2019s Hump affair, in the same war..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I was in Xinyang with my folks while brothers Gerhard and Henry were here on Jigong in school when all this was going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Jigong was just the summer place. In those days the mission residence and church at Xinyang was right on the river. It was very beautiful with a broad area of sand and the sparkling river flowing right in front of our house. We had a nice yard, and we had a very pleasant situation. But at the time in 1926 when Chiang Kai Shek defeated the northern armies and unified the country there was a very strong anti-foreign movement, some murders of missionaries etc. All Americans were recalled by the consulate to come home to US That was the time our family went from Xinyang down to Wuhan and I think we got on a British Gun Boat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Was Danielle on that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Yes, she and my father and we three boys.. We got on the gun boat and went down to Shanghai. Most of the people then went on a trans-pacific steamer across the Pacific to the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: What would you bring? How did she pack? She is packing you out of the house to go maybe to Norway, maybe across the street. How did she handle that?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: We had trunks and suitcases and carriers to and from trains and boats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Everything? Did you take a wheelbarrow down to the boat, or something?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: There were always coolies to carry things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Did you leave anything behind?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: We, of course, left a lot of things behind. You couldn\u2019t take furniture. But furniture was not expensive in China. We went down to Shanghai, and then we took the coastal steamer from Shanghai up to Vladivostok (Port Arthur as it was called then.) And I have a picture of the five of us. I\u2019m a little shaver of about four and a half or five, just as our family got on the Siberian Railroad to go across Siberia and Russia and on to Helsinki, Finland and then Norway.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were on the train for 7 days. There really wasn\u2019t any food service on the train. I have just a few recollections from the trip. We did have bunks, and we went first class. For some reason the picture I have in my mind was an extended negotiation between the conductor and my father about how many pillows we had. Of course the language problem was atrocious and the Russian had some German, I guess, so I can hear my father counting, \u201cEin, Zwei, Drei, Vier.\u201d The Russian was also counting, and they could not figure out how much to pay for five pillows. I still remember two words from that trip, which might not be right. \u201cKepyatakk\u201d was the word for \u201chot water\u201d, of which we had a lot, and \u201cmelliko\u201d was \u201ccanned milk\u201d. I think we had sugar and hot water and canned milk as a treat. Another thing I remember is that we were in Moscow in the railroad yard and the train started moving and my father wasn\u2019t there. So here the train was pulling out of the station. He\u2019d been scouting somewhere and he came, and swung on the train and all was well. He had an awfully nervous wife.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Any words from Danielle?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I\u2019m sure there were but I can\u2019t remember. I just remember the scene of my father getting on the train after it was moving out of the Moscow station. I don\u2019t remember this myself but in what my father wrote of the trans-siberian trip he said he had never seen so many drunks in his life as in Moscow on Easter Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Caroline insert: \u201cAs Gerhard told the story, the train just went down the tracks a couple miles to fill up with water, and then it backed up again to the station. Another of his comments on the trip was the feeling of closeness with the whole family together for the seven days. And he remembered his dad buying borscht at the stations when they stopped.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy: What happened at the end of the trip?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: We next visited some missionary friends in Finland. I was just terribly restless and no doubt a childish nuisance to all. My mother said,\u201d What\u2019s the matter, Arthur?\u201d And I said, \u201cI want to go home. And so she smiled and said, \u201cWhat\u2019s home, Arthur?\u201d And I said, \u201cP\u00e5 t\u00e5get.\u201d (On the train.) It doesn\u2019t take long for young kids to adapt to a new home!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Do you recall your mother playing with you, or reading to you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: She read to me. She read Hans Christian Andersen stories. Which are violent by today\u2019s standards and modern parents no longer read unexpurgated versions to their children. She read all the fierce Hans Christian Andersen stories, sparing none of the gory details. And at A. S. K., Mrs. Lindell, our matron, would read to the young kids from Hurlbut\u2019s \u201cStory of the Bible\u201d. The original version has been banned from all Sunday Schools today because it doesn\u2019t spare any of the violent and sexy details in the Bible. One of the transitions in our life at ASK was when we graduated from Mrs. Lindell\u2019s Bible stories and had to participate in Bible reading and devotions with the \u201cbig kids\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mother was basically Norwegian. The one antagonism I can remember between mother and father was that father was always Americanizing, and mother was always pulling back toward Norwegian. We spoke only Norwegian in the home, that was what mother wanted. And I can remember how tremendously upset mother was because we four \u201cmenfolk\u201d were often sitting talking in English at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Could Danielle understand and speak English?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I can\u2019t remember her not being completely free and facile in English, both spoken and written. I don\u2019t know how or when she learned it. I always talked to my mother in Norwegian, never in English. She was very uncomfortable when we talked English. We were a Norwegian home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was very proud of her home, wherever she lived. I can remember on Jigong that our house was pleasant and nicely furnished. She actually had some things from Norway. She would sit down at the table, and she would say, \u201cYou know, we could have the king (of Norway of course) as our guest for dinner tonight\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: What kind of a Christian was she? Was she a very formal person, or was she, how would you say it, was she warm, or was she more stand-off-ish?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: As for Danielle as a Christian, I was too young to know except that my father describes her on the formal rather than aggressively evangelical side. As a person, if you say, \u201cWarm and fuzzy,\u201d I\u2019d say, \u201cNo.\u201d She was not warm and fuzzy. She was comforting. At the same time her expectations were, I\u2019d say, very strict. My father was a lot more easy and generally casual. My mother pretty much ran things and was the disciplinarian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Were you spanked as a child?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I do remember being spanked once. We had this very large porcelain dish of prepared bienshe (Honan dialect for dumplings) placed in a screened cabinet in the dining room — no refrigeration of course. I was eager to hasten supper by moving them to the kitchen for reheating by the cook, \u201cda shefo\u201d , which in Chinese means \u201cbig servant\u201d. Mother said, \u201cArthur, Leave Them Alone!\u201d But I opened the cabinet and took out the bienshe to carry them to the kitchen. I dropped the valuable serving dish and our dinner with it. My mother laid me over her knee and gave me a few swats in the right place and it didn\u2019t really hurt at all. Other than that, I can\u2019t remember being spanked by either my mother or my father. Certainly not by my father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy: Give us some chronology so we can know what is going on when.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Our family left China in 1926 and came to the US via British gunboat from Wuhan to Shanghai, Japanese steamship from Shanghai to Port Arthur (Vladivostok, Russia, just north of Beijing), across Siberia to Norway and then via the Norwegian steamship the \u201cStavangerfjord\u201d to the US We were in US in 1927 and returned to China in 1928. I saw my first movie, Charlie Chaplin of course, aboard ship. I also saw the original Ben Hur later in the US<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: How long were you in Norway?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Two or three months. actually all summer. It was part of the furlough. I can remember that I had my leather shoes but I had to have wooden shoes because that\u2019s what the kids wore in Norway. I remember how hard it was to get used to wearing wooden shoes. My mother and father took a vacation trip, a fjord steamer to Nordkap and the midnight sun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Where did you stay in Norway?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: We stayed at Bremnes. The relatives took good care of us. I can remember another thing, our parents discussing with our relatives what we three kids could and couldn\u2019t do. They said it was all right for Gerhard and Henry to take a boat on the water, but they could not use a canoe. Perhaps this memory sticks with me because tight restrictions were seldom a part of our experience as kids.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Kids boating in the North Sea?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Maybe it wasn\u2019t the open North Sea, more likely a bay or harbor. We had a very nice summer and I have a picture of my father and mother on the fjord steamer. They look very happy, it was perhaps the happiest and most relaxed time of their short married life together, just 19 short years from 1913 to 1932.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: It sounds that a relaxed vacation time was not part of Danielle\u2019s life? Was the idea of time off part of her life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Good dinners, reading, visits with friends and picnics were very much a part of her life. Especially on Jigong we did have relaxed, good times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: How long were you there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Typically, my mother would come up when school was out. And go back about when school started. But after she died I stayed with our family friends the Tvedrs\u2019\u2019 between the time school was out until it was time for my father\u2019s summer break.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: How old was she? How did she recreate? I can imagine you boys wandering around in the forest. But she was up here for three months with a bunch of little hellions. What did she do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: On Jigong there were a good number of women like her, some wives of men missionaries as well as single ladies, nurses, teachers and a female Norwegian physician as well. They would have coffee together and socialize. And we had Chinese servants, so she was not put upon to do very much housecleaning or cooking. Oh Jigong there was just one servant but in Xinyang I think we had a cook, a gatekeeper, houseboy and yardman<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Did you have an amah?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Yes, and that enabled my mother to do work both in health services and teaching. I can remember that I used to throw my blocks all over the yard, and Amah would pick them up. Just a sort of a colonial scene, if you will. I also remember that it was not acceptable to throw blocks for someone else to pick up and both Amah and mother soon put a stop to it!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: So the missionary women got up to the Jigong mountain resort and they socialized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: And get acquainted with their kids whom they perhaps had not seen since the preceding summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: How about your own summer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I had a little work shop where I made toy boats, little ones. Another thing, I had an erector set and built a trolley between trees in the yard. After school was out, it didn\u2019t occur to me to go play with the other kids. Finally the other kids came as said, \u201cWhat are you doing, Art.\u201d And I said, \u201cI\u2019m playing with this, or I\u2019m playing with that.\u201d They said, \u201cOh, come with us!\u201d So I joined basic life on Jigong. We\u2019d play tennis all morning, we would go home and eat, and in those days they wouldn\u2019t let us go swimming until an hour after dinner\u2013which was the longest hour of the day. And then we went swimming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Did your mother enter into the tennis and swimming?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: No, my mother did not do tennis or swim as far as I can remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Did she hike?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: To get from here to there was always a hike on Jigong but we called it walking.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: She hung out with her friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Socially she hung out with her friends and had coffee. By contrast with most of the wives, however, she was active in mission affairs and politics which each summer were organized and negotiated for the coming work year. My mother did love to read. My dad had said, that as a child, she was a reader, a reader, a reader. She read everything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Would she use the school library?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: If there was one it wasn\u2019t much. I can\u2019t remember where she got books. She would read. She did a certain amount of sewing and managing the house. And writing letters, etc. And of course, at the mission station there was a lot of \u201cdoing good works\u201d. At Jigong there was a certain amount of that, but I think it was quite casual addressed to the Chinese merchants on Jigong and the servants of missionaries who might or might not be Christian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Caroline: Art: I would like to know a little about what you did that year, 1927, in the States. I seem to remember something about your starting school in St. Paul, not knowing much English. And, is this the furlough during which Tante Gertrude got married? )<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I started kindergarten in St. Paul at the normal age and can\u2019t remember having to learn English or having any problem although our home was strictly Norwegian for family talk. Actually, I skipped the second half year of kindergarten and moved to first grade a bit ahead of my age. My first grade teacher was \u201cMiss Schneider\u201d but I can\u2019t remember the name of my kindergarten teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: That was the first time Danielle was diagnosed as having cancer?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: If you go back to the chronology again, we came back from the States to China in 1928. At that time Jigong was not ready for occupancy again as a school. The school opened at Shekow which is just outside of Wuhan. My mother stayed with her three boys there while my father went on to Xinyang to rebuild the facilities and start up the missionary work again.. That was when my mother had her first onset of cancer in 1929.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: How did the symptoms develop?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Yes. She had a lump in the breast and, as I recall, she was actually ill. My father came from Xinyang to take her to Beijing to the Rockefeller Hospital there. She needed help to get around at that time. After she had a mastectomy she came back, and was basically pretty fine until the middle of 1931 or so. But then in 1931, there was a recurrence of the cancer, so my father and mother went up to Beijing again, and they said that there was nothing they could do about it. I remember when they came off the train on return I asked my father \u201cIs mama going to be well again like last time?\u201d He answered in Norwegian, as he always did when it was important. \u201cNo Arthur, she is coming home to Xinyang to die\u201d. And he started to cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: How old were you ?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I was 9 I can remember they gave mother a little cup of wine with an egg yolk in it. She drank that every day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: What was that supposed to do?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I have no idea. That was because at that time medically you really couldn\u2019t do much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Weren\u2019t you evacuated to somewhere?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: In the fall of 1931 the conditions were reasonably safe in Xinyang. from the marauding Communists who came through Henan on the \u201cLong March\u201d from south China to remote northern Yunnan province. The Chiang government had a significant defensive garrison at Xinyang.. But Jigong was not a garrisoned and relatively secure walled city as was Xinyang. So for security reasons the ASK school moved to Hankow, or Wuhan, as it is called now and subsequently it moved up to Kuling. Kuling (now called Lushan) was, and still is, a summer resort mountain downstream from Wuhan on the Yangtze river that is even more beautiful than Jigong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy: So when did you last see your mother?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: In the fall of 1931-32, my father and mother decided \u2013 she was very ill then \u2013 that the best thing was to send us three boys up to school at Kuling. They told us they would send a telegram when mother died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: It said in the obituary that I read that she felt that she still had more work that she wanted to do, and that she wasn\u2019t ready to die.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I\u2019m sure that is true but I was only 10 and can\u2019t speak to that..<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: She was not resigned to her death until fairly close to the end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I do remember this. That she really wanted to die on Jigong. My father said, \u201cNo!\u201d First of all, it wasn\u2019t really safe from robbers, Communists and what have you. Care givers and Dr. Skinsness were not on Jigong and besides my father had to continue his work to the extent possible. And so her bed was placed in the front room, next to the dining room. That\u2019s so she was sort of in the middle of the house. For a period from September until the next February when she died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Was she bedridden?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Yes, she was bedridden, and Dr. Skinsness would call on her. And I assume he gave pain medication, or whatever could be done. There were ample numbers of hands to help her. Whether that could be called nursing care or not, I don\u2019t know. I doubt it. As a nurse I\u2019m sure she wasn\u2019t very happy with the care she received, but that was all there was. There were always people available to help her, that was not the problem, but the intelligence and helpfulness was probably limited. And my father stayed there at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When she died, my father made sure that, despite many obstacles she should be buried on Jigong as she wished. Trains were inoperative and roads for vehicles up the Jigong slopes were not built until 20 or more years later. He scouted the mountain trails and arranged for coolies to carry the casket up the mountain trails to the Jigong cemetery. They they had to dig the winter soil and rock for the gravesite.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: So you knew she was dying when you left for school?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Yes, that was understood, when we left Xinyang in September for the train and riverboat steamer trip to our school on Kuling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: So you received the news from your father while you were at school?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Yes, Palmer Anderson the school principal called the three of us out of our classes and comforted us as best he could. Actually, Gerhard gave the news to me — he said — \u201cArthur, mother is dead\u201d. Then he kissed me. He was composed and quiet. Henry was crying. Gerhard was 7 years older than I and Henry was 3 years older.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Were there other people there?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Only the principal and the three of us. I went back to class and my classmates were curious because a trip to the principal\u2019s office usually involve some significant misbehavior and appropriate punishment. I said when I returned to class \u201cMy mother died. It was expected.\u201d It was amazing to me that there was just a feeling of acceptance or perhaps childish unawareness. I don\u2019t remember any strong feelings there at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: I remember the same when my father died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Is that right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: I was 7. Old enough to understand. Vin Edwins (an ASK contemporary of my dad and a business partner of my uncle Henry in Ephrata) \u201cYour father has died and gone to heaven.\u201d I said, \u201cO.K.\u201d I remember it being sad around the house. And I remember going up the stairs, and thinking I was supposed to feel really sad now. Obviously Henry and Gerhard were older and had more understanding. You were too young.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: It did not bite me at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: I remember at the time feeling, \u201cThat was weird.\u201d I should feel something. I didn\u2019t get it. It did not make any sense to me. I understood death. I was 12 before it got to me. I remember that\u2019s when it hit me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I may have subconsciously expected the telegram. The night she died I was a long time falling asleep, most unusual for a 10 year old. I fantasized for hours after I went to bed of miracle cures for cancer and treatments that would make her well. Then I had in my mind a picture from Hurlbut\u2019s Story of the Bible of Jacob\u2019s ladder, after his wrestling match with the angel, Jacob had a vision of steps of clouds ascending to heaven. I then saw my mother as if she were making the ascent and was comforted and went to sleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy: How about later on?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Here\u2019s how the realization came to me. With my father away I basically was an orphan. The mothers of other ASK kids could sometimes travel to the school or arrive after school was out to take them for a few weeks to their home mission station before going to Jigong or elsewhere for summer break. And all these various mothers of the other kids were so solicitous of me. And I only realized in later years that their solicitude was based on the fact that my mother was dead. I wondered why these women were clucking over me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In many ways I had a home place with Tvedts\u2019 and Sigurd and Solveig, being about my age, were surrogate brother and sister. Each year there were some weeks after school was out and before my father\u2019s summer break. For this time over some years I made my home with the Tvedrs\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Where were your brothers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Of course as I told you they were at school with me on Kuling until 1932 at the time my mother died. That spring my father took the three of us to the US He had to do that because Gerhard didn\u2019t have his US citizenship and had to come to the US as a minor under my dad\u2019s ministerial entry permit. He never took out US citizenship because before he went to China in 1910 it didn\u2019t matter and he was never in the US long after that to complete the naturalization process. Gerhard entered as a minor and had the right to apply for US citizenship at age 21. My father had to take his own money and take us all to the states or Gerhard could not have entered the US except under a limited immigration quota system in effect at that time. He enrolled Gerhard in Waldorf College, and Henry in Waldorf Academy in Forest City, Iowa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I returned to China and ASK with my dad in the fall of 1932. He dropped me off at Jiugiang which was the Yangtze river port below Kuling. It was a two hour bus ride and an 8 mile walk up the mountain. At one point on the trail there are 1000 steps uninterrupted by a flat spot. ASK arranged to send a servant down from the mountain to escort me from Jiugiang up to Kuling. Since the rather elegant Jardine Mattson Line British Yangtze ship arrived too late for the trip up Kuling on the arrival date ASK also arranged for a missionary family in Jiugiang to take care of me overnight. I have no idea of the denomination my hostess represented but I do remember being most uncomfortable because she felt impelled to make a \u201creal\u201d Christian out of me overnight. It was spooky, she just overwhelmed me a little semi-orphan kid, just 10 years old. I wonder in retrospect what the Chinese citizens of Jiugiang made of this emissary from the US I got from Jiugiang to Kuling and I was in the 5th grade. Kuling was a wonderful place, and ASK a wonderful school. There was another American school on Kuling (called Kuling American School) about the same size so we could have athletic contests, went to an Episcopal church together and had a mixture of rivalry and friendship over the three years when ASK was on Kuling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Your brothers were gone, your father was away, you were at school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: How did you get to the states in the spring of 1932.?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: It was the reverse of the trip from US in the spring that I just described. My dad picked up we three boys at Jiugiang which was downstream from Wuhan and enroute to Shanghai. We traveled on a British registry Jardine Mattson Yangtze river steamer. We then took a \u201cDollar liner\u201d steamship across the Pacific, \u201cPresident McKinley\u201d, \u201cPresident Taft\u201d, or what have you. Next we rode Pullman sleeper cars on the Great Northern Railway from Seattle to St. Paul. And we stayed at a mission residence house there for the summer.. My brothers went down to Waldorf, and my father and I took the Great Northern Railroad to Seattle, the President McKinley from Seattle to Shanghai with stops and Yokohama (Tokyo port) and Kobe and a Jardine Mattson river steamer up the Yangtze river to Jiujiang. There I was dropped off for the trek up to Kuling and my dad went to Wuhan on the river steamer and then on to Xinyang by rail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Going back to arrival in Seattle, when you traveled by ocean liner as you entered the harbor salesmen from all the railroads would come aboard the boat, and they would all try to sell you on their line, Great Northern, Union Pacific or what have you. We always rode The Great Northern. They would come and take care of your baggage, and enroll you. Before entering the US you filled out a long health questionnaire and were examined by a physician to make sure your health was OK. They\u2019d take your pulse check your ears and eyes, ask about infectious diseases endemic where you came from etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: I was looking back at our Moongate dedication ceremony of today. You are very into memorializing the graveyard where your mother and the people were buried , whether their bodies are there now, or are down the hill or where ever. You have a different sense of memorial for your mother than I have for my father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: How so?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: The honor you feel for this place. My father was buried two blocks from my house. I could go there any time, but I don\u2019t. My mother does. It is a different sense of memorial. Could you explain it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I\u2019m not sure that I can. There are of course the associations from childhood and family in a real sense for me and others ASKites: the ASK faculty and student body were \u201cfamily\u201d in a real way, Mother is understandably more remote and is in me more in an emotional than a personal sense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: But you brought the Moongate to life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: The was designed by Ed Sovik, an ASK graduate. and the project was given life by many people.. But I look at the memorial as a family totem. To the missionary time on Jigong and to the ASK family whose home was there. That is what I see. The grave I don\u2019t see. I see with great emotion what my father went through going up that mountain to achieve the burial my mother wished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Your father\u2019s struggle. That was interesting, because that\u2019s what you thought of. He wanted to do that. None of us had to do that for a burial. He went up that hill. He wanted to do that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: But the memorializing basically is for the Jigong missionary presence and the ASK family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: I understand that, because I come out of that same family, who helped raise me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: In some ways you are right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: In many ways. My mother was from Minnesota. I was raised in Ephrata. But I was raised by my mother and father, and guess who: The China people. And then when my father died, there were grandma and grandpa Tvedt, Uncle Henry and Vin Edwins and Norm Tvedt, Henry\u2019s business partners in Ephrata… So when I got my hand full of rocks, who did I think of. That thing you are reflecting about, happened to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Thinking as family, over the many years as far as I know few ASKites who married each other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: You couldn\u2019t marry your sister.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: It is really true. The three couples who married that I remembered were sweethearts in High School.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Did they stay married?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Oh, yes. The three couples I remember included Paul Lindell and Margaret Sovik, and they were steady for the last two years of high school. Paul died some five or more years ago. And David Vikner and Louise Lindbeck. Louise died about a year and a half ago. Rob Holm and Phoebe Skinsness were another ASK couple — Phoebe died in 1998.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Did those two couples meet at school, or other places?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Or did they meet each other in high school?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: It\u2019s like family, they always knew each other. You see Jigong was a community that came together summers, infants and all. When I was one year old I took the prize as the best looking baby on the mountain. I think made it because I was the fattest or perhaps I was the only baby of an appropriate age.. They always reminded me that I was the prize baby of Jigong in 1923.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: That bonding is there with your mother but the thing that seems to get you going emotionally is your father. The mothering that that group gave you was perhaps all that a real mother did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: I am just wondering, was you father one of the super evangelical Christians? Moody Bible School type.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: My father was not really of the revival type and my mother perhaps even less so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: What was driving him?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I don\u2019t know. The way I look at it is that he was motivated by the missionary emphasis in the environment that that he grew up in and the religious organizations he became a part of in the US Around 1900, when he was 18 to 20 years old the idea in western nations was that Christianity was the answer to the world\u2019s problems, moral, social, political, health and what have you. Once the world was christianized, the world\u2019s problems would be solved. You can judge for yourself whether the missionaries were unknowingly, or even knowingly, agents for larger interests in their source countries. Colonization? the climax of the colonial era pre-dated the major missionary movements by many years. Business? religious and missionary activities were loud critics of business exploitation both in England and in the US This goes back to the opium wars of the 1850\u2019s. Criticism of oil and cigarette interests continued to the 1930\u2019s. Political influence? US diplomatic and consular representatives in China seemed to regard the missionaries as an embarrassing nuisance and in no way agents of US interests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: We were talking about Danielle. She had the same ticker in her. But hers wore out before your father\u2019s did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: But she was a nurse, and for some reason, I can understand the medical missionary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than the evangelistic one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: From today\u2019s perspective you are, of course, right. Today the idea of creating replica\u2019s of a Moody revival meeting or an Iowa rural Lutheran congregation in far off China seems absurd. Yet, depending on the denomination and the individual missionaries at a location, that is exactly what often happened! It\u2019s easy to make fun of it today. It\u2019s more understandable when you consider the moral, social, health., treatment of women and destructive superstitions that prevailed in China when the missionaries first came.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Kind of like the Peace Corps. They try hard to respect local customs and practices but are sometimes criticized for creating replicas of the US in the strangest places.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: The Peace Corps is a good analogy. Peace Corps service has a very, very broad consensus in our society as being a good thing for our rich and comfortable society to do. A century ago, missionaries were the adventurers. Missionary stories were the entertainment of the prairies. My dad had all kinds of great stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy: So rather than becoming an anthropologist, you became a missionary?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Environmentalist?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Both analogies fit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: They were pioneers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Explain what you mean by \u201cThey were going to save the world.\u201d What did they perceive they were saving it from?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Everything was Christianity, the Bible and conversion. That was pretty much an absolute among most missionaries. These were not stupid people and they represented the society they came from. It did not look naive 100 or 75 years ago, it only seems naive in retrospect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: You can understand the beliefs of these people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: From the mind-set of the people involved and from my own recollections it\u2019s perfectly understandable and reasonable. .<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Did the missionaries really treasure the Chinese soul the same as their own?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: I think that they treasured the souls of the Chinese and showed concern for the bodies as well, far beyond that characteristic of Chinese society at the time. The soul that came to church in faith, to them was of immeasurable value. The hospital and the education were worthy in themselves but principally a means to an end. The way to reach the people was through education and through medical service. But the important thing was to save the soul. But as time went by, missionary activities came to see more and more the value of the educational and medical services. Ultimately the approach has changed so that educational and medical service have become primary and conversion to Christianity a derivative or by-product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: What about the so-called \u201cRice Christians\u201d?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: There were rules about saving souls. If you were a missionary, you couldn\u2019t save souls just by buying them rice. \u201cRice Christians\u201d was a pejorative term.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course there were missionaries who had money available, brought in a crowd and got some \u201cconverts\u201d who then became hangers on, The missionaries who did that without changing the way people believed and lived were soon brought up short by their missionary seniors, church boards etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: In what sense did they change people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: In China the concept that the human life had a value was a new idea even in my time in China.. The fact that you would deliver medical service to someone ill was a new idea. The fact that you would go out of your area for service for the public good was a new idea. Education for children and the poor, consideration of women as people rather than property and prohibition of infanticide to say nothing of binding women\u2019s feet were originally Christian imports to China, And they were introduced into the pagan society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: How much do you know about service and relief programs?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: We could only know how people in ordinary society spoke and acted. I remember personally a comment when floods caused many deaths in our area. It was sad but really good news because there were too many people anyway! When there was a flood, even the government, when they wanted to distribute money for relief would give it to the missionaries to give it to the poor. Because the missionaries were honest. And they would try to help the poor. Chiang Kai Shek\u2019s government would provide government money for relief, for flood or famine or so forth through missionary organizations. They were perhaps the only reputable social service agency, you couldn\u2019t find any other.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: If you had given it to the government of Wuhan or something, it would have been gone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Gone. And Chiang Kai Shek gave a lot of money to generals to run his army, and didn\u2019t get his money\u2019s worth. Corruption, ineffectiveness and ruthless taxation cost the Nationalists the contest with the Communists as has been fully reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: You talked earlier about how hard it is to understand today the motivations and the programs of the missionary movement dating back so many years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: What did Danielle and Hans think? The re-thinking of the missionary role and program was going on as far back as the early 1920s, wasn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Yes, publicized in part by the metamorphosis of Pearl Buck from ardent missionary to a critic of many things western including its religion.. A despotic father, condescending of the moral and social values inherent in both Confucian wisdom and Buddhist teachings, may have been a factor. As to my parents, I doubt that they were receptive to any fundamental rethinking. Certainly not Danielle. I can\u2019t really say that about my father. He was always respectful of the character and wisdom of Chinese society. The heathen religions were never called \u201cheathen religions\u201d by him. Also my father was very receptive to the \u201cThree self movement\u201d, which interestingly originated with the Japanese when they were in charge and which with variations continues in China today. Self government, self propagation, and self support I believe were the items. The underlying idea was the removal of foreign influence from religious activities in China. I can remember my father\u2019s theme when he described his view of where missions should go in China. He used the word \u201cindigenous\u201d and promoted this idea in what he wrote and preached in the US environment. Religious ideas and scripture might come from the outside but religious life must be adapted to the culture where it lives. American missions must learn to accept the adaptations and modifications that arise locally.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He thought that the best thing the Christians could do was plant the Christian church and leave the Bible and the moral and social ideas that grow out of the Christian life. When this reaches a critical mass, continue help and support as requested but otherwise get out of the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As to Chinese political authorities, from Chiang on down they were accepting because the Christians were more likely to work, stay sober and raise a decent family, be honest and diligent in business and, in general, be good citizens. So that in general, if you look at the state interest, as long as the Christian religion doesn\u2019t interfere seriously with the interests of the state, it is a pretty good thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: So how come, and when, did he have to leave China?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: My father went back to China after World War II and returned to start up work in Xinyang again. He continued through the turnover when the Communists took over from the Nationalists in 1948-1949. At first the Communists left the missionary activities alone. But after a year or two they introduced anti-foreign and across-the-board anti-religion programs that made it hopeless for foreigners to continue. My father left China to go to the US via Norway in 1951. He died in Norway enroute to US Judging from his letters which I still have, some of the happiest and most carefree times in his life were his last months and weeks in Norway. He was honored and praised in his home place, went fishing, rode with a friend on the back of a motorcycle and had the time of his life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy: How did your father fit into Chinese life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: My dad seemed to live a well programmed life? He would read Chinese for a couple hours a day and tried to expand his character count every day. He had office hours for visitors, travel schedules both locally and to mission out-stations, regular meals etc., He spoke Chinese well enough so that, unless they could see him, the Chinese did not realize that he was not a native.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: Did he read Buddhist writings?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Perhaps, but not to my specific knowledge and not necessarily classical Chinese or what you wrote poetry with. He was socially and politically aware of Chinese life and political affairs and had China-friendly opinions on world affairs in general.. He had reservations on the broad introduction of mechanical agriculture. He anticipated that aggressive mechanization and the forcible \u201ccollectivization\u201d of the peasantry would ruin agricultural productivity.. And Mao found that out with a vengeance when famine caused deaths estimated at 20 million<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: We were sort of thinking of a little stronger injection of Christian values and, of course, the cultural revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: The cultural revolution was an affair of the 1970s, my father left China in 1951. But many Christian values, except for religious practice, were carried forward into Communist social and educational programs. At first there was a lot of acceptance. including by my father and many missionaries at the time. It\u2019s hard to be against a government that introduces literacy, creates a common spoken language throughout China. As you know, Chinese writing is in the form of ideograms and not phonetic and has always been reasonably the same throughout China. It\u2019s hard to disagree with Communist programs that wipe out drugs and prostitution. Medical programs (remember \u201cbarefoot doctors\u201d, lower taxes and the \u201ciron ricebowl\u201d assured even the poorest some food. I think I told you about the book by Ronning, who was the Canadian Ambassador to China and important in far East politics throughout the Korean and the Vietnam wars. He seemed to feel that the Communists represented the fulfillment of the Christian mission movement. He saw no evils in Communism and the U.S. in his view was the enemy of all things moral and just in the far east. Ironically, I knew relatives of his who were a part of the Lutheran missions in our part of China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy: Like what evils?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: As to \u201cevil\u201d, we can talk about the Communist program of the early 1950s that not only purged foreigners from the Chinese environment but also killed from 5 to 10 million landowners and shop owners as \u201ccapitalistic roaders\u201d. This was thinly reported in the US in part because at that time there was some pro-communist bias both in the State Department and in the newspapers. It could, of course, be rationalized that the defeated Nationalists who moved to Taiwan would have been just as ruthless. Mao\u2019s \u201cgreat leap forward\u201d of the 1960s featuring the forced collectivization of peasants to \u201ccommunes\u201d and cottage level industrialization was well reported as a tragedy. The starvation toll in China was put at perhaps 20 million. The cultural revolution of the 1970s was also well reported in the US The social impact of Mao\u2019s program where China\u2019s teen-age \u201cRed Guards\u201d humiliated and tortured educational, commercial and political leaders was catastrophic for China. Colleges and graduate schools were closed for several years. The direct killings in the cultural revolution were lower in number than earlier tragedies but \u201creeducation camps\u201d and prisons resulted in a huge toll morally and socially. China\u2019s educational and scientific community has still not recovered and those who should becoming to leadership today are lacking the education and background for the responsibilities involved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: What do you make of developments subsequently?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: When the Nationalists (Chiang) got in charge in Taiwan, the same people that were thrown out of China by the Communists evolved into one of the few democracies in Asia. Interestingly, Chiang\u2019s son who laid the base for democracy in Taiwan had his education in Russia. He was a very practical and forward-looking political leader who rejected Communism and leaned favorably towards the US<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: I wanted to ask one more big question about your dad? What did he actually do? Did he go around and talk to people. He was a very busy man. What was he doing? I don\u2019t know what you do as a missionary in a foreign country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art:: Well, I really don\u2019t know. I know he read a lot. He built a physical mission station in Suiping, attracted a following and had a church, educational programs, and my mother had a clinic for basic health education and treatment. He also, together with Chinese Christian workers, traveled around as an itinerant \u201csalesman\u201d for Christian teachings to a smaller towns near where his mission station and church were located. He would try to create a Christian community there. He had a budget to support them. Where there was interest he might acquire a facility and hire a trained native Christian from elsewhere to coordinate and lead continuing work. He was the organizer, the promoter. And he would stop and visit the \u201coutstations\u201d and see how they were doing. When he, \u201cmuseh\u201d (Reverend) came, the local evangelist would put on the best service and the best appearance, and so forth, that he could. A business trip. And he would visit, and make sure that facilities were in order, books were procured and religious services conducted appropriately. If the evangelist was starting to steal money you would have to fire him. You would administer budget. You have a church. You are organizing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: It is a career path, then.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: Yes, it was a career path personally and from a service standpoint — hardly a financial pursuit.. You have a church, and you are organizing a group of people. And the thing is that it is a career path for educated and religiously motivated people who are probably a little brighter, more aggressive and perhaps more adventuresome than the average. The thing is that missionaries truly believed in what they are doing or they would have sought some more rewarding and less strenuous occupation. The same also was true of many, but self evidently not all, of the native Christian converts. A significant \u201cunderground\u201d Christian church continued throughout and emerged when the Communists relented in their anti-religion programs in the 19980\u2019s. I our eagerness to condemn the Communists now it is seldom reported that throughout much of China mission properties were not only returned to the local Christian community but that the government rebuilt many of the church and school facilities. I personally visited at least a half dozen such programs in my visits to China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy: Did missionaries do laying on of the hands healing, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: No. That was kind of un-Lutheran. There might be one or two, but they would be looked at sideways. There was praying of the demanding sort that one might expect in a southern Baptist church even today. There were serious expectations that Christians should be honest in business, care for their families, avoid opium etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: Perhaps also not abandon girl babies, not bind feet and not sell daughters into prostitution<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: And actually the Christian homes would be conspicuous by tidiness and orderliness, attention to education and exhibit what we now label as \u201cfamily values\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rolf: It did not stick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: It stuck enough so that it persisted with millions of Christians through more than 30 years of official government repression. Statistically Christianity is spreading in China today like wildfire in the officially sanctioned \u201cChristian\u201d (all Protestant denominations) and \u201c Catholic) affiliations. I like to tell my Catholic friends that in China they are not considered \u201cChristians\u201d. The growth of the suppressed \u201chouse churches\u201d and the Rome-affiliated Catholic activities continues as well but is difficult to track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Margaret: What about Christianity in China today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: That\u2019s too big a question for me and is covered in the newspapers. What I see is reports of regulation and suppression — compared with fifty or sixty years ago, however, it looks like freedom and opportunity for growth. The growth of Christianity reported widely is unprecedented. It\u2019s now Chinese Christianity as my father said it should be when he would give his sermons and lectures on the need for an indigenous Chinese Christian church.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Randy: What about the future of China in a more general sense?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Art: That question I can answer definitively. Nobody, perhaps least of all the Chinese themselves, knows!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Background: Art Nesse was born of missionary parents in 1922 in the province of Honan, central China. He was in China until 1936 except for two trips, one to US via Russia and Norway in 1927 and another trip directly from China to US in 1932. Art\u2019s mother died in 1932 when Art was only… Continue reading Interview with Art Nesse Regarding Danielle Nesse<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":165,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/269\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":273,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/269\/revisions\/273"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nesse.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}