All posts tagged huili

Esther Expedition: “Begging us not to go”

by noel.piper on May 30, 2012 in Asia with No comments

Esther Expedition

What remains of the life and ministry of Esther Nelson and her fellow missionaries? That is one of the big questions I had in mind throughout our Esther Expedition in China in March.

Of all the places where Esther Nelson lived and worked, Huili seems to have the healthiest, most thriving church. Even though we know God works in many ways to build his church, the missionaries are certainly part of the heritage in Huili.

The number of meeting points is one measure of the life of the church. In a town the size of Huili these days, there is probably only one registered church, if any at all. The government may grant permission for the church to have meeting points where one of the church’s pastors preaches periodically.

The pastor named 11 towns where there are meeting points of the Huili church. Ideally, each of these has a local leader who teaches when the pastor isn’t there. This is an amazing number for a rather isolated town.

Old women staring at us. Imagine what a curiosity Esther must have seemed.

Two of those meeting points are in towns that Esther names–”outstations” where she went with the gospel, and where the gospel is still spoken at the church’s meeting point.

Traveling the road between Xichang and Huili, we stopped and walked along the old main street of Yimen, which Esther called Emen (photos). We were the only foreigners there and it’s not likely there have been many in the years since Esther trekked 18-20 rugged miles over the mountains to get there and to walk along that same street.

 

May 5, 1949 – Huili

Well, I have done some visiting around of late.  I took [a nice long walk] to Emen, fifty li north of us. My coolie woman and her son came with me. Emen [Yimen] is just a small village of but one street long. Most of the people living there are tillers of the land, some are inn keepers, others are business men, but they all need the Lord tho they do not realize it.

The afternoon of our arrival we rested. The next morning I was out on the street early talking to the people and children. They were interested and listened earnestly. I talked until my throat was dry and harsh. Then I went for a little rest. Later my woman and I went out around the village visiting the homes ’round about.  Some places we came to, they begged us to tell them more, begging us not to go, but when we must go, they asked us to come again. We gave tracts and gospels to those who could read and they were delighted to get them.

Perhaps Esther’s testimony there is part of the reason a Gospel witness remains in Yimen.
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Esther Expedition: huili — seeds

by noel.piper on May 30, 2012 in Asia with No comments

Esther Expedition

In missionary biography, it’s easy to focus on the big things and overlook the things that help everyday life go on.

This springtime season reminds me of one recurring topic in Esther’s letters from Huili. Alongside the reports of sowing the seeds of the Gospel were the requests for seeds to nourish the body–seeds to share with local farmers and for the 2 gardens she tended. One was in the church compound, the other in the chapel compound down the street.

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4/15/48 — Huili

I wrote you about sending vegetable seeds some time back.  Please send a package of each kind of vegetable as red onions, rutabagas and others, lima beans and others I did not mention. . . .

We have vegetables here but of very little variety–only about 3 kinds on market all thru and one gets so tired of them, so would like to get some started here, also watermelon and different melons etc.

5/21/48 – Huili

My tomatoes are now blooming, lettuce is up, cabbage is small, not doing well. They have a very scant variety of vegetables so want to get seeds out to the farmers. . .

 

7/30/49 — Huili

We have been enjoying tomatoes & cucumbers out of our garden at the church. We also have peaches now. I have canned some. We have so enjoyed the crabapples here this summer. We have baked them and they are grand. I canned 8 or 9- jars of them. The only fruit we get to can here is crabapples and peaches.

8/14/49 — Huili

I am just getting my fall garden ready. Some beans, peas, and lettuce are just coming up. . . . I hope things grow so that I get new seeds. If I am able to stay on here I would like some rhubarb seed. . . .  Our watermelon plant is growing. It is very small and just blooming now so am afraid it will do nothing. My cucumbers were not very good. May do better next planting.

10/22/50 — Huili

I wonder if you would put a few lettuce (head) seeds and a few beet seeds in a letter and send on. My other seeds dried out from too much rain. I would like  getting them started again. Thanks heaps.

4/20/51 — Huili

It will soon warm up. I have been planting tomato plants these days. Our cauliflower is now heading. We have just a very few in our garden but it’s nice to have them as this time of year there is not much on street.

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Nowadays, Esther wouldn’t need to ask for seeds to be sent from home. If she walked along the old streets of Huili today, she’d find more than one shop lined with packets of every kind of vegetable seed she’d want.

 

 

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My travel photos may be viewed at my Shutterfly Share Site.
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If you make a purchase after you click on some of the product links in a post or after you use an on-line shopping link in the sidebar, I receive a small commission, which costs you nothing extra. I recommend only items that I think will be of interest to my readers and that I probably have used personally or wish I had.
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Esther Expedition: Huili — getting there

by noel.piper on May 27, 2012 in Asia with 3 Comments

Addition: We arrived in Huili just one day after the 64th anniversary of Esther Nelson’s arrival there. For us it was March 9, 2012. For Esther it was March 8, 1948. (I was 2-1/2 months old then).

Esther Expedition – March 2012

It was a rough road 3 months ago from Xichang up to Huili. And I do mean up–over 4 ranges, each higher than the last. Once we got to the mountains the good road looked like the photo to the right here. Pavement not too bad, but watch out for the edges. In this shot, the drop-off is only a few feet. My eyes were shut too tight for taking photos when we were  skimming the edges of the non-guardrail real dropoffs.

What really tears up the road is the heavy trucks, hauling coal from near the top of one of those ranges. For miles, the potholes were the smoothest part of the ride. The  small car we were driving in kept hitting bottom–hard. Paul, the owner and driver, assured us there was a protective cover. Good thing, else we’d have been paying for lots more than his time.

The trucks groan to the top and then descend the other side in a cloud of steam, produced by the device that sprays their brakes to keep them from burning up on the downhill stretches. At filling stations, truck drivers don’t just fill with gas, but also with water for those brake coolers.

Still, once again as we compared our trip with Esther Nelson’s, we came out easy. Our ride took a long morning; hers was 2 long days. Here’s her description of  traveling the same route. Don’t miss the Minnesota-style irony when she says the roads are fine.

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Wednesday, March 10, 1948

I left Sichang [Xichang] on Sunday morning, or rather noon for it was noon before we got away altho we were told to present ourselves at 8:30 in morning. I do not like starting out on any trip or journey on Sunday but at times we can not help it, we have to go when bus leaves or wait an several weeks. Perhaps that would be the thing to do but sometimes it seems not.  I wish you could see the thing they call a bus and  the way they load it.  I did take the picture of it but only about half the people were on as I had to take it when we stopped and some were off before I was ready.

Found on the way to Huili--Esther's "bus" still running?

The bus here is an open truck, and first freight and baggage are packed in, then the people scramble on top as fast as they can and squeeze in like sardines or even more so. I was fortunate this time to be allowed to sit in the cab part with the driver but that too was crowded as we were four people and a baby besides four or five large wash basins, my typewriter, my shopping bag full of last minute things (the one Odette gave me), and half a dozen other things under and on our feet, or in our laps.

The roads were in rather poor repair which of course is nothing new. The truck traveled without his hood as it had to be off so that the two men sitting one on either side of the hood part could coax the truck along, sometimes feeding it gas, sometimes oil, sometimes tying the broken wires together and sometimes burning alcohol to get it hot. Always the cranker had to be used, sometimes putting stones under wheels as the brakes were worked on.

It is wonderful how they can manage and the truck chocks away at a fair speed and thankful I am that it can not go faster.  We did have a good driver this time. We had a difficult time getting started.  The truck was packed way beyond its capacity, the people sitting on top of the hood and everywhere, even having their feet hanging over the top of the cab so that the driver could hardly see the road at times.

I wish you could see the roads. Well they are fine.

Going up the higher hills the people had to get off and walk up, and over most of the bridges they walked. We were getting along well when at about one o’clock or so we arrived at a place where the small bridge had been removed to build the one on the further side leaving this one a big gap with no boards or planks or even stones to fill it up with It took all of an hour to dicker with the people who were to’ have had it in repair to get them to get it fixed up and then at quite a sum of money.  (This was a public bus and roads should be prepared.) The men began coming from every direction carrying heavy planks, tree trunks and boards and in another hour we were ready to proceed on our way, none the worse for our wait in the sun. Some even went and had their dinner.

Dechang now ("Tei Chang" to Esther)

I had to stop and move out of the sun it seems to shine into every corner and is quite hot.  The flies too, are a nuscians (?  My dictionary is in Shanghai!).

We arrived at Tei Chang [Dechang] at about 4:30 p.m. but had to stop here for the night, as if we went on we could not make the next good stopping place, so another two hours were lost.

It was almost a panic getting off for sleeping. Places are not too many and each one wants a good one. It’s every one scramble for himself.  I got off but too much of a scramble for me so let the greater number get away before I tried to get at my baggage, two suitcases, one box of a few tin things, and my bed bundle, consisting of a coverless quilt, steamer rug, wash basin and toilet articles, my green coat, and several other things that did not get room in suitcases, wrapped in a large oil sheet. When I finally got in I was sent up on the loft which was not all finished, as yet only a little more than half having floor. I saw some straw in a corner and hurried over and got a large two hands full and put it the other corner right next to a paperless window (Paperless means glassless) Then I put my bed bundle there also. The rest I left in a room downstairs. The only stairs was a ladder. I scrambled down this several times before I could get two boiled eggs and a little bowl of rice, and some warm peanuts for my supper and lunch. Then turned in for the night but I was so tired that I did not stop to open my bed bundle but just spread the straw, used my bag of things as a pillow, my coat as covering and off I went to dream land with my 23 million dollars under my head.

We were off early so I was so glad I did not have to stop and tie up my bed bundle. I noticed some of the others did as I did about opening bedding. Today our hills or mountains were some what higher climbs and all day long we circled around in the mountains, with some sudden hair pin turns, caved-in roads and so on. Long before we were anywhere near Hweili [Huili] we borrowed alcohol from another bus going in other direction but long before we got in we were feeding the truck pouring in a little at the time from a bottle. This was found too tedious so they stopped and uncovered some in the truck but they were too stingy with it so it only lasted a short distance but as luck would have it we were going downhill all the way so coasted down.  When we got to the other side of Hweili where it was flat we stopped to send into town for alcohol. This was a mile or more to town which we were expected to walk. It was just dusk so another scramble to get away before dark.  I got a carrier for my baggage and off we went to town and to the church.

I have arrived.  Thank the Lord.

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There are more photos of the road between Xichang and Huili.

Huili ("Hweili" to Esther) -- late 1940s

Huili today

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My travel photos may be viewed at my Shutterfly Share Site.
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Subscribe to Tell Me When To Pack. Use the links to the right or click here.
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If you make a purchase after you click on some of the product links in a post or after you use an on-line shopping link in the sidebar, I receive a small commission, which costs you nothing extra. I recommend only items that I think will be of interest to my readers and that I probably have used personally or wish I had.
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Esther Expedition: Huili — Esther’s house?

by noel.piper on May 22, 2012 in Asia with No comments

My laptop is living up to its name by sitting in my lap while I sit on the love seat in my living room. So it’s a good time for some virtual travel. One virtue of virtual travel is that we can be together in Europe one moment, and then fly the next moment to China.

A few days ago I heard of someone who was in China and would be traveling to Huili, Sichuan Province. She is related to one of the families who was serving there at the same time as Esther Nelson. Esther was there  1948-1951.

Sending some Huili information to her reminded me that I hadn’t yet uploaded any of my photos from Huili or posted anything here about that significant place.

Today, let’s just visit the church.

The Huili  church building is entered through the courtyard behind some businesses that face the street. The church owns the businesses (one is called the Gospel Snack Shop or

something like that) and rents them for income.

We showed up without notice just when a small meeting was about to begin in the balcony area. We were greeted first with kindly curiosity. Their interest and enthusiasm grew as we explained our reason for being there and showed them the “Esther Nelson’s China” photobook that traveled in the back pocket of my vest.

They told us that there had been an old missionary house where the altar of the church is now, and they thought that must have where Esther Nelson and Flora Mae Duncan lived.

Perhaps that was Esther’s house, but I’m not sure becasue a letter from that time says they lived in a house behind the chapel, which was a different building.

Around town later, we showed a 1949 photo of the chapel building and asked a number of people in the streets or in shops where the chapel building was–the former bank building that the Baptists bought to use for classes and other gatherings besides the usual church services.
Finally, someone put the pieces together and pointed us to a place a few hundred yards down the street from the church building. The old building isn’t there any more, but in the courtyard, you can see the top edge of an old house over a wall. It’s in the right place, in the right courtyard behind the former site of the right building, so it might have been Esther’s house. It wasn’t accessible at the time I spotted it.

White building is where chapel used to be

Roof of old house, just visible over long low wall

 

 

 

 

 

 

And there are more Huili Church photos too.

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My travel photos may be viewed at my Shutterfly Share Site.
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Subscribe to Tell Me When To Pack. Use the links to the right or click here.
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If you make a purchase after you click on some of the product links in a post or after you use an on-line shopping link in the sidebar, I receive a small commission, which costs you nothing extra. I recommend only items that I think will be of interest to my readers and that I probably have used personally or wish I had.
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Esther Expedition: This and that

by noel.piper on March 12, 2012 in Asia with 1 Comment

Esther Expedition

It’s fun to post about travel and accommodations that are toward the camping end of the continuum. But I don’t want to you overrate our adventurousness. It’s almost breakfast time in Emeishan in a very nice hotel. By looking you probably wouldn’t know where in the world it is. Your one clue that would limit the likelihood to Asia is that there’s an electric water kettle and tea bags rather than a coffee maker. Also the room rate is about 1/3 of the same quality in the US.

In Esther’s time, the Americans here called this area Mt. Omei. It was a good place to come in the summer to get away from the heat and busyness of daily life. Unfortunately for us, March is not vacation month. It’s raining and cold. Back into the long underwear after our sunny, warm days in the Xichang/Huili area further south.

I’ve kept wishing I’d shown you a map of the stops of this expedition. So last night I stayed up too late preparing an Esther Expedition map for you. It’s on the right hand top side of my Esther Nelson share site on Shutterfly. Also, as I prepare photos and upload them for you to see, that site is where you can find them anytime you like.

Now, to catch up with Joann’s posts. You can see the woman in Xichang who put me in my place because of how I was dressed. And even more significant, she gives you a glimpse of a few minutes of the service on Sunday at the church that stands where Esther’s house probably used to be.

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If you make a purchase after you click on a product link in a post or after you use an on-line shopping link in the sidebar, I receive a small commission, which costs you nothing extra. I recommend only items that I think will be of interest to my readers and that I probably have used personally or wish I did. 

Hopscotching decades

by noel.piper on March 9, 2012 in Asia with 5 Comments

Esther Expedition

 

Update: Joann’s description of our river steamer is here.

 Addition: In the 21st century experience in Starbucks, I not-so-subtly grabbed a handful of “Slimmer Sweetener” (leap back a couple of decades before we “traditionally built” people got in on PC terminology) to take with me to these parts of the country where no one has heard of Diet Coke or diet anything. 

Also I should have mentioned that next we’re being driven to Huili, where Esther served her last term in China. THAT will be another step backward in time from what we’re told–the walled old city remains. Also since that’s the most recent place she lived, it’s our most likely place to find people who knew her.

Traveling China may as well be time travel–fly into Shanghai (and here and here) on a 21st century jetliner and then start hopscotching backward and forward, decades at a time.

1– 2012. Flight from Shanghai to Yichang (and here). No problem–still 21st century. No hint of the dizziness to come.

2– 1989 (1939?). Chinese ferry from Yichang to Chongqing. Ferry doesn’t mean transporting vehicles, just people. Don’t think cruise. Think people mover. Maybe 30 mph up the Yangtze. Leap backward 3 decades, about the time this boat was new and the railings weren’t roped into place, when walking the undulating floor didn’t make you seasick before you ever set sail, and maybe the space heater in your quarters produced heat and the wall lamp over the desk actually lit up. Or really, it might not be that different from Esther’s experiences on a Chinese river steamer. Watch for Joann’s comments about the ferry.

3– 2012. In Chongqing, go straight to Starbucks for breakfast and WiFi. Then on to lunch with friends at McDonalds. Don’t be too hard on me. I ordered the least American thing I could find on the menu–spinach chicken wrap with a serving of corn for the side and fried taro pie for dessert.

4– 2012. High speed train from Chongqing to Chengdu, 2 hours. Joann made this trip by train a few years ago — 15 hours.

5–1982. Hard sleeper train from Chengdu to Xichang, where we are today. Hard sleeper is what it sounds like–a bunk on an overnight train. The “mattress” is about the same softness and thickness as your doctor’s examining table. No problem in the doctor’s office, because you don’t stay there 7 hours in every position you normally try to sleep in. Oh yes, and there were 2 bunks above mine. Generic pain reliever PM made everything okay.

6–1990. Joann says the main impression of the bustling modern part of the city of Xichang reminds her of the China she knew in 1990. I’ll take her word for it.

7.–1947 (1647? 2000?). The old part of Xichang are pretty nearly the same streets Esther Nelson would have seen when she visited her friends here, Levi & Ida Lovegren, in the late 1940s. The old city used to have a wall around it that was built not decades ago, but millenia. We walked a section of the wall, looking down on some of the same rooftops that were here when Esther visited. Except the portion of wall that still stands is a replica built in the last few years–a very 2000-ish thing in China, building new things to look old.

Mrs Piper walking down one of the streets of Xichang

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Lots of footsteps to follow

by noel.piper on January 2, 2012 in Asia, Recommended with No comments

The next 3 days, while Johnny and Talitha are involved with Passion 2012 in the Georgia Dome in Atlanta, I’ll be 1/2 hour up the highway from them at the American Baptist Historical Society.

For most of Esther Nelson’s years in China, she was with the American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society.

So I’ve been collecting names from Esther’s letters–names of people she worked alongside. Beginning tomorrow (Tuesday), I’ll be spinning through miles of microfilm, looking for their prayer letters. The special treasures will be when they specifically mention Esther or when they mention events or people that Esther has also written about. Whenever more than one person writes about the same event, there are always more details as well as another person’s perspective.

Even when the connections in their letters are not that direct, whatever I can glean about everyday life, about the culture around them, about their interactions with the religions of China–all those things will give a more complete setting for understanding Esther’s story.

Mission Impossible: The Unreached Nosu on China's FrontierI’ve been warming up for this research expedition by reading Mission Impossible: The Unreached Nosu on China’s Frontier (or for Kindle). The author, Ralph Covell was part of the Sichuan team in Esther’s later years, when she was working alongside missionaries from the Conservative Baptist Foreign Mission Society.

The book is well written at both the personal level and in giving an overview of the culture and historical setting. Covell is amazingly frank about pitfalls missionaries sometimes fell into, situations that made it easy for critics to call them imperialists.

This book will send you partway down my path of following in Esther’s footsteps. Watch particularly for mentions of Esther Nelson and whatever was happening in Huili, the town where she was working. This was during the last dramatic years of her service in China, when the Communists came into leadership.

I feel like Christmas Eve. I hope I can sleep tonight.