When I was a young girl one of the highlights of our church life was the visits from our missionaries. They always wore native costumes and told us about the countries they came from. Their slide-shows were legendary. My favorite missionaries were always from China. It stirred my imagination to hear about such an exotic place.
I was reminded of those long ago demonstrations recently when I read a short story written by Thornton Wilder. Wilder spent his teenage years in China when his father became the American Consul-General. This short story is primarily a memoir with tourches of fiction. Here are the opening lines:
“It used to be said that to have lived in China during those years between the Boxer Rebellion and the 1911 Revelution was to have enjoyed a foretaste of Heaven. Skilled and tireless servants could be engaged for six to ten dollars a month. There were superb cooks and inspired gardeners; there were tailors able to copy faithflly the fashion plates from Paris and London.”
As the story progresses we see that the heavenly-life was only for the very wealthy. The average Chinese citizen lived in extreme poverty and ill-health. Even as a thirteen-year-old Thorton Wilder saw and understood it all.
Wilder kept a journal for most of the time he was in China. He already knew he wanted to be a writer. The majority of this story is about his time at a mission boarding school 300 miles away from his father. Thornton and his three roommates were minorities among the large number of English students and staff.
The last part of the story is spent telling about one of the roommates. He doesn’t really fit in anywhere. He is also the type of kid who wants to do something wrong just because he thinks he can get away with it.
This was an interesting look at the old China of the early twentieth century. To read it for yourself, you can find it here at the Story of the Week.
Short Story Monday is sponsored by John at Book Mind Set.