My first trip
to China as a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church was in
December of 1931. During the first term of service overseas, I
taught music theory and accompanied the choir at the Hwa Nan
(South China) Girls College in Foochow. Music was an important
part of the curriculum, and many girls were eager to learn. We
had several pianos and small pump organs for lessons and
practice, and a missionary friend loved the mandolin and had
started a mandolin group.During the late nineteen-thirties everyone was looking toward Generalissimo Chiang Kai-Chek and expecting great things of him and his followers. However, we entered the nineteen-forties in the midst of a war. As the opposing forces neared Foochow, we knew the soldiers would be coming. We had to have a safe place to send the students to get them out of harm’s way. One of the U.S. missionaries went upriver and made arrangements for a second campus. There were caves, of sorts that would offer protection from bombings, and we would be away from the main road and river.
We moved the girls, their books and belongings, science equipment, library books and even a piano on river boats. I was glad to know that the students would be able to continue their lessons. As we went in river boats to the temporary campus, our boatmen often had to get out on the river bank as they pulled the boat upriver with ropes, past the rapids. We realized that the men who ran the river boats knew what they were doing. I was not afraid, just eager to get back to teaching.
Up near the new campus there was an old ancestral shrine which had been abandoned. There we put a piano for lessons because the girls could get to the shrine and safely back to their rooms, or to the nearby caves, when the planes were close and the alarm sounded. For quite some time we began classes at 5:00 a.m., allowing the students to finish their schoolwork before the planes came. One day while giving a lesson I heard a plane coming. Running to the open doorway, I saw the plane close enough even to notice the pilot’s goggles. As the student and I were running for shelter, I prayed that this man was a Christian who would realize this was a mission station. This second campus up the river was at Tai Ping (meaning "Peace") and there in the midst of war, we found God’s peace.