Page:The Chinese Empire. A General & Missionary Survey.djvu/146

 been made! and yet, in very truth, we are to-day only at the beginning of Christian work in Nanking.

The Rev. J. Hudson Taylor of the China Inland Mission rented a house in Yangchow in 1868. From the first there was considerable opposition to the missionaries. The gentry and literati, with the connivance of the officials, plotted to drive the foreigner out of their gates. It was difficult to get up a riot, for the lower classes in Yangchow are not turbulent, though they can be rude enough if they think it safe to indulge the propensity. The missionaries dressed in Chinese costume, and made every effort to conciliate the prejudices of their heathen neighbours; it was plain that they were the most inoffensive people imaginable. The gentry, sure of official approbation, persisted, and the riot came off, happily with no fatal results, though the lives of some of the ladies of the Mission were doubtless shortened by the strain and brutality of that fearful time. The whole affair was manœuvred, both before and after the riot, in such characteristic style, that if the name was altered the description of the outbreak and the settlement would apply to many of the subsequent regrettable disturbances in China.

However, work in Yangchow has been continued from that date to the present time. The China Inland Mission Home for lady workers is in this city, and hundreds of lady missionaries have received their first ineffaceable impressions of Chinese life and missionary work during their residence there.

Before 1868 the London Mission had commenced work in Chinkiang. They regarded this city as an out-station from Shanghai and had rented a chapel and stationed an evangelist there to carry on the work. After the Yangchow riot the China Inland Mission secured premises in the city. Chinkiang is now very adequately supplied with missionaries and the accessories necessary for Mission work. There is the China Inland Mission Hospital, the women's hospital and girls' school of the Methodist Episcopal Mission, also the large and well-organised men's college