Over the next few months, Aylward saves her money to purchase a ticket on the Trans-Siberian Railway, choosing the more dangerous overland route to the East because it is less expensive. Robinson ( Moultrie Kelsall), the senior missionary, feels sorry for her and secures her a position in the home of Sir Francis Jamison ( Ronald Squire), a veteran explorer with contacts in China. The story begins with Aylward ( Ingrid Bergman) being rejected as a potential missionary to China because of her lack of education. Most of the children in the film were ethnic Chinese children from Liverpool, home to the oldest Chinese community in Europe. The film was shot in Snowdonia, North Wales. The musical score was composed and conducted by Malcolm Arnold. Robert Donat, who played the mandarin of the town in which Aylward lived, died before the film was released.
Directed by Mark Robson, who received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Director, the film stars Ingrid Bergman as Aylward and Curt Jürgens as her love interest, Captain Lin Nan, a Chinese Army officer with a Dutch father. The Inn of the Sixth Happiness is a 1958 20th Century Fox film based on the true story of Gladys Aylward, a tenacious British woman, who became a missionary in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War.
The Japanese placed a price of $100 on her head, but Aylward refused to seek her own safety (“Christians never retreat,” she wrote angrily to a Chinese guerilla warrior who. By now a Chinese citizen, Aylward passed on military information to the Chinese army whenever she could. In 1938, war came to Yangchen when the Japanese bombed the city, killing many and driving the survivors to the mountains. Soon that orphan was joined by another and then another, and Gladys Aylward’s mission to the orphans of China was born. Aylward bought the child for a handful of coins and took her under her own care. Soon the Chinese were calling her “Ai-weh-deh,” which meant the “virtuous one.”ĭuring her travels as foot inspector, Aylward came upon a woman begging by the road with a small child and soon learned that it was not the woman’s child but rather an orphan that she had kidnapped to aid her begging. In this role, she traveled widely and was able to share Christ as she went about her official duties. Among her admirers was the Mandarin of Yangchen, who appointed her as the local foot inspector in charge of enforcing the new law against the ancient custom of foot binding. The story-loving Chinese retold the Bible tales as they continued their travels, and the gospel message was soon spreading along with the fame of the innkeepers.ĭespite the earlier predictions of the China Inland Mission, Aylward quickly mastered the local Chinese dialect and won the respect of the citizenry. Along with clean beds, good food, and care for the travelers’ mules, the two women provided evening entertainment in the form of stories about a man named Jesus. She and Lawson seized upon the idea of opening an inn that would attract the commercial travelers that came though Yangchen on their way to other cities. As practical as she was idealistic, Aylward realized immediately that the local people were not receptive to foreigners and that she needed a subtle and non-confrontational method of reaching them with the gospel. Upon arrival in Yangchen, Aylward teamed up with another lone missionary, an elderly Scotswoman named Jeannie Lawson.
Her resources were a meager two pounds nine pence, far short of the ship fare of the time, so her journey encompassed train, boat, bus, and mule before she finally arrived in the city of Yangchen in a mountainous region just south of present-day Beijing. Rejected by the China Inland Mission because her “advanced age” of 28 made her too old to learn Chinese, she headed for the mission field entirely without support. In 1930, a young woman named Gladys Aylward left the suburbs of London and set out for China, convicted that she was meant to preach the gospel to the people of this remote land.
Not to be Forgotten: Gladys Aylward 1902-1970 Missionary to China Volume: PP 18:3 (Summer 2004) Article: Not to be Forgotten: Gladys Aylward 1902-1970 Missionary to China Author: Leslie Hammond
0 kommentar(er)
