In the Shadow of the White Pagoda. By Clara J. Hausske.
Published by Caves Books, Ltd., Taipei, Taiwan, 1989.
Review by Walt Giersbach
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Published by Caves Books, Ltd., Taipei, Taiwan, 1989.
Review by Walt Giersbach
Historical memoirs are fraught
with problems as reminiscences dim or are subjected to revisionism. More problematic is that the farther back in
time the commentator goes, the more the facts are distorted by the writer’s interpretation. Because Clara Hausske recalled and kept notes
on her work in China almost a century ago, the reader of In the Shadow of the White Pagoda is struck with unvarnished truth
about the shattering poverty,
malnutrition, sickness, chaos of war and banditry taking place far from the
cities. Yes, the writing is often
simplistic and reportorial, but reading Hausske’s description of the challenges
she and her husband faced in China in the 1920s, ‘30s and ‘40s is as clear as
looking at an unedited film. There is a
level of authenticity as she describes
a life that’s hard to imagine — except that other parts of the world are undergoing
these same difficulties and opportunities.
The Hausskes went to China sponsored by what is now United Board for
World Ministries. Their religious
denomination was Congregational, now the United Church of Christ. Their mission was located literally in the
shadow of the pagoda where 20 years earlier Boxer rebels massacred Christians.
Albert Hausske left the U.S.,
with his wife Clara and two toddler children, in 1920 to administer the
accounting for a hospital in Taiku, Shansi Province. This mission was two days’ inland from
Tientsin by boat, railway and rickshaw.
The book, extremely well edited by her son, Albert Carol Hausske, was
published in 1989 from Clara’s notes, photos and letters.
This was the back country that appeared on no one’s tour guide. The Hausskes were missionaries not to convert
some indifferent Buddhists, but to cure those on the verge of death, feed those
protein-starved people who saw meat in their diet only on holidays, who were
illiterate to the point of having to unlearn “folk wisdom” and embrace proven
scientific diet, and to care for people so desperate they abandoned their
children to the school as the only hope their progeny would live. In that, the Hausskes were lucky also to have
served with Dr. Wiloughby Hemingway,
uncle of author Ernest Hemingway, who had arrived there in 1903.
Clara offers a positive,
forbearing look at daily life with all the quotidian duties, communication obstacles
(the Hausskes learned to speak Chinese), and hardship of moving from house to
house under trying circumstances. It is
also an insider’s look at life as the Communists approached Nanjing in 1927, themselves
emigrating to Korea as refugees, their return when Chiang Kai-shek recaptured
Nanjing, and fears as the Japanese took over city after city in the years
leading up to 1941. That declaration of
war forced the Hausske family back to the States (there had been occasional furloughs
home since 1920) until they could return in the 1950s.
She writes, “In 1940, only seven
foreign missionaries supervised the care of about fourteen hundred inpatients,
ten thousand outpatients, three hundred and fifteen boarding students in the
schools, thirty student nurses, several Chinese doctors, and innumerable people
in the countryside.” Her commentary on
this is enlightening: “Their lives were simple but very rich. They were fortunate that there was always
plenty of work to keep them in good spirits.
And it was also as well that they could adjust themselves to
difficulties when it was necessary to do so.”
Was this a rosy-eyed view? More
likely it was the interpretation of a spiritually rich person who had seen much
progress.
Surprisingly, Clara displays a
total lack of irony or disbelief in her descriptions of children being carried
to the hospital on a relative’s back, or a tearful father giving his child to
the orphanage so the boy might live.
If there is one lapse for this
reader, it is that Clara did not apply more subjective reporting and personal
response to the political changes raging around them. Their work was threatened, as were the lives
of the local population. The relief work
was halted only when the Japanese sent them out of the country and when the Communists
refused to let them resume their mission.
Today, there often is a knee-jerk
reaction to missionaries, seeing them as evangelicals out to corrupt the purity
of native populations. Witness what
missionaries did to Native Americans and Hawaiians in the name of
“civilization.” Clara makes almost no
reference to religious teaching in her memoir; there is, however, continual
detail of the Chinese lives they saved, the children and adults they taught to
read and write, and the Western lessons in diet, nutrition and childcare they
taught to extend and enrich their lives.
The book provides another
interesting insight into the independence of this woman. Clara was often alone when Albert was
traveling to other missions. She regularly
traveled by herself or with her children.
She was emancipated years before women gained the respect they
deserved. In many ways, Clara mirrors
the life of my grandmother traveling the U.S. on the Chautauqua lecture circuit
during the same period. Yes, there were
women who became empowered in that period.
I need to disclose that Albert
and Clara Hausske were friends of my father, Walter C. Giersbach when he was
president of Pacific University, and of my mother. I remember their son, Trevor Hausske who
edited his mother’s book, graduating Pacific in the mid 1940s when I was six
years old.. And the Hausskes were
generous in their gifts of Chinese art to my parents, including their sale of
two antique Chinese chests that are still with my family.
Awhile back, I was inventorying
the antiques my parents collected and decided to unravel the mystery of who the Hausskes were, these
shadowy people from my childhood. Out of
the that detective work came the discovery of In the Shadow of the White Pagoda, now available only through used
booksellers.
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