: Marion Young was born in 1911, the eldest of eight children, and grew up in Galway during the turbulent times surrounding Irish independence. A childhood friend remembered, 'even before she was ten, Marion was going to be a missionary. It was not a day-dream, but an intention; she had no need for day-dreams.' When in 1935 Marion was appointed to China by the Irish Presbyterian Church's Women's Association for Foreign Mission, she wrote to her parents, 'Am I happy or am I happy? Whoopee! Whoopee!! Whoopee!!' This was the start of a long correspondence. From China she recalled the 'smell of fresh cut hay, the Mournes with gorse blazing gold, the smoke lying over Milford in a hollow on a summer evening seen from Allan's lane', and how it 'cut out completely the spits and smells around me'.
She wrote about two wee boys, Ping An, the cook's son, and his friend, En Fu, in winter clothes - 'the quickest way to scatter them is to look up - they flee like two little fat bundles with feet stuck on the bottom'; and later opened a letter with 'Christmas morning - grey, dank - wakened by running feet outside my window' - the start of her account about the rescue of the cook's daughter-in-law from the bottom of the well. Ever present is the oppression of Japanese rule. Marion used 'coded' words, such as 'Black and Tans', to avoid the attention of the censors, but when able to send letters with fellow missionaries who were returning home, she wrote clearly about the torture of Chinese citizens, remarking, 'They treat folk a bit more kindly before freeing them, to give the marks of beating or torture a chance to clear up - isn't it a bright thought?' As Douglas Alexander, former Secretary of State for International Development, writes in the foreword, 'what emerges is the deep respect and indeed fascination with which Marion and so many of her colleagues regarded their Chinese students and the culture and civilisation of which they were part.'
Marion was very much a part, and when a Taoist priest looked at her 'several times in a puzzled way and then said, "She isn't of our people then?"' she felt 'highly complimented'.
- ISBN10 0993507816
- ISBN13 9780993507816
- Publish Date 30 November 2016
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Little Knoll Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 416
- Language English