First Signs of Trouble

Heading up the Yangtze River in 2011 towards the Three Gorges Dam near Yichang, and utterly oblivious
at the time to the fact that I was not the first member of my extended family to be paying a visit!

Herbert Sowerby did not arrive back in Shanghai until September 1888, and Ann Fanny Wombwell not until May the following year.  It was the expectation that Herbert would take charge of the more remote Sashi station. In October of that year, Herbert was present at the consecration of the new Church of the Nativity in Wuhan.

There were though in the Episcopal reports, signs that not all the
Chinese were seeing and appreciating the radiant light that the
missionaries were so generously shining down on them. In 1890,
the Mission documents report that: An attempt was made to stir up an anti-Christian demonstration in Wuchang and anonymous placards
attacking foreigners and their religion in the most blasphemous and repulsive manner were posted,
and hand-bills distributed all over the city. The members of the various missions joined in demanding
that the circulation of these papers should be stopped and the offenders be arrested and punished.
The Tao-tai (ruler of the district), after some days assured the missionaries that no further trouble
need be anticipated; everything quieted down, and there the matter rested.

An interesting report, suggesting that the missionaries in China had considerable support and influence from their home countries and governments, which was certainly true to a large extent. More telling however, are the accusations levelled of blasphemy towards a people whose history, culture and traditions had the most minimal relationship with Christianity, and the demands, effectively, that the Chinese authorities censor the media of the day in line with the demands of the foreign powers, and adjust their judicial decision-making processes to suit. Although China, was notionally an independent country, the colonial imperative seemed to demand full freedom for the visiting missionaries to persuade the Chinese people to adopt the values of their own culture and religion. The die had been cast.