Indefatigable Missionaries

See his Wikipedia Entry for more.

The indefatigable missionaries (including Herbert Sowerby's brother, Arthur) were not to be overly discouraged by outbreaks of carnage accompanied by mass beheadings, and soon resumed their activities.

It cannot or at least should not have come as a major surprise when trouble boiled over again in the shape of the Xinhai revolution of 1911 broke out, resentment boiled over again in Shashi. Naturalist, explorer, and also military man, Arthur de Carle Sowerby, Herbert Sowerby's nephew, headed into the area on an expedition to rescue as many foreign missionaries as could be managed. Against all odds, his expedition succeeded in struggling back to Beijing early in 1912.

The foreign missions continued to be active in China all the way through to 1953, when Mao Tse Tung, not finding himself with the time on his hands to examine the fine distinctions between the associated theologies and creeds of Catholics, Lutherans, Protestants, Baptists, Jesuits, Presbyterians, Methodists, and more, decided there was a much easier course of action. He decided to expel all of them, lock, stock and barrel, from China.