WOMAN MISSIONARY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22630, 23 July 1935, Page 10

WOMAN MISSIONARY

ESCAPE IN WHEELBARROW (From hur Own Correspondent.) SYDNEY, July 11. Miss Annie Jones, of the Church Mission Society Hospital, Mienchuh. Western China, when she returned to Sydney recently, described how she escaped from Chinese Communists by making a wheelbarrow journey across the plains of Western China. At u few hours’ notice, Miss Jones, who belongs to Sydney, and the sevdn other members of the mission, had tc evacuate the hospital, having been ordered by the military governor at Chentu to get out as quickly as possible, .owing to tlie danger of a Communist coup. Tho.v were forced to send their patients home, and, under instructions, they set out on I’cot. They walked about five miles and then were picked up by wheelbarrows pushed by coolies.

Miss Jones said she had heard of the Beechworth (Victoria) wheelbarrow wager, but she smilingly explained that wheelbarrow transport was quite an ordinary way of travelling in Western China.

The Communists, she added, were very different from the bandits, who were more or less part and parcel of life in the part of China where she had been working. Mienchuh, where she was stationed is in Szechuan, the most westerly province in China, and life had been a strain there for the last five years. The country abounded with brigands, and it was an ordinary thing to have an attack by day or by night. The hill country at the foot of which Mienchuh stood, was in fested by brigands, who would swoop on to the town, shoot wildly to terrify the populace, and then steal whatever they wanted. Three-quarters of the patients in the. mission hospital were sufferers from rifle wounds inflicted by the bandits.

The bandits obtained their rifles largely from the military. Sometimes they ambushed parties of soldiers and stole their rifles. Some had friends in high military positions. In other cases the local militia were hand in glove with the brigands. Actually some local militia wore bandits themselves. They kept their own districts quiet, but raided others. Each district * had its secret society of bandits, and in her province about half a dozen bands operated, each led by a .“ regular outlaw.” Miss Jones said that though the bandits would rob missionaries, they. rarely inflicted physical injury, but, the Communists were a dreaded menace. For the last two years and a-half they had been ravaging the eastern portion of the province, although it was not until-March that they came into Miss Jones’s own district. “ They are absolutely ruthless and kill by hundreds and thousands, so that i;; why we were ordered to evacuate as quickly as possible,” said Miss Jones “ Nine-tenths of the population also left the district, taking what few things they could manage. They were terrified Special aeroplanes were even sent to evacuate Europeon women and children from Chentu.” “Life in Western China is hectic at present,” added Miss Jones. “It is like living on the edge of a volcano. General Chiang Kai-shek is now in the west hoping to get things straightened out, but the Reds were reported to be making Szechuan their objective and to be marching on it from north and south, and their reputed intention was to establish a Communistic state in Western China.”

Owing to the forced evacuation of her station. Miss Jones, who has been in mission work for 20 years, has taken her furlough a year before it is due. Despite her experiences she hopes to return to Western China next year.