Introduction
During the War of Resistance Against Japan , China received a lot of international aid. In addition to some material aid in the name of the country, many international friends also devoted themselves to the War of Resistance Against Japan and made great contributions to China's revolutionary cause. Ms. Ai Weide was one of them.
1. Ai Weide came to China
In 1902, Ai Weide was born in the suburbs of London in the UK. Her father was just an ordinary worker, with many brothers and sisters in the family. Her family was only able to maintain food and clothing, and she could only go to school for a few years. After all, the conditions at home were unable to support her studies, so when she grew up, she went to a rich family to work as a maid.
She also suffered from long-term malnutrition due to her poor family and long-term work, and her height was only 1.45 meters.
When Ai Weide was 27 years old, she believed in Christianity like most British people. At the same time, she applied to participate in the Mainland Association for missionary to China, but was rejected because of her educational experience.
received the news and actively participated in the theology training class, but was eliminated because of poor foundation and poor learning progress. But she was not discouraged. She saved money while working, and finally seized a good opportunity. She heard that Ms. Jenny, who was preaching in China, wanted to retire because she was older, but no one was willing to replace her.
pic | Elderly Ai Weide
Ai Weide immediately wrote a letter after learning about it. She expressed her willingness to take over Ms. Jenny, hoping that she could give herself this opportunity.
A few months later, she received a reply from Jenny. Jenny was willing to accept her, but hoped that she could arrive in Tianjin, China first, and she would send someone to pick her up. After receiving the letter, Ai Weide quit his original job and said goodbye to his parents and family. He simply packed his bags and used his savings from working for many years to buy a ticket to Netherlands . He prepared to take a train from the Netherlands to Russia, transfer from Siberia into China, follow the Central East Railway south to Dalian , and finally arrive in Tianjin by boat from Dalian.
actually has a ticket to Tianjin directly from the UK, but the cost of taking the boat was twice as expensive as the total amount of money she had originally planned. At this time, Aiwei did not have the financial strength. After buying the ticket to the Netherlands, she only had 2 pounds, 9p left, which was not necessarily enough for her subsequent bus fare, and her journey was not smooth.
When she boarded the train to Siberia, Russia in the Netherlands, the train was forced to transfer to Moscow, and many reform-laborers at Moscow station boarded the train.
As the train drove again, the train finally arrived in Siberia, but before the terminal was reached, passengers such as Ai Weide were driven off and asked the passengers to walk forward. Ai Weide had no choice but to transfer to the Chita in front.
But after she arrived with difficulty, local officials told her that the railway to Northeast China was no longer accessible.
It turns out that the conflict between Japan and the Soviet Union has escalated, and the Manchurian Railway to Northeast China is no longer accessible under the control of the Japanese army. With the help of a local wife, she boarded the train to Haicunwei, took the Japanese merchant ship from there, and followed the merchant ship to Japan. I took a boat from Japan to Tianjin, China. In this way, she crossed more than 10,000 kilometers to China, opening a new chapter in her life here.
Pictures | Youth Ai Weide
2. Create an inn
With the help of Tianjin Mission Center, Ai Weide arrived in Jincheng, Shanxi after many twists and turns. Here she met Mrs. Smeed and was treated warmly. Mrs. Simid prepared a Chinese cheongsam for her and sent someone to Yangcheng.
When she arrived in Yangcheng, she realized that the location of the church did not seem to conform to the doctrine.
The church in Yangcheng is in a private house, just next to the street of the county town. People and convoys are coming and going, and they are not quiet.
Fortunately, the church rent is low, only one pound per year, and the area is more than 100 square meters, and there are special chefs to cook. Under such conditions, the adverse effects of geographical location can also be ignored.
Jenny was already seventy-three years old at this time and had been preaching in China for more than fifty years. Ai Weid was very friendly to her, holding her hand affectionately, showing her everything in the church, and teaching her step by step how to handle the daily affairs of the church.
So, Ai Weide stayed here. She cleaned the church cleanly and tidy, and was full of expectations for her future life in China.
Ai Weide lived here and found that the church courtyard was very empty. She wanted to open an inn in the idle courtyard of the church, which was specifically used to receive the passing mule teams. At the same time, she could also spread the gospel of the church to them while they came in to rest and eat. The inn room fee could also be used as missionary funds.
After discussing with Jenny, Jenny happily agreed. When the two of them named the inn, Jenny made a suggestion, hoping to be called "Battle Fortune Inn". This is the Eight Fortune Inn in " Sermon on the Mount " in the Bible, and Ai Weide happily agreed. After the inn opened the door, the business was bleak. Ai Weide felt that the chef was a local and his taste would not be deviated. He could only be seen as foreigners, and he was a little scared, but this was caused by cultural differences, and she had no choice.
Faced with the situation where no guests are coming, Jenny suggested that Ai Weide be invited to attract customers at the door, but as a missionary, Jenny's suggestions made Ai Weide hesitate.
Just when Ai Weid was in a dilemma, perhaps it was the gospel of Christ that gave her some revelation, and she began to walk to the door, but because of the language barrier, her plan to seek customers did not work. But she still insisted, and there were always people who looked at each other curiously, and some people would go to the store to have a meal when they saw a clean dining environment and cheap prices.
pic | Inn old scenery
Jenny and Ai Weide were entertained carefully, and their reputation gradually spread, and more and more people were eating and resting here.
They learn local dialects and turn the Bible into small stories to tell people in the past. People treat it as a myth and are willing to listen to it, relieve their fatigue, and spontaneously set rules. When Ms. Ai tells a story, she is not allowed to make any sounds and interrupt them casually.
was influenced by Ai Weide's mission, and gradually she found that the people who came to eat had changed. Everyone was no longer the fierce look of slapping the table and cursing their mothers. They could all be humble and polite to each other.
At this moment, bad news came. When he was going out for a missionary, Jenny fell off the stairs and died. Ai Weide had no choice but to assume the business responsibility of Bafu Inn himself.
3. Help for Yangcheng
Because the fame of Bafu Inn has become increasingly famous, it even attracted the county magistrate. The county magistrate came with a purpose, hoping that Ai Weide could support himself in promoting the "Tianfoot Movement" and abolish the bad habit of foot binding. Faced with the county magistrate's request, Ai Weide happily agreed.
In this way, Ai Weide wandered in the nearby villages on behalf of the government, popularizing the harm of foot binding to them, and using herself as an example to tell people that women's feet will be a pathological situation after foot binding. She also took the opportunity to promote stories in the Bible to persuade people to be good.
After this incident, Ai Weide became completely famous in Yangcheng's generation.
The prison riot was in turmoil, and the warden also asked her to persuade her. Faced with the blood-stained blade of the thug, she promised the thug very calmly that as long as he put down his weapons, he would not be punished. He also told the thug the story of Jesus in the Bible, and finally the thug put down his weapons under her persuasion.
4. Hate of Japan
In 1938, the Japanese army spread the war to Yangcheng and sent two planes to bomb the Yangcheng area.
Japanese Fighter dropped twenty-four bombs in Yangcheng, and Bafu Inn was also bombed into ruins by the dropped bombs. Ai Weide was crushed under the house, thankfully only slightly injured.
Picture | Ai Weide sat in
But soon after, the Japanese army was about to arrive in Yangcheng. In order to avoid the war, Ai Weide took his men to the mountainous area.
In the mountainous area, she established a temporary hospital and used all the few first aid medicines in the temporary hospital, specifically used to treat injured Chinese military and civilians. She did not ask much about the origin of the injured.
Watching the people suffer and lose their lives, Ai Weide hated the Japanese's actions very much. This was also the first time she faced the cruelty of the Japanese.
1932, Ai Weide went to the mainland meeting in Zezhou and met with his compatriots for a short time. But unexpectedly, the Japanese who had drunk too much seemed to be crazy and broke into their house.
When she went forward to dissuade her, she was knocked unconscious by the Japanese army with a gun. In the few days after she woke up, she still had a headache.
The brutal behavior of the Japanese army made her, who was originally neutral, gradually stand with the Chinese people. In 1936, Ai Weide joined Chinese nationality.
The founder of Time magazine also sympathized with the Chinese people. After learning about Ai Weide's aid to the Chinese, he interviewed her.
Ai Weide publicly stated: As a religious person, she is neutral about war, but from her own perspective, she hates Japan's cruelty very much because she has been hurt by the Japanese army many times without reason, and she is already a Chinese.
5. Qianli Migration
Ai Weide also did a lot of charity.
Once, while she was wandering in a market in Yangcheng, she found a woman with a vicissitudes of face selling her daughter on the side of the road, and the child was very thin.
She couldn't bear it and bargained with the woman, chopping from two silver dollars to Jiumao, and finally took the girl back to Bafu Inn.
In the following days, she took in a row of 8-year-old boys, babies who lost their parents, etc. When she adopted more and more children, she planned to set up a rescue station to accommodate these children.
Picture | Ai Weide and the orphans
In 1940, when she was temporarily staying in Zezhou, her Ai Weide's rescue station was finally completed. The rescue station she established accommodated more than 200 orphans and more than 1,000 refugees.
rescue station is a bit huge. As the war is approaching, for safety reasons, she decided to transfer these children to the rescue station in Xi'an and the Yangcheng Mountain District in two batches. She stayed to take care of more than a thousand refugees.
She sent an assistant to take the lead in escorting more than 100 orphans to the Xi'an rescue station, while preparing to transfer the remaining one hundred orphans.
She got the information of the Japanese army's spring raid. The Japanese army wanted to attack her and her missionary station, and offered a reward of one hundred dollars to catch her.
Ai Weide learned of the news, she hurried out of Zezhou with a hundred children to Yangcheng. On the way back, she did not avoid the Japanese fighter jet shooting and was injured on her shoulder. After a simple treatment, she did not take a break, but insisted on rushing back to Yangcheng.
As the Japanese army gradually approached, Ai Weide felt the severe situation, so she had to plan the retreat route again and decided to go to Xi'an.
She can go as she wants, but what should the children do?
The number of one hundred children is too large to hide in the homes of fellow villagers, and how should they survive once they leave?
But there are more than a thousand kilometers from Yangcheng to Xi'an. With more people, the goal will be bigger, let alone how can I take the children?
But Ai Weide was afraid that the children left behind would become tools for the Japanese army to vent their anger, so he gritted his teeth and decided to take the children to transfer. If the road was not clear, he would walk around the mountain.
When they were moving out of the city, the county magistrate came and heard the sound and gave them a few bags of Xiaomi , and sent someone to to the side of Yellow River .
The most difficult part of this transfer is that nearly half of the road a thousand kilometers is rugged and difficult to walk on. Not to mention the children, she will fall if she accidentally.
She took this into consideration and let the children go to the middle, with adults in front and behind.
Picture | Stills from "Liufu Inn"
On the one hand, the adults in front can check the road in time, and the adults in the back can take care of the children so that the children will not fall behind;
On the other hand, the children in the middle support each other, and the youngest children are carried by the adults in baskets. Some children are tired and can't walk, so the adults can carry them for a while, take a break before continuing to walk by themselves.
When most of the children are shouting that they are tired, the team will stop and rest.
Due to insufficient supplies, I eat millet porridge every day. At night, I find a windproof place to sleep on the spot.
The children's shoes were worn out, and their clothes were not much better. They were scraped one by one by one by one by the branches. What made Ai Weide feel most distressed was that many children's feet were swollen due to high-intensity walking.
Once, they encountered a guerrilla team in the mountain. The guerrilla soldiers accompanied the children for a while and left some food for them before leaving.
This allowed them to get supplies. After rushing around like this, they finally saw the Yellow River twelve days later.
The Yellow River is surging, how to safely cross the Yellow River has become an important issue for Ai Weide to think about.
wanted to find a boat, but there was no big boat nearby that could accommodate these adults and children. The boat was not stable on the river surface and had no progress for several days, which made her very distressed.
At this time, the Kuomintang soldiers on the other side rowed a boat to Ai Weide. The group of refugee troops had been observing for a long time. When they were sure that they would not threaten the Kuomintang soldiers, they rowed over to ask if they needed help.
When the soldiers of the National Army learned that she was Ai Weide, they all paid tribute to her.
In Shanxi, Ai Weide's deeds were known to many people, so the Kuomintang sent a ship to transport the group of children across the Yellow River more than ten times. Just when Ai Weide learned that she had arrived at the National Military Defense Zone, she finally stopped worrying.
With the help of the soldiers, Ai Weide and his group took the train to Xi'an. Along the way, they found that there were many refugee relief points along the way, which also guaranteed the meal problems of the group.
When the train arrived at the middle of Zhongtiaoshan , the bridge was blown up because of the impact of war, and the train could only stop on the spot.
In this case, Ai Weide was determined to lead the children to continue hiking, but no one knew the route of the advance, whether it was the local villagers or the staff on the train.
She could only walk forward according to the rough direction, and the children felt desperate for the first time facing the mountains.
Faced with this situation, Ai Weide has to spend a lot of energy on moving forward and exploring the way, and also has to share his energy to comfort these children.
The children's desperate wailing made her want to lie down and let go of herself for a moment, and she didn't care about anything, but this didn't work. She felt wronged and couldn't help crying anymore. As soon as she cried, the children also cried with her, and it didn't stop after a long time. After crying, Ai Weide cheered up and continued on his way. A few days later, she found a house in front of her. After a brief question to the owner, Ai Weide knew that she had finally arrived at Tongguan .
From the people here, it is known that there are only 140 kilometers left here from Xi'an.
Under the guidance of the locals, Ai Weide and his group got on the car transporting black charcoal, then transferred to the train several times, and finally arrived in Xi'an, but learned that Xi'an no longer accepted refugees.
After asking from multiple sources, she learned that the nursery in Fufeng County of could accept them, so they set off to the nursery in Soong Mei-ling . After arriving, Ai Weide breathed a sigh of relief and fainted after counting the number of people.
Doctor told the head of the nursery that Ai Weide had a high fever for a long time, but due to mental tightness, she did not notice that she had developed pneumonia, there were signs of being hit by heavy objects in the brain, and there was a bullet on her shoulder.
The doctor sighed very much that Ai Weide had malnutrition, but now all kinds of situations are mixed together, which is very bad, and there is a risk of death at any time.
pictures｜Ai Weide sketched like
The miracle happened. Even though the situation was so critical, Ai Weide still woke up. The first thing she did when she woke up was to ask about her situation of a hundred children.
When they learned that they were in the nursery in Fufeng County, the stone in their hearts fell to the ground and completely unconscious again.
After the doctor's treatment, Ai Weide saved his life, but she had been treated in the orphanage for a whole year before she recovered.
Before leaving, she went to say goodbye to the children and set off for Chengdu, where she helped many poor people and lepers.
But the good times didn't last long. She fell ill in 1948. This time she needed a long time to recuperate, but China at that time could not give her a good recuperation environment.
After the persuasion of her friends, Ai Weide returned to the UK the following year to reunite with her parents and siblings.
After Ai Weide returned to China, a London reporter interviewed her, recording all her heroic deeds, so that the world could know this brave and kind woman.
Her story was also written into the book "Little Woman", and later it was adapted into a radio drama.
In 1957, her story was made into the movie " Liufu Inn " by Fox in the United States, and received widespread praise.
6. Returning to Taiwan
Ai Weide, who returned to his motherland, was very concerned about the Eastern country where she had lived for twenty years. She didn't know what the situation in China is now, and she hoped to return to China again.
However, after the founding of New China, foreign policy was very strict, and Ai Weide never returned to mainland China due to his identity.
In 1957, Ai Weide went to Hong Kong, China. She believed that Hong Kong is also China's land, and it can be considered a return to China when she arrived in Hong Kong.
Here she met the orphans she had rescued and worked with them to help Hong Kong refugees. Unfortunately, because her visa expired, Ai Weide had to leave Hong Kong and go to Taiwan.
In Taiwan, she established the "Aiwei Orphanage" to rescue the orphanage in Taiwan;
She was also received by Queen of England Elizabeth and donated money to her orphanage, but in her heart, she still wanted to go back to Yangcheng to take a look.
Picture | Ai Weide in Taiwan
7. Yangcheng
In 1940, after she led a hundred children out of Yangcheng, she never returned to Yangcheng.
was originally because it was an area occupied by the Japanese army and it was not safe to go back, so she went to Lanzhou and Chengdu to preach.
After the end of the Anti-Japanese War, the situation was not stable, and her trip to Yangcheng could only be stranded.
Civil war broke out, and Yangcheng became the jurisdiction of the Kuomintang again, stationed by Yan Xishan . She was in the jurisdiction of the Communist Party, but she could not move due to the war.
On New Year's Day in 1970, Ai Weide unfortunately suffered from flu . Because his condition turned violently into pneumonia, he was unable to make up for the situation as his condition worsened. Ai Weide passed away. She was buried in Taipei and headed towards the mainland according to her last wish.
Before getting sick, Ai Weide had to go to the beach every week to look out, staring at the beloved mainland China with his nostalgic eyes. Her deep love for China touched each of us.
Conclusion
Whether in Europe and the United States or in Taiwan, she calls herself a Chinese.
She is not only a Chinese, but also a Chinese "orphan mother". Ai Weide's life has made great contributions to China and is a hero that the Chinese will always remember and be grateful to.
