1940s Tibetan work

1940s

Kham ཁམས་

Life in the Kham region was deeply affected by the chaotic conditions that prevailed throughout the 1940s.

The decade saw the Catholic missionaries in Kham continue their long legacy of dying as martyrs. French missionary Michel Nussbaum, who had served at Yanjing for 32 years without a furlough, was murdered by bandits in September 1940; while Maurice Tornay from Switzerland and a Tibetan convert named Dossy were shot dead by four Buddhist lamas in August 1949, just weeks before Mao Zedong formally established the People's Republic of China.

Evangelical missions went through a painful transition, as the foreign missionary enterprise would down.

Robert and Euphemia Cunningham retired to the United Kingdom in 1942 after investing 35 years of their lives in the Kham region. Robert, who died soon after returning home, had been a leading gymnast prior to becoming a missionary, and "his magnificent physique enabled him to remain for practically the whole of his missionary career at Kangding, over 8,000 feet [2,438 meters] above sea-level."

Euphemia, meanwhile, was a gifted linguist, and while other missionaries struggled for years to acquire a useable level of Tibetan, she spoke Kham so fluently that she often had crowds of Tibetan women and children gathered around her as she shared Bible stories with them. At the start, local Khampa women sometimes touched her lips as she spoke, so amazed were they that a white woman could speak their language.

Occasional stories emerged from Kham to encourage believers in the 1940s. One report from Kangding told how

"Slides on the life of Christ provided a great attraction, and sometimes as many as 100 people at a time stood to listen and watch: men with long swords, picturesque garb, and typical Tibetan swagger listened intently.... A census showed that almost every province of Tibet was represented; some having traveled for months to reach Kangding.

Access to people from all parts of Tibet was in this way gained. Even Lhasa-trained monks, conscious of their special prestige, talked earnestly about the Lord Jesus Christ.... In 1948 an old Chinese lady and a Tibetan girl boldly confessed Christ in baptism."

1. Accounts of these and hundreds of other inspirational Christian martyrs in China can be found in Paul Hattaway, China's Book of Martyrs: Fire & Blood, Vol. 1 (Carlisle, UK: Piquant, 2007); and Paul Hattaway, China's Christian Martyrs (Oxford, Monarch Books, 2007).

2. See Loup, Martyr in Tibet.

3. "In Memoriam: Mr. Robert Cunningham," China's Millions (January-February 1943), p. 8.

4. Lyall, A Passion for the Impossible, p. 143.