1926 - Wu Yude

1926

Lijiang, Yunnan

Seventh-Day Adventist work in Yunnan commenced when two Chinese colporteurs undertook an extensive journey throughout the province in 1917. Starting out from the SDA headquarters in Chongqing, they spent a year researching locations where workers could minister. The following year two missionaries visited many of the same towns. The gospel was proclaimed and the sick treated, and gradually throughout the 1920s the SDA work in Yunnan took root. In the 1920s Claude Miller recruited two Chinese evangelists, Feng Deshen and Wu Yude. Together the three men set out on a seven-week trip during which they walked 660 miles (1,069 km), preaching the gospel and distributing literature to thousands of Dai, Miao and Yi people living in the south of the province.

Wu Yude was a well-educated man from Sichuan Province. Before he had heard the gospel he joined the Chinese army and was stationed at Kunming in Yunnan Province as secretary to a general. Wu fell ill and went to the small SDA medical dispensary for help. While convalescing, “Wu began attending evening preaching services. About this time, he secured release from military duties, and entered upon daily study of the Bible…. His spare time was spent in selling Bible ‘portions.’”[1]

After the successful first trip to southern Yunnan a second journey was arranged, this time led by a Nosu evangelist named Luo Guiyi, with Wu Yude acting as his colporteur by distributing gospel books to whoever showed interest in the message. They travelled through the ancient town of Dali, home of the Bai nationality, where the duo managed to enlist 200 new subscribers to the Signs of the Times magazine. Luo remained at Dali to follow up enquirers, while Wu went north to the town of Lijiang, home to the Naxi and several other ethnic minorities. A 1937 report noted:

“It was at that time that Colporteur Wu Yude presumably met with martyrdom at the hands of robbers…. At Lijiang, several days distant northward, he sent back to the tract society a list of subscriptions taken in that city, and wrote that he was leaving the next morning for Heqing…. He has never been heard of since…. Today at Lijiang, where presumably he lost his life, there stands a Seventh-Day Adventist church.”[2]

1. Clarence C. Crisler, China’s Borderlands and Beyond (Takoma Park: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1937), 100-101.
2. Crisler, China’s Borderlands and Beyond, 100-101.