1900 - Yun Yi

July 1900

Yun Yi

Beijing

Yun Yi with her family. Yun Yi is seated on the right.

Yun Yi (spelt ‘Wun-E’ in old accounts), attended the Girls’ School in Tianjin. Yun Yi was unflatteringly described as “a different type of girl altogether. Her gentle brow was badly scarred with small-pox, the scourge of Chinese homes, and she was not pretty…. But she had a most attractive character. She was a girl one could thoroughly trust, and had a clinging affectionate nature.”[I]

Yun Yi’s father was the chief dispenser of medicine at a large mission hospital. Her mother worked in fulltime Christian service. Yun Yi was engaged to a Christian student who was not liked by the missionary teachers at the school. One described him as “a student who had never seemed to me an attractive character… he was not industrious and often caused his tutors much anxiety.”[II] When the missionary asked Yun Yi’s parents why they had allowed her to become betrothed to such a man, they answered, “Well, you know, we could not expect to have much choice when arranging for her marriage, when her face is so scarred with small-pox.”[III] Immediately after their wedding, Yun Yi and her new husband, Li, went to live in Beijing, where Li was given a job as an assistant to the missionary Joseph Stonehouse at the West City Mission. It was reported,

“The young wife won golden opinions from the missionary lady, for she was evidently a true Christian and one who desired to help in the work. Her husband, on the other hand, was often a source of anxiety to those with whom he worked. He never seemed to put his heart into his teaching.”[IV]

After living in the nation’s capital for about three years, rumours started to circulate that the Boxers planned to massacre every Christian in the city. Yun Yi’s lukewarm husband “often thought it would be a wise plan to make his escape before the trouble came, for he was not of the stuff of which martyrs are made.”[V] Three days before the trouble started in full earnest, Li fled the city, leaving his wife behind. Yun Yi’s hosts were too scared to keep her in their house, because of fear of what the Boxers would do to them for harbouring a Christian. She was turned out into the streets in the middle of the night. Yun Yi

“…stood there alone, on the blood-stained streets of the Chinese capital, a lonely girlish figure, and leaning her head against the mud wall she wept bitterly. The night was close and hot, but silence had not fallen upon the great city as was wont in quiet times, for away on the slopes of the ancient walls, the Boxers shrieked and shouted for the blood of the Christians.”[VI]

The Lord did not forget his precious abandoned daughter. A kind Christian woman named Xie found Yun Yi and invited her to stay in her home. For the next few weeks Yun Yi was safely sheltered in the old couple’s home, before a false Christian betrayed her to the Boxers. She was thrown into the back of a cart and taken to the Boxers’ headquarters, where they tried to force her to worship idols. Yun Yi steadfastly refused to bow down or burn incense to any image, and told her captors, “I am a Christian. I believe in Jesus.” Some of the onlookers were amazed to find no fear at all on her face, and assumed it was because she was not really a Christian and therefore didn’t understand the danger she was in. “That is not true,” Yun Yi calmly replied,

“‘‘I have been a Christian for years. I belong to a Christian family. My father has long been head dispenser in the hospital in Tianjin. My husband and my brother are both preachers, and my mother and father teach the doctrine to others. No one can doubt that I am a Christian too!’ At this they all shouted with rage and declared she was not fit to live.”[VII]

A teenage boy, crazed by the blood he had already shed, hacked Yun Yi’s head from her neck. Her mother, who survived the Boxer madness, later said, “When I first heard of all she suffered, I felt as if my heart would break, but afterwards, when I thought about it calmly, and heard how brave a confession she had made, and how fearless she was in the face of death, I felt glad that my girl had proved herself a true witness for Christ the Lord.”[VIII]

I Bryson, Cross and Crown, 35.
II Bryson, Cross and Crown, 42.
III Bryson, Cross and Crown, 42.
IV Bryson, Cross and Crown, 42.
V Bryson, Cross and Crown, 43.
VI Bryson, Cross and Crown, 43.
VII Bryson, Cross and Crown, 46.
VIII Bryson, Cross and Crown, 46.