This is a complete and accurate transcript of the tape of the first oral history interview of Jennie Kingston Fitzwilliam (CN 272, T1) in the Archives of the Billy Graham Center. No spoken words have been omitted, except for any non-English phrases which could not be understood by the transcribers. Foreign terms which are not commonly understood appear in italics. In very few cases words were too unclear to be distinguished. If the transcriber was not completely sure of having gotten what the speaker said, "[?]" was inserted after the word or phrase in question. If the speech was inaudible or indistinguishable, "[unclear]" was inserted. Grunts and verbal hesitations such as "ah" or "um" were usually omitted. The transcribers have not attempted to phonetically replicate English dialects but have instead entered the standard English word the speaker was expressing. Readers should remember that this is a transcript of spoken English, which follows a different rhythm and rule than written English.
Chinese place names are spelled in the transcript in the old or new transliteration form according to how the speaker pronounced them. Thus, "Peking" is used instead of "Beijing," if that is how the interviewee pronounced it. Chinese terms and phrases which would be understood were spelled as they were pronounced with some attempt made to identify the accepted transliteration form to which it corresponds.
... Three dots indicate an interruption or break in the train of thought within the sentence on the part of the speaker.
.... Four dots indicate what the transcriber believes to be the end of an incomplete sentence.
( ) Words in parentheses are asides made by the speaker.
[ ] Words in brackets are comments by the transcriber.
This transcript was made by Alice L. Fitzwilliam (daughter-in-law of Jennie Fitzwilliam), with some revisions by Robert Shuster and was completed in June-July 2003
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Collection 272, T1. Interview of Jennie Kingston Fitzwilliam by Paul Ericksen, June 13, 1984. [Note: The audio recording of this interview is very poor and the exact words in many places is uncertain.]
ERICKSON: This is an interview with Jennie Eliza Kingston Fitzwilliam by Paul A. Ericksen for the Missionary Sources Collection of Wheaton College. This interview took place in the offices of the Billy Graham Center Archives on June 14, 1984 at 2:30 pm. [Pauses] Well, when we were talking the last time we got together, we had...we talked about your years growing up out east [in Massachusetts] and your training before going to China; your decision to work with CIM [China Inland Mission], then traveling to China and your language training. I think we covered your trip out to the wes...southwestern part of China. You started talking about your work with the Lisu and the Kachin.
FITZWILLIAM: Yes.
ERICKSEN: I wonder if we could go over just the very end of that again and if you could talk about your...your traveling from...was it...? Where was your language training?
FITZWILLIAM: The ladies language school was in Yangzhou. When we went out, we were up there just a few months when the trouble broke...the 1927 trouble broke out in China, when Chiang Kai-shek was a Communist and swept up over China. [Chiang was allied with the Communists at the time and in 1927 made a march north to conquer local warlords and bring the entire country under the national government; Chinese and foreign Christians were sometimes treated harshly during this march.] And so ee all had to be evacuated down to Shanghai, to the International Settlement down in Shanghai. So we were there , oh, I think over a year. Quite a bit over a year, about a year and a half I guess. And then...after...we were married there in Shanghai. My husband came out two weeks later than I did and went to the men's training home. 'Cause good old CIMers, [chuckles] we weren't allowed to get married 'til we'd had two years in China. But they changed it to one year that year because we were all there in Shanghai. so they thought that was abetter way to do it. So we were married in Shanghai and then Mr. James O. Fraser who is...was really the man had started the work among the Lisu. (He's the hero of Behind the Ranges [ a biography of Fraser by Mary Taylor].) He was appointed superintendent of the whole province of Yunnan and so he took us and another couple by the name of Casto around...around south through Singapore and up north through Burma and then across the border from Bhamo, Burma to Tengyueh, China. And there, we were there for over a year studying the Chinese language and taking the Chinese exams before we were allowed to go to the tribal people. And then at Christmas (let's see) Christmas of 1929, we went down to Lisuland, which was about a five days journey south of the city of Tengyueh. And Mr. and Mrs. Gowman were our senior missionaries there. The Casto went on to Paoshan, another four or five days journey to work among the Lao tribe. We were appointed to work among the Lisu tribe and we were station there at Muchengpo. I think I told you in the last interview [the audio track of this interview, recorded may 17, 1984, was so poor that it was not kept] about our reception and Christmas....
ERICKSEN: Yeah.
FITZWILLIAM: Well, we settled in Muchengpo to do Lisu language study and the summer after we arrived (we were there Christmastime)...the summer after we arrived Mr. Gowman was taken ill and died in that summer. And his wife went home on furlough soon afterward, so we were left with the Lisu work to carry on. So we spent our time in language study and then going out into the district to carry on short term Bible schools. The Lisu had done all of the evangelistic work The missionaries since the very early days when Mr. Fraser first started the work, the missionaries were not involved in the evangelistic work. The Lisu themselves have gone into the heathen areas and when they won the people to the Lord, then the missionary came along and held short term Bible schools. They put aside... The Lisu are farmers of course and they put aside their work and study for a week or two and then go on to another. The district was large but it had, oh, about six or seven different centers where we would hold these Bible schools and people would come from the outside areas. And then from...from that work in that center, volunteer workers among the Lisu went way up into the northern Salween and work and open up the work up there. And that's where Isobel and John Kuhn worked after they came into the Lisu work. And then when the Cooks, who had been early in the Lisu work, moved on down to Paoshan to work among the Laos, when they came back from their first furlough...from their second furlough, they went up to the northern Salween to pick up the work among these new Christians up in that area. And we carried on down there, in the Lisu...among the Lisu there. I am not sure how much detail you want in that. Our work among the Lisu was...well, it's really a choice privilege to work among the Lisu because they are a very loving people. They are primitive. They...they had no written language until they became Christians. They were simple mountain aborigines of China and animists in their worship. And when they turned to the Lord the thing that really gripped their hearts was the fact that God loved them. Their heathen worship, their worship of evil spirits had nothing in it of love. They only worshiped the evil spirits because they were afraid of them. When they get sick they thought some evil spirit had bitten them, as they say, because they had done something to make them angry. Their worship was just to appease the wrath of that evil spirits and get over the...the calamity that had been following them. And so they live...lived in constant fear of what the evil spirits would do to them and trying to avoid making them angry, so when the Gospel came to them with the message that God loved them and because He loved them and sent His Son to die for them, it really gets to their...gets to their inner being and gets to their heart and they turned wholeheartedly to the Lord. And they turn in families and often the whole village turns but if the whole village doesn't turn, if some in the village don't want to turn, the Christians move off into a Christian village. They lived for the most part in Christian villages. They built a...they build their own chapel made of bamboo with a thatched roof and...and fashioned different kinds of benches. Some of them, of course, in the poor villages just have logs for benches, but in the bigger places they manage to get plain boards and they just make plain benches, no backs. The Lisu meetings lasted an hour and a half or two, so sometimes you wished for a back. But anyway, they carried on their own work. From the very beginning of the work there's been no funds from outside Lisuland used among them. Mr. Fraser was, I guess, fifty to sixty years ahead of his time. Now all missionaries recognize the fact that the work has to be indigenous to be lasting. Mr. Fraser was far out as far as most missionaries were concerned at that time. They just didn't think...they thought he was eccentric in all his ways. But he taught the Lisu that he had come a long way to teach them about the Lord Jesus and now that they had come to know Him, it was up to them to carry the Gospel to all the rest of their people and so that's what they did. And they went out in volunteer...usually two together out into the heathen areas far and wide, up and down that border. I think you could safely say that all of that region to...way up to the extreme Salween area has been completely evangelized by the Lisu. And no one knows how many thousands of Christians there are now among them. And they carry on their work. They support their own evangelists. They have usually...in our district we had about six evangelists that gave their full time in the work going from village to village. We go to call[ing] them pastors rather than evangelists because they were working among the Christians for the most part, though they did go off with the groups into the heathen areas. And the Lisu supported that work even though they are very, very poor, such a standard of poverty that we Americans just don't...just don't perceive of. It's just a constant struggle for them to find food enough to keep body and soul together but in spite of all that they gave very generously to the Lord. I always feel like the Lisu taught me so much more about really sacrificing for the Lord than I...than I taught them. I remember one day standing out in front of our mission home there in Muchengpo and a young man came up...came up the mountain trail. and he had a large basket on his back. And as he came along, I...I said "Hi, Hello, Thomas." He said, "Oh, hi, teacher." I said, "Where are you going?" He said," Oh, I'm going up the church to put my offering into the church granary. I promised this to the Lord and our rice is almost gone. I was afraid if I didn't bring it in today, we might eat it up." I thought to myself as I saw him walking on up the hill to put that rice went into the church granary to support the full-time Lisu teachers that I really didn't know what it means to really sacrifice to the Lord. And they...they do. They feel that that is something that they could do for the Lord and they give very generously to the Lord's work. Sometimes it's grain; sometimes it's a cow or a horse or a pig, but not often. There were not many that are that rich that they have that much, but by putting it all together they gave a sizable amount to the Lord. And they love...they love to study. I think I mentioned in my last interview that the Lisu work is really unique in that among all those thousands of Christians living off even in remote little villages, practically without any exception, they all read and write even though they don't...didn't have a written language even before they became Christians then. It's surprising....always surprising to me. You might think that people with a background like that that had never studied, they would be kind of stupid but many of them are really clever. And they love to...love to study the Word [the Bible]. There's no time to be lazy in Lisuland. [chuckles] There's always somebody wanting to be taught either privately or in the meetings. They ran their own church. They elect their own deacons and they run their own church and they invite the missionaries to come and sit in their meetings so they wouldn't say or do anything unscriptural. But they conducted their own church discipline. And they believed in church discipline. I remember writing to my mother when I first went out there and telling her about some young couple who had been caught in adultery. And they had...the deacons whipped them before the congregation. And I wrote that to my mother and my mother wrote back "Well, I can't...I don't understand. I don't believe there are people in America who would stand for that sort of thing." But you know that young couple came around and they came right back to the Lord. So we decided that the Lisu know how to deal with their own people better than we do. They believed that as Christians they had to live as the Lord would have them live. They're very strict about keeping Sunday and they're strict about giving time to the Lord's work in voluntary work. They are very dedicated people. Now, of course, that's not all Utopia. There are many of them that do slip by the wayside. But the overall average. I would say, compared to an American church, even a Wheaton church, they know more of dedication to the Lord than we do here in America. Oh, it has been a real privilege to work among them. You know, some good people...some good missionaries at that time, even in the CIM who worked among the Chinese, they said, "Well, they're so poor, they just don't have anything to give to the support of the Lord's work." Well, Mr. Fraser always said, "When they were heathen, they managed to give their offerings to the evil spirits because they're afraid of them. Surely now they ought to manage to give something to the Lord because they love Him." And they do. They responded to Him in a very wonderful way so that it was a real...a really a great privilege to work among them.
ERICKSEN: You said they were very strict about Sundays, observing the Sabbath. Can you tell me what a typical Sunday would be like?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, you go to church and you go to church and you go to church. [Chuckles]
ERICKSEN: What time would this all begin?
FITZWILLIAM: Early, early in the morning before...before breakfast. the gong...the village leader, whoever the village leader for that week...pounds the gong. They have these brass gongs and they resound all over the mountainside. So he gets up and he pounds the gong, which calls everybody to come to early morning service. Everybody troops up to the church and hey have about an hour service. Oh, I should say that the Lisu love to sing. They are very musical. Working in interior China among the Chinese that have never sung western music before, they just didn't seem to grasp it and the singing in the Chinese churches - pathetic. But the Lisu had a real musical bent. Mr. Fraser said that he wondered if it wasn't that every syllable...every word ended in a vowel. And that's true of the Korean...of the Korean people. They sing beautifully too. And the Lisu, they learned to carry all four parts and they always sing part singing. And when they got together in the evenings, like in a Christmas festival, little groups will be at one bonfire here and a bonfire there and a bon...they'll all each one be having their own sing. And I've sat and listened to the Lisu singing the Hallelujah Chorus and it's really a...they can really sing it. When you get to heaven, you can probably find the Lisu.... They just love to sing. And so in their worship services, singing takes a very great part in that service. Then one of the Lisu will speak off or, if he invites us, one of us...one of us missionaries would speak, either my husband or myself. And then they have breakfast. And then about ten o'clock we have another service, which would last until about twelve. And then we....
ERICKSEN: What happens in that service, the same?
FITZWILLIAM: What?
ERICKSEN: What happens in the second service?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, just about the same. They...they have a village leader and they.... We...we put out a syllabus that went through the Bible designated a certain portion of Scripture for each service and they usually followed that rather than [unclear] unless the thought the Lord gave them something else to say. And they would get up and read that portion and give a message on it. And that would be the service. And some of them developed into really good speakers. [Unclear, I remember ] a Lisu teachers about Gideon and the story of Gideon [Judges 6-8]. And he really made it live. [Unclear] And they're very anxious to get Bibles. [Long portion unclear]
ERICKSEN: So you had two services by noon.
FITZWILLIAM: [long portion unclear] They all took part, which is a wonderful way for them to grow. To give a message, they had to grow. During our first years in Lisuland, it was completely the men who carried on and the women just sort of sat in the back. I always think that that's the explanation of Paul's admonition that the women keep silence in the churches, because they sit in the back and they had their children with them and before you know it they would be talking among themselves. And then some of the men would holler and say, "Keep still back there. This is church" But then they grew in the Lord, they learned an awful lot [?], especially the younger girls.
ERICKSEN: Did they give the messages?
FITZWILLIAM: Did the women ever give the messages?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, they have. [long portion unclear] ...of the culture. But they really have grown in their willingness to take an active part in it.
ERICKSEN: Were the...were the services sort of organized ahead of time?
Fitzwilliam: Yes.
ERICKSEN: A hymn.
FITZWILLIAM: Oh, yes.
ERICKSEN: Prayer, sort of like what we might be used to?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes. They...they carried on much like we do, just because the missionaries taught them how to conduct a church service. And they had quite a lot of singing; they had prayer and a message and singing again, depending upon how long the preacher could preach. [Chuckles] They would fill in with singing. And sometimes someone would be appointed to preach and would get cold feet the last minute so then they would say, "Well, [words in Lisu]," that is, the Lady teacher or the Man Teacher, "would you please come and talk about this part of the Bible?" And so they then we would...
ERICKSEN: So that was you...?
ERICKSEN: Did that happen often?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, it did happen quite frequently, but we didn't encourage it.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: But when they are first starting and they get up there and they don't know what to say, so then.... I suppose if we weren't then, then some of the men would....
ERICKSEN: Did you ever have any situations where you weren't quite sure what to say either when they called on you and then...?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, I don't remember. I always did my best to try to explain the passage. It was more Bible study than preaching. We had...we had had much more of a background on it than they had had. We knew it all our lives and we studied it in Bible school. The Lord helps out in times like that!
ERICKSEN: Did the Lisu who were going to be teaching, did they prepare ahead of time?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, they often came...normally they came to my husband or to myself. Of course, I was at home a lot alone [portion unclear] out in the district after Jack.... Jack was a baby when we were first came there and I couldn't travel [portion unclear]. So I was home more than he was, so often I was the one who often had to teach them. They would come in and want help with a passage they were studying. We thought that was a big part of our ministry-- to teach them how to study God's Word and how to...how to teach it. Our work was entirely among Christians. We had no...when we were down in that area we had no...practically no contact with the heathen.
ERICKSEN: Did you ever find that disappointing? Were you uncomfortable about that?
FITZWILLIAM: No, because the heathen were not neglected in any sense of the word. The Lisu could reach them much better than we could. I mean, for us to go into a heathen area, we were a curiosity. We were from the foreign country. And he Lisu went in as the Lisu to the Lisu and it wasn't a strange foreign face they saw. So they were much freer than [?] if white people had come to them. I was always grateful for the fact that the Lisu did take the responsibility of reaching the heathen people. We had contacts occasionally. We traveled with [portion unclear]. They all had had a chance to hear and there were those who decided against being a Christian, so there really wasn't much message you could give them. It's a very unique sort of a situation. They either decided for or against the Lord. And if they decided against the Lord, very rarely those who decided to remain heathen would turn to the Lord, almost...almost never. Mr. Fraser said that he had never really known a Lisu who had turned Christian and then gone back into heathenism who ever came back again. They evidently had had a taste of...
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: ...of worship of God and had never gone on to salvation and had come back and were not interested in Him.
ERICKSEN: What...As you look at the time when you first arrived, when you first came to Yunnan and then compare the development of the...the work to the time when you left. Are there any changes that took place that you can recall in the work?
FITZWILLIAM: No. I think that they became much more aggressive to reach other tribes during that time because when we, when we went back from our first furlough, we were promised by our mission that we could give half of our time to the Kachin work, opening up work among the Kachin, and half of our time to the Lisu in that same area. Of course, we were the only missionaries there, for both the Lisu and the Kachin. So the Lisu came along with us. We went to a Kachin village.
ERICKSEN: Was that...what was the name of that village?
FITZWILLIAM: Lungchiu. And the Lisu moved in so we had a Kachin/Lisu village and it was a comfort to have them there, because that was a heathen village, of course.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: There were only one or two Christian families.
ERICKSEN: I remember we were talking last lime about the fellow [unclear]....
FITZWILLIAM: Yeah. A number came and they were a great, great [unclear] all over the area.. [Sentence unclear.]
ERICKSEN: Now, where had...where had the Lisu people come from? They weren't...
FITZWILLIAM: Well, their tradition is...
ERICKSEN: ...a Chinese people.
FITZWILLIAM: ...that they came from the heads of the rivers (that would be the Mekong and Salween Rivers) and certainly they are more like Tibetans and Burmese than they are like Chinese. They aren't like the Chinese at all. They're obviously very different stock from the Chinese. That's a tradition, that they came down from the river, from the heads of the river. You don't find many Lisu far away from the Burma border. They're all up and down that Burma border area on both sides of the border.
ERICKSEN: Were they.... You were comparing them with the Chinese. Were they darker than the Chinese? Were they...? What about their size, their physical features? Can you describe...?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, they are Mongolians, of course, but have a different look than the Chinese. They dress so differently than the Chinese. They wear a loose jacket and loose trousers and they always wear a turban, which is just a long piece of cloth wrapper around their head.
ERICKSEN: Men and women?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, the women wear a decorated one on their heads that has beads and tassels on their headdress.
ERICKSEN: Were they a small people? How...?
FITZWILLIAM: No, They're average. Some were practically six feet. No, they're not small. They're more....I would say more rugged though than the Chinese, many of the Chinese. Of course, they are mountain people and their whole background...
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: ...is hard physical work, for both men and women.
ERICKSEN: How did the Chinese feel about the Lisu? Did they get along well or did they sort of stay out of each other's way.
FITZWILLIAM: No, not well. They called all the tribal people "wild men" and they looked down upon them. But the...but the Lisu laughed at the Chinese too, so....
ERICKSEN: What did they call the Chinese?
FITZWILLIAM: They called them Mucha. I suppose it's a slang word, but it's their word in Lisu for the Chinese. Mr Fraser told the story that when he first converted the first generation [?], he told them about a hail storm in town[?] and one of the Lisu broke up with great glee. "Just think what those Mucha are going to get when the Lord comes back," he said. "They are going to get hailstones that weigh so much." So there's not...but it's interesting to see that when they really become Christians, they have a concern for the...the salvation of the Chinese. As heathen they hate each other. The Lisu had been pushed by the more aggressive Chinese people have pushed up to the tops of the mountains and the top of the mountain is not the best place to go to be a farmer. And so the Chinese have taken over the more...the better areas, the plains and the places that are more fertile. And so there is no love lost when they are heathen, but it's interesting how when they become Christians, they become really concerned to get the Gospel to them. When we were traveling and staying in a Chinese village, the Lisu would make an attempt to talk to them and explain how they were Christians.
ERICKSEN: Do the Lisu know Chinese?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, [portion unclear] The men know market talk but not a great deal. They can carry on an everyday conversation. Some, of course, know more than others. And as the mission [?] developed, the Lisu established a Chinese school so their children could learn to read the literature, because the Chinese had so much more literature than the Lisu and also hey felt that if their children could read Chinese they would be better able to survive in the economy of that area. And so they opened a Chinese school [unclear] and they hired a Chinese. Well he was...he had a background of tribal...of a tribe in west...east Yunnan, but he had gone to a Chinese school and knew Chinese and the characters [of the Chinese language]. And so they supported him and had a little school where their children could go and study Chinese. [unclear]
ERICKSEN: Did it achieve what they had hoped it would?
FITZWILLIAM: What?
ERICKSEN: Did the children learn any...?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, it did. They got so they could read some Chinese characters. I don't know...well, I don't know that it was in existence before I left long enough to know if it had any permanent economic value to them, but at least they could read Chinese literature. They felt it was one step up to be able to read Chinese. [portion unclear] Of course, many, many, many of the Chinese could not read their own....
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh. Did the Chinese respect a tribal person who could speak Chinese more?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes. Yes, they would respect them more. Of course, heathen Chinese...I don't know what it's like [portion unclear]. the Chinese are very proud people and rightly so. They are very proud of their long civilization and they feel like they are the people of the world. and everything foreign, they look down upon so they looked down upon the Lisu as this mountain people. They treated them like [potion unclear].
ERICKSEN: Were there ever occasions when Christian Chinese and Christian Lisu got together?
FITZWILLIAM: Yeah. We had a team - four young Chinese boys that came out from Bethel Bible School [long portion unclear] and these four young stu...four young men, nice Chinese young men came out and they held an evangelistic service, Bible teaching and Christian dedication services for the Lisu. And they were very well received. We had an old Chinese evangelist who came out and he spent, oh, three or four weeks with us and taught. A lot of the time he taught in...in Chinese and a Lisu would interpret. A Lisu who knew the Chinese there would interpret. But a good number of the Lisu in the central station where we were could understand quite a bit of Chinese. But for the most part they had to speak through interpretation.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: But they...they welcomed these teachers and looked up to them and respected them. They felt they were older in the knowledge of the Lord than they were.
ERICKSEN: Now, was Muncheng.... [stumbles over pronunciation]
FITZWILLIAM: Muhchengpo,
ERICKSEN: Was that an entirely a Lisu village?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, it was entirely a Lisu Christian village. And Mr. Gowman, our predecessor there, had built a house there. It was simple, but it was a good frame house. It had a thatched roof but it had wooden floors and some windows and some. But when we went to the Kachin, we felt we should live in a house like they lived in.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: The Lisu built it for us. The Kachin build their houses up off the mountain...the ground. And so the Lisu, with some Kachin help, built one like that for us. The Kachins build their houses up off the ground. The Lisu, with the Kachin help, built the house for us like the Kachin houses, with a bamboo floor. It comes up to meet you when you walk because it's springy. And we went away for a while. They had to cut the bamboo. It was the wrong season of the year for that, so we wanted to move over there. The worms will eat it if it's cut in the wrong season of the year, they kind of bore in.. When we would go away for a few weeks teaching we came back to find everything covered with bamboo dust. The worms were eating our house up!
ERICKSEN: Did they eat it completely or...?
FITZWILLIAM: What?
ERICKSEN: Did they eat the house entirely or...?
FITZWILLIAM: No, they just bored into the...into the bamboo, eventually we had to change the bamboo. It took several years for that to deteriorate entirely.
ERICKSEN: Now, you say the Lisu homes are built up on stilts?
FITZWILLIAM: No, the Kachin homes are built up on stilts and then they have a bamboo floor. The Lisu just have a dirt floor, which they find on the ground. [?]
ERICKSEN: And what do they...what are the walls built of?
FITZWILLIAM: Bamboo.
ERICKSEN: Bamboo would be....
FITZWILLIAM: They take these large bamboo...they take a large bamboo and split it open [portion unclear] and make the walls of that. The roof has bamboo poles and they cover it with thatch. They leave a hole in both ends above the wall. That's where the smoke goes out. They build an open fire.
ERICKSEN: Would they have windows?
FITZWILLIAM: No, they don't have any windows. The one they built for us...they don't have any windows, but the one they built for us they cut an opening out of the bamboo and we put some screen there.
ERICKSEN: And where would the door be?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, right in the middle.
ERICKSEN: Not on...it wasn't on one of the ends?
FITZWILLIAM: It is just a long [unclear] usually. Ours was three rooms.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: Theirs are usually, probably, one or two. But they made three for us. And the door would be right in the middle of the center room. But it wasn't an uncomfortable house. It's surprising how much you don't miss it when you [unclear]..
ERICKSEN: Anything you did miss?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, I would like to have had ice or refrigeration or that sort of thing because we couldn't keep any food very long. We had to keep cooking everything that we didn't eat up right away. That I would like to have had., but I got on without it.
ERICKSEN: Did you have to go to the market regularly then to get food?
FITZWILLIAM: Well we...we always sent the Lisu down to market [portion unclear]. We never really went to the market ourselves, but we used to order things once or twice a year from Burma, foreign things that helped out. We would try when we were at home to eat as near American food as we could manage, because when we were out among the Lisu, we just ate what the Lisu provided for us.
ERICKSEN: What was the Lisu diet like?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, if they really get what they like to have, they'd have rice and vegetables and occasionally meat.
ERICKSEN: What kind...?
FITZWILLIAM: They don't have rice the year around. They eat potatoes when the potatoes are in, and they eat corn when the corn is in. That was one thing that we found kind of hard to...to digest, corn when it was corn season. They would usually try to get rice for us because it made us sick just to eat corn. It was really delicious and I really liked it, but it just didn't set very well with me. They pound it up and it's coarse grain and they steam it like they do their rice.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
SHUSTER: It's fluffy. You get tired of it, of course, faster than you do rice. And the potatoes - they just boil those. They don't...they're not...Chinese food is out of this world [very good], but Lisu food, you just eat to keep going. They're not good cooks like the Chinese are but they don't have anything much to cook.
ERICKSEN: What kind of meat did they eat?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, they...they...we...out in that part of the country, they have a barking deer. You heard them at night just barking like a dog. The tribe's people hunt the barking deer with their muzzle loading guns. They have to shoot several times before they shoot straight enough to hit one. [chuckles] We were out in Bible school once and they took us hunting deer. They stationed us around a hill and my husband was in one place and I was in another.. I didn't have a gun, but I was stationed with the Lisu who did. Then they get the boys to go down the ravine and they make a big noise to stir up the deer. The deer goes running up and as the they come running up to the clear space, then the people that are hidden there up shoot them. So this day, they scared this deer up and everybody shot at him and it ran back down in the hollow again [chuckles]. So they had to stir him up again...scare him up again. You know, they don't completely devastate the area of barking deer because their guns were so poor, which is fortunate. But they do often have barking deer meat. And they eat...they eat monkey meat too. I could never quite accomplish that.
ERICKSEN: You never had any?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, I never ate it, but we...they used it....My husband ate it though. He said it wasn't bad. They boil it over the fire and...skin it and boil it. It was like a little baby. I couldn't get it down. And then they have pigs. They keep a pig and slaughter a pig once in awhile. They don't have meat every day by a long shot.
ERICKSEN: Any chickens?
FITZWILLIAM: That's a very great delicacy. I mean, they had a few chickens that they keep for eggs and they eat...they cook one occasionally.
ERICKSEN: Were there any rivers near by that you could have fish at all?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, yes. There's were mountain streams that had kind of a fish in it. They're not really very tasty and very bony like. We did have it sometimes. The Lisu have a way of fishing. They have a herb that they spread in the water that knocks the fish out. They come to the top and they just pick them out with their hands. And I...I would always wonder why that didn't kill the person who ate the fish, but it doesn't. It just...just...evidently has to get into the blood stream. And they pull those fish out that have been sort of knocked out with this herb which they put on the water and still eat them and that's the way they fish. I don't know if you want to know about that
ERICKSEN: How did they cook most of their food? Did they broil it or fry it or...?
FITZWILLIAM: Just over an open fire. Yes, just over an open fire. They usually...very poor families don't even have that, but most of them have a sort of an iron stand that goes over the fire and they put their pot on that. They cook the rice until it gets to a certain stage and they take it off by the side of the fire and let it steam. And they put their vegetables in. They have mostly a kind of greens, [portion unclear] something like Swiss Chard [portion unclear].
ERICKSEN: Now, did...did you learn to cook with all these different things, or did you have someone living with you?
FITZWILLIAM: We had someone...we had a Lisu cook. He cooked everything. He got to so he could cook things foreign. Every once in a while I made some kind of a dessert, when we would get hungry for something sweet. They weren't very good at that.
ERICKSEN: Did they have any sweet food?
FITZWILLIAM: No, they do...they eat [unclear] sugar cane.
ERICKSEN: Do they grow that?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, they grow sugar cane and eat that. And they have a [unclear] but they do sometimes in the market, the Chinese market, have a hard brown sugar. The Lisu really have very little sugar. I remember Mr. Fraser telling us that when he came out of Lisu, he...he would go down to the Chinese village. He'd buy several cans of that sweetened milk that you could buy in the Chinese market. He would just sit down and drink it; he would be so hungry. [portion unclear] I don't think I told you before how the work got started among the Lisu.
ERICKSEN: No.
FITZWILLIAM: Well, Mr. Fraser went into...was attracted to these mountain people and tried to live with...and he went out to live with them. At first, they were afraid of him and they wouldn't have anything to do with him. But finally he won their...their confidence and so they would invite him out. So they finally came to the place where they liked to have him come to their village and they liked to hear him talk. And he learned the language and reduced it to writing and translated a catechism and the Gospel of Mark. But the Lisu just would not turn. They would say, "Well, teacher, the de...the demons don't bite you. If we don't worship them they bite us and we're afraid not to worship them." So they just wouldn't turn. He worked among them for several years with out getting any results. And so the mission wanted him to go to another area of China. They thought he was being wasted there. So he got permission for one more year, well, one more season. And he wrote home to his mother and asked her to gather together (I think I told you this) he asked her to gather together a group of her praying friends and that they would pray that God would open the door for the Lisu to the Gospel. They did that. They made it their business. And not long after that group of women in her home started to pray, the Lord started to work out in...in Lisuland. and here a village and there a village and sometimes a whole district began coming over, a mass movement to the Lord. And I heard Mr. Fraser say over and over again he felt humanly speaking, the credit for the opening of the work to the Lisu and winning the battle in the heavenlies was that little group women unclear] who prayed for God to open the door to the Gospel among the Lisu people. Certainly, it seemed as though the battle was won in the heavenlies for the Lisu people because then there was a real turning, a real mass movement. That was before we went there. By the time we went there, there were of course many Christian villages and many Christians among them.
ERICKSEN: How was the village...if it was a whole Christian village, how was the village set up government-wise, was the head of the church the head of the town?
FITZWILLIAM: Well there was....
ERICKSEN: How did that work?
FITZWILLIAM: The head of the church was the head of the town, yes. They had a village leader and he was in charge of appointing the people for the services. It was strictly a Christian village and a Christian setup. If there was discipline needed in the village, the church did it. And of course, they lived under Chinese jurisdiction in that the whole.... They really had just squatter's rights. And the whole area belonged to the Chinese officials and they paid taxes to the Chinese officials. He was theoretically over the.... Well, there was no jurisdiction really as far as for protection or.... But they didn't seem to need...they didn't seem to need any. I've been alone in a Lisu village for days and weeks on end, being the only white person and no doors that were really locked. But I never had a fear. In fact, I think I would be a lot more afraid living in Chicago [chuckles] than I was in a Lisu village. There didn't seem to be any need for....
ERICKSEN: Was there like a policeman in town?
FITZWILLIAM: No, just the Lisu church. [portion unclear]
ERICKSEN: You mentioned discipline before, that people were whipped.
FITZWILLIAM: Uh-huh.
ERICKSEN: Was that the standard means of discipline or ...?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, they didn't do that often but..... We...we...we didn't really approve of it. They didn't ask us, and so we didn't object and it worked, but they...they did outgrow that.
ERICKSEN: What...?
FITZWILLIAM: SO that was their way of doing that. [unclear]
ERICKSEN: What did they grow into?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, the deacons meet, oh, period...periodically. They meet...all of them...a whole district would meet together after the Christmas festival. All of the villages in the area meet. All the villages in they ...deacons in the whole district that we were responsible for, they meet once a year. And they would go over church rules and make church standards and if they had cases of discipline that they needed to deal with. They didn't have a lot of discipline. But if there was a quarrel or disagreement, the deacons dealt with it. And then there would be regulations. They did a really tremendous job, I thought. Much better than we could have done, because they knew their own people. And they were much more strict with their own people than we would be. For instance, they decided...the missionary, Mr. Fraser, said that he never felt he had any Biblical authority to object to their chewing beetlenut. It's messy, you know.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: Their teeth all get red and they spit red saliva [laughs] all over the place. So we never made any point of trying to tell them that that was not the thing for a Christian to do. But they made up their minds that, "Well, he missionaries didn't use beetlenut so it must not be a very good thing to do." So they made a rule that people couldn't chew beetlenut and be a member of the Lisu church. They enforced that for a while, but for the most part, that...that just fell away and they just gave up. They did not think that...as one Lisu said he didn't think the Lord liked the door...that our bodies were the temple of the Holy Ghost and he didn't think the Lord liked the door all plastered up with red beetlenut [laughs] so he gave it up..
ERICKSEN: Were there other sort of behaviors that the church expected them to give up when first they became Christians?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, the lack of keeping Sunday . I often think of what we do in Wheaton [laughs] Because they wouldn't go to market, or gather wood or do anything like that...work in their fields or do anything like that on Sunday. And they would discipline in the church if you did that.
ERICKSEN: And everyone kept track of each other?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, they kept track of each other. It was small...everyone lived in small villages.
ERICKSEN: How big would a village be?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, the house where we...the village where we lived was a fairly large village for the Lisu because....
ERICKSEN: And that's Muchengpo?
FITZWILLIAM: Muchengpo. And I suppose there were probably 25 or 30 houses there. Then, just down hill there was another village, and across the mountain another village. But hey lived in small villages near their fields.
ERICKSEN: [Pauses] I wonder if you could tell me a little more about the [pauses] the religion that the Lisu had before they became Christians?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, they were spirit worshipers. They worshiped evil spirits..
ERICKSEN: Where did the spirits live?
FITZWILLIAM: Oh, in the trees, in the houses, all over, they felt. They were afraid to go out at night because there would be evil spirits. And hey have a real fear of the evil spirits and so when they got sick or trouble comes, that's when they worship them out of fear. They never worship them, you know, with a desire to worship.
ERICKSEN: For convenience.
FITZWILLIAM: There's no love. It's just a fear to appease the wrath of the evil spirits. And they have traditions that....I've heard them say that they had a tradition about...about God, the Great Spirit Wusa they called him, and they still use that word for God...
ERICKSEN: What was his name again?
FITZWILLIAM: ...the Creator. Wusa. He created everything and He created everything good and He's good. And because He's good, they never felt they had to worship Wusa until they became Christians and learned that He loves them. But they...they have a tradition of the creation [of the world] and a tradition of the flood, some what warped an different, but certainly the whole theory of.... [Pauses] They...I don't think anything...as heathen, they don't think anything is a sin unless it's something that they get caught out in, like stealing and that sort of thing. They had a tradition that some time a man with a white skin would come with a book. And many of those tribes have had that same tradition. So when the gospel came, when Fraser came and taught them to read the...the...the.... It seemed as though it was the Lord's preparation for them to hear the Gospel. But the heathen religion has nothing of comfort - just fear. And their whole effort was to deceive the evil spirits and make them think they were offering something better than they were offering [word unclear]. So I think it's really...you can realize that it is the teaching of the Holy Spirit that they're able to intelligently understand about sin and the need of cleansing from sin, and...and the fact God loves them and the fact that the Lord Jesus paid for their sin with His own life. It is certainly the teaching of the Holy Spirit that they are able to comprehend that. [Tape recorder turned off and turned on.]
ERICKSEN: You mentioned that often your husband would be out traveling throughout the district. Was he going from village to village?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, ee was going from usually one area to another area where there was a cluster of villages and then the Lisu would gather in a central village where he would stay.
ERICKSEN: Then he would have a short Bible school?
FITZWILLIAM: Yes, he would conduct a Bible school. And in some of the areas, the Lisu built a little house for us where we could stay in. Other times we stayed in the chapel or in the church. They often had a little room at the back of the church that they had partitioned off that we could stay in. And then sometimes we just stayed in their homes.
ERICKSEN: How did you travel?
FITZWILLIAM: What?
ERICKSEN: How did you travel from place to place?
FITZWILLIAM: Horseback or walking.
ERICKSEN: Did you have a horse?
FITZWILLIAM: We...I...we had horses and it's the only way we could get around or walking. I had a little horse that the Lisu gave me. I had gone up to a Lisu village in cold [?] country, they called it, with a couple loads of Bibles. And the horse...the...one of the horses that were carrying the Bibles got lame and couldn't carry them anymore so they put them on my horse and I walked. When I got there, the Paul [a Lisu teacher] who was one of the dearest Christians (gone to glory [Heaven] now), he said. "That's not right teacher, you shouldn't have to walk. I've got a little horse and I am going to give it to you. Nobody else is ever to be able to ride it and you're never allowed to pack it." So until I left. Then when I left, I gave it back to him to keep while I was away. [Words unclear] Nice little things like that that the Lisu did. But they of course walk. Very rarely do they ride. Well, it's hard...it's hard country. It's really mountainous, called the Switzerland of China. And it is beautiful, beautiful mountains , very beautiful country, but it's up one mountain and down the other and it's really... it's really hard going.
ERICKSEN: Are there cut roads all the way?
FITZWILLIAM: No. there are just little paths. And then they...the paths going from one...one from one large district or another would have them more broken out, sort of, but they are just little narrow paths. And the official...the Chinese official [who governed the territory] would call a day of work for people to get out and cut down bushes and that sort of thing to keep the paths open. But there were no roads at all. Not up in Lisuland at all. You either walk or go on...ride a horse.
ERICKSEN: Now when you went out traveling to the different districts, would you and your husband go alone, or would you have a guide, a Lisu...?
FITZWILLIAM: No we would never go alone. We'd always have a Lisu with us. We would always...they'd come from one district.... They wanted us to come to a certain area, they'd come over, and carry things for us and escort us...
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: ...and take us over to the villages.
ERICKSEN: I was wondering, what was a typical day like? We talked about what a typical Sunday would be like. What was a typical workday be like for you?
FITZWILLIAM: Well, we sort of at the beck and call of the Lisu all day long, because they had no medical work except what we could do. And so we carried on a little dispensary. And well, it was either study preparation, interrupted by calls for one thing or another from the Lisu. They...they were always free to come to our house and sometimes they would come to sell a few eggs or buy some medicine or come to study. So it was...we had a fairly busy day.
ERICKSEN: Did it include the evening or...?
FITZWILLIAM: No, they...except for going...going to services, they are not out much in the evening after dark. And services usually at least started in the light, even in the winter time. Summer time they usually worked in their fields until fairly late and often it went into the dark (and in the winter time too), but aside from going to church, they wouldn't be much...there wouldn't be much activity at night. Of course, they didn't have anything to go to.
ERICKSEN: Uh-huh.
FITZWILLIAM: They didn't have entertainments or anything like that. Their entertainment was....
END OF TAPE