CHAPTER VII - THE “NATIVE FOREIGNER”

Summary

In our walk along Shanghai Bund, we saw a gentleman whom a new-comer might at first sight mistake for a Chinese, but who on closer inspection proved to be a foreigner in native dress, hence known among the Chinese as the “Native Foreigner.” This witty Chinese phrase he is disposed to take as a compliment, indicating as it does his disposition to meet the Chinese half-way, and not to make Westerners of them, though his aim is to see them Christianised. He is of course a missionary.

All missionaries do not adopt the native dress, but those who do not, yet clothe themselves with those motives which the native dress symbolises. And perhaps it is not saying too much to affirm that all missionaries to China have to make up their minds toward a loosening of certain links which bound them to the society of their countrymen. That they have to be geographically severed from home is a condition which they share in common with their other countrymen in the Far East, and goes without saying; but that they will be the subjects of a certain amount of criticism from those fellow-countrymen of theirs, both at home and on the spot, is a certainty which they accept together with the rest of their lot in coming to China. The man before us is a fairly well criticised man.