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while trekking and living amongst Chinese his Chinese language skills must have been of immense value and probably were the prime reason why he was invited to join several natural history expeditions through northern China.
Arthur's father, the Reverend Arthur Sowerby was a missionary in China for forty years, mostly in Taiyuan though during his latter years he was a tutor to the sons of Republican President Yuan Shih-kai [who attempted to mount the imperial throne in 1916].
Sowerby was a man of his time. He would have seen the Chinese first, as a child and a young man, from a missionary point of view, “sad heathen souls needing saving," later, with the eyes of a traveller and so-called explorer as "dullards who needed leadership and western civilisation,” and finally, as a businessman and resident in the Foreign Concession of Shanghai, where the Chinese were regarded as "the Yellow Peril, natives to be kept at a distance, and frequently ridiculed." China and the Chinese were popularly denigrated by the Western community and Chinese in general were distrusted. These strongly rooted beliefs reflected nearly a century of western misunderstanding and reaction to Chinese conduct, and shaped the behaviour of Treaty Port Westerners and Britons in particular. However, Sowerby had a redeeming feature as the editor of and a writer for a journal, one of the aims of which was to educate foreigners living on Chinese soil on, amongst other things, Chinese culture,
The only connection this article has with the Millennium, however tenuous, was the fortunate escape of the Sowerby family, including the fifteen year-old Arthur, from the largest Boxer massacre of missionaries exactly a century ago in 1900. The great majority of Western missionaries in Shansi, many scores, were murdered - with the provincial Governor, Yü Hsien, taking part in the killing of fifty-one Catholic and Protestant missionaries in his yamen, and with a further fifty or so being killed elsewhere in the province. The Sowerbys were lucky enough to be back in England on long furlough at the time and the Reverend Arthur Sowerby who lost many friends and colleagues had the sad task of writing the obituaries of several of them.
Arthur was educated at home in Taiyuan and also at a missionary
123
while trekking and living amongst Chinese his Chinese language skills must have been of immense value and probably were the prime reason why he was invited to join several natural history expeditions through northern China.
Arthur's father, the Reverend Arthur Sowerby was a missionary in China for forty years, mostly in Taiyuan though during his latter years he was a tutor to the sons of Republican President Yuan Shih-kai [who attempted to mount the imperial throne in 1916].
Sowerby was a man of his time. He would have seen the Chinese first, as a child and a young man, from a missionary point of view, “sad heathen souls needing saving," later, with the eyes of a traveller and so-called explorer as "dullards who needed leadership and western civilisation,” and finally, as a businessman and resident in the Foreign Concession of Shanghai, where the Chinese were regarded as "the Yel- low Peril, natives to be kept at a distance, and frequently ridiculed." China and the Chinese were popularly denigrated by the Western com- munity and Chinese in general were distrusted. These strongly rooted beliefs reflected nearly a century of western misunderstanding and re- action to Chinese conduct, and shaped the behaviour of Treaty Port Westerners and Britons in particular. However, Sowerby had a redeem- ing feature as the editor of and a writer for a journal, one of the aims of which was to educate foreigners living on Chinese soil on, amongst other things, Chinese culture,
The only connection this article has with the Millennium, how- ever tenuous, was the fortunate escape of the Sowerby family, includ- ing the fifteen year-old Arthur, from the largest Boxer massacre of missionaries exactly a century ago in 1900. The great majority of West- ern missionaries in Shansi, many scores, were murdered - with the pro- vincial Governor, Yü Hsien, taking part in the killing of fifty-one Catho- lic and Protestant missionaries in his yamen, and with a further fifty or so being killed elsewhere in the province. The Sowerbys were lucky enough to be back in England on long furlough at the time and the Reverend Arthur Sowerby who lost many friends and colleagues had the sad task of writing the obituaries of several of them.
Arthur was educated at home in Taiyuan and also at a missionary
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