Harvest of Hunger: Sutherlands in China trilogy, #1

By P.Scott Corbett

Harvest of Hunger is the first book in a gripping trilogy recounting the saga of four generations of an American family serving as missionaries and cultural ambassadors in China in the 19th and 20th centuries. From the bustling streets of Beijing to the halls of academia, this historical fiction transports readers to the early twentieth century, a land in turmoil as it grapples with its imperial past and uncertain future. Ross Sutherland, a scientist, a physician, and father of a young family returns to China to join his aging missionary father in his own way by accepting teaching positions at new universities in Beijing. As he struggles to balance his multiple family responsibilities, he finds himself embroiled in a dangerous hostage situation during the North China Famine of 1920. Though a certain amount of literary license has been used in developing the narratives, they do track closely actual historical events and experiences of actual people. With vividly detailed scenes and well-crafted prose, Harvest of Hunger is a riveting tale of service, duty, and resilience that will keep readers turning pages long into the night. Don't miss out on the first volume of this exciting trilogy. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: P.Scott Corbett
• Release date: Jan 13, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224682973

Book preview

Harvest of Hunger

By P. Scott Corbett

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Copyright © 2023 by P. Scott Corbett

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher

except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Printed in the United States of America

First Printing, 2024

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DAPSHOW PUBLICATIONS

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https://dapshowpublications.wixsite.com/dapshow-publications

For the memory of Hunter and his son CHC. 

And of course, for my wife, Cui Yi, who helps to keep the family line going.

PREFACE

The following is the first book in a trilogy recounting the saga of four generations of an American family serving as missionaries and cultural ambassadors in China in the 19th and 20th centuries.  Though a certain amount of literary license has been used in developing the narratives, they do track closely actual historical events and experiences of actual people.  This book takes up the story of the character, Ross Sutherland, who was the second generation of his family to live and work in China, as he and his family address the challenges of the North China famine of 1920-21.  The second book in the series, Fortune’s Retrieval, recounts the struggles Ross’s children, Harriet and Alvin, endure in war-torn China from 1937 to 1945.  The third book, Pursuing Shadows, brings the family’s involvement with China up to contemporary times as Ross’s grandson, Lawson Sutherland, sets out for China in the 1980s to look for his family legacy and history.  May these books entertain, educate, and illuminate Chinese and American humanity in ways suggesting that fundamentally Chinese and Americans can find much common ground in this modern world.

Dramatis Personae

Ross Sutherland (Chinese name Xu Jie):  educator and physician, the son of a prominent Shandong missionary (Chinese name Xu Xiande). 

Minnie Sutherland:  Wife of Ross Sutherland and partner in their missionary activities in Peking

Lucien and Lillian Porter: Fellow missionaries in Peking and close family friends to the Sutherlands

Mary Sutherland:  Ross’s stepmother.

Chang nai-nai:  The nursemaid to the Sutherland children

Yuan Shiikai:  Northern China warlord and first president of the Republic of China and self-appointed emperor until his death in 1916.

Feng Guozhang:  At one time Vice-President and then President of the Republic of China and founder of the Zhili clique of generals.

Empress Dowager Cixi and her nephew Emperor Guangxu: The panicle of the imperial government from 1875 to 1908.

Wu Bingxian:  Chief of Peking Police.

Dr. Roy Hemberger:  Brother-in-law to Ross Sutherland.

General Feng Yuxiang:  Known as the Christian General a major force in North China and the Zhili clique.

Sun Meiyao:  Bandit chief in western Shandong and the leader of the Shandong Founding Autonomous Army.

Duan Qirui, The military head of the Anhui Clique.

Tian Zhongyu:  Governor General of Shandong Province

Zhang Zoulin:  Manchurian Warlord and a major player in the politics of Northern China

Lev Karakhan: Deputy commissioner for foreign affairs for the Soviet Union.

John D. Rockefeller, Jr:  Standard Oil executive and American philanthropist.

Chou Ming-shan:  Chinese member of the advance team to set up relief efforts.

Ian Walsh:  London Missionary Society missionary working with the relief team.

Hans Bauer:  German engineer and part of the relief team.

Elizabeth Culbertson: American missionary woman of the Church of the Brethren and part of the team.

Sun Dianying: Major bandit chieftain in the Shandong border area

Commander Liu Jiafeng: Lieutenant of Sun Dianying and captor of the hostages.

Yan Xishan:  The warlord of Shanxi Province bordering on Shandong.

Dr. F.F. Tucker:  The superintendent of Relief operations in Shandong.

Lieutenant Williams: U.S. Marine delivering the ransom to the bandits.

Private Jones: Part of the ransom delivery mission.

Commander Genjo Qian:  Ruthless bandit and Liu Jiafeng’s rival.

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1

Minnie Sutherland sat at her writing table and glumly started to compose her weekly letter to her father, George Sydney Webster, the pastor of the Church of the Covenant on East 42nd Street in New York City.  She had been keeping her family, and the church appraised of nearly everything that went on in the family since she, her husband Ross, and their infant son Alvin had arrived in Peking, China, back in 1907.  With degrees from New York Medical College and Union Theological Seminary, both in New York City, Ross had decided to follow his father’s example and return to China, where he had been born and raised, and take up a position teaching at the small Presbyterian mission-sponsored North China College in T’ungchow, China, a southeastern suburb of Peking[1] and considered the eastern gateway to the capital. 

Ross and his father had their differences regarding their Presbyterianism and their views of what needed to be done in China.  Ross’s father had first taken a medical degree before graduating from Princeton University Theological Seminary as a student of one of the last orthodox Calvinist theologians in the 19th century.  Though he established a hospital in his base of operations, Chefoo in Shandong Province, he basically concentrated on evangelizing. 

Ross also took a medical degree.  But while he was studying in New York, he simultaneously attended and subsequently graduated from Union Theological Seminary, an independent, progressive, and ecumenical institution focusing on interreligious cooperation.  For that, Ross’s relations with his father were severely strained for quite some time as the elder Sutherland did not approve of his son’s liberalism and his emphasis on being a scientific and medical missionary.  They would frequently argue with the elder Sutherland insisting that saving Chinese souls was most important and Ross insisting that improving the health of the Chinese was most important.  As Ross often said, One cannot convert corpses.  But to try to effect a reconciliation, Ross took up his own personal mission in Peking, hoping that his father might come around and appreciate the family’s legacy of being committed to helping the Chinese to craft a better China. 

That was thirteen years ago, and many changes had taken place for Ross and the family.  Since the abolition in 1905 of the traditional Confucian civil service exam system, which had been the heart and soul of the Chinese educational complex and the official conveyor belt of recruiting certified qualified candidates for responsible and high positions in the vast Chinese governmental bureaucracy, the educational milieu of the nation had been thrown into confusing disarray.  Foreign missionary endeavors sought to step into the open an evolving educational landscape and simultaneously assist the forces of modernizing reform and educationally evangelizing by promoting Western-style education. 

While Ross labored at North China College, the family had grown, adding Harry in 1909 and Harriet in 1915.  By the second decade of the century, it dawned on the mission educators that the hodgepodge of small struggling western colleges in Peking was in some cases expensively duplicating efforts and counterproductive, so a move was launched to unite several of them into one, larger first-class university.  From 1915 through 1920, four of the separate Christian colleges in Peking united to form Yenching University.  Ross had been an enthusiastic supporter of the creation of Yenching University and was both humbled and honored in 1918 to be an Associate Professor and head of the Chemistry Department of the blossoming institution. 

Over the years, Minnie’s weekly missives kept her family back in America up to date, as much as possible, about the grandchildren, their mission work, and sometimes the notable events in the struggling evolution of Peking. 

Starting in the early 1900s, the moribund and decaying Qing imperial dynasty attempted to reform itself and modernize.  When Minnie, Ross, and Alvin arrived, there still was an emperor, the three-year-old Puyi.  But all that changed radically in 1911 with the revolution mounted by Nationalist Republicans in central China that ultimately resulted in the abolition of Imperial rule.  China was thrown into decades of political struggles and chaos that made life in Peking interesting and sometimes exciting, to say the least.

Minnie began to compose her chronicle of the week’s events. 

Peking, China, Jan. 4, 1920

This letter will be full of sad things, I fear, for the week has been full of them and yet I know you are interested in everything that touches our lives, our sorrows as well as our joys.

Minnie took a deep breath and sipped her tea as she formulated what she had to say. 

First of all, there has been Mr. Ogilvie’s going, such a shock to us all, such a tragedy and unexplainable thing.

She somewhat painfully detailed Mr. Ogilvie’s struggle with pneumonia, the grief that was rippling through the Presbyterian mission, his wife’s agony, and the well-attended and deeply respectful funeral that was held for him. 

As if to give her readers a chance to catch their breath before she delivered the next blows of the distress the family and the larger foreign mission community in Peking were enduring, she launched into a brief weather report.

Usually, New Year’s Day is fearful as to weather, cold, windy, and dusty.  But this year the weather was perfect, quiet, sunny, and mild. 

While Ross, and much of Peking’s foreign missionary community, were involved with the arrangements for Mr. Ogilvie’s funeral, the Sutherland household received some additional sad news. 

And then about one o’clock came a telegram from Chefoo asking him to come immediately because of Father Sutherland’s critical condition.  Our dinner guests stayed until 2:30 and then it was a mad rush to get Ross packed and off by four o’clock.

Minnie then related that Ross missed the first boat to Chefoo, the site of Father Sutherland’s mission and Ross’s birth, but got on one the next day.  Since she had not gotten any further news from Chefoo, she assumed that her father-in-law was "probably still living" at her writing.

Minnie steeled herself to continue chronicling more misfortune.  One of their sixteen-year-old female students died of tuberculosis.  And then the third child of close associates and family friends in their common missionary endeavors also passed away.

Minnie was grateful the house was quiet, as it was rather late at night and the children were in their beds.  Ross was away in Shandong.  She put the pen down for a minute or two and rubbed her writing hand, which seemed stressed a bit with all the sadness that it deposited on paper. 

Diligently, though, she felt compelled to complete the account of the previous week’s goings-on, so she took the pen up again. 

Word has come that Dr. Roys has to be taken to the U.S.A. immediately for an operation to save his life, and even then, there is a great deal of chance for him.

As if that were not enough, Minnie reported that Lilian Porter had been hospitalized with amoebic dysentery, which was especially worrisome since she was pregnant with her baby and due almost any time. 

And so there seems to be just one thing after another.  As you wonder, I said this was likely to be a sad letter.

She put the pen down again and got up to go check on her sons as she heard some rustling in their bedroom.  Satisfied that all was well, she returned to her correspondence but decided to close.

I was interrupted and now must go to bed.  So much love to all of you.  Ever, Minnie.

Two weeks later, again taking up her pen on Saturday morning, January 17th, Minnie was able to dispatch happier news to New York.

Another thing we are happy about is that our Daddy came back to us yesterday.  Of all the inaccessible places, Chefoo is one of the worst this time of year.

She then launched into some detail about Ross’ adventures and difficulties in returning to Peking from his dash to Chefoo.  Father Sutherland apparently passed peacefully in his sleep and the funeral was well attended.  Her father-in-law had eleven children, but they were strewn all around China and Asia, and Ross and his sister May were the only offspring able to get to the homestead for his final days.  Though he still had deep regrets about their earlier estrangement, Ross was solaced by the fact that since his return to China, he and his father had reconstructed their relationship.  They achieved a truce of sorts, which included tolerance and mutual respect, and a deep and adamantine love for each other.  After the funeral, there was some discussion of what was going to happen to Ross’s stepmother, Mary. Minnie wrote that initially her mother-in-law had decided to remain in Chefoo if she could find some suitable work within her deceased husband’s mission operation. 

She will stay through the summer, and we’ll have our family reunion as scheduled, if Jane and her family can come from India.  Poor Jane will be broken-hearted when the news of father’s death reaches her for, she was so counting on seeing him.  None of her children have ever met father. 

The year had gotten off to an inauspicious start.  Minnie prayed that things would get better for the family and the Western missionary project in China overall. 

2

With just a week to go before the beginning of the traditional Chinese New Year’s holiday on February 20th and the transition from the Year of the Goat to the Year of the Monkey, it had already seemed like a long and cold winter to Ross.  Minnie informed her family on January 24th that their youngest son, Harry, had been struggling with whooping cough, probably a result of a minor epidemic of the disease rippling through the mission children. She also lamented that: We need snow so much for everything is dry as a bone, not having had a drop of rain since early November. 

The political pot was still torrid in Peking at the beginning of February.  Ross and his colleagues continued the work of constructing what was hoped to be one of the finest universities in China—Yenching University.  Its original site in the city was considered too small for the intended growth and expansion of the university, so for some time, efforts had been made to obtain a more spacious location for the campus.  Indicative of the political transitions taking place, eventually by the beginning of 1920 the university building committee, of which Ross was a member, was nearing completion of obtaining an old country estate, called the Garden of Modest Gaiety, formerly belonging to a notoriously corrupt imperial eunuch on the northwest edge of the city near the both the Old and New Summer Palaces.  When the Qianlong Emperor died in 1798, the eunuch was condemned to death by the succeeding emperor, and the eunuch’s estates were confiscated and absorbed into the cluster of palaces, parks, and gardens owned by the Manchu Emperors.  The disintegration of the Imperial government and system after the 1911 revolution made it possible for the university to obtain the land.

But in February 1920, the students at the twenty other colleges and universities in the city had arisen to voice their fervently nationalistic voices against the perceived mistreatment of China by the Japanese and the negotiators of the Versailles Peace Treaty in Paris.  The fuse that had ignited a national outburst of anti-Japanese and anti-government demonstrations was the proposed Shandong Resolution of the treaty.  According to that resolution, the Japanese were to assume all the German extraterritorial rights and economic privileges in Shandong Province.  The Japanese claimed those special rights when, as allies of Great Britain in The Great War, they defeated and ousted the Germans from the province in 1915. 

Minnie explained to her father, 

The students are still deeply interested in politics and the Japanese boycott.  They held another demonstration and parade yesterday.  They are certainly in earnest in all these attempts to save their country.

The Chinese call the advent of the new year and its accompanying celebrations the Spring Festival, though as he handed his wife Minnie a scarf for his eldest son, Ross thought there was nothing spring-like about either the weather or the more somber mood of the times.  He was helping Minnie bundle up his sons Alvin and Harry to shield them from the northwest wind known as xibei feng in Chinese.  It frequently crashed down on Peking like a fierce horde of marauders intent on extinguishing all the warmth in the city and sending its helpless denizens shivering to huddle around the fires in their kitchens.  Minnie had decided that five-year-old Harriet would stay back, safely inside, with their amah, Chang nai-nai, as a precaution against any infection.  Harriet had been gravely ill just two years before when the worldwide flu epidemic swept through north China and Minnie just could not stand the thought of her being gravely ill again. 

Don’t worry Harriet, Minnie softly reassured the little girl.  "We won’t be gone too long.  And we’ll just be on the hillside on the other side of the road outside the compound.  Chang nai-nai can send one of the kitchen boys out to get me if you really need me."

Oh, all right, mommy, Harriet said with disappointment dripping from her frowning face. 

Right, now, boys, Ross turned to Alvin and Harry, who were so bundled up in layers of clothing that they could barely put their arms down at their side, You know what we are going to see?

Yes, Father, Alvin, the oldest, said.  "We are going to see the funeral process of President Feng Guozhang, he replied, pronouncing the name in perfect Chinese without any hint of an accent.  Having lived there since he was eight months old and spending a considerable amount of time with the house servants, especially the cook, his Chinese was sometimes better than his English. 

So how did he die? eleven-year-old Harry asked. 

Natural causes, Ross answered and noticed that neither Alvin nor Harry caught the irony in his voice. Feng had been part of Yuan Shikai’s coterie of generals and strong men from Yuan’s Beiyang Army and helped Yuan essentially usurp power from the more popular revolutionary, Sun Yat Sen at the time of the 1911 revolution and the fall of China’s last Emperor and the creation of the Republic of China.  But after Yuan attempted to make himself China’s new emperor in 1915, Feng broke with him politically.  Yuan attempted to have Feng assassinated, but mysteriously, the assassin himself was murdered. 

Ross and his family had watched the dangerous and fierce political struggles fracturing China into bits and pieces with great concern. 

Yes, son. A few years ago, nobody would have bet on Feng ever dying peacefully in his sleep.

But he was president of China once, right? Alvin joined the conversation.

Yes, he was, Alvin. You remember recent history pretty well.  He was president for a year or so back in 1917 and 1918 but was eventually pushed aside by a rival, Ross said, finishing fixing Harry’s scarf tightly.  After that, he retreated from Peking and eventually founded the Zhili Clique of warlords who fought against the more powerful Anhui Clique for mastery of China.

Oh, Ross, this is no time for a history lesson.  Besides, it is so complex I am not sure even you fully understand all the ins and outs of the current political scene, Minnie said, beginning to shoo Alvin and Harry towards the door.  If we don’t hurry, we’ll miss the funeral procession.

Right you are, dear, Ross agreed.  Let’s go, boys.  Maybe if and when all the political dust settles down, we can get a better fix on who is actually in charge and whether this country will restore imperial rule or make any progress at becoming a republic.

Minnie turned to Chang nai-nai, You know where we’ll be—just across the street on the hillock by those twin Ginkgo trees. We shouldn’t be long.  They opened the door and began to walk through the brisk air.

Minnie continued a short discourse on President Feng. He was a former leader in the Stratocracy we’ve been enduring these last few years.  It is hard to believe he was very popular even though he and his partners seemed to favor a political solution to unifying the country through negotiations rather than doing it by force, as the Anhui Clique would have.

Stratocracy? Alvin’s face revealed his confusion over the word.

Yes, Stratocracy, Minnie said as they walked towards the road outside their compound.  It means government by the military and an army.

See, boys, this is already an educational endeavor.  Your mother has just taught you a new word. Ross chuckled a bit. 

Stratocracy, stratocracy, stratocracy, Harry quietly repeated to himself as they started to climb the small hill that would