The second edition of Jeanette Li was recently published by Crown & Covenant Publications. What follows are excerpts from that book (with chapter numbers).

1. Almost a Castaway

Turning to face his astonished aunt, [my father] said, “I Shum, is not this child a human being? Then why do you want to cast her out to die? You regard sons as most precious simply because they perpetuate the family name, while girls ‘are born facing outside,’ only to marry into another clan. It is my desire and hope that this child may remain with us always, to be a companion and comfort to her mother and me.”

On hearing these incredible words his aunt went away angry, embarrassed, and baffled. Taking the baby girl [Jeanette Li] back to his wife he said, “My heart has been empty, suffering bitter grief all these years. This child, though not a son, shall make up for all our loss and sorrow, bringing us comfort and joy. We shall never send her away.”

From her inmost heart his wife replied, “We have only this one wee mite. Thank you for not even thinking of putting her away.”

As he gently placed the child in her mother’s arms he said, “Your words have saved me from the grief and sorrow I feared. Of every ten girls sent to the foundling house, nine are soon dead. But this child is our precious treasure.”

Weeping tears of disappointment because she had not borne a son, she said to the child, “If you are a lucky one, very well. If not, we’ll make the best of it. I am very sure of one thing: if your brothers and sister had not died, and if Grandmother were alive today, you would have no such welcome. She would cast you out to die. Even though you are only a girl born facing outside, you are better than none. We shall give you an opportunity to live.”

So that is why my great-grandmother died: that I, this un­wanted girl child, in the good providence of God should not die as a castaway. She died that I might be allowed to live and tell the story of my life and of God’s goodness to me.

2. A Girl at Our School!

For hundreds of years, until near the end of the 19th century, the Yin family had lived in Deqing, a city about 200 miles southwest of Canton and not far from Wuzhou on the border of Guangxi (Zhuangzu) Province. It lay in a poverty-stricken district facing the Xi River on the south and hemmed in by mountains on the north.

The mountains were largely stripped bare of forests and bracken for fuel. Heavy rains gouged great gullies in the mountainsides and washed down coarse gravel that destroyed rice fields in the valley. With the impoverished soil, frequent crop failures caused by drought, and occasional floods when the river inundated the whole valley, people depended on rice and other foods imported from Guangxi (Zhuangzu) and Yunnan. Though people were industrious, thrifty, and honest, all business and industry was unprofitable. They suffered hardship and poverty in hopeless patience.

The standard of living was low, and the mental culture had so deteriorated that the people imagined there lurked many dangers in the world beyond. They so firmly feared the powers of evil spirits that they did not readily accept anything new. Rather, they built up barricades of fear, ignorance, and superstition, hoping to hold back these harmful forces. They were as men with shackled feet unable to make progress.

There was not one wheeled vehicle in the district; all travel was on foot; all farm products and all merchandise were carried on the shoulders of men and women.

Long after steamboats were known, because of superstitions, only small boats towed by men were allowed on the upper reaches of the Xi River, which was navigable far up into Guangxi Province. Such was the background of the life of the Yin family in Deqing.

Following the ancient Chinese custom, the entire clan lived together in the ancestral home. At the time I was born, the family consisted of about forty persons.

According to tales told by my uncles and aunts of family affairs during the reign of my great-grandmother, what with the quarrels and jeal­ousies, the hatred and the gossip, there was little peace or happiness in that household. When my great-grandparents had grown very old, on the insistence of the younger generations, the families, the food, and the finances were divided. But all the relatives continued to live under the ancestral roof though in separate apartments. All depended largely on the estate that had been handed down from their forefathers. The main business consisted of buying and selling tobacco leaves, and my grandfather, being the eldest son, had inherited the management of the business.

5. Found by a Heavenly Father

The [Mission Hospital] doctor found I was suffering from malaria, hookworms, and other parasites, so she said I should stay in the hospital for care and medication….

She often spoke to me about “Our Father in heaven,” and I supposed she was talking about my father. She said, “If you want to see your Father in heaven you must believe in Jesus.”

“Oh, I believe. I do believe. Please take me quickly to see my papa.”

She then saw that I had a wrong idea, so she explained, “Our heavenly Father is not the father you had here on earth who died. He is God who created the heavens, the earth, and people and all things. So we belong to him. All who believe in him and love him call him ‘Our Father in heaven.’ He loves you even more than your own father loved you and he will care for you, embracing you with his everlasting arms.”

When she said that, I threw my arms around her neck and wept: “Please take me to him,” I said. “My heart is urgent.”

“Our Father in heaven is a spirit,” she explained. “He doesn’t have a form or body like we have, and we can’t see him with our eyes. His Son, Jesus, came to earth and had a body like ours. He died for our sins, so we must believe in him and he will forgive our sins and lead us to the heavenly Father. He will give you peace and will never leave you without comfort.”

Again I said, “Take me to him quickly. The more you tell me the more eager my heart is to go to him.”

She said, “Only Jesus can lead you to him.”

This made me sad and I cried out, “O Jesus, lead me to my Father.”

Many days passed and, seeing that I was really seeking the heavenly Father, she taught me to pray to him in the name of Jesus. We knelt together, and I repeated her prayer after her as she confessed that she was a sinner and asked his forgiveness because of the death of Jesus for sin.

We prayed, “Make me a clean new person, a child that will please God, and receive me as your child, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.” She said, “This is the way you speak to your heavenly Father, so every time you feel lonely and in need of your father who has died, just pray for what is in your heart. He is always glad to hear his children speak to him.”

After this, I often prayed, and as I learned to pray, I was mysteriously changed. I ceased continually to cry and call for my father. As I now know, all these sad experiences were God’s grace to me. He used sickness and death to break up the home in which I had been lovingly nestled. But he did not cast me off and forsake me. As the eagle he “spread forth his wings, caught me up in his wings,” and carried me even to his own home to become his child, and to obtain such blessing and peace and joy as this world cannot give. If he had not done this I should have followed my father in his superstition and idol worship on the way to hell.

After I recovered from my illness, Dr. McBurney said to me, “Before you go, I want to take you to a place where there are many girls.”

So I went with her, and my mother followed. She took me to the Love Doctrine School for Girls. I saw one girl I knew, Huang Jin Ying, a distant relative, so I ran and sat down beside her. When my mother called me to go home, I said, “I am not going home.”

The doctor urged her to let me stay with my friend, as it would help me to get well and forget my sorrow. My mother remembered that my father had promised that I should get an education. She noticed how healthy and happy all the girls were and decided to let me stay and study. Then she could go to work as usual.

She went to Jin Ying’s desk and told me I could stay in school. I was so delighted that I laughed aloud and danced for joy. This was what my father had promised.

So we went to the principal, who was the sister of the doctor.

She asked me many questions, and I answered so clearly that I was accepted as a student. When she asked my name, my mother said, “Yin Zhao Ya.” The teacher said, “That is not a suitable name for a pupil in school. You should give her another name.”

“I remember now,” she said. “Her father called her Mao Ya (Jasmine Bud)when she was born. Then later he gave her a ‘read-book name,’ Dao Xing.”

The teacher was pleased with that name and said, “Dao is for Dao Li, which means doctrine or teaching, and Xing is for Xing Wang, which means prosperity. The doctrine of Jesus prospers.” I did not understand until some years later what it meant for Jesus’ doctrine to prosper.

6. A House Divided

Though [my family, when I returned home] was divided, living and eating separately, all worshiped at the same shrine which was in our section of the house—the one farthest back from the front entrance. Since we were Christians, we could not sin against God by worshiping ancestors and idols.

So I went to my uncles and said, “My mother and I believe in Jesus and cannot worship any God but him. So from now on I cannot worship at the ancestral tablets, nor burn incense to them. Nor can we share in the cost of incense and candles. Every year we shall go and help repair ancestral graves, but we can’t join in the worship.”

When my uncles’ mother heard me say this, she very ex­citedly scolded and cursed and even beat me. My Sixth Aunt said to her, “Don’t do that. The village elders may hear of it and say we insult the ancestors by mistreating this lone widow and her daughter.”

So they stopped scolding and beating me, and I went home and told my mother what I had done.

After a few days my father’s older sister came to visit us. Among all the relatives, she was the one who was kind to us. But she also reproved us for not worshiping as she worshiped, and she wept.

“Dai Gu, do not cry,” I said quietly. “Please listen to me. When I was born, everyone said I was just a girl ‘born facing outside,’ and they advised my parents to send me off, unwanted, to the foundling house. But they refused. If they had sent me off to that place for foundlings, I certainly would have died. Wouldn’t that be the same as for me not to worship here now? Since I was born a girl, would I not be married into another clan and not required to worship here? Just pretend that I was married off early and that, like the married aunts, I don’t worship here.”

My aunt quit scolding and went out to an uncle and said, “Uncle, this girl is irreverent toward her forefathers. She was born stubborn and with a sharp tongue. Leave her alone. I can’t convince her.” Then she went to her own home. This was in 1911, when I was just twelve years old.

At the New Year, my mother and I went to visit her elder brother. They had heard rumors that we were irreverent toward the ancestors, and also that she was an immoral woman. They refused to accept her explanation.

While I was playing with my cousin, he bumped his head against the wall, so they bumped mine until it bled. When my mother came to my help they beat her, until I ran out into the street and called, “Save a life! My uncle is beating my mother.” Neighbors came and helped us escape from our relatives.

As we came home, I said, “Jesus knew these things would come to us, and he said, ‘Rejoice and be exceedingly glad…for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you’ (Matthew 5:12). We must be patient and endure it.”

46. Our Passport—My Bible!

This was the last outpost of the Communists, and the guard who stopped us was especially careful and severe in examining our baggage. He noticed that, besides toilet articles and such things, I had a Bible in my bag.

“What book is this ?” he asked.

“It is a Holy Bible,” I said. “It is the book that teaches salvation through Jesus Christ. It tells of the God who created heaven and earth. He sent his Son Jesus to earth to die for sinners.”

“Such a book you should throw away at once,” he snarled.

I said, “Even if I were to throw away everything else, I would never throw away this book.”

He opened it and held it in his outspread hands, but upside­down. So I knew that he could not read, but I said nothing.

Our driver said, “Never mind. We shall have to be examined in the city.”

The guard said, “This book is so big and thick. It certainly contains many things which I must examine carefully.”

I said, “This book tells you how to be saved; it is the best book you could read. If you turn it the right side up it will be easier to read and understand.”

As I spoke I turned it around and put it back into his hand.

“I have no time to read,” he said. “Go on and find an inn.”

Then he put down the Bible and left us.

We then entered the city and went to the office where bag­gage was examined, but they had closed for the night.

The driver said, “We need not be afraid to enter the city now. In case you are awakened during the night and quizzed, just tell who you are and where you came from.”

We prayed to the God who neither slumbers nor sleeps to protect us, and we slept undisturbed.

At seven o’clock next morning, we went to the south gate to be examined. We were the first to arrive and were first in line for examination. But the man in charge for some unexplained reason put us at the end of the line, and kept us there in the hot sun from 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. By that time, all were tired and hungry, the children were crying, and I had fever and a headache. Our driver begged the officer to examine us at once, but he refused; so our driver went out and bought food for us.

I had two travel permits, or passports; one was given me by the hospital regarding my work. The other was a certificate of citizenship from the National Government of China.

While we waited at the end of the line, several young women came who, I judged by their dialect, were from Guangdong and probably had some connection with the New First Army. They insisted on getting in line ahead of us, but when they came out of the office they were weeping. I heard whispers that it was because of their passports, and the officers had been insulting. Then I thought of my two passports, so I took out the one given me by the National Government in Changchun. What could I expect if the Communists saw that? I went at once to the toilet, tore the passport to small pieces, threw it into the open toilet, and covered it with a brick. I came out and was immediately called for examination.

The officer asked my name, address, and occupation. I said, “I am an evangelist; I have been teaching the patients in the hospital in Changchun.”

He asked, “What is the number of your passport?”

“I cannot remember the number,” I replied.

“An evangelist and you cannot remember the number of your passport?” he questioned. “What did you teach the sick people?”

I said, “I taught them about the God who created heaven and earth and all things. That he is owner and ruler of all. Though men do evil, he loves them and sent his Son to die on the cross to save them.”

He said, “Do you live according to what you teach?”

“I teach what the Bible tells me and what I have personally experienced,” I replied.

He asked, “Let me see your Bible.” I took it out of the bag on my shoulder and handed it to him. He took it and said, “Up to this time many men have passed through here and claimed to be pastors, but they had no Bibles. You are the first Christian to carry a Bible. I believe you really are a Christian teacher. We don’t need to examine your baggage. How many are with you?”

When I told him, he at once wrote a paper permitting us to travel.

All along the way I depended on my Bible to testify for me and to be, under God, my guardian.

Postscript

Jeanette Li served and evangelized with the Reformed Presbyterian Mission in Manchuria for many years. After fleeing to Hong Kong, she eventually traveled to the U.S. and became a U.S. citizen. She spent the last years of her life as part of the Los Angeles, Calif., RPC. She went to be with the Lord just before the English translation of her biography was published in 1971.