Across China’s Gobi
The Lives of Evangeline French, Mildred Cable, and Francesca French of the China Inland Mission
Linda Benson
April 2008 | 280 pages
$24.99 (paperback) | ISBN
978-1-910736-71-5
$44.99 (hardback) | ISBN
978-1-910736-72-2
Also available from:
Amazon
| Barnes & Noble
| Blackwell’s
|
The Book Depository
| Booktopia
|
Indigo
In the 1920s, three adventurous and determined British women missionaries traveled along the traces of China’s old Silk Road to “gossip the Gospel” in the Muslim regions of northwestern China. But as this ground-breaking biography of Mildred Cable and the sisters Eva and Francesca French illustrates, their mission service was only one aspect of these three unconventional women’s lives. As members of the China Inland Mission, they advocated equality for women in mission service; in their varied writings they denounced the British opium trade; and on home leaves they wrote and published books that, in their lifetimes, brought them wide acclaim as adventurous travelers, authors and popular public speakers. Ultimately, the collaboration between Francesca French and Mildred Cable produced over 20 books, including Mildred Cable’s renowned travel classic, The Gobi Desert.
In this detailed and carefully researched account, Linda Benson reveals three extraordinary lives and provides new insight into the role of European women in the China mission field, the impact of warlord politics in Gansu and Xinjiang, and the lives of Muslim women in the far northwest.
About the Author
Linda Benson is professor of Chinese history at Oakland University, Michigan, and author of several books on northwestern China, including The Ili Rebellion and China’s Last Nomads. She is also the author of numerous scholarly works on China’s Muslim minorities and the 20th century history of the Xinjiang region.
Related products
This landmark study by a leading Chinese scholar of international relations significantly advances our understanding of the origins of Chinese Communist foreign policy. Basing himself on a wealth of previously inaccessible Chinese archival sources, memoirs, and official documents, Professor Niu charts the evolution of CCP foreign policy in the period preceding the revolutionary victory in […]
Arguably the first book to take a generational approach to the Chinese cinema, this book offers a broad picture of the evolution of Chinese cinema in its historical context, as well as thorough and insightful analyses of representative films from different generations.
The most comprehensive analysis and reference on the enormous water resource crisis confronting the People’s Republic of China. China’s Water Crisis (Zhongguo shui weiji) describes in detail the history of floods, water scarcity, and pollution problems in all seven of China’s major drainage basins and proposes solutions for future sustainable management.
Four Hundred Million Customers (1937) is a collection of humorous essays and piquant anecdotes underpinned by well-informed insight and highlighted by witty drawings by G. Sapojnikoff. Like a bowl of salted peanuts, these vignettes make you want “more.” The book was welcomed on its publication as the most entertaining and instructive introduction to the rapidly modernizing people […]
The roots of modern Sino-Japanese relations lie in the intense cultural and political exchanges which blossomed in the mid-1850s extending into the late 1920s. Scholarly interest has grown over the last two decades in the interaction between China and Japan in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. While much of that interest has centered […]
The Oriole’s Song is a love story — love of family, of entwined cultures, of life itself — during and after the turmoil of war. This beautiful recollection of an American girlhood in China during World War II is a continual delight with large insights and small moments made exqusite by delicate prose. On May […]