Nesse Arrival in China - Learning the Language

It was into this social, political and cultural maelstrom that grew out of China's long history, and the just-past Boxer Rebellion that two idealistic, Christian missionaries of Norwegian heritage arrived in central China. My mother came to China as a nurse under the auspices of the Trondheim Missionary Society. She was assigned to a large Norwegian hospital in Yiyang, Hupeng province, a day's sail up the Yangtze Rirer from Wuhan. My father emigrated from Norway to the US at age 17. He made his way through many jobs and help from earlier immigrants to complete his education at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minn. He accepted a call from the Norwegian Lutheran Church of America to be a missionary in China's central Honan and Hupeh provinces.

The Chinese language is unconscionable difficult. A missionary said once that the devil gave the Chinese this language to frustrate outside ideas from entering China. The language has 40,000 characters. Many of these have gone out of use and many are duplications (two characters for the same word). Characters must be memorized and a native teacher must say the word first - thereafter the student speaks them. The meaning of each character carries over from historic times. The Chinese teacher has no special training in teaching techniques. Most of them must naturally have his teacup in hand through instruction periods. The general impression here is that "you must teach the teacher teach you".