The Study Of Activities Of Female Missionary Ada Beeson Farmer In Guangxi In The Late Qing Dynasty (1902—1910)

After the Second Opium War, Protestant churches of American began to come to China, some of these churches have tried to preach in Guangxi which in the south China. But, because of the limits of geographical and social environment, including the effects of bandits’pillage and Taiping rebellion, churches which preached in Guangxi could not establish one station in the city, such as Presbyterian Church, Baptist Church. The Christian and Missionary Alliance was the special one, it established stations and preached around Guangxi successful. As a female missionary which came to China initially, Ada Beeson Farmer lived and preached in Guangxi many of years. She had witnessed the opening of Pingle and Liuzhou stations, and in her curse of preaching, she knew the local customs and social development progressively. In Guangxi, she focused on preaching to the woman and the child, and communicated with them. As one foreign female missionary, she had understood the life of Guangxi in her perception which was different from Chinese people. She documented things which about the local social life and the status of women and children, and wrote her own views meanwhile. These records are valuable and significant for today’s study which about the local society of former Guangxi. But, until now, there was no one academic fruit about the whole life of Ada Beeson Farmer in Guangxi. It is the deficiency of local history and ecclesiastical study. And this paper wants to reflect Ada Beeson Farmer’s activities in cities of Guangxi based on the interpretation of her personal diary and letters, and combining with other historical data, narrate the local communication between China and West in Guangxi which was little known by people.This paper contains introduction, text and conclusion. Introductory section introduces the study fruits of the cases of Christian missionaries in China form domestic and foreign scholars, the sources of this paper, the methods of research and the related concepts. The text is divided into four chapters. In order to illustrate the whole preaching environment of Guangxi, the first chapter is to analyze the social background of preaching in American and Guangxi, and narrates the early activities of the Christian and Missionary Alliance in Guangxi. The second chapter states Ada Beeson Farmer’s early life in American, including her childhood, school career, and the firming of aspiration to preaching in China. On the basis of her life in American, we can understand the willpower and inclination of Ada Beeson Farmer, and why she had built her ambition to China. According to chronological arrangement, the third chapter expounds Ada Beeson Farmer’s activities in Guangxi, including the study of language in Wuzhou, the transient residence in Guilin, the main preaching actions in Pingle and Liuzhou, and synchronously, discusses the awareness about entire geographic and social environment of Ada Beeson Farmer to these cities which she lived. The fourth chapter is designed to review the whole activities of Ada Beeson Farmer in Guangxi, and illuminate the significance of her preaching process on the basis of fundamental historical data. By means of comprehending Ada Beeson Farmer’s life in China, we can get the perspective of groups of female missionaries in Modern China from the micro-level.