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SCMP Reporter

FEW Westerners could claim to have had as much influence on China and to have revealed as much to the outside world about an epic chapter in the country's history than a quiet missionary who died in England this week.

  Ironically, Alfred Bosshardt, the man who survived the Communist Army's tortuous Long March, was perhaps more famous in the West as Jakob Kellner, the central character in Anthony Grey's epic novel, Peking.

  It is more ironic that his book on the Long March, The Guiding Hand, has been translated into Chinese and is now used in courses at the Beijing National Defence University.

    Born to Swiss Baptist parents in Manchester, on January 1 1897, Bosshardt joined the China Inland Mission after completing an apprenticeship in engineering. He sailed for Guizhou Province in China in 1922.

  In 1925 the area was struck by severe famine and Bosshardt fell victim to typhoid and almost died. Soon after his recovery he met Rose Piaget, the daughter of the Swiss watchmaker, and they were married in 1931.

   He and Rose were captured by Communist forces in Guizhou on October 1 1934, along with a missionary colleague from New Zealand, Arnolis Hayman - just seven weeks after the troops began their historic Long March.

  Bosshardt was to walk with the troops for nearly 4,000 kilometres because his captors believed he was a spy.

  About 100,000 Communists, armed only with simple weapons and without any motorised transport, set out from southeast China on a fighting retreat that took them across trackless wastes to Shanxi in the northwest.

   Rose was soon freed but Bosshardt was kept captive to share the ordeal as the marchers endured repeated land and air attacks from Chiang Kai-shek's nationalist forces.

  Bosshardt was to write later: ''In such bleak conditions, captors and captives have much in common. At the frontiers of endurance, men cling together. Under extreme conditions there is a common struggle for survival.''   Bosshardt was repeatedly sentenced to death in support of ransom demands. Once, after escaping for a short time, he was stripped and beaten with bamboo rods.

   In a nearby province, other Long March Communists beheaded two young married American missionaries, and Bosshardt could only stand helplessly by as Chinese landlords and other ''class enemies'' were beheaded by teenage peasants competing to wield the swords.

   A date was finally set for the execution of both missionaries if a ransom of US$100,000 was not paid. For months, deals were proposed under which the mission was supposed to provide everything from arms to medicine. Bosshardt and his colleague were threatened with execution and cruel beatings. Even when coolies arrived bearing sacks of silver, the troops went back on their word and released only Hayman.

   Bosshardt developed an emotional as well as practical attachment to his captors. He made himself a crochet needle so he could knit them gloves, and his ability to read French made him a special asset. The Chinese maps which the army were using had been produced for schools, and were strategically useless.

  French maps could be bought in one city, but the commander could not read them. The missionary translated them into Chinese, and so became a Red Army guide at a crucial time in Guizhou.

     He was released in Kunming on Easter Sunday 1936 when he was diagnosed as suffering from pleurisy, bronchitis, beri-beri and other diseases. Doctors said he would otherwise have died within days. Rose flew to meet him and the couple journeyed to Britain before returning to rural China to settle.

    After the Communists arrived in the city in 1948, pressure was put on Christians to renounce their faith, but Bosshardt's church was not closed and only one of his congregation recanted.

   By 1951 all missionaries were expelled from China. Rather than go back to Europe the Bosshardts moved on to Pakse, Laos, to work among mandarin-speaking Chinese.

  Again they were viewed as spies, and it took time to build trust. One of Bosshardt's guiles was to win over the children first.

   In May 1965, just as the Bosshardts were due to retire to Europe, Rose died. The following year he retired to Manchester, to play a leading role in the Chinese Church, which draws Chinese-speaking students from all over Asia.

   In 1990 he moved to a Kent retirement home run by the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. A mysterious paralysis, which doctors connected to deprivation on the Long March, made it vital for him to have full-time nursing care.

   While recovering from his ordeal on the Long March, Bosshardt wrote an account of his experiences, The Restraining Hand, which was followed in the 70s by a fuller autobiography, The Guiding Hand.

   In the 80s he made contact with General Xiao Ke, commander of the section of the army which had taken him captive, and China's greatest surviving hero of the Long March.

  The two men exchanged messages following a chance remark to Xiao Ke by an American writer that his old prisoner was still alive in England. Each expressed surprise and pleasure that the other had survived and they continued to exchange messages until recently, although they never met again.

  The messages led to publication of The Guiding Hand in China. The commander even wrote his own foreword, urging communists to respect historical truth and admit they were wrong to treat missionaries as spies.

   The translation of The Guiding Hand has since been used for instruction at the Beijing National Defence University. A Chinese dramatist, Zheng Zhong, is preparing a screenplay and the Sian Film Studio is planning an international film based on the book.

   Anthony Grey, the former Reuters correspondent who was held captive by the Red Guards at the time of the Cultural revolution wrote this week: ''Bosshardt was perhaps the most saintly individual I've ever met. In the horror of the Long March he put asideall thoughts of hatred.'' 



Missionary's Long March ends quietly