Gladys Aylward

Gladys May Aylward was born on February 24, 1902, in Edmonton, North London, to working-class parents. Her father was a postman, her mother a former domestic servant. The family attended church but lived with no particular religious intensity until Gladys, at eighteen, attended a revival meeting and experienced what she described as a profound conversion. The experience redirected everything that followed. She left her job as a parlormaid and applied to the China Inland Mission, convinced she was called to missionary work. The mission rejected her application after she struggled with the theological coursework, particularly the required languages. The rejection stung, but it did not deter her.

Unable to secure formal missionary sponsorship, Aylward took matters into her own hands. She worked as a parlormaid to save money for train passage to China, a journey that in 1930 meant traveling overland through Europe and Russia — dangerous, circuitous, and far cheaper than sailing. She carried a suitcase, a bedroll, food for the journey, and two pounds sterling. The trip nearly ended in disaster when fighting broke out between Russia and China, stranding her briefly in a war zone, but she eventually reached her destination: Yangchen, a remote city in Shanxi Province, where an elderly Scottish missionary named Jeannie Lawson had agreed to take her on.

Lawson was seventy-three and had been working alone for years. Together they opened an inn for muleteers — travelers leading mule trains through the mountains. The inn served meals, provided lodging, and offered something unusual for such establishments: Bible stories told each evening for entertainment. Aylward learned Mandarin quickly, adapting to local customs with a facility that surprised even her. When Lawson died in 1934, Aylward inherited not just the inn but a growing reputation for integrity and fearlessness that would define her work for the next twenty-five years.

The reputation brought official recognition. The Chinese government appointed her a foot inspector, tasked with enforcing the new law against foot binding. It was unusual for a foreign woman to hold such a position, but Aylward's fluency in the language and her evident respect for Chinese culture made her effective. She became a Chinese citizen in 1936, taking the name Ai-weh-deh — "the virtuous one." The decision reflected both practical necessity and genuine identification with her adopted country.

The work that would define her legacy began in 1938 when Japanese forces invaded Shanxi Province. As bombing intensified and conditions became desperate, Aylward organized the evacuation of nearly one hundred orphaned children, leading them on foot across the mountains to safety in Free China. The journey covered more than one hundred miles of dangerous terrain, pursued by Japanese forces, with Aylward responsible for children ranging from toddlers to teenagers. They walked for days, sleeping in caves, begging food from villages, crossing rivers and mountain passes. All the children survived. The feat became legendary, later forming the basis for the book The Small Woman by Alan Burgess and the Hollywood film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, though both accounts took significant liberties with the actual events.

Aylward remained in China through the war years, continuing her work with orphans and refugees while serving as an intelligence agent for the Chinese resistance. The Japanese placed a bounty on her head. She was wounded by shrapnel during a bombing raid and never fully recovered her health. By 1947, exhaustion and illness forced her return to England, where she found herself uncomfortable with the attention her story had generated. She did not fit easily into the role of celebrity missionary that others wanted to assign her.

Her Writing and Enduring Witness

Aylward was not primarily a writer, but her life generated a literature of witness that continues to influence Christian formation. Her own writings were modest: letters home, brief articles for missionary publications, and later a small memoir. The more substantial record comes from those who knew her and from the journalists and biographers who documented her story. What emerges from these accounts is not a simple narrative of heroic missions work but something more complex: a portrait of ordinary faithfulness under extraordinary circumstances.

The story that made her famous — the evacuation of the children — was indeed remarkable, but it was built on years of less dramatic work: running the inn, serving as foot inspector, learning language and customs, earning trust. Aylward's significance for spiritual formation lies in this foundation rather than in the dramatic episodes. She demonstrated that missionary work, at its core, is about presence, patience, and adaptation rather than conquest or cultural importation.

Her relationship with formal missionary structures remained complicated throughout her career. After the initial rejection by the China Inland Mission, she worked largely independently, supported by small donations from friends and churches but never fully integrated into the established missionary apparatus. This independence allowed her freedoms that more formally appointed missionaries might not have enjoyed, but it also meant working without the resources and support that institutional backing provided.

After her return to England, Aylward struggled to find her place. The publicity surrounding her story opened doors for speaking engagements, but she remained uncomfortable with fame. In 1957, at age fifty-five, she moved to Taiwan to work with Chinese refugees, drawn by the opportunity to serve Chinese people again and to escape the attention that had followed her in England. She established an orphanage in Taipei and continued working with children until her death.

Aylward died on January 3, 1970, in Taipei. Her funeral drew hundreds of mourners, including many of the children she had cared for over the decades. She was buried in Taiwan, having chosen to spend her final years among the people she had served rather than in the country of her birth.

Who should read about Gladys Aylward: Those who struggle to reconcile extraordinary calling with ordinary preparation, particularly readers who have faced rejection by established institutions but sense that God's purposes may not align with institutional gatekeeping. She is valuable for those exploring what it means to adopt rather than impose culture in service of the Gospel, and for anyone wondering whether dramatic callings require dramatic personalities — Aylward was notably unremarkable in most ways except persistence. She is less useful for readers seeking systematic theology or contemplative instruction, but essential for those learning what sustained faithfulness looks like when stripped of institutional support.