Run to Glory: The Story of Eric Liddell

Eric crouched down lower in his hiding spot as he heard the noisy footfalls of platform shoes coming closer. He and his older brother, Robbie, loved to play games with Gee Nai Nai, their amah, and hide-and-seek was one of their favorites. As he heard his Chinese nanny call his name—she could not say “Eric,” so she called him “Yellee”—he started to laugh excitedly.

Slowly and deliberately her footfalls neared his hiding place. Eric always wondered what took her so long and why she took such tiny steps. Little did he realize the pain she lived with day after day, the result of her cruelly bound feet. The custom among many Chinese families at that time was to wrap strips of cloth tightly around their daughters’ feet so that the girls would grow up with tiny feet. As years passed, such tight bindings around the feet deformed the bones, and many girls and women couldn’t take a single step without experiencing great pain. But Gee Nai Nai, not a young woman, never complained, and her happy personality was adored by the Liddell children.

And then the amah’s face met his under the table. “There you are, Yellee,” the amah said to Eric in the rural dialect, tugging at his Chinese-style quilted coat. Laughing herself, she pulled him out and plopped him on her lap. “Enough games for now. It’s time for your lessons with Lordie and Jiernie.”

Trying not to smile, Eric imagined that “Lordie” and “Jiernie”—Robbie and their younger sister, Jenny—had picked their own hiding places by now. None of them was eager to be in school.

Tagging along obediently, Eric followed his amah to one of the two schools in the mission compound. The other school was for girls. In China at this time, only boys were given an education. When the Christian missionaries arrived, however, they urged families to allow girls to attend school, too. (Unfortunately, many Chinese girls were forced to seek refuge in the homes of the missionaries. As boys grew up, they helped provide money for their families, but girls couldn’t contribute in that way. So some families killed baby girls or left them out in the country to die. Those girls who were allowed to live were often terribly mistreated.)

Surrounded by a high wall made of hardened mud, the compound at Siaochang where Eric and his family lived consisted of four large brick houses, the schools, a hospital, and a chapel for church services. The village of Siaochang, which included the mission compound, consisted of small houses made of mud, another high mud wall, and a gate.

The gate remained open during the day, but when night came, the gate was closed and locked. There was relative peace in China now, but for years the people of Siaochang and greater China had feared for their lives. The roots of discontent could be traced to the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century, roots that were obsessively cultivated by the Jezebel-like dowager empress, Tz’u-hsi.

The Opium Wars (1839–43, 1856–60) were trade wars that began when China tried to suppress the opium trade by making it illegal for British merchants to bring opium into Chinese ports. For decades, the British had legally traded opium for Chinese goods, but the highly addictive drug was causing serious social and economic problems throughout China. When the opium trade became illegal, British merchants were unhappy because opium had been their major trade item. War broke out, and China ended up making major concessions to Western nations.

With the Treaty of Nanking, signed on October 8, 1843, China was forced to pay a large fine, open five ports to British trade and housing, and cede Hong Kong to Great Britain. But the Treaty of Tientsin, signed in 1858 and ratified in 1860, would have greater implications for Eric’s parents: China was forced to admit Christian missionaries and open travel to Westerners, including passage to the hitherto almost-unknown Chinese interior. In a terrible irony, a later agreement restored the legal status of the opium trade.

The Opium Wars left a bitter taste in the mouths of many Chinese, but few hated Westerners as intensely as Tz’u-hsi. After her consort, Emperor Hsien Feng, died in 1861, the empress became the virtual ruler of China because the heir to the throne, T’ung Chih, was only five years old. When he became old enough to rule, he proved a colossal disappointment to his mother. He not only encouraged young people to travel abroad, but he built a university in Peking where Western ideas were taught. When T’ung Chih died in 1875 at the age of nineteen, leaving a pregnant widow, the dowager empress wasted no time grieving. She quickly appointed her sister’s son to succeed to the throne. Hardly coincidentally, Kuang Hsu was also a young child—and so, once again, Tz’u-hsi greedily took the reins of power.

Secret societies had long existed in China, but until 1897 none had been supported so enthusiastically, if unofficially, by many of the royal court, including Tz’u-hsi. Although her nephew was now directing the government, Tz’u-hsi had found a cause she could readily endorse: the Righteous and Harmonious Fists, known to Westerners as the Boxers. The Boxers, who got their name because of their ritual, karate-style movements, were determined to rid all foreigners from China. They believed their bodies could stop bullets and even cannonballs and that no foreigner could fight them and win. To them, foreigners were the cause of the rampant social unrest throughout their country as thousands of Chinese workers lost their jobs due to Western industrialization. One of the Boxers’ manifestos proclaimed their ideology in this way:

To be converted to Christianity is to disobey heaven, to refuse to worship our gods and Buddha, and to forget our ancestors. If people act in this way, the morality of men and the chastity of women will disappear. To be convinced of this, one has only to look at their eyes, which are completely blue…. Our military strategy is simple: Boxing [karate] must be learned so that we can expel the devils effortlessly; the railways must be destroyed, the electric wires severed, the ships demolished. All this will frighten France and demoralize Britain and Russia…. Kill the blue-eyed devils.

By 1898 Tz’u-hsi was once again in control of China. When her nephew, who shared the pro-Western attitudes of his late cousin, attempted to imprison her, she succeeded in placing him under permanent house arrest at the Summer Palace in the Forbidden City. At the same time, she ordered his favorite wife to be thrown down a well to her death.

At age sixty-three, Tz’u-hsi was more determined than ever to rid China of all foreign influences. The time was ripe for the Boxer Rebellion, and the explosion was soon to occur. The time had also come for the Reverend James Liddell and his wife, Mary, to begin their missionary career in China.

Eric, Robbie, and Jenny loved to hear their mother and father tell stories of what China was like when they had first arrived. During the winters at Siaochang, when they spent most of their time indoors, their parents would first read to them from the Bible, and then continue their stories from the night before, stories that usually ended at a very exciting part.

In the very year that the empress Tz’u-hsi began her third period of rule, James Liddell arrived in Shanghai. Shortly after Mary joined him in 1899, the couple traveled to Mongolia, a northern province of China, to set up a mission station there. Mongolia! The name alone brought to mind jagged, forbidding mountain ranges, never-ending deserts, and wild, roaming peoples.

Eric and his brother and sister often wondered what had brought their seemingly shy and unassuming parents to such a wild and dangerous frontier. But that was before their own faith journeys would lead them to make similar kinds of fearless decisions. And that was before they understood the power of the Holy Spirit, a divine force that could not only bring two people together, but also lead them where even their imagination could not venture.

Drymen, Scotland, located on the southeast corner of Loch Lomond, was home to James Dunlop Liddell, who was raised the son of a grocer. Reserved, hardworking, and pleasant, the Liddells were like many other Scottish families of the era. They were also known for their devotion to God, which sometimes led to behavior unusual for most church members of the time. At religious meetings the Liddells sang loudly and uninhibitedly.

Though devout, James had never contemplated missionary service as a career. As a young man, he was employed as a draper’s apprentice in Stirling, Scotland, and was content with that calling until one summer holiday and one not-so-chance meeting changed his course. It was during this respite that a Congregational minister named William Blair struck up a conversation with James, and he shared in great depth the work of his church in overseas missions.

James was troubled in the months that followed. He was sure God was leading him into mission work—but where, and how? Certainly a piece of the puzzle was missing, and her name was Mary Reddin.

When they met at the annual Sunday school picnic in Stirling, Mary, a nurse from Glasgow, was visiting friends while convalescing from an illness. Since neither James nor Mary was from the area, they spent the entire afternoon talking and sharing their dreams. In particular, James told Mary of his desire to serve in an overseas mission, a strong yearning of Mary’s, as well.

Following that afternoon meeting, James and Mary enjoyed many get-togethers until Mary returned to Glasgow. Then they began an avid exchange of letters. With each succeeding missive came greater intimacy. Finally, James proposed marriage. Would Mary agree not only to be the wife of a minister, but the wife of a missionary in a distant land? Mary did not hesitate in her answer: Yes, she would go to the ends of the earth with James. The year was 1893.

James immediately applied for an ordination course in Glasgow and, following its completion in 1897, then applied to the London Missionary Society for admission into a course offered for those seeking mission appointments. The society, however, informed James that he could not marry until he completed the course and one year of hands-on training as a missionary in a foreign country. The society could not afford to pay for a wife’s passage until the husband had proved competent at such an overwhelming calling.

The next year, James set sail for Mongolia—alone. To prepare herself for the rigors of mission work, Mary went to the Isle of Lewis, in the Hebrides, to work as a nurse during the summer herring season. She would be kept busy mending the many cuts, gashes, and even worse injuries suffered by fishermen as they plied their trade with razor-sharp knives.

Although James had shown an aptitude for learning languages and had a good command of Chinese after one year, and while he was still sure of his life’s work, his letters to Mary of life in Mongolia were hardly promising. Freezing cold, swirling dust, strange nomadic peoples, a mission post that was a simple clay building, and mounting political unrest—this was the Mongolia James described.

But Mary Reddin was not deterred. This was the life she had wanted, too, and she would share that adventure with only one man.

On October 23, 1899, Mary and James were married in Shanghai Cathedral. They had no family with them—only their loved ones’ blessings and prayers. Immediately following the ceremony, the couple left for the mission post in Mongolia, traveling by steamer to the Gulf of Po Hai and then by train and mule cart to the mission.

Indeed, throughout 1899 the terrorist activities of the Boxers had escalated dramatically, with bands of these flailing marauders attacking Christians on sight. Not surprisingly, the peasants in rural China had been most receptive to the Boxers’ ideology. These poor people believed that if they did not do as the Boxers ordered, they would lose their crops because no rain would fall. In rural Mongolia, these attacks were repeated again and again.

In May of 1900, a Boxer faction descended on the mission station in Mongolia where James and Mary had been assigned. In the middle of the night, James and Mary, who was six months’ pregnant, grabbed one small suitcase and escaped in a rickety old wagon driven by a mule for many miles. When, after several dangerous days, they reached the seacoast, they boarded a boat and sailed once again for Shanghai. In their hasty flight, the Liddells left behind a trunk that contained invaluable information about life on the mission.

Even after James and Mary were ensconced in the mission compound of Shanghai, they could hardly feel at ease. A short time later, the Boxers brought their reign of terror to Shanghai, eventually departing to lay siege to other cities.

But not all Christian missionaries were so fortunate. More than two hundred were killed by the Boxers before the secret group was finally overthrown. On June 13, 1900, after the Boxers had entered the capital city of Peking, relief forces from Britain, France, Japan, Russia, Germany, and the United States attempted to secure their interests in China and protect its citizens. Tz’u-hsi, however, had other ideas. After dispatching imperial forces to turn back these relief armies, she declared that all foreigners residing in Peking would be killed. Finally, on August 14, 1900, the relief forces were able to gain permanent possession of the city, and a peace treaty was signed a year later, in September 1901. China was ordered to pay a stiff penalty over a period of forty years, as well as allow foreign troops to remain in Peking.

And what happened to Tz’u-hsi? The Liddell children delighted in this storybook ending. Disguised as a peasant, the dowager empress escaped from Peking riding in a mule cart, not even recognized by her own guards. Eighteen months after the Boxer Rebellion ended, in a magnanimous move, the British authorities allowed her to return to the Forbidden City. Slyly, she had admitted that she had left the city disguised because she, too, feared the Boxers would kill her. However, under the terms of the treaty, Tz’u-hsi would never again have any real power in China.

On August 27, 1900, while James and Mary were at the Shanghai compound, Mary gave birth to a boy, Robert Victor. When the baby was just a few months old, James decided he should return to Mongolia, despite the Boxer threats that still existed. He had other plans for Mary and Robbie, though. They would go to Tientsin, a city about eighty miles north of Peking and close to the Mongolian border.

But Tientsin had not been quite the haven James imagined. The Boxers had rampaged through Peking, and before they could be stopped completely by the relief forces, their next stop was Tientsin. On June 11, 1900, as Japanese Chancellor Sugiyama stood sentinel at the gateway to the city, he was shot dead by the marauding Boxers, who then terrorized Tientsin. While many women and children managed to escape, those who remained were sequestered with the other foreigners. For two months, the Boxers laid siege on Tientsin before an international military force of eight nations came to its aid.

When the Boxers realized their forces were decidedly outnumbered, they set off boxes of fireworks one night and escaped during the noisy confusion that ensued. They had clearly left their mark on the city. One-third of Tientsin had been burned to the ground.

Throughout the subsequent perilous days, Mary felt she and Robbie were being sheltered by God’s hand. But Mary had still received no word from James.

Traveling with Colonel Wei, the commander of a small force of the Chinese Imperial Army, James endured an extremely stressful journey. Despite the overthrow of the Boxers in Peking and the accompanying treaty, reprisal murders in rural villages were common, and the threat of bandits was constant. Furthermore, when they reached the former mission post in Mongolia, the sight was hardly welcoming. The mission had been completely abandoned, and there was nothing for James to do but return to Mary in Tientsin and await a new assignment—and, it turned out, a new member of the family.

Eric Henry Liddell was born on January 16, 1902, in Tientsin. His original name, “Henry Eric Liddell,” had been deemed unsatisfactory. On his way to register the birth of his new son, James was stopped in the street by a missionary friend. “What are you going to call the wee chap?” asked the friend.

“Oh, my friend, he’ll have a hard time at school with those initials!” came the unhesitating reply. Suddenly realizing what the initials for Henry Eric Liddell would spell, James and Mary changed the name immediately—but the story lived on, as a source of laughter and embarrassment to young Eric.

When Eric was several months old and Robbie was almost two, James received his new assignment in Siaochang, a village lying in the Great Plain of northern China, a region known for its extreme temperatures. Siaochang was one of two mission stations in the Great Plain, an area of more than ten million people (mostly farmers) and ten thousand villages. Although the land was considered a drought area and was subject to devastating dust storms, crops did thrive there. In a good year, the muddy rivers caused millet and wheat to flourish as well as soy beans, sweet potatoes, and peanuts.

Again James went first, with Mary arriving in Siaochang in the spring of 1903 with one-year-old Eric and two-year-old Robbie. To reach the mission compound from Tientsin, Mary and her sons had traveled six hours by train to Tehchow, stayed overnight at a flea-ridden inn, and then survived a forty-mile trek by mule cart that had lasted the better part of a day. But Mary’s spirits were buoyed at the gate to Siaochang. On a sign above the gate were written Chinese characters that spelled, Chung Wai, I Chai, meaning, “Chinese and Foreigners, All One Home.”

Yes, she believed, the Boxer Rebellion is indeed over. These people know we mean them no harm. James, who had been quickly dubbed Li Mu Shi by the villagers, a name which meant Pastor Liddell, rushed to sweep her into his arms, and then to hug his precious sons who had survived their earliest years miraculously unscathed.

Eric and Robbie, and later, Jenny, who was born in October 1903, were the only children in Siaochang who weren’t Chinese. As they entered school, the Liddell children learned to speak Chinese. Compared to the English alphabet, which has twenty-six letters, the Chinese language, known as kwan hwa, has fifty thousand characters or letters. Even to write a simple sentence, Chinese children must learn three thousand characters, or wen hwa.

For Eric, going to school with his amah meant learning more and more of these symbols. But Gee Nai Nai was patient, and she loved her time with Yellee, Lordie, and Jiernie, hours spent when Mary made her daily rounds at the mission hospital.

After school, Eric played with his many Chinese friends. He learned how to play Ping-Pong and chess, he learned to use chopsticks to eat, and he learned many Chinese songs. The people of Siaochang were always singing, whether out in the wheat fields seeding, plowing, and harvesting, or in their mud houses at night.

Summer was a favorite time of year for missionary families on the Great Plain. To escape the intense heat of Siaochang, where temperatures would reach 100 degrees Fahrenheit on most days, the Liddells traveled east to the coast, to the town of Pei-tai-ho on the Gulf of Pei-chili.

Dressed in his one-piece bathing suit held up by shoulder straps, Eric spent his days on the beach splashing and laughing in the warm waters and taking an occasional swimming lesson from Mary. James joined the family in August because that was harvesttime in Siaochang, a time spent out in the fields and not in church, and he felt free to leave the mission compound.

In August 1906, James Liddell joined his family at this treasured retreat for what would be their last summer together for many years. After reading his first newspaper at the beach, James made it clear to his family that Scotland was on his mind.

“Mary, you simply won’t believe this!” James exclaimed, rubbing his bushy gray mustache.

“Father, may I see, too?” Robbie asked, not wanting to be left out. Eric’s blue eyes peered over his brother’s shoulder, trying to see what had captured his father’s attention.

Laughing, James explained. “He’s the first Scot to win a medal in track at the Olympics, Eric.” The boys’ faces were blank, but James continued anyway. “Well, Halswelle won the silver medal, or second place, in the 400-meter race.”

Smiling at Eric’s understanding, James nodded. “That’s right, son. No Scottish runner has ever won the Olympic gold medal.” Thinking a moment, James realized that he didn’t want to give Eric the wrong message. “Eric, winning a medal isn’t that important. What matters is how you run the race of life. Do you remember what Paul wrote to the church at Corinth?” Reaching on the sand for his ever-present Bible, James flipped the pages to the New Testament. “Ah, here it is: ‘Run in such a way to get the prize.’ And what prize is that?”

In the spring of 1907, seven-year-old Robbie, five-year-old Eric, and three-year-old Jenny boarded a German liner with their parents for the six-week journey that would end at Southampton, England. The children were excited at the prospect of such an adventure, but Mary couldn’t hide her concern. Eric had been recovering from a bout of dysentery, and the dark circles under his eyes, not to mention his fragile frame, had made her question the timing of this spring furlough.

Just before they left Siaochang, a missionary friend, seeing Eric, had remarked to Mary, “That boy will never be able to run again!” Stroking her son’s forehead as the ship trudged along its course, she could almost believe those words. Almost, but not completely.

She had sensed God’s hand at every crossroads in her life—at the Sunday school picnic, in the Shanghai Cathedral, in forsaken Mongolia and Tientsin, and most especially in Siaochang, where He had blessed them with years of contentment. Now God was leading them back to Great Britain, to Scotland. He would not forsake His child, Eric Liddell.