The China Years 1925-52: The Life and Letters of the Rev & Mrs Clifford V. Cook

In 1925, Elsie Cuthbertson sailed to China to become a missionary. She met and married Clifford Cook, also a missionary. Enduring hostility when the Chinese shouted “Yang kuei tsi” (“foreign devils”) at them in the street, they knew the dangers of the changing political spectrum. Under the Kuomintang, anti-Western demonstrations were common. They had to escape by barge, return and flee again from the Japanese invasion by hitching a ride in an American pilot’s plane. They suffered poverty, lack of medical care and the death of their own infants from lack of hygiene with remarkable equanimity. A record of values and times forever gone.

Raymond Cook, born in China, is the son of Elsie and Clifford Cook.