“Educated in China, Elsie finds ‘good earth’ here” from the February 26, 1970 Door County Advocate
MRS. JOHN HARDING and her daughter, Jayne, examine an exquisite Chinese Mandarin figurine — a souvenir of Mrs. Harding’s childhood. The daughter of missionaries, Mrs. Harding and her sisters were born and educated in China. One sister now lives in California and the other is in Denmark. —Advocate
Educated in China, Elsie finds ‘good earth’ here
By KETA STEEBS
An education which began decades ago in a Chinese boarding school is being continued here in Sturgeon Bay. The transplanted but still eager scholar is Mrs. John Harding of Ellison Bay, a registered nurse who is anxious to resume her interrupted career.
Mrs. Harding, the former Elsie Jacobson, is the daughter of a Danish father and Norwegian mother who, early in their married life, left their Scandinavian homeland to trek to China as missionaries. Elsie was born in a small village called Changwu located near the Tibet border in the Shensi [Shaanxi] province of north China—an area which later achieved the dubious distinction of being the cradle of Chinese communism.
At the time the Jacobsons arrived in Shensi it was a sleepy, backward area gradually getting over the effects of the Boxer Rebellion. Parents still bound the feet of girl babies, war lords ruled the peasantry, c----- [indentured] labor was cheap and plentiful, Buddha was almost universally worshipped and each home had its own special idol.
The Jacobsons were the only white family living in the village. As representatives of the Scandinavian Alliance Mission (now known as the Evangelical Alliance Mission) their duty was to educate and convert as many heathen as possible. There was, Elsie remembers, a “certain strain of antagonism” evident on the part of several dyed-in-the-wool pagans which deterred the elder Jacobsons not one whit.
“My parents worked with and made friends of the common, working class people,” she recalls. “Many villagers and farmers became Christians as a result of their untiring efforts.”
Elsie remembers her parent’s home as being a well built, comfortable building with rooms built, oriental style, around a courtyard. The furnishings were European and Mrs. Jacobson had no difficulty in finding household help. Elsie remembers her family’s Amahs (maids) being paid $7 a month—an excellent wage by Chinese standards and one which made them the envy of their less fortunate neighbors.
Chinese homes were unique in that each contained a large bed made of bricks called a “kang” on which the entire family slept. The bed (which will never replace Simmons) was built about three feet off the floor and had a hollow interior. A small door built into one side enabled the householder to heat the bricks by inserting a heated charcoal brazier inside. Mother, father and children curled on top of the warm (if unyielding) surface and slept the sleep of the just.
Each home, no matter how humble, was equipped with a niche to house the family idol. Idols were changed at the beginning of each new year (for good fortune) and Elsie remembers the ones she saw as being “almost unbearably ugly.” Larger statues, displayed in shrines, were so monstrous in appearance she still shudders to think of them.
No well-brought-up, gently reared European child attended a Chinese school and Elsie, along with her two sisters, were no exceptions. They were sent to the seaport town of Chefoo and enrolled in a boarding school run by missionaries. At the tender age of six Elsie saw her parents only three months a year (December, January and August) but remembers being exceptionally happy under the circumstances.
Her twelve years of strictly disciplined schooling to entitled her to qualify as an Oxford University candidate (an honor she couldn’t accept) and provided her with an excellent knowledge of Latin and French. Curiously, Chinese wasn’t taught in school and Elsie’s rudimentary acquaintanceship with the language was obtained on her own time with the help of friendly villagers.
Although the girls wore European clothes to school they were forced to adopt the Chinese style of dress during the cold winter vacation months.
“We wore the traditional wadded garments,” Elsie says. “We had our choice of trousers and tunics or Mandarin robes. Neither would win a fashion award but they kept us warm.”
All wares were sold out in the open. Shoppers were so accustomed to haggling over prices (usually ending up by paying half of the merchant’s first figure) that Elsie found it hard to break the habit here. “Maxwell street in Chicago is about the only place I can do it,” she says ruefully.
Elsie sailed for America on the Tatsuta Maru, the last Japanese passenger ship to make the voyage back in 1941. Pearl Harbor effectively eliminated further trips for another four years. The Jacobsons spent one memorable day in Honolulu before disembarking in San Francisco. The sight of American dock workers doing “c----- labor” was a sight the teenage emigrant never forgot. “I had never seen a white person work like that before,” she says.
Visiting her first “dime” store was such a delightful experience she feels eternal gratitude toward Barbara Hutton’s ancestors.
From San Francisco the family moved to Chicago where Elsie attended the Moody Bible Institute for three years before entering nurse’s training at the famed Swedish Covenant hospital. Elsie’s highly regarded English education may have qualified her for Oxford but it wasn’t good enough for the Chicago Board of Education. The young boarding school graduate was forced to undergo special tutoring and write a difficult examination paper before being admitted for training.
After successfully earning her degree Miss Jacobson became Mrs. John Harding and eventually the mother of six attractive children—a circumstance which caused her to forsake her hard-won nursing career and begin a new way of life.
She and John owned and operated a large nursery school in Chicago which became a second home for 73 children. This enterprise ended three years ago when the Hardings bought a farm and business in Ellison Bay.
Now busily engaged in helping her husband run the Norrland motel, Mrs. Harding still finds time for Girl Scout activities (she’s a Brownie leader), church work (the family belongs to the Sister Bay Baptist church) and is currently attending a nurse’s refresher course in Sturgeon Bay.
I’d like to go back to nursing on a part time basis,” the attractive homemaker says a bit wistfully. “It’s the most satisfactory career I can think of.”
If, in the not too distant future patients in the Door County Memorial hospital recognize the smiling face accompanying this article they’ll know that once again the indomitable Mrs. Harding has accomplished her goal.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
[The word which is censored twice refers to low-paid indentured laborers from Asia. The original and uncensored version is available from the Door County Library Newspaper Archive.
The title references a novel, “The Good Earth”, which was also made into a movie. It was written by Pearl S. Buck, a daughter of missionaries in China.]
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