Chinese Saint
🇨🇳Dora Yu
1873–1931 · Chinese · Evangelist, Bible Teacher & Pioneer of Chinese Women's Ministry
“The highest calling of a woman is to win souls for Christ.”
Biography
Dora Yu (Yu Cidu) was born in 1873 in Zhejiang Province to a scholarly family. Educated in mission schools and later trained as a physician, she served initially as a medical missionary in Korea. A profound spiritual crisis led her to a deeper consecration to God, after which she returned to China as an itinerant evangelist and Bible teacher. She became one of the most powerful evangelists of her era, conducting revival campaigns in cities across China. Her preaching combined doctrinal depth with personal urgency, calling believers to holiness and the fullness of the Holy Spirit. In 1920 she established the Bethel Mission in Shanghai, a training center for Christian workers that became one of the most significant institutions of the Chinese church. Dora Yu is perhaps best remembered as the evangelist through whose ministry Watchman Nee came to faith in 1920, a connection that profoundly shaped the trajectory of Chinese Christianity. She continued traveling and preaching until poor health forced her to rest, and she died in 1931. Her combination of evangelistic zeal, biblical teaching, and institutional vision made her a towering figure in early twentieth-century Chinese Christianity.
Key Works
Dora Yu's most enduring institutional work was the founding of the Bethel Mission in Shanghai in 1920, which trained hundreds of Chinese Christian workers over its years of operation. Her evangelistic campaigns were extensively documented by those who witnessed them. She wrote devotional materials and Bible study guides that circulated widely among Chinese Christians. The Bethel Band of evangelists she helped inspire continued her legacy of itinerant evangelism across China and Southeast Asia well after her death.
Legacy
Dora Yu broke barriers as a female Chinese evangelist at a time when women's public ministry was widely questioned. Her establishment of the Bethel Mission created an institutional framework for training indigenous Chinese evangelists that outlasted her own ministry. Most significantly, her influence on Watchman Nee connected her legacy to the millions of believers shaped by Nee's writings and the Local Church movement. She stands as the mother of modern Chinese evangelism.