Missionary
🇬🇧Gladys Aylward
1902–1970 · British · Missionary to China; 'The Small Woman'
“I wasn't God's first choice for what I've done for China. There was somebody else — I don't know who it was — God's first choice. I don't know what happened. Perhaps he died. Perhaps he wasn't willing. And God looked down and saw Gladys Aylward.”
Biography
Gladys May Aylward was born in Edmonton, North London, the daughter of a postal worker. She worked as a parlour maid and felt called to China but was rejected by the China Inland Mission as unsuitable — too old, not educated enough. She refused to accept the verdict. She saved her wages week by week and in 1930 traveled to China by the Trans-Siberian Railway — alone, in the midst of the Russo-Chinese border war, with almost no money. She reached Yangcheng, Shanxi Province, where she worked alongside the elderly Scottish missionary Jeannie Lawson, running an inn for muleteers and telling them Bible stories. She became a Chinese citizen, took the name Ai Weh-de (Virtuous One), and served as a foot inspector for the Chinese government, using the role to enter homes with the gospel. When Japan invaded, she organized the evacuation of nearly a hundred children over the mountains to safety in Xi'an — a harrowing journey that left her physically broken. She spent her final years in Taiwan working with refugees and orphans. Her story was told in the biography The Small Woman (1957) and the film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958).
Key Works
Aylward's most dramatic deed was leading nearly a hundred orphaned children across the Shanxi mountains to safety during the Japanese invasion — a journey of over a hundred miles on foot through enemy territory while she herself was wounded and feverish. She established the Gladys Aylward Orphanage in Taiwan, which served hundreds of children. Her story, told in Alan Burgess's The Small Woman, became one of the most popular missionary biographies of the twentieth century and inspired the Hollywood film The Inn of the Sixth Happiness.
Legacy
Gladys Aylward became a symbol of what God can do through an ordinary person whom official channels have rejected. Her solo journey to China, her cultural integration, and her rescue of the children crystallized a theology of availability — that calling matters more than credentials. Her later work with refugees and orphans in Taiwan continued until her death. She is remembered in both Britain and Taiwan as a figure of extraordinary courage and faith.