Jennie Faulding Taylor - Pioneering Work Among Women

Pioneering Work Among Women

After the new arrivals had weathered two typhoons and arrived nearly shipwrecked in China, they donned Chinese clothes and ventured down the Grand Canal, looking for a place to settle down to mission work. It caused a scandal among the other Westerners in China to see a young single woman like Faulding adopt the Chinese dress, which was considered a compromise with an idolatrous culture. However, Taylor was undeterred in encouraging his missionaries to “adopt all things not sinful that were Chinese in order to save some”. In Hangzhou, Faulding proved the value of being an unmarried female, as her daily walks around the neighborhood gave her opportunities to be invited in by the Chinese women who did not feel threatened as they might have by a foreign man.

After she had been in China for five years, she was given a furlough at the request of her parents, that Hudson Taylor honored. Taylor accompanied her home in 1871. She had keenly felt the loss of Maria Taylor the year previously, her friend and mentor. On the way back to England, Hudson proposed marriage. She accepted on the condition of her parent’s approval – which was not easily obtained. Finally in November of the same year they were married. She instantly became the stepmother to Taylor’s four surviving children and a successor to Maria as the “Mother of the Mission”. Together, they had two children of their own and adopted an orphaned daughter of a missionary.