Celebrating and harvesting

As we're finally leaving the dark, cold and poor January behind us in Scandinavia, the Chinese are about to enter their big festivity of the New Year. In 2022 the year of the Tiger starts on the 1st of February. In 1905, the newly baked missionary Olga spent her first Chinese New Year celebrating the...

Taking risks during Christmas in China

From the stories my grandmother used to tell me when I was little, there is one I often think about come Christmas. It was 1895 and my grandfather's parents, Dagny and Robert, were newlyweds. They lived in a small Chinese mountain village called Hancheng in the northwest. There were no other Europeans there, and it...