Norwich bulletin., 1921-05-28
4ErTE RFRoM NORWICH Y. N. c. A.
 FOREIGN SECRETARY IN CHINA

ceived by General Secretary Edwin Hill | of the local Y. NJ c. A. and will doubt | less be interesting to a large number of people. especially to those. who by their contributions have enabled the Norwich Y. M c. A to support Robert W. Clack. secretary of the Paotingfu. China, r. NJ. c. A.. who writes this letter.
 Paotingfu, North China, April 2. 1921
 My dear Hill: Dust dust dust A yellowish gray coating over everything. Even inside the house with the windows sealed up, in a few minutes time coat will gather on the furniture thick enough for one to write in. And out-of-doors one must breathe it, eat it, and even the eyes get caked up with mud in the corn CTS.
 Year before last the rainfall was far below normal: last year there was al- most none: and now for three months only a furry of snow which was absorb ed by the dust without even making It muddy. All the roads are ankle. deep
 in dust making travel almost as diff cult as f they were running with mud. Unless ve get 2 good rain around Pao- tingfu within ten days all our wheat will be dead, and we are in for another year of famine. Fortunately in most of the sections outside the Paotingfu territory there has been rain. 90 the distress will q
 The central distributing dump of the American board is in the yard just across the street from our home. and I get good chance to see the working of our system of distribution both from the
 start to finish. We are getting in grain Ashipments almost every day now. and ! there is a continuous procession of carts and wheel barrows through the dust, eith- 1, CT bringing in the grain from the rail- | Irs,- gN
 stations in the counties southess st of this. | Then every day or two the people from one or another of the country sections of 1 this county come In for their month s
 supply of grain. They come in on foot l from as far as fifteen miles away and 1 carry the grain home on their backs. Just yesterday I saw one poor old woman of
 seventy with forty pounds of grain in her
 sack on her back. just starting on her little bound feet for a twelve mile trip back home She had left home at mid
 night tAe night before in order to get
 here in time and would not get back till after dark that evening as her poor
 crippled feet and the ahominahle roads
 made fast walking impossible. The
 greater part of those who come for the
 grain are children old people, as the
 able bodied are busy carrying water tc
 try to save their wheat. or else getting
 the ground ready to try to start a new
 crop with the seed we are furnishing
 them.
 This famine relief Is now. of course
 our greatest responsibility. We were dis
 appointed in our hope to get some on else to take the executive responsibilit!
 in our union relief committed. Ther has been absolutely no one else 10 do t and willy nilly I have had to shoulder i
 and do the best I could. Luckily VI have MT. Galt of the American boar
 mission al treasurer, and Mir. D. Fl , T.eavens of the Changsha Yale mission , Ga Norwich man), came in February t j take charge of the accounts until the las . of May. so that hardest part Of all i i, being very efficiently taken care of. " . now have our organization all set ur an , this last month fed almost half 2 nillio , people (cxact figure 4s7 .7570 This is onl '. little over half of these needing helr
 but we can quite easily feed the rest if v v can only get the funds.
 Our association secretaries are no'
 taking the entire responsibility for rc
 | ceiving the grain as it comes in, assign
 ing the proper amounts to the variou ' counties, and unloading 1t and deliverin v 1t to the missions and other gencies wh n do the actual distributing to the peopl d Wang Ching Hsiu. the youngest men1b' e of our staff. takes the main responsibil = ty for this and is handling it in 9 yer e efficient manner. He gives his who y time to the work. and the other seer e taries take turns helping to Euperinter Il the actual unloading of the grain. d Owing to so many students droppir
 out of our day school. because of tf 'f famine we have been obliged to discor Il tinue it temporarily since the winter v; 2 cation. But we have reorganized o' l, night school. so that many of the st' d dents who have been able to find woI
 during the day may stiii continue the = studies in the evening. We hope to r r. open the day school again after the fan n inc is over.
 IS But as most of our members are cf tl 'f city rather than the country they al IS only indirectly affected hy the fsmin 7, and we have to do our hest to keep [ y the work for them. The youths depsr
 ment is trying new wrinkle in stude s- Bible classes which so far promises 10 C. very successful. They have organized = special Bible study committee of thr
 students from each school Of high scho
 grade or higher (except one whose [
 rector is violently snti-Christian). al
 these students are themselves organiziI d" the classes Tn the schools. We only fu r. nish inc teachers. Each school has fro en one to three classes. Three classes a 4l to run for ten weeks and then prizes V ss be given to the schools having the lay oh est total attendance and the largest p' d. centage of attendance.
 '1he physical department. under [ tn leadership of Mr. Liu. entered teams ss both senior anr junior divisions of { IT, international hexathlon in February. ' ns got third place among the Chinese as' an citations in the senior division, and seco g. in the junior One of our juniors. re Hsiang Pc. competed In beth diyisio lss and won the highest individual total ms points not only in the junior divisi
 but in the senior as well.
 'a- Our annual membership campai ey, starts tonight We have set our goal TOT 500 members and have the best set lg- we have had yet. hut with the fam ny, conditions 1t is rather a problem as ai- what the result will be. Last year sa- set 400 ae our goal and got almost $ lie