This service is intended for Wheaton College students, faculty and staff; people who live in convenient driving range to campus; or people who will be visiting Wheaton's campus. Every month, this Bulletin Board will highlight a new document or set of documents that are available in the Archives. Come on over and have a look!

February 2009: At Home in Shanghai

Clockwise from upper left: Gateway; Servants' Quarters; View from Entrance; Chinese Hostel

Views of the New Compound -- China Inland Mission -- Shanghai, an undated photo booklet with sixteen views of CIM's Shanghai compound in the coastal city in China, probably from 1931.

Compiled into a small booklet, these black and white photos depict the facilities of CIM’s international headquarters during the era in China when missionaries more commonly operated out of gated compounds. Unlike other missions, CIM based its international headquarters in China, rather than in one of its sending countries (in part because for eighty-seven years it operated in only one country). This placed the headquarters facilities, senior executives and administrative staff much closer to its operations in the interior of China. Many CIM missionaries, both new to the mission and those returning to China after their furloughs, therefore passed through and stayed at these facilities before returning to their assignments inland. (While vacating the facilities from 1942-1945 during the Japanese occupation to relocate in Chungking, they returned to Shanghai in 1945 after the war. In 1951, CIM evacuated its missionaries and administrative staff from China after being expelled by the communists. Only after this relocation did the mission expand its ministry into other countries in Southeast Asia and locate its headquarters in Hong Kong and then Singapore, being renamed Overseas Missionary Fellowship.) These photos provide a glimpse inside the walls and allow the viewer to walk the grounds, halls and rooms of the compound. The photos are from Collection 215, Records of the United States Home Council of Overseas Missionary Fellowship (China Inland Mission.

Click here to see enlarged versions of the individual pictures, or click an individual image on this page to link to that enlargement. Once there, can you find the portrait of mission founder Hudson Taylor? The Chinese temple in the background? Power lines? The 1531 address? The piano?