聂乐信 · 1871 – 1960 · Danish (Chinese nationality from 1931)
Ellen Nielsen (Ellen Kirstine Marie Nielsen) was born on 17 July 1871 in the village of Brønninge in Holbæk, on Zealand, Denmark. Her father was a chimney sweep who, because of his drinking, was often unable to support the family; her mother raised six children while also tending cattle, horses and sheep on a farm. Ellen was the youngest, often helped her mother with the work, and came to love the outdoors early. The family was so poor that from the age of eight she worked to earn the money for her own schooling. After her mother died in 1890, she moved to Copenhagen, where she served among prostitutes through the YWCA.
She wanted to become a missionary, and the YWCA recommended her to the Danish Missionary Society (DMS). But the society had never sent a woman to the field; it turned her down at first and required her to finish her education. Together with another woman of the same surname, Kathrine Nielsen, she entered the teacher-preparatory class of N. Zahle's School, whose courses also included nursing and Chinese. They graduated in 1897, and the YWCA recommended them to the society a second time. This time the society agreed and sent them to Manchuria, making them the first Danish women missionaries sent to China.
She arrived in China in 1898 and was assigned to the church in Dandong (then Andong), Liaoning, where she worked as a nurse at the West Street clinic. An epidemic was under way, and she was sent to the town of Dagushan, southwest of Dandong, where she saw as many as one hundred patients a day. There was also friction with local residents: the missionaries did not accept Chinese medicine, and there were conflicts over faith as well. In 1902 she set up a boarding school for handicrafts, which began teaching the following year with only three students. She laid down one admission rule: no girls with bound feet would be accepted. The school taught the girls embroidery and sold their handiwork abroad to support itself, while also offering classes in literacy, hygiene and the faith. Two of the first three students were orphans, and she adopted them.
In 1908 she founded the Chongzheng Girls' Primary School (崇正女子小学), and four years later she set up the Chongzheng Poor Relief House, which taught women spinning, weaving and embroidery; it was later extended to unemployed fathers, who were taught farming. Noticing that many women could not work because they had children to look after, she opened the first kindergarten in Northeast China in 1913. In the spring of 1920 she built eight houses on the northern foot of Gushan to shelter elderly and disabled villagers. Over the next several years she also served as principal, expanding the school to include a middle school, a high school and a normal school. She decided to stay in China for good: in 1929 she gave up her Danish nationality and applied for Chinese nationality, which was granted in 1931, and she took the Chinese name Nie Lexin (聂乐信). Only with Chinese nationality could she buy land, and with funds sent from Denmark she built a collective farm known as the "Nie Family Village" (聂家村). By 1939 more than 300 people lived on the farm; the girls' school had 417 students from Manchuria and northern Korea and 18 teachers; the relief house had 370 people on its rolls; and 175 houses had been built in the village. Out of her own salary she paid each worker 7 yuan a month, and she also shared the harvest and livestock with them; the workers' children attended school free of charge. She also bought a property on Lu Island (鹿岛) so that the workers would have a place to take holidays.
In 1942 the Japanese army took over her school and renamed it Dagushan National Higher School. After the war against Japan ended the situation changed again. In 1946 most missionaries withdrew, and in 1947 the Communists entered Dagushan. They confiscated her personal belongings and all her land and property, placed her under house arrest, and at a trial classified her as a landlord. Two Danish employees were released after 14 days in prison and returned home; the Chinese employees were sent to labor camps, where most of them died. Ellen Nielsen refused to leave. She said she was now a Chinese citizen and had a responsibility to care for these villagers. In 1949 the new government promised freedom of religion and returned to her the church, 4 cows, an orchard and a pond. She tried to rebuild the community and restore the church, but another round of denunciations soon followed, and she was branded an imperialist. By 1950 she was the only Danish missionary left in all of China, and she was forced to live in a small underground hut. Her faithful helper Wang Chengren (王承仁) sold milk for her so that she could meet her production quota; after she grew old and went blind, her neighbors cared for her. In 1959 Wang Chengren was arrested for helping her. In February 1960 she fell and broke both arms, and on 25 July she died at her home in Dagushan. Members of the church buried her at the foot of Gushan. Five days after her death, Wang Chengren was labeled a counter-revolutionary and sentenced to 15 years. In 1980 she, together with other missionaries, was rehabilitated. Today the well-known local product, the Gushan apricot, comes from the yellow apricots she brought from Denmark and grafted.