Alfred Bosshardt

Early Years and Coming to China

Alfred Bosshardt (Rudolf Alfred Bosshardt, also known as Alfred Bosshardt) was born in 1897 in Manchester, England, into a family that had moved to England from Switzerland. Raised in the faith from childhood, as a young man he resolved to go to faraway China to preach the gospel. In 1920 he was accepted by the China Inland Mission, and about two years later he set out for China, where he was assigned to Guizhou Province on the south-western frontier.

Into Guizhou

After arriving in China he travelled throughout Guizhou preaching and shepherding believers, his journeys reaching towns and mountain villages. In June 1931 he married his fellow worker Rose Piaget in Guiyang, and together they served in this hard land.

On the March with the Red Army

On 1 October 1934, as Bosshardt, his wife, and several fellow workers were returning from a preaching trip, they were detained by the Red Sixth Army Corps led by Xiao Ke (萧克). The Red Army regarded this Westerner as a “spy” and demanded a huge ransom (records say a fine of 100,000 yuan per person). The women and some of the co-workers were released one after another, but he was held together with the New Zealand missionary Arnolis Hayman and taken along on a gruelling march with the army, becoming a Western missionary who experienced the Long March first-hand. Over the following year and a half he marched with the army for about 560 days, covering about 10,000 li, crossing mountains and ridges, enduring hunger and cold. Along the way, by lamplight, he translated a French map of Guizhou into Chinese, item by item, for Xiao Ke, and the two men came to know each other through this.

Release and Writing

Around Easter 1936, after much suffering, Bosshardt was at last set free. Though his body was worn out, his faith had grown firmer. He wrote of this experience in The Restraining Hand (1936), telling the world of his witness during his captivity; its Chinese edition, titled Shenling zhi Shou (神灵之手), was published in 1989 with a preface by Xiao Ke himself. In 1973 the book was reissued under the title The Guiding Hand.

Back to the Mission Field

In 1940 he returned to China to continue his missionary work, until he was forced to leave in 1951. He then went to the Pakse area of Laos, where he gave about another 15 years to missionary service. After his wife's death, he settled in his later years in Manchester, England, where he shepherded the local Chinese believers and founded a Chinese church. In the 1980s, the elderly Xiao Ke sought out his former “prisoner” to send his greetings, and the two corresponded, turning enmity into friendship. In 1993 Bosshardt went to rest in the Lord in England.

A Witness in Suffering

His life spanned war and displacement, yet he always met suffering with gentleness and patience. On the most perilous journey of the Long March he held on to hope by faith and did not treat others with resentment, leaving later generations a witness of unchanging resolve in the midst of hardship.