What Our Literature is Accomplishing in China by James E. Shultz

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 29, 1916

What Our Literature is Accomplishing in China

By James E. Shultz

JAMES E. SHULTZ

WITH this I am sending something that I think will be of interest. It is a Chinese code telegram that I received a short time ago from western Chinese Turkestan. If you will look on the map, you will see that Brother Allum's station at Chung-king, Szechuan, which is our most distant western outstation at the present time, is only about one third of the distance from Shanghai to the city of Kashgar, the place from which the message was sent. While the sending of this code telegram is unimportant in itself, as the message is only a petition which we were asked to publish in the magazine, yet it is significant, for it shows that our magazine is circulating on the distant western borders of the Asiatic Division, and that it is considered of sufficient importance to warrant the citizens' committee of the city of Kashgar in spending over fifty dollars gold to send this message to us for publication. It shows the rating of our magazine as compared with the other papers and magazines of China.

One page of the code telegram received at Shanghai from western Chinese Turkestan

How our magazine got away out there I do not know, for the only railroad connection leads almost to the city of Moscow, and thence down through Russian Turkestan to the borders of Chinese Turkestan; but that it is there cannot be questioned, for they sent the message to our exact address, and asked that it be published in the Signs of the Times. I am thinking that here is an opening for us on our extreme western border, and am sending them several more copies of our papers. I am asking where they learned of us, also that they send us a list of subscribers. It will be some time before I can receive an answer, for the nearest railroad is two hundred miles distant from Kashgar.