Bosshardt, Rudolf Alfred 薄巳 (1897-1993) Alternative Names: Bo Si 薄巳 Religious Affiliation: China Inland Mission (Protestant)

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Reference Aids: Andrew F. Walls, in: Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, p. 81.

Compiler: Norman Howard Cliff, Harold Wood, Essex, England.

Rudolf Alfred Bosshardt, British missionary (male), was born on 1 January 1897 in Manchester, England, the child of Heinrich Alfred Bosshardt and Marie Foster, who were immigrants from Switzerland. The family joined the Moss Side Baptist Church, and later the Union Hall Evangelical Church. Alfred Bosshardt Jr. was 'converted' aged 9, and the following year felt called to serve God in China through a visiting missionary speaker of the China Inland Mission. At the age of 17 he was baptized by immersion. In 1918 Bosshardt chose to retain Swiss nationality, while the rest of the family opted for British nationality.
In 1914 he commenced an apprenticeship in engineering. With the outbreak of World War I Bosshardt offered himself for military service, but his German name disqualified him.
From 1920 to 1922 he went into training to be a missionary with the China Inland Mission (CIM) at Newington Green, London. After three months he was accepted by the CIM's London Council. On 28 September 1922 he sailed on the Kitana Maru for Shanghai. On 19 November 1922 he left Shanghai for the CIM's Men's Language School at Zhenjiang 鎮江, Jiangsu, for a year's study.
Alfred Bosshardt was appointed to Zunyi 遵義 in north Guizhou province. Upon arrival the famine conditions there shocked him. Thousands were dying of starvation and disease. Jack Robinson (his Superintendent), Bosshardt, and a Catholic priest distributed famine relief. Alfred himself nearly died from typhus.
Following his marriage in 1931, he and his wife were transferred to Zhenyuan 鎮遠, Guizhou. On 1 October 1934, after a conference, Alfred and his wife Rose were walking in a group of missionaries (five adults and two children) near Jiuzhou, when they were abducted by a section of the Red Army. They were taken as hostages and a high ransom was demanded. The women and children were released within a fortnight, leaving Bosshardt and Arnolis Hayman, a New Zealander, as captives of one of the "Long Marches", namely that of the Second Front Army commanded by Xiao Ke and He Long. Under harsh conditions and physical beatings the two missionaries marched with their captors for many miles. Hayman, who had a family of six children, was released at Sangzhi in Hunan after 413 days of captivity on 18 November 1935, weak and emaciated. Alfred Bosshardt was released on Easter Day, 12 April 1936, near Kunming, Yunnan, in an advanced state of beri-beri. He had been on the march for 560 days and had walked 2,500 miles. He was also suffering from pleurisy, bronchitis, and sprue.
From his sick bed in Kunming, Bosshardt dictated an account of his captivity, which was published as The Restraining Hand.
Alfred Bosshardt received medical treatment and careful recuperation after his ordeals. He and his wife then addressed crowded meetings in Britain, Europe, and North America. In January 1940 they returned to Guizhou, and settled in a new station at Panxian, which had four baptized church members and no missionary. Panxian fell to Communist forces in 1950, and the people had indoctrination classes, accusation meetings, trials, and executions.
In 1951 the Bosshardts had to leave Panxian and they left Samuel Tang in charge of a group of seventy Christians. Fifty years later Pastor Tang, now in his 70s, was chair of the Guizhou Christian Council, but more important for him he was 'superintendent' of many village congregations numbering many thousands in the Panxian area and had started a Bible Class to train leaders for these many congregations.
Having joined the "Reluctant Exodus" out of China, the Bosshardts arrived in Hongkong. Being French speaking, they went to Pakse, Laos, where the Swiss Brethren were working. In 1957 Laos became an official Overseas Missionary Fellowship field. In Pakse there was a small Laotian Christian Church, but little work among the Chinese. Bosshardt, having worked in Laos from 1951 to 1966, returned to his home in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester.
He helped the Manchester Chinese Christian Church. Here he wrote The Guiding Hand with the help of Gwen and Edward England. In 1984 he was visited by the British writer Anthony Grey, who subsequently worte a novel, Peking, based on Bosshardt's life. In 1986 Harrison Salisbury, researching for his book The Long March: The Untold Story, visited Bosshardt and brought greetings from General Xiao Ke in China, with whom he had marched half a century earlier. Salisbury sent a copy of The Guiding Hand to Xiao Ke, the "scholar general". This contact resulted in Bosshardt and Xiao Ke corresponding. The Chinese general was impressed with Bosshardt's accuracy and objectivity in his book, and had it translated into Chinese. This became an official textbook at Beijing's National Defense University.
In 1990 Bosshardt moved from Manchester to Cornford House, Pembury, Kent, with clerical cord infarction. He died in 1993. Messages of condolence were received from Chinese officials in London and Beijing, describing Alfred Bosshardt as "an old friend of the Chinese people". He had been arrested sixty years previously as an enemy of the Chinese people.

He married fellow CIM missionary Rose Piaget (1894-1965) in Guiyang, Guizhou, on 10 June 1931. Her family owned the famous Piaget Watch Works at La Côte-aux-Fées in the Jura Mountains of Switzerland. The service was half in English and half in Chinese.
There were no children of the marriage.

Literature:
(a) by Bosshardt:
The Restraining Hand: Captivity for Christ in China (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1936).
The Guiding Hand: Captivity and Answered Prayer in China, with Gwen and Edward England (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1973).

(b) about Bosshardt:
Leslie T. Lyall, A Passion for the Impossible (London: O.M.F., 1965).
A. J. Broomhall, Hudson Taylor and China's Open Century, Vol. 7 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989).
Jean Watson, Bosshardt: A Biography (Crowborough, East Sussex: Monarch Publications, 1995).

Archives:
(1.) Anthony Grey Archive, AG/AB Alfred Bosshardt and the Long March 1930-1996, Special Collections, University of East Anglia, Norwich, England.

(2.) Overseas Missionary Fellowship Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies, London, England.