A LASTING memorial to Barnsley Christian missionary James Hudson Taylor will open in China later this year.
The Hudson Taylor Memorial Tower stands at the back of the new Xuan-De Church in Zhenjiang.
Hudson Taylor was a 19th century missionary who left Barnsley in 1853 and arrived in China the following year.
He is hailed as a spiritual leader by more than 70 million Christians in the Far East.
The memorial has been spearheaded by Hudson Taylor’s great, great, grandson, Jamie Taylor the 4th.
It features the gravestones and remains of Hudson Taylor and his wife Maria, and displays of the life and ministry of the couple, as well as ministries of the China Inland Mission, which Hudson Taylor founded.
It will open on June 5, 113 years after Hudson Taylor’s death in 1905.
Jamie said such a memorial was almost unprecedented in China, and as well as serving as the resting place of Hudson Taylor and Maria, would house a historical record of the work of the China Inland Mission.
Jamie said: “I feel a great deal of excitement, and I’m thankful for the many who have supported this project, both with time as well as financially.
“The memorial will be open to visitors on a regular basis.”
The basement of the tower is where the remains of Hudson Taylor and Maria are now buried.
The search for the couple’s original graves dates back to 1983 when members of the Taylor family visited Zhenjiang. The six pieces of Hudson Taylor’s gravestone were found three years later in a museum. In 2012, a Taiwan businessman discovered a piece of Maria’s gravestone in an antique shop. The words were not easy to understand, but a search on the internet revealed what they said, and the man donated it to the Taylor family so it could be placed alongside Hudson Taylor’s in Zhenjiang Gospel Church.
A year later, the Zhenjiang authorities contacted the family to say land developers of an old English cemetery had unearthed a Chinese gravestone that marked the burial site of Hudson Taylor and Maria, and had found their graves. Because the original gravestones had been prepared in England, they were engraved in English, but decades later, the couple’s children had decided it was important to have an additional gravestone engraved in Chinese characters. Out of the hundred or so grave sites in the English cemetery, only the couple’s graves were still intact.
It was decided that the gravestones and the remains of Hudson Taylor and Maria would be re-interred to the Xuan-De Church in Zhenjiang. The architect’s original design of the church’s 60-metre bell tower was quickly redrawn to serve as their resting place.
A huge cross has been placed on top of the tower which will be visible for miles, especially when it is lit up.
