Word: compounding
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...compound the nightmare, the Red Guards were striking at many of the things that the Chinese have always respected. Buddhist shrines were defaced; schools were ordered closed for six months (to revise curriculums along purely Maoist lines). Respect for womanhood and religion was forcibly forgotten. Into British-controlled Hong Kong came eight victims: exhausted Franciscan nuns, one of whom died after being thrown onto a wheelbarrow and harshly trundled across the border...
...Weihsien was relatively civilized. The prisoners were not beaten or tortured by their Japanese guards. But there was never enough food-Gilkey lost 45 Ibs. during the ordeal-and prison life was dominated by tensions wrought by both boredom and fear. Living space was at a premium in the compound, a former Presbyterian mission. In the dormitories, chalk lines were drawn on the floor, carefully delimiting the area each man had for his bed and few possessions. Privacy was almost nonexistent...
Moral Breakdowns. As a prologue to Shantung Compound, Gilkey approvingly quotes Brecht's sardonic couplet: "For even saintly folk will act like sinners,/Unless they have their customary dinners." To his surprise, Gilkey discovered that the most devout missionaries were not immune from selfishness. Even ministers began to squabble with their fellow prisoners bout food shares and steal from communal supplies. Forgetting the lesson of the Good Samaritan, missionaries with families bluntly refused to share any portion of their living area with others who needed space. One preacher went so far as to contend that he needed extra room...
...demands of prison life, says Gilkey, frequently exposed the strict Protestant ethic as legaiism wrapped in hypocrisy. Many of his fellow prisoners were critical of the compound's fundamentalist ministers. On principle, they refused to lend their canteen cards to heavy smokers-but they would not hesitate to barter the cigarettes they got from the Red Cross for extra tins of food. Far more popular were the Roman Catholic missionaries, who generally displayed a spirit of freedom from material wants that enabled them to play a creative, neighbor-helping role in the community...
...prison favorite was a Trappist monk who was caught smuggling 150 eggs into the compound under the prison wall. Sentenced to 45 days in solitary, he took the punishment lightly, since as a monk he was used to long and lonely meditations. Still another prison saint was Dick Rogers, a former British soldier. An alcoholic, he proved to be virtually the only man who could be trusted to guard the communal food store without stealing anything for himself. Nonetheless, writes Gilkey, "Many a pious diner, whose ration of food depended on Dick's strength of character, still thought...