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NZ Chinese Language Week – two early 20th century translations

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A number of Dunedin men and women served as Christian missionaries and teachers in China in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

They needed to learn the language of the people they were living and working with, and many became competent speakers. Worldwide, teaching materials, including hymn books and Bibles, were translated from English into regional languages for use by Chinese congregations. When Knox Church gave the Otago Museum a group of items brought back by some of the missionaries they had supported, it included examples of such material.

We think this hymn book might have been used by Annie Hancock, who taught with the New Zealand Presbyterian Mission, travelling to Canton in 1912.

 

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Image: Chinese hymn book published in 1879 | Otago Museum Collection 

 

 

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Image: Chinese Bible, showing map of the Holy Land | Otago Museum Collection