Telling the Redemptive Story of Chinese Female Leprosy Victims in the Late Qing and Early Republican for Western Readers: The Missionaries’ Narrative in Without the Camp

Leprosy relief efforts were a key part of the Christian mission of salvation in China. During the Anglo-American Protestant overseas missionary movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many missionaries recorded stories about relief work of Chinese female lepers in Without the Camp: The Journal of The Mission to Lepers in India and the East. First, the missionaries portrayed Chinese female lepers as marginalized figures, symbols of moral suffering and victims in need of salvation, reinforcing their religious mission and humanitarian spirit. Second, through the relief and conversion stories, the missionaries appealed to Anglo-American Christianity to participate in the overseas missionary movement and to fund the leprosy relief cause in China. Finally, the missionaries’ stories of converted Chinese women leprosy victims served as discourses for the spread of the gospel and civilization in China.