The Parlor Maid Who Became a Mandarin's Equal

In 1932, Gladys Aylward stood on the platform at Liverpool Street Station with a one-way ticket to China and a suitcase held together with a cord. She was twenty-nine, a parlor maid with no university degree, no mission board backing, and an accent that marked her as working-class London. Everything familiar — her parents' home in Edmonton, the small church where she had first heard the call, the language on every tongue around her — she was leaving it all behind.…