DESTINATION CHINA,  IN A HURRY
                                     by Sister Maura Ryan

In the Spring of 1946, the world was slowly recovering from the effects of World War II.  This recovery was closely watched by a group of Columban Sisters, eagerly awaiting their chance to travel to mission in China.  

One of those Sisters was Sister Maura Ryan,  who remembers with great detail the happenings of  almost sixty years ago:

Sister Maura Ryan

'Earlier that year, I had tentatively been assigned to Kiangsi, but transportation to the Orient might not be back to normal for several months, so no immediate preparations for travel were made. 
Then it happened.  “Be ready to sail from London to Shanghai in less than 2 weeks”.  Passage for 5 Sisters had been secured on the SS Otranto.  Preparations swung into high gear.  I was studying in Dublin and planned to take a train  to visit my family for what I thought was the last time.  (A mission assignment in those days did not include home leave.  The assignment was for life.)   I dashed to Amiens Street Station only to see with sinking feeling, the last carriage of the train disappear out of the station.  I had to wait another day.
Five of us shared a cabin on the Otranto, which had been an Australian luxury liner, now converted to a troop carrier, and without air conditioning.  With five Columban priests also on board, we had the joy of Mass most days and also some thirsty mornings in the tropics, when we could not drink water from midnight until after Communion.  I can remember drinking 5 cups of coffee at breakfast!  I had always loved the sea, so 5 weeks on board was an adventure.  The voyage brought us through the Mediterranean and Suez Canal, where mere inches seemed to separate the ship from land!  One day, sitting on deck, I watched a couple with a donkey walking through the sand.  It was like a scene from Scripture, perhaps Mary and Joseph returning from Egypt, while Jesus slept in a basket on the donkey! 

After traversing the Indian Ocean and visiting Colombo and Singapore, we reached Hong Kong.  The day before we docked, we heard that the ship would not complete the voyage to Shanghai as promised, and we would have to disembark and find other ship to finish the journey.  Meanwhile, we would enjoy the hospitality of the Canossian  Sisters on Cain  Road for a week, while we tried to cope with summer heat, humidity, and large flying beetles.  During the night, one of these had landed in a glass of liquid beside my bed, and I almost drank him in the dark.  Since then, I have never taken a drink in the dark, probably the only resolution I have never broken!! 

Finally, we got passage on a small Chinese freighter that carried 8 to 10 passengers, and promptly sailed into the remnants of a typhoon.  Being a good sailor, I had the dining room all to myself for 2 or 3 days!. 
In the port of Shanghai, the Sisters were at the dock to welcome us.  Then I realized I did not want to leave the ship.  That ship was a link, tho a broken one, to the homeland, and once I left it, the link would be forever broken.  “Take Lord, receive…”  Of course, I could not see then how times would change, and now I sit writing in one of the homelands, enjoying the hundredfold.

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