author
Anna Magdalena Johannsen
Written by a missionary who spent sixteen years in China, these pages bring everyday life, faith, and change into sharp human focus. The result is a personal early-20th-century portrait of Chinese womanhood told with warmth and close attention.
1 Audiobook
Everlasting Pearl: One of China's Women
by Anna Magdalena Johannsen
About the author
Little biographical information about Anna Magdalena Johannsen is easy to confirm, but her own book identifies her as "for sixteen years a missionary in China." She is known for Everlasting Pearl: One of China's Women, first published in 1913 and later reprinted, a short work centered on the life and conversion of a Chinese woman named Ch'ang-Chu, or "Everlasting Pearl."
Johannsen's writing stands out for its intimate, story-driven view of daily life in China as she experienced it through missionary work. Rather than offering a distant overview, she focuses on family life, customs, belief, and personal transformation, which gives her work the feel of both memoir and biography.
Because so few reliable sources preserve details about Johannsen herself, her book remains the clearest window into her life and perspective. For listeners today, that makes her an unusual historical voice: a writer remembered less through a public career than through one vivid, compassionate account.