author
Wilhelmiina Arpiainen
1859–1922
A Finnish teacher and pioneering missionary, she spent two decades in China and turned those years into vivid memoir and religious writing. Her work offers a rare firsthand view of cross-cultural life at the turn of the 20th century.
1 Audiobook
Muistelmia Kiinasta
by Wilhelmiina Arpiainen
About the author
Born in Pieksämäki in 1859, Johanna Wilhelmiina Arpiainen was a Finnish teacher, Christian writer, translator, and missionary. She is remembered especially for her long service in China, where she worked for about twenty years with the Free Church of Finland.
Arpiainen has also been described as an early pioneer of Finnish women’s missionary work. In addition to teaching and mission work, she wrote about her experiences, and her memoir Muistelmia Kiinasta preserves her observations of everyday life, faith, and cultural encounter during her years abroad.
She died in China in 1922. Today, her writing stands out not only for its religious purpose but also for the personal window it opens onto a Finnish woman’s life and work in another part of the world.