Title: Letter from Venetia Cox to B. T. Cox

Identifier: 0263-s1-b1-fc   (https://digital.lib.ecu.edu/35194)

Description: A handwritten letter from Venetia Cox to her mother, B. T. Cox, in Winterville, North Carolina. Cox writes from aboard a steamer with the China Navigation Company en route to Shanghai, and she is to continue on to Peking [Beijing] from there. She writes of the flooding in China that has disabled the railway lines from Hankou to Beijing and her own frustrations with travel because of this. Cox also complains of rising costs, haggling with the Chinese over payment for goods and services, and the “superstitious” Buddhists. She writes of a girl she has been teaching English to, who gave her a gift and saw her off at the steamer. Cox laments the girl’s engagement to an unpleasant unskilled laborer, with whom she has been engaged since birth, which Cox says is common practice in China. She also tells of a recent visit to St. Hilda’s School in Wuchang and the attitudes of the children there. A native of Winterville, Venetia Cox was an Episcopal missionary music teacher in mainland China between 1917 and 1950.