This Week in China's History: The Murder of Alfred Caubrière

June 18, 1948

Listen to Kaiser’s narration of the story!

Shortly after midnight on June 18, 1948, Péi Fēngyīng 裴凤英 — a Catholic nun — was awakened by an intruder. She lived in what had been the servants’ quarters for the small church in Hǎichéng, Liaoning, all the other buildings in the complex having been occupied by communist forces a few months earlier as they prosecuted their civil war against the Nationalists.

Pei not only found that someone was indeed prowling through her home, but that she recognized the man. His name was Yáng Déshān 杨德山, and he worked for the parish doing odd jobs. In recent days, he had been observed several times stealing food from the church’s residence. In normal times, this might be the sort of petty theft that would be let go or perhaps called out quietly, but times were tough: the end of the Pacific War in 1945 had, it turned out, just been a prelude to more war. The social fabric of Manchuria was beyond frayed. Bandits were an even greater threat to local order than the two opposing armies, but the church could find little comfort in the would-be government of the new communist occupiers, who were — at least by reputation — notoriously opposed to both religion and missionaries.