The first Protestant mission efforts in Guizhou began in 1877, but it was not until 1986 that China Inland Mission (CIM) first went into a Miao area. Samuel Clarke made contact with a Hmu (Miao from SE Guizhou) believer in Guiyang from Panghai in 1895, and in 1896 he moved to Panghai.  Although the missionaries met much opposition, the missionaries used to their advantage the unequal treaties of 1842 and 1858.  They said “We told them that we were there by treaty right; we had our passports, the high provincial authorities knew we were there, as did the local magistrates at Tsingpinghsien, and we intended to stay.”  The Boxer Rebellion of 1900 disrupted the missionary work all over China.  Its disastrous results were foreshadowed in 1899 when William Fleming of the CIM and Pan Xiushan, the first Miao convert, were murdered in Chong’anjiang.  Apparently Pan was suspected of importing arms to support another Miao uprising. Mission work in SE Guizhou went slowly, at times having people respond, and when the missionaries returned from furlough, they often found that many of the converts had fallen away and gone back into their animistic practices. It is calculated that in 1949 when the missionaries left that area there were around 200 Hmu belivers. Of the 2 million Hmu in SE Guizhou today, an estimated 1000 confess Christ.

The real harvest in Guizhou came under the ministry of J.R. Adams of CIM in the area around Anshun near Guiyang City.  Adam opened the first chapel and a small boys school for the Flowery Miao in 1899, but his work attracted Chinese as well as their minority neighbors.  He worked with both groups until 1900, as inquirers came from 250 hamlets and villages in the surrounding area.  When the Boxer turmoil erupted, he and this colleagues were in great danger. The Empress Dowager had issued an edict to all provinces to kill the foreigners. The viceroy in Guizhou not only disobeyed this order, he sent an escort to accompany missionaries fleeing for refuge to Shanghai.  Following this chaotic period, Adam was not certain whether anything would remain of this incipient movement. Particularly was he fearful when he learned that a military official and a noted village headman had gone throughout the entire district, threatening with death any who would opt for this foreign religion.  Some of his fears were justified.  Only twenty chose to be baptized at his first baptismal service in 1902.  But a network of villages had been established, and the gospel carried rapidly by the people themselves into many villages of the Flowery Miao.  In a very short time hundreds of them had believed in Jesus and were willing to follow him. Adam, B. Curtis Waters, and others of their colleagues baptized many of these new converts, organized them into churches, and mobilized them to reach into  the many villages where the Christian message had not yet come.  By 1907 the missionaries could speak of twelve hundred communicants. In all, Adam personally baptized approximately 7000 Miao during his ministry.  

One thing that troubled Adam was that obviously many who came to him had traveled a great distance, some from Zhaotong in Yunnan Province three days distance on foot.  He urged them to visit Samual Pollard, the Methodist missionary in charge of Chinese work. They were not sure about Pollard since they had not met him, but they were willing to give him a chance, and the miracle of mass turning  to Christ happened again. At first a few Miao showed up at Pollard’s door to hear about Jesus, but soon 200 were coming for teaching. Pollard’s first trip to the Miao's mountain homes was in 1904.  He preached, taught, baptized converts, and organized them into churches, but found Zhaotong too far away for effective ministry. One of the leading chiefs gave him a plot of land across the border in Guizhou where he erected a chapel, a home, and educational facilities for all facets of the Miao work.  This site, known as Shimenkan (Stone Gate) became the center of all Methodist Miao work. Three other subsidiary centers were developed, and from these radiated outward a network of sites for the development of the work.  Within three years more than one thousand converts had been baptized.

 Soon after this two Miao lepers went to see Pollard hoping to be cured of their leprosy.  They learned that Jesus could heal them from their sin and returned joyfully to tell their fellow villages about this new message.  They soon requested that Pollard would send a missionary to their villages.  Overwhelmed by his expanding ministry, Pollard requested that the CIM assign one of their missionaries to this new work.  Its leaders sent Arthur Nicholls, then stationed in Kunming, to go to Sapushan in the eastern part of Wuding county.  Nicholls studied under Pollard for a time and learned about Miao ministry before heading to his new assignment, and very shortly he had established chapels in five areas, and the work gained the same momentum as it had shown in Anshun and Shimenkan.  Whole villages turned to Christ from idolatry, witchcraft, debauchery, and various levels of drug addiction.  Freed from these oppressive burdens, their economic picture brightened and their lives and societies took on a new dignity.  In 1932 the CIM estimated that the Miao church in the Wuding area numbered about two thousand with several thousand more in the wider Christian community.  Today the Big Flowery Miao number around 300,000. Approximately 70% of these are professing believers.  

*Covell, Ralph. The Liberating Gospel of China.  Pp. 83-93.