Gladstone Charles Fletcher Porteous, known by the Chinese name 張爾昌 (Zhāng Ěrchāng), (1874–1944) was an Australian Christian missionary to China who served with the China Inland Mission from 1904. He became Superintendent of the mission's work in East Yunnan, was a skilled Bible translator, devised the romanized Yi alphabet, and translated portions of the New Testament into several Chinese dialects.
Early Life
Porteous was born in Carngham, Victoria, Australia, in 1874. He was the son of John Dempsey-Porteous, who had emigrated to Australia from Glasgow, Scotland, and Catherine Fletcher of Sandon, Victoria. He trained at Rehoboth Missionary College in Richmond, Victoria, before sailing for China in 1904. In 1906 he was appointed to the mission station at Sapushan, where he worked among the Miao people and began learning Chinese.
Ministry in Yunnan
Porteous arrived in Yunnan in 1907 alongside fellow missionaries Arthur G. Nicholls (郭秀峯) and George E. Metcalf (王懷仁). He was joined by his wife, Minnie (née Pearson) from England, whom he married in 1908. Together they ministered in Yunnan and eventually moved to Salaowu (撒老乌), an area associated with the Yi (Nosu) people, where their ministry continued for over twenty years.
A talented linguist, Porteous collaborated with Nicholls to translate portions of the Bible into at least three separate languages/dialects:
- The Gospel of Mark in the Laqua language (1912)
- The Gospel of Matthew in the Hmong language, in collaboration with Samuel Pollard
- The New Testament in the Nusu language (Gospel of Luke, 1923; Acts of the Apostles, 1926; New Testament, 1948)
His assistant in Yi language translation work was Li Faxian (李發獻). Porteous devised a standardized romanized alphabet for the Yi language to promote literacy among Yi communities.
Death and Legacy
Gladstone and Minnie Porteous had three children: Ruth Catherine, Christine Olive, and Stanley John, who was killed in action during World War II while serving with the Royal Australian Air Force. One of Porteous's grandsons is the Australian actor and scriptwriter Shane Porteous, best known as Dr. Terence Elliot in the television series A Country Practice. A great-granddaughter is radio presenter Jo Stanley.
Porteous died of typhus in Salaowu on 10 November 1944. A tombstone was erected by local church members, inscribed in three languages—English, Nuosu, and Chinese. At the time of his death, approximately 20,000 of the Yi and Miao people were reported as Christians. His original tombstone was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, and a replacement was later placed in the presumed location of his grave.
References
Key sources on Porteous include the Annual Report of the American Bible Society (1949), Marshall Broomhall's The Jubilee Story of the China Inland Mission (1915), and China Inland Mission periodical China's Millions. A family biography, The Porteous Story (1975), was written by his daughters Ruth Porteous Bailey and Christine Porteous. Scholarly works on the period, including Joakim Enwall's A Myth Become Reality: History and Development of the Miao Written Language (1995) and Lachlan Strahan's Australia's China: Changing Perceptions from the 1930s to the 1990s (1996), also document his contributions.
