He was barely a mile from the foreign factories, but he could have been a thousand. To fit in, he donned a floor-length Chinese gown. His neighbors contributed to his wardrobe, donating Chinese socks and shoes. When aspiring mandarins flocked to Guangzhou for the annual civil service examination that year, some of them dropped by Roberts’s mission. Roberts had been told that they were implacable foes of his work, but they sat politely through Sunday services.
