The life of St Metrophanes, first Chinese priest
Marked out young by his teachers as a man of quiet, patient, humble character, he served for years as a catechist before, at twenty five, he was ordained to the priesthood by Saint Nicholas, enlightener of Japan, becoming the first Chinese priest of the Orthodox Church.
For fifteen years he labored in the Peking mission, helping translate church books and bearing many hardships without complaint. In the summer of 1900, when the Boxer uprising turned against the foreign missions and their converts, the mission church was burned and Christians fled to Father Metrophanes for shelter, including some who had once opposed him, and he took them in and encouraged the fearful. On the night of June 10, soldiers and Boxers surrounded his house. Most of those sheltering there escaped over the walls, but Father Metrophanes stayed with those too weak to flee. He was struck down in his own courtyard and died there, one of the two hundred and twenty two Orthodox Chinese martyred that summer, whom the Church now keeps as the first fruits of the Chinese Orthodox Church.
