James O. Fraser

James Outram Fraser (Chinese 富能仁) (1886–1938) was a British Protestant Christian missionary to China with the China Inland Mission. He pioneered work among the Lisu people, of Southwestern China, in the early part of the 20th century. He is credited with the Fraser alphabet for their language.

Born in London in 1886. Fraser had four brothers and sisters. His parents divorced when Fraser was a teen, his mother moving to Letchworth, buying property with her own funds.

By 1906, he was at Imperial College London studying engineering. Fraser was accomplished in piano and held a recital in his twenties before he left for China.

He became a graduate engineer. However, in 1908 he dedicated his life to missionary work and joined the China Inland Mission. He arrived in China at 22 and travelled from Shanghai to Hong Kong and then to the mountainous region of China's far southwest.

He was forced by the chaos accompanying the Chinese Revolution of 1911>to divide his time between Yunnan Province and Burma. He learned the Lisu language and commenced his work among the Lisu, a Tibeto-Burmese minority people who lived in the high mountains along the borders of the two countries.

Fraser had arrived in Yunnan in 1910, and spent nearly thirty years working among the Lisu. Fraser is best known for the alphabet he created for the Lisu, often referred to as the Fraser alphabet. It was designed for purpose of translating the New Testament into the Lisu language. Fraser also designed a written musical notation for transcribing the Lisu's oral history songs.

Going to China with CIM (China Inland Mission), he was stationed in the then remote province of Yunnan to work with the local Chinese, but Fraser was a keen climber and revelled in climbing through the mountains meeting and preaching to the Lisu people, particularly in the upper Salween River valley. Readily accepted by them and able to live in their mud floor huts, he was able to communicate a little through Chinese and then to learn their language, which is in the Tibeto-Burman group. Initial success was followed by years of doubt and difficulty until 1916, when he and fellow missionaries started to see scores of families convert to Christianity and enthusiastically pursue a new life without the fear of the spirits that had previously characterised them.

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