When the Great Depression forced the American Board to withdraw twenty missionaries from its North China staff in May 1934, the Robinsons were on the list. However, a group of Chinese friends led by M.T. Liang offered them a loan of capital so they could stay in Tientsin as self-supporting “Christian lay-workers.” They built the new venture around Marian’s existing project, the Haiku Women’s Industry, a workroom near Tientsin that employed sixty to one hundred twenty poor Chinese women.
On September 24, 1934, they opened the Robins’ Nest Handicraft and Hobby Shop in the new YMCA building downtown as a retail outlet for the Haiku and other struggling mission industries. They sold goods in the city and shipping orders to customers abroad. Robbie supplemented their family income by teaching English part-time at the Chiu Ta Salt Refinery, the Pacific Alkali Company at Tangku, and the Hopei Institute of Technology. He was earning roughly 80$-90 USD a month while the American Board let them stay in the mission house rent-free. The enterprise ran successfully until the Japanese occupation of Tientsin in mid-1937 forced the family to evacuate.
Robinson Family (Colby Special Collections)
