Eric Liddell, the Oscar-inspiring, Olympics-winning Chinese hero

He's remembered the world over as the inspiration for the 1981 Oscar-winning movie Chariots of Fire – the tale of a Scottish athlete whose strong Christian faith led him to refuse to compete on a Sunday. 

But Eric Liddell's story is so much bigger than the events of the 1924 Olympics. It's a story that stretches from a church in Edinburgh to wartorn China.

In a converted building on Edinburgh's Holy Corner, Eric Lidell's niece is telling that story to a packed audience. It's a talk she's prepared well… and, together with her slides, Sue Cavel's hour-long foray into the life and death of her uncle is part of a series of events staged over this summer.

Eric Liddell's story begins and ends in China, the country he called home.

"If you're born in the country and you die in the country and you've lived half your life in the country, it might not be actually your home country, but by golly, you've certainly contributed to it," says Cavel.

And contribute he did. Born in Tianjin in 1902 to Scottish missionary parents, Liddell spent a blissful early childhood in China. But when he was six, his parents moved back to their homeland. 

For a child born and raised in Tianjin, turn-of-the-century Scotland was a foreign land. But he settled in well and began to make a name for himself on the running track.

He was a passionate runner. But he had other passions too. His faith in God was an inseparable part of his life and his refusal to compete in the 100 meters because it took place on a Sunday, became the story of the 1924 Paris Olympics. (Instead, Liddell won gold in the 400 meters and silver in the 200 meters.)

Return to China

It was this sense of faith that took him back to China in 1926, first to Tianjin and later to Xiaozhang in Hebei Province. He started a family and began working as a missionary and teacher.

But dark clouds were on the horizon. When the Japanese began their war of aggression, China faced a threat as severe, as brutal and as all-encompassing as any in its long history. 

His family fled to Canada, but Liddell was going nowhere. His work at the missionary shifted from pastoral care to caring for the sick and wounded. This is why he is so widely remembered in China – the shared suffering endured at the hands of the Japanese. 

In 1943, Liddell was interned at a camp in Weifang. For two years, Liddell cared for fellow prisoners in the camp, helping local Chinese villagers smuggle in food. 

In a letter to his wife, he wrote of suffering a nervous breakdown due to overwork – and fearing he might have a brain tumour. It turned out to be the last letter he'd write. On that same day – February 21st 1945, just five months before liberation – Eric Liddell died, aged just 43.

"I think he's had a very short life in some ways. And it was cruelly cut off," says niece Sue Cavel. "But boy, he packed a lot into it and achieved a lot more than I'll ever achieve… I think he must have had a lot of joy in his life too, although there was a lot of sadness too."

John McMillan runs the Eric Liddell Community in Edinburgh. It's a museum and cafe which, along with providing invaluable pastoral care for people with dementia, also houses the Eric Liddell museum.

"What I've picked up from Chinese people themselves," he says, "is the fact he is celebrated, is revered, in China. And in some ways, I would say he's better remembered than maybe in some parts of the UK. But we're working hard on that." 

Events and talks and exhibitions are just some of the ways the Community remembers the man who was a Scottish hero, a British hero but above all, a Chinese hero.