In the past, when I was leaving,
the green willows were lush;
Reflecting now, as I am coming back,
the rain and snow are falling heavily…
@ Chungking
Chungking is my birthplace, which was the wartime capital of the Republic of China in the War of Resistance Against Japan during World War II.
I was born in the Southwest Hospital in Sandy Terrace of Chungking, which was originally the Central Hospital of the National Government built in Nanking, the capital of the Republic of China in 1929. During the War of Resistance Against Japan, it was moved to Sandy Terrace of Chungking in 1937. After the Communist Party came to power in 1950, it was taken over by the Communist Southwest Military Region and renamed Southwest Hospital.
When I was born, my parents lived in the Nankai Middle School in Sandy Terrace, which was built on over one hundred and thirty acres of land donated by the local gentry during the Resistance War. The campus was vast and beautiful, with hills, lakes, fields, and orchards all around.
Nankai Middle School and Nankai University were founded by the famous modern educator Mr. Poling Chang in Tientsin. When the Resistance War broke out, Nankai was bombed by the Japanese and moved to Chungking. Mr. Poling Chang followed the pattern of Nankai in Tientsin and built a teacher’s dormitory inside the Nankai Middle School in Sandy Terrace, which was all quadrangle courtyards connected in a row, made of black-blue bricks and tiles, with each courtyard separated by hollowed-out bricks. To commemorate Nankai in Tientsin, it was named “The South of Tientsin Village," and Mr. Poling Chang lived in the No. 3 courtyard.
There were also Peach Blossom Lake, South Garden, Banana Garden, and other scenic spots on the Nankai campus, which were picturesque. The author of “The Great Flowing River," Ms. Pangyuan Chi, studied at Nankai Middle School in Sandy Terrace during the war, and her book has many detailed descriptions of Nankai Middle School and Mr. Poling Chang.
The school song of Chungking Nankai Middle School records this history:
On the coast of the Gulf of Pechili, at the mouth of White River, stands our towering Nankai spirit!
We strive diligently, seeking innovation every day, shining with boundless future prospects.
Magnificent benevolence, genuine wisdom, and courage are forged and nurtured, refined and cultured.
On the banks of the Yangtze River, at the mouth of the Excellent Mound River, stands our towering Nankai spirit!
Decades years later, my parents got married at No. 12 of the South of Tientsin Village, and I was born at Southwest Hospital. After leaving the hospital, we moved to No. 1 of Banana Garden. It is said that the former residence of Mr. Poling Chang, No. 3 of the South of Tientsin Village, was later turned into a kindergarten. I attended kindergarten at Nankai, but I don’t know if it was at the former residence of Mr. Poling Chang.
The South of Tientsin Village
@ Chengtu
Chengtu is where I grew up, which is the capital city of Szechwan Province, the biggest city in southwestern China.
A large area in the northeastern part of Chengtu was the property of the Canadian Methodist Mission. After the Opium War in the late Manchu Ching Dynasty, the Manchu Ching imperial court was forced to lift the ban on Christianity, which had been in place for over a hundred years, allowing Westerners to enter the Chinese mainland for missionary work. The Western Christian world rejoiced at the prospect of four hundred million lambs waiting for the shepherds of Christ in a vast virgin land where the gospel had yet to be preached.
Christian churches from various European and American countries rushed to send missionaries to China to claim their own lambs. Among them, the Protestant Christian churches were the most dynamic and active.
However, due to the long distances and difficult transportation, each sect was isolated and powerless in the vast Chinese mainland. Therefore, the Protestant denominations united to form the China Inland Mission of the Christian Church, which included the Canadian Methodist Mission. This was a Wesleyan Methodist denomination originating in the United Kingdom and expanding to the United States and Canada, advocating for a holy life and social improvement, and conducting missionary work among the common people through medical care and education.
The Canadian Methodist Mission raised funds from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom to purchase a vegetable field in the northeastern part of Chengtu, where they built the largest church in southwestern China at that time, the Gospel Church, also known as Gracious Light Church, which is still the main church in Chengtu today and the location of the Szechwan Theological Seminary.
The church was burned down in the Chengtu anti-missionary riot in the year after its completion in 1895, rebuilt, and burned down again during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900. It was then rebuilt again.
Around the church, the church gradually bought land with overseas donations and founded the Sino-British Bookstore, Sino-British Girls’ Elementary, and Middle School, Union Girls’ Normal School, and Foundling Hall. They also established the first Western medical hospital in the southwestern region of China, the Canadian Methodist Hospital.
At that time, Chinese women were not willing to go to the hospital and mix with men. The church sent a female medical doctor, Dr. Mary Alfretta Gifford, who graduated from the Trinity College of the University of Toronto of Canada, went to Chengtu in 1893 to establish the first women’s hospital in West China, so that Chinese women could receive medical treatment separately from men.
These Western medical doctors who graduated from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada went on to participate in the establishment of the first modern university in western China, the West China Union University School of Medicine, and its affiliated hospital, the West China Hospital.
They became the leaders in modern hospitals in the southwestern region and the birthplace of modern dentistry in China. Dr. Ashley Woodward Lindsay graduated from the Royal College of Dental Surgeons in Toronto, a Canadian who came to Chengtu in 1907 and founded the first modern dental clinic in China, is the pioneer of modern dentistry in China. The School of Dentistry at the West China Union University he founded and as dean for thirty years, was the most famous dental school in Eastern Asia at that time.
In the 1940s, the campus of West China Union University covered over two hundred acres, and its size and beauty were unmatched among universities in China at the time.
West China Union University was jointly founded by five churches from Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, including the American Baptist Church, American Methodist Church, British Quakers, Canadian Methodist Church, and Church of England. To demonstrate their cooperation and collaboration, hence the name “Union."
In 1910, the university raised over a million US dollars from the United States and purchased land for building the campus on the south bank of the South Brocade River in Chengtu and this beautiful flat land was named after the university called West China Flat since then.
The first president of the university was the American education management expert, Dr. Joseph Beech, who served for over thirty years, and the professors were from renowned British, Canadian, and American universities, such as Oxford, Cambridge, Toronto, Harvard, and Yale.
At that time in China, church universities had the highest tuition fees, followed by private universities, and national universities were the most affordable. Therefore, church universities had the highest material resources and teaching standards. The organizational structure, professional setting, curriculum plan, and education management of West China Union University were all at the advanced level of Britain and the United States at that time, hence the reputation of being the “number one in Eastern Asia."
During the War of Resistance Against Japan, West China Union University admitted over ten well-known church universities that had relocated. As a result, West China Flat in Chengtu, Sandy Terrace in Chungking where National Central University had relocated, Summer Terrace in North Town where Fudan University had relocated, and dozens of other relocated primary and high schools and educational institutions in White Sandy Terrace in River Ford were collectively called the “Four Terraces of Culture" in the wartime, especially West China Flat was considered as the “heaven of culture and education".
After the Communist Party took power in 1949, all church land and property were confiscated, and foreign missionaries, doctors, and teachers were all expelled.
My home in Chengtu was located within the campus of the former Sino-British Girls’ Middle School, which was built in 1895. When I was a child, there were still giant ginkgo trees preserved on the campus, as well as teaching buildings, offices, dormitories, cafeterias, bathrooms, and toilets built by the Canadian, British, and American missionaries.
These buildings were a fusion of Chinese and Western architectural styles, with traditional Chengtu black-blue brick walls and tiled roofs, Chinese-style upturned flying eaves, Western-style arched tall windows, and interior wooden floors and stairs with smooth, shiny handrails that we children often used as slides to play on. There were also large British-style fireplaces in the rooms, with wide mantel-shelf and tall windows, and an attic on the roof. There was even a dark and gloomy basement, and we would sneak in and scare ourselves, screaming as we ran out…
Later, when the new dormitories were built and demolishing the old ones, huge wooden columns and foundations, brick, and tile rubble were piled up on the ruins. We would spend our days wandering around the ruins, sifting through the debris. I remember we found many rolls of oil paper wound tightly around a metal spindle, which we would unravel to make long strips of oil paper. To this day, I still don’t know what those were for.
When I was in junior high school, a large office building in the middle of the school’s playground was destroyed in a fire, and dozens of pianos and various musical instruments stored in the attic were also burned. These were the instruments used for music classes and choir performances at Sino-British Girls’ Middle School, which was renowned for its high-level music and art education.
I grew up on the Sino-British Girls’ Middle School campus and attended both junior and senior high school there. This heritage campus, with its rustling ginkgo trees and historical charm, was my world during my childhood and teenage years.
I went on to study at Fudan University after leaving Szechwan for Shanghai. My high school was established ten years earlier than my university, and its history was even longer than that of Fudan University.
After 1949, the Christian church and Westerners were heavily stigmatized by the Communist Party. Outside the gate of Sino-British Girls’ Middle School was Foundling Hall Street, named after the Foundling Hall run by the church at the intersection. When I was in elementary school, I had to walk along the street every day to get to school, which was the former Sino-British Girls’ Elementary School, and the campus was combined with adjoining courtyards around a small and exquisite garden.
It was said that the Foundling Hall was where foreigners would capture and eat children. Everyone was afraid, so we always walked in groups. When we needed to see a doctor, we would go to the nearby Number Two Hospital, which no one knew was actually founded by the church as the Canadian Methodist Hospital.
Perhaps it was fate that led me to travel all over China in my adulthood, and eventually cross the Pacific Ocean and settle down in Canada. I grew up under the influence of Canadians, and now I have become one myself.
There is an American movie called “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness," starring Ingrid Bergman, which tells the true story of an English missionary, Gladys Aylward, who overcame many difficulties and self-funded her way to Shansi Province in northern China to spread the gospel. The story happened in 1930, almost a hundred years after the Manchu Ching Dynasty lifted the ban on Christianity, yet the fervor of Western Christians remains strong. Later in 1938, when the War of Resistance broke out, the region was invaded by Japanese forces, and Aylward led more than 100 Chinese orphans to safety over the mountains, despite being wounded and sick, personally caring for them, and converting many to Christianity. They endured hardships and retreated all the way on foot to Sian, Shensi Province in western China.
Christianity was introduced to China by Western missionaries after lifting the ban in the late Ching Dynasty. After many incidents of personnel casualties and church burnings caused by religious riots, the church was repeatedly destroyed and rebuilt. By the time of the Republic of China, it had developed vigorously and made outstanding contributions to modern education and healthcare in China. Unfortunately, it came to an abrupt end by the Communist Party in 1949 when Western missionaries, teachers, and doctors were thoroughly expelled, and the true church was completely destroyed.
@ Shanghai
After graduating from high school at 16 years old, I went to Shanghai from Chengtu to study at Fudan University. I saw the campus buildings that combined Chinese and Western styles and looked antique. The style was exactly the same as the Sino-British Girls’ Middle School campus that I was used to seeing since childhood, except there were no ginkgo trees, but instead, there were French sycamore trees all over the campus, just like in West China Union University.
Later, I learned that this kind of architectural style was the perfect combination of traditional Chinese architecture and Western design, which began in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and was popular for half a century in China’s classical revival architecture. The Fudan campus was designed by the famous American architect Henry Murphy, a representative of the classical revival of Chinese architecture.
The library of Fudan University
Mr. Joseph Hsiangpo Ma, the founder of Fudan, came from a large gentry Catholic family and was a Jesuit priest. In 1900, he donated 500 acres of fertile paddy fields to the church for education and founded China’s first private modern university, Aurora University. However, due to his opposition to theological education on campus and his advocacy of “academic independence, freedom of thought, and no political or religious restrictions," he led some teachers and students to withdraw from Aurora University and founded Fudan Public School in 1905, which became Fudan University in 1917.
Mr. Tenghui Lee, who served as the president of Fudan for thirty years, was an overseas Chinese who graduated from Yale University in the United States and was a devout Protestant. Like Mr. Joseph Ma, although he was a Christian himself, he opposed theological education on campus and put freedom of thought first. This is probably the root of why Fudan students particularly admire freedom.
Fudan not only advocates religious freedom but also allows political freedom. Before the War of Resistance Against Japan, Fudan was able to accept students expelled from other universities for political reasons. During the war, Fudan relocated to Chungking, my birthplace, and made Summer Terrace in North Town, where Fudan was located, a free zone where any political party or belief could freely propagate their ideas. Summer Terrace also became one of the four cultural terraces in the rear of the war.
Generally speaking, the disputes of the Catholic Church in China are more numerous than those of the Protestant Church, probably because the Roman Catholic Church is more dogmatic and domineering. The main reason for the ban on Christianity in the early Ching Dynasty was that the Vatican prohibited Chinese believers from worshiping heaven, ancestors, and Confucius. After the ban was lifted at the end of the Ching Dynasty, both the Catholic and Protestant Churches entered the inland areas of China, and even small counties like Joint County had several religious cases.
As early as 1856, French Catholic priests came to Joint County to preach and developed their followers through medical treatment. However, because ancestor worship was prohibited, most of the converts were rascals who sought refuge. They often bullied others and gave the church a bad reputation. Eventually, the church was destroyed by the local gentry.
In 1900, a German Protestant pastor began to preach in Joint County and even persuaded a local monk to convert to Christianity. The monk donated all the temple properties to the church, which amounted to paddy fields producing more than 70 thousand pounds of paddy every year. These fields were donated to temples by the local gentry who believed in Buddhism.
The pastor accepted the land, destroyed the Buddha statues, and converted the temple into a church. The local gentry reported this to the county government, which reported it to the Western Affairs Office. The British consul sent an inspection team to conduct a joint investigation, and it was ultimately determined that the foreigners should not occupy Chinese land. The German pastor was expelled back to his home country.
Despite these disputes, the Christian church continued to send missionaries to preach in Joint County. Catholic priests, mostly French, and Protestant pastors from Britain established schools and provided medical treatment. They developed thousands of followers in Joint County until Christianity disappeared from Joint County after 1949 when the Communist Party took over China.
The history of Christianity in China had its ups and downs, harmony, and conflicts. They raised the banner of the omnipotent exclusive one true God in China, which had revered the ancestors and natural spirits of all things for five thousand years. It was destined to be fraught with difficulties, but they indeed brought modern Western civilization to China.
Although modern Western civilization was based on the polytheistic ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, European barbarians were bound by the monotheistic Christian religion for a thousand years after destroying the ancient Greek and Roman civilizations. It was not until the Reformation and Renaissance that they broke free from ignorance and picked up the remains of ancient Greek and Roman civilizations to develop modern civilization. However, modern civilization followed Christian missionaries’ footsteps, entering China and penetrating into counties, towns, and villages.
From Chungking to Chengtu, from Chengtu to Shanghai, from the upper reaches of the Yangtze River in western China to Shanghai at the mouth of the Yangtze River in eastern China, and from Peking in the North to Hong Kong in the South, across the Pacific to the United States and Canada, I have lived, studied, and worked in seven cities. With vast mountains and rivers and multiple time layers, looking back at my journey, it seems that every little bit has a discontinuous clue that links up the history of China in the twentieth century.
Phoenix Works:
鳳巢 