Family ties from history remain intact
Guling, a centuries-old resort town in the mountains about 13 km from downtown Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province, is renowned as a place where foreigners settled after the First Opium War when the city was forced to open as a trading port to the West.
In February 2012, during his trip to the United States, then Vice-President Xi Jinping recounted an old story: An American man called Milton Gardner grew up in Guling. He had fond memories of his childhood there and wished he could return. Sadly, Gardner died before he could fulfill his dream.
Xi heard the story in 1992 when he worked in Fuzhou as the secretary of the city Party committee, and that year he invited Gardner’s widow Elizabeth to visit Fuzhou and Guling.
Recently, 19 people from seven US families paid a visit to Guling to track their ancestors and their stories. Here are four stories: We came three years ago to Fuzhou for the first time. This is our second visit. We grew up with many stories and Chinese artifacts, books and treasures that they brought back. My grandmother had a diary. My grandfather had an autobiography. So we knew quite a bit about their time here, but it’s just a fraction of the amazing life that they led here with the Chinese.
Their courage and commitment to be here, to be with the Chinese people, and to be a friend of the Chinese, impressed me the most. My grandfather helped to establish the Tianru Middle School (in Minqing). He was the principal of the middle school. We are very proud of him. My grandmother left Iowa for China when she was 26 as a single woman, which was so courageous.
My grandparents made friends with the Chinese. They were always hosting people at their house for dinner. It seems that every night, somebody was coming over for dinner and friendship. My grandfather was prima- rily an instructor in animal husbandry, poultry, pigs and cattle. He was the first administrator of the Foochow Union High School. They built the school in the 1920s. It was bombed and burned in 1930s by the Japanese. They usually didn’t bomb American buildings if they knew they were not Chinese buildings, but for some reason, they took this one out.
My grandparents were always very old to me. We never talked about anything. They were very reserved. They were extremely religious. They were Methodist, and they were not outgoing. They were really hard-workers.
I learned all kinds of things about China from grandpa. Actually I was really too young to ask questions. All I knew is that my father was born in China, and when I told other Americans, they looked at me, like, you don’t look like Chinese.
When I was a child, China and the US were not friends, so we never talked about it much, and I didn’t find out about it until I was much older.
My father was born here, right here in Guling, in 1912. He lived here until he was nine. So I have a real connection.
One of the gifts I got was a copy of a book he wrote, about his life as a child in China. And he loved it. He spoke Chinese. He talked about the story of the cook cutting the head of a chicken and the chicken running around. He had a lot of memories. He had a great love of China and Chinese people. He was always talking about the love and the connection to China.
He never came back. He went to school and by the time he finished school, the war had started. His parents came back to the US in 1935. They were too old to come back.
My father was a medical doctor. He started first in Gutian (Fujian province) hospital, and then came to Fuzhou when we came back in 1938. I was in Fuzhou from then until 1949. He stayed until 1950.
It was my home here. We loved being here. My father was very much at home in China. Our family was a mix because my mother was very American, had never lived anywhere outside the US before. In our family, there were a lot of American customs. We were homeschooled by our mother. But when we lived in Gutian, I played mainly with Chinese kids. It’s a really special place in our lives, which is why I came back.
When I came back in 2010, we went to Union Hospital in Fuzhou. Doctor Zhang, who was president of the hospital then, invited us for dinner. There was an old woman who was a retired nurse from the hospital. She was trained under my father, so she knew my father.
When we returned to the US in the 1950s, China closed up, and we couldn’t come back. Then my father died in the 1960s. He never was able to come back. He would come in a minute if he could.