The Making of a Family Saga : Ginling College [1 ed.] 9781438429144, 9781438429137

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The Making of a Family Saga

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The Making of a Family Saga Ginling College

Jin Feng

Cover photo of Ginling College faculty and administrators, 1932, courtesy of Yale Divinity School Library, Special Collections Published by State University of New York Press Albany ©2009 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production by Diane Ganeles Marketing by Michael Camp0chiaro Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Feng, Jin The making of a family saga : Ginling College / Jin Feng. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4384-2913-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Ginling College (Nanjing, Jiangsu Sheng, China)—History. 2. Women’s colleges—China—Case studies. 3. Missions—China—Case studies. 4. Church colleges—China—Case studies. 5. Women—China—Nanjing ( Jiangsu Sheng)—Social conditions—20th century. 6. Women intellectuals—China—Nanjing (Jiangsu Sheng)—Biography. 7. Ginling College (Nanjing, Jiangsu Sheng, China)—Biography. 8. Family—China—Nanjing (Jiangsu Sheng)—History—20th century. 9. Community life—China—Nanjing (Jiangsu Sheng)—History—20th century. 10. Nanjing (Jiangsu Sheng, China)— Intellectual life—20th century. I. Title. II. Title: Ginling College. LG53.N3F46 2009 378.51'136—dc22 2009007382 10

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To Ginling Daughters Past, Present, and Future

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Contents

List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments

ix xi

Introduction: Telling Stories of Ginling

1

Ginling College The Family Discourse Sources and Scholarship Organization of Chapters

Chapter 1. The House of a Hundred Rooms (1915–23) Setting and Dramatis Personae The House of a Hundred Rooms We Had a Dream Creation of the Family Discourse Implementation of the Family Discourse: Initial Negotiations Student Compositions: The Kingdom of God in China

Chapter 2. Building These Hallowed Halls (1923–27) The New Ginling Home Training Her Body for God or for China: PE at Ginling (I) Femininity, Christianity, and Nationalism: PE at Ginling (II) Awakening to Rising Conflicts

2 4 17 25

26 27 34 41 48 51 61

67 68 76 89 97

Chapter 3. The Return of the Native Daughter (1927–37)

111

The Tempest of 1927 Mother and Daughter Cooperation, Equality, and Power: Ginling’s Battle for Independence in the 1920s Dissent, Squabble, and Unrest: “Family” Life in the 1920s to 1930s

113 123 136

158

viii

Contents

Chapter 4. Dispersion and Reunion (1937–45) The Nanjing Massacre: 1937–38 Sharing the Fate of the National Family (I): Adventures of the Ginling Family in Exile Sharing the Fate of the National Family (II): Curricular Adjustments Head of the Family in the War Heaven or Hell? The Two Sides of the War Story

170 172 181 190 199

207

Chapter 5. Things Came Undone (1945–52)

215

Homecoming Disintegration and Countermeasures at Postwar Ginling Regime Change and the End

216 219

Epilogue: Resurrection and Reunion

226

243

Family Correspondence Ginling Reborn The Discourse of the Ginling Family: Final Accounting

243 245 248

Appendix A: Biographical Dictionary Appendix B: Glossary of Chinese Characters Appendix C: Catalogue of Names and Times of Interviews by the Author Notes Bibliography Index

255 259 267 269 297 309

List of Abbreviations

ALWP

Anne Louise Welch Papers

CCP

Chinese Communist Party

CRPMP

China Records Project Miscellaneous Personal Papers Collection

ETMP

Esther Tappert Mortensen Papers

GCC

Ginling College Committee

GMD

Guomindang (Nationalist) Party

MCTP

Matilda Calder Thurston Papers

NNU

Nanjing Normal University Archives

NYC

New York City

PUMC

Peking Union Medical College

RG

Record Group

SC

Smith College Library Archives

SHAN

Second Historical Archives in Nanjing

UB

United Board of Christian Higher Education in Asia

UM

University of Michigan, Bentley Historical Library

UTS

Burke Library, Union Theological Seminary, NYC

YDSL

Yale Divinity School Library

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Acknowledgments

This book would not have come to fruition without the help of numerous people. First, I sincerely thank all the “Ginling Daughters,” alumnae and other associates of that esteemed institution, whose kindness and patience shall always remain with me. Rocky Chin and May Chen generously opened to me their home and collection of Ginling-related materials. Librarians and archivists at various institutions came through with helpful answers every time I had questions: Joan Duff y of Yale Divinity School Library Archives, Anne Lozier of Smith College Archives, Dean Rogers of Vassar College Archives, Wilma Slaight of Wellesley College Archives, and many more. Special thanks go to Carolyn FitzGerald, who read various chapters and versions of my manuscript and provided enormous support in the process of my writing and revision of this book. Grinnell College awarded me research grants through the years and a sabbatical leave for 2007–2008 as well, making it possible for me to start and complete the final draft of my manuscript. The Associated Colleges of the Midwest awarded me a Faculty Career Development Grant for my archival research and interviews in China. The Hopkins-Nanjing Center provided me with a quiet home and excellent facilities during my sabbatical year. An early version of my discussion of Ettie Chin in Chapter Four appeared in my article “Exile Between Two Continents: Ettie Chin’s War Experience in China (1937–1944).” I would also like to thank my editors, Nancy Ellegate and Diane Ganeles, and the anonymous reviewers of my book, for their most useful and encouraging comments and suggestions. Last but not the least, my parents have always supported my intellectual exploration, even though it has led me far away from their side.

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Introduction

Telling Stories of Ginling

I

n this book I am not aiming to present a traditional college history. Instead, I will scrutinize some of the epoch-making events surrounding the foundation and development of Ginling College (Jinling nüzi wenli xueyuan 金陵女子文理學院, 1915–52), an all-women’s missionary institution of higher education in China, in order to explore the uneasy relationships between tradition and modernity, nationalism and internationalism, and memory and history in twentieth–century China. Although Ginling’s institutional history has inevitably been shaped by various sociopolitical and cultural forces, I will adopt a “microscopic” rather than “macroscopic” approach, and examine the written and oral materials produced by the Chinese and American women involved in the building of Ginling from “ground level up.” That is to say, not only will I privilege the personal, subjective, and apparently idiosyncratic (re)interpretations of dominant institutional discourses by individuals, but also, when examining seemingly cut-and-dry official documents, I will seek to shed light on both the intricate motives and dynamic interactions that created them and the physical and psychological consequences that they have had in individual lives. I adopt this approach partly because of the nature of available sources and the state of scholarship on Ginling. I also believe that to create an effective history of an institution of higher learning, we should listen to the lively ensemble of intermingling voices that not only constantly change the shape of the college during its lifetime, but also give the institution its enduring afterlife. Furthermore, since individual cognition, the kernel of any intellectual history, always integrates diverse sensory impressions and affective responses, I suggest that an institutional history can be shown to its best advantage in an embodied and individuated form. Therefore, although my analysis of individual storytelling will reveal shared narrative

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patterns shaped by the larger sociohistorical context, I will focus more on the ever-shifting personalities and events that defined Ginling’s institutional character at various points and on the college’s enduring impact upon those involved in this collective enterprise called “education.” Since I will trace diverse contours of people and events, at times my discussion may appear dispersed and embedded in specific historical moments. However, I will try to demonstrate how issues of modernity, nationalism, and gender affected the ways that a unique group of Chinese women experienced and influenced twentieth-century Chinese history. Discursive constructs are arguably not historical realities. Nevertheless, I will treat written and oral materials on Ginling as both symbolic responses to and molding forces of concrete historical situations. In so doing, I hope to break the deadlock caused by rigid moralist denunciations of Western imperialism in China, and to capture some of the rich visions and experiences of Chinese modernity missing from existing master narratives of twentieth-century Chinese history.

g i n l i n g c ol l e g e A brief sketch of Ginling history will reveal its deep immersion in the political upheavals of twentieth-century China. It was founded in 1913 through the united efforts of eight American women’s mission boards: Baptists (North and South), Disciples, Episcopalians, Methodists (North and South), and Presbyterians (North and South), and it officially opened in Nanjing, China, in 1915. On the one hand, Ginling was born out of a fortuitous combination of international and national factors: particularly the Social Gospel Movement and the Student Volunteer Movement in the United States that recruited many female college graduates for the mission field in China, and the Qing (1644–1911) government’s more receptive attitude toward “new learning” for Chinese women. Yet its birth also testified to a moment of profound national distress in Chinese history. The repeated defeats and humiliation suffered by the Qing army and navy at foreign hands had forced Chinese cities to open to foreign businesses and missionaries, while making plain to the political and intellectual elites of the time the necessity of Western education for any possible Chinese rejuvenation. A heightened and widespread sense of national crisis caused by foreign encroachment into the economy, politics, and social life of China gave rise to increasingly radical schemes of national self-strengthening and Chinese modernization.1 From the model of constitutional monarchy espoused by reformers such as Kang Youwei (1858–1927) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929) to the Republican model of Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925),

Introduction

3

intellectuals became more and more sympathetic to the total renunciation of traditional Chinese culture and full acceptance of Western modes of modernization. The birth of Ginling College at such a trouble-ridden historical juncture foreboded a thorny path for the institution, but also promised a vibrant site of discursive engagements from the very beginning. Not surprisingly, Ginling witnessed many cultural and political convulsions of twentieth-century China during its lifetime. Among them were two large-scale traumas. In 1927, American faculty members had to evacuate Nanjing when the Nationalist Northern Expedition Army captured it, and there was arson, looting, and shooting that caused considerable chaos and distress within the college. In 1937, the faculty and students of the whole college had to scatter to Shanghai, Wuchang, and Chengdu to escape from the invading Japanese army. Only an emergency committee headed by one of the American missionaries stayed in Nanjing to oversee the college properties and open its door to Chinese refugees during the horrendous Nanjing Massacre. In 1938 the majority of the members of the college reunited and settled down with five other colleges in Huaxi ba (華西壩), an area a little outside of the city limits of Chengdu in Sichuan. It was not until 1946, several months after the anti-Japanese war ended with the unconditional surrender of Japan, that members of Ginling returned to their much-damaged campus in Nanjing. Here they stayed when the Chinese Communist army entered Nanjing in 1949 following the ouster of the Nationalist government. After a series of workshops organized by the Communist government that attempted to “reeducate” missionary faculty members and students with the new ideology of dialectical materialism, Ginling College returned to more or less regular academic work. However, with the eruption of the Korean War and the Chinese government’s efforts to reorganize and control higher education, officially called “Adjustment of Colleges and Departments” (yuanxi tiaozheng 院係調整), Ginling College first merged with the University of Nanking (Jinling daxue 金陵大學), its missionary “brother” college and neighbor in Nanjing, in 1951 to form the public institution Jinling University. In 1952 the Normal College and several departments of Jinling University finally combined with various departments from other colleges to form Nanjing Normal University, also a public school. The last class of Ginling College graduated in the same year, bringing the total number of Ginling graduates up to about a thousand. In the next thirty-some years the name “Ginling” all but disappeared from public view, but it was never absent from the minds of those who had played a part in its life. What has differentiated Ginling from its missionary peers that have also been dispersed and reorganized lies in its surprising

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The Making of a Family Saga

resurrection. Before Ginling’s former Chinese president Wu Yifang passed away in 1985, she, with the help of various influential alumnae both in China and overseas, convinced the Chinese government of the necessity to reopen Ginling. After her death, alumnae organizations both in China and abroad launched vigorous and widely successful fund-raising campaigns. The more than half a million dollars that was raised helped to build a classroom-office building on the original site of Ginling College. The first group of students entered the reinstituted Ginling College, a unit under the large umbrella of Nanjing Normal University, in 1987. In the twenty years since then, this college has graduated about two thousand students, twice the total number of Ginling graduates from 1915–1952.2 Moreover, it offers several of the most popular majors at Nanjing Normal University, such as applied English, nutrition, and international accounting. The resurrected Ginling College celebrated the eightieth, eighty-fifth, and ninetieth anniversaries of its founding in 1995, 2000, and 2005, respectively, and, most recently, the twentieth anniversary of its reinstitution in 2007.

t h e fa m i ly di s c ou r s e Ginling’s history poses an intriguing question. Namely, given its relatively short life span and small number of graduates, not to mention its “suspect” status as an American-founded all-women’s missionary college in mainland China after 1949, how can we explain its remarkable staying power and extraordinary comeback where all other, purportedly more influential, missionary institutions such as Yenching (燕京) University have failed? I suggest that the answer lies in its powerful discourse of the Ginling family. Ginling College certainly faced challenges similar to those faced by its missionary peers in its attempts at bringing Christian higher education to China. Not only did its nature as an American transplant in China create competing demands on its members and result in confl icted loyalties of its members, but its infrastructure also seemed fraught with tensions. For, although hailed by its missionary founders and Chinese supporters as a symbol of Chinese women’s increased educational and professional opportunities, it depended on foreign sources for fi nancial support and, in its early years, for fi lling most of its faculty positions. Moreover, at Ginling, as was the case in other missionary colleges at the time,3 Chinese and American faculty members were subject to different salary scales, with Chinese members receiving less compensation for the same rank and seniority. The rationale of the trustees was that the missionaries’ living expenses were higher and that they could be paid

Introduction

5

by their boards following American salary standards, while the Chinese faculty members should be compensated according to the rule of “economy,” since they could only draw their salary from the tuition and fees that Ginling collected from its students.4 This policy created inequality between its Chinese and American members. Moreover, in the early years Ginling’s American faculty members clearly dominated the decision-making processes concerning the curriculum, the faculty and student governance, and the institutional relationship with the Chinese government. All these seemed to have forecast troubled relations between its Chinese and American constituencies even as the missionary founders espoused the indigenization of missionary education and a family atmosphere transcending the issue of race. Furthermore, both the American and Chinese members of the college faced their own sets of dilemmas. Of course, Ginling College provided an invaluable venue of self-actualization for the American missionaries. For some missionaries, it meant professional achievements. For others, it provided a new way of religious devotion. And for still others, it promised adventures and exotic experiences. For all, the experience at Ginling College added breadth and depth to their lives and offered an alternative path to the traditional expectations for women. However, their freedom and power of self–determination came at a price. Material difficulties were the least of it, though as a rule female missionaries were less well paid than their male colleagues in China. Many of them also had to go through difficult psychological adjustments, since they lived in an alien land faraway from their own family, feeling the loneliness and self-doubt all the more acutely when their family demands competed with their missionary work. The rising nationalist fervor in early twentieth-century China often forced them to face their own identity as members of colonial powers such as the United States and Britain in a semicolonial Chinese society. Their extraterrestrial privileges in China, although helpful in building Ginling and shielding the institution from government interference and Japanese molestation at times, also inevitably separated them from the very people they had vowed to serve. While not completely unaware of the irresolvable conflict between their privileged status in China and their proclamation of Christian love for the Chinese people, most of these missionary women shared their male colleagues’ firm belief in the innate superiority of Western civilization and Christianity. Because of their steadfast adherence to their cherished project of rejuvenating China through Christian higher education, they often had to wrestle with dissenting opinions both from radical male intellectuals from the outside, and from the Chinese members within Ginling.

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The Making of a Family Saga

Missionary institutions often came under fire in twentieth-century China because of their connections to colonial forces. For example, the World Christian Students Association held their eleventh convention at Tsing-hua (清華) University in Beijing in 1922, and incurred nationwide protests from non-Christian Chinese intellectuals in cities like Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, Xiamen, and Changsha.5 A telegram sent by students in Shanghai accused missionaries of perpetrating cultural imperialism and “raising running dogs [zougou 走狗] of foreign capitalists.”6 Ginling further angered radical male Chinese intellectuals and even male members of other missionary institutions because of the missionary women’s disapproval of students’ political activism and their opposition to coeducation. In addition to aspersions cast on their character from external sources, they also had to tackle discontent from within. Although anyone in a position of power may too easily become a figure of both attraction and repulsion, some missionaries who were inclined to enforce discipline became easy targets of resentment by Chinese students because of the obvious American dominance on campus in Ginling’s early years. The Chinese women students and faculty members at Ginling College encountered their own particular challenges as well. On the one hand, they enjoyed more educational and career opportunities than the majority of Chinese women of their times. Many of them also achieved remarkable success in their professions as scientists, social workers, teachers, and doctors after graduation. However, they had to negotiate their way through their professional aspirations, traditional expectations for women in Chinese society that revolved around marriage and children, and the nationalist sentiment of their compatriots, which they frequently shared. On a mundane level, they had to choose between working for their alma mater as “returned daughters” at a reduced salary and jobs that paid better at government institutions, and between demonstrating their devotion to Ginling and earning a living wage adequate to provide for their own families. Moreover, they had to pick sides when the issue of race and nationality came into play in various political upheavals. The May Fourth Movement in 1919, the May Thirtieth Incident, in 1925, and the 1927 Incident, when the Nationalist army captured Nanjing, were just a few of the events that tested their mettle as both members of a missionary college and Chinese citizens. In light of the complex racial and cultural dynamics both outside and within Ginling College, the missionary founders urgently needed a powerful means to create solidarity. This they found in the discourse of the Ginling family. Although they invoked the model of the traditional multigenerational Confucian family based on a strict hierarchy of age-,

Introduction

7

gender-, and status-grading, they also made several important changes. For one thing, they insisted on a uniform gender makeup of the student body, strenuously defending Ginling’s identity as an all-women’s college. This effort created what Estelle Freedman has called a “female public sphere,” and demonstrated that female institution building could form among middle-class women an empowering community that mediated between women’s domestic world and the public sphere.7 The missionaries also invoked Christianity as a shared spiritual bond of the Ginling family, and thereby provided another important tool of empowerment for Chinese women who, as Elizabeth Littell-Lamb has demonstrated through her study of the YWCA in China, often used Christianity as a “heterodox” religion to structure and give new meanings to their lives.8 The missionaries further asserted that the common goal of the Ginling family lay in the training of Chinese women as well-educated, spiritually elevated Christian leaders who would help create a strong and harmonious new national family in China. Their invocation of a Chinese nationalist agenda, although moderate in tone and not without inherent contradictions, not only neutralized the charge of cultural imperialism directed against them, but also appealed to the Chinese students and their families swept up in the national salvation movement of early twentiethcentury China. We can see that the missionary discourse of the Ginling family confl ated several different types of family: using the traditional Chinese Confucian family as its original model, the founders also sought to conjoin their Christian belief and the nationalist aspirations of their Chinese students and colleagues, all while promoting a social feminist agenda9 of raising Chinese women’s status. In addition to enunciating this set of core values, this discourse also demarked the center and periphery of the Chinese national family that the missionaries had envisioned. For them, an ideal Chinese national family should be guided by a group of elite Chinese women who had mostly come from privileged family background and been educated at a Western-style Christian institution, since they could serve in leadership roles to transform the common masses in Chinese society with the help of Christianity. The experience of Ginling College in the twentieth century would test the elasticity of this discourse, and show how its attempts at integration into Chinese society and the boundary it set up contributed to Ginling’s successes and setbacks at various historical moments. The detailed description and analysis of the enactment of Ginling’s family discourse will be the task for the remainder of this book. For now, let me try to provide a preliminary exploration of both the power and inherent contradictions of

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The Making of a Family Saga

this discourse, an exploration I hope will illustrate the generative analytical focus of this book. ***

“The family is the single-most-important place where a child learns about love, authority, and power,” Martha Vicinus has said,10 and it is often invoked as a useful trope to instill intragroup bonding. The deployment of the family metaphor for missionary institution building was thus not unique to Ginling. Yenching University was also purportedly steeped in a family spirit, thanks to the diligent efforts of its American missionary president, John Leighton Stuart (1876–1962).11 However, Ginling’s family discourse proved unique in its reiterative versatility, encompassing institutionalization, and lasting impact. The context of its origination can provide some clues to its wide success at Ginling. Since “the family offered an indispensable figure for sanctioning social hierarchy within a putative organic unity of interests,”12 missionaries were able to make the group dynamic of missionary authority and student obedience seem more natural by invoking the family metaphor. Moreover, the family discourse found the Chinese members of Ginling impressionable and malleable, perhaps because of their intimate experience with the traditional Confucian family hierarchy. In other words, the missionary founders’ choice of the trope of the family was able to strike a resonant cord with both the Chinese and American members at Ginling because the values and needs of the two groups overlapped at this particular historical juncture. In addition to its obvious utility for establishing missionary authority and a hierarchical structure, the founders found this discourse attractive also for its power to create a feeling of community. Because these missionaries were single foreign women residing in an alien land and culture, the image of an institutional family, however deliberately manufactured, provided them with much-needed emotional support. At the same time, the teachers got emotional feedback from a group of young Chinese women who had left their own natal families to live in a residential college among peers mostly unrelated by blood. The family discourse thus dislodged Chinese women from a kinship system dominated by Confucian ethics and helped them to explore new relationships and form new identities, while in the process offering both the Chinese and American members a stable community to call home. The secular and liberal Ginling curriculum served to attract Chinese students who craved either practical knowledge for professional

Introduction

9

advancement or a glimpse into a different culture. The words of the missionary John Mott accurately captured missionary understanding of Chinese interest at the time: “It is Western education that the Chinese are clamoring for, and will have. If the Church can give it to them, plus Christianity, they will take it; otherwise they will get it elsewhere, without Christianity—and that speedily!”13 It also should be noted that Ginling’s missionary founders belonged to the group of “modernists” in the mission field14 who were more interested in preparing elite Chinese women for “Christian leadership,” than in proselytizing illiterate and poverty-stricken Chinese masses. They envisioned Ginling graduates as intellectual and spiritual leaders who would transform their people and nation not so much through evangelization as through their work and lives of “Christian consecration.” Therefore, although Ginling was in principle a missionary college, the faculty from the very beginning took pains to build it into a bona fide institution of higher education that possessed rigorous academic standards as well as an impeccable Christian character. Their broadly conceived curriculum was thus able to attract a large and relatively diverse pool of Chinese women, some of whom had grown up in families of Confucian literati who had resisted the promulgation of Christianity. Ginling’s missionary founders proclaimed a tripartite mission of educating Chinese women in body, mind, and spirit. Because of their own educational experiences, the missionary founders of Ginling adopted the curriculum of elite American women’s liberal arts colleges in New England in order to produce the kind of Chinese women who could meet the perceived needs of contemporary Chinese society. Ginling’s curriculum deserves our attention for its strength in three particular areas compared to other colleges at the time: English, physical education, and home economics. As will be shown later in this book, these curricular emphases not only prepared their students for study abroad and career development, but also became a crucial part of these students’ interpretation of the meaning of a Ginling education and of their identity as Ginling graduates, not the least because such emphases provided the students with rare freedom and broadened their scope of self-development and even self-invention. In addition to the institutional mission and curriculum, the profile of the individuals who built the college also added to its secular and liberal flavor, and thereby further increased its attraction for middle- and upper-class Chinese women of the time. Recruited by the Student Volunteer Movement, female American educational missionaries were mostly college graduates who, according to Reverend Arie DeHaan, a recruiter of female college graduates for the mission field in China, were on the whole “practical, unemotional persons” rather than the traditional “religious

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The Making of a Family Saga

people,”—that is, ardent evangelists.15 Women who came to Ginling to teach “wanted more for themselves than they saw in conventional alternatives. Some of them wanted more opportunities for achievement; some, more renown; others, satisfaction, independence, adventure, status.”16 Most of the American women who established and developed Ginling College had either come from privileged families, or received the highest level of formal education among women of their time and culture, or both. Because of the missionaries’ personal backgrounds and powers of articulation, their words and deeds functioned as cultural conduits through which the experience of American culture was disseminated and reinvented. Notably, they tended to integrate religion and “civilization” in their instruction at Ginling. Just as captivating for the Chinese students as the missionaries’ academic qualifications was the way that these American women embodied Western lifestyle and material culture. Although placing less emphasis on official endorsement of Western etiquette than their missionary neighbor, the University of Nanking,17 Ginling faculty members taught their Chinese disciples table manners and other rules of “civilized” social behavior just as assiduously (and perhaps even more effectively, given Ginling’s smaller size and residential character) through their frequent tea parties and other social interactions. The Chinese students, consequently, imbibed at Ginling not only academic, religious, and moral instruction, but also training in gender- and class-inflected Western etiquette that left an indelible impression on their minds. Later they would repeatedly invoke this kind of training as an indispensable part of their collective identity; it was encapsulated, so they claimed, in a unique Ginling qizhi (氣質), or mien and spirit, in which they would always take inordinate pride. The family discourse at Ginling College attracted and molded Chinese women who entered its door. However, they were not merely passive receptacles of this powerful institutional ethos. The family discourse also enabled them to form new identities and attempt new ways of selfrepresentation, a perhaps unintended consequence of its missionary creators that nevertheless further endeared Ginling to its Chinese members. Although apparently occupying a location of privilege because of their family background and their access to modern education at a time when many middle- and upper-class Chinese women were not allowed to step out of domestic space, mission-educated Chinese women still had to overcome various obstacles hindering their intellectual and professional growth. Compared to their male counterparts at missionary colleges, these women had to face both Chinese and American gender stereotypes in order to make something of their lives. They also had to tackle

Introduction

11

racial stereotypes, cultural prejudices, and at times political persecutions because of their unique geopolitical location as Chinese citizens with a semi-Western (and religious) institutional affiliation living in an era of rising nationalism in China. As a result, these women often had to rework dominant discourses to represent and advance themselves. For Ginling women, opportunities came with the circulation of the dominant institutional discourse of the Ginling family. In a move resembling what Martha Vicinus calls “the non-normative in dialogue with the normative,”18 the Chinese women undertook an imaginative reworking of the familiar trope of the family. In response to the missionary exhortation to build the collective Ginling family, the Chinese women were able to free themselves, at least temporarily, from the all-too-real confinement of family obligations and gender roles at home, and achieve self-representation through a seemingly paradoxical integration of the individual and the collective. That is to say, on the institutional level, they were able to narrate and signify their individual experiences through enthusiastic cooperation with American missionaries in the collective enterprise of building Ginling and constructing its institutional history. In the larger national context, the family metaphor also provided them with a certain leverage to negotiate for power—including freedom from missionary control—precisely because of the missionaries’ promotion of Confucian ethical values and Chinese rejuvenation. By using the family discourse to legitimize their filial and patriotic duties as daughters to their own parents and “daughters” of China, the Chinese women were able to transcend both the institutional boundary and the demand of complete devotion to Ginling and Christianity made on them by the foreign missionaries. Both Ginling students’ Chinese heritage and Ginling’s unique institutional temperament account for why the Chinese women used such a seemingly indirect way for self-representation. Tani Barlow, after examining the sinologist Mou Zhengyun’s genealogy of the Chinese term for women, funü 婦女, concludes: “There is no term present before the twentieth century that might indicate women as a group outside of the family [in China].”19 Rather, Chinese women “were gendered by virtue of the protocols specific to their subject positions and not necessarily or even in the first case by virtue of the physiological ground they may or may not share with people outside the kinship group.”20 In other words, they were either nü, unmarried daughters of their natal families, or fu, married women, and wives and mothers who belonged to their husbands’ families. Since Chinese women’s subject position had always been defined within patrilineal kinship before the twentieth century, it followed that Ginling

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The Making of a Family Saga

students would find the family metaphor both an easily recognizable and a useful discursive tool with which to seek their individual and group identities outside of the kinship network. As will be illustrated throughout this book, the Chinese women at Ginling indeed frequently invoked the trope of the family to legitimate both their pursuits as individuals and their nationalist endeavors. As mentioned above, the Qing government had become more interested in introducing Western education as a result of its military defeats at foreign hands. In 1906, it issued an imperial edict sanctioning Chinese women’s education. Consequently, Chinese women of middle- and upperclass families found it easier than before to step out of their homes to explore new possibilities at Western-style educational institutions. Ginling College, as one of the few colleges that admitted women at the time and a small, residential, all-women’s institution at that, particularly attracted young Chinese women and their families not only because of its academic quality, but also due to its emphases on strict chaperonage and careful moral and religious instruction. In this regard, it represented to the families of the Chinese students a halfway house between Chinese women’s complete seclusion and their radical liberation; thus, it was able to appeal to both Christian and non-Christian elite families, and in some cases even to radical anti-Christian male intellectuals who nevertheless wanted their daughters to attend an all-women’s institution without the distraction of male pursuit and radical politics.21 The historical origin of Ginling, as seen from both nationalist and missionary perspectives, determined that Ginling’s Chinese students would have to carry the burden of high Chinese and missionary expectations. But this heritage was neither unique among “new women” of the time nor an unmitigated liability, for it also contributed to their collective self-image as pioneers in Chinese women’s education, career development, and nationbuilding. In other words, although hailing from a distinctive missionary institutional affiliation, the Ginling women belonged to the same group of modern Chinese women who, as promoted by radical male Chinese intellectuals of “patriotic” persuasion, left their families in order to pursue a modern education and career outside of home, and to participate in China’s nation-building project. Like other “new women,” Ginling students participated in the building of their national family, because this was one of the few viable courses for Chinese women of the time to step into the public arena and make their experiences count.22 Yet their sense of mission and trail-blazing, not dissimilar from that felt by their missionary teachers, also contributed to the formation of both their individual and group identity and a community of pioneers.

Introduction

13

Ginling’s residential character, with its emphasis on close interactions and bonding between its members, and its institutional motto oriented these women toward a collectivist rather than individualist approach in their self-representation. The Ginling College motto of “Abundant Life” promoted by the missionaries and their Chinese colleagues emphasized to the students an internal “family spirit” and “service” to Chinese people. This institutional philosophy reveals the American founders’ concerted and self-conscious attempts at creating a collective identity that could transcend a narrowly defined religiosity and at reconciling the conflicts between the college’s China location and American affiliation. In proclaiming this motto, the missionaries could use moral and religious terms to justify Ginling’s existence and the founders’ functions in it. However, this motto also represented an institutional ethos that appealed to the Chinese women who sought individual realization through their participation in a collective project of high moral and spiritual worth: they were pursuing “transcendence,”23 following the example of their missionary teachers. For Chinese women who had just started to test their strengths in the public arena, a collective undertaking couched in moral and spiritual terms provided a justification, a training ground, and at times even a venue for more individualistic pursuits. The powerful discourse of the Ginling family gave both Chinese and American women an institutional home and a way to combat the limitations their own cultural traditions placed on women. But at the same time, both groups of women eventually also had to tackle its inherent contradictions and constraints. This was not only because the large sociopolitical context they lived in often impinged on the autonomy of their college. Nor was it simply due to its invocation of Confucian ethics that this discourse constantly came into conflict with both the antitraditionalist discourses disseminated by radical Chinese intellectuals and the idea of liberal democracy promoted by the missionaries. We can trace its innate contradictions to even more complex sources. Mirroring their Chinese protégées’ experiences, missionary women at Ginling ascended to positions of power unavailable to them at home. As Ann McClintock rightly points out: “The rationed privileges of race all too often put white women in positions of decided—if borrowed— power, not only over colonized women, but also over colonized men.”24 Moreover, female missionaries were able to rely on their geopolitical location in China as what Lydia Liu calls a “distancing factor” to help them acquire personal power and freedom, for “the extent to which they could imagine themselves as liberated individuals and gain their own freedom from patriarchal bondage depended on their physical removal from the

14

The Making of a Family Saga

network of patriarchal institutions at home.”25 Yet, although they were allpowerful white women vis-à-vis “the yellow race” of Chinese, they were nevertheless marginalized in their own patriarchal traditions, even as such traditions were transplanted to China and temporized by missionary zeal for the “work” of evangelism shared by both male and female missionaries. This contradiction inherent in female missionaries’ position of both power and vulnerability was clearly shown in Ginling’s struggle for independence as an all-women’s college against the plan by the Advisory Council of East China Christian Colleges and Universities that proposed a federated “East China University” in order to streamline missionary education.26 Moreover, although less inflammatory (albeit no less significant) a divergence from the “master plan” devised by male missionaries in China, the liberal arts curriculum they adopted at Ginling not only conflicted with the prevalent Chinese wish to train technocrats who could help with China’s industrialization, but also effectively contested the consensus of the influential China Education Commission of 1921–22, led by Ernest Burton, then vice president of the University of Chicago, and consisting of a group of educators based in both the United States and China, including Ginling’s president, Mrs. Thurston.27 Although conceding that specialized training at missionary institutions should not be “narrowly technical,” the commission did recommend that colleges “offer and emphasize courses preparatory to a limited number of professions, choosing these with reference to the specific needs of the community in their region.”28 Yet, despite the pressures on them from male missionaries, their perception of both their own cultures and the significance of Ginling in the national picture of China took its own path. Residing in an enclave removed from direct patriarchal rule (though not from coercive attempts) and shedding the forced passivity mandated by the cult of ideal Victorian womanhood in their home countries, the female missionaries were temporarily able to entertain a double illusion shared by their male colleagues: their unreasoning assumption of the superiority of Western traditions and their confidence in having discovered in Christianity an efficacious spiritual remedy for all of China’s ills. In a sense they lived in a bubble in China, an experience that made their perception of Western cultures out of sync with real time. Between the two world wars, the United States moved toward secularization and consumerism, while public opinion took a conservative turn regarding women’s education.29 At the same time, however, female missionaries still tried to inculcate into their Chinese students a somber missionary take on life and work, and promised students rosy prospects for the liberal arts education they received at Ginling. Yet, the contemporary realities of both China and the United States too often

Introduction

15

brought home to them the instability of their position. They encountered irreconcilable conflicts: between the missionaries’ privileges of extraterritoriality guaranteed by gunboats and their self-image as good Samaritans, as ambassadors of Christianity and apostles of peace and civilization; and between the Chinese masses’ need for a sustainable economy and the missionary sponsorship of a moderate spiritual evolution with Christianity as its guiding light. The Chinese students under their tutelage, in turn, had to deal with their own conflicted identities as daughters of Ginling and citizens of China despite, or, precisely because of, their support for Ginling’s family discourse. To some extent, they formed a love-hate relationship with Ginling’s missionaries and harbored complicated emotions of both admiration and resentment toward them. This was because, for one thing, the nationalist fervor of their compatriots often forced them to take sides in political upheavals. Furthermore, the education they received at Ginling and the family atmosphere that had nurtured them through college to some extent did them a disservice, precisely because of the idealized “family” picture to which it had acclimated them. As Hu Xiuying, a Ginling alumna and later a professor of biology at Harvard, pointed out, “Our advisors described too clearly the contour of an ideal society of truth and beauty but rarely forewarned us of the dark, evil sides. Thus we often say, ‘In the intimate Ginling family we feel at home but graduation feels like being married off ’ [Jinling yijia qin, zaixiao ru jiating, biye ru jianü 金陵一家親, 在校 如家庭, 畢業如嫁女]. In other words, at school we feel the family spirit, but upon graduation we feel all the more the pain of homelessness.”30 It can be seen that Ginling’s emphasis on family spirit at times left their students vulnerable to harsh realities and crushing disappointments in Chinese society. The existence of Ginling’s powerful family discourse may also explain the difference between Ginling and Nanking students in their self-positioning vis-à-vis Chinese society. As some scholars have commented, Ginling graduates typically demonstrated a more conciliatory attitude toward the Chinese government, while Nanking graduates more often questioned authorities and voiced dissent.31 Since Ginling and Nanking were both missionary institutions and close neighbors to each other in Nanjing, Ginling’s emphasis on both consensus and conformity “within the family” and constructive action toward society may well have shaped Ginling students’ apparently less critical attitude towards the Chinese authorities. Yet, not just the advantages but also the drawbacks of the family discourse at Ginling College make it an invaluable lens with which to investigate the various tensions in twentieth-century China. First of all, given

16

The Making of a Family Saga

the maneuvers and countermaneuvers, the conflicts and negotiations between tradition and modernity constantly waged through the deployment of the family discourse at Ginling, we can explore a set of questions both essential to Chinese women’s modern experiences and useful for the investigation of enactments of gender, race, and class at Chinese missionary institutions: What did it mean to be “daughters” of Ginling in an era of rising nationalism in China? Why did the Ginling women, as so often happens with graduates of elite American all-women’s colleges, seem unable to “get over” their college experience? How did they find and free their own voice in a society and cultural tradition dominated by men? How did they secure means of empowerment against apparently unbeatable odds? The dynamic transmutation of the family discourse in Ginling history will also shed new light on the tensions between memory and history inherent in modern Chinese historiography. As Wang Ban has pointed out in his Illuminations from the Past, the mainstream May Fourth discourse of history adopted the Western Enlightenment view of history, and “[t]he tenor of Enlightenment thought is antitraditional, antimemory and privileges modern, forward history at the expense of the cultural past.”32 Therefore, the radical intellectuals of the time typically undertook to rescue history from memory: to exorcise the lingering memories of cultural traditions in order to enable China to participate in the grand project of historical progress. In advocating a clean break with Chinese traditions, they sought to propel China toward modernity and equal status with modern Western nations on the international stage. This was of course a simplistic view of history that they never managed to carry out completely. In fact, they inevitably drew on specific Chinese accomplishments and memory, and thus achieved a “multilayered immersion in tradition”33 in their construction of a master narrative of modern Chinese history. However, this did not prevent them from deploying a variety of foils to accentuate their own modernity, such as the stereotypical conservative Confucian forces that clung to the glorious Chinese past, and foreign missionaries who paid tribute to Chinese traditions with the ulterior motive of obstructing Chinese progress toward modernization. In contrast to this simplistic representation of modern Chinese history, a reexamination of the ways that Ginling women represented their own roles in the making of the institution and of Chinese modernity will reveal to us a more nuanced picture of Chinese modernity. It will challenge the standard May Fourth master narrative of Chinese modernization and historical progress by providing a glimpse into alternative and at times even diametrically contrasting paths excluded from the May Fourth narrative.

Introduction

17

Thus, I believe my inquiry will add to the nuances of modern Chinese history, and also facilitate the exploration of some theoretical questions related to history writing. In his book Voices of Collective Remembering, James Wertsch provides a comparison of the meanings of “collective memory” and “history” as they are conceptualized in contemporary scholarship.34 While history is seen as objective, disinterested, critical, and selfreflective, collective memories are often dismissed as being too subjective, too unselfconscious, and too quick to exclude ambiguities and alternative voices. However, given the inherent problematic in the radical Chinese intellectuals’ anti-memory stance, can “subjective,” “emotional” memories such as those produced by members of Ginling College in fact help to retrieve voices that had been removed from the supposedly more objective history? Does memory in this case actually play an equally important role as history in furthering our understanding of twentieth-century China? How can we bring memory and history together rather than locking them into unproductive deictic positions? Or to ask a question particularly pertinent to my inquiry: Can the narratives constructed by the Ginling women, their “herstories” of diverse voices, form a mutually explicatory and constitutive relationship with the existing “history” of Chinese modernization? In summary, a tracing of the family discourse throughout Ginling’s institutional history will illustrate not only the dynamic changes experienced and effected by Ginling and its members, but also how local interpretations and enactments of gender and cultural identities interacted with the sociopolitical and historical context of twentieth-century China. In this way, my project will bring the microscopic into dialogue with the macroscopic, in that the stories told by Ginling members will not only challenge the May Fourth master narrative of Chinese modernity, but also reveal its limits as a tool of interpretation of twentieth-century China.

s ou r c e s a n d s c hol a r s h i p The discussion of Ginling’s family discourse above demonstrates the complex strands woven into its institutional history. My project seeks to reveal its full richness in order to fill a gap in existing scholarship on Ginling College. Ginling has so far commanded little space in the official histories of both the People’s Republic of China and the American mission movement. Granted, the college had only produced a meager total of one thousand graduates by the time of its dissolution in 1952. Yet a surprisingly high percentage of its alumnae and former faculty members played important and publicly acclaimed roles in Chinese cultural modernization and nation-building at a time when Chinese women enjoyed little public

18

The Making of a Family Saga

visibility or formal power. For instance, besides producing a significant number of well-known educators, administrators, scientists, and doctors, Ginling even had three alumnae who became female generals in the Communist People’s Liberation Army. Furthermore, Ginling College possessed the significant position of being one of the only two independent allwomen’s colleges and one of only a dozen or so missionary institutions of higher education in twentieth-century China. Perhaps most importantly, the college’s extraordinary internal cohesion and enduring impact deserve our serious attention. Ginling’s longtime invisibility resulted not only from reader’s apathy toward women’s experience, but also from the severe political atmosphere in the several decades after the establishment of the Communist government in China. For those with Ginling connections, the choice to stay in China after 1949 effectively prevented their voices from being heard, since they were often identified by the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as belonging to the cohort of Chinese intellectuals sympathetic to “American imperialists,” and as less than wholehearted in their support of the Chinese government. Because of these stringent criteria of political correctness, these women’s representations of their experiences of modernity were either ignored completely or appropriated as a conversion narrative of self-reform in order to fit the master narrative of the PRC. Fortunately, in recent years some Chinese scholars, most notably the Chinese historian Zhang Kaiyuan, an alumnus of the missionary University of Nanking, have turned their attention to missionary institutions and their roles in the cultural modernization of China.35 Yet in the series on seven Chinese missionary colleges that Zhang has edited, the volume on Ginling College authored by Sun Haiying includes little beyond a translation of the original English institutional history written by its founders half a century ago. Nor have Chinese researchers demonstrated much enthusiasm about Ginling College in articles published in mainland China, though they have produced insightful studies of other missionary institutions such as Yenching University and of the national context of missionary education. Some master’s theses have indeed investigated Ginling, such as Zeng Fangmiao’s “Minguo jiaohui nüzi jiaoyu—Jinling nüzi wenli xueyuan de ge’an yanjiu” (Women’s Missionary Education in Republican China: the Case of Jinling College) and Huang Jiezhen’s “Cong Wu Yifang yu Jinling nüzi daxue kan Jidu jiao jiaoyu linian de shijian” (The Practice of Christian Educational Theory as Seen in the Example of Wu Yifang and Jinling College).36 But as unpublished works, they can only expect occasional citations in published books such as a comparative study authored by Zhu Feng.37

Introduction

19

Most recently, a group of Ginling friends and associates has produced two scholarly books—Wu Yifang de jiaoyu sixiang yu shijian (The Educational Theory and Practice of Wu Yifang), and Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi (A History of Ginling Women’s College)—and four volumes of autobiographical or biographical essays published under the collective title Jinling nüer (Daughters of Ginling). The Educational Theory and Practice of Wu Yifang particularly represents outstanding recent Chinese scholarship. It has not only included previously overlooked materials, but also sought to use the category of gender to analyze Wu’s life and achievements. But it is limited by its scope as mainly a biographical study of an individual educator. Moreover, as the works mentioned above are studies of localized interest and impact, Ginling has yet to kindle widespread and serious academic research in China. Although adding more materials to the original institutional history penned by American missionaries, these Chinese works have not treated the subject of Ginling College itself with the full critical and analytical attention it deserves. Paralleling the recent increase of interest in Ginling in China, research on Ginling outside China has also been sporadic until recently. The American missionaries directly involved in the founding and running of the college published at least three books recording its history and dramatis personae: Ginling College (1955), coauthored by Matilda Thurston, Ginling’s first president, and Ruth Chester, also a senior faculty member at Ginling; Sunshine and Storm: A Canadian Teacher in China, 1932–1950 (1991), written by Florence Kirk, a Canadian missionary and longtime English professor at Ginling; and This Stinging Exultation (1972), a biography of Wilhelmina (Minnie) Vautrin, another notable personage connected to Ginling, written by Mary Treudley, a former professor of sociology at Ginling. In this book I will treat these works mostly as primary sources rather than as “transparent” secondary literature, since they were written by missionaries directly involved in the project of Ginling College. American historians of missionary activities have produced three books that discuss American missionary education in China, including: China and the Christian Colleges, 1850–1950 (1971) by Jessie Lutz; Christian Higher Education in Changing China, 1880–1950 (1976); and Ever New Horizons: The Story of the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, 1922–1975 (1980), both by William Fenn. However, these Englishlanguage studies were published almost thirty years ago, and the authors of these works paid scant attention to missionary women’s unique contributions. Furthermore, their estimate of missionary impact in China remained largely gloomy. Having fallen short of realizing the ambitious missionary slogan, “Evangelize the whole world in our generation,” they

20

The Making of a Family Saga

often lamented the “unfinished encounter” between China and Christianity.38 Evaluations of the evangelical efficacy of Chinese missionary colleges were equally pessimistic: “Their contribution to China was of lasting importance; their contribution to Christianizing China or sinifying Christianity was marginal.”39 The authors complained that the colleges did not fulfill their original goal of producing a critical mass of religious professionals: “Fewer graduates became Christian ministers; the average was 5 percent, and the proportion was declining.”40 However, examined in broader terms, missionary colleges such as Ginling not only spearheaded educational, medical, and social reforms in China, but also enabled Chinese women to explore roles of social mobility and power often denied them by their own traditions. The more recent English-language research on American missionary activities in China, whether published or not, reflects this new understanding. Jane Hunter, Dana Robert, and Gael Graham all have pointed out female American missionary women’s conflation of evangelism and “civilization” and their contributions to Chinese women’s gain of agency.41 Carol Chin’s article on American women missionaries attempts to go beyond examining Christianity in China only as “cultural imperialism.”42 In her dissertation Elizabeth Littell-Lamb discusses the history of the YWCA in China and its role in aiding social feminist undertakings in China. Mary Jo Waelchli has also completed a biographical study of Ginling’s two presidents, Martilda Thurston and Wu Yifang, in her 2002 dissertation.43 Still, none of these works have fully treated the historic events involving Ginling, nor do they particularly privilege methods of discourse analysis. By suggesting an examination of the role of words in the making of the institution, I do not mean to advocate that the study of Ginling be isolated in a formalistic vacuum or that its history be reduced to pure linguistic difference and historical insignificance. Rather, I would argue that an interrogation of the complex interactions between different narrative voices will help us to see a more nuanced picture of the intertwining social and cultural forces that shaped both the institution and the identities of its members. This approach works especially well with Ginling, whose institutional history has only been imperfectly preserved by written documents due to Chinese and international political exigencies of the past century. The available primary sources on Ginling consist mostly of English-language materials, collected by the United Board of Christian Higher Education in Asia and now housed at the Yale Divinity School Library archives; Chinese-language materials prove scant at Yale and in Chinese archives. Moreover, the collection of materials is weighted more heavily to the early part of Ginling history, before China’s War of Resistance against

Introduction

21

Japanese invasion broke out in 1937. This has happened because the Chinese women involved in Ginling appear to have written more in English than in Chinese in Ginling’s early years, and, in the cases of Wu Yifang and many others who stayed in mainland China until the end of their lives, because their collections of Ginling-related documents and memorabilia were looted or destroyed during the various wars and political upheavals in China, such as the Cultural Revolution. In light of the unevenness of existing written sources, it behooves researchers to explore other venues, such as oral narratives, in order to realize more fully Ginling’s potential as a rewarding research project. As I have discussed above, Ginling’s history pulled together the complex and intertwining strands of Chinese cultural modernization, the promulgation of Western culture and Christianity, and women’s pursuit of power and self-determination in twentieth-century China. Because of its profile as an all-women’s missionary institution struggling to maintain autonomy while caught up in tumultuous historical circumstances, Ginling has generated multiple versions of its story shaped by the particular religious, class, gender, and political discourses of various locales and times. My oral interviews of Ginling alumnae and other associates often reveal signs of alterity and randomness not readily visible in existing written documents. Compared to written materials, these less edited or self-censored oral narratives also betray discursive breakages and historical dislocations more clearly. In this respect, the discourse of the “Ginling family” proves to be a particularly productive analytical focus. Not only has this discourse been the resounding message and guiding principle that congregates all the narratives, but it also reveals, under analytical pressure, the various discrete strands underlying the apparently unanimous endorsement of this dominant discourse. In order to tease out the rich and diverse meanings of the family discourse at Ginling College, the present book will thus examine a variety of primary materials. First, since the Yale Divinity School Library houses the collections of both the United Board of Christian Higher Education in Asia and Yale’s China Record Project of Missionary Papers, it has been an invaluable source of official papers and personal writings related to Ginling. These include written documents such as the President’s Annual Report produced by the two presidents of Ginling, official correspondence between the Ginling administration and its Board of Control and trustees, and returned alumnae surveys. I will also look at circular Christmas letters sent home by various American missionaries and their diaries and personal letters. Compared to official documents, these writings, although not completely free of intentions to gain publicity, often

22

The Making of a Family Saga

provide more intimate details and more frank commentaries about their lives at Ginling and in China. The Second Historical Archives in Nanjing and the archives of the Nanjing Normal University, in comparison, collect more Chinese-language materials authored by the Chinese students and faculty members of Ginling. Although less abundant than the missionary papers at Yale, these writings offer revealing insights into the self-imagining of the mission-educated Chinese women and their relationships to their American mentors and colleagues. A fourth source of written materials came from my trips to Smith College Archives, Wellesley College Archives, and the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan. I have also benefited from the kind help of archivists from Mount Holyoke and Vassar College with whom I have corresponded by mail. Although less directly connected to Ginling, these materials have supplied more information on the educational and professional experiences of the many American and Chinese women involved in the enterprise of Ginling College. Smith has turned out to be a particularly rich source among this group. Smith was Ginling’s sister college in the United States and one of its chief donors, and materials in the Smith archives include records of many kinds of interactions between the two institutions, such as descriptions of Smith faculty visits to Ginling, reports by Smith alumnae working at Ginling, and letters and diaries written by American missionaries unaffiliated with Ginling, which Smith collected in order to gather information on the general picture of missionary experience. For example, Smith gathered materials written right after the Massacre of Nanjing between the end of 1937 and the beginning of 1938. This last group of writings, though unrelated to the daily running of Ginling College, not only brings into sharp relief the wartime environment in which Ginling existed but also helps the reader to step back from the narratives of the Ginling women to assess Ginling’s role amid all the national and international upheavals. Although focusing more on written documents, I will also bring into this dynamic mix my interviews, conducted over a period of several years, of Ginling alumnae and other associates. This last group of materials concerns Ginling’s later years more than its early years, since its older members had passed away by the time I started my interviews. However, they do not just vivify salient points presented in the written materials. Precisely because these interviews have been conducted in Chinese, involve a diverse group of Ginling associates, and focus more on Ginling’s later years, they help to check the potential biases of available archived documents and make up an irreplaceable part of the compilation of Ginling materials.

Introduction

23

While I will juxtapose revealing vignettes from their oral reminiscences with the written artifacts to highlight underlying tensions and disruptions, I hope that the reader will make allowance for my apparent privileging of primary materials written in English. This is done not only because of the difference in quantity of available Chinese- and Englishlanguage sources but also because of the nature and goal of my project. I choose to focus on the discursive force wielded by written words for several reasons. Above all, written language remained the center of controversy in the process of China’s cultural modernization, causing heated clashes such as: the debates on vernacular versus classical Chinese language; debates on literal versus liberal translation; and even attacks by the nonmissionary graduates on missionary students as un-Chinese because of the latter’s purported ineptitude with their native language. Although these debates will remain in the background in this book, they help to contextualize Ginling’s experience in the process of Chinese modernization. Moreover, English, the primary tool of communication between Ginling and its American headquarters and benefactors, functioned as the basic building block of the public image that Ginling presented to the Western world. English started as the only language of instruction at Ginling. This policy was later modified to accommodate the lower entrance levels of their students and volatile political situations that called for more use of Chinese in missionary institutions. However, Ginling graduates consider learning English one of the most important, if not the most important, rewards of their Ginling education, and some even mention their exceptional mastery of English compared to that of other Chinese college graduates as a crucial part of their collective identity. Given these influences, the sheer bulk of English-language materials not only commands more research time, but also illustrates the inherent contradictions in the identities of the Ginling women. Therefore, exploring the multiple layers of Ginling writings will most effectively excavate the cultural, racial, political, and historical forces involved in the making of Ginling and of the new Chinese woman. Since Ginling proved to be both a pioneer in Chinese women’s modern education and also a lively site of cross-cultural negotiations, a careful examination of the discursive output of its Chinese and American members will reveal the strategies that Chinese women adopted in order to represent themselves not as passive beneficiaries but as empowered agents in the missionary undertaking of making “new women” in twentieth-century China. Taken together, these writings trace a genealogy of the education and growth of the Chinese new

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The Making of a Family Saga

woman who later became a full-fledged member of the project of Chinese modernization: her earliest appearance as a student under American tutelage, during which phase she was more written about than she was actually an author of her own writing; her gradual coming-ofage while being educated and writing about her own experience; and, fi nally, the actualization of her education in China, when her varied career path provided rich materials for her own narratives. Examined individually, these writings also showcase Chinese woman’s diverse experiences of modernity from the national, the institutional, and the individual perspectives, respectively steeped as these writings were in the unique national and global spirits of the time. In other words, the investigation of the construction of the Ginling stories will reveal the discourses surrounding the education of the modern Chinese woman at an institutional level, marking out what kind of gender conventions and cultural conceptions were translated, revised, or discarded in a missionary institution where such notions were constantly being contested and renegotiated. At the same time, this inquiry will also illustrate in what ways and to what extent Chinese women were able to speak out by using “the master’s tool,” for the examination will reveal not only the empowering moments but also the pitfalls and limitations that their narrative strategies produced. In light of the historical significance and textual richness of the Ginling materials, these women’s narratives demand an approach that is sensitive to both its historical specificity and theoretical interest. Therefore, I will not only situate these narratives in their particular historical context, but also examine the ways they interacted with one another. This approach will in turn highlight the web of discursive forces that these texts formed; through them, Chinese women laid claim to their own independent identities by telling different and at times subversive stories that challenged the various master narratives disseminated by both their Chinese compatriots and American mentors. Since the ultimate goal of my inquiry is not to construct a seamless, coherent narrative of Ginling College but to use Ginling as a lens to examine the complex configurations of gender, race, and religion in the project of Chinese modernization, I will seek disruptions and confl icts underlying the apparent continuity and uniformity of the Ginling writings. I will particularly interrogate the distinctions underlying the apparently similar intellectual patterns and narrative gestures shared by the authors. Employing analytical tools from different fields to bring narrative artifacts into their historical and cultural frameworks, my project will thus cross the border between cultural and historical studies.

Introduction

25

org a n i z at ion of c h a p t e r s My book will follow the general chronological order of Ginling history. In each chapter I will juxtapose the official historical narratives with various other competing and contrasting voices of storytelling. In this way, I will be able to not only illustrate the common narrative patterns and devices shared by these writings, but also reveal their many nuances and undercurrents. Chapter 1 will introduce the beginning of Ginling College and the origination of the family discourse. Chapter 2 will focus on the building of the new Ginling campus and the impact of this historic event on the public perception and self-image of Ginling College. Starting with the “1927 Incident,” Chapter 3 will highlight the emergence of Wu Yifang as the first Chinese president and an effective leader of Ginling College in its eventful transition from American to Chinese leadership. In contrast to the relatively stable and even tenor of the first part of Ginling history, the next two chapters of my book will delineate the historical traumas that Ginling experienced during and after China’s War of Resistance (1937–45). Chapter 4 will trace the dispersion and reunion of the Ginling community in the war, whereas Chapter 5 will show the combination of factors after the war that eventually ended Ginling College in China in 1952. Finally, in the epilogue I will analyze the reopening of Ginling College in Nanjing and attempt to evaluate Ginling College in terms of its contributions to our understanding of twentieth-century Chinese history. Ultimately, as the first published English-language study of Ginling College in half a century, the book will address key issues in several disciplines. For scholars of modern Chinese culture and intellectual history, I will present an analysis of a body of materials as yet understudied. For students of gender studies, the book will provide insights into the process of subject formation of a group of female Chinese intellectuals at a transitional point in their society’s history. For those doing work in international education and multiculturalism, the book will present an example of the complex configuration of gender, culture, race, and religion in a Chinese-American context. Finally, in light of the increasing visibility of China and the explosion of information about it in international media in recent years, the book will provide a revealing example of the two-way cross-cultural exchange that has transformed the lives of all involved.

Chapter 1

The House of a Hundred Rooms (1915–23) The college was born in the hearts of women working for the uplift and enlightenment of the women of China. —Mrs. Lawrence Thurston, “President’s Report, 1916–1918”

We came with the expectation of entering a college, and college in our fancies was an elegant place. But here we found we were in a dirty, dingy old “Gung-gwan [gongguan 公館].” —A student from Ginling’s first class of 1919

A

ny captivating founding story is perhaps by necessity redemptive in tone and revisionist in nature. Not only must it describe for later generations the trials and tribulations of the founder, but it must also comprise a triumphant and exhilarating ending that overcomes any previous setbacks and thereby also sanctifies the endeavors of its inheritors. The missionaries at Ginling College further reinforced their founding narrative with their claim to a divine will, when they declared themselves “ambassadors of Christ” engaged in the enterprise of creating “the Kingdom of God” in China through Ginling.1 In contrast to this revisionist and redemptive missionary narrative, I will seek to delineate Ginling as a site of battling discourses, wherein Chinese and American women tried to wrest power from the various patriarchal, racial, and colonial ideologies intended to subjugate them. Ginling women’s creation and appropriation of the family discourse presents a perfect example of how they appropriated statements from various missionary and Chinese discourses,

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and imbued them with new meanings for the purpose of their own selfrepresentation and empowerment. The founding story of Ginling came into being against powerful patriarchal discourses on femininity both in the West and in China: the cult of Victorian womanhood and domesticity in the United States, on the one hand, and, on the other, the emergence of the female body in public discourses in China as part of nationalistic concerns. For example, Chinese women were exhorted to be “the mother of national subjects” [guomin zhi mu 國民之母] under the influence of social Darwinism, or the “new woman,” “a referent for Western cosmopolitanism” that symbolized modernity for urban middle-class intellectuals, or both.2 Although invoking these and other dominant discourses such as the ideal of the traditional Confucian family in China and the missionary narratives of defective Chinese “national character,” the female missionaries often did so in order to subvert patriarchal power structures both in word and in deed. They succeeded in building one of the first colleges that admitted female students in China, a big boon for Chinese women. Their vision for female leadership surpassed the prescriptions laid out by male American missionaries and male Chinese intellectuals. The negotiations involved in the creation and dissemination of Ginling’s family discourse revealed Ginling to be much more than merely a chapter in Western cultural imperialism, a charge frequently leveled against Ginling by radical Chinese nationalists. The way that Minnie Vautrin, an American missionary of lower class background, encountered prejudices from her higher-class Chinese students revealed that missionary institutions splintered along lines of class as well as those of race and nationality. More importantly, despite the stricture of both Western and Chinese patriarchal discourses on femininity, Ginling enabled Chinese women to seek a place for themselves in Chinese modernity and to create and test their own voices in making twentieth-century Chinese history.

s e t t i n g a n d dr a m at i s p e r s on a e Before I discuss in detail the materials related to the founding of Ginling College, let me try to provide a brief history of Protestant missionary education in China that will shed some light on the significance of the timing of its opening. The flourishing of Protestant missionary education in China had its historical origin in the unequal treaties forced on the Qing court by Western nations. After the first Opium War (1840–42), which saw the defeat of the Qing navy by British battleships, five treaty ports opened to foreign businesses and Christian churches: Guangzhou (Canton), Xiamen

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(Amoy), Fuzhou (Foochow), Ningbo (Ningpo), and Shanghai. Mission schools subsequently opened in these cities, essentially under the protection of foreign battleships. However, mission education remained a minor affair in its first fifty years in China, despite the opening of more treaty ports to the United States, France, Germany, and other European powers after the Second Opium War (1863–65). But by the late 1880s, with an increasing number of Chinese Protestants (which amounted to more than thirty-seven thousand by 1889) and also because of rising interest in Western learning among the non-Christian Chinese elites, missionary schools were filled to capacity and even became overcrowded. By 1900 six all-men’s Christian colleges had been founded in China, all having grown out of existing mission secondary schools. While missionary education for Chinese boys and men could profit from the deep-rooted respect for education in Chinese society and could learn from the model of Chinese schools for Confucian literati, missionary education for Chinese women faced more challenges. Chinese women rarely received formal education before the twentieth century, and they were even less likely to attend schools outside of their household. Foreign missionaries pioneered the formal education of Chinese women by establishing Chinese girls’ schools. The British missionaries Mr. and Mrs. Gutzlaff opened the first school for Chinese girls in Macau in 1835, but it ended less than five years later with the expulsion of the founders in 1839 in the tense atmosphere surrounding the impending First Opium War.3 A Miss Aldersey of the Church of England founded another girls’ school in Ningbo in 1844.4 By the year 1860 there existed twelve mission girls’ schools in the five treaty ports. However, in this period missionaries recruited their students mostly from disenfranchised and marginalized social groups (perhaps a small cluster of Christian families, orphans, or even beggars), and the buildings and other facilities of the mission schools left much to be desired. Meanwhile, Chinese society began to wake up to the importance of women’s education. After the Second Opium War and especially in the wake of the aborted “One-Hundred-Day Reform” (Bairi weixin 百日維新) of the 1890s, Chinese intellectuals such as Liang Qichao promoted Chinese women’s education as an essential part of China’s self-strengthening. A number of girls’ elementary and secondary schools were established in Tianjing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Sichuan. In 1906 the Empress dowager Cixi issued an imperial edict to sanction women’s education. In 1907, the newly constituted Ministry of Learning (Xue Bu 學部) published the regulations for girls’ elementary schools and normal schools, and thereby regularized Chinese women’s education as part of a national education

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system for the first time in Chinese history. After the founding of the Republic of China in 1912, more vocational schools for women, such as the Shanghai School for Nurses and the Shanghai Women’s Industrial School, were established, making a total number of 3,461 women’s schools and 172, 724 female students in 1916.5 Yet, while the Chinese intellectuals of the time expanded women’s education from the elementary school level to secondary school level and vocational level, they still saw little need for women to receive a college education. Here missionary institutions again took the first step. The first missionary college for Chinese women was North China Union Women’s College (Huabei xiehe nüzi daxue 華北協和女子大學), organized in 1905 by Luella Miner. As had happened with all-male missionary colleges in China, North China was an outgrowth of the Bridgman Academy (Beiman nüxiao 貝滿女校), an all-female mission secondary school founded by Eliza Bridgman in Beijing in 1864. In 1914, a second all-female college, Hwa Nan College (Huanan daxue 華南大學), was started in Nantai Island in Fujian province, based on another missionary girls’ boarding school: Foochow College Preparatory of Foochow Woman’ College (Huaying nüxiao 華英女校), which had been under the leadership of Lydia Trimble. Ginling’s birth partly followed the American female missionaries’ design to “establish four woman’s colleges in China—one each in north, central, west, and south.”6 Yet it also differed from the two earlier Chinese women’s missionary colleges in that it pulled together support and resources from various all-female mission schools rather than developing from one particular school as its embryo. Since missionary secondary schools were able to attract enough Chinese students to warrant a missionary college both for the continued education of their graduates and for training teaching staff to fulfill their needs, Ginling’s founding reflected the increasing support for women’s education in the wider Chinese society as well as among foreign missionaries. Yet this also meant that Ginling, more than the earlier missionary colleges, needed a distinctive institutional profile to attract and retain Chinese students and faculty members if it wished to compete with other missionary and Chinese institutions, which were soon admitting women as well. Ginling’s establishment also illustrated the changing nature of American missionary education for Chinese women and the shift in the group temperament of female American missionaries in China. The American missionaries who founded Ginling and its peer institutions in the early twentieth century had very different experiences from those of the first generation of female evangelists who came to China inspired by the “Second Great Awakening” of the 1830s. The fi rst generation of female

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missionaries faced stringent government laws and local hostility that frequently threatened to explode into violence. In comparison, the missionaries at the turn of the twentieth century found a more receptive audience among Chinese intellectuals, who were eager to master foreign learning in order to strengthen China. As a result, the newly arrived educational missionaries more often interacted with the elite sector of Chinese society, while their forerunners had mostly been limited to the project of converting illiterate, poverty-stricken Chinese masses using material compensation as incentives. A more favorable Chinese environment also led to the improvement in both the academic preparation of admitted students and the quality of school facilities and curricula at mission schools. By the 1890s all mission girls’ schools had shifted from the previous model of free room and board for children from poverty-stricken local families to charging their students from well-to-do families tuition and other fees. Their curricula also expanded to include theology, Chinese, world geography and history, and mathematics, with some even able to offer English.7 While the change of missionary schools from charitable institutions to regular fee-charging academies elevated their academic quality and their status in Chinese eyes, it also placed mission education out of reach for lower-class Chinese people. A less apparent but equally important change took place in the composition and self-image of the foreign missionaries during this period. The number of female missionaries in China steadily increased after 1876. Female missionaries for the fi rst time outnumbered males in 1889, and made up almost three-fifths of the total missionary population in China by 1905.8 Moreover, in the early twentieth century many American educational missionaries in China were college graduates recruited by the Student Volunteer Movement, which toured American campuses collecting pledged volunteers to go into mission fields. Jane Hunter describes the Student Volunteer Movement as a “romantic student movement” that combined “evangelical enthusiasm and school spirit,” but these missionaries selfconsciously distanced themselves from an early generation of evangelists who seemed to them to possess “intense [religious] fervor.”9 In the words of Edward Gulick, an educational missionary sent to Changsha, Hunan, by the nondenominational Yale-in-China program, his generation considered themselves “good Samaritans” who illustrated “Christian helpfulness,”10 while the early generation “characteristically exhibited intense motivation, attitudes of cultural superiority, and religious aggressiveness.”11 This was a self-image shared by the new generation of female missionaries. For example, Alice Reed, a graduate of Grinnell College who was recruited for Grinnell-in-China in 1916, doubted her suitability for the mission field

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because she saw herself as “a practical, unemotional person,” but was reassured by her recruiter that this common temperament of college graduates was “not a sign of lack of religion but rather a sign of control and strength.”12 Although beneficiaries of American extraterritoriality protected by foreign battleships, the missionaries of this generation viewed themselves as emissaries of peace, goodwill, and Christian love. Equipped with a higher level of formal education than the earlier generation, they also felt more the need to see their own educational experiences and particular talents make a difference in Chinese lives. The founding of Ginling College at this juncture was thus inevitably shaped by the historic shifts in both Chinese and missionary education of Chinese women. Although materials on the establishment of Ginling are relatively small in quantity, they demonstrate the female missionaries’ indefatigable efforts to unify the college and also foreshadow its later competition with both Chinese institutions and all-male missionary colleges. At this early stage, the major wordsmith of the Ginling stories was Mrs. Lawrence Thurston (née Matilda Calder, 1875–1958), Ginling’s first president, but Wilhelmina (Minnie) Vautrin (1886–1941), its onetime acting president and the college workhorse in administration, also appeared frequently in various kinds of writings. Mrs. Thurston was born into a well-to-do family in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1875. She received a BA in mathematics from Mt. Holyoke College in 1896. After teaching in private high schools in the United States, she taught in Central Turkey College for Girls, Marash, Turkey, in 1900–1902 under the American Board. She married Rev. J. Lawrence Thurston in 1902, and the couple went to China on the Yale-in-China mission in 1902. After her husband died in 1904, she worked as traveling secretary for the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions in 1904–6, and for the Yale-in-China mission in Changsha, China, in 1906–11. However, she felt increasingly frustrated that her skills were not adequately used and that her work was belittled by the male-dominated Yale-in-China mission, and she wished to leave.13 She was appointed by the Presbyterian Board (North) to go to China in 1913, and taught at Mingde School in Nanjing, China, in 1913–15. She was appointed as president of Ginling College by its founding boards in 1913, and occupied this position until 1928. During her tenure as Ginling president she raised funds for a magnificent new campus and established many Ginling traditions. After retirement from the Ginling presidency in 1928, she worked as an adviser to the President until she returned to the United States in 1936. In 1939 she was called by the Ginling headquarters in New York to go to Nanjing to relieve Minnie Vautrin, whose mental health had been greatly damaged by her experiences during the Japanese occupation

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of Nanjing. After Pearl Harbor, Mrs. Thurston was confined to the Ginling campus in Nanjing until she was deported in 1942. From 1942 until her death in 1958, she lived with her sister, Helen Calder, in Auburndale, Massachusetts. She was the coauthor of Ginling College (1955), so far the only English-language institutional history of Ginling. Minnie Vautrin came from quite a different family background. Born into a struggling farmer’s family in Secor, Illinois, in 1886, she received her BA from the University of Illinois, and her MA in education from the Teachers’ College, Columbia University, in 1918. She was sent to China as an educational missionary in 1912, and worked as principal of Sanyu nüzhong (三育女中), a girls’ middle school in Hefei, Anhui Province. In 1919 she was contacted by the Ginling headquarters in New York to go to Nanjing, China, as acting president and dean of the college during Mrs. Thurston’s furlough and fund-raising trip in the United States. She took up the administrative responsibilities of Ginling in the volatile political environment of the May Fourth era. At Ginling she oversaw the building of the new campus, organized neighborhood-visiting programs, and established Ginling Practice School. In 1937 she stayed at Ginling’s Nanjing campus to run a refugee camp for Chinese women and children during the Massacre of Nanjing, which lasted six weeks from December 1937 to early 1938. At one point the Ginling campus sheltered ten thousand Chinese women and children. After the immediate crisis passed, she continued to manage an experimental school and handicraft workshops for refugee women and girls at Ginling until 1940. She was awarded the highest honor to a foreigner by the Nationalist government on July 30, 1938—the Order of the Jade (caiyu xunzhang 采玉勛章)—for her work during the Japanese invasion. With her mental health deteriorating because of the traumas of the war, she was taken back to the United States for treatment. She committed suicide in 1941, one year after she left Ginling. Thurston brought to the founding narrative not only her educational background as a Mount Holyoke alumna, her working experience with Yale-in-China, and her missionary passion but also, in a more subtle yet significant way to the Chinese students, her privileged family upbringing and the force of her personality. In contrast, Vautrin, born in small-town Illinois and having worked with a younger age group in inland China before joining the Ginling faculty, connected better with the Chinese students from rural areas. Therefore, Vautrin’s experience at this time often revealed more the conflicts inside the college and the hardships of working at Ginling rather than its privileges. Compared to the vocal American faculty during Ginling’s beginning years, its Chinese constituency, including Ginling’s small class of Chinese students and an even smaller

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Chinese faculty, was still attempting to shape their own voices. However, they would soon start to contribute their own efforts to the construction of Ginling stories. This is exemplified particularly by the writings produced by Wu Yifang, of Ginling’s first class of 1919 and later its first Chinese president; by her Ginling classmate Mrs. Way-sung New [Niu Huisheng] (née Zee Yuh-tsung [Xu Yizhen]); and by Liu Enlan, their younger Ginling “sister” of the class of 1926 and later the chair of Ginling’s Department of Geography. More detailed discussions of the Chinese women will be offered in later chapters so as not to obscure the dominant efforts of the missionaries at this stage of the Ginling history. Since Thurston remained for more than a decade the chief authorized communicator with the college’s Western supporters and later became one of the two scribes of the only existing official Ginling history, I will devote more attention to her narrative endeavors in this chapter, but will also bring in the writings by other missionaries. Thurston’s writings that focused on the start of the college include not only the various reports and circular letters that she sent to the United States but also chapters in Ginling College. In her more personal writings such as reports to her own mission board, the American Presbyterian Church (North), she intertwined her own life story with the story of the college, and thus both enlivened the institutional history with episodes from her own life and elevated her autobiographical writings to the status of a witness narrative. In what follows I will investigate several key elements of the master narrative crafted by Thurston and the other missionary founders: their descriptions of the initial physical setting of the college, their narrative positioning of the college in a large theological and historical context, and their creation and implementation of the central discourse of the Ginling family. At the same time, I will also juxtapose the missionary narratives with those authored by the Chinese women involved in the early years of Ginling in order to better map out the beginning of Ginling. In examining these materials, I will reveal that although the missionary founders initiated the discourse of “the Ginling family” as a crucial part of their concerted efforts to build a united college community, the Chinese students also shaped this discourse in their own ways. In realizing this discourse the missionaries met with constant challenges that called for their accommodation and adaptation. Among them were the students’ initial disappointment with the facilities, their academic difficulties, and the interpersonal conflicts between students and faculty and between faculty members themselves. Through my analysis I hope to demonstrate that the family discourse at Ginling, never a completed product, had been from the very beginning a project of constant negotiations of contending

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The Making of a Family Saga

personalities and narrative voices. Moreover, as later chapters will illustrate, its strength lay precisely in its fluidity and responsiveness to changing institutional and societal needs, a characteristic that made possible the dialogue between Ginling’s ever-shifting institutional history and the history of twentieth-century China.

t h e h o u s e o f a h u n dr e d r o o m s The founding mission boards of Ginling each “pledged $10,000 US for building and equipment, the support of a representative on the teaching staff, and a contribution of no less than $600 toward current expenses. Three persons from each of the co-operating missions were elected” to constitute the Board of Control that oversaw the running of the college in China.14 However, the Ginling College Committee (GCC) in New York City handled all budgetary allocations and missionary appointments for the college, and functioned as Ginling’s center of operations in the United States and the highest authority on all Ginling-related business. With this structure of dual governance in place, Ginling College opened its door to Chinese women in Nanjing, China, on September 17, 1915, with six teaching members, three staff members, and eleven students from Nanjing, Zhenjiang, Ningbo, Shanghai, and Jiujiang. Wu Yifang joined the first class in the spring of 1916 to make it into a group of twelve, but only nine students remained after their first year, and only five of these nine graduated in 1919 with a BA degree. Significantly, Ginling College did not register with the Chinese government at this point. Thus, although the fi rst five Ginling graduates were often hailed as the “first Chinese women to receive a BA degree in China,”15 technically their degree was not acknowledged in China, because Ginling did not belong in the national education system and China had no tradition of awarding academic degrees for college education at the time.16 Somewhat ironically, a BA from Ginling was fully recognized in the US, and a Ginling graduate could be admitted to any American graduate school based on that credential. Moreover, at the start Ginling College shared the “provisionary” charter of the University of Nanking, granted by the “Regents of the University of the State of New York,” though Ginling added five women representing the five constituting missionary boards to the trustees of Nanking to form its highest governing body: the Ginling College Committee.17 Consequently, Ginling graduates received diplomas awarded jointly by two institutions: the State University of New York and the University of Nanking. This often led to the misunderstanding that Ginling College was not an independent institution but only a women’s

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college within the University of Nanking. That, in turn, planted the seed of contention and competition between Ginling College and its missionary brother institution, the University of Nanking. It was not until 1935 that Ginling received its own charter from the regents of the State University of New York and had its own board of trustees, and granted graduation diplomas in its own name. After Ginling’s second president, Wu Yifang, discussed with the GCC the implications of their application for an “absolute” charter during her trip to the United States in 1934, the Ginling women obviously considered that the advantages of demonstrating Ginling’s independence far outweighed the “convenience” and “privileges” that they had enjoyed under the previous arrangement, and they made their decision accordingly.18 Yet this show of strength and self-confidence was still two decades away from Ginling’s unassuming beginning. In 1915 Nanjing was by no means the industrialized metropolis that it is today. A limerick at the time described it as a city famous for “dim electric lights, broken telephones, roads full of potholes, and trains full of soldiers” (Diandeng bu ming, dianhua bu ling, daolu bu ping, huoche zhuang bing, 電燈不明, 電話 不靈, 道路不平, 火車裝兵).19 Ginling’s first college home was an old-style Chinese residence located in Embroidery Alley (Xiuhua xiang 繡花巷), known locally as the Garden of the Lis” (Li jia huayuan 李家花園) because of its previous ownership by the fifth son of Li Hongzhang, the famous statesman of the Qing dynasty. It consisted of “two large, rambling Chinese mansions set side by side, each containing four paved courts, set one behind the other, with a fifth court at the side. The buildings were all of gray brick with gray tiles and overhanging eaves. Each court had about ten rooms, in most of the rooms delicately latticed windows covered the larger half of the walls. Access to adjoining courts was through moon gates— large circular openings in the dividing walls.”20 Thurston had announced the beginning of Ginling with cheerful confidence, “Smith started with fourteen students. Give us forty years to grow. There are more girls in China than in America,”21 she said. But most of the faculty and students found the first “campus” unattractive and depressing. Thurston alone sounded enthusiastic about the setting: “As Chinese houses go it is very well built and admirably adapted to our uses. The students live in the west side and the foreign faculty in the east. Chapel, classrooms, and offices are at the front. There is plenty of sun and air.”22 Her American colleagues, while affectionately calling their college home “the House of a Hundred Rooms,” felt disappointed by Ginling’s appearance, for they had their own image of a college for women based on their experiences at elite American women’s liberal arts colleges such as Smith. They complained

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of the “freezing days of winter,” the moldy floors on which they could harvest specimens for their biology experiments, and “walls ten feet high, surrounding a flat compound, [which] shut away the beauty of sky line and the glory of the mountain.”23 This was also hardly the glamorous setting expected by the Chinese students who came from privileged families in urban areas: “We came with the expectation of entering a college, and college in our fancies was an elegant place. But here we found we were in a dirty, dingy old ‘Gung-gwan [gongguan].’ Wind blew in through the cracks of the wooden walls. Snow drifted in through the tile roofs and melted on wooden ceilings.”24 The students’ complaints ranged from overventilated classrooms (some without glass or paper paneling whatsoever) that were freezing cold in winter, stuff y dorm rooms hot enough in the summer to hatch chickens, inadequate lighting provided by two or three kerosene lamps in the hallways that made walking through them after five in the afternoon a surreal experience, to the dark garden overgrown with bushes and weeds, infested with flies and mosquitoes, and suspected of being overrun by snakes.25 In addition to the rather dismal physical setting of the college, its first group of students found their academic life very challenging. Many years later, one of them still remembered the disappointments they had suffered in their first semester: There were only nine of us. All smallness as well as bigness creates problems. Most of us had come from school groups much larger than the College class in which we found ourselves. Here the class was the college and the college the class. We were homesick not only for our homes but also for the schools from which we came. We were dissatisfied. . . . We were full of complaints. We were disappointed and discouraged, and besides these physical discomforts the lessons were too hard for us, so our only way to seek for relief was to cry bitterly.26

The missionaries were chagrined by the academic difficulties of a group of students who had come highly recommended by their mission secondary school teachers. They noted the students’ uneven entrance levels, their insufficient English—the only language of instruction at Ginling except in their class of classical Chinese—and their overall low level of preparation for college work. Even Thurston complained of the various problems facing the students in her family letters, in contrast to the uplifting tone in her official report. For example, she remarked that the students had been “babied” in the past and lacked “independence of character,” and

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that some of them had been “protégées of foreigners” and thus “half foreign in their way of looking at things.”27 The Ginling faculty decided after the first semester’s experience to require of all first-year students several general foundational courses and to postpone their declaration of majors to the second year. Ginling also started to give in several major cities an annual bilingual entrance examination that consisted of tests in six subjects, rather than only checking high school transcripts before admitting prospective students. But for the time being, the missionaries had to find effective measures to deal with the immediate academic and emotional problems experienced by their students. To weld the discrete parts of the college into a solid collective, they needed to change the students’ negative assessment of their college experience. Transformation of the physical setting of the college would take time and money, but for now they could work on the way that the students viewed the college and their own membership in it. Thurston led this campaign for the creation of a unified Ginling community—what she called the “Ginling family”—with diligence and imagination. For this undertaking she and the other American missionaries could borrow from two existing models: female missionaries’ “mothering” of Chinese masses and the familial atmosphere of all-women’s liberal arts colleges in the United States in the nineteenth century. American women had invoked and deployed familial metaphors in their missionary work in China ever since their arrival in the nineteenth century. Hunter says that among female American missionaries there reigned “a domestic model for missionary service . . . under the general rubric of ‘mothering’”—namely, the female missionaries saw their responsibilities as extending their feminine skills of nurturing to “all God’s creatures,” including the Chinese.28 In some cases, such generalized mothering of the community was augmented by single missionary women’s adoption of Chinese children. Although Ginling’s missionary faculty members focused more on the education of Chinese women than on taking care of the general public, they were not immune to the implicit gendered prescription of their roles as female missionary educators, and often responded to their charges’ emotional and academic needs with nurturing. But, as mentioned, in a sense these missionary women were also recreating or even reinventing their educational experiences at women’s liberal arts colleges in the United States. Helen Horowitz traces a gradual withdrawal of female faculty members from students’ spiritual life in American women’s colleges starting in the 1880s. She ascribes this to the faculty’s growing autonomy and preference for privacy: “The earlier confidential relation between teacher and student disappeared not only

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because students in college lived within their own social world but also because their women faculty wanted less and less to do with them outside class.”29 Seen in this light, the missionary faculty members at Jinling were practically turning the clock back and reverting to the prototype of Mary Lyon’s Mount Holyoke—called unflatteringly by some a “Protestant nunnery”—in which “teachers, sharing her evangelical zeal, accepted missionary pay and expected to have no private lives. The hours outside the classroom went to monitoring student behavior, heading a table in the dining hall, and counseling and advising students as ‘special friends.’”30 Although having inherited the models of both missionary “mothering” and Mary Lyon’s evangelical women’s institution, Ginling’s missionaries also used their unique circumstances to create an effective family discourse at Ginling, even as they struggled against external adversities. It was Thurston who first brought into focus an important ingredient of Ginling’s self-image: its separate and superior status to the University of Nanking, at first an all-male missionary institution and Ginling’s neighbor in Nanjing. Thurston acknowledged the general discontent about the first campus, admitting: “The Chinese building is more generally appreciated by foreigners than by Chinese. It is not popular with the students.” But she immediately qualified her concession: “It is the best type of Chinese dwelling house. With the windows which we have added the rooms seem to me to be lacking in nothing that is essential to comfort and dignity. They have more space and better ventilation than the new rooms planned for the University of Nanking.”31 Behind Thurston’s enthusiasm about the house lay not just her New England thrift—she considered the rent for more than a hundred rooms at only $32 per month in U.S. currency a “real steal”—but also her awareness of Ginling’s everlasting, albeit often unspoken, competition with the University of Nanking, established by a group of male missionaries around the same time that Ginling opened. Ginling College had to make Jinling nüzi daxue (金陵女子大學 Jinling Women’s College) its Chinese name in order to distinguish itself from the University of Nanking, in Chinese also called Jinling daxue (金陵 大學). However, the women missionaries refused to give up the name Ginling, because they liked its musical quality and “historical associations,” since it was the literary name for Nanjing that had often been used in classical Chinese literature.32 More seriously, the University of Nanking seems to have stolen the match from Ginling by starting their new buildings first. And, although the University of Nanking originally only admitted male students, it soon declared itself coeducational and repeatedly attempted to incorporate Ginling. It thus further inflamed the competition for resources and students and exacerbated the ill will

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between the two institutions. The missionary faculty members at Ginling College were determined to keep their independence in the face of what they considered a male bully. The perceived threat of a takeover by Nanking, publicized among the students by the Ginling faculty, also functioned as a tool of generating solidarity; for it increased Ginling’s determination to differentiate itself from its brother institution and to maintain an independent identity at whatever cost. Later generations of students and faculty members would defend their autonomy and independence against pushes for merger throughout the school and national history of twentiethcentury China. While establishing a common external rival helped to demarcate the boundary between Ginling and its missionary peers, within Ginling the faculty members also organized enjoyable group activities with students outside of the classroom setting to cultivate a sense of familiarity and intimacy. They established various cherished traditions of the college during these early days, such as the annual Founders’ Day celebration, designated social times with the students, and faculty-led naturalist walks and outings. As an alumna recalled, “The faculty often looked them [the first class of students] up and took them for a walk in the garden to appreciate the beauty of nature or took them to tea to enjoy the life of a closely bound family.”33 These social occasions signaled to the students their teachers’ personal attention and interest in them, and soon changed the way that the students regarded their college. They came to echo Thurston’s view on the charms of their unpromising-looking first campus: “Little by little the class of 1919 was awakened from their hazy dream. They then saw only the fun and joy of being pioneers. They discovered in the ill-finished rooms that the ventilation was good, and good ventilation would keep them free from colds.”34 The missionary faculty emphasized to the first generation of students their unique collective identity as the first Chinese women to receive a college education in China, and thus inculcated into them a unified sense of noblesse oblige regarding their nation. The college motto chosen by the first generation of students and faculty together, “Abundant Life,”35 indicated Ginling students’ self-image. As Wu Yifang remembered it, this motto emphasized to the students the meaningfulness and happiness of service to the others. She remarked that just as the biblical origin of the college motto signified, one should not live only for oneself but must use one’s wisdom and ability to help others and the society in which one lived. In so doing, an individual could make both her own life and the lives of others richer. Thus, in her mind this motto embodied the ultimate goal of the college: to train Chinese women to serve their people and build “God’s Kingdom on Earth” in China.36

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Later events would show that this motto not only shaped Ginling’s campus culture, but was also often deployed to call for self-sacrifice among Ginling members. It thus became a powerful tool of socialization that integrated each incoming class into the Ginling family and ensured the continuation of the Ginling spirit of service through war and peace. The immediate result of adopting this motto was that the classes of 1920 and 1921 suffered far less disillusionment and a less painful transitional experience than the first class, even though the physical setting remained the same. Yan Caiyun (’21), who came from a wealthy and powerful business family in Shanghai, never even mentioned to her family the material hardships at Ginling. Her younger sister Yan Lianyun (’24), who followed her older sister to this putative paradise, recalled her own astonishment at the primitive conditions of no electricity, no running water, and no modern plumbing at Ginling, and her determination to persevere just as her sister had done before her: “My sister never mentioned to us the difficult material life at Ginling. Our foreign teachers also gave up their life of ease to come to China in order to build Ginling into a college on a par with American institutions of higher education. My classmates were all working diligently in a clean and orderly environment. These facts soon enlightened me. I quickly adjusted to my college life, and became a member of this big family of solidarity, friendship, and vitality.”37 After graduation, Yan Lianyun also took on a challenging assignment arranged for her by Minnie Vautrin. She went to teach at an all-female middle school in a remote, poverty-stricken village in Anhui for three years at a much lower salary than was the standard compensation for Ginling graduates at the time. Echoing Vautrin’s advice, she claimed that she regarded this job as a chance to serve China: “I had the good luck to be born and brought up in a wealthy family. Now comes a precious opportunity for me to serve the others.”38 Yan Lianyun’s example illustrates the impact of the college motto on individual students’ self-perceptions and life goals. Yet it displays the end result more than it does the backstage maneuvers that created this college motto. Although the initial challenges that they encountered provided an immediate incentive for their creation of the family discourse, Thurston and other missionaries had in fact set the tone for such a dominant institutional ethos even before the physical Ginling came into being. Only by unveiling the initial thrust of Ginling’s founding narrative can we further clarify the process by which the missionary faculty constructed the discourse of the Ginling family. Therefore, throughout the remainder of this chapter I will first analyze the self-positioning of the missionary founders,

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and then trace the gradual coming into being and constant re-negotiations of the family discourse in the early years of Ginling.

w e h a d a dr e a m Thurston claimed in Ginling College that Ginling originated from a daring dream of American women missionaries. In the winter of 1911–12 representatives from eight American women’s mission boards, most of them principals and other top administrators of girls’ mission schools in China, held a meeting in Shanghai, where they had been stranded by China’s revolutionary war to overthrow the Qing dynasty. At the end of the meeting, they signed an appeal to start an all-women’s Christian college for the mission secondary schools located in the major cities, such as Wuchang, Nanjing, and Suzhou, of the mid and lower Yangzi Valley. The original agreement was that these missionary schools “would send their graduates to college and benefit by the training of leaders in the Christian education of women.”39 Thurston explained this mutually beneficial arrangement in more plain wording in a proposal to establish Ginling that she sent to the United States: the mission high schools in the Yangzi Valley would become the college’s “main feeders” of students, while the college could also depend “upon them as the preparatory departments or schools for the college.”40 Yet Thurston considered Ginling much more than the product of a union of convenience. From the very start, she spoke of Ginling’s historical and theological significance to the Chinese students and to the American audience of her publicity efforts. In so doing, she in fact proclaimed the historical and theological inevitability of the birth of Ginling. Interestingly, Thurston moved Ginling’s origin back to 1900, the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, rather than the more realistic starting point of 1911, when the Nationalists overthrew the last dynasty and founded the new Republic of China. Furthermore, she omitted any mention of the Boxer Rebellion of 1900, a very traumatic event for American missionaries, given the killing of Chinese and foreign Christians and destruction of church properties that it entailed. Moreover, although mentioning in passing the return of the surplus Boxer Indemnity Fund by the Western countries that made it possible for the Qing government to send students to study abroad, Thurston failed to note either the use of foreign military force on Chinese soil by the allied army of the Western powers during the Boxer Rebellion or the fact that it was in its aftermath that the Chinese government started a series of nationwide educational reforms that profoundly changed the face of Chinese women’s education. Thurston’s selective memory and curious reticence about

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certain elements in the origination of Ginling College implied two interrelated narrative motives. On the one hand, she could thus evade any awkward references to cultural imperialism, a charge often thrown at Western missionaries by Chinese nationalists, and an accusation that would be even harder to deny if she made plain the close connection between the missionary enterprise and foreign battleships. On the other hand, Thurston could try to synchronize the beginning of Ginling with that of a Christian nascence in China. As she confidently announced, “The quarter century that followed [the beginning of the twentieth century] was one marking a great extension of Christian influence in China.”41 Of course, Thurston acknowledged the historical contingency and the Chinese need that called for the birth of an all-female missionary college. She mentioned a newly emerging Chinese enthusiasm for Western knowledge and for missionary schools after the new learning had been sanctified by imperial edict. She especially listed science, Western music, and English as the subjects much sought after by Chinese families for their children, even for their daughters, partially attributing the founding of the college to Chinese market demands.42 However, she by no means compromised her own sense of mission and consequence by making these acknowledgments. In order to lend the new college legitimacy and significance in the eyes of her evangelically inclined American audience, she invoked the slogan of “woman’s work for woman,” a major American missionary theory that fueled the largest grassroots missionary movement of Protestant women in the United States since the late nineteenth century. In her proposal to start Ginling College, she stated: “‘Every advance in foreign mission work only shows more clearly the need and importance of woman’s work.’ If woman’s work is conceded to be a part of the missionary campaign it is easy to see the necessity for a body of young Chinese women trained as leaders.”43 In acknowledging female missionaries’ equal contribution but separate work zone in the mission field, the notion of “woman’s work for woman” legitimated not only the dominance of female missionaries— herself included—in the education of Chinese women in terms of both their number and their importance, but also, particularly, her design of the curriculum at Ginling. The pedagogical goals Thurston had in mind illustrated precisely the fusion of culture and religion, personal cultivation and social contribution, that “woman’s work for woman” promoted. An insightful analysis of the American women’s missionary movement starting from the late nineteenth century points this out: The late nineteenth century women’s missionary movement confl ated culture with religion, attributing the strengths of Western culture to

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its Christianity, and the weaknesses of non-Western culture to other religions. The movement hoped that the conversion of women to Christianity would trigger social changes that would attract more women to Christianity, thus putting into motion a continuous cycle that in the divine plan would lead to a better world through the conversion of whole nations. ‘Woman’s work for woman’ as a missionary theory saw little conflict between evangelization and civilization. Its belief in the inseparability of body and soul, of social context and personal religion, and of evangelistic, educational, and medical work was a central contribution to the mission theory of the period.44

An enthusiastic advocate of “woman’s work for woman,” Thurston justified her particular model of Ginling curriculum in terms of its value in promoting mental training, religious teaching, and social service. For example, she insisted on a strong science faculty at Ginling, repeatedly requesting that the headquarters in the United States send competent candidates to teach chemistry, physics, and biology. As some historians have noted,45 Thurston was quick to point out the practical use of science in contemporary China: “Physical Sciences and Biological Sciences are important both as preparation for teaching and for medicine. Both have very practical uses in everyday life and uses which China very much needs.”46 However, she also pointed out the evangelical potential of teaching natural science to Chinese women; she claimed that the acquisition of such knowledge would enable Ginling graduates to become Christian wives and mothers as well as teachers, and thereby to evangelize China through both their professional work and their family life. In another letter to Ginling’s New York office, she more explicitly explained her reasons for promoting a strong science division at Ginling: “It is a real grief to me to start so weak in science. The Chinese are not keen about it because they do not realize how much they need it and the things that it makes possible, both from the point of view of practical uses and mental discipline. I should like to see a genuine enthusiasm for these subjects which would mean so much for the homes of China if educated women took them up.”47 Thurston’s rationale for offering courses in hard science to Chinese women shows that in justifying the curriculum she designed for the education of modern Chinese women, she often added interesting twists to both the cultural biases and gender conventions accepted by American missionaries of her generation. Gael Graham notes that although expanding and secularizing their curriculum in response to Chinese demands, the Western missionaries often legitimated such moves by developing a specific rationale for each subject added. They usually claimed some

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corresponding flaw in the Chinese national character that needed reforming in order for them to advance the Christian cause in China. For instance, the study of astronomy supposedly helped to disabuse the Chinese students of their native superstitions; mathematics taught reasoning and analysis, which the Chinese “naturally” lacked; history taught moral lessons; and geography as well as history showed the Chinese people China’s real position in the world and thus taught them humility.48 Teaching science was a more thorny issue for the missionaries, for in reality the study of science often cultivated in the Chinese students and scholars a strain of rational skepticism in the style of John Dewey that turned them away from Christianity.49 But the missionaries argued that the spread of science dispelled Chinese superstitions and demonstrated Western superiority, and thus attracted the Chinese people to Christianity.50 In contrast to the common missionary practice of citing character flaws in Chinese people to justify curricular changes, Thurston appropriated for her use the figure of “the Angel in the House,” an idealized stereotype of domestic woman widely popular in the United States at the time. The archetypal “Angel in the House” purportedly offered in her home a “centre of order, the balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty” for men who toiled away in the commercial marketplace and public sphere.51 Invoking this figure, Thurston publicly recognized women’s traditional role, accepted in both Chinese and American cultures, as chief caretaker and homemaker when she urged educated Chinese women to put their knowledge of hard science to work for “Chinese homes.”52 However, she actually imagined bigger and better things for a typical Ginling graduate than the mere position of a housewife, no matter how capable and successful she would prove to be in that role. This can be seen clearly in Thurston’s vision of the overall course of training for Ginling students: “We want to [ . . . fit] students for service in the three fields of ministry to the needs of body, mind, and spirit. I believe that the all-round training of the college is the ideal preparation for the young women who are to be the Christian leaders of China [ . . . It] remains for us to make the college strong in those things which strengthen character, inspire high purpose, and lead to full consecration of life to Jesus Christ and His Kingdom.”53 In practice, Thurston not only developed courses in premedical sciences, education, and social sciences at Ginling, but also often expressed her pride in the Ginling students who pursued advance degrees and became prominent professional women in China. In a newsletter written in 1932, for instance, she proudly described a meeting between Mrs. Howard Wayne Smith, vice president of the Federation of Women’s Boards of Foreign Mission and a group of nineteen Ginling alumnae, “which

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included six principals or deans, eleven college teachers, three high school teachers and two married women.” “Of the nineteen,” she said, “nine have higher degrees. Whenever a group of selected Christian leaders is brought together in China, one finds the Ginling graduate.”54 Sending out another newsletter in October 1933, she also announced to the alumnae: “You are our joy and crown and we are always interested in knowing where you are and what you are doing. . . . Please boast of any honors or responsibilities which have come to you in addition to reporting the regular professional work which the year has on record.”55 Thurston’s approbation of career women suggests that she invoked the figure of “Angel in the House” more to solicit support for the curriculum she implemented at Ginling than to express her true allegiance to the cult of domesticity practiced in the United States at the same time. Education for women took a distinctly conservative turn in the United States after the First World War. As Martha Vicinus explains: “The wholesale slaughter of young men during the war reinforced demands that women return to their homes and leave the public sphere to men. . . . A new generation of reformers attacked women’s single-sex schools for their antidomestic curriculum and artificial, antifamily ethos under the leadership of single women.”56 Similarly, in China the general public looked at college-educated women with suspicion, alleging that their education did the society a disservice by ruining them for their “natural” roles as “good wives and mothers.” In fact, even some male students of the University of Nanking, presumably more enlightened than the general public through their Western-style education, accused Ginling of making a “deformed society” (jixing shehui 畸形社會) in which the majority of women refused to marry and procreate; they cited the statistics that only 14 percent of its graduates married between 1919 and 1927.57 In light of the gender conventions prevalent in the United States and China at the time, it can be seen that Thurston actually broke away from those male-centered prescriptions when she planned for the education of Chinese women at Ginling. Thurston envisioned producing a group of exceptional Chinese women who would act as agents of transformation in Chinese culture; for her, to work as a devoted yet anonymous wife and mother would be a waste of talent and investment for her Ginling graduates. In her endeavor to make Chinese women into Christian leaders, she imagined more mobility and power for her students than were generally available to either their female Chinese compatriots or their female American counterparts. Her high expectations for the Chinese students caused her not only to attempt to make Ginling into a “useful [oasis] beyond the deserts of conventional familial expectation,”58 but also to assume a less

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than sympathetic attitude toward romance and marriage. This attitude was perhaps shaped by her own experience of a short marriage contracted mainly for evangelical purposes and her career ambitions (shown both at Yale-in-China and Ginling), but it was staunchly shared by other missionary workers of the same stripe at Ginling. Unfortunately, the missionary women’s suspicion of the male-dominated discourse of romantic love frequently found verification in their students’ experience. For instance, Mao Yanwen, a transfer student who entered Ginling in 1922, found that her cousin and fiancé had fallen in love with a younger “new” woman and wished to call off their engagement after he returned from his study in the United States, even though the two of them had eloped from their hometown to escape from her arranged marriage several years earlier. According to Mao’s reminiscence, Thurston not only angrily charged the man with “acquiring only the dark elements of American education,” but also spent nights praying with Mao to comfort her with Christianity.59 Small wonder that in response to male criticism of Ginling students’ lack of interest in dating and marriage, Thurston stated: “From 1912 the theory of equality between men and women had been preached and the young men wanted all the new liberty it gave. The women were more cautious, knowing that upon them would come most of the criticism and consequences of any unwise disregard of the old safeguards.”60 Moreover, she claimed: “A large majority of the [Ginling] girls were not particularly interested in boys. Romantic love had not hitherto featured in marriage relations in China, and marriage in itself had no particular attraction for the woman who had intellectual interests.” At the same time she accused the male students of harboring ulterior motives: “Some of the men students were already married, in many cases to wives not of their own choosing, from whom they could expect nothing of the companionship which the new ideas made them crave. The men resented the girls’ independence and their refusal to fall in behind them in their student activities, political and otherwise. They thought the girls were under the domination of their Western teachers, and gave them no credit for having opinions of their own on social and political questions.”61 Thurston defied time-honored gender expectations in both China and the United States by not only invoking the missionary theory of “woman’s work for woman.” In supporting her students’ career pursuits, she also used her interpretation of the political and cultural conditions of China at the turn of the century to propagate her vision of the education of Chinese women. As has been mentioned earlier, Thurston situated the beginning of Ginling in 1900. This was not only because she honored the missionary origin of Ginling and saw the Ginling enterprise as a manifestation of the

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overall wider spread of Christian influence in China starting in the twentieth century. It was also because she considered that the new century ushered in “a new day for [Chinese] women,”62 a moment that demanded that the missionaries start a college in China to best prepare Chinese women for new opportunities and challenges. In the opening ceremony of the college, Thurston made the president’s address to the first class of students, and in it described “the opportunity awaiting the college woman in China; the need for [her] to make ready to meet it, and the promise of God to fulfill [her] every need.”63 In a rhetorically extravagant publicity pamphlet intended for a Western audience, she compared the Christian missionary to “the Siegfried who roused Brunnhilda from her sleep on the fire bound rock,” and declared: “Since Christianity is the only motive force sufficient to raise and reach standards of democratic citizenship, the need of the women of China is higher education that is Christian.”64 In more concrete terms, she envisaged a women’s college in China that would not separate them [Chinese women] for long years from their own country and its changing condition, nor wean them from their families and their people so that they would never again be content with life as it must still be lived in China. . . . [It should be] a college which would put emphasis on things which strengthen character and deepen purpose and inspire to fuller consecration of life. In the college, East and West would meet, each bringing gifts of the best they had, holding fast what was good, and meeting the new needs of the new day in China.65

In contrast to the radical rhetoric of the May Fourth Chinese intellectuals who advocated complete destruction of Chinese traditions and total westernization, this vision shared by Thurston and Ginling’s other missionary founders prescribed evolution rather than revolution as the solution to China’s social problems. Their vision found an appreciative audience in their Chinese students and their parents when Chinese women stepped out of their homes to receive a modern education for the first time in Chinese history. The moderate attitude toward Chinese traditions taken by the American missionaries not only appealed to the cultural pride of the Chinese students and their parents, but also dispelled their apprehension about the strange and unknown, and therefore helped ease these young women into their college life. Furthermore, by incorporating patriotic calls into their description of a Ginling education while temporarily suspending the restricting traditional gender code, they also illustrated to their students Chinese women’s crucial role in nation-building and evangelization. In

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so doing, they enhanced the students’ self-awareness and self-esteem as women, Christians, and Chinese citizens. In an era of rising nationalism in China’s modernization process, such a move was not merely wise, it was also necessary. It helped to connect Ginling graduates with the general conditions and common sentiment of their people, and thereby made them into more effective members of their society and more devoted alumnae to an institution that pledged to prepare them well for a successful life after college. On the other hand, this mission of the institution conceptualized by Thurston also implicitly extracted Chinese women from their expected roles as daughters, wives, and mothers by placing the needs of their national family above those of their biological or marital family. She thus also implied the indispensable part played by the Ginling family in enabling Chinese women to join in the nation-building project and to enjoy options and freedom denied their female compatriots. To state it simply, the American missionaries’ particular way of historicizing Ginling’s birth downplayed Chinese students’ racial, class, and religious differences, and laid a solid base for the emergence and propagation of the family discourse at Ginling.

c r e at ion of t h e fa m i ly di s c ou r s e From the above discussion, we can see that the discourse of the Ginling family was created both to address immediate and urgent institutional needs and to realize the founders’ vision of a Christian higher education for Chinese women. The success of this discourse in creating institutional cohesion can be attributed in no small part to the founders’ choice of the particular trope of family. “Family” became a compelling metaphor at Ginling not only because of the missionaries’ cultural conservatism but also because this metaphor satisfied the emotional needs of both the American and Chinese constituencies of the college. The missionary faculty of Ginling often proclaimed their confidence in the redeeming characteristics of traditional Chinese culture and their wish to integrate those positive traits into their undertaking of educating modern Chinese women for a new China. The Chinese qualities that they praised most included the reverence for learning, the inclination for moderation, and the Confucian family values. They deemed it critical to preserve such positive national characteristics at Ginling and through Ginling at a time of great turmoil and transition in China. The early Ginling students appreciated the missionaries’ praise of Chinese cultural traditions and attempts at preservation, even though in practice they themselves sought freedom beyond the

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traditional boundary of femininity. They interpreted these praises and attempts at preservation as gestures of good will, as the faculty’s willingness to integrate Chinese culture into missionary education. By proclaiming cultural conservatism in this way, the missionaries accentuated shared values among Ginling faculty and students, and generated necessary group loyalty and solidarity regardless of race. In extolling Confucian values, the missionaries were also invoking powerful cultural memories to strengthen the family discourse. As I have mentioned earlier, the missionary enterprise to some extent created an anachronistic entity in Ginling, compared to its American sister institutions at the same time. Colleges like Mount Holyoke, Vassar, and Wellesley had moved away from their evangelical origins and intense family atmosphere to a more liberal, secular campus culture by the beginning of the twentieth century. Yet at Ginling the American faculty members found it necessary to create and enforce close ties both between faculty members and students and between the students themselves. In this effort they were aided by the Confucian model of teacher-student interaction. Although an exclusively male privilege, traditional institutions of higher learning, including both state-sponsored guozi jian 國子監 and private-run shuyuan 書院, provided a time-honored model of interpersonal dynamics at schools. The master-disciple relationship can be seen as a recasting of the father-son relationship within the Confucian family. The Confucian ideal of instruction and emulation often had the teacher take a paternalistic attitude toward his disciples while the students deferred to their teacher, and sought not only knowledge but also moral instruction and civilization embodied in the august person of their master. The students’ respect for their teacher is perfectly captured in this old saying: “Once a teacher, a lifetime as a father” (yiri wei shi, zhongshen wei fu 一日為師, 終身為父). Therefore, when the missionaries praised “the Chinese love for learning,” they were not only invoking the collective cultural unconscious of reverence for the authority of the teacher, but also tying it back to the Confucian family structure. Elevated as one of the five most basic human relations by Confucianism, “friendship” between men also promoted peer relationships among classmates and fellow literati in traditional Chinese society. Needless to say, this was an experience often denied upper-class Chinese women, who had been segregated and secluded at homes except in rare cases where women’s poetry societies were allowed to flourish.66 It thus behooved the missionary women to provide for their students an alternative to the existing Chinese model of male schools and friendship and at the same time to develop a unifying campus culture at Ginling. The emotional force of the family metaphor facilitated their endeavor.

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Ginling’s American missionaries lived and worked as single women away from their own families in a land physically and culturally distant from their own native country. The discourse of the Ginling family created for them a mock family structure that gave them both career and emotional satisfaction, enabling them to regard themselves as leaders, protectors, and surrogate parental figures to the students. Although often describing themselves as rational and intellectual women, the long periods of separation from their own families and friends in the United States sharpened their craving for interpersonal warmth and the sense of being needed. Furthermore, most students of Ginling in its early years came from families that, although perhaps nominally Christian, still adhered to the Confucian family model that often silenced and oppressed its young and female members. Some students, including Wu Yifang, even had had their feet bound at a young age. Therefore, the students found the mock family structure of a women’s residential college not only reassuring but also emotionally satisfying, for the American faculty often appeared more caring and sensitive to students’ needs and troubles than their parents were. Hunter has suggested that it was “gratuitous personal attention from formerly forbidding authority figures” that eventually converted female Chinese students in mission schools to an alien religion: Christianity.67 Whether they converted at college or not, Ginling students undoubtedly felt attracted to a more benevolent managerial style and were readily integrated into the “Ginling family” through positive interactions with faculty members. Many of the Ginling students also came from extended families where petty squabbles, personality conflicts, and power struggles were daily occurrences.68 Some of them, such as Wu Yifang, had experienced horrendous family tragedies before enrolling at Ginling. Seen in this light, the students’ college experience felt no less than life-affirming, for their mentors apparently respected them as individuals and often went to great lengths to help them cope with college. The Chinese students saw their newly formed ties with their peers out of the family context both refreshing and nurturing, precisely because their peers were almost but not quite “sisters” to them. Hunter highly values Chinese women’s peer relationships formed in mission institutions, stating: “Chinese girls discovered each other for the first time in schools in the early twentieth century. The experience of peers, other girls at the same stage of development with similar problems, was among the most significant developments of their education.”69 At Ginling not only did special pair-bonding happen, such as the lifelong friendship between Wu Yifang and Xu Yizheng, both of the first class of 1919, but sisterhood also soon became institutionalized. During the freshmen week program at the

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beginning of each fall semester, various college departments and student organizations offered new students necessary orientations. First-year and third-year students were paired up as “sister classes,” and a junior or senior student lived in every freshman dorm room as a student mentor to help care for her lower-class sisters’ academic and psychological problems.70 As a result, Ginling students developed a sense of generation and saw themselves as one link in the long chain of traditions that defined both the institution and their own college education. They were, in their mind, both little sisters and big sisters in the long-lasting Ginling family. In addition to the sense of familiarity and emotional energy that the trope of the family was able to generate, the missionaries also discovered a convenient tool of gentle discipline in the rhetoric of the family. First of all, the missionaries avowed respect for positive Chinese characteristics and thus advertised their good will and reassured the Chinese students who were studying at a strange missionary institution, where the instructors were predominantly foreigners and the sole language of instruction was English. More importantly, the faculty members were able to appeal to both the students’ “family” feeling and their putative “Chinese” moderation and diligence to ward off external distractions at a time when student demonstrations and rallies often disrupted academic work in other institutions. After all, the Confucian ethics that the missionaries advocated emphasized respect for authority. As surrogate parental figures, the faculty members were able to use emotional persuasion rather than disciplinary measures to steer students to see things their way. Although the increasingly radical Chinese environment would at times catch the faculty unprepared for the outburst of students’ patriotic passions, the faculty-student relationship remained congenial in its early years.

i m p l e m e n tat ion of t h e fa m i ly di s c ou r s e: i n i t i a l n e g o t i at ion s The creation and dissemination of the discourse of the Ginling family thus answered a variety of institutional and personal needs. Yet it still took considerable negotiations in the beginning to establish a working group dynamic. Perhaps to be expected in a small and close-knit community, in the first few years the more vexing, if less fatal, problem than the lack of financial and personnel resources consisted in interpersonal relationships. Its first president, Matilda Thurston, fully realized the primary importance of “personal culture” among its faculty members. In a letter written to the GCC in New York, she remarked: “It takes time to be sure on the

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very important element of personality, and I do feel that that is of tremendous importance. No amount of mere scholarship can make up for that indefinite thing in a person which makes her count in the lives of others because of what she is in her inmost soul.”71 Yet despite her attempts at cultivating a family spirit, the members of Ginling did not always find it easy to get along with one another. Sometimes the issue was clashes of personality and administrative style. This was the case with Minnie Vautrin. When Thurston went to the United States on furlough for the academic year 1918–19, she decided to postpone her return for one year in order to raise more funds for the new college buildings. Vautrin was contacted by the GCC to go to Ginling as acting president for one year. When she arrived at Ginling in the fall of 1919, she faced a strong-willed faculty and a student body much stirred up by the May Fourth student movement. Mary Treudley, professor of sociology and Vautrin’s biographer, described the faculty then as a “democratic group”: “No one was afraid to speak her mind and almost everybody did so with great constancy and vehemence.” Treudley wryly commented: “[Vautrin] was dominant on campus. . . . Of course God led her to see what was right and, having seen it, she worked tooth and nail to make his will the law in her location.” Vautrin’s perceived self-righteous attitude prompted one irreverent young member of the faculty to say: “I could have stood up to Minnie but Minnie and God were too much for me.”72 But more serious clashes occurred between Vautrin and the students. Her Western colleagues had recognized her as a capable and worthy colleague, though they did not all warm to her on a personal level, but Vautrin’s relationships with Ginling students proved more problematic. Having grown up in rural Illinois and worked with a younger age group from rural China in the past, Vautrin found herself scoffed at by Ginling’s more metropolitan student population: “Minnie the urban leaders marked at once as country and looked down their haughty noses at her rustic ways.” They ridiculed Vautrin’s little economics, such as teaching servants to oil paper for insulation of windows and doors instead of buying readymade oil paper, or her order that meals at college in the fall would not be served before a certain date. They also saw her habit of eating Chinese food with the students at their dining halls in order to save money as “snooping,” though her behavior clearly harked back to the Mount Holyoke model of faculty monitoring mentioned earlier. Furthermore, Vautrin was somewhat authoritarian in her administrative style: “Minnie had been thoroughly indoctrinated with Emma Lyon’s authoritarian philosophy about the running of a middle school in China. She was not fully sensitive to the fact that a system which works well with teen-age girls may not be

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suited to college women. So she went gum-shoeing to make sure that quiet hours were kept quiet and that lights were out when the rules said they should be.”73 Vautrin’s administrative style at times revealed her view of what the students’ priorities and their futures should be, which often was fundamentally different from what the students had in mind. A story about Vautrin was told as a cautionary tale to every freshman at Ginling. It was said that Vautrin once rushed out to intercept a Ginling student who went on an unchaperoned romantic walk with her boyfriend. Vautrin caught up with the couple and escorted them home “like naughty children,” to the great embarrassment and resentment of the Ginling student. In an era of increasing social interactions between young people of different sexes and amid rallying calls for the emancipation of women and freedom of marriage, Vautrin’s heavy-handed handling of this incident seemed oldfashioned and reactionary to the students. Besides her lack of sympathy toward youthful romance, Vautrin also disapproved of students’ political involvement in patriotic activities. She wanted the students to focus on training to become middle school teachers, social workers, and doctors: “Students, Minnie felt, at least in the early days, should devote themselves to preparing for a career, as she had done, and leave the affairs of state to older heads. . . . She considered politics, like marriage, a necessary evil to be postponed as long as possible.” Such an attitude found even less popularity with the students, for although many of the Ginling students, as Thurston claimed, had no interest in romance, they did aspire to be patriotic citizens of China. In fact, one of the most important motives for them to receive a modern education was to prepare themselves for nationbuilding rather than to preserve Chinese traditional values. Little wonder that Treudley observed regretfully: “Minnie would have made a good Confucianist in many ways. . . . She appreciated more keenly than her students the charm and virtues of the ancient culture. Hold fast to what is good was a theme recurring often in her teaching.”74 The American missionaries of Vautrin’s generation generally shared her notion of proper student conduct and of the measures that they should take to guarantee such behavior. While not many of them formed warm friendships with Vautrin, they also “had no suspicion that the students found her as all too perfect as they did themselves.” Instead, they thought of Vautrin as just what the students needed: a firm hand.75 Therefore, although serious clashes between the faculty and the students occurred only when the political situation became more volatile and the national picture grimmer with the advance of the twentieth century, we can see inklings of such conflicts even in the early days of the college. Vautrin’s

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lack of popularity with the Ginling students only foreshadowed mounting differences in thought between the missionaries and Chinese students. In the later years of the college, American faculty would notice wider generational gaps in values and beliefs not only in the student body but also in their own rank. They would have to make more adjustments to the discourse of the Ginling family to resolve internal conflicts and create unity when the college was under the pressure of tumultuous social conditions and a different set of political and cultural imperatives than they were accustomed to. Eventually, they were forced to modify the college curriculum and even change the avowed mission of the college in order to cope with war and other taxing historical circumstances. Despite—or perhaps precisely because of—the many conflicts within Ginling, the official versions of the Ginling story tended to describe the college as a harmonious utopia. In addition to the self-validation in both theological and historical terms mentioned in the previous section, Ginling faculty strove to paint a picture of universal happiness within the college to the general public. This was particularly true of Matilda Thurston. While residing in the unsatisfactory House of a Hundred Rooms for the years 1915–23, Thurston was simultaneously engaged on two fronts; she was not only busy buying small pieces of land from Chinese residents for a permanent site of the college, but also anxious to cultivate a unifying college ethos. She assured her American sponsors: A most healthy college spirit has shown itself through the two years. The classes have developed a class spirit, and there has been a wholesome rivalry in good deeds, but this has in no way hindered cooperation. Our big freshman class boasts that it is “more than half the college” and “can stay here four years more,” but it accepts the authority of college precedents and is not unruly under upper class leaders. Near the end of the second year the students asked for student government. It was in no spirit of wishing to cast off restraint but with a serious sense of responsibility to be self-controlled women, individually and collectively, that they asked for those powers which the faculty were glad to put in their hands.76

As can be seen from the report above, Thurston tried to present a positive interpretation of any potential signs of conflict between the students’ wish for independence and faculty authority. Another discursive strategy adopted by the missionaries in their writings was to convert descriptions of problems and confl icts to descriptions of positive and proactive countermeasures. For instance, Thurston mentioned an entrance examination

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designed for high school graduates after they had discovered the inadequate preparation of the fi rst class, as has been mentioned earlier in this chapter. Also, she mentioned in her annual report the expansion of the one-year special program of intensive English (formerly only available to government high school students with presumably insufficient English proficiency) to accommodate all mission school graduates. They took this step because their “main feeders” of students, the women’s mission high schools in the Yangzi Valley, complained about Ginling’s high entrance requirement in English while other (male) missionary colleges challenged its “low” admission level. The reason that the missionaries tended to strive for a more optimistic representation of the institution than the reality warranted can be traced not only to their strong faith in their Christian enterprise but also to the expectation of their American headquarters to see positive returns for missionary investment and efforts. Thurston, for example, wryly commented when submitting her second annual President’s Report: “The fi rst printed report was criticized as pessimistic.” She tried for a more uplifting tone in her subsequent reports.77 More than reacting to internal tensions and external pressures, the Ginling faculty also proactively sought to foster a family atmosphere by promoting among the students a uniformly austere and service-oriented lifestyle through daily exercises and rituals. Yet they also tempered this somber campus culture with attempts at forming close emotional ties with the students and, more subtly, leading through the model of their own elegant comportment. Most American faculty members, as Protestant missionaries and graduates of elite women’s liberal arts colleges, aimed to re-create at Ginling the image of their own alma maters. In a pamphlet describing the years 1915–19 at Ginling, Thurston described in glowing terms the “busy, interested, congenial [faculty] group” that “draws on a large fund of observation and experience from leading American colleges and universities when they sit in council over policies and practices at Ginling. It is a privilege to be building the ideals of one’s own Alma Mater into this college for women in China.”78 She also admitted elsewhere, however, that no faculty members had had experience of teaching at Chinese colleges when Ginling started.79 The successful construction and implementation of a Ginling curriculum modeled on the liberal arts education at elite American women’s colleges was achieved only gradually, but in the beginning years the faculty at least established a rhythm of college life that echoed their college experiences in the United States. The typical day for a Ginling student at this early stage resembled the routine at “Mt. Holyoke in its early days”80 (that is, Mary Lyon’s “Protestant

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nunnery”): rising bell at six, breakfast at seven after tidying up their rooms, morning lessons from eight to twelve, chapel at noon, tiffin [light lunch] at half past twelve if chapel ended on time, afternoon classes (including labs, singing, gymnastics, and other less academic activities) or individual study hours lasting until supper at six, quiet hours afterward, and retiring bell at ten.81 As at Mt. Holyoke under Mary Lyons,82 Sunday chapel was required of all students, after which they taught Sunday school at their own churches or a nearby orphanage, or devoted themselves to Sunday religious meetings organized for neighborhood children and adults in the afternoon. The religious emphasis of the college life perhaps can be attributed to its identity as a missionary institution, but in its regimented way of living and its emphasis on evangelism we can detect the hand of Thurston, a Mount Holyoke alumna and a devout Presbyterian. Although she claimed that she had never thought of becoming a missionary until she fortuitously took a course in missionary studies at college, she proved to be a conscientious and dedicated missionary worker at Ginling.83 At the same time, the Chinese students, Christians though they might be, were more attracted to entertaining and merry activities than to worthy religious projects, as can be seen in their enthusiastic participation in their annual Christmas celebration, which frequently included caroling, procession, dramatic performance, and gift exchange.84 Furthermore, they were often drawn to faculty members for reasons other than the somber and virtuous aspects of their personality. This was true in Thurston’s case. In contrast to Vautrin’s “country” mien, Thurston was admired by her students for her elegant style in both personal appearance and interior decoration. This was hardly surprising, considering their different family backgrounds: as mentioned, Thurston was brought up in an affluent family in Connecticut while Vautrin was born a farmer’s daughter in small-town Illinois. In fact, Thurston had also expressed contempt for missionaries from the American Midwest in her younger days, finding them narrow-minded and parochial, and calling some of them “hopeless country specimen[s].” She was not unlike the more urban students at Ginling who looked down on Vautrin.85 To a group of young Chinese women who had recently emerged from secluded homes, subjective impressions of the faculty members based on things such as their toilette readily swayed their judgments. Of course, the missionaries’ academic credentials or religious and moral worthiness took time and a certain amount of socialization to appreciate. In comparison, stylish grooming and polished deportment of the Western faculty members signified to the students not only personal elegance and sophistication but also a window on a fascinating new style of “civilized” Western living to which they aspired. For example, Frederica

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Mead, although looked down upon by some students because she only earned a BA from Smith, was also remembered as “a woman of culture and from an upper-class financial home, so she shared with us her costumes and her traveling experiences. We always liked to see her dress up beautifully.”86 It is also said one student caught her first glimpse of a brassiere when a Chinese faculty member who recently returned from the United States unpacked her suitcases in front of her. This made the student decide on the spot to go to the United States. For her, it was a land that promised not only more wonderful underwear like this, but also a new bodily freedom that had been denied to the tightly corseted and bound Chinese women of her time and class.87 Revealingly, while every one of the alumnae paid homage to the college spirit of social service, most took pride in their Ginling education not for any particular academic courses and worthy community service projects that they had undertaken back at school. Rather, they took inordinate pride in an amorphous qizhi 氣質 that their four years at Ginling had supposedly inculcated into them. What they described as Ginling alumnae’s unique qizhi, or mien and spirit, amounts to “correct,” elegant, gentle, and kind social behavior, an external “polish” that purportedly signified their inner worthiness, and not just their spirit of service but also their knowledge of Western civilization. One alumna described it this way: “My entrance to Ginling made me feel that I was entering a ‘high’ (gaoji 高級) society. My classmates all seemed so cultured. They dressed neatly and meticulously, but not overtly extravagantly. Everyone was refined in their behavior, never a rude word or gesture.”88 The students’ representations of their intimate experience with Western food, dress, and etiquette through the missionaries, though assuredly class- and gender-inflected, are by no means as frivolous or shallow as they might sound at first. Such experiences molded their positive impressions of both Western culture and the meaning of modernity, for, to them, westernization and modernization promised new freedom and possibilities of self-invention. As Hunter has argued, these Chinese women and their American mentors were “posed on a cultural interface”: “If . . . Chinese women [were] more readily attracted to Western customs (as nationalist students argued), it was because the frontier where East met West offered them escape from home hierarchies.”89 The so-called Ginling qizhi that purportedly encapsulated the value of Ginling education shaped students’ daily behavior and lifelong habits, and therefore also left an indelible imprint on their psyches. In time the initially amorphous Ginling qizhi would take on a life of its own, metamorphosing into a symbol of their group identity and a legacy to pass on to their younger “sisters,” even though these latter generations may have

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never even set foot on the original Ginling campus in Nanjing. But for now, let us further explore how the missionary faculty’s model comportments and attentive personal touches converted the first group of Ginling students from apathetic bystanders or disenchanted critics to loyal and productive members of the community. After a beleaguered beginning semester, “Mrs. Thurston found in them loyal daughters who were willing to stand by her through wind and storm. They were no longer by-standers or inspectors, but they became a part of the family and willingly took up the yoke of being the first born in this newly founded home of learning.”90 More than forty years later, one member of the first class remembered Thurston “as a lady general in a long dark grey cape over her lovely purple taffeta dress, very genteel and dignified.” She continued, “we were proud of her New England manner and her refined taste for things elegant. She was versatile and could talk on all subjects, scientific, religious, and philosophical, carried on Chinese conversation very politely, and made no faux pas in the highest circles. Nothing seemed to worry her, She never used pressure nor rushed about the essentials, but liked to take time and do them well.”91 In this affectionately and admiringly drawn portrait, Thurston appeared as a “lady general,” an accomplished gentlewoman possessed of not only a genteel breeding and impeccable comportment but also the ability to run a college with ease. Her poise and breeding not only served her well in upper-class circles, but also made her an effective president who could present a positive face of the college to the outside world. Thurston herself admitted that the women’s missionary boards appointed her the first president of Ginling both because of her experience with Yale-in-China and because she had acted as the traveling secretary of the Student Volunteer Movement in the eastern colleges of the United States between 1904 and 1908, and, as a result, had made many useful connections for future fund-raising efforts on behalf of Ginling.92 Because of her rank as president, Thurston was the recognized leader of the college. Because of her personal elegance and social grace, she, rather than the hardworking Vautrin, was accepted by the college community as their charismatic “head of the family.” Interestingly, because of her feat of raising the majority of the funds for the new college home and her uncompromising nature, she also often appeared as a father figure in the students’ reminiscences. For instance, one alumna thus commented on Thurston’s extended fundraising trip in the United States in 1919: “She was doing the work of the father of the house, while the Dean served as mother and the faculty as nurses; thus the family affairs were carried on successfully and happily.”93 Another alumna recalled: “I wished a great many times to call her mother

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but I could not do so because her bearing and dealing with us was rather fatherly.”94 However, Thurston was also hailed by Ginling alumnae as the mother of the college, a mother whose “devotion to the growing child [Ginling], her vigilant watchfulness, constant care, tireless toil, motherly delight in her, self-forgetting sacrifice for her, have made the child what she is and what she will be.” If such phrases sound trite and formulaic, one particular incident apparently convinced her students that she was a “progressive mother” who encouraged wholesome interactions between the sexes: “Once or twice when [male] University [of Nanking] students extended their invitations to Ginling seniors, she not only sanctioned their accepting but also encouraged them to invite the hosts in return. Let us not forget that this was at a time when this kind of thing was rare in Nanking.”95 Compared to Vautrin’s more watchful and interfering administrative style on similar occasions, it is little wonder that Thurston easily won over the students with her understanding and gentler handling of their needs and qualms. However, Vautrin also gathered her own group of followers and admirers who found in her both a mother and a father. For example, in a Chinese-language article written for her memorial service at Ginling in 1946, the author recalled that Vautrin treated her students both like a “strict father” (yanfu 嚴父) and a “loving mother” (cimu 慈母). Vautrin’s large-boned figure and her dignified appearance apparently struck her students as rather masculine, but her constant smiles, gentle words, and especially her kindness towards the poverty-stricken women and children living close to Ginling earned her the reputation of being a caring mother. The “familial” roles and gender identities that Thurston and Vautrin assumed in the students’ writings were hence fluid ones, but they both offered motivating role models for their students. They demonstrated to these Chinese women new possibilities of self-realization and empowerment for an educated woman in China, since they claimed dignity and power for themselves through their service as single female Christian educators rather than as wives and mothers as demanded by traditions in China and the United States. The students obviously failed to recognize that their unique status as American women working in China was one important source of their power. It can also be argued that their admiring disciples reaffirmed traditional gender stereotypes in using traditional gender expectations to categorize their work as masculine or feminine, “fatherly” or “motherly.” However, the work and life of American missionary women did provide much inspiration and emotional support for Ginling students at a time when Chinese women had just started to experiment with new careers and lifestyles.

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Thurston’s example seemed especially inspiring to Ginling students because she not only worked as the chief architect of the physical and discursive Ginling family, but also made the trope of family more intimate and vital through the example of her own life. Although Vautrin also put aside her father’s needs in order to serve Ginling, it was Thurston who left copious notes about her personal sacrifice through her autobiographical writings. Consequently, her more personal, autobiographical sketches, just like the official documents that she produced, illustrate the way she adeptly shaped and deployed the trope of the family. Thurston was appointed as the first president of “the only college for Chinese women in the Yangtze Valley” in 1913 and subsequently linked her life with Ginling for almost half a century until her death in 1958. According to an autobiographical sketch, a disappointed Matilda Thurston left the Yalein-China mission in 1903 in order to accompany her sick husband, the Rev. Lawrence Thurston, back to the United States after having worked in China for barely a year. She wrote, “Do you think we were glad to go? It was the hardest thing we had ever had to do—the greatest trial of our faith in God. For long before this we had both given up thinking of the missionary life and work as duty. It was privilege and honor.”96 Not only did Thurston characterize her short marriage as a joint partnership formed to honor God’s will and to better devote their lives to China, but she also claimed that she considered the needs of Ginling as important as those of her own parents. During her visit to the United States in 1924, only her second in the eleven years of her tenure as Ginling president, she wrote to the Ginling students that she had to remain by her father’s deathbed: “I am with you in spirit and torn by the conflicting claims of the work there and here and the heart pull of Father’s pathetic state.”97 She characterized her unavoidable delay in the United States as a fulfillment of her filial duty that nonetheless caused her much internal struggle and emotional anguish because of her absence from Ginling. In so doing, she simultaneously demonstrated her adherence to “family values” and her devotion to her “spiritual daughters” at Ginling. Thurston thus became a much more efficacious and felicitous embodiment of the Ginling family than Vautrin. In contrast to Vautrin’s silent withdrawal from her father in order to serve Ginling,98 Thurston was able to fulfill her obligations as both a daughter to her American father and a mother to her Chinese daughters through her discursive maneuvers. The Ginling alumnae praised Thurston as “a beloved mother, a reliable and loyal friend, a unifying spirit, and the personification of the collective goodwill and fellowship of friends from other lands for the women of China.” 99 Her example illustrates the enduring power of successful

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personal connections that the missionary faculty members established with their students at Ginling. Because of personal influence such as hers, the American missionary women made the “Ginling family” a vibrant trope in the minds of their Chinese disciples. In the years that followed, the discourse of the Ginling family provided a useful tool of legitimization that enabled Ginling to weather many political upheavals such as the change of leadership from an American to a Chinese president and administration in the late 1920s, and the Nanjing Massacre committed by the Japanese military in Nanjing in 1937–38. However, even in the beginning years, the Ginling students had already started to deploy the trope of the family in their own ways and claim the dream of the missionaries for their own. As with all reworkings of dominant discourses, these students often subtly changed the tenor of the discourse of the Ginling family even while apparently echoing the message that the missionaries conveyed.

s t u de n t c o m p o s i t ion s: t h e k i n g d o m o f g od i n c h i n a Classroom instruction functioned as the most direct venue for the dissemination of ideology and culture in an educational institution such as Ginling. The students learned from their missionary teachers not only “objective” scientific knowledge, but also their particular perspectives on race, gender, class, and religion. Consequently, they also often reproduced similar biases in their own writings. For example, Elsie Clark, a prominent American suffragist, led a discussion of women’s rights in her second-year English class at Ginling in 1916, and was pleased with the students’ reiteration of certain missionary beliefs about gender roles, such as “the distinctness but equality of the sexes, a role for women that was not strictly limited to the domestic sphere, and an emphasis on service and reform.”100 In this section, I will focus on some student compositions that illustrate the way Ginling students adapted the trope of family in their own discursive endeavors, and I will try to compare them with relevant writings by American faculty members. I hope to reveal not only the resonance but also the distinction between these two types of writings. Since English was the language of instruction, Ginling students needed to learn to communicate effectively in a language other than their mother tongue. The American faculty members, as native speakers of English and well-educated women, became their models of not only correct linguistic usage but also of proper ways of thinking and expression. Therefore, when describing their life at college and imagining their future after college, the students often used the same metaphors and phrases used by

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the American faculty members, but sometimes they also produced different interpretations of the given phenomenon. In an essay published in 1917 entitled “Life in Ginling College,” Dong Nyok-zoe spoke enthusiastically of the many advantages of studying at Ginling: “Not to speak of the cheapness of the fees, and of the nearness to our homes, there are other advantages, namely, . . . a closer contact with the life of our homeland, and a keener sympathy for all the changes that take place in China.”101 This list sounds remarkably similar to the list of the virtues of a women’s college located in China that Thurston extolled in Ginling College, mentioned earlier in this chapter. However, this student saw the problem of multiple local dialects in a different light than Thurston. Xu Yizhen (Mrs. New Way-sung), a member of the first class, recalled that of the American faculty, only Thurston and Vautrin spoke good Mandarin, “even better than some of the students who had only dialects to use.”102 Among the students themselves, the proliferation of dialects was a source of confusion as well as amusement. Dong Nyok-zoe remembered that once a student asked for some steamed buns (baozi 包子) to be bought, but instead received a newspaper (baozhi 報紙) from the college gatekeeper. For Thurston, this presented a challenge: “School problems in the north are not the same as ours; for one they have not the polyglot problem which we shall have in our student body, for all the northern students use mandarin.”103 Yet Dong considered this a unique advantage. Not only did the coexistence of diverse dialects “impress upon [them] the urgent need for a national tongue,” she claimed, but it also helped to make the students “all-round characters”: “If we open wide the windows of our brain we cannot but see, hear, and understand the customs, manners, and traditions of the different localities represented. We profit by the assimilation through our contact with one another.” It can be seen that while Thurston considered multiple dialects to be a source of confusion and anarchy, this kind of linguistic environment nevertheless revealed to this student the living meaning of “Abundant Life,” the college motto promoted by Thurston and her American colleagues. Furthermore, the diversity of dialects awakened the students’ nationalist consciousness. As Dong mentioned, the students began to realize the necessity for a unified national tongue due to the difficulties they encountered in communicating with one another. Moreover, she declared, the students recognized their unity and solidarity as Chinese citizens despite their different dialects. She remarked, “[A]s a rule, most of the girls are not without earnestness in the pursuit of knowledge and willingness to be of service to our fatherland.”104 As Dong’s essay has illustrated, their nationalist consciousness paradoxically arose more

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from the students’ recognition of their differences than from the faculty’s promotion of uniformity through the discourse of the Ginling family. As can be seen in the student composition mentioned above, Ginling students’ use of the trope of the family at times differed from the original expectations and limitations set by the American faculty. Although initiated by the American faculty into their “familial” roles at Ginling, the students expanded their group identities; they imagined themselves to be members not only of the Ginling family but also of the national family of China. Later these two identities sometimes came into conflict with each other, but at this point, a happy balance could still be achieved. This was mainly because the students had yet to face any serious challenges from their national government and Chinese compatriots regarding their institutional affiliation and racial identity. Precisely because of this, their self-imagined role as patriots and servants to their nation also remained an untested dream. This can be seen most clearly in an essay entitled “The Kingdom of God in China,” published in Smith College Monthly around 1920.105 H. H. Wilder, a Smith faculty member who taught English at Ginling for a time, explained in her preface to this essay, “[It] pictures so vividly the thoughts and desires of a young Chinese girl who has never left her native country that I have thought it best to give it absolutely verbatim without changing so much as a comma.” The essay, a composition written for the topic “A Dream of the Kingdom of God in China” that Wilder had given to the whole class, describes a dream in which an angel leads the narrator on a tour of the “Kingdom of God in China.” It starts with her visit to Beijing, where she witnesses the president and the cabinet at work, then to the railway station in Nanjing, followed by her tour of the central city of Nanjing—a home, a school, and the industrial quarters— until the narrator is awakened from her pleasant dream by the tolling of the bell of the college. What is most striking about this description of the Christian utopia in China lies in its central paradox: the author fantasized about a theocratic democracy where harmony is achieved by the citizens’ self-recognition of their proper position in a social hierarchy sanctified by God and Christianity. On the one hand, the student described in this “Kingdom of God” a familial harmony based on the citizens’ “brotherly helpfulness” toward one another, repeatedly using words such as “peaceful,” “democratic,” equal,” and “cooperative.” In her dream, “[t]here was no oppression, no injustice, no discontent” in China. On the other hand, China could arrive at that blissful stage only after “ethical and religious order prevailed everywhere,” which ironically required centralized control: “[A]ll need[s] of the people

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were provided” for by the government in Beijing and “everything was kept in order by many able social workers.” The author emphasized that the citizens followed the social order voluntarily because everyone realized “[m]an is not one of selfish individualism, neither is he an impersonal unit, but each one is a son of God, and [one must learn] to look upon every man as his brother.” Consequently, “everybody held his own responsibility and controlled himself.” However, such a claim of enlightened and spontaneous self-control, without any explanation of its source or reason, could well mask the tyranny of religion and the suppression of human desires. Advocating self-control so that people “became masters instead of servants of their habit,” the author described a six-year-old boy thus advising his three-year-old brother to give up eating a piece of fruit: “Dear brother, don’t cry; that sugar cane is not good for you. You have to control yourself or else you cannot be a good citizen and [m]amma will be ashamed of you.” While this may be another example of the centrality of familial metaphors in the consciousness of Ginling students, it also exposes the naïveté of this student’s plan of nation-building.106 That the student composed this essay under the heavy influence of her missionary teachers is beyond question. Written in English, it used the familiar vocabulary of the missionaries and echoed many of the values that they strove to instill in their students, such as democracy, freedom, service to others, and mutual love. Although the student also incorporated Confucian teachings, these traditional Chinese values were not necessarily antagonistic to Christianity. For instance, the author promoted “the heart of children” for adults: “simple, humble, teachable, trustful and receptive,” ideal moral characteristics by the standards posed by both Confucian and Christian doctrines. However, this composition also inadvertently revealed the existing social problems in China through the author’s presentation of a series of pleasant surprises in the Kingdom of God. For example, the president does not need a bodyguard, because a peaceful China has no use for militarism. Nor is China afraid of Japan, for as a godly country, China “has no outward forces, but her invisible powers will conquer all.” People do not quarrel with one another even when injured by others, and industrialists do not exploit child labor, because they do not “let money obscure [their] sense of value.” The other side of the story, of course, is that the many disappointing phenomena that the student had observed in reality prompted such wishful thinking. Staking all her hope for a solution to all the pressing social problems on Christian faith and Christian living of the Chinese people, she neither described any concrete plans nor recognized the limited utility of such an alien religion in a nation as diverse and as secular as China at that historical moment.107

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Half a century later, Treudley talked in hindsight about the limited power of Christian evangelization: “In those years in the old Ginling, 1919–23, Christianity lost the student movement. . . . John Dewey was the idol worshipped by many undergraduates in those days.”108 Yet Wilder, the student author’s American mentor, wrote a confident postscript to the essay: “Thousands of young people, thoroughly awake to the situation, are ready not merely to dream but to act and the oldest empire of the world is awakening from its long sleep, not as a menace, but as the newest and perhaps the greatest auxiliary.”109 Wilder’s optimism shows the common sentiment of the American missionaries, who valued Chinese culture and initially expressed sympathy for its nation-building project. However, we should also note that the missionaries were set on a particular way of improving the conditions in China, which they steadfastly imparted to their Chinese students and consequently influenced their vision of Chinese modernization. The author of the essay concluded upon waking from the dream: “Those parables [given in the Bible] show that Kingdom of God comes by slow growth as mustard seeds do. It does not come by revolution but by evolution. Even though this dream of the Kingdom of God in China seems as if it is our remote unattainable aim, the beginning and the approaching of the aim is not far away, but here and now in China.”110 In view of the limited educational and life experience of the author, her confidence in the eventual coming of God’s Kingdom to China seems to have originated more from her faith in her teacher’s visions and beliefs than from any actual understanding of Chinese reality. Furthermore, as far as China’s future is concerned, her essay more produced a fantasy of a Christian utopia in China rather than any well-thought-out plans to achieve that goal. Her preference for evolution rather than revolution, and her emphases on social order and self-control, also revealed the cultural conservatism characteristic of the American missionaries. From the discussion in this chapter, we can see that the missionaries at first convinced their students of the viability of their own particular vision of China’s deliverance through the promulgation of Christianity, and of Chinese women’s individual realization through this collective undertaking. This was achieved thanks to their successful creation, propagation, and implementation of the dominant institutional discourse of the Ginling family. Moreover, they designed a liberal curriculum modeled on elite women’s colleges in the United States and established various institutional traditions, such as the college motto of “Abundant Life” and the Founders’ Day celebrations. These deliberate attempts at creating solidarity not only institutionalized a family spirit at Ginling, but also expanded the trope

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of the family from the institutional to the national level, and thereby cultivated among their students a collective sense of noblesse oblige toward their nation and people. More subtly but as importantly, the faculty members engaged the students in a variety of social activities, not only signifying their personal attention but also introducing Western etiquette and lifestyle to their students. Because of the new freedom and possibilities of self-empowerment that modern and Western customs seemed to promise, most Ginling women formed a deep, lifelong attachment to a Westerninspired social grace; what they call their unique Ginling qizhi has defined a crucial part of their group identity. This underlying psychological predilection for Western culture, prevalent as it has proven among the alumnae, provided an intriguing annotation to the college spirit of social service and their cultivated self-image as patriotic Chinese. It foreshadows not only conflicted loyalties but also the constraint of a Ginling education that the alumnae would later experience as “daughters” of both Ginling and of China, for the family discourse eventually limited Chinese students’ imagination of the kind of future possible for themselves and for China. Ginling’s family discourse created strong bonds of understanding and emotional support in the early years of the institution, because the missionary founders highlighted to members of the college their shared experience of overcoming adversities and pioneering Chinese women’s education. In this light, the Ginling family came into being thanks to the same dynamics that formed communities of Pilgrims and American missionaries, both of which thrived on a similar kind of shared “liminal experience.”111

Chapter 2

Building These Hallowed Halls (1923–27) “A college for women replaces a Mohammedan graveyard!”—A figure of what our college will do in bringing to life some of the “dead bones” of China. —Mrs. Lawrence Thurston, Starting a College in China

Go out into all of the centers and schools in this great nation and teach the gospel for bodies. —Abby Mayhew, head of the Shanghai YWCA Normal School of Physical Education

A

s mentioned, Ginling’s first home in an old-style Chinese residence produced much discontent within the college and impelled the missionary founders to seek ways to reorient the students’ feelings toward the college. They not only created and disseminated the powerful discourse of the Ginling family, but also intensified their attempts at building a new campus. After a long and arduous process of fund-raising, land-purchasing, and building, Ginling College finally moved into its new home in October 1923, a fortnight behind schedule and after much anxious waiting and lastminute scrambling. The subsequent years marked Ginling’s growth in many respects. The supporting mission boards and organizations of the college grew from the original eight to ten, including its first British board. Student enrollment and the number of faculty members greatly increased. The

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curriculum was expanded, and a system of majors and minors was established in 1925—after fulfilling collegewide first-year requirements, the students could declare both a major and a minor in their second year—in order to ensure both the depth and width of a Ginling education. Furthermore, the physical education department came into its own, adding a crucial component heretofore missing from the implementation of Ginling’s mission of training Chinese women in body, mind, and soul. All these positive developments seemed to the Ginling community to promise a bright future for the institution. Ginling’s new campus, in providing a beautiful and permanent home for the community, symbolized for the founders a great step forward in their project of making female Christian Chinese leaders. However, the missionaries also encountered new challenges from various sources. On the one hand, increasing external political turmoil gave rise to frequent student demonstrations that interrupted Ginling’s normal academic work. On the other, student self-governance, although originally intended by the students to cultivate self-discipline and independence, also challenged faculty authority, causing rifts within the “Ginling family.” As the national family, the college family, and the collective student body came into conflict, the faculty had to devise new strategies to maintain college solidarity. In order to best delineate the newly emerging contentions and negotiations surrounding the discourse of the Ginling family, in this chapter I will focus on two major events of this period: the building of Ginling’s new campus and the establishment of its physical education department. I will contrast narratives of Ginling’s growth with writings that expose the central conflicts simultaneous with college expansion, such as the conflict between individual aspirations and collective undertaking. For the Americans this conflict meant individual contributions versus the collective missionary enterprise. For the Chinese faculty and students the main conflicts were seen as between patriotism and their institutional loyalty and Christian beliefs; between traditional expectations of femininity in both the United States and China and nationalist sentiment that called for Chinese women’s participation in nation-building; and, ultimately, between Christianity and Chinese patriotism. Therefore, it can be seen that Ginling’s growth brought into sharp relief the various contradictions inherent in the identities of both the institution and its members, and thus also tested the adaptability of its family discourse to new historical circumstances.

t h e n e w g i n l i n g hom e College buildings are more than piles of stones and timbers. They bring to life the character of the institution and serve as striking campaign banners

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and recruitment advertisements to the outside world. More importantly, for its present and former associates, the college home concretizes their educational and working experiences, enabling them to recall and relive their misty youths or productive middle years in an almost visceral way. In the case of Ginling, the college architecture symbolized not only individual experiences but also shared labor in the birth of something larger than any individual life. Therefore, it evoked an intoxicating moral exhilaration about the merger of individual ego into a magnificent collective enterprise each time an alumna or faculty member, regardless of race, reminisced about the building of the new campus. Although they were a happy union of Chinese architectural elements and American modern conveniences, the college buildings were designed by an American architect and built with American funds. They thus inevitably caused a certain tension between Ginling and its Chinese observers from the outside. Although the new campus heralded a new era of expansion and growth for Ginling, to outsiders it sometimes signified an extravagant lifestyle and even a westernized mind-set, which, they claimed, disqualified Ginling students from being productive and patriotic members of modern China. Therefore, although it further improved group solidarity within Ginling, the new campus also sharpened the conflicts between the Ginling family and the society within which it existed. The building of a new campus had been long time in the making at Ginling. Although Thurston and her missionary colleagues fully realized the practical use and symbolic significance of an attractive campus, their status as foreign women in China and their insufficient language skills in Chinese made the task of building Ginling difficult. When organizing to start Ginling College, Thurston discovered to her dismay that “it takes more than money to buy land in China.” She said, “Time is one essential; much patience, too, while the owners of the small plots are brought to consider any reasonable price when it is known that a foreigner wants the land.” Ginling had to settle for a rented run-down Chinese residence as its first home for the years 1915–23. Yet Thurston recouped with a thrilling narrative of building the new college home, even though the actual construction was still years away. With her usual motivational skills, she laid claim to the spiritual and historical significance of the new campus long before she had acquired either the funding or the land: “What a fine campaign cry it would be in raising money for the college: ‘A college for women replaces a Mohammedan graveyard!’—A figure of what our college will do in bringing to life some of the ‘dead bones’ of China.”1 Thurston’s missionary colleagues also joined in this joint venture of telling the story of building a new Ginling. By interspersing vignettes of hardship with

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those of deliverance, they sought to hail not only the coming of a more exciting new era for Ginling, but also Ginling’s increasing prominence in the larger national and international picture. The missionaries’ narratives claimed that they had started to plan for the new Ginling home long before the actual construction got underway in Nanjing. The many deficiencies of the House of a Hundred Rooms made them all eager for a new campus. Ever since 1916, Thurston had been engaging in negotiations to buy land piece by piece for a permanent site of Ginling. But she found “it was well nigh impossible for a woman to carry through a land deal that involved at least twenty acres, owned by ten different owners,” especially because “almost all desirable land for [her] purposes [was] grave land” in Nanjing. Fortunately for Ginling, John Leighton Stuart, then the president of Nanking Theological Seminary, took over the arduous task of land-buying for three years. When he left to assume the presidency of Yenching University in Beijing in 1918, Stuart turned over to Thurston “the deeds, stamped and sealed, for twenty-seven acres of land, which had cost about U.S. $13,000 and included eleven ponds, sixty corners and more than a thousand graves!”2 In mentioning Stuart’s help in the official college history, Thurston not only acknowledged the kind assistance of a brother missionary but also highlighted the fi rst of many fortuitous happenings and “divine” interventions that enabled the missionaries to accomplish the impossible and triumph over the insurmountable throughout the years. Thurston undoubtedly presented the many miraculous deliverances bestowed on Ginling and its members as proof of Ginling’s “Christian consecration.” Yet lest her audience underestimate the female missionaries’ independence and self-sufficiency, Thurston also meticulously delineated their indispensable role in the building project. She emphasized that although she did not fully control the process of buying land for the new campus, she did a great deal in raising funds for the new college buildings and in defining the architectural character of Ginling. The choice of a suitable location for the new campus alone revealed much careful consideration on her part: “It lay to the west and south of the grounds of the University of Nanking, near enough to allow cooperation between the two institutions and not too near to endanger the proprieties.”3 After securing the land, Thurston put her useful connections and elegant taste to work in order to attain exactly the right touch for the architecture of the new campus. Before leaving for fund-raising, she had already commissioned Henry Murphy of Murphy and Dana, a New York architecture firm that had opened an office in Shanghai, to design the Ginling buildings. Thurston saw in Murphy, who also designed the buildings

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for Yale-in-China and the Yenching University campus, the best possible person to realize her “dream of beauty,” to cement in stone her vision of a Ginling where “East and West would meet, each bringing gifts of the best they had, holding fast what was good, and meetings the new needs of the new day in China.” “As faith grew stronger,” Thurston and Murphy planned a new Ginling for four hundred students, with three academic buildings and three dormitories, even though the overall student enrollment had just dropped to fi fty-two.4 Moreover, “at a time when many new Chinese building projects were imitating utilitarian Western styles,” Thurston insisted on integrating Chinese architectural elements into the new campus. The new Ginling buildings that subsequently emerged on paper all sported a modified Chinese palace-style exterior, complete with overhanging curved roofs and pointed eaves, but they also came equipped with modern Western conveniences such as electric lights, running water, and furnaces. A fitting tribute to the missionary ideal of Ginling education, the new Ginling campus would be recognized by future architects as embodying “the historical outcome of the interflow of modern Chinese and Western culture.” It was said, “[It] has the typical features of the two-way mobility. Its cultural importance and social effect have gone far beyond the use value of the architecture.”5 With blueprint in hand, “on a very hot June day in 1919 Mr. Murphy and the President staked out the lines of the quadrangles on the new site.”6 Yet at that point “the buildings were only on paper, and in the imaginations of those only to whom an architect’s plan has meaning.” As Thurston told it, it took not only the imagination, faith, courage, and hard work of individual female missionaries but also the solidarity of American women united by their Christian faith for the exciting Ginling vision of beauty and culture to materialize eventually. Thurston had spent almost two years traveling and campaigning in the United States before she could raise enough starting funds for the Ginling buildings. She described how she had obtained enough financial support for Ginling against all odds, even though previous fund-raising efforts had failed dismally. The much touted “Interchurch World Movement” after the First World War aimed to “finance a great advance in the work of the church at home and abroad,” but it brought Ginling only $5,000, hardly enough to pay the architect’s fees. Thurston’s first attempt at fund-raising in the United States in the autumn of 1920 also proved disappointing. But thanks to the courage and able leadership of Mrs. Henry W. Peabody, a joint campaign to build “Seven Oriental Colleges for Women” respectively in China, India, and Japan gathered great interest and momentum in the US. When Thurston returned to China in February 1921 to start the new buildings, Ginling

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had been promised $600,000, a share of the three million dollars collected by the joint campaign. Thurston asserted: “It was the cooperative, non-competitive promotion of projects that finally made its appeal to the women of America.” However, she also reveled in the fact that the feat of raising three million dollars was achieved by a group of American women “of faith and determination,” “against the judgment of many practical men and in spite of the hesitation of less courageous women.” Thurston not only took pride in the $100,000 she personally secured toward the Ginling building funds, but also called attention to the lasting effect of this campaign in stimulating in American women’s churches, clubs, and colleges “an interest in the women of China as they came out of their long seclusion into a new place of privilege and responsibility.”7 By connecting her personal undertakings with both the collective Christian enterprise of American women and the future of Chinese women, Thurston emerged as an exemplary female missionary with unshakable Christian faith in her narrative, and one who envisioned a consecrated new Ginling beyond institutional and national boundaries. That is to say, since the construction of a better college home would provide an efficacious site for the education of future female Chinese Christian leaders, her narration of building a new campus claimed for not only Ginling’s missionaries like herself but also for female Christians in the United States a crucial part in China’s eventual salvation through Christianity. Thurston and her missionary colleagues’ growing confidence in Ginling’s contribution to both Christianity and China enlivened their narration of both fundraising and construction. For Minnie Vautrin and others who spent two and half years supervising the building process, it was both gratifying and empowering to witness Ginling’s bright future taking concrete shape day by day. It was said that Minnie Vautrin single-handedly taught the Chinese crew how to make the one road that could hold trucks from the city to Ginling’s new campus, relying only on her thorough reading of Encyclopedia Britannica.7 The finished new campus comprised six buildings, three for academic use and three as student dormitories. Characterized by Mary Treudley, professor of sociology at Ginling, as “Chinese temples adapted to the use of Western science,”8 the new buildings replicated the “stateliness and grandeur” of the Forbidden City in Beijing on a smaller scale,9 displaying massive red pillars, overhanging curved roofs adorned with gargoyles, and ornate, brilliantly colored decorations underneath the eaves. Thurston beheld the three academic buildings with special fondness and complacency: “The academic quadrangle opened on the east, looking directly toward Purple Mountain, with the roofs of the University of Nanking about half a mile away in the near distance. From

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the Social and Athletic Building, which stood on the west side of the quadrangle, this familiar Nanking view was obtained. The Recitation Building stood on the north side of the quadrangle, and the Science Building faced it on the south. The Social and Athletic Building, a gift of the Smith College Alumnae, dominated the group and was considered by many to be the best example up to that time of Chinese style in architecture adapted to modern uses.”10 The moving day arrived in October 1923, full of exciting chaos. Fifty eager students had come two days ahead of the opening time of dorms, and frantic last-minute efforts were made to get everything ready as soon as humanly possible. Thurston remarked: “Getting the buildings started was difficult. Getting them finished has nearly exhausted our vital energies. The only comfort is that we are sure we shall not have to move again in our life time and the buildings will be here long after that. And they are beautiful, and we feel more and more at home in them as the months go by.”11 The new campus not only brought much gratification to Ginling’s missionary faculty, but also greatly increased Ginling’s visibility and status in Chinese eyes. The dedication week saw the arrival of numerous local, national, and foreign celebrities, families and friends of the college, and students from all over the city. The Ginling students and faculty regaled their visitors with a colorful academic procession, a chapel service, a Chinese-style banquet, six open houses, and daily tea parties. The spectators enjoyed a feast for the eye beyond the campus architecture, as they observed the “gay bits of color in hood and band” of the academic procession competing “in elegance with . . . [the] brocade and stiff silk” of the Chinese guests. Just like on any other occasion when missionary institutions provided entertainment for the local populace, Chinese guests came early and in great number, and stayed long past the point of politeness. Not only did several hundred local merchants and Christians bring their families to take tea and visit the campus, but also, on Saturday, the last day of the dedication week, four thousand city students flocked to the new Ginling. Mary Thayer, a new Ginling faculty member, wrote with a mixture of exultation and exhaustion: “Two to five is the period named, but 1:30 finds one hundred waiting at the doors, with lines of long-gowned men from the universities, and girls from government schools and middle schools ready to replace them. The broad campus is none too broad, and rooms none too spacious to accommodate them. What the guest book may reveal as to numbers, none has yet had time nor courage to count.”12 The new campus became a landmark in Nanjing and a symbol of multifaceted significance for Ginling’s different constituencies. One missionary faculty member new to Ginling described in lyrical terms her first

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glimpse of the campus: “One of the never-to-be-forgotten sights of our lives is that first night’s view of the curved roofs of the Ginling buildings, with their horned dragons and picturesque silhouettes standing out in the moonlight. And another, is the fi rst sight, early next morning, of Purple Mountain, which is so intimate a part of the Ginling campus, shading from palest violet to deep purple against a rose-colored sky, and looking not unlike the artist’s portrayals of Fujiyama wreathed in its scarf of floating clouds.”13 While newly arrived missionaries sensed more the excitement of living in what they perceived as quintessential, exotic “Oriental” surroundings, students found their new home to be a reassuring token of Ginling’s family love that was also happily in tune with students’ patriotic love. As one of them claimed: “[Thurston’s] motherly love prompted her to place [the students] in artistic surroundings. . . . For she firmly believes that the beauty of old China can serve modern uses and wishes her girls to appreciate the art of their own past.”14 In fact, when students and alumnae later remembered Thurston, they always paid tribute to her great contribution to the building of the new campus, and regarded the new campus as the embodiment of Thurston’s ideal for not only Ginling but also for the whole of China: “China is to become a harmonious, perfect, loving nation! People are living in harmony like brothers and sisters, nations like friends, God and human beings like father and sons. In other words, heaven and earth, North and South, East and West, all live together like a big family and each is an active member of the happy home, each doing his very best to bring this home into [sic] perfection.”15 It can be seen that the new buildings reinforced the discourse of the Ginling family in that they symbolized the union of various driving forces that defined Ginling: the missionary undertaking of the spiritual uplifting of their Chinese students; Ginling’s competition with both Chinese and missionary peer institutions, especially the University of Nanking; the students’ yearning for faculty nurturing, and the students’ pursuit of larger goals, such as national salvation, beyond the institution. In practical terms, the new campus provided both students and faculty with exceptional instructional support and residential comfort compared to other institutions of higher education in China at the time. In contrast to the dissatisfactory living conditions between 1915–23, now the students enjoyed well-appointed dorm rooms with a maximum of four people per room. They could take a shower on the same floor as their rooms at least once a week. The dining facilities also improved, allowing Ginling to run their system of “nutritious supplemental meals” (yingyang can 營養餐) more effectively. After a physical checkup for all students at the beginning of each school year, students who were underweight or had

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health problems could partake of an additional dish or snack every day: students with anemia were given milk every morning, those having lung problems a dish of stir-fried liver, and those underweight a bowl of porridge cooked with eggs and shredded pork.16 It can be seen that Ginling’s comfortable new home added considerably to its residential flavor and provided students with the kinds of “comforts of the home” most likely unavailable at most Chinese homes of the time. Many years later, students still talked about their residential life in fond terms. Hu Xiuying, both a Ginling and Harvard alumna, even claimed that the arrangements for “living and dining at Ginling were superior to those at the Radcliffe Graduate School of Harvard.”17 Missionary faculty members spoke more about the improved teaching and research facilities than about their living quarters. However, given that the lack of privacy when they took a bath had been a major source of discontent for female missionaries,18 they must have felt the same kind of satisfaction as their students, now that they could conduct their toilette in relative peace and privacy. Indeed, Thurston claimed that in the new buildings the missionaries had “been living in the lap of luxury as far as bathing goes—two baths a day in our nice proper tubs,” though she was still concerned that “when the whole family is here it will be less exclusive—five people to a bathtub.” She continued, “That is not worse than a family, but we are not a real family after all and it will take some adjusting to make it go smoothly.”19 The new campus effectively united Ginling not only because of its visual impact and living amenities, but also because of its fluidity as a signifier. The missionary faculty saw in it not only a testimony to missionary devotion but also divine blessings of Ginling in the past, present, and future. For them, the new campus promised an exciting future for the Christian enterprise in China and for their personal growth as female Christian educators participating in this grand project. The Chinese students saw in the new campus not only the loving care of their foreign teachers but also Ginling’s rising status and increasing importance in their nation’s life. It can be seen that for each member of Ginling the new campus promised a more significant institutional and personal role in the construction of a new China. The new Ginling campus would witness a fierce struggle for institutional independence, complex negotiations during the change of leadership, and heroic tales of resistance to Japanese war atrocities in the ensuing years. As one of the few spots in the capital considered by the Nationalist government as presenting a positive face of the republic, it functioned as a government showpiece, displayed each time a prominent visitor, foreign or Chinese, arrived in Nanjing.20 While Ginling’s spectacular campus both

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increased institutional self-esteem and Ginling’s sense of solidarity internally and improved Ginling’s status and relationship with the Nationalist government externally, it also roused envy and made Ginling the recipient of constant criticism of its perceived luxurious lifestyle from both Ginling’s peer missionary institutions and from Chinese observers. Moreover, during times of war, the campus not only became a shelter for Chinese refugees as well as Ginling faculty and students because of its American missionary affiliation, but also became a conspicuous target of military occupation because of its congenial living quarters and beautiful grounds. Consequently, the Ginling community’s attempts at protecting their campus from occupation by Chinese or foreign armies produced many inspiring tales that transformed individual heroism into collective devotion to both God and China. The successful defense of their campus symbolized to the Ginling students, faculty, and alumnae their shared love for the Ginling family above considerations of personal safety. Yet, interestingly, its loss also generated powerful feelings of nostalgia and hope, all the more potent because the idealized paradise of a Ginling free from personal conflicts in their narratives surpassed the reality of any locale they had occupied or would occupy.

t r a i n i n g h e r b ody f or g od o r f or c h i n a : p e at g i n l i n g (i) Not only did the new Ginling campus offer its members beauty, comfort, and culture, but it also stimulated the growth of physical education by providing it with a luxurious new home: the Social and Athletic Building. As the largest of the six new buildings, this building had on its second floor: “a gymnasium, showers, dressing rooms, rooms and offices.”21 A campus map of the time also showed various outdoor athletic fields and courts for hockey, basketball, baseball, volleyball, tennis, and archery.22 Moreover, the Shanghai YWCA turned over its Normal School of Physical Education to Ginling after lengthy and often tense negotiations for almost a year; that brought with it all the teachers and sixteen second-year students, books, equipment, and an annual fund of five thousand dollars, though the affiliation between Ginling and the YWCA were to be terminated by the latter in 1930.23 As a result of these developments, Ginling’s PE program acquired sufficient material support to offer a full major for the first time in college history. It would develop into not only a full-fledged department at Ginling but also a national training center for female directors of women’s PE programs in later years.

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Before examining the chronicles of physical education at Ginling in detail, I should point out that its PE program always played a variety of roles in college life. Not only did the PE faculty members train their own majors and offer PE classes to the general college community (including both students and faculty), but they were also charged with responsibilities today normally assigned to college health centers or theater departments, such as conducting physical checkups for all students, offering remedial PE courses to students who could not fulfill regular PE requirements because of health problems, and organizing dance exhibitions and theater performances. My discussion below will thus necessarily present a kaleidoscope of PE activities, but will also focus on the two interrelated themes underlying these different aspects of physical education at Ginling: the conflicts between different conceptions of femininity, and the conflicts between Christianity and Chinese patriotism. Sometimes these tensions erupted mostly along racial lines, but on other occasions they also marked the changing values of a new generation of students. In the next two sections of this chapter, I will respectively examine a variety of writings that chronicled the development of PE at Ginling, and discuss the complex and at times contentious relationships that the PE program formed with other units of the college, caused partly by the volatile social environment surrounding Ginling at the time. Before Ginling’s new campus came into being, effective physical education remained a distant dream. When the college was housed in a dilapidated old-style Chinese residence, the missionaries could find neither space for PE classes and activities nor well-trained faculty members to take charge of the program. Furthermore, when requiring student participation in PE classes and activities, the missionaries at first encountered some resistance from their students. However, after 1923 and the move to a new campus, Ginling’s PE program gradually established a national reputation as the only place to train female PE directors and recreational leaders in modern China. The growth of Ginling’s PE department from a humble beginning to its venerated position as the PE center for Chinese women thus made a gripping tale in the writings by the PE faculty. However, these writings also display a fascinating combination of selfjustification, showmanship, and evangelical and nationalist exhortations, and thus reveal the complex discursive maneuvers in which the PE faculty members engaged. Ginling’s PE program began as a service unit at the college. Its main mission was to improve student health enough for them to have the stamina to complete their four years of study (several students had already had to quit school because of pneumonia, tuberculosis or other common

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ailments of the time). Because of limited staffing, initially Ginling’s PE faculty members were mostly part-time or temporary people. They were holding concurrent appointments in other departments or attending Chinese-language schools to prepare for more “serious” teaching, and their function lay mainly in organizing naturalist walks and enforcing daily exercise hours. In 1918, Dr. Llewella Merrow, the college physician, established the procedure of a mandatory annual physical checkup for all students at the beginning of the school year. Moreover, first- and secondyear students were required to take four hours of PE classes a week, and third- and fourth-year students two hours a week. Half a credit was given for each semester of satisfactory work done, and four credits were required for graduation.24 During this period, the PE department still focused on the promotion of student health, though several Chinese and American women with degrees in PE from U.S. women’s colleges, such as Chen Yingmei (Chun Ying-mei 陳英梅) and Katherine Rawles, both PE majors from Wellesley, arrived to work as PE directors. For American faculty members such as Rawles, the Ginling student body was proof of cultural differences between Chinese and American women. Rowles collected and compared vital statistics of Chinese and American women of the same college class in her report on the PE program for the year 1920–21. She described the average height (five feet), weight (one hundred pounds), and age (twenty-one) of the Ginling students, remarking: “American girls are younger, taller, and heavier. In studying the formal height and weight tables worked out for different age periods for American and European women we find that the Chinese student is about fifteen pounds underweight.” In addition to basic health measurements, Rawles also showed a lively interest in a comparative study of the orthopedic development of Chinese and American college women. She discovered “the percentage of cases of lateral curvature is much smaller than in America—there are practically no flat feet or weak arches, the all too frequent complaint in American colleges.” She added, “Posture is, however, very bad, chest expansion is very limited in most cases,” and “eleven girls, 15% of the enrollment, have had their feet bound for varying periods of time, thus more or less limiting their opportunity for exercise.” The most serious obstacle to the department’s promotion of general health among the students, Rowles found, was that “the habitual disinclination for physical exertion has predisposed them to many other ailments.”25 Rowles’s note on foot-binding and bad posture among Ginling students reflected one of the roles played by the PE program as keeper of general college health: the PE faculty administered posture checkups as well as physicals each year for all students. Yet her note on foot-binding

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signified more than a neutral scientific interest, it also revealed the typical missionary sensitivity to what they perceived as symbols of the oppression of women in other cultures. Carol DeSmither, in her study of the American female missionaries in the nineteenth and twentieth century, remarks on these women’s “evangelical feminism,” which “revolved around the horror that American women felt at the barbaric treatment of women in other cultures, and around the efforts they made to plan and finance undertakings to reverse that destiny.”26 As an American missionary and a PE major equipped with the standard theological and gender conventions of her time, Rowles embarked on evangelizing and civilizing Chinese women particularly through her PE classes. She vowed to teach her students spiritual and moral values as well as the biological foundations of physical exercises: “We are trying to teach the girls how the wonderful machine which is the human body works, how to care for that machine, and to give them a new sense of responsibility not only for their own health but for that of those about them. Playing together out of doors in the sunshine we hope to gradually open the way to the realization that fresh air and the feeling of wholesome fatigue are conductive [sic] to breadth of vision and resourcefulness in the face of problems.”27 In connecting body and soul in her discussion of PE, Rowles clearly invoked the missionary discourse on PE of her time: what Andrew Morris has called “muscular Christianity,” which equated a healthy body with Christian moral character.28 Ginling’s PE faculty members succeeding Rowles continued to emphasize to their students the religious, moral, and intellectual dimensions of PE. With the improvement in facilities, staffing, and funding, they were able to offer a comprehensive curriculum to their majors that fully supported the missionary goal of training Chinese women in body, mind, and soul. When Ginling’s newly established Department of Hygiene and Physical Education started a four-year program for the first time in 1925, the department brochure not only outlined its major requirements, but also presented a full array of courses and activities that aimed to help all Ginling students to fulfill their PE requirements for graduation. It should be noted that the new PE curriculum came about through the joint efforts of two American women: Emily Case of Ginling and Norah Jervis, formerly of the YWCA Normal School of Physical Education. Although the joining of YWCA teachers into the Ginling faculty by their agreement of affiliation could potentially disrupt the family discourse at Ginling, the collaboration of the two women proved to be a happy one, perhaps because of their similar backgrounds as Wellesley-trained PE majors. By modeling it on the Normal School program, they were able to create a full-fledged four-year program for Ginling by the time the department started in 1925.29

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According to this scheme, whether they were majors or nonmajors, all first-year students were required to take Biology or Chemistry, Chinese, English, History, Hygiene, Music, and Physical Education. The first-year PE course Motor Education met four hours each week and focused on the “practice of athletic, rhythmic, and gymnastic activities as follows: program in fundamentals of baseball, basketball, field and track, gymnastics, hockey, tennis, and volleyball.” Similarly, the secondyear PE program for all students included “individual and team sports and fundamentals of dancing” four hours a week, while the third- and fourth-year programs, taken two hours a week, required all students to learn “intermediate or advanced athletics, intermediate dancing or gymnastics.” The PE department even supplied a seasonal schedule to inform the students of the content of Motor Education courses throughout the four years. For example, in fall, Fundamentals of Dancing, Gymnastics, Basketball, Field and Track, Baseball Fundamentals, and Tennis were offered to all first-year students; in winter Boxing and Volleyball replaced Baseball, Field and Track, and Tennis; and in spring the focus would be on Fundamentals of Dancing, Boxing, Baseball, Field and Track, Volleyball, and Tennis.30 Although strictly enforcing PE requirements, the PE department took into consideration individual students’ levels of fitness and health. The brochure said, “[S]tudents are classified for the above activities on basis of physical fitness and motor ability as determined by medical and physical examinations and achievement tests.” It added, “Students recommended for ‘mild’ activity by the College Physician are not permitted to take field and track, basketball, or hockey,” while “those assigned ‘restricted’ activity are provided with a substitute program including archery, croquet, hockey goal, paddle tennis, adapted gymnastics and rhythms.” The department continued to fulfi ll its duty as the office of hygiene and health for the college: “Physical examinations are given at the beginning of each college year, posture photographs are taken, and recommendations made in regard to conditions need correction. Individual conferences are held with each student later in the year to check up on the progress made. Students who at the beginning of the sophomore year are found still to retain postural defects are assigned to special corrective work in small classes as a substitute for part of their regular program.”31 The attention paid to general health and posture by the PE Department would later contribute to the alumnae’s self-awareness of their distinction from Chinese women of their time. As one of them recalled, not without pride, “People would immediately recognize us on the streets as Ginling students just from the way we walked.”32

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The PE department at Ginling established its national reputation as the training center for female PE directors primarily because of the broad way it trained its four-year majors and two-year professional degree-holders, who were, we are told, “qualified for college work in all subjects except perhaps English.”33 After fulfilling the same first-year requirements as nonmajors, in their second-year PE majors had to take Biology II or Chemistry, Chinese, English, General Psychology, and PE, and were required to practice teaching primary school activities. During their third year, they had to take Education, Philosophy, and Anatomy and Kinesiology, as well as other PE classes, and practice teaching middle school PE. Although their fourth-year courses concentrated on hygiene and physical education, they had to take both advanced theory classes such as History and Principles of Physical Education, Administration of Physical Education, Child Health and Development, and Health Education, and practicum courses such as Reconstructive Hygiene and Tests and Measurements. From the above description we can see that the PE curriculum also illustrated the kind of broad liberal arts education that Ginling emphasized. The PE faculty members were highly conscious of their role in fulfilling Ginling’s missionary goal of training female Chinese leaders solidly grounded in Christianity. In its first brochure published in 1925, the department elevated its pedagogical goals to those of character building and moral cultivation as well as professional training. In fact, one of the rationales it gave for expanding the original two-year program to a fouryear one was that two years was not sufficient time for the students to gain a broad “appreciation of the moral implications of the work and the responsibility for character-building which it involves. High standard of sportsmanship, an understanding of professional ethics and ideals, and a vision of the opportunity which is theirs, are very vital factors in the success of training.”34 Such a conception of the spiritual and moral dimensions of PE activities echoed the overall Ginling mission of training female Chinese Christian leaders in body, mind, and soul. The PE department in effect cited such a broad vision of PE as its raison d’étre: to establish a training school for Chinese women who would, in the immortal words of Abby Mayhew, former head of the Shanghai YWCA Normal School of Physical Education, “go out into all of the centers and schools in this great nation and teach the gospel for bodies.”35 Using their usual rhetorical strategy of invoking pragmatism, as Thurston had done to justify offering science courses at Ginling (see chapter 1), the American missionaries pointed out the practical benefits of establishing a four-year major for their PE students. For one thing, the four-year curriculum would provide a more rounded education to PE majors. “Under the

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new plan a college student who intends to specialize in Physical Education will for the first two years take the same work as her other classmates. . . . In her third year she will begin on the technical courses included in the major in Hygiene and Physical Education . . . and by the time that she is ready to graduate she will have a fairly broad and thorough professional training as well as a widened horizon and keener mental equipment as the result of her more general studies.” They argued that although the salaries of their PE graduates would initially seem prohibitively high for a single Chinese school, “in the long run there will be a gain to all concerned.” This was because the department could train recreation directors for an entire district or community, so that these women could organize various activities and coordinate PE courses for the whole area more efficiently. This would eventually lead to a win-win situation: a Ginling PE major could generally earn a higher salary than those with only two years of training, while schools of the same district could jointly hire her to increase coordination and efficiency in their physical education. The brochure of the PE department described in glowing terms the quality of their future graduates: “It is our purpose to turn out from Ginling teachers who will have the training and the ability to do a bigger type of work than has heretofore been done; who will be able to take the lead in increasing the extent and effectiveness of the work through organization and personal influence, and who will be pioneers in working out new material and in adapting the details of a system more or less alien to China, to her own particular needs.”36 In addition to extolling the practical and spiritual value of Ginling’s physical education, the PE faculty also developed theories that cited purported Chinese cultural flaws and social ills to highlight the need for a PE course grounded in Christian morality. Emily Case (Mills), onetime PE director at Ginling, stood out as the most eloquent and coherent champion of a physical education anchored in Christianity. Case was first among her equals not so much because of her passion for PE as for the extra efforts she made to develop and propagate her theory of physical education for Chinese women. The atmosphere at Ginling was admittedly “not academic,” because “there was little time or opportunity for scholarly endeavor in the busy round of teaching and of activities outside the classroom.”37 However, Case presented at least two important papers on Chinese women’s physical education. One was delivered at the annual conference of the China Association of Christian Higher Education in 1926 and the other at the First International Recreational Congress in Los Angeles in 1932. Subsequently she published her articles in Ginling newsletters circulated in the United States.38 Case claimed that she had derived her PE theory from her

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“experiment” with the four-year PE course at Ginling, but had also augmented it with her observation of general PE practices in contemporary China and her knowledge of Chinese cultural traditions. She described for her audience the many challenges that faced a Christian PE educator aiming to spread “the gospel for body” in China. She cited the traditional Chinese bias against physical exertion: “Active or noisy play was considered undignified and unbecoming in an adult, and was out of harmony with their religious ideals.” She also faulted the traditional civil service examination for obstructing the introduction of “the ideas of all-round development of personality and freedom of expression so basic to the recreation of today.” Case blamed the oppression and seclusion of women in traditional society for the backward state of women’s physical education in contemporary China. Case felt no less disgruntled with the current situation of women’s PE in most Chinese schools, even as she acknowledged positive changes in Chinese women’s situation. She listed four problems she had observed: “superficiality,” “overstrain,” “exploitation by men,” and a dangerous promotion of athletic competition among women. Her elaboration on these problems revealed her particular imagination of Chinese womanhood informed by both her Christian beliefs and her notion of proper femininity.39 Case disapproved of any indication of exhibitionism in a women’s PE program. For instance, she viewed dance instruction as a rather dubious part of the PE program, for “dancing is apt to be taught for its spectacular effect, and the Physical Education program degenerates into a series of rehearsals for one exhibition after another.” Moreover, in her mind there remained “a vast difference” in heritages and habits between female Chinese and American students. She urged caution in teaching PE to young Chinese women, “or we shall leave a trail of damaged hearts and shattered nervous systems behind us.” Case detected in female Chinese students not only physical inadequacy, but also “emotional instability” and an unfortunate tendency “to take everything personally.” Therefore, she argued against the promotion of intermural competitive sports, claiming that the notion of sportsmanship was alien to Chinese culture and “loyalty to one’s team and generosity to one’s opponents” difficult to inculcate into female Chinese students, who dreaded defeat “because of the fear of losing face,” and to whom “discouragement comes easily and the game is often given up before it is really lost.”40 This negative assessment of Chinese women’s suitability for competitive sports was not unique to Case. Rather, it reflected a common belief among missionary educators of her time, who tended to perceive the students’ “reluctance to compete as cowardice.”41 The missionaries were also usually less than sympathetic

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when their students moped after losing a game. For example, the Methodist missionary Elsie Reik sternly told her students at Hwa Nan Girls’ Middle School that they were “making fools of themselves” when they appeared listless and low-spirited after losing a game.42 Although Case painted a less than flattering picture of the physical fitness and emotional maturity of the typical Chinese woman student, she expressed far more concern with the “danger” of having “girls’ athletics coached by men” who had little or no experience in women’s physical education. She criticized male coaches who had girls “continuing strenuous practices throughout the period of their monthly sickness” and women’s programs that were made “to resemble the men’s as closely as possible, without any regard for the fitness of the girls for the activities or the desirability of the activities for future propagation among women.”43 Case’s criticism of male-dominated PE programs invoked the popular discourse that “jarring exercise during menstrual periods” could endanger women’s reproductive health, which “had constituted the bedrock of male discourse on women’s tiyu [physical education] since the 1920s.”44 But Case appropriated male-dominated discourses on the Chinese national character and women’s reproductive health, whether missionary or Chinese in origin, in order to argue for her own assessment of the PE culture in China. Case claimed that Ginling allowed only “intramural competition” and emphasized learning “games for their intrinsic values,” in contrast to the harmful tendencies that she had observed in male-dominated PE programs. For instance, at Ginling they taught tennis in such a way that the average student could play “it well enough to enjoy it so that she will keep it after college.” Although Case admitted that their PE program was “modeled very much on the plan of that given at Wellesley College and at the University of Wisconsin,”45 she promptly emphasized her alertness to contemporary trends in China. She noted the disintegration of the traditional extended family, the urbanization and overall westernization of the Chinese lifestyle, and “a tremendous growth of nationalism” as the three key elements that called for adjustments of women’s PE programs. She considered these “revolutionary changes” more challenges than opportunities for women’s PE programs, however. For instance, she viewed the national promotion of military training, first aid, and home nursing that aimed to aid patriotic self-strengthening as more “utilitarian” than recreational, and regarded Chinese martial arts (“Chinese boxing”) as too “complicated,” “ostentatious,” and “lacking a scientific basis.” Moreover, Case expressed her grave concern about the “very widespread interest” in competitive sports that had “taken the country by storm in the past ten years.” To her it meant putting “the cart before the horse,” because the “youth of China [were] not prepared physically at all”

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for any highly competitive form of athletics. Since the PE department took charge of recreation at the college, she felt it also behooved her to express her disappointment and even alarm about “the introduction of commercial amusements, notably the moving picture” in China, stating: “The movie as a blessing to China is decidedly mixed, and many Americans living there would be glad for the sake of their country’s reputation as well as for China’s own good, if its advent had been postponed.”46 Case’s theorization of physical education for Chinese women highlighted the many fundamental beliefs about Chinese culture and femininity that she shared with her missionary colleagues. One striking feature of her papers was her insistence on the insurmountable cultural differences between Chinese and American college women and her myopia about contemporary Chinese society and culture. She failed to note that her sample was a group of Chinese women mostly coming from privileged families who were spending four years of their life at a place out of sync with the general conditions in China. Moreover, she exaggerated the (supposed) physical and psychological inferiority of the Chinese college women to their American counterparts. Mistaking the students existing inside “the Ginling bubble” for typical Chinese women of her time, Case narrowly defined Chinese femininity based on her limited understanding of Chinese women and their potentials. It is perhaps understandable that Case’s acquaintance with more elite Chinese women rather than lower-class female laborers resulted in her ignorance of the latter’s physical stamina and capacity for hardships necessitated by their struggle for survival, and made her notion of Chinese femininity as a delicate, fragile flower an inaccurate, one-sided picture. However, as she transplanted to Ginling the inherent gender biases of the Wellesley PE tradition, such as its strong opposition to competitive sports among women, she in effect abetted in the limitation of Chinese women’s mobility. Case’s argument against competitive sports among Chinese women, though out of the best of intentions, ironically denied Chinese women entrance to one of the only public venues open to them at the time. Last but not least, she conflated the Chinese intellectual biases against physical exertion with some kind of intrinsically weaker Chinese physique and psyche, and thereby saw no hope for Chinese women to attain the level of physical fitness and psychological maturity of their American peers. Precisely because Case used a gender-, class-, and race-inflected lens in her analysis of Chinese culture, her prescription for Chinese women’s physical education often closely followed an American model rather than took the local material conditions into account. Her promotion of tennis at Ginling, perhaps also a concept borrowed from the YWCA Normal

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School in Shanghai, is an example. An imported sport, tennis at the time symbolized the social status of the player more than it provided a practical exercise for Chinese women to “keep up after college.” If they were not fortunate enough to find employment at a westernized institution such as Ginling or to have the financial resources to seek out Western sports facilities, they would not be able to continue playing. Even Ginling students experienced difficulty in keeping tennis, when wartime scarcity forced the PE department to give up tennis in Chengdu, Sichuan, in the 1940s. Case’s limited scope made her exaggerate the power of both the individual PE director and of physical education to transform Chinese society. She expressed sincere concern about the physical and mental welfare of Chinese students when militating against the masculinized PE courses she found in most Chinese schools. However, she did not realize that such insufficient programs resulted not only from a lack of well-trained female PE instructors but also from the general discriminatory gender code and practice against Chinese women, for which American missionaries such as she also had to take partial blame precisely because of their sweeping generalizations about Chinese womanhood and the lack of openness to new definitions and conceptions of femininity. In reality, individual female educators often found themselves impotently caught up in the web of hostile social forces.47 Even the much-touted Ginling PE graduates encountered numerous difficulties despite their impeccable credentials and positions of responsibility. Consequently, they often expressed their wish to return to their alma mater, saying, “[L]ife is not easy for the Chinese woman teacher in this field. Men have little regard for some of the things which have to be reckoned with in women.”48 All in all, to the disappointment of missionaries, although various PE classes contributed much to the students’ educational experiences at Ginling, for the general public they more often turned into spectacles and sources of entertainment rather than accomplishing any fundamental transformations of Chinese culture and society. Case’s inherent cultural conservatism proved to be another liability. Case’s criticism of Chinese martial arts, a position shared by her missionary colleagues of the time, “rendered virtually all of the diverse forms of Chinese physical culture obsolete and relegated them to history.” They were left promoting a physical culture that excluded Chinese traditions.49 She failed to map out a PE program both meaningful and effective under the conditions of twentieth-century China for the Chinese women outside of Ginling, despite her legitimate protest against the emphasis on military training and commercial amusements. In this aspect, her impotency paralleled the experience of her missionary colleagues at Ginling. American

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educational missionaries in China in the mid-1920s felt “profoundly threatened by radical Chinese experiments with new gender practices as well as by the rising demands of the Chinese to control education within their own country, and shaken by the emergence of a secular, consumerist youth culture in the United States.”50 They mostly took refuge in the existing evangelical and educational practices, (unwittingly) inflating the success and importance of their institutions rather than experimenting with curricular reforms that could have made their schools more a force to be reckoned with in China at the time. Although the Ginling missionaries were more fortune than most in that they could still invoke the family rhetoric and rely on the help of alumnae who returned to work at their alma mater, they were gradually losing touch with the true feelings and passions of their Chinese students in an era of rising individualism and nationalism in China, a period that saw modern physical culture more as “the true indicator of national strength and health”51 than as a tool of Christian evangelization. The American faculty’s gradual loss of effectiveness ironically coincided with the increasing powers of articulation and vision gained by the Chinese faculty, such as Zhang Huilan 張匯蘭 and Huang Liming 黃麗明 (Chen Hwang Li-ming, ’27). Zhang was a student of Chen Yingmei, the former PE director of Ginling—who was also known as one of the first Chinese women to graduate with a PE degree from Wellesley and as China’s first female PE educator.52 Zhang herself earned the distinction of being the first Chinese woman to receive a doctorate in PE, the first female basketball referee in China, the first female dean of a national college of physical education, the first Chinese woman awarded “National PE Medal” by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government, and the first Chinese woman honored by UNESCO for her contributions to PE.53 She also wrote intelligently on individualizing PE programs for women based on their physical fitness.54 She would become Ginling’s PE department chair during the Resistance War. Huang graduated from Ginling in 1927, earned a MA in physical education and hygiene from Wellesley, and returned to teach at Ginling in 1931. A protégée of Case, who had secured a scholarship for her to study at Wellesley, Huang succeeded Case as chair of the PE department after her return to China. Huang’s article “What Play Can Do for China,” published in the December 1925 issue of the Ginling College Magazine, presented a revealing contrast to Case’s papers. Rather than focusing on the negative aspects of PE in contemporary China, Huang extolled the benefits of recreation to her readers. She emphasized the advantages of physical exercises beyond the basic maintenance of various systems of the body, listing

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stimulation of intelligence, building of character, and cultivation of social virtues such as “sportsmanship,” “friendliness, unselfishness, kindness, corporation, loyalty” as the lasting benefits of recreation. She even linked play with the college motto, “Abundant Life,” arguing that PE would help the college to live up to its promise of producing Chinese women into the mold of “a highly educated person with great mental ability, good character, high personality with an understanding of other people, the will to serve others with the greatest energy supported by a perfectly sound body, and to share all things which she has obtained with the world.”55 Granted, Case’s papers focused on the significance of PE and recreation in the larger national context, while Huang’s article intended to generate interest in recreation among Ginling students, and both of them invoked Ginling’s tripartite mission of training Chinese women in body, mind, and soul to legitimate PE. However, Huang’s article exuded a confidence in what Chinese women could achieve that was conspicuously missing from Case’s papers. While Case talked about Chinese students with condescension, Huang considered the benefits and limitations of the situation in China and adjusted her expectations and pedagogy accordingly. Like Huang, the other Chinese faculty members of the PE department displayed more flexibility and perseverance, and placed more confidence in Chinese “womanhood,” than Case had. Facts showed that their confidence was not misplaced. When Ginling evacuated Nanjing and spent eight years in exile in Chengdu during the Sino-Japanese War, they modified the Chinese bow and arrow for their classes, and had basketballs, volleyballs, baseballs, and other equipment made locally when American imports were no longer available.56 Consequently, Ginling-in-exile continued to attract student participation and produce capable female PE educators despite material difficulties. Case had claimed that young Chinese women suffered from fragile physical and psychological health, but many alumnae described their positive experiences of competing with other colleges in basketball and volleyball matches, revealing not only their competitiveness but also their enjoyment of physical exercise and exertion for their own sake.57 A sketch of Ginling athletes painted by their sometime nemesis, students at the University of Nanking, offered further external support for a picture of vigorous and high-spirited Ginling women. The author described a group of Ginling volleyball players who came to compete with the Nanking women’s team. Compared to the paler, less energetic, and less skillful female Nanking players, Ginling women appeared “in white blouses and black shorts,” “with bare feet and arms” and “ thick ankles,” while all sporting tanned complexions, “chewing gum,” and walking with a definite “swagger” (shenqi 神氣 ).58

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f e m i n i n i t y, c h r i s t i a n i t y, a n d n at ion a l i s m: p e at g i n l i n g (i i) The writings authored by the American and Chinese PE faculty have already illustrated some of the tensions between missionary and Chinese conceptions of Chinese womanhood. In this section I will further explore contested ideas of femininity between the PE department and other units of the college. Since these conceptions of proper femininity were invariably related to the larger sociopolitical milieu of the time, I will treat gender, religion, and nationalism as interrelated themes. Although initially modeling itself on Wellesley’s PE program, also a major training ground for Ginling’s PE faculty, the PE department soon found it necessary to adapt to Chinese demands in order to establish itself in China. Like the Wellesley program, the PE department at Ginling grew from being an academic support unit to being leader and administrator of all of the college recreational activities and special events, and finally to being the national training center for professional female PE educators. Although Ginling’s PE faculty did not elaborate on their idea of femininity, as Wellesley-trained instructors they had been very much influenced by Amy Homans, who not only founded Wellesley’s PE program but also pioneered the professional training of female PE instructors in New England and beyond. Homans put forth her idea of femininity thus: “Womanliness means physical vigor, strength, and hard work by women with impeccable manners who were faultlessly groomed.”59 As will be illustrated below, missionaries outside of the PE program at Ginling did not always share this idea of femininity. Ginling also had to accommodate the increasing nationalist fervor of the time. The PE department especially yielded to external pressures to produce athletic stars who could compete at national and international sports events. Since at Wellesley intercollegiate meets were considered as undermining femininity and therefore were strongly discouraged,60 a position also taken by Emily Case of Ginling, it can be seen that the PE department at Ginling eventually deviated from its American model. This new direction in PE caused considerable alarm among American missionaries at Ginling, for they regarded it as both damaging to the maintenance of proper femininity among the Chinese students and as a sinister omen of narrow nationalism and militarism. Because of the diverse roles that PE played at Ginling, the missionary faculty’s concerns about PE also extended to dance instruction and its implications for interactions between the sexes. The Chinese faculty and students generally assessed these new developments in a more positive light, interpreting them as new

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opportunities for Chinese women’s liberation and participation in nationbuilding. The discussion below will show not only the students’ constant negotiations with both the traditional Chinese gender code and the missionary ideas of femininity but also their burgeoning gender awareness in the early twentieth century. The first generation of Chinese students were more accustomed to a sedentary and cloistered lifestyle. Thurston thus described the physical condition of Ginling students in her report of 1918: “Not all have the vigorous health we could wish and we ought to do more to build up strong bodies. They have not the zeal of the American girl for physical exercise and out of door sports.”61 Xu Yizhen of the first Ginling class of 1919 recalled that the first generation of students “never cared to compete with others” and “never liked to change into open-neck shirts and bloomers.”62 Although causing problems for implementing effective PE, these early students’ reservations toward competitive sports and revealing sportswear were fully, if only tacitly, endorsed by the missionary faculty members outside of the PE department. The missionary faculty at Ginling apparently gave in to a general scholarly inertia. At one point the PE department wrote a limerick to urge the whole faculty to adopt a new motto: “One hour a day reserved for fun and frolic,” promising them “the wealth of vim and vigor,” “the freshened interest in the day’s routine,” “the toning down of too abundant a figure,” “the contact with our students much more free,” and “a reputation for sportsmanship and versatility.” The author, a PE faculty member, had noticed around her “a state of listless ennui” in her colleagues, who only “take a little stroll around the campus,” or “sit and chat about work at tea,” or “let correcting papers cramp [them].”63 The PE department later offered a course entitled “Faculty Sports,” comprising two hours of exercise time each week in order to promote physical fitness among their more cerebral colleagues.64 Mrs. Thurston, Ginling’s American president, must have been describing a common lament of the older missionary women when she complained in a letter written to her sister Helen Calder in 1921 about being the “heavy weight tipping the scales . . . at 167 1/2 pounds” because of a lack of enough exercise.65 Not only their own sedentary lifestyle but also their ideal of Christian femininity made non-PE female missionaries sympathetic to the first generation of Ginling students who disliked sports and their PE outfit. As Pui-lan Kwok points out, female missionaries believed that “women should dress like women because the equality of the sexes did not mean the abolition of gender differences.”66 On some occasions, Thurston held even more strict standards of femininity than her Chinese students. For

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example, she dismissed the play Hua Mulan that the PE department had organized to welcome Wu Yifang’s return to Ginling in 1928 as having “no special significance.” She disliked the play ostensibly because of its bizarre story line, but really because the heroine was a far cry from the kind of dignified, genteel young woman she hoped to produce at Ginling.67 The figure of Hua Mulan, the heroic cross-dresser who fulfilled both her filial and patriotic duties, often signified to Chinese women female empowerment through participation in the national war effort.68 Thus, we can see that Thurston’s idea of proper femininity at times distanced her from her students’ vision of Chinese women’s self-realization. Mrs. Thurston and her colleagues especially condemned the promotion of competitive sports among women not only for its perceived contribution to irrational nationalist fervor, but also because they regarded it as copying male-centered PE programs existing in the missionary and state schools of the time. The all-male missionary high schools and colleges in China had been developing their PE programs in order to train “Christian manhood.” Christian manhood entailed “physical strength, stamina, and muscular development” and “characters . . . such as courage, courtesy, honesty, self-discipline, diligence, and sportsmanship.”69 Yet for women’s missionary institutions, PE was taught more as a matter of course since it had always been part of the curriculum of American women’s colleges (taught there partly as a response to American debates on whether women’s supposedly “weak constitution” and “hysterical” temperament made them unfit for higher education).70 Whether PE was adopted more to assuage missionary anxiety carried over from their American experience or more out of real Chinese needs, the women missionaries usually argued that PE class was a useful way to correct Chinese cultural biases, such as the viewpoint that physical exertion was demeaning to the upper class, and that they hoped to reform Chinese culture through the transformation of its PE. However, they rarely argued for its efficacy in cultivating Christian femininity. On the contrary, American missionaries such as Thurston repeatedly voiced their qualms about their students’ eager participation in national sports meets,71 which appeared to them both a hazard to women’s physical health and psychological well-being and a blind duplication of men’s PE activities. In opposing the imitation of the men’s PE program at Ginling, the missionaries in fact identified competitive sports among women as a threat not only to the cultivation of Christian femininity but also to the fundamental gender-identity and religious character of Ginling. The female missionaries had justified Ginling’s identity as an all-women’s college by drawing on the missionary theory of “woman’s work for woman” that emphasized

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male and female missionaries’ equal contributions but distinct work zones, foci, and approaches in the mission field. Indiscriminate imitation of men’s programs would violate this dominant doctrine, they thought, and thereby threaten the very basis of Ginling’s existence. To Ginling’s missionary faculty, the promotion of intermural competition was not the only problem in men’s PE programs. Since most missionaries at Ginling were avowed pacifi sts, they also felt leery of what they perceived as a narrow nationalism and militarism manifested in the PE curricula promoted in Chinese government schools after 1905. In their eyes, Chinese schools modeled their PE programs on those existing in German and Japanese schools, which “emphasized physical training as a way to inculcate habits of obedience, glorify the military, and promote nationalist ideals.”72 The accentuation of martial training in the service of nationalism ran counter not only to the missionary women’s notion of Christian femininity but also to their liberal beliefs that “society can be changed through changing individuals” and that “what China needed most . . . was not a political revolution but a spiritual regeneration.”73 Small wonder that the American faculty members harbored mixed feelings toward PE at Ginling after their initial enthusiasm about the improvement of student health had ebbed. However, while the missionaries frowned upon military training and national and international sports competitions, the Chinese faculty members derived a great deal of satisfaction and pride from their students’ stellar performances at sports meets. Indeed, when China sent its delegation to the Eleventh Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, the Chinese PE instructors and theorists of the group, including Ginling’s own Huang Liming, unanimously felt humiliated by the Chinese athletes’ poor performances and by China’s negative international image as the “Sick Man of East Asia” (Dongya bingfu 東亞病夫) reinforced at this Olympics Games.74 In fact, the Chinese members’ different reception of competitive sports compared to that of the Western missionaries illustrated the kind of discursive exchanges between China and the West that exceeded and even counteracted the original intentions and expectations of the Western progenitor. Larissa Heinrick’s recent study points out that although the stereotype of China as the “Sick Man of East Asia” was first produced by Western missionaries and deployed for the promotion of missionary ideology, it was later appropriated by social Darwinist radical Chinese intellectuals to call for national self-strengthening through various schemes, such as the modernization of Chinese PE.75 In a similar twist in ideological circulation, although the missionary faculty members at Ginling took pride in their service-oriented college motto, this institutional ethos also made

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the Chinese faculty particularly susceptible to the call for the salvation of their benighted nation. Accepting the link between a strong body for the Chinese people and a strong modern nation, Chinese faculty members at Ginling looked on PE and competitive sports among their students as a way to fulfill their patriotic responsibilities and to realize their own identities as modern citizens of China. In this idealistic pursuit the Chinese faculty members were aided by the fact that Western sports were treated more as a “cultural form” than as an exclusive male reserve ever since their introduction into China. Granted, Chinese society generally manifested a deep-rooted prejudice against physical labor at the time. In his study on Chinese masculinity, Kam Louie illustrates that although the ideal man in the Confucian tradition achieved a harmony between wen (文), the literary, and wu (武), the martial and heroic, wen gradually gained primacy over wu in premodern Chinese society, and wu became more associated with brute force and nonelite masculinities.76 However, as Susan Brownell’s research on the history of Chinese women’s participation in sports reveals, despite the traditional prejudice of the literati against sports and physical labor, the Western notion of sport as exclusively “a male preserve” did not apply in China. In the Republic era, modern sports became closely associated with Western-style schools, especially those run by the YMCA and YWCA, and therefore became more a mark of culture than that of gender, since they were understood as “a Western cultural form.” Interestingly, according to Brownell the Western bias of sports as “a male preserve” was reflected in the National Games organized by the Westerners in 1910 and 1914, which denied women the right to participate. But when the Chinese took over the organization of the National Games, women were first allowed in three exhibition sports in 1924, and later as full-fledged competitors in four sports in 1930: track and field, volleyball, basketball, and tennis. To put it simply, “Male-female polarization was subsumed by the larger issue of nationalism. . . . Reformers who advocated physical education for women did so because they thought that it was one of the sources of the superior strength of the Western powers.”77 Of course, Chinese women’s entry into competitive sports under the rubric of nation-building can be conceived as another example of patriarchal exploitation and appropriation of women’s agency. Indeed, ever since the late Qing period, under the influence of evolutionism and social Darwinism, reformers like Yan Fu all promoted the strengthening of the female body, because women were seen as the mother of modern citizens. However, women’s entrance into sports and competition did provide them with more venues for the exploration of their modern identity as well as

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increase their public visibility. It can only be expected that Ginling’s Chinese students and faculty felt compelled to join in the grand project of national salvation in order to prove their patriotism, even though the missionaries strove to provide an environment of learning free from nationalist political indoctrination. The link between strong women and a strong nation was accepted by modern Chinese intellectuals of the time, whether men or women,which partly accounts for the conflicts between missionary and Chinese vision of suitable PE instruction for Chinese women. The particular role that the PE department played in the growth of Ginling further complicated the situation. On the one hand, the PE department garnered much social attention and prestige for the college through its annual Field Day demonstrations, its dance exhibitions, and the championships that their students won at city and national sports meets; all attracted large Chinese audiences, including important Guomindang (GMD) officials. Yet seen against both the missionaries’ deep wariness about the role of PE in the promotion of Chinese nationalism and their particular definition of proper Christian femininity, this department occupied an awkward position of both marginality and spectacle. This can be seen, for example, in the way that the Ginling administration treated their PE department. Although the president never failed to acknowledge the indispensable role of the PE department in both attracting and training students for athletic directorship, and in fact often used the department as a showpiece in her publicity materials, she sometimes also expressed displeasure with a department that seemed to lack academic rigor and missionary commitment, for their members tended to marry and have babies early and therefore did not devote themselves to their careers at Ginling wholeheartedly. Of course, neither Thurston nor Wu Yifang would be so crass as to openly take PE faculty members to task because they placed marriage and family above career. Yet the senior faculty members did not generally display much sympathy toward romance and marriage. Minnie Vautrin, as mentioned in chapter 1, was a supporter of women’s celibacy, and regarded marriage as a necessary evil to be postponed as long as possible. Thurston also acerbically rebutted criticisms that a Ginling education only produced spinsters. She stated that well-educated Chinese women understandably would not like their freedom to be restricted by marriage, and that she counted it as a blessing rather than a threat to society that economically independent single women appeared in large numbers in Chinese society.78 This tacit expectation of their faculty members to prioritize their career pursuits and their devotion to the institution perhaps contradicted the vow to reform Chinese families through Christianity that Thurston

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had invoked to justify the Ginling curriculum earlier (see chapter 1). However, it remained a powerful, if often unspoken, consensus among the powers-that-be at Ginling: its senior faculty members and administration. In fact, most missionaries or Chinese faculty members either chose to remain single or got married very late in life, including Ginling’s Chinese president Wu Yifang and other popular professors such as Liu Enlan, professor of geography, and Wu Mouyi, professor of chemistry. Against this dominant faculty culture of celibacy and professional pursuits, the PE instructors who chose family rather than career would appear out of place. Wu Yifang’s resigned displeasure about PE faculty members’ marriage and parenthood, especially during Ginling’s exile in Sichuan in the Resistance War, would further bear out the administration’s ambivalence toward the PE department (see chapter 4). More seriously for the administration, the PE department sometimes cost the college bad publicity, for it was blamed by society for promoting Chinese women’s exhibitionism and loose sexual behavior. In this regard, the department’s traditional strength in dance instruction was both a blessing and a curse for the administration. On the one hand, the long-standing strength in dance instruction in the PE department played an instrumental role in both popularizing PE activities among the Chinese students and shaping their gender awareness. At Ginling dance classes were one of the most popular, if not the most popular, PE activities among the students. The alumnae, even those who professed to have disliked PE, always recalled enjoying their dance classes. The colorful pageants that dance exhibitions presented, with students in attractive costumes,79 added a spirit of play and performance to an otherwise somber campus culture. Many years later, alumnae still remembered their talented dance teachers such as Ling Peifen, a Ginling alumna who was the daughter of Chen Yingmei, another Ginling PE faculty member and former department head, and their delightful dance classes.80 Needless to say, for student participants as well as spectators, dance instruction and exhibition also provided a fascinating window on Western lifestyle and culture. Dance instruction at Ginling replicated the typical curriculum at American women’s colleges such as Wellesley; Ginling offered classes on Western folk dance, square dance, tap dance, and even May Pole dance. As a result, dance instruction not only created group cohesion among students and positive rapport between faculty and students, but also shaped the students’ new gender awareness and their understanding of modern and Western culture. The ideal Confucian lady is not a dancer. According to Gloria Strauss, “[T]he movement style associated with the ideal woman is . . . to be found

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in [Peking] opera”: “She is demure and reserved in movement . . . short mincing steps characterize the walk, the feet are kept close to the ground. Proper deportment entailed keeping her eyes lowered and glancing neither to the left nor to the right.”81 In contrast, at Ginling students found in dance a new freedom of movement alien to the traditional Chinese upbringing of women. It was through dance classes that most Ginling students became first acquainted with the rhythmic movement of their bodies. Moreover, dance instruction helped students to excel at social dance, and created opportunities for their interactions with the opposite sex. Social dance in the United States at the time carried its own set of gender- and class-inflected constraints. This was because dance served as a marker of “gender, racial, ethnic, class, and national identities,” while “dance forms originating in lower-class or nondominant populations . . . [were] ‘refined,’ ‘polished,’ and often desexualized.”82 However, unaware of the intricate power dynamics underlying social dance in the United States, the Chinese students at Ginling were merely enamored of the opportunities that dance instruction presented them in China. For them, dance instruction, together with the introduction of Western dress, opened their eyes to a more expressive and fluid body culture, and therefore introduced to them a taste of American lifestyle and “modernity” in one of its most embodied and attractive forms. Although always attracting both prospective PE majors and large audiences at their performances, dance instruction sometimes unexpectedly inflamed unpleasant or even malicious rumors, however groundless, from their brother institutions and the local media. Sometimes the perceived immodesty in Ginling students outraged not only local people’s sense of propriety but also their national pride. For instance, in 1927 Minnie Vautrin and several other missionaries chaperoned a group of Ginling students to tea on the Cumberland, a British destroyer anchored at Xiaguan, a port on the Yangzi River outside of the city of Nanjing. Unfortunately, several of the more sophisticated students of the group danced with the British naval men for a short time at the end of the visit. Scandalized citizens immediately “shrieked [on posters] in the Nanking streets” that “this base and intimate association with the enemy . . . brought disgrace upon Chinese womanhood.’”83 Chinese observers had already looked with suspicion at Ginling women’s easy way with the opposite sex on social occasions. This incident undoubtedly proved to them that Ginling’s women’s loss of proper feminine modesty, a result of Western education, eventually led to their loss of national pride and patriotism. The majority of the missionary faculty members at Ginling, although less vehement in expression,

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were no less unhappy about what they saw as their students’ serious lack of judgment in their interactions with men. According to Thurston, this generation of Ginling students’ association with men departed from the behavior of the first generation of Ginling students, who, as she described with pride and approval, “were more cautious, knowing that upon them would come most of the criticism, and consequences of any unwise disregard of the old safeguards. . . . The Ginling girl was not radical in her attitude, not at all because she was repressed or restricted by school rules but because her instincts were wise and right.”84 Whether or not the early students had indeed been such paragons of virtue, the later generations did socialize with men more frequently because of an increase in venues: sports, choir practice, and joint service projects that took them to the countryside, as well as social dances and dating. A short film made in the 1930s by Ginling College entitled It Happened at Ginling, for example, portrayed the life of a Ginling student from interior China who gained a beau from the University of Nanking; she had met him at choir practice.85 Although the missionaries made allowances for the social changes in China in later years, most of them still clung to a more traditional gender code reinforced by their Christian beliefs, which required “women to be modest and restrained in their demeanor, and not to show signs of sexual appeal.”86 Such a conservative definition of femininity upheld by the majority of the missionaries presented as serious a challenge to the PE department as did their liberal beliefs that opposed militarism and revolution. As the PE department came to shoulder the task of generating publicity materials for the college, its role as the display piece inevitably exacerbated the conflict between Ginling’s self-conscious cultivation of proper Christian femininity and its need to attract Chinese students and justify its evangelical function to its American sponsors.

awa k e n i n g t o r i s i n g c on f l ic t s Ginling College was caught in both national and internal conflicts even as it continued to prosper in the 1920s and 1930s. As a result of the growth of college assets and resources, Ginling’s Chinese student body also began to develop its independent identity and test its strength in the 1920s. To be sure, these young women imagined their identity from a collectivist rather than individualist perspective. They often defined themselves in relation to either their Ginling family or their national family, influenced by both the rising nationalist sentiment of the time and the Christian faith imparted to them by their American missionary teachers. However,

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they also gained more visibility and powers of articulation through their attempts at finding their own voices. Ginling College Magazine, a bilingual, student-edited quarterly that published writings by students, alumnae, and faculty, was started in fall 1924. As the first generation of Ginling graduates started their professional lives after college, some returned to their alma mater as faculty members, and thus played more active roles in making the next generation of new Chinese women at Ginling. The mid-1920s also saw increased tensions both within and outside Ginling. On the one hand, Ginling found itself target of criticism from its peer institutions. For example, the conference of missionary institutions in China held on Ginling’s beautiful new campus during the winter vacation of 1924 earned Ginling unexpected censure. In response to criticism of Ginling’s perceived luxurious lifestyle and diminishment of Christian character, Thurston felt it necessary to defend Ginling in her report for the year 1923–24. “When distorted and untrue statements are made and passed around,” she said, “we can only rely on our friends who know us to deny and defend. And if you have not the fact, let us tell you. On the religious side I am sure we are standing for the things which Jesus put first—‘God’s kingdom and his Righteousness.’” 88 Ginling students were sometimes discredited as subpar by evaluators of missionary education in China as well. Dr. Cressy, who evaluated missionary education in China for the year 1925–26 and reported to the Associated Boards (forerunner of the United Boards of Christian Higher Education in Asia and coordinator of missionary higher education in China), purportedly characterized Ginling students as “a special type—not quite up to that of the University [of Nanking]—a separate type,”89 much to the resentment of the Ginling faculty and students. While such disparagement from within the missionary circle dealt a serious blow to Ginling’s collective ego, the college was also caught up in a trouble-ridden national milieu. The anti-Christian movement in China had been developing since the nationwide boycott against the eleventh convention of the World Christian Students Association in 1922 (see Introduction). In April 1924, following the expulsion of student activists by the Holy Trinity Christian School (Sheng sanyi jidu jiao xuexiao 聖三一基督教學校) in Guangzhou, the anti-Christian movement rose to a new height, and moved toward devising concrete measures to oppose missionary education and return educational rights to Chinese hands. As a result, in October of the same year, at the tenth convention of the National Association of Educators, two motions were passed: “Banning Foreign Educational Enterprises in China” and “Forbidding the Propagation of Religion at School.” They showed that the retrieval of educational rights had become a nationally adopted project among Chinese intellectuals and educators.90 .

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Although Ginling students did not participate in any anti-Christian rallies, they felt compelled to prove their patriotism. The May Thirtieth Incident of 1925, in which students who were protesting the killing of a Chinese worker by a Japanese guard of a cotton mill in Shanghai were fi red upon in the International Settlement, again caused widespread national demonstrations. Ginling students participated in the rallies in Nanjing after the Incident in 1925 and absented themselves from class for three and a half days. Thurston counted Ginling “fortunate beyond many schools in China in being able to finish the year’s work even though it could not be completed in a regular fashion.”91 The Dagu Incident of 1926 again saw many missionary institutions nationwide, including the University of Nanking, participating in protests against perceived government weakness in foreign policy toward Western powers. Although the Ginling students did not join in the student demonstrations in 1926, the Dagu Incident still sent ripples across the campus. The Ginling students decided on a more pragmatic “patriotic program” to raise awareness—such as promoting the use of Chinese goods—rather than walk out again, but the foreign faculty still considered this another distraction for the students who should have been concentrating on their academic work. The American missionaries, feeling awkward about taking stern disciplinary measures to control students’ patriotic activities, found a helpful ally in a “returned daughter,” a Ginling alumna who came back to work in their Chinese department and the library in 1924. As Thurston described it, the Ginling students were steered toward a more rational and moderate path by Phoebe Ying-tsing Ho(h) (Hao Yingqing 郝映青), class of 1920, who had “been [a] most helpful influence and a wise leader of student opinion all through the year.” Ho had taught at the YWCA Normal School of Physical Education after her graduation, and returned to Ginling when the Normal School merged into Ginling in 1925. Thurston also indirectly credited Ho’s part in averting anti-Christian violence in Nanjing when she reported: “An effort made by the radical group to control the students of the city has been foiled and although the division still exists there was no very united anti-Christian demonstration at Christmas or any very aggressive movement of students in any of the numerous crises which have developed in Peking.”92 Thurston also applauded the work of a special committee of faculty that surveyed and took steps to regulate student extracurricular activities in order to correct “excessive expenditures” and overcommitment of students’ time to social activities, including political demonstrations.93 But at times Thurston and her missionary colleagues found faculty advice spurned by the students, who were trying to spread their wings.

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During this period of growth, Ginling’s student self-governance system came into its own, displaying remarkable progress in political awareness over that of the first class of 1919. When asked to elect a class president, the first class of Chinese women did not understand the concept of democracy. They apparently fell back on “the Confucian idea of reverence for age” as their only criterion, and elected the oldest member of the group.94 Yet, despite students’ heightened sense of autonomy during this time, Thurston experienced growing pains along with her students. Since she always envisioned Ginling as a family and faculty members as surrogate parents, she felt both proud of and uneasy about the students’ demonstrations of independence. For example, she complained: “This fall the student body voted not to have a faculty member adviser, feeling that the presence of a member of the faculty put constraint upon free discussion. It is a backward step if the ideal is cooperation and community life.” Thurston obviously felt the authority of the American faculty threatened by such behavior but chose to characterize it as a minor deficiency in students’ experiment with democracy: “The desire to be democratic when it means that all students must be consulted even upon minor matters and all offices even down to committee chairmen must be elected in general ballot, complicates life for faculty and students.”95 On residential life Thurston took a firmer stand, probably because this issue posed a more direct challenge to and exerted a greater impact on the image of the “Ginling family.” The students’ relationships with their dormitory director, called “matron” at first, had been troubling from the beginning. Thurston took the matron’s side in this scuffle: “Students took liberties they would not think of taking in an American college. . . . They took away from the matron the place of head of the school family. . . . It left [the matron] in the position of a head servant under student direction.” Still, the college held several faculty-student joint conferences and replaced the matron twice instead of penalizing the troublemakers among the students. Thurston noted with regret the difference between the first and later generations of students. While the first class was “truly a family of sisters, helping to make the college spirit a family spirit” and worked side by side with the president, with later classes the faculty “never solved the problem of enforcement and penalty for infringement in a completely satisfactory manner.” Seen in hindsight, the Ginling students of the 1920s enjoyed a remarkably high degree of autonomy with regard to residential life, perhaps even higher than is the norm in U.S. residential colleges nowadays. Thurston eventually blamed Ginling’s residential problems in this period on the students’ Chinese heritage and the social atmosphere of the time: “There is a strain of anarchism and laissez-faire in Chinese

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philosophy and the period was one of reaction from the old, strict control of the patriarchal family.”96 But the perceived threat to her beloved Ginling family felt no less disappointing to her despite all her rationalization. The disputes and controversies both internally and externally determined that the Chinese students’ literary and discursive output during this period would also represent their struggle with conflicts between their personal aspirations, institutional affiliation, and racial identity. Xu Yizhen provides a particularly revealing case of this because of her exceptional eloquence and deep involvement in Ginling business even after her graduation. Born in Suzhou, China, in 1894, she was a third-generation Christian. She graduated from Elizabeth Yates Memorial All Girls’ School, a mission secondary school in Shanghai, in 1910, and taught in private schools there in 1910–15. She entered Ginling in fall 1915 and received her BA in history in 1919 from Ginling. At Ginling she formed a lifelong friendship with Wu Yifang, later the first Chinese president of Ginling. She taught in Nanjing and Beijing after graduation from Ginling, and was married to Dr. Way-sung New in 1924. After her marriage, she continued many of her professional and volunteer activities. She was chairman of the Methodist School Board of Shanghai, and active in social welfare and the nurses’ training program in her husband’s hospital. She received her MA from Teachers’ College, Columbia University, in 1923. In 1927 she was elected the first Chinese chairman of the Executive Committee of the newly constituted Ginling Board of Control, and recommended Wu Yifang as Ginling’s new president. After her husband died in 1937, she spent two years in intensive relief work with the International Red Cross in war-torn Shanghai in 1937–39. She taught English at St. Stephen’s College in Hong Kong in 1939–41. In 1945 she served as member of the Preparatory Committee of the Chinese Delegation at the founding of the UN, and was the Chinese representative to its Commission on the Status of Women, Division of Human Rights. She worked as lecturer in various institutions in the United States in 1949–55. She was appointed Assistant Dean to Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, in 1955. After her retirement from Western College in 1959, she concentrated her energies on church activities and the Ginling alumnae group. She died in 1981. It can be seen that Xu Yizheng lived an active public life even after her marriage. Some scholars have even credited her with representing the beginning of the “indigenization” (bentu hua 本土化) of Ginling.97 From her writings during this period one could predict her active involvement in Ginling affairs later. Xu’s husband, Dr. New Way-sung, was first cousin to the Song sisters. Xu was therefore related to Chiang Kaishek by marriage. In the early 1920s she wrote a letter to her American

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mentors at Ginling describing her troubled mental state because of the anti-Christian tendency that she had witnessed in Shanghai. Deploying a wealth of family metaphors, she compared her compatriots to brothers who mistreated Christians and her nation to a weak mother. She claimed to have found herself unable to denounce her own national family but found it equally impossible to turn against her alma mater; she compared it to an older sister-in-law who had brought her up in lieu of her sick mother. In painting Ginling—or, more precisely, the American faculty members—as surrogate parental figures, this letter illustrated the profound influence of the family rhetoric that had permeated Ginling’s academic program and the students’ college experience. Yet the metaphor of the family also turned out to be a double-edged sword, for it enabled the loyal alumna to justify her loyalty to her nation and thus to subtly distance herself from the claim on her exclusive devotion made by her alma mater. The dilemma faced by Xu also shed some light on the increasingly precarious position in which a patriotic yet Christian Ginling student such as she often found herself. Just like Xu, Ginling students had to struggle with new challenges to their sense of a stable, clearly defi ned identity even as they gained more power and public recognition during this period. For many Ginling students at this time, their struggle with identity politics was most obviously displayed in their dissatisfaction with Ginling’s curriculum, especially Ginling’s perceived weakness in the field of Chinese. The students had filed complaint against their Chinese instructor even in the early years of Ginling. Thurston’s choice of an opiumsmoking former linsheng 廩生 (successful candidate of the lowest level of the civil service examination), who could only teach reading and writing in classical Chinese, hardly satisfied the Chinese students who were impatient to develop proficiency in vernacular Chinese, the new national language promoted by the Literary Revolution of the May Fourth era. Thurston hired another Chinese instructor in order to “give the students what they are eager to get in their Chinese studies,” remarking: “Students like ours are living in a world of ideas apart from that of the old-time teacher with only a classical training, and they crave and need what only a teacher with some modern training can give.”98 The Ginling curriculum in 1915 required all students to take twenty credits of Chinese for graduation.99 The Chinese department was founded in 1927, and offered courses in Chinese language, Chinese philosophy, Chinese poetry and classical literature, Chinese literary history, and writing in modern Chinese.100 Responding to criticisms that Ginling had fewer Chinese books than English books in its library, the faculty members added to its Chinese

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collection, so that there was a total of 6,418 Chinese-language volumes as compared to 4,828 English-language books by 1925–26.101 Yet as a missionary college, Ginling had never completely shaken free of its reputation of strength in English and weakness in Chinese instruction, a reputation that, I must add, was largely deserved. Some of this can be attributed to Ginling’s traditional emphasis on English. Not only were almost all courses given in English, but Ginling also established an English Comprehensive Test that it required all students to pass in the second semester of their second year. Students who failed it had to study English for one more year and then retake the exam. A second failure would result in automatic dismissal of the student from Ginling.102 The Chinese department was also much less visible than the English department because of perennial staffing problems, a smaller number of majors, and overall a less stellar national reputation. As late as fall 1926, Mrs. Thurston still complained about a staffing complication in Chinese: “The worst gap in the ranks is in Chinese,” she said when a certain Mr. Chuan who had been teaching at Yenching reneged on his acceptance of a position at Ginling. Thurston explained that Ginling had offered him a position because it felt its “reputation in Chinese requires a teacher of some standing in the profession—the hardest thing in China to get, along with real teaching ability.”103 The students were obviously aware of Ginling’s weakness in Chinese in reputation and in reality. Although Ginling College required its students to take a certain amount of Chinese classes, the quality of Chinese instruction proved uneven. Many alumnae professed to have never liked their required Chinese classes; instead, they took pride in their English proficiency.104 In the reminiscences of former Chinese majors, the Chinese department appeared almost like an exclusive club for a few dedicated students who had had a family background in Chinese learning or whose Chinese teachers happened to be respected Chinese scholars and writers who were teaching part-time at Ginling.105 The English department attracted more student interest and participation through a vibrant English club that organized a drama subclub, a chorus, puppet shows, majors’ performance of English dramas for the annual “Class Night,”106 and English-language speech contests and debates. However, the rising nationalist sentiment in the 1920s led students to equate the mastery of Chinese with Chinese national identity and patriotic spirit. For instance, Zhang Xiaosong (Djang Siao-sung), Ginling ’26 and later one of its deans, proposed that missionary colleges use their considerable resources to train Chinese-language teachers so that other people would not accuse their students of being “unpatriotic,” or “not caring for their own national literature.”107 The teaching of Chinese at Ginling

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did not follow the same trajectory of moving from the periphery to the center and replacing the instruction of religion as the dominant part of the curriculum, as Peter Ng has described as happening in other missionary colleges.108 But the students did express increasing dissatisfaction with a Ginling curriculum that to their mind lacked effective instruction of guoxue 國學 (national learning). For example, Zhu Muci (Dju Muh-tsi), another member of the class of 1926, described her rude awakening at Ginling. Having transferred from Yale-in-China to Ginling because of Ginling’s purported strength in Chinese, she found her “mind and spirit consumed by floods of books,” by “imported” and “impractical” materials that could not prepare her for becoming a useful, contributing member of her nation. She extolled various pleasing features of her life at Ginling: the “palace-like” campus architecture, the “elegant yet dignified” interior decorations, the comfortable living facilities, and even the delicious dishes of “white rice, roast chicken and beef, fresh fish, radish salad, and green leafy cabbage.” But she declared herself “panicky” and “terrified” at the thought of entering a “new, modern” Chinese society, because she felt she would only become a “bookworm,” a “useless slave to the dead,” if educated in the current Ginling curriculum. By characterizing the Ginling education as “an unfit tool for the making of Chinese women” and calling for curricular reforms to accentuate “national learning,” Zhu’s article revealed the conflict between students’ love of their nation and their allegiance to Ginling.109 Yet even as the Chinese students sensed the inherent conflict between their national identity and institutional loyalty, the central trope of the family remained powerful in their minds. An article entitled “Students and Marriage Customs in China,” published in the Chinese Recorder in July 1926, showed how the students’ power of self-invention was restricted by their family and educational background. Written by “College Girls” on a topic central to the self-definition of Chinese women of the time, this article displayed a more conservative definition of women’s roles in modern China. Having found fault with both traditional Chinese and modern Western marriage customs, the authors attempted to find a middle ground between absolute authoritarianism and radical individualism: “In regard to marriage we need our parents, or older people’s advice, but the final decisions is to be made by the individuals concerned.”110 Although desiring a certain freedom for Chinese women in choosing a suitable marriage partner, the authors still claimed that being a wife and mother was the ultimate destiny of an educated modern Chinese woman. To them, marriage alone would enable the modern Chinese woman to fully realize

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herself, for it provided the opportunity for her to establish a model modern family: In this newly established home the wife should be the right hand to her husband. She should be careful that the husband’s life and work are not hindered by her. She should be willing to stay at home and do her duty. As a wife she makes the home a cheerful, restful, and comfortable place for the man when he comes back from a day’s hard work. . . . As an educated mother, she should do her part in educating the children at home. . . . There are many social demands also. She ought to organize different clubs to improve conditions of living—clubs for the prohibition of drinking and smoking, and for promoting public sanitary conditions. In this way, her functions as an educated woman would not be limited to the home, but society would also get the benefit of her better privileges.111

As can be seen here, the authors once again defined Chinese women’s identity primarily in relation to the family, here a modern nuclear family in which she would work as a helpmate to her husband and an enlightened mother to their children. The authors also described social demands for this type of modern woman, yet they listed “club organizer” as her only way of working outside of home. This prescription reflected both the class and gender biases of the authors. First of all, they neglected to mention that lower-class women often had to work outside of the home in order to support their families; instead they based their model of women’s social engagement on the lifestyle of an upper-middle-class club woman with money, leisure, and social connections—the charity fund-raiser and organizer. Furthermore, the imagined role of being the husband’s helpmate and general household manager meshed well with both the traditional feminine role in China and the American gender ideology of the time: a woman was said to be “the Angel in the House,” even as their own experience at Ginling and their teachers’ lifestyle contradicted this kind of gender prescription. It also echoed the general missionary agenda of gender reform in China. For many American missionary women, traditional Chinese families were “the citadel of heathendom,”112 and the most effective way to improve Chinese women’s conditions and evangelize China, at least in theory, was through the civilization and modernization of the families in China. The mobility that the authors apparently bestowed on the married Chinese woman working as a social worker and club organizer can also be seen as an extension of her traditional supportive role as caretaker, nurturer,

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and moral police of society, and therefore effectively placed women on the periphery rather than at the center of social changes. Another article showed more awareness of Chinese history and reality in its analysis of the family situation in China. Two Ginling students, Li Zezheng and Cai Kui, published a Chinese-language article entitled “Jiating wenti” (Family Problem) in the June 1926 issue of Ginling College Magazine.113 The authors explained that they chose this topic because the changing social conditions called for the adjustment of the traditional Chinese family structure. They disagreed with the more radical opinion that advocated the complete demolition of the family, and argued that the family as a systematic organization played an irreplaceable role in the procreation and education of human beings, and in ensuring the development of human society and the continuation of mankind. With a more historical and international perspective, the authors then traced the development of the family structure in both Chinese and Western societies before proposing ways to improve the family structure in modern China. They proposed both better social conditions for the interaction of young men and women and effective sex education at school in order to facilitate better marriages in China. They also pointed out four major controversial issues affecting families of the time: the parent-children relationship, the master-servant relationship, the inheritance of the family estate, and the financial relationship between spouses. The authors concluded that the education of women and the guarantee of women’s rights of employment, inheritance, and property by law lay at the center of the solution. In contrast to the article discussed earlier, this article revealed a solid grounding in social reality. Although the problems that they pointed out more often appeared in middle- or upper-class families, the authors tried to apply sociological methodology to the analysis of existing social problems. This article thus illustrates both the authors’ knowledge and skills learned at Ginling and the limits of such a foreign educational experience within a Chinese setting. The articles mentioned above illustrate the importance of the modern nuclear family in Ginling students’ conception of Chinese women’s role in contemporary society. However, it would be a serious mistake to regard such a narrowly defined femininity as either the only option imagined by Ginling students for their futures or the only practical path that they eventually followed. For many Ginling students and their missionary teachers, marriage came low on their list of priorities. The first class of Ginling students who graduated in 1919 provide a revealing example. The five of them took a vow of celibacy with the support of an American faculty member, who proudly characterized this action as their “singleness

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of purpose.” They achieved a great deal in their professional careers after graduation, producing a college president (Wu Yifang), a medical doctor, a pediatrician, and a Bible teacher. Only one of the first class, Xu Yizhen, a.k.a. Mrs. New, eventually got married, but, as can be seen from the biographical notes provided earlier, even her life differed widely from that of the social woman described in the English-language article “Students and Marriage Customs in China.” After graduation, she taught for several years before getting married, and then married under family pressure and, she said, peer advice: according to her, her college classmates voted to have her marry in order to “provide a home” for them. An active career woman and prominent alumna over Ginling’s lifetime, she represented the alumnae and the Board of Control to give the college seal to Wu Yifang, her former classmate and the first Chinese president of Ginling, at the latter’s inauguration in 1928. Perhaps most revealingly, she often considered her own marriage and her role as wife and mother secondary to her public activities and service, deeming the latter more essential to her identity. For instance, she not only reminisced admiringly about Miss Kim, the president of Ehwa Women’s College in Korea, another missionary college founded by American women, as a “radiant” single woman, but also described herself as preferring career to family: “I never cared for marriage, nor for home, but for school and teaching, whole of my life [sic]. Without the pressure and order from my parents, I would never get married—plenty of things in life to satisfy me.”114 She showed both unusual independence in many of her life decisions and a strong desire for public visibility, revealing that her personal aspirations at times overshadowed her proclaimed devotion to the Ginling family. She claimed that both Wu Yifang and she chose to teach at government schools after graduation against the advice from the missionaries, who would have liked for them “to accept a lower scale of salary because they said [their] work is from the heart, and paid us $50 as a limited salary.” “Dr. Wu Yi Fong [Yifang] and I were the first ones to accept the higher government positions with a high salary,” she said, “because we did not think it was very fair to work on only a service level. Both of us had financial burdens to take care of.” Sometimes her desire for public recognition produced a narrative tone akin to self-promotion. For instance, she attributed Wu Yifang’s presidency to her own efforts, claiming that she had asked Mary Wooley, the president of Mount Holyoke who was a member of the Burton Education Mission of 1921–22, to arrange for a Barbour Scholarship for Wu to study biology at the University of Michigan, and therefore started Wu on her way to a brilliant career. Xu described this incident not so much to accentuate her devotion to her classmate as to emphasize her

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unerring foresight; for she claimed to have foreseen from the very start that “Ginling needs a President with degree in Science, Central government wants National to be President, Westerner cannot be leader.” She even claimed to be the most eye-catching figure at Wu’s inauguration ceremony, at which she spoke in both impeccable English and Mandarin, and thus roused the envy of Madame Chiang Kai-shek, then the first lady of China, who could only speak in English and Shanghai dialect. With an almost naive pride, she recalled that her husband gave her a Buick and a chauffeur for her work after the ceremony. She said, “[I]t was this inauguration, unprecedented, which moved my husband to realize what kind of position and status I held in Ginling College. . . . Even today Ginling students of 1928 remember that day and my image as they said how could we ever reach up to her.”115 According to the reminiscences of the Ginling alumnae in later years, she indeed provided a role model for the later generations. Although they expressed their own desires for power and visibility in more subtle ways than Xu, they shared with her a deep-seated admiration for well-educated and accomplished (single) career women. According to statistics published by Ginling College Magazine in its twenty-fifth anniversary issue (November 1940), only 171 of its alumnae had married after graduation, making up a total of 37.3 percent of the whole alumnae population, suggesting a prevalent wish among them to pursue career rather than marriage and family life. More accolades for professional achievements should of course go to Wu Yifang, whose writings and life will be the focus of next chapter. But before leaving this stage of the Ginling story I would like to add a few anecdotal remarks about the impressions that Ginling students made upon the public. Interestingly, what impressed a foreign audience most about female Chinese students of missionary institutions was the eloquence and poise that they displayed at public functions. Grace Seton recalled several positive impressions of Chinese women that she had received during her visit to China in the early 1920s. At the Yenching Women’s College in Beijing, she heard a tale from the amazed American president of the college, who described to Seton the way that a student actor improvised at a college theater performance of The Merchant of Venice attended by the female relatives of the students. The student added a monologue for Portia in the scene of choosing the casket: “O honorable father and grandfather, even though this heavy sacrifice and shame which you have put upon me is almost more than I can bear, I will obey and do thy bidding.” The student later explained that she predicted that her audience, ignorant of Western literature and

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lifestyle, “would be horrified at the immodesty and shame of this girl, who could watch her marriage arranged in this fashion, without a gobetween and in her presence, and that they would not like the play.” Her improvisation was indeed a great success with the audience. Seton also described female Chinese students’ fondness for athletics and their ability to “speak freely in mixed groups on sociological topics.” She even added with wry humor that the Christian female students “acquired a different slant on the subject of Western ‘liberty’ and on their God as a chaperon” when they proposed in all seriousness to their YWCA leaders to organize “preaching teams, consisting of young girls and young men together, to go about the country without older chaperonage.” This comment by Seton, incidentally, resonated with the equally conservative attitude displayed by Mrs. Thurston and other missionaries at Ginling, who likewise emphasized chaperonage and moral instruction. Seton came to this conclusion about the modern Chinese women after her many remarkable discoveries: “In a word as I review the girl students and her previous generation, now an important factor in the community and future of China, my impression of her is that of an alert, efficient, sane, and pleasing personality. The age-old bondage has been broken and she is pressing forward doing the work of both Mary and Martha on the new path of self-determination.”116 Although Seton did not mention Ginling students in particular, a similar example that is closer to home comes from Mrs. Walter C. Lowdermilk, whose husband was a professor at the University of Nanking. She wrote an article entitled “The Modernizing of the Chinese Woman” in 1925, recounting her close interaction with a Ginling student, Chen Mei-yü 陳美渝. Chen came from a traditional family in Sichuan that included the father’s several wives, who were illiterate, had bound feet, and smoked opium. Entrusted by the father to take Chen to attend a modern school in Chengdu, Lowdermilk soon witnessed a surprising transformation of the girl; she found Chen delivering a passionate patriotic speech at a Japanese boycott mass meeting. Chen later attended Ginling College. Having observed Chen’s amazing transformation, Lowdermilk remarked: “We hear of the New Woman in China but that does not mean the girls with extreme mannerisms, puffi ng the eternal cigarette and trying to ape the foreigner as depicted in the movies. The new woman is making history in China today as she successfully enters various walks of life and service and attempts to advance her cause. We cannot say that she has altogether won for herself economic independence. But here as only a few years ago, scarcely a woman was found in public life, now we fi nd them as teachers, students, doctors, nurses.117”

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Lowdermilk presented Chen’s case as a tribute to the missionary education that the Chinese woman had received, but her account also illustrates the increasing public visibility and recognition that the Ginling students received in the 1920s and hints at the potential confl ict between the missionary vision of modern Chinese womanhood and the students’ own aspirations and experiences of Chinese modernity. Their experiences with public performance gained at college would serve them well in their future ventures into the public arena, especially when starting in the late 1920s, rising nationalism demanded more of Chinese women’s participation and service in public roles.

Chapter 3

The Return of the Native Daughter (1927–37) What we want is only that Ginling continues to train Christian leaders and to develop for great service to humanity; whoever holds the rein makes no difference to us. —President Wu Yifang, letter to the GCC, March 29, 1928

. . . I am death on women’s institutions with their petty spites and trivial concerns. —Esther Tappert, a faculty member of Ginling’s English department, in a letter home

I

n this chapter, I will focus on three significant events of Ginling in the years 1927–37: the 1927 Incident (that is, the Nationalist government’s takeover of Nanjing and its aftermath, called by Thurston “the Tempest of 1927”); the transition of college leadership; and Ginling’s fight for independence. The year 1927 marked a turning point for both China and Ginling. The Guomindang (GMD) Northern Expedition Army drove out the warlord army from Nanjing in March and established it as the capital of the Republic of China. For the first time in more than a decade of civil war since the Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1911, a unified and prosperous nation seemed possible. Indeed, from 1927 to 1937, the Nationalist government gradually reduced the political fragmentation of China that had attended the end of the Qing dynasty, and established “the first modern Chinese sovereign state.”1 Moreover, it begot economic growth very similar to that of the postwar “economic miracles”

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in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.2 As some scholars have remarked: “There is reason to suppose that in the absence of Japanese invasion, the trend towards internal reunification” and economic reconstruction under Nationalist control would have continued.3 Chinese nationalism became “an overarching political imperative” that obtained greater popular support from both Nationalists and Communists, and from both Chinese men and Chinese women.4 But it also threatened the continued existence of Ginling College. Male Chinese intellectuals intensified their attempts to subjugate the women’s emancipation movement under the rubric of nation-building, and thus frequently denied women’s voices, especially their opinions on women’s education and careers. At the same time, student demonstrations against foreign “imperialism” further derailed the academic life of institutions of higher education. This chapter will delineate how the Ginling women grappled with the increasingly powerful nationalist discourses that attempted to recentralize power and rebuild the base of government authority in education and other fields, and how the Chinese members eventually carved out a niche for themselves as bicultural and patriotic Chinese intellectuals. “The Tempest of 1927” not only brought traumas to individual missionaries in Nanjing but also threw Ginling College into unprecedented chaos. After the killing of the American vice president of the University of Nanking by looting soldiers, Ginling’s missionaries, together with the other American citizens in Nanjing, were ordered to evacuate by the U.S. Foreign Department. Although Thurston and most of her missionary colleagues chose to wait in Shanghai, the absence of the majority of the administrative staff and teaching staff seriously jeopardized the continuation of Ginling. Furthermore, after peace and order were restored in Nanjing, the Nationalist government increased pressure on all missionary institutions to register (li’an 立案) with its Ministry of Education, mandating requirements that in effect forced the missionaries to choose between the Christian foundation and the continued survival of their colleges in China. The negotiations that aimed to keep Ginling alive and vibrant under the new political regime—particularly those carried out by Mrs. Thurston and Wu Yifang, the “Ginling daughter” who returned to take the reins of the college—reveal the complex engagements of various political and cultural forces at this crucial historical juncture. A more volatile external environment inevitably changed the group dynamics within Ginling. A by-product of the government-promoted “Restoration of Educational Rights” was the intensified national push for coeducation in all institutions of higher learning. Whereas the turnover of Ginling to a Chinese leadership caused some initial awkwardness between

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the Chinese and American constituencies of the college, their unanimous wish to have it remain an independent women’s institution unified Ginling. Lasting until Ginling’s end in mainland China, this collective undertaking held together the “Ginling family” across racial and class boundaries more effectively than any other measures at a time of mounting tensions in national and international politics. Nevertheless, rifts inexorably emerged even within the Ginling family. The most strident voice of dissent came from Esther Tappert (Mortensen), who wrote copious letters and reports to express her disenchantment with Ginling, even assaulting its family rhetoric and its identity as a women’s institution. Tappert belonged to a younger generation of missionaries not enamored of the notion of selfless devotion to Ginling, an institutional ethos that for an earlier generation of missionaries had meant taking up an assortment of tasks if need be, regardless of personal qualifications or preferences. For Tappert, a “Christian living” that promised full intellectual and spiritual self-realization counted more than the collective “Christian enterprise” of preserving the Ginling family. She desired for herself both the right placement for her unique interests and talents and an indispensable share in the building of “Christian fellowship” at Ginling. Moreover, she was never awed by the senior members of the college, but rather felt belittled and “smothered by mothering” by those in positions of power. Tappert’s negative assessment of Ginling reflected the more individualistic pursuits of the younger missionary faculty members at Ginling, such as their ambitions for specialization and career advancement, even though few were as vocal and abrasive as she. Her dissatisfaction with the current state of Ginling and her own membership in it also partly reflected the changing power dynamics between Chinese and missionary faculty members at Ginling and other missionary institutions. Although no more ambitious than Mrs. Thurston was in her Yale-in-China days, Tappert did not have the same opportunity to assume leadership and call all the shots in a missionary institution. In any case, Tappert’s writings warrant some discussion because they not only contribute to a more rounded picture of the Ginling family through her exposure of its dark side, but also point up larger shifts in power relationships both institutionally and nationally.

t h e t e m p e s t of 1927 Before analyzing Ginling materials, some background information about the 1927 Nanking Incident will help illustrate the political stakes involved. The Northern Expedition, a military campaign aiming to extend the Nationalist power base from Guangdong Province to the Yangzi River,

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started in summer 1926. In a proclamation to the world issued in August 1926, Chiang Kai-shek, then the commander in chief of the Nationalist army, claimed that their goal was to “liberate China from the warlords and win its rightful place of equality among the nations, with friendship for all.”5 A self-styled pious Christian, he also responded to the concerns of an American journalist in a reassuring tone: “I have no quarrel with Christianity and missionaries will always be welcome as heretofore. The elimination of missions from China is not part of our program, and they may function in this country without interference as always.”6 Yet the nationalist movement was by defi nition against the political and economic privileges of foreigners in China. The national antiChristian movement that began in 1922, although initially not associated specifically with the Nationalists, gained support from both the Nationalists and the Communists. The propaganda employed by both parties during the Northern Expedition often charged missionary institutions with being “the tongues and claws of imperialism.” In some cases, destruction of missionary properties by Nationalist troops occurred during their march to the north. In mid-March 1927, the Northern Expedition Army launched their attacks on the lower Yangzi cities of Shanghai and Nanjing. The troops led by General Cheng Qian were charged with capturing Nanjing. The warlord troops of Sun Chuanfang retreated from Nanjing on March 23, and Cheng Qian’s troops entered the city during the night. According to accounts by foreign eyewitnesses, on the morning of March 24, 1927, the British, American, and Japanese consulates were ransacked, the British consul was wounded, foreign citizens were robbed, their residences were looted and burned, and several foreigners were killed, including one American: the vice president of the University of Nanking, Dr. John Williams. The same afternoon two American destroyers and a British cruiser shelled Nanjing to “assist the escape of some fifty foreigners,” killing, “according to separate Chinese investigations, four, six or 15 Chinese civilians and 24 troops.” Anti-foreign activities soon ceased, and order was restored after Chiang Kai-shek entered the city on the same afternoon. All foreigners wishing to leave were evacuated safely by the twenty-fifth.7 Accounts differed as to who was directly responsible for the Nanking Incident. Reports by Nationalist officers, including that of General Cheng Qian, blamed northern troops and local rascals dressed in Nationalist uniforms, while Western diplomats in China as well as Chiang Kai-shek’s faction within the Nationalist party attributed the attacks to Communist agitators. As will be shown below, the Ginling contingent, caught in the eye of the storm, also provided their accounts and interpretations of the Incident. As trauma narratives, their writings served a unique purpose in

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the construction of an institutional history. Although representing only an extraordinary and brief period of the collective institutional experience, they not only vivified the hardships and challenges missionaries personally experienced, but also, whenever possible, transformed narratives about hardship into myths about the triumph of human will or the miracle of divine deliverance. Yet individuals caught up in the traumatic events also found themselves deprived of initiative and selfdetermination. Not only were they subjected to physical suffering and life-threatening dangers, but they were also often forced to make compromises and relinquish their principles. Therefore, although representation of trauma theoretically allows the survivor to “mourn,” and hence creates “the possibility of engaging trauma and achieving a reinvestment in, or recathexis of, life which allows one to begin again,”8 the writings left behind by Ginling missionaries also betrayed acute emotional crises and psychological wounds. The official Ginling history recorded several miraculous escapes by the American missionary faculty amid the chaos of 1927. As Thurston told it, three times during the “fatal” morning of March 24, 1927, when the missionaries of Ginling hid in the faculty house, “things looked very critical and the college was delivered in a way that seemed like a real intervention.”9 The first time that Chinese soldiers and “rabble” came to Ginling, the Chinese faculty and students diverted them to the college physics lab, and claimed that they did not know where the foreigners were. The second time, a father come to look for his daughter and a brother (an officer in the Nationalist army) came to look for his sister, and the two helped to drive out the second wave of looting soldiers. The third time, just as the foreign faculty members had taken refuge in their last hiding place—the attic of the faculty house—a Chinese faculty member from the University of Nanking came. Guarded by him and a small group of soldiers led by a Nationalist officer, they went unmolested to the University of Nanking. At Bailie Hall at the university the Ginling missionaries stayed with all the other foreigners in Nanjing, who had gathered together waiting for evacuation from the city. After spending an uncomfortable night at Bailie Hall, the group of sixty men, forty women, and over twenty children were led to the Yangzi River, where they boarded several Western gunboats and left Nanjing for Shanghai, and, for many of them, from there to the United States. In her capacity as the official historiographer of Ginling, Thurston accentuated divine intervention, citing a student letter: “Ginling has been living on miracles . . . have faith Ginling will be living on miracles in the future. God surely will do what is best and we must be ready to help.”10

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Yet the more personal and immediate reports after the incident written by Thurston and her missionary colleagues revealed the psychological anguish that they had experienced. After boarding American gunboats, every American evacuee was asked to write a report of the Incident to be submitted to the US government later. In these reports, written individually or collectivley, the moods of the missionaries ranged from resentment, anger, fear, sorrow, and shame to pride and hope. The Ginling group had demonstrated their solidarity and independence as a group by at first unanimously resisting the evacuation order issued by the U.S. Foreign Department. They also all rationalized their eventual carrying out of the evacuation order as a decision made out of consideration for their Chinese colleagues and friends; thus, they invoked the discourse of the Ginling family even in an emergency. The reports authored by male missionaries were uniformly dramatic, but the female American missionaries of Ginling related mundane as well as unusual experiences, and they also chose a different emotional focus. Male missionaries such as G. Stanley Smith selected the foreigners’ march to the river as his dramatic focal point: That march of the foreign community from the University of Nanking to the river, has I think never been equaled in history. There were over a hundred men, women and children in the party—men and women of refinement and education; seekers after peace and goodwill among the people they had come to serve. The total of the years of unremitting service that was represented in that company—service to the Chinese people in hospital, school and church cannot be calculated. It was the best that America had to give to China and it was rejected, not by the people among whom the years had been spent but by the soldiers of the government that had promised to protect foreign life and property.11

Smith painted a compelling picture of the march by infusing his narration with a sense of injustice, tragedy, and self-righteousness. He contrasted the exile of the missionaries with both their personal worthiness (“men and women of refinement and education; seekers after peace and goodwill among the people they had come to serve”) and with their years of service and sacrifice in China. In so doing, he in effect both condemned the ignorance and ingratitude of the Chinese nationalists who had caused their sufferings and valorized their Christian consecration in their serene acceptance of persecution. Compared to this highly evocative account, the women missionaries’ descriptions of the Incident appeared rather prosaic at first sight. Emily Case, chair of the Department of Physical Education, called the march “remarkable,” but prefaced this remark with the description of

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mundane activities before their evacuation and highlighted the sense of the absurd rather than the tragic in the marching scene: “Two by two we marched, a few of the men keeping alongside to hold the group together and hasten our pace (reminded me a bit of class serenades at college, and the sectional song-leaders prancing up and down to keep us all in time!)” In contrast to her off hand attitude toward the march, she paid considerable attention to the normalcy of life before the political situation exploded. She recalled that they “had a splendid Hockey game on Tuesday [March 10, 1927] with several faculty members participating, to the music of the distant guns. Various friends who for various reasons had not evacuated with the others, dropped in for tea.” On March 11, the Ginling faculty members “were surprised by a visit from Anna Moffett and Miriam Null—the two girls at Ming-deh, the Presbyterian School—just out walking for their health! The fact that fighting on the streets with stray bullets flying was already reported didn’t seem to bother them.” Just like the two women who followed their routines despite the dangerous situation, the Ginling faculty showed their courage by carrying on as usual. Case reported that rumors of battles came to Ginling and female Chinese refugees flooded the Ginling gym. She wrote, “Finding the gymnasium the worse for wear after a night of refugees, I held my eight o’clock class in the Corrective Room, dividing the girls up and playing croquet in two groups. The game was new to them, and everyone was having a merry time—something of a reaction from the tension of the night.” Later, when in hiding with her colleagues in the faculty house, she “read a while . . . took a nap . . . [and] even danced a bit, until victrola music seemed inadvisable—(fiddling while Rome burned, you might call it!).”12 The fact that Case included such details of everyday living in an official report to her government signified not her interest in triviality, but rather her valiant attempts to preserve normalcy in an emergency and, to some extent, to defy the predominantly tragic-heroic tone of her male missionary colleagues by insisting on seeing the absurd as well as the tragic in the Incident. However, behind Case’s gesture of intrepidity and independence also lay a complex tangle of emotions. Unlike the male missionaries who unanimously protested their righteousness and innocence, Case and her missionary colleagues at Ginling experienced conflicted emotions. Above all, they desired self-determination and personal dignity despite the constraints imposed by both the volatile political situation in China and by their domineering male compatriots. The women’s resistance to the evacuation order already demonstrated their independent mind, though they often expressed their desire for independence in the language of sacrifice and martyrdom. Thurston reported that no foreign faculty members

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wanted to leave Ginling, even when faced with the danger of looting and killing by soldiers. Their British colleague, Eva Spicer, also spent half the night on the phone trying to persuade the British consul to let her stay. However, they urged Esther Pederson to leave, because they “all felt she had no right to take the risk,” since she was engaged to be married.13 In differentiating her from the “regular” members of the Ginling family, they in effect categorized Pederson as a woman who had already relinquished her right of self-determination by virtue of her engagement. The American missionary women were of course oblivious to the irony embodied in their exclusionary attitude toward Pederson. Whether their attitude toward Pederson betrayed their biases against engaged and married women or testified to their protectiveness of a future nuclear family, their sentiment regarding Ginling was perfectly clear: they had originally decided to stay with the Ginling family in Nanjing, disregarding personal safety. After the missionary faculty members were escorted to the University of Nanking, they at first hoped to stay there only for a few days and then return to Ginling to resume their regular duties, because they thought this “tempest” would soon pass, just as it had in past wars and in outbreaks of contagious diseases in Nanjing. But as the political situation grew tenser, and the Chinese faculty and students at Ginling all urged them to leave, Thurston felt obliged to relieve her Chinese colleagues of the responsibility for their safety and welfare. However, she was by no means resigned to the decision made by the male members of the evacuation group: “As usual all the plans were made by a group of men and not until it was all decided were we told—even then we were barely told that we were to leave at once for the gunboats. . . . The mood of the men was one of impatience to get away and some resentment at our holding back.” She claimed that the women missionaries’ reluctance to leave Ginling resulted from their deep worry about the Ginling students: “We had lost nothing but were in the position of a mother being forced to leave her children behind and a number of us were ready to take the personal risk. When the Chinese faculty told us we had better go we yielded but it was a terrible pull on our heartstrings to leave.” But she also expressed feelings of frustration and impotence at being trapped in a situation beyond her control: “Personally I felt that we were in a place where we could not act as individuals. We were caught in a whirlpool and carried along by the current. . . . International complications were already serious and it seemed better for all foreigners to leave the city.”14 Thurston’s firm pacifist stance was also shaken by her experience in 1927: “After a night on a concrete floor a sailor’s bunk seemed the lap of luxury and in spite of my disapproval of gunboats in general I felt that in

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such a situation there were some things worse than that particular boat.”15 This last comment may be seen as her attempt at humor rather than the representation of her true feelings toward Western gunboats. But Thurston did blame the 1927 Incident solely on the Chinese army, ignoring the part played by foreign gunboats in inciting such nationalist fervor in the first place: “The worst militarism I know is that I have seen in China— militarism without discipline, soldiers who are a law unto themselves, who know no loyalty and no true patriotism.”16 Thurston’s mixed feelings of helplessness, anger, and sorrow were shared by her missionary colleagues, especially the plainspoken Case. Although highlighting her sorrow and anxiety about leaving the Ginling students and faculty behind, Case obviously felt more weighed down by the loss of her power of self-determination. She felt ashamed of her own physical cowardice: “I had always hoped that I would have physical courage when it came to a crisis, but I was sadly disappointed that morning. I felt nothing but a kind of nausea, and my mouth was too dry to talk. It was all so ignominious.” She also lamented her helplessness: “I have never felt so impotent, so completely in the grip of circumstance, before. If you are not at liberty to die for what you think is right, what freedom is there in this world?”17 Case’s disappointment with her own surrender of principle under duress—namely, that she could not die a martyr for Christianity for fear of causing international complications—in fact revealed her desire for the realization of herself through the Christian enterprise of Ginling. Case displayed an almost obsessive anxiety about proving the missionary women’s innocence to the Chinese people. For instance, upon hearing about American gunboats firing at Nanjing, she fretted about the impact that this incident might have on the Chinese mind: “There would have been no other need of anti-foreign propaganda in China for the next hundred years. We would have cooked our own goose.” She felt particularly troubled about the harm such an incident would do to the missionaries’ public image: “As it was, our Nanking friends saw us depart blameless, the victims of the sins of others, striving to show only Christian charity towards those who had cast us out. Had the gunboats fired, every remembrance of this would have been completely wiped out in the minds of the Chinese, and the Christian work of decades crashed to the ground.”18 Case apparently worried about the missionary cause in China. However, her fi xation on preserving the innocent appearance of the missionaries and her vivid delineation of her shame, anger, and impotence far eclipsed her mention of “the Christian work.” After all, this “party line” was added on, almost like an afterthought, at the end of her narrative. While Case may

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have desired moral and religious credit rather than material gains for herself, her narrative still revealed her motive of pursuing personal autonomy through the collective missionary project. While the American women shared their individual emotional experiences freely and liberally through their narratives, they also all concentrated on the depiction of the parting scene between them and their Chinese colleagues and students, rather than on the missionary march to foreign gunboats. On the one hand, they deployed the poignant narrative of the parting as their rationale for defying the evacuation order. On the other hand, through the very action of recalling and reliving their shared sorrow, they conjured up their cherished image of the Ginling family, and thereby exerted some control over their impending retreat even while being trapped in a state of powerlessness. This also explains why the Ginling women chose the parting rather than the missionaries’ march to the gunboats as their emotional focus. As has been mentioned earlier, the male members of the evacuation group such as G. Stanley Smith gave free rein to their sense of injured pride and abused innocence by accentuating the pathos in the marching scene. However, since the missionary women, as Thurston had pointed out, had been denied the power of decision-making in the whole business of evacuation, they naturally did not feel included in this “male” undertaking and refused to act the martyr like the male missionaries. Rather, they sought justification and self-determination elsewhere, in summoning up by words a close-knit community of Ginling. The more helpless they in fact were under the circumstances, the more urgent they felt the need to invoke the Ginling family as a defense mechanism. Case described as follows the scene at Bailie Hall at the University of Nanking when Ginling’s Chinese constituency came to visit and comfort them: “It was very moving indeed, as friend after friend and group after group came up the stairs to find their foreign friends and tell them of their grief at what had come to pass.” She continued, To most of that group I suppose the news [of the order to go to the gunboats] seemed heaven-sent. To us it sounded like a death-knell. How could we go off and leave those girls to face the dangers and the problems ahead without our support? Indeed why should we leave, now that our safety was guaranteed, and the city was really under control once more? . . . It was such a ghastly position to leave those defenseless girls in; the dangers ahead were so appalling; and we had tried so desperately [to] do the right thing. Something was terribly wrong somewhere. It did not help to talk to the girls. They said that we must go—indeed they

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were all as glad as we that day that there were gunboats to go to, for they felt that there was no safe place in the city for us, and they could not take responsibility for our lives. And yet I never to my dying day want to go through again the agony of that hour in Bailie Hall. Many of the girls were weeping unrestrainedly; some of them were trying to say comforting things to us; the Chinese faculty were talking desperately with some of our numbers about how they would manage financially, and what could be done for protection for the college. . . . the most serious cause for fear was the far more subtle dangers ahead, when they would have to cope with political and military powers, unaided.19

Case’s expression of deep sorrow and anxiety about the fate of their Chinese friends, together with her maternal tone and protectiveness, was echoed by her American colleagues, such as Thurston. Since the missionary women’s melancholy can be interpreted as expression of their sincere, selfless devotion to both the college and the larger Christian enterprise shared by all the members of Ginling, the parting scene provided for these women a far safer alternative than the marching scene. With the all too real presence of American gunboats and display of male chauvinism by their compatriots, the march provided examples of American imperialism and gender discrimination as glaring as those of Chinese militarism. However, the selective focus of the missionary women’s narratives did not lessen the emotional force that such narratives commanded, especially since the Chinese faculty and students also joined in the undertaking of constructing a discursive Ginling family by evoking powerful emotions through their narratives. By sharing feelings of loss, confusion, sorrow, and love, the Ginling group reinforced the family rhetoric that yet again came to their rescue when the college was under siege from external forces. Liu Enlan, of the class of 1926 and chair of the geography department, wrote: “I looked at them [the foreign faculty] but I could not find any word to say. . . . They did not want to leave us. But they must not stay. We must part. There was nothing we could do. The family wept together. I could not weep. The sight I saw pierced my heart. Never had I seen so sad a scene. I was not myself. I lost all my feelings. Everything there seemed so remote, they were like stories which I have once read. Even the fact of their departure also appeared to be like something very remote. The people seemed so far away even when we were holding each other’s hands.”20 Not only did Liu describe the complete “loss” of herself in the collective sorrow and thus pay tribute to the Ginling family, but she also explicitly invoked familial metaphors in her narrative: “My nation in spite of her faults and failures, I love. My brothers [Chinese compatriots] in spite

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of their ignorance and sins, I love. My friends kind and true I cannot but love. Why should hatred enter in I cannot understand. Why? Why? Why could not the world live in love and peace?”21 Liu spoke from the location of a Chinese citizen yearning for universal love between her compatriots and her American friends. In an inadvertent gesture of reciprocity, Minnie Vautrin staunchly defended the Chinese people’s innocence in this travesty, even attributing “the wild stories [ . . . ] concerning the assaulting of women” to some American women’s unnecessary hysterics when the looting soldiers searched for valuables on their persons. Vautrin spoke with triumph about how the missionaries “were saved by the old family system which has controlled China for centuries, for an officer of the Nationalist Army, immediately upon his entrance into Nanking, came over to Ginling to see if his sister was safe.”22 In so doing, she not only tried to vindicate her longtime staunch defense of traditional Chinese values but also delineated a Ginling family that transcended the boundaries of institution, race, and class. Indeed, Vautrin depicted a Ginling family that had not only brought forth the best of both Chinese and American cultures—just as the missionaries had originally promised when establishing the college—but would also outlast temporary setbacks and carry on. Preserving a cohesive Ginling family through their construction and dissemination of evocative narratives, the American faculty members all expressed not only their strong wish to stay and weather the storm with their Chinese friends, but also their gratitude for their Chinese friends’ courageous protection of them at great personal risk. Case even attributed their miraculous escape to the hard work of their Chinese friends the same way Thurston did to divine intervention: “We owe our safe arrival at Bailie Hall after all the narrow escapes of the morning chiefly to the fact that there was such a large group of Chinese friends trying to protect us.”23 One such devoted Chinese friend was her colleague Huang Liming, a PE instructor, who flatly refused to lead a group of Nationalist soldiers to the hiding place of the missionaries even when threatened with bayonets.24 Huang later recalled that her courage stemmed from the realization that it was a “life-and-death situation for the foreign faculty.”25 Anna Moffet, who was saved by a group of Chinese laborers after having been shot by looting soldiers, reportedly expressed similar appreciation of the Chinese people: “I [Vautrin] have heard Anna say many times since, that the things she remembers that day were not the shooting of the soldiers, but the kindness of the workingmen who were so deeply grieved by what had happened to her. Again and again they brought her bowls of their coarse food, and although she could not eat it, she tried her best in order not to make them feel she was ungrateful.”26

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For American missionaries, such manifestations of courage and love from the Chinese people signified Chinese recognition of their years of hard work and sacrifice. As a student rightly, albeit somewhat naively, put it in her report of the aftermath of missionary evacuation: “In short, the campus—equipment and students are objects to be admired now in this city by all the newcomers. Ginling has never failed. Ten years hard work so mean something to the public. Please rejoice with us.”27 In acknowledging the amazing acts of their Chinese colleagues and students, the missionary women also derived pleasure from what they perceived as the fruits of their labors. This in turn gave them confidence and hope in an apparently desperate situation. As Mary Treudley aptly stated: “When we see such courage and the confident assurance of our alumnae that the spirit of Ginling must triumph over all obstacles, can we do anything else but nail our colors to the mast, and keep on?”28 It can be seen that the accounts of the 1927 Incident produced by both the American and Chinese women of Ginling not only counteracted the trauma but also converted it into something life-affirming. They fashioned a tale of the rebirth of Ginling, rising from the ashes of destruction like a phoenix and soaring once again, and a testimonial of the American missionaries who saw the “thrilling record of Ginling alumnae in all sorts of difficult and even dangerous positions”29 as the greatest validation and reward of their missionary work. At the same time, the American missionaries also implicitly justified their pursuit of self-determination in this emergency (albeit expressed as an ardent wish for martyrdom) by invoking their collective enterprise of missionary education.

m o t h e r a n d dau g h t e r Interestingly, although missionary accounts of the 1927 Incident highlighted the devotion of the faculty, students, and alumnae to Ginling during a time of political and social chaos, other sources showed that the Chinese students and faculty did not always share the negative missionary view of the nationalist movement. When the Northern Expedition started in July 1926, some students expressed enthusiasm about how the impending revolution would oust warlords and unify China. They especially took to heart the message of “Restoration of educational Rights.” As Thurston obliquely mentioned in the official history Ginling College, “Towards the end of the term [of fall 1926] a certain element of strain developed. Some outside influences were working on the students stirring up a spirit of criticism. They were urged to send ‘demands’ to the faculty.”30 After the Nationalist troops entered Nanjing, some students were also eager to join

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the National Women’s Association under the leadership of the GMD. As one of them explained, “[W]e join this Association because we want to help the women of China. We also want to let the ‘party’ know that we are the women leaders of China.” They also voluntarily organized groups to study Sun Yat-sen’s “three principles of the people” (sanmin zhuyi 三民主義). One of the Chinese faculty members in charge in the emergency obviously supported these students. She defended their action by arguing: “We get high credit by letting girls work in different organizations. I know people will not agree on that but as a matter of fact you cannot maintain an institution and not let your students share in the movement.”31 As will be shown below, most Chinese faculty members shared the concern to make Ginling viable under the GMD regime, and later joined in the efforts of its second president, Wu Yifang, to have Ginling join the mainstream of Chinese society. We can see even at this early stage that the Nanking Incident of 1927 forced the American missionaries out of positions of power and provided the Chinese faculty and students with the opportunity to take on new roles of responsibility and leadership. Three Ginling alumnae, in particular, stepped in to run a summer school on the Ginling campus. Liu Jianqiu, of Ginling’s first class of 1919 and a doctor in practice in Shanghai, acted as general manager and college physician. Deng Yuzhi, a junior secretary of the Shanghai YWCA and later general secretary of the YWCA in China, took charge of student life, while Yan Lianyun, also residing in Shanghai at the time, administered the academic side of college. With all the missionaries absent, the Chinese faculty and alumnae hired additional Chinese instructors to keep classes going in order to save Ginling from occupation by the Nationalist army. Complying with regulations issued by the Nationalist government that required a majority of Chinese members on the governing body of any missionary institutions, a new Board of Control was constituted in May 1927, with Xu Yizheng elected as the chairman of the Executive Committee. This committee subsequently nominated Wu Yifang as Ginling’s new president. Wu Yifang was eventually appointed as president by Ginling’s board of trustees. On September 22, 1927, after eight missionaries returned, Ginling opened for its fall semester, but Thurston still resided in Shanghai for the time being. The Executive Committee in effect took care of the daily running of Ginling until Wu Yifang returned from the Untied States to assume the presidency in summer 1928. Although the miraculous escape of the American missionaries perhaps made for a more action-packed narrative, the psychological drama involved in the reconstruction and self-adjustment of Ginling following the trauma of 1927 proved no less captivating. The efforts of Thurston and

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Wu Yifang, involved directly in the transition of the college leadership, demonstrated the bond and the elasticity afforded by the family discourse. In contrast to Wu’s adroit discursive maneuvers in the discussion of her upcoming presidency, Thurston’s writings at this time show the inner struggle she was experiencing. However, their narrative motives prove remarkably similar if seen in light of the dominant institutional discourse of the Ginling family. Wu’s role as the new “head of the family” required a strong showing of self-confidence and capability in order to reunite a college community in distress. Thurston, as the exiled former head of the family, could only preserve her dignity and reaffirm her connection to Ginling by providing an account of her indomitable will and willingness to sacrifice herself despite personal pains. My discussion below will accentuate the different problems they faced during the period of transition, with Thurston holding on to her dignity and dreams for Ginling and Wu Yifang seeking to stabilize the college. However, their shared concerns and discursive strategies will also be elucidated. These two major actors were separated by the Pacific Ocean in the “fatal days” of 1927. As mentioned above, Thurston chose to reside in Shanghai after her evacuation. She described her departure from Nanjing as “a mother being forced to leave her children behind” and claimed that she experienced “a terrible pull on [her] heart strings.”32 But the time following her evacuation felt even more trying because of its uncertainty: “It was not possible to plan ahead. We lived from day to day, up one day, down the next.” She claimed that her ability to see two sides of the same issue was a curse in the large national context, “for the extremists on both sides counted you their enemy when you wanted to be a friend and a reconciler.” Her decision to retain most of the American faculty members in preparation for the opening of Ginling in fall 1927 also earned her criticism from even within the Ginling group, though she valiantly argued: “We took a risk of incurring a big addition to our deficit by not releasing teachers, but we took a bigger risk of being unprepared for work in September if we let them go.” Not only did she encounter challenges to her decision from her missionary colleagues, but the living conditions in Shanghai, with nineteen faculty members keeping house together, also psychologically taxed her; she liked her privacy. Some bitterness inevitably crept into her narrative when she stated: “Ours in Shanghai lacked the inspiration of dangerous moments” compared to the Nanjing contingent. Thurston stayed away from Ginling most of the time between her evacuation and Wu’s inauguration, except for short trips for Commencement, Founders’ Day, and the Christmas of 1927. Even after her return to Ginling as an advisor in 1928, she felt herself to be “in a situation of considerable embarrassment.” She

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said, “A good many of my ex officio duties were taken care of by committees and I felt a good deal of the time that I was a kind of fifth wheel. There was no lack of welcome, and in personal relations with faculty and students, no embarrassment, but on the official side it was awkward.”33 While emphasizing the psychological anguish she had suffered in order to demonstrate her self-sacrifice and spirit of cooperation, Thurston also invoked the family rhetoric to justify her refusal to take an early retirement, as had been suggested by the Ginling College Committee in the United States: I thought of it [her decision to stay on at Ginling] in terms of work to be done and wanted to help. Others thought of it in terms of official dignity to be guarded. One letter argues “As a rule a child does better when not under the eye of its parent. . . . It would be very difficult for Miss Wu to act independently; to do her own thinking; to want and ask for your advice and yet not always follow it.” Analogies are not arguments of course. My personal experience made me argue quite differently, for I was inspired and not at all repressed by my father who from the time I was sixteen treated me as an equal; and I thought I could do the same in relation to my grown up daughter. Foreigners are sometimes over sensitive and very self-conscious in regard to the transfer of responsibility to Chinese leaders. A good many of the finest Chinese would prefer to have it done without making it seem so difficult: done because it was the natural thing to do. In a recent letter one of our alumnae writes, “I believe in Chinese leadership but . . . I am tired of hearing from our foreigners. ‘This must be Chinese, and that must be Chinese’; the most irritating thing is to hear them say they had better quit, or they had better not do this or that because a Chinese should do it. . . . I think it all depends. Each case must be analyzed on its own merits.” This is “Chinese opinion” more characteristic of the best in China than the radical ideas of those who would rid China of foreigners and take over all schools as centers for their propaganda. Ginling students protested the idea of my leaving. I think they felt that it rather outraged the family feeling which is strong at Ginling. Chinese families hold together, and older and younger generations fi nd room in the home.34

Thurston’s intriguing narrative conflated several different types of family analogy. The American headquarters emphasized the independence of the “grown daughter,” trying to persuade Thurston to leave Ginling in the best interest of the new president and the institution. Thurston, however, countered this traditional American wisdom with her

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own experience as an independent daughter who had been nurtured and inspired by a father who had treated her as an equal since the time she was sixteen; she stated that she was able to treat Wu with the same kind of respect and support. Not only did Thurston in effect dismiss the family analogy used by the American office as “no argument,” but she also went so far as to adopt the Chinese point of view and call her fellow Americans “foreigners,” and to criticize their unnecessary “sensitivity” about the transference of leadership into Chinese hands. In so doing, she distanced herself from the majority American view at home and, instead, allied herself with the “Chinese opinion more characteristic of the best in China” that regarded the transition as a natural result of years of preparation and development rather than as a loss of Western power and dignity. Thurston took the Chinese side not just because she wanted to help Wu Yifang “carry a load which had been more than [she] could carry alone”;35 but, equally important, she also claimed power for herself when characterizing herself as an insider of an alien culture, able to make more informed and wiser decisions than the Ginling headquarters in the United States because of her long years’ experience in the mission field in China. That Thurston chose to demonstrate her independence and indomitable will to the Ginling College Committee even under the uncertain circumstances of 1927 should present no surprise, given her uncompromising personality and a past history of plain dealings and even clashes with the GCC.36 In fact, Thurston had opposed Ginling’s registration with the Nationalist government at first and cautioned against making any sweeping changes such as constituting a Chinese-majority Board of Control, though she had supported the board’s nomination of the Ginling alumna Phoebe Ho as vice-president before the Incident.37 When asked by the GCC to resign and leave Ginling to make room for the new Chinese president, Thurston expressed her sense of outrage: “I feel as if I could understand a loyal minister of the Emperor who had been commanded to commit hari-kari [sic].”38 She felt appalled by the cavalier attitude of the GCC not only because the American headquarters seemed to doubt her integrity, but also perhaps because she questioned the GCC’s ability to make judgments about the situation in China when they were thousands of miles away. After all, when she tendered a resignation by five key Western members and herself to the new Executive Committee of the Board of Control on May 11, 1927, the board thanked them for their willingness to cooperate but chose not to accept the resignation. Therefore, Thurston’s invocation of the Ginling family in her rebuttal to the GCC not only expressed her loyalty to the “family,” but actually also demonstrated her power derived from the support of the now Chinese-dominated Board

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of Control, who, in her opinion, represented true Chinese opinions and sentiments. Seen in this light, Thurston’s reaction to the GCC revealed that the discourse of the Ginling family could help individual female missionaries in the field to claim power from their headquarters in the United States despite the missionaries’ rhetoric of self-sacrifice for the Christian cause, just as this discourse aided Chinese women to break away from the tyranny of traditional gender conventions in Chinese society. This is not to say that Thurston did not feel genuinely moved and encouraged by the Chinese students and faculty members who urged her to stay on at Ginling. She saw herself in the light of a beloved family matriarch who could both offer her support to the younger generations and, in turn, receive respect and love from the junior members of the community. Whether such a self-image showed more wishful thinking than a clear view of Chinese reality is a matter of opinion. The GCC, for instance, doubted the genuineness of Chinese emotions, while her missionary colleagues Vautrin and Chester supported her version of the story.39 In any case, the American and Chinese members of Ginling were fully caught up in the moment and sincerely viewed their actions in this critical period as contributing to the life-and-death struggle of holding the Ginling family together. As had happened before, a perceived external threat to the college served as an effective unifying force. The antiforeign actions of the Nationalist army and the stories of their looting and killing (though none of the Ginling members had experienced such horrors at first hand) both created the sense of shared hardships at Ginling and added romance and adventure to its comparatively tame college life. As the faculty and the students gave free rein to their emotions in their writings during this period, the sentimentalism and hyperbole of their narratives also fed Thurston’s emotions. The rhetoric of the family was able to come to the rescue of Ginling in a time of emergency precisely because it generated such selfreinforcing emotions. While Thurston removed herself and settled into a rented house in Shanghai, together with several of her missionary colleagues, Wu was at the last stage of completing a doctorate in entomology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor: she had been there since 1923, funded by a Barbour Scholarship for Oriental Women from the university. Wu Yifang’s own family background and personal experience up to that point can shed some light on not only her psyche but also on the kind of family and cultural heritages of her generation and class of Chinese women. Wu was born in January 1893 into a declining scholar-official family in Wuchang, Hubei province. Her great grandfather was a hanlin 翰林 (one who has passed the civil service examination at the national level and then

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was made into an official of the Imperial Academy) in the Qing dynasty; her grandfather a juren 舉人 (one who has passed the civil service examination at the provincial level), and her father only a xiucai 秀才 (one who has passed the civil service examination at the county level). In her own words, she was a progeny of “a family in which each generation was inferior to the preceding one” (yidai bu ru yidai 一代不如一代).40 Fortunately for her, a childhood of genteel poverty did not prevent her and her older sister from attending new-style schools in Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Suzhou, though this was achieved only after her older sister’s radical act of a suicide attempt. However, just as they were enjoying their school life at the well-known Laura Haygood School for Girls (Jinghai nüzhong 景海女中) in Suzhou, a mission-founded all-female school, family tragedies dealt her serious blows one after another. Because of a charge of embezzlement, her father drowned himself. Within the space of a few months in 1909, her older brother and older sister committed suicide, and her mother died of grief. She had to start supporting herself, her younger sister, and her grandmother by teaching English at a local school at the tender age of sixteen. Several years later, with her uncle’s financial help and kind encouragement, Wu was able to enter Ginling College in the spring semester of 1916, a semester later than her classmates and only as a “special student,” because she had not received any official diploma from high school. However, her hard work soon made her the top student in class and earned her official admission by summer 1916. Meanwhile, she also formed a lifelong friendship with Xu Yizhen, an outgoing and warmhearted classmate from a Christian family in Shanghai, whose influence led to her baptism in 1916. At Ginling Wu distinguished herself with not only her excellent academic performance but also her leadership skills. She was elected the first Chair of the Student government at Ginling. In 1919 in the May Fourth Movement she halted her preparations for graduation exams in order to lead Ginling students in political rallies, fund-raising, and demonstrations against the corrupt warlord government. After graduation from Ginling, she taught English at the Beijing Women’s Normal High School (later Beijing Women’s Normal University) until she left for Ann Arbor. In contrast to Thurston’s painful retreat from Nanjing, Wu had been enjoying a happy and productive graduate school experience. Not only did she excel in her studies, but she also continued to participate in her nation’s political life even from overseas. In 1925 she organized Chinese students to send money and articles back home to support the Chinese demonstrations against Japanese imperialism after the May Thirtieth Incident (see chapter 2). In 1926 she made herself known at Michigan with her protest

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against the visiting Australian prime minister. In front of an audience of more than four thousand people at Michigan, this dignitary claimed that China had never been an independent modern nation, and that neighboring Asian peoples should immigrate to China to reform it. Declaring this “a great insult to the Chinese people,” Wu immediately submitted an article of rebuttal to the student newspaper, the Michigan Daily. She thus became well-known among her American professors and classmates as an excellent student and a patriotic Chinese.41 On the personal level, she was keeping house with her younger sister, Wu Yiquan, and their female cousin, a daughter of her beloved uncle, both of them also attending the university. In addition to the Chinese family of three that she was able to enjoy, Wu Yifang also became good friends with “Bunny” Welch, the wife of her dissertation advisor, Professor Paul Welch in the biology department, and was a favorite of their little daughter, Anne Louise.42 In 1927 Wu Yifang was completing her PhD dissertation in order to graduate the next year. Meanwhile at Ginling, Wu’s former Ginling classmate and lifelong friend, Xu Yizheng, recently made chairman of the Executive Committee, nominated her as Ginling’s new president. Thurston wrote in Ginling College that in order to comply with the government requirement of Chinese control of the college, the Executive Committee recommended to “the Board of Control and through them to the Ginling College Committee that Miss Wu Yi-fang be invited to become President of Ginling College.”43 The Board of Control acted on the Executive Committee’s recommendation and nominated Wu to the Ginling College Committee, which subsequently elected her to that office on January 13, 1928. Wu arrived in China in June 1928, and assumed administrative responsibilities on July 1, 1928. Thurston returned to Ginling with the title “advisor” in 1928, after having worked at the temporary Ginling office in Shanghai since March 1927. She would act in the capacity of treasurer, building supervisor, admission officer, and registrar, as well as advisor to the college president, starting in 1928. Yet, Thurston’s cut-and-dry chronicle of events presented above by no means told the whole story. For example, she did not mention that Wu Yifang was not her first choice, and that she originally supported another Ginling alumna, Phoebe Ho, for vice president of Ginling (see chapter 2). In fact, it was Dr. Cora Reeves, professor of biology and chair of the biology department at Ginling since 1917, who highly recommended Wu, a fellow Michigan alumna. Some even argue that Wu became Ginling president because the strength of Reeves’s recommendation eventually convinced the GCC.44 But Xu Yizhen undoubtedly played a crucial role in Wu’s presidency as well, in view of their lifelong friendship and Xu’s own reminiscences later (see chapter 2). Given the revisionist

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nature of the official Ginling history, the various other types of writings left behind from that period will help us to recover the fascinating psychological drama that had been carefully edited out by Mrs. Thurston. First of all, the votes of the Board of Control record the diverse opinions on the election of Wu Yifang as the next Ginling president. Although only one of the twenty people (nine of them Chinese) outright opposed the appointment of Wu, many of them voiced concerns and reservations about such a radical change. The one forthrightly disapproving member, Mr. Roberts, played the fi nance card: “I disapprove of the idea that Ginling must immediately have a Chinese President and a Chinese majority on the Board of Control, unless the fi nances can be borne by the Chinese.” Roberts expressed his opinion in a manner more candid than most, but other members also indicated their hesitation one way or another. One American member questioned Wu’s “qualifications of consecrated Christian leadership.” A Chinese member thought Wu’s years of absence from China may have alienated her from “the changing conditions in China right now,” while another Chinese had qualms about being misunderstood as “taking advantage of this present circumstance” if a Chinese president were instituted immediately. Even those who approved the recommendation of the Executive Committee did so conditionally. One American member suggested that they give “Miss Wu a thorough trial but would hope that some limit might be set to her trial term of service.” Another expressed more resignation than enthusiasm about the appointment, saying, “[T]he step seems to be inevitable and demanded by all of the circumstances now shaping affairs in China.” A third member voted for the motion only because she advocated “the principle of replacing foreigners with Chinese in positions of executive importance” and saw it necessary to “hurry up such changes in view of the present crisis.” The Chinese members of the board also shared the American members’ concerns about Wu’s appointment. One of them suggested that they “invite Miss Wu as vice president for a period of two years in order to readjust herself to this present perplexing condition in China and train her up to take bigger responsibility in future.” Granted, the Board members also acknowledged Wu’s credentials, such as her “unusual mental and personal qualifications,” “the additional advantage of study in America,” and “her intellect and social standing.”45 Yet the recorded votes showed that the board’s approval of Wu’s appointment was based more on considerations of expediency and pragmatism than on their genuine confidence in Wu Yifang’s leadership abilities. Seen in this light, Wu’s immediate accession to the presidency of Ginling can be characterized as a political decision reached after a series of negotiations

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among several major players: Ginling’s American sponsors, the Nationalist government, and the newly constituted Chinese Executive Committee that had unequivocally expressed to the Board of Control the “full confidence of the alumnae” in Wu Yifang. Since most of the American board members had had no previous interactions with Wu, their hesitation about appointing Wu was understandable. Still, when the letter of appointment reached her in Ann Arbor, Wu faced potential conflicts between Ginling’s Chinese and American constituencies regarding her suitability for the presidency. In fact, Thurston also expressed concerns over Wu’s lack of administrative experience, as if having forgotten that she and her husband also had had no experience whatsoever when they were sent to Changsha to establish the Yale-in-China program.46 Wu could actually lay claim to a wealth of organizational and administrative experience even though she had never worked as president of a Chinese college. She had been teaching at Beijing Girls’ Normal School in 1914–15 before entering Ginling. Before she set sail for the United States, she had returned to teaching at Beijing Women’s Normal High School, later Beijing Women’s Normal College, and had been the chair of their English department in 1919–23. In the United States, she was chairman of Chinese Student Christian Association in the USA in 1924–25, and vice chairman and acting chairman of the Chinese Student Alliance in North America in 1925–26. Yet, rather than touting her personal qualifications to the GCC, her correspondence with them showed an impressive combination of tact, meticulousness, conscientiousness, and iron will. Anticipating the lack of confidence in her personal abilities harbored by various parties, Wu volunteered to take on Ginling’s presidency as a trial. In a long letter dated May 29, 1928, sent to Miss Elizabeth Bender, the secretary of the GCC, she explained that she had offered to do so not because of “a fear of external hardships” but out of the concern that she could never “develop into an administrative worker and become equal to the task.” She continued: While I realize that some chance qualifications, such as from the first class, made me appear well fitted, I do not forget my own weaknesses and how I may never be trained to be a president. Since Ginling calls me to fill the need, I am willing to make a trial. When I asked for the right to resign if I fail after the period of trial, I meant it to hold in other direction, too—that is, the [Executive] Committee or Board [of Control] do not need to hesitate to remove me if they find it is time for me to go. Please do not misunderstand me, this is not any sacrifice on my part. I

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am not unselfish enough to forget my personal career or future. It is only because by chance I can start on my cherished line of work—teaching— when I give up administration; it will not be my failure and I have not the least worry as to where to find work.47

Although Wu Yifang appeared to have a very humble opinion of her personal worth, we should not overlook the way in which she deployed such humility. While attributing her appointment only to “chance qualifications” and thus apparently dismissing her own credentials, she also emphasized her willingness to serve Ginling despite having serious qualms. In so doing, she not only used the language of self-sacrifice instead of expressing her desire for mobility and power, employing typical missionary rhetoric,48 but also left herself a way out by characterizing in advance her possible resignation or removal as her personal choice. Her subsequent remarks about her preference for teaching rather than administrative duties actually supplied her with two ways of self-empowerment. First, she implied that for her it was more a sacrifice to take on an administrative position than a teaching one, and thereby underscored yet again her devotion to her alma mater despite her personal predilection. Second, her comment that removal from office, should that be necessary, “would not be [her] failure and [she has] not the least worry as to where to find work” expressed her self-confidence in her own qualifications and a future of gainful employment, and thus also subtly declared her independence from the board’s decision. Yet Wu proved her maturity as the future Ginling leader not so much by demonstrating her independent will as by expressing her understanding of the American perspective and insisting on honest communications across the Pacific Ocean. She declared herself “greatly inspired by the attitude of the Mission Boards toward the future work in China.” As if having heard Mr. Roberts’s belligerent comment about the link between finance and control, she highly praised the “true” Christian character of the mission boards: “While it is only natural for true Christians to do so, yet according to general practices the governing power goes with the financial support, and the missionaries have had the control for so many years; we thoroughly appreciate the great sacrifice the missions and missionaries have made.” Wu’s expressed admiration for the mission boards and individual missionaries not only acknowledged and validated their continued support, but also, by characterizing this as an act of “sacrifice,” united the Chinese constituency with the American missionaries under the glorious banner of “true” Christian living. Nevertheless, moving from first person singular to the plural, Wu also spoke from a clearly

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defined location of power because of her popular support among the Chinese constituency: “What we want is only that Ginling continues to train Christian leaders and to develop for great service to humanity; whoever holds the rein makes no difference to us. I used ‘us’ here, because it is the attitude of the alumnae.”49 Presenting herself as the spokesperson of Ginling’s Chinese group, Wu aimed not so much to show her power as to reconfirm the venture of training female Chinese Christian leaders jointly undertaken by Chinese and American women, and thus to mollify and motivate her American audience. She thus carved out for herself a niche at Ginling: a Chinese leader with a unique bicultural perspective who could function as a bridge between two distinct cultures. Later experience would show that this was a position of both considerable power and vulnerability. Having conveyed both her personal opinion and the common sentiment of the Chinese group to Ginling’s U.S. headquarters, Wu completed this virtual statement of intention with a clarification of her leadership style. She vowed to introduce changes only after “a thorough consideration,” for “it seems only sound policy to keep the best in the institution and to build on slowly to this substantial foundation.” In light of the general cultural conservatism of the missionary faculty members and mission boards, this kind of reassurance would not have gone amiss. She also stated her preference for the honest expression of opinions, claiming, “It is only in the spirit of frank discussion and mutual trust that I can work at all, and that we may expect for any accomplishment.” As for the delicate issue of Mrs. Thurston’s future role at the college, Wu expressed her personal inclination to invite her to stay on (she said she would “need her help”) but immediately qualified this offer by pointing out the need to consult with the faculty, alumnae, and students of Ginling. She said she felt she must “disregard the personal and consider the problem from the viewpoint of the institution” in handling this issue now that she had been elected president.50 This important letter demonstrated Wu Yifang’s rhetorical agility even though she was writing in a language other than her mother tongue. By considering the issue of her presidency from the personal, the institutional, and the international perspectives, she not only reassured her audience through an impressive demonstration of her own mental clarity and emotional maturity, but also disarmed them with her ability to see things from their point of view. While this letter convinced the American supporters of Wu’s balanced vision for Ginling’s future, her other correspondence with the GCC during this period also illustrated her meticulous attention to details. She appeared to be very scrupulous about financial matters.

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For instance, she offered to travel back to China by second class instead of using the first-class fare the GCC had sent her. When the GCC disagreed, she insisted on refunding “proportionately of the total amount, and not on the basis of second class rates,” as the they had proposed, if she “should serve Ginling less than three years.”51 Wu also reported to the GCC her visits, originally suggested by them, to Smith, Mt. Holyoke, and Western College in order to “learn from each institution its general organization and policy, and the outstanding work of each of its various offices.”52 In so doing, she further reassured the GCC not only of her thorough preparation, but also of her willingness to accept guidance and constructive suggestions from Ginling’s American headquarters. After all, she followed their advice and returned to Ginling’s original American models in order to ensure the stability and policy consistency of a Ginling administration under her leadership. Wu’s interactions with the GCC at this early stage, including both correspondence and personal meetings, proved so successful that Thurston later wrote in a somewhat sour tone about it all. She said, “Miss Bender [of the GCC] wrote that she [Wu] has won their love, admiration, and confidence which gives her a big advantage over me from the start, for they had never shown me that I had any of these.”53 From the above analysis, it can be seen that just like Thurston, Wu accentuated her bicultural identity and insights in order to gain both independence and support from Ginling’s American headquarters. Although the two women apparently displayed different attitudes toward and formed different relations with the GCC at this point, Thurston likewise expressed to the GCC her understanding of the Chinese point of view to prove the rationality of her decision to remain at Ginling. Not only did these two women both emphasize their bicultural position, they also deployed the same rhetoric of sacrifice when stating their opinions about the transference of leadership; both accentuated their willingness to set aside personal pride or preference for the sake of the institution and of the Christian enterprise. Not only did their claim of cross-cultural perception make them appear to be astute and capable leaders, but the highlighting of their spirit of service also testified to their Christian character, and thus enabled them to collect moral as well as intellectual credit. However, rhetorical effectiveness does not always promise smooth personal interactions. It is therefore important to examine the process through which Wu emerged as a strong leader, and replaced Thurston as both “the head of the family” internally and the embodiment of Ginling to the outside world. Therefore, we must look at the way Wu led the battles to maintain Ginling’s independence

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as an all-female Christian institution at a time of rising nationalist fever in the late 1920s.

c o op e r at ion, e qua l i t y, a n d p o w e r : g i n l i n g’s b at t l e f or i n de p e n de n c e i n t h e 1920 s Wu Yifang arrived in Nanjing on June 8, 1928. Interestingly, Thurston at first felt a little disgruntled that Wu had to split her time between Ginling and her uncle Chen Shutong’s home after she had already repeatedly postponed her return because of her doctoral dissertation. Thurston observed, “Men seem to have cleared the way more completely so that career has the right of way but, married or unmarried, women seem to be expected to put family into a place of higher claim. We want Miss Wu at Ginling after waiting all these months. Her uncle feels that he has waited six years and altho [sic] he does not press his claim she feels it.”54 But more serious challenges awaited Wu than the mere competing demands of her family and her duties to Ginling; and among them was the strained relations between Ginling’s American and Chinese constituencies at the time. Yet, despite such challenges, Wu Yifang eventually brought about the “sinicization” or “indigenization” of Ginling College—that is to say, she worked to turn Ginling into an institution widely accepted in Chinese society.55 Wu Yifang’s efforts to put Ginling into the mainstream can be seen in various aspects of Ginling’s college life after her inauguration. For one thing, the number of Ginling’s Chinese faculty members increased sharply. Whereas foreign members constituted about 70–80 percent of the whole faculty between 1915 and 1926, reaching the highest point of 93 percent in 1923, after 1927 Chinese members made up more than 50% of the faculty. Between 1927 and 1937, the period of the outbreak of the full-scale Sino-Japanese War (1937–45) and Ginling’s evacuation, Chinese members usually constituted two thirds of the faculty, with the only exception of the year 1934, when foreign members made up 42 percent.56 Wu Yifang also gradually increased the number of admitted students from non-missionary public and private secondary schools in order to “enroll qualified students and avoid misunderstandings by society.”57 Although the change in student population was not as dramatic as in faculty composition, missionary secondary school graduates did decrease from 87 percent in 1928 to 66 percent in 1935.58 But more crucially, Wu Yifang very much cherished her Chinese citizenship, even as she both proclaimed her bicultural location and sought to inculcate cosmopolitanism into her students by promoting collaboration across the borders of race and nationality at Ginling. This self-conscious

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racial identity in turn determined the different way she administered Ginling and interacted with the Chinese authorities. As mentioned earlier, Wu had organized patriotic activities during her student years in both China and the United States. Furthermore, she also claimed that her “most agonizing experience” was witnessing the commercial ships and gunboats of “British imperialists” sailing safely in Chinese waters, while thousands of Chinese refugees were exposed to the Japanese air raid on December 3, 1937.59 Thurston must have sensed Wu’s persistent though often understated nationalist feelings, for she once complained that Wu’s cultural and racial biases had not been changed by her conversion fourteen years ago, and that Wu always evaluated things from the viewpoint of “a Chinese aristocrat.”60 Yet Wu Yifang had the full support of her Chinese colleagues and students in involving Ginling in the patriotic movements of the time. As Chinese citizens without the protection of extraterritoriality and therefore more deeply affected by Chinese political affairs, the Chinese faculty and students understandably were more sensitive and responsive to the national milieu than the foreign missionaries were. But more importantly, they sincerely wished to contribute to national salvation despite their missionary affiliation. As can be seen from their responses to the Northern Expedition mentioned earlier, at least some members of the Ginling community supported the GMD. Moreover, students’ previous enthusiastic participation in patriotic programs also signaled that they yearned to play an active role in their nation’s fate. After 1927, they envisioned greater and more positive involvement for themselves. Rather than merely attacking a morally bankrupt and weak warlord government by holding demonstrations as they had in the past, it seemed that the time had come for them to join in the reconstruction of China and help usher in a new epoch of Chinese renaissance. The rising racial consciousness and nationalist sentiment of Ginling’s Chinese constituency called for Ginling to change its relationships with the outside world, especially with the Chinese government. Ginling under Thurston appeared more like an American enclave whose senior members socialized mostly within foreign missionary and Chinese Christian circles, and whose outreach efforts focused on serving and evangelizing poverty-stricken Chinese families in the neighborhood. The warlord government in Nanjing played no significant role in shaping either Ginling’s curriculum or campus culture, to judge by the scarcity of any mention of interactions with the government. We receive the impression that Ginling’s missionary faculty and administration concentrated on building a liberal arts curriculum based on an American model and in cultivating a family spirit within Ginling, while

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perfectly content with (and, indeed, desiring for) the lack of government involvement. Thurston, for example, admitted in a letter dated November 4, 1930 that she had had little to do with the world outside of Ginling before 1927: “I thought when I came back to Nanking this time that I would try to identify myself a little more with the Community than I had in the past.”61 However, this high autonomy enjoyed by Ginling was destined to be a thing of the past after the GMD established their national capital in Nanjing. For one thing, the movement for the “Restoration of Education Rights,” in ferment since 1922, now found a centralized government leadership that could implement concrete policies to ensure results. The GMD already published Sili xuexiao guicheng 私立學校規程 (Regulations for Private Schools) in 1926, classifying all missionary institutions as private institutions as opposed to state-funded public (guoli 國立 or shengli 省立) ones. In 1928 they further decreed that the majority of any board of trustees for private institutions should be Chinese, with a Chinese chairman or director, and that all foreign-founded institutions should have a Chinese president. In 1929 the government published a new Regulations for Private Schools to replace the 1926 version, and made a series of amendments to it in 1933, 1943, and 1947, increasingly tightening its control of college administration, hiring, and curricular design. The GMD even outlined their policies regarding funding for private institutions in their 1931 constitution, Zhonghua minguo xunzheng shiqi yuefa 中華民國訓政時期約法.62 Against this background of increasing government control of higher education, the Chinese faculty and students at Ginling proved no more immune to the general nationalist sentiment than their compatriots not affi liated with missionary institutions. As Thurston observed with resignation to the GCC, the Chinese faculty members were “first Nationalists and then Christians” in the heady period immediately after the Nationalist government was established in Nanjing.63 All signs pointed to the necessity of fundamental changes for Ginling. That is to say, in order to survive under the new political regime Ginling needed to modify the paradigm of an autonomous, relatively secluded, elite all-women’s liberal arts college adopted by the missionaries. It fell on Wu Yifang’s shoulders to navigate the treacherous waters of both external pressure and potential internal racial confl icts, and to lead Ginling back to stability and prosperity. On the one hand she had to tackle pressure exerted by a central government aiming to gain more control of missionary education, while on the other hand, she also needed to reunite a Ginling community not only scarred by the trauma

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of the 1927 Incident but also struggling with changing racial composition and power dynamics—all while settling into her freshly minted presidency. What took place was indeed a tale worth the telling. Internally, Wu Yifang successfully established a productive working and personal relationship with Mrs. Thurston despite the heightened racial awareness within Ginling in the politically fraught atmosphere following the 1927 Incident. At her inauguration, for example, she insisted that tributes paid to Mrs. Thurston by various constituencies of Ginling make up a significant portion of the program. As a result, although Thurston did not like the title of “advisor,” which she thought ill defined her position and work at Ginling after the transition of leadership, she was very gratified by Wu’s thoughtfulness. She commented, “One cannot help being pleased when such sentiments are a sincere expression of affection, and some measure of appreciation of what you have tried to do. It would have been more timely to . . . let this be Miss Wu’s day, but they seemed to like to join us together in this way and I think it was Miss Wu’s wish to have it so.”64 Similarly, Wu orchestrated the elaborate celebration of Thurston’s sixtieth birthday in conjunction with Ginling’s twentieth anniversary in 1935, causing wide publicity as well. North China Daily News, for instance, reported in an article entitled “First President of Ginling College Honored in Connection with Twentieth Anniversary”: “This came as a complete surprise to Mrs. Thurston.”65 Although Mary Waelchli argues that Wu’s true sentiment towards Thurston was difficult to ascertain because of different impressions left by her and Xu Yizhen,66 Wu at least proved her mettle as a tactful and successful administrator in her dealings with Thurston. Wu also averted potential conflicts resulting from the disparity in compensation between the Chinese faculty members and the American ones by invoking the powerful family discourse that demanded individual sacrifice and promoted group solidarity. As a result, although Ginling did not adopt a uniform salary schedule as Yenching University did in 1930,67 it also did not encounter as serious a “salary quandary” as Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), a Johns Hopkins-style medical school established by the Rockefeller Foundation in Beijing. As Mary Bullock has remarked, “[S]eparate salary scales perpetuated the relative affluence of the foreigner, with unavoidable psychological discrimination.” At PUMC the Chinese employees harbored “a certain envy” toward their higher-paid foreign colleagues, which damaged the harmony between the two racial groups. More seriously, because of the unstable exchange rate in 1930 the mission boards decided to pay missionary faculty salaries in gold while Chinese faculty continued to receive their compensation in local currency. This policy further widened the gap between the two salary scales, because it

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virtually doubled the buying power of foreign faculty members. At PUMC the Chinese faculty members were understandably outraged.68 At Ginling the Chinese and foreign faculty were also paid on different scales. The salary report of the year 1937–38 showed that a missionary with the title of full professor and department chair received $2,851 for annual salary, while a Chinese member with the same title and years of service only received $1,880.69 Senior missionary faculty members such as Reeves and Chester received over $200 per month, while Chinese faculty members, even senior members such as Wu Yifang and Liu Enlan, were paid under $200 a month. With the exception of professors endowed by the government, such as Chen Zhongfan, chair of the Chinese department, who could expect an additional monthly stipend from the Nationalist government, the Chinese faculty members were typically compensated far less. For instance, a “returned Ginling daughter”— namely, a newly graduated alumna who remained to teach at Ginling— was paid less than $100 a month.70 However, Ginling experienced less conflict regarding this issue than PUMC, thanks to the able administration of Wu Yifang and also because of the dominant institutional ethos of the Ginling family. In her letter written to the GCC dated March 11, 1930, Wu Yifang mentioned that although the Finance Committee of the Associated Boards recommended paying foreign faculty in gold, the Executive Committee of Ginling’s Board of Control did not accept this policy. Instead, it “passed a different action” that paid imported goods in gold without changing the payment method of missionary salaries. Wu Yifang acknowledged the foreign faculty’s selfless consideration that brought about this decision: “Our foreign faculty felt that they did not wish to have an increase so long as there was not a general increase in the salaries.” She also stated her position: “Personally I never felt that this adjustment as suggested by the Finance Committee meant a salary increase, and that it would cause any feeling of discrimination by the Chinese. It is true that the living expenses in general are higher for everybody because of the low value of silver, but comparatively, it certainly affects the foreign group more.” She apparently upheld the unequal salary scales at Ginling, for she took missionaries’ adherence to a Western lifestyle for granted and endorsed their higher living standards, while dismissing any possibility of Chinese resentment if the new policy of salary payment were to take effect at Ginling, as it had in other missionary institutions. However, in the same letter she also stressed consensus and shared goals within Ginling regardless of race by simultaneously comparing Ginling with its missionary peers and highlighting the self-sacrifice of Ginling faculty for the common good:

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“As for the salary scale in general, we knew . . . that ours was comparatively lower than that of the other mission institutions, but with the large deficit in the budget we did not feel that we could propose any salary increase.” Wu Yifang thus presented to the American headquarters a united Ginling family that placed institutional interests above personal gain. But she remained alert to the ramifications of Ginling’s relatively low salary standards, for she also urged the GCC to look into this issue especially, because “three of [Ginling’s] faculty members have been offered positions elsewhere with higher salaries.” Therefore, it can be seen that in her dealings with Ginling’s American sponsors concerning the salary issue, Wu Yifang again adroitly represented herself as a strong leader of a united Ginling family who nevertheless kept the best interests of individual faculty members as well as those of the institution at heart. Not only did Wu Yifang succeed in averting conflicts caused by the thorny issue of different salary scales, but she also led Ginling in two major campaigns to maintain independence in the 1920s. During this period, the college was fighting against both what the missionaries perceived as government interference with the fundamental Christian character of the institution and the coeducational movement that gained popularity and threatened to absorb all-women’s colleges. Although Wu Yifang played a more prominent role in dealing with Ginling’s registration with the Nationalist government, her support of Ginling’s fight for preserving its status as an all-women’s college should not be underestimated, either. It must be noted that she relied on Thurston’s more aggressive style in fighting against coeducation, and stated her support in a no less resolute, albeit milder, way. Wu Yifang tackled the two battles differently in the 1920s because of the different levels of urgency involved. While the registration issue had to be handled immediately, the fight against coeducation proved a long-range undertaking. The Chinese government presented a more direct challenge in the former, but Ginling’s fellow missionary institutions, especially the University of Nanking, posed a greater threat to Ginling’s independence in the latter. Thurston and her fellow missionaries had at their disposal a wealth of experience in dealing with Ginling’s missionary peers, while nobody could replace Wu in dealing with the Nationalist government in light of her nationality, her position as Ginling president, and her impeccable credentials. Therefore, it would be both a more rational division of labor and a more effective use of her time for Wu Yifang to play a lesser role in Ginling’s battle against coeducation in the 1920s, when she had to wrestle with more immediate crises. She did step up her leadership in the battle against coeducation in the 1930s and 1940s, though.

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Fighting Against Coeducation. Along with the rise of nationalism came intensified promotion of coeducation in institutions of higher learning in China in the 1920s. For radical Chinese intellectuals of the time, coeducation represented the modern trend in education. They regarded it as not only an important tool to break down thousands of years of gender segregation in China but also a necessary step to strengthen and modernize China. In their headlong rush toward modernization, they tended to ignore women’s voices, disparage any opposition to coeducation as an indication of conservatism, and refute different opinions in political and moral rather than in pedagogical or intellectual terms. Interestingly, the missionary institutions in China were also engaged in a fierce and lasting battle over this issue among themselves, with men’s and women’s colleges divided along gender lines. As Gael Graham points out: “The conflict over coeducation is one of the rare instances of documented gender conflict among missionaries in the field. . . . The fact that they were willing to reveal their differences over coeducation to their home boards shows how deep those differences were.”71 Male missionaries approved of coeducation in Chinese colleges. They praised its efficacy in developing natural social relationships between the sexes, demonstrating the intellectual equality of women to men, enhancing “moral” behavior, and even preventing underage and premature marriages.72 However, female missionaries insisted on “woman’s work” as a separate sphere. Of the three women’s missionary colleges, the North China Union Women’s College (Huabei 華北) eventually merged with Yenching University and moved onto their campus, but not before the women had fought a prolonged and bitter battle that resulted in the ouster of Luella Miner, the dean of women at North China, and the nervous breakdown of her successor, Alice Frame. Apparently, John Leighton Stuart, the president of Yenching at the time, purposely failed to fulfi ll the conditions that the women had laid down for their merger. The other women’s college, Hua Nan (華南), refused to merge with Fukien Christian College, and Hua Nan’s Chinese president, Lucy Wong, wrote bluntly in 1929: “We who are working in the field know very well that they [the male institutions] want to swallow us.”73 The missionary women’s adamant wish to remain separate and independent can also be seen at Ginling. In 1927 the University of Nanking declared itself coeducational and admitted its first group of nine women, while offering large scholarship inducements to future women students. The long-standing covert competition for students and resources between Nanking and Ginling came out into the open. Newly returned to Ginling in September 1928 after her exile

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for one and a half years in Shanghai, Thurston sent to Margaret Hodge, chair of the GCC, a confidential report discussing the issue of cooperation between Ginling and Nanking. This document shows not only the gender ideology and education philosophy that Thurston shared with her female missionary colleagues, but also the deep-rooted rivalry and at times personal conflicts between the two neighboring missionary institutions in Nanjing. According to Thurston’s report, possible cooperation between the two institutions involved issues ranging from social relationships between the male and female students of the two schools, to the best approach to facilitating Chinese women’s intellectual development, to the rights of allwomen’s institutions, to the religious life at the institutions, to the Christian faith or lack thereof of individuals at the two colleges. Thurston wrote as a leader of a women’s missionary institution, a seasoned educator who had worked in the field of Chinese women’s education for several decades, and a female missionary devoted to the idea of “woman’s work for woman.” However, she also wrote with fresh memories of her recent traumatic experience in the 1927 Incident on her mind, which she partly blamed on the “University [of Nanking] group.” Thurston’s report thus showed a mixture of tones: vitriol, pride, sarcasm, and self-justification. Thurston spoke more frankly than usual in expressing her disapproval of the program of cooperation between the two institutions currently under discussion. In her cover letter to Hodge, she criticized it as “the product almost entirely of the male mind which stresses organization and financial efficiency and proceeds by a steam roller process over the feeble effort of women to modify the program.” She described her report as an objective representation of facts. Although only three other people besides herself had seen the report—Ruther Chester, Harriet Whitmer, and Ellen Koo (of the music department and the only Chinese of the group)—she assured her audience that she had “fairly represented the Ginling side of the case.”74 Following the cover letter, the body of Thurston’s report opened with a brief review of the history of Chinese women’s modern education and a comparative study of American and Chinese men’s attitudes toward coeducation. Thurston emphasized that women’s missionary colleges had been the first to admit Chinese women until “revolutionary ideas” had opened the doors of some government colleges to women. Even so, she argued, these coeducational institutions tended to follow the fashion in order to appear “progressive” rather than took women’s special needs into consideration. She accused the missionary institutions that had started coeducation of showing, at best, a serious lack of courtesy and consideration and, at worst, of possessing an unchristian-like thirst for power. She pointed out that the women’s institutions were not consulted at all before

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coeducation was adopted in the men’s institutions. For Thurston, this signified an action of betrayal that resulted in the sudden drop of student enrollment at Ginling. Although Thurston still managed to keep her equilibrium when describing the general picture of coeducation in China, her tone turned considerably more heated at the mention of Ginling’s archrival, the University of Nanking, and her attack became increasingly personal. For instance, she charged that the male students’ push for coeducation had been motivated by self-interest: “Men students, like the men in political life, want to have women around. They want to know girls of the college type, they want them to join in their activities.” Moreover, these men’s chauvinistic behavior belied their high rhetoric of women’s liberation: “They make a certain demand for cooperation; but always it seems to be a desire to have women fall in line with their program, attend their movies, take part in their social entertainment and enliven their dull lives.”75 In view of the male-centered nature of the May Fourth nation-building project and Chinese society in general at the time, Thurston’s accusations sounded entirely plausible; in truth, even “progressive” male intellectuals often used the figure of the “new woman” to advance their own agendas rather than allowing Chinese women to fashion their own independent modern experience.76 But Thurston’s character analysis of the “progressive” male intellectuals of the time took a more personal and perhaps even more incisive angle. Thurston felt little sympathy toward young men’s wish for freedom in marriage, since she saw their romantic pursuits as the cause of the collapse of traditional morality. In her self-appointed defense of Chinese morality and “old-style” Chinese women, she even took the new leaders of the Republic of China to task, for Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek had both divorced their “old-fashioned” wives and married Song Qingling and Song Meiling respectively, both graduates of women’s liberal arts colleges in the United States. Thurston did not spare the American-educated male Chinese intellectuals, either. She criticized their ignorance of American women’s history, claiming that they had only attended “the big state universities or Columbia” in the United States, and therefore “knew nothing of the woman’s college movement, and of its contribution in America.” Moreover, she implied that they, just like Sun and Chiang, were “men in official positions who want a wife who can figure in public life as the old style Chinese woman cannot,” and who frequently tried to lure female Chinese missionary students away from their studies with marriage proposals.77 Thurston’s acerbic remarks about the ulterior motives behind Chinese men’s promotion of coeducation may seem to have trivialized the

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coeducation movement in modern China. Her scorn of modern male Chinese intellectuals can also be attributed to the culturally conservative attitude of the missionaries. Ruth Chester, a professor of chemistry and dean of studies, also shared Thurston’s suspicion of the motives of modern male Chinese intellectuals in promoting coeducation and free association between the sexes. She described a party hosted by the Nationalist Ministry of Foreign Affairs, newly installed in Nanjing, at which she met quite a few male American-educated government officials. She said of them, Several of these young men want us to give some dances over here! They are lonely and miss the kind of social life they had in the West. They think our students would like it if we gave them a chance, which shows how little they know of our students. I can just see their noses go up at the suggestion. They may be too conservative, but I don’t feel like being critical of any degree of social conservatism in China these days when at the best old standards are being swept away and many are going to wild extremes. If any group of Chinese can help slow down the change it is all to the good. The only trouble is that in all probability we shall be blamed for the conservatism of Ginling girls when in reality it is due to their own good sense and their real interest in more worthwhile things.78

Chester’s preference for “conservatism,” just like Thurston’s advocacy of “proprieties” as an indispensable companion of “freedom,” revealed one reason that Thurston opposed coeducation: the cultural conservatism shared by most missionaries at Ginling. Ginling women’s own experiences with the supposedly modern Chinese men also provided ammunition for Thurston. As mentioned in the last chapter, instances existed of independent-thinking Ginling students such as Mao Yanwen being jilted by their Western-educated beaus who preferred more malleable and younger companions. Ginling’s close contact and years of competition with the University of Nanking also caused Ginling women, American and Chinese, to form universally unflattering views of the “University group.” This played a significant role in Ginling women’s rejection of the proposed merger. For example, in her report, Thurston claimed many irreconcilable differences between the two student bodies to argue against a merger. In contrast to the male students at Nanking, who in Thurston’s report appeared chauvinistic, radical, and destructive, the Ginling students were supposedly “a naturally conservative group in social matters, having much more regard for family ideals, and more appreciation of the finer things in Chinese culture, while at

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the same time, they are not narrowly nationalistic and also appreciate the best things in Western culture.” Thurston particularly emphasized the two “fundamental differences” between the two student bodies. First, while the Nanking students craved female companionship and romance, “a very large majority of [Ginling students] are not particularly interested in boys. Romantic love has not featured in marriage relations in China, and marriage in itself has no special attraction for the woman who has intellectual interests.” Second, Nanking’s lack of Christian character was a source of acute discontent for both the Ginling faculty and students: “There is more loyalty to the church and more appreciation of the Christian heritage among Ginling students, although they are not blind to the faults of organized Christianity as they know it in China. Here, too, as in the matter of patriotism, they are prepared to be constructive rather than destructive.” Overall, Thurston depicted Ginling as a distinctly residential college regulated “by the rules and regulations of a well ordered home. Faculty and students live together in very happy relation to each other,” whereas Nanking admitted “a much less carefully selected body of students” who often disregarded faculty control and manifested more “anti-foreignism and destructive propaganda.” As a result, the student life at Nanking was “not regulated” at all. Ultimately, Thurston condemned the University of Nanking for its perceived role in encouraging student demonstrations in order to undermine Ginling. She even accused her rivals at Nanking of lacking Christian spirit: “Nearly all of Ginling’s troubles have had their origin in the University. Pressure to have Ginling students take the same line as the University, threats of what would happen if they did not; and now this public criticism of Ginling which comes from the University group, adds to our feeling that there is a most unbrotherly spirit in the group.”79 In accusing Nanking of possessing an “unbrotherly spirit,” Thurston was perhaps also recalling the reactions of Nanking students to the incident of several Ginling students dancing with British naval men at a tea party in 1927 (see chapter 2). As Liu Enlan told it, the university students erected verbally abusive posters near Ginling after the party, denouncing the Chinese women as “foreign slaves” while calling for the demise of foreign faculty members: “Down with Mrs. Thurston and Miss Vautrin for disgracing Chinese women by letting them dance with foreign soldiers.” Nanking students also published articles attacking Ginling in their University Weekly. Citing previous snubs by Ginling faculty who disapproved mixed seating at Sunday chapel or romantic walks of Nanking and Ginling students, the author ranted: “Their foreigners are despising even the highly educated people of China. They think that even their soldiers are better than Chinese University boys.” In response, Liu commented

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scathingly, “They are sore because they are not having as much social intercourse with the Ginling girls as they crave for. . . . Their constant fusses over Ginling just reveal more and more of their unmanliness.”80 Although Thurston expressed regret over the dance incident, commenting “I wish they [Ginling students] hadn’t done it,” she placed full blame on Nanking students for creating and spreading malicious rumors about Ginling. She went so far as to make up a new version of “East is East”—“Oh, He is He, and She is She / And never the twain shall meet”—to describe the fundamental and irreconcilable differences that she saw between male and female students at the two institutions.81 Since the Ginling faculty and administration, Chinese and American, shared a negative view of the male students of Nanking, they understandably revolted against the idea of a merger between the two institutions. Thurston did speak to a common sentiment of the Ginling group, therefore, when she rejected the proposed merger in her report. However, by painting the University of Nanking as a place of anarchy, destruction, and an assortment of unscrupulous practices, all in all a virtual den of iniquity, Thurston spoke more in the tone of an outraged mother protecting the virtue of her chaste daughters than as a coolheaded educator. Thurston obviously felt strongly about Ginling’s “right to exist as a Women’s College,” just as she believed in the necessity for Chinese women to have their own space, to “work out their own solutions to various problems of life unhampered by the domination of masculine authority and point of view.”82 But more importantly, she also considered Nanking the archvillain in many of Ginling’s past upheavals, and felt anxious to distance Ginling students from such a source of contamination. Yet in so doing, she also failed to give credit to the critical faculty and the decisionmaking ability of her beloved “Ginling daughters”; instead, she portrayed them as gullible creatures susceptible to being duped by Nanking men’s mendacious propaganda. Speaking again like an overprotective mother, in the same report Thurston also took exception to any hint of criticism of her cherished Ginling students. She protested against Cressy’s report to the Associated Boards that assessed missionary education in China and promoted more specialized professional training in missionary institutions (see the introduction). Thurston argued that Ginling students did not lack either intellectual interest or keen awareness of the current political situation in China. Rather, “with the four years they are less insistent on specialization and purely utilitarian courses than men,” and “the girls are just as responsive but they have a much more balanced and truly practical and constructive reaction.”83

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The missionary women’s battle against coeducation revealed what Graham has called “the paradox of Christian gender ideology” adopted by female missionaries—namely, “only by separating their work from that of men could women missionaries maintain the illusion of equality between the sexes.”84 However, the way it was waged at Ginling also presented another revealing example of how the trope of family was effectively deployed in major ideological battles internally or externally. Thurston did not misrepresent herself when she claimed to speak for the Ginling family, for not only did her American and Chinese colleagues agree with her summary of the situation in the 1920s, but Ginling also continued to fight the battle for the preservation of its independence well into the 1930s and 1940s and up to the point that the college was dissolved by the Chinese Communist government. Of course, Ginling and Nanking did make attempts at cooperation, following the edict of the Associated Boards, who wished to streamline and economize missionary education in China. Yet logistics, personality clashes, and gender and national politics often made such cooperation full of pitfalls. In the Ginling Newsletter written in October 1933, Thurston reported: “Because of our new plan of cooperation with the Univ. of Nanking we are beginning our classes fifteen minutes earlier and they are making the compromise of putting their chapel at noon so we have not had to change that.” Moreover, with regard to the two curricula, “Of Ginling students 23 are taking work in the Univ. of Nanking and 14 University students are taking work at Ginling. . . . The cooperation affects . . . all 230 courses . . . which students from the two institutions are having together.” However, she by no means backed down from her position of independence: “For ten years, since we moved to the new campus, there has been some cooperation between the two institutions but we are trying now to plan together for the advanced courses so that there will be no need to be duplication and so that we may have fewer small classes. This is on the basis of two equals working together.”85 In the same frankly worded report to the GCC written in September 1928, Thurston defended Ginling against criticisms from other male missionary institutions besides Nanking. She rebutted their allegation against Ginling’s supposed unfair monopoly of the best female students. First of all, she debunked Central China’s (Hua chung 華中) claim that Ginling had always had “first choice of the women students.” She claimed that Yenching did: “There is a general impression that Yenching gets first choice of all students, that Yenching has more of a reputation among the Christian colleges as a university.” Yet in her eyes even Yenching was no match for Ginling in academic quality: “Their catalog is padded, and . . .

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at any particular time, or in any period of two years, they do not offer all the courses which are listed.” Ginling was also criticized by male institutions for lowering their entrance standards in order to attract more students, a charge to which she responded as follows: “I see no reason why in our present crowded condition, we should be tempted to lower our standards to fill our ranks. All the colleges have probably had to lower their standards somewhat during the last five or six years, because the middle schools have lowered theirs, and it is not a wise procedure to leave too wide a gap between the college and the middle schools.” Thurston then directly accused her missionary brothers of sour grapes: “There is a good deal of competition for women students, and perhaps one reason why Francis Wei [president of Central China] is sensitive is that Central China has made a bid for women students from schools that were sending a fairly large number to Ginling.” As for the University of Nanking, Thurston explained, very few of Ginling students chose to transfer or even take courses at Nanking, and most of those who did had done so out of personal grudges or preference for male instructors, hardly a reflection of the quality or effectiveness of a Ginling education.86 Thurston’s explanation of some Ginling students’ defection, however, did not always reflect what these Chinese students thought, for some did believe that Nanking had a faculty with more solid academic and scholarly training.87 This report thus reflected not only Thurston’s all-out fight against all male institutions to defend Ginling’s independence, but also her strategy of personalizing political conflicts and exposing the less-than-righteous motives behind the male missionaries’ criticisms. Although American missionary women, especially Thurston, may appear to have taken the lead in Ginling’s vocal and adamant opposition to merging with Nanking, they enjoyed the full support of Chinese students and faculty, with Wu Yifang as their strong leader. Needless to say, Wu Yifang was put in a difficult position in this battle, caught as she was between fighting for women’s rights and devotion to the nationalist cause, between exhortations to struggle for independence by female American missionaries and exhortations to adopt coeducation by her male Chinese compatriots. She relied on missionaries such as Thurston and Chester to use aggressive discursive tactics to defend Ginling, perhaps taking into consideration both their past experience of dealing with Ginling’s missionary peers and the indemnity and license provided by their foreign citizenship. However, she also explicitly expressed her support for this Ginling campaign. In 1931, she emphasized to the missionary B.A. Garside, who had proposed a plan to merge all missionary colleges in East China in 1928, that Ginling was not just any missionary institution. Rather, she

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said, it fulfilled the unique goal of educating a large number of Chinese women who shunned coeducational institutions.88 In 1933 in a letter to the GCC, she again accentuated the “unique position” of Ginling in providing Chinese women with a modern education: “In Christian education we are one of the two colleges for women in China, but because of the geographic location of Hwanan [Hua Nan] College it is serving mostly the Province of Fukien [Fujian], and Ginling is serving practically the whole [of] China. If we take the college education for women in general we find that the Ministry of Education will not attempt to establish any separate college for women because of all the government universities [that] are now coeducational.”89 This was followed by her instrumental work in winning for Ginling an independent charter from the regents of the State University of New York during her trip to the United States in 1935. This declaration of independence ended Ginling’s days of sharing the “provisionary charter” of the University of Nanking since its founding in 1915 (see chapter 1), and thus in effect foreclosed the possibility of Ginling’s merging into Nanking as a dependent unit. The missionaries also acknowledged Wu Yifang’s leadership role in this battle, and reported to her their continued efforts after 1935. As late as 1943, the fight between male and female missionaries over the issue of merger and coeducation still raged on. In a report to Wu Yifang about a missionary conference on postwar reconstruction, Ruth Chester described the way Francis Wei of Central China challenged Lucy Wong, president of Hua Nan: “Dr. Francis Wei immediately asked for the reasons why we should have independent women’s colleges, so she [Lucy Wong] gave several reasons which were then supplemented by [those of Chang, or Zhang] Hsiang-lan [Xianglan] and by myself. Then Dr. Wei expressed himself quite definitely . . . [saying] that all of the things which we mentioned as important he felt were important but could be equally well obtained in a coeducational university, provided that the university really made serious plans for its women students.” As to the issue of maintaining the Christian character of the institution, a concern that Thurston had raised as one reason for her opposition to merging with Nanking, Chester reported with irony and disapproval: “As Dr. Francis Wei put it, ‘If you gave me all the money of Ford and Rockefeller put together, I still would not be able to find adequate Christian faculty with all the requirements that we would like to establish for such teachers.”90 In October 1945 Ruth Chester, Florence Kirk, Eva Spicer, and Marjorie Causer, all foreign faculty at Ginling in Chengdu, held an in-depth discussion of the future relationship between Ginling and Nanking. In a joint report to Wu Yifang they stated their unanimous belief in the necessity of

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at least one independent women’s institution in China, and therefore they vetoed the motion of the merger once again. They noted that in coeducational institutions women faculty members always suffered the glassceiling effect, since males were the preferred candidates for promotion and study abroad. As a result of such discriminatory practices, women could not build a strong core of senior faculty members who could then pay attention to the special academic and residential needs of their female students. Furthermore, they expressed skepticism about the practicality of true cooperation between Nanking and Ginling, because of the perceived irreconcilable differences in character between them: “Their regulations are absolutely fi xed, and admit of no alteration, whatever the circumstances of the case. We have our regulations, and try to enforce them in general, but we do admit that there are cases where changes may be made. . . . Since we are a smaller group, and women, considerable responsibility is still taken by the administration for dormitory life, and certain regulations have to be enforced there.” More serious for these female missionaries was the issue of maintaining Ginling’s Christian character, since they predicted that a merger would cause the dilution of the Christian character of Ginling, a relatively small college, by a sea of anarchist chaos at Nanking: “[A] complete merging with Nanking would lessen our Christian effectiveness without raising theirs.”91 Ginling’s wish to remain separate, equal, and independent even survived the grilling eight years of the Sino-Japanese War, thanks, in no small part, to Wu Yifang’s continued support and leadership despite the fact that urgent needs of national salvation and changing international political dynamics had considerably reduced missionary presence and influence at Ginling. For instance, Tsai Kwei [Cai Kui], then the chair of the Ginling Alumnae Association, wrote to the Ginling College Committee in September 1945, presenting a collective protest from the alumnae against a rumored merger with Nanking. Citing this kind of strong consensus among students, faculty, and alumnae, the usually soft-spoken Wu Yifang wrote to the GCC in unambiguous terms against the proposed merger. She even criticized Dr. William Fenn, professor of English at Nanking and a longtime adjunct professor at Ginling, who had written a report to the Associated Boards discussing the collaboration between men’s and women’s missionary colleges. Wu Yifang said it showed a “complete lack of understanding of women’s education.” Although allowing a “voluntary cooperation between the departments” of the two institutions, Wu ultimately asked for an outside arbitrator if a larger-scale merger were to take place: “If the Planning Committee in America does wish to see a plan of cooperation work out we must expect some representative from America

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to help us. As you both know the conditions in China very well and the relationship between Ginling and Nanking, it will be very difficult for President Chen [Yuguang of Nanking] and myself to work out any plan by ourselves.”92 The American and Chinese constituencies at Ginling, whether faculty members or students, united across the borders of race and class, because they acknowledged the importance of preserving a female space for the full self-actualization of Chinese women. Although the coeducation movement unfolded outside Ginling, its implicit male dominance often dismissed women’s unique needs and contributions in the name of nation-building. Given the relatively small number of female college students—they constituted only 17.8 percent of the college student population in 1947, despite a more than thirty-times growth from 192293— the women’s concern about being overwhelmed by male interests and dominance after any merger seemed entirely legitimate. Thus, Ginling’s fight for independence not only demonstrated a feminist strategy of “female institution building” (Freedman), but also contributed significantly to Chinese women’s education and career development at this crucial historical moment, a fact that has been recognized again and again by the alumnae after their graduation from Ginling.94 Owing to the unwavering, albeit often unassuming, support and leadership of Wu Yifang, the controversy over coeducation and a possible merger with the University of Nanking generated a sense of solidarity between different racial and class groups at Ginling. Wu Yifang played an even more direct and visible role in handling Ginling’s registration with the Nationalist Ministry of Education. Registration with the Ministry of Education. Ginling had encountered the issue of registration as early as 1925. Thurston had written in her annual report of 1925–26: “The question of registration of Christian colleges has been the subject of long hours of discussion in intercollegiate conferences, in faculty sessions and in informal conversations between upper class students. It is not for us at Ginling as serious a problem as in the men’s colleges, but we are not finding it easy to see how we can conform to the regulations of the government.”95 Ginling did not register at the time because the Ginling College Committee and the American missionary faculty found some of the terms of registration unacceptable. For example, in return for certain privileges in taxation and funding, the missionary institutions were required to have both a Chinese president and an administration and faculty with Chinese majorities. More troubling for the missionary faculty members, Ginling College could not “have as its purpose the propagation of religion” and its curriculum had to conform

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to the standards set by the Ministry of Education and could “not include religious courses among required subjects.”96 Ginling held off the inevitable for several years, but the missionaries had underestimated the depth of imminent political changes, and things came to a head after 1927, when the GMD began to put the might of the government behind the movement of “Restoration of Educational Rights.” With other missionary colleges already registered or ready to register, Ginling could not afford to dawdle further on this important issue. Ginling’s eventual registration with the Ministry of Education owed much to the efforts of Wu Yifang and the Chinese faculty at Ginling, who made pragmatism prevail over what they saw as American literal-mindedness. Wu wrote to the GCC detailing her rationale for making certain compromises in the wording of the college mission statement. She described the efforts of the Chinese faculty to have direct communications with the Ministry of Education in an informal consultation session with the viceministers of education, Wu Leichuan and King Chu [Zhu Jingnong].97 Wu and Zhu were Chinese Christians who would soon become president of Yenching and president of Cheeloo [Qilu], respectively. Wu first assured her American audience that the requirements of registration should not be perceived as anti-Christian. She reported that the representatives from the ministry explained to the Ginling group that the government’s refusal to register institutions with a clearly stated aim to propagate religion stemmed from their wish to separate religion and state and to ward off Japanese cultural invasion, for Japan had demanded the right to propagate Buddhism and had already established Shinto rites in Manchuria. Wu explained that if unregistered, Ginling would be denied many privileges, such as exemption from the tax on imported goods and equipment, and the eligibility of Ginling graduates to receive government funding to study abroad or to work in registered institutions. Wu regarded the latter as a particularly serious problem for Ginling. She indicated that Ginling’s enrollment would drop sharply if it did not register, since many missionary colleges had already taken the step to register. In another letter to the GCC written around the same time, she mentioned “a sort of competition among the Christian institutions, and we have to think of ways of attracting,” because “formerly Ginling was the only college for girls to come in[to] the Yangtze Valley, [but] now all the Christian Colleges, with the exception of St. John’s, are admitting women.”98 Wu raised the issue of enrollment as a compelling point of her argument not only because of its practical implications for the maintenance and growth of Ginling, but also because the acknowledged competition between Ginling and coeducational missionary institutions such as the University of Nanking would galvanize the GCC to see things her way.

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While adopting this pragmatic line of argument, Wu also alleged an accidental cultural difference to minimize conflicts between the two fundamentally different positions on registration adopted respectively by Ginling’s Chinese constituency and its American one. She cited Wu Leichuan’s reasoning that religion is essential to life, “but like our daily meals, [it] does not need to be mentioned in written words.” She claimed that such an analogy reflected “the general attitude of us Chinese in not attaching so much significance to words as our Western friends do; we are satisfied so long as the real spirit is maintained.”99 Wu thus paved the way for her argument to change the version of the mission statement previously passed by Ginling’s foreign faculty and the GCC, which, she predicted, would never be accepted by the ministry. On the other hand, Wu also emphasized that Ginling was facing increasingly stringent government regulations and more pressure from its own students to register with each round of deliberation and delay. As Wu Yifang told it, the ministry then required that Chinese members constitute two-thirds of the board, instead of the original simple majority. Ginling was not allowed to keep its Department of Religion and could only offer elective courses in religion in the Department of Philosophy, while the University of Nanking had been permitted to maintain its original curriculum and the religion department by virtue of its earlier registration. Having downplayed the political difference between Ginling’s Chinese and American groups and highlighted the urgency of the current situation, she proposed the ingenious idea of treating the problem of the mission statement as an internal housekeeping issue. In her plan, they could vote to change the name of the Board of Control in China to the Board of Directors and the Ginling College Committee in the United States to the Board of Founders. The two boards could then draw up an agreement between themselves to state Ginling’s institutional character and thus “conserve the Christian character of the institution” without openly defying government edict, while the Board of Directors could submit a version of the mission statement acceptable to the government. Following this plan, Ginling managed to sidestep the touchy problem of constitutional provision and dealt with the proclamation of Ginling’s Christian character as a matter of internal executive decision and implementation. The statement of purpose for Ginling was finalized as follows: “The Purpose of the Board of Directors is to conduct in Nanking a private institution of higher learning for women which shall conform to the highest standards of educational efficiency, promote social welfare and high ideals of citizenship, and develop the highest type of character, in accordance with the original purpose of the five Christian Mission Boards which were its founders.”100

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Wu explained to the U.S. office that the language they used—“in accordance with the original purpose of the five Christian Mission Boards which were its founders”—already implied Ginling’s Christian character without saying so much in words.101 She argued, “Personally, I do not consider using the alternative statement of purpose a compromise, although I should have preferred the clearly stated original one. I think that I understand fairly clearly both the Western and the Eastern mind and fully appreciate the difference between their conceptions of the importance of stating literally what one intends to do. The point we should fight is, it seems to me, any interference by the authorities with the actual maintenance of the Christian character of the institution.”102 Just as Emily Case did when talking about PE instruction, Wu cited a “fundamental” cultural difference between Chinese and American people to argue her case. However, while Case used it as rationale to tailor PE instruction to suit the needs of the less mature Chinese students as compared to their American peers, Wu deployed it to downplay the difference within the Ginling community and to claim for herself the decision-making power. She had highlighted her ability to see things from both the Chinese and American perspectives when discussing her presidency with Ginling’s U.S. headquarters in 1928, and Wu again invoked her bicultural location to justify the alterations in language that they had to make in order to register Ginling with the government. But here she took the Chinese side and pointed out to her U.S. benefactors the importance of picking the right battle to fight in order to ensure the survival and prosperity of Ginling in contemporary China. Thus, it can be seen that she also showed growing confidence in her own leadership and more autonomy in her decision-making, so much so that she completed the Ginling registration in November 1930, before she had received official approval from the U.S. side: “We realize that all of these changes in the Constitution and Bylaws should be approved by the Ginling College Committee before their final adoption, but as I have stated above, these changes were all recommended by the Government, and unless we comply with their instructions it will be necessary to withdraw our registration. Therefore the Board [of Directors] voted, authorizing me to complete the final registration of the College.”103 Considering that two-thirds of the Board of Directors consisted of Chinese members, Wu’s bold move also reflected the increasing power and influence of Ginling’s Chinese constituency in college life. However, in a gesture of paying tribute to Gining’s missionary origin, Wu also proposed to increase the number of members on the Board of Directors from twenty-one to twenty-four so that every mission board could be

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represented, while still complying with government regulations to maintain a Chinese majority. Wu’s adroit negotiation of Ginling’s relations with both its missionary supporters and the new Nationalist government under tumultuous political conditions confirmed her leadership ability to all concerned. This seemed even more remarkable, since she arrived at Ginling almost a decade after her graduation and at least six years after she last saw Nanjing, and was greeted by both the beautiful new campus of her alma mater and by widespread chaos institutionally, locally, and nationally. To reopen, Ginling needed to secure the goodwill of the Nationalist government and to appease a hostile local intelligentsia that had been bashing Ginling for its purported cultural imperialism and insult to Chinese national pride in the incident of Ginling students dancing with British naval men. Plunged into the maelstrom of political struggle on several fronts, Wu demonstrated her administrative skills through her successful handling of emergencies such as the issue of registration and the battle for independence. Although more and more missionaries were in favor of registration, not all things had gone as successfully or happily as in Ginling’s case. The University of Hangchou (Zhijiang 之江), for one, experienced conflicts between its American trustees and its Board of Control in China.104 Thus, Ginling’s smooth registration once again proved Wu’s tact and leadership skills, especially noteable considering that she had assumed presidency only a few months earlier. One distinctive feature of Wu’s leadership style was her ability to express understanding and withhold judgment regardless of her interlocutor’s position. For example, despite her nationalist sympathies, Thurston regarded her a comrade in the pacifist movement in the 1930s: “There is a good deal of strain in life these days for people like Dr. Wu—she sees the problems from both sides . . . while she does not side with Japan she sees how it looks to them, as well as to the Chinese.”105 Despite her final decision to stay and keep Ginling in China after 1949, Searle Bates, a missionary at the University of Nanking, sympathized with her during the Communist takeover of Ginling: “Subject to attacks because she is an earnest and a prominent Christian, who has been rendering constant service in the Executive Committee of the National Christian Council— frequently an officer—Dr. Wu does not have an easy path either as an individual or as President.”106 While her credentials, administrative abilities, and personality traits prepared Wu Yifang for a successful tenure as Ginling president, her personal connections with China’s political elite of the time, including the ruling Chiang and Song families, also positioned her well for a brilliant career

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as a public figure. Wu had a lifelong friendship with Xu Yizhen, Madame Chiang’s cousin by marriage, and she was personally invited by Madame Chiang to join in a daily prayer meeting at the fi rst lady’s house during China’s crisis with Japan in the 1930s. Chiang Kai-shek, like his wife Song Meiling, recognized Wu’s symbolic value as an American-educated female educator and administrator in modern China. He and his wife attended the Ginling commencement in June 1934, on which occasion he walked in the academic procession and addressed the student body, signaling his esteem of Wu Yifang and Ginling with his attention as a busy head of the state. He also often invited Wu Yifang to delicate negotiations with demonstrating students or to meetings with prominent foreign visitors. Whether due to her innate virtue or her symbolic value, Wu was “very much in demand in all kinds of movements for social and educational advance,”107 and she was often the only woman member on important national and international committees. More useful for Ginling, Wu’s political connections served her well as an administrator throughout various crises. For example, one of the first challenges faced her after her inauguration was that a GMD general wanted to commandeer the Ginling campus and make it the headquarters for the Shanxi warlord Yan Xishan. Wu sent a telegram to Xu Yizhen to ask her husband to speak with the foreign minister and thereby averted the crisis.108 Her political clout would also help her to protect student activists from GMD persecutions later (see chapter 5). Wu’s levelheadedness in complicated political situations and her success in establishing good institutional relations with Chinese authorities, a feat heretofore never achieved by any missionaries at Ginling, won her the admiration and support of the foreign faculty at Ginling. Ruth Chester described Wu’s social interaction with Chinese and foreign dignitaries with great admiration: “She seems perfectly at home and like a foreigner when she is talking to one, and completely Chinese when she is with them, and all the time to be fully herself. She is a remarkable person and if her physical strength can keep up with all the demands on her she will do great things.”109 Catherine Sutherland, a professor of music at Ginling, also described her admiration for Wu’s stamina and optimism during their exile in Chengdu: “While she has some very ‘low’ moments, she is constantly a surprise in her buoyancy that seems to ‘hope all things.’”110 The Chinese students and faculty members, even those who cherished fond memories of Thurston’s administration, naturally found it easy to identify with such a role model. Thurston noted from the outset in 1928 that Wu was “going to stir real loyalty and enthusiasm in the Ginling group. It is perfectly natural to feel that she is theirs in a way no foreigner

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could be.”111 Indeed, students later claimed: “Everybody wants to grow up to be just like President Wu.”112 Thus, it can be seen that Wu Yifang successfully completed the transference of power at Ginling and solidified her position as its beloved president and leader. As Wu’s performance during the even more tumultuous 1930s and 1940s will show in the following chapters, she not only replaced Thurston as the head of the Ginling family, but also acquired a certain mystique in the reminiscences of the Ginling alumnae. In their reminiscences collected in the four-volume Jinling nüer, the alumnae extol her leadership abilities, modesty, and nurturing. In some cases they even conflate the college with the woman: “The color purple: how elegant, how familiar, how gentle, and how harmonious! It is the school color that we alumnae would never forget. In my mind it is also closely associated with the image of President Wu.”113 Similarly, in oral interviews they would always remember her “walking down the southern hill in her Chinese qipao [cheongsam],” even though they had had no other personal interactions with her.114 Wu Yifang was to emerge as a beacon of Chinese women’s professional achievements; she received “filial” adoration from Ginling’s Chinese alumnae and her influence and legacy lasted beyond her own life span.

di s s e n t, s qua b b l e, a n d u n r e s t: “ fa m i ly ” l i f e i n t h e 1920 s t o 1930 s Ginling in the 1920s and 1930s seemed to have lost much of the relative tranquility of its early years. Granted, it continued to win positive publicity from its American visitors. For instance, the Smith trustee Mrs. Dwight Morrow talked about her visit to Ginling in glowing terms at the 1936 Smith commencement. Other than the architecture of the Ginling campus, what impressed her most was the students: “And the rooms! I have had three daughters at Smith College and I have never seen the room of any one of the three in as good order as those of the Chinese girls.” The Ginling students that she met amazed her not only with their neatness, of course. She felt that they also showed an intellectual aptitude that far surpassed that of their American counterparts. Morrow’s daughter Constance, a Smith student who accompanied her mother on this visit, exclaimed to Morrow, “Oh, mother! I could never have written on that” when she heard of the thesis topics of the two Ginling students they met: “The Significance of the Marital Conflict as Explained by the Modern Stage” and “The Organization and Disorganization of the Family as a Unit in the Changing Life of China.” Mrs. Morrow also called Wu Yifang “one of the great women of

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modern China” and declared herself “perfectly convinced of her brains, tact, skill, and her international mind.”115 The various narratives by members of Ginling at the time yielded up signs of deep conflicts that escaped these visitors’ observation on their short excursions. Of course, even in its early days, Ginling had never been the carefree ivory tower that the missionaries would have us believe in their publicity and fund-raising materials. As I have mentioned in previous chapters, the students enthusiastically participated in the May Fourth Movement and other patriotic activities, while the college struggled for financial resources and competed with other missionary institutions. Moreover, “the storms in the paradise” described by narrators from this period not only illustrated Ginling’s growing pains but also, paradoxically, testified to its increasing strength as an institution of higher learning. That is to say, as Ginling grew, it also allowed more room for diversity among its members, and thus created an atmosphere more conducive to the exchange of ideas and the development of independent inquiry. Needless to say, the Ginling story born out of the more secular and liberal milieu of the 1920s departed from the Christian inspirational tales that the missionaries had authored in the beginning. The disenchantment expressed in the missionaries’ narratives both faithfully recorded their own disquiet about the secular turn of Ginling and revealed their changed positions vis-à-vis Ginling and Chinese nationalism. This was especially true of Thurston. No longer the top leader of Ginling, she no doubt felt less pressure to provide optimistic tales and to present a positive face to the public. Her narratives from this period on, consequently, painted a more realistic and candid picture of a Ginling undergoing growth. In Thurston’s eyes, the most negative impact of registration with the Nationalist government was the decline of Christian influence at Ginling. The college curriculum of 1915 had originally required ten credits in Religion for graduation. The Department of Religion was established in 1926 and offered courses in Church history, biographies of saints, religious psychology, and comparative religion. Moreover, students were required to attend a twenty-minute morning prayer every weekday and an evening prayer half an hour long every Thursday evening, as well as Sunday chapel. More informal religious activities, such as a brief prayer before lunch and parties around Easter and Christmas, further added to the dominant Christian atmosphere on campus. As a missionary institution, the majority of Ginling’s faculty and students were Christians before 1927: 90 percent in 1920 and 82.89 percent in 1926.116 In sharp contrast, after Ginling’s registration, the religion department was dissolved by government order in 1929, and classes in religion became

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elective. Morning chapel became optional, and Sunday chapel was sometimes held jointly with the University of Nanking. Thurston expressed her deep anguish at seeing “empty seats” at morning chapel in 1930, since only 30 percent of all students attended, with the first-year class having an even lower attendance at 20 percent.117 Although Thurston also expressed hope to “get back to a better chapel attendance than . . . about 70 on the average out of a possible 170,” and felt cheered up by the fact that “our proportion is better than most of the colleges and the attendance at the Monday Memorial Service—the Sun Yat-sen ceremony—is not larger at Ginling than the chapel service,”118 Ginling continued on its path of secularization by adopting a “double-track” system for its essential rituals. For example, it both held a weekly memorial service for Sun Yat-sen, reciting Sun’s will and singing the song Sanmin zhuyi (Three Principles of the People), and continued their morning and Sunday chapel. For Founders’ Day, it held two consecutive ceremonies, one religious and the other involving singing the GMD party song, saluting the GMD party flag and Sun’s portrait, and reciting Sun’s will. The graduation rituals also were split into two parts. Awarding of a baccalaureate degree featured a full religious service including a sermon given by an ordained minister, while commencement, held the following day, was an entirely secular aff air with a keynote speech given by members from the Ministry of Education.119 With these institutional changes, attendance at chapel further plummeted, and classes of religion, no longer required at Ginling, saw a sharp drop in enrollment. Thurston, who was then teaching both Religion and Astronomy, wryly commented: “Personally I am just as enthusiastic about saints as about stars, but they [classes in religion] do not seem to be so poplar with these students.”120 Overall, the percentage of Christians dropped year by year, and Christians became a minority presence at Ginling: 73.44 percent in 1931, 58.22 percent in 1934, 49.58 percent in 1935, and 43.24 percent in 1936.121 Thurston understandably worried about the lessening of Christian influence at Ginling and all over China: “The common problem for us all as I see it, is the comparative indifference and non-participation of Christian students and faculty in the Christian program. We need revival, deeper conviction and deeper devotion.”122 Granted, she and other missionaries had often painted a rosier picture of Ginling’s unwavering religious focus than the reality actually warranted before Ginling’s registration. For example, Thurston had claimed that for her, “the minutes spent in the chapel seemed like a spiritual oasis in a desert of things mundane.”123 However, most Chinese students had actually been more attracted to the lectures and discussions of current aff airs,

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held as part of their chapel service, than to the worship service per se. They sometimes even considered their more devout Christian classmates’ enthusiastic involvement with the YWCA both inefficient and uneconomical.124 Nevertheless, requirements of courses in religion and Christian rituals, if not the Christian faith on its own, had effectively brought together the college community up to that point. With Christianity losing its position as the dominant institutional ideology and chapel service losing its former significance and authority, Ginling found itself missing not only a powerful institutional doctrine but also many of its bonding rituals. The traditional state ideology, Confucianism, had been thoroughly discredited by radical modern Chinese intellectuals. Humanism in the mode of John Dewey’s skepticism and pragmatism “proved too weak a creed as a state religion.”125 The Three Principles of the People, although adopted by the Nationalist government as the foundational theory of the state and mandated to be taught in all colleges, also fell on deaf ears at Ginling, a traditional stronghold of Christianity. Thus, the unrest and conflicts in the late 1920s and 1930s at Ginling reflected a gradual unraveling of organized communal life following the demise of two important and interrelated tools of homogenization: Christianity, the previously dominant ideology of transcendence, and its attendant rituals. Nationalist movements not only often forced the hand of the Ginling administration and faculty, but also manipulated students’ participation in patriotic activities to serve the political goals of the government. In an increasingly complex social milieu, Ginling students became more involved in political activities, sometimes at the expense of their academic work; and murder and mayhem also found their way into the formerly peaceful campus. Thurston mentioned a murder in her report of 1934. The college nurse, a Miss Hsu Hwei-chuen, was missing for a night and later found dead “with clothes disheveled and covered with a piece of matting in a secluded place on the high hill, as one goes the rear road to the college from Kan Ho Yen.” The college administration had to deal with the police and handle “the very difficult problems connected with the poor body, which had to lie out on the hills until the police had made all their investigation, then had to be put in the coffin, and taken over to the place where the autopsy was performed.” The graphic violence and sinister implications of the crime undoubtedly left their mark on the psyches of the students and faculty at Ginling, but more vexations came from day-to-day squabbles and conflicts among them. Thurston described the problem of “a senior who flunked a course, which she had been taking at the University [of Nanking], and was very difficult to manage” around the same time the college nurse was murdered. According to Thurston, “[S]he acted like a

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hysterical, small child; tried to get a friend who was quite essential to the Class Day play to leave Nanking with her; threatening all sorts of dire consequences if she did not.” In an indulgent tone, Thurston said that this case was eventually solved as a family matter when faculty members identified stomach ulcers as the source of the student’s extreme antisocial behavior, and she was taken to a hospital in Shanghai by Harriet Whitmer.126 At other times, larger-scale conflicts between the faculty and students occurred at Ginling, catching the American faculty unprepared. Emily Case described such a “tempest in a teapot” in a lively tone in a letter to her family. Right before the Nationalist army’s march into Nanjing in March 1927, several students and their families felt it best for them to leave Ginling and return home. However, they unfortunately adopted what Case described as a “dog-in-the-manger attitude” and tried their best to close the college, for “they did not wish to leave their classmates behind them studying because they know they will miss a lot of work and have a hard time making it all up on their return.” The students had a mass meeting on Thursday evening until eleven o’clock. Case heard indirectly that “there was a good deal of quarreling in the meeting,” with the result that 62 out of the 103 present voted to “stop work for three weeks.” This result was handed to the faculty the next morning—“whether as a ‘request’ or as an ultimatum it would be hard to say!” The faculty members, Case remarked, “were inclined to consider it in the light of the biggest crisis within the college that we have had as yet, and to be slightly tragic over it.” They subsequently met on Friday evening, and declared to the students that they would commit themselves to staying over part of the summer to help those wishing to leave to make up for missed work, if only the students would return within a month. The students appeared appeased by this offer, for “the large mass of students . . . apparently settled down to work again with great zest” and only a dozen juniors packed up and left. Ginling was able to avoid a hostile confrontation between the faculty and students on this occasion, to the relief and satisfaction of the American faculty. They saw the peaceful resolution of this crisis as a tribute to their understanding of their own students’ psychology and to their own authority within the Ginling family: “We will have the satisfaction of knowing that we have done our best and not succumbed to the general demoralization prevalent elsewhere in the city.”127 Nevertheless, family rhetoric at times proved not the solution but rather the cause of irresolvable conflicts at Ginling, as can be seen in the example of Esther Tappert, who joined Ginling’s English department in 1929. Arriving in China as a single woman, thirty years of age, Tappert had taught English at Ginling off and on until 1937, after which she declined

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Ginling’s invitation and instead chose to teach at Chungking University, a coeducational, provincial, Chinese government university. Tappert found her two years at Chungking University the happiest period of her China experience up to that point. Reflecting on her years at Ginling while working at Chungking, she wrote to her family: “[N]o wonder I am death on women’s institutions with their petty spites and trivial concerns.”128 Although Tappert represented the only vocally dissenting voice so far, her writings not only shed light on the psychology of those members less enamored of Ginling, but also pointed up some inherent problems in the “family” structure of Ginling that ill suited the more independent-minded and ambitious. Tappert’s dissatisfaction with Ginling was manifold. She felt her duties at the college to be miscellaneous and ill defi ned, her living amenities primitive with constant electricity outages and lack of hot baths, her part in college life ignored and trivialized, and her opinions often misinterpreted and misrepresented by her missionary colleagues. But perhaps most importantly, Tappert did not share Thurston’s or Vautrin’s sentiment about the Ginling family. Her disgruntlement can partly be attributed to a generation gap among the missionary faculty at Ginling. The earlier generation of faculty members, such as Thurston and Chester, proclaimed themselves moderates and pacifists, but Tappert sympathized more with radical ideas and patriotic movements in China. She observed with more admiration than censure that “the students of China are a much more active factor in national affairs than the student groups in America of which [she had] been a member.”129 She also believed that “China’s real hope” lay in producing the kind of leaders eager to “do away at a blow with the things which have behind them all the accumulated force of thousands of years of habit.”130 In this she displayed a very different attitude toward Chinese traditions from that of the more conservative Thurston and Chester. She also forthrightly sided with the Chinese people in their resistance to the Japanese invasion, even criticizing the U.S. government’s initial neutrality in the war: “And lest our anger and resentment at Japan blind us to our own guilt—America is maintaining a self-righteous neutrality while all the blacksmith shops of the country are being secured for scrap iron to supply Japan with needed raw materials for weapons of war.”131 She not only harbored scholarly ambitions while working towards a doctorate in English from Yale, but also felt very passionate about “professional satisfaction.” She called it “a matter [ . . . ] of placement—a recognition of language teaching as a profession and an opportunity to use the results of my investigations and experience in a unique and effective way.”132 With a desire for more specialized work and high expectations

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for her role as teacher, she found her teaching job at Ginling uninteresting and frequently demoralizing. She described her role at Ginling ironically as “trying to make good women who can read and write English and save China.”133 Furthermore, she often doubted her own effectiveness as a teacher of English at Ginling: “With less than a month of actual teaching before me, I am again wondering what I have taught in a year. My freshmen still at times (some most of the time) write meaningless jumbles of words for sentences and I’ve said each one of them must write at least three paragraphs without mechanical errors and with a fairly intelligent thought content in order to pass the course. That didn’t seem too much to ask.”134 Tappert’s dissatisfaction with her students’ performance may well have been legitimate, but it was also at least partly caused by her own impetuous personality. For example, her colleague in English, Florence Kirk, a Canadian missionary from a small town who arrived at Ginling in 1932, and who purportedly always taught Freshmen English using the same book, Thomas Hardy’s The Return of the Native,135 had no difficulty making friends with her students. Kirk also painted a much more positive picture of the students: “They were attentive and industrious, eager to follow instructions. It was a pleasure to get to know them in the classroom, in conferences, and in social situations.”136 Unlike the more maternal Thurston and Vautrin, whose great love for China arose from “the assumption of endless Chinese need,”137 Tappert felt more depression rather than indulgence upon hearing the tales of family woes from her students: “One of the girls—so many do—has a difficult home situation . . . This . . . is only one example of the family situations that are behind the girls we are trying to make into ‘strong Christian characters’ who will save China.”138 Unfortunately for Tappert, she came to Ginling at a time when change of leadership diluted American and Christian influence at Ginling. Effective mentoring within the missionary group and the kind of “Christian fellowship” that she craved thus became rare to come by. Thurston, for one, keenly felt the gradual disappearance of a Christian communal life and family atmosphere at Ginling as a result of rising nationalism in China starting in the mid-1920s. When describing her experience of keeping house with eleven other missionary faculty members, she remarked not only on her inexorable vacating of the position of head of the Ginling family but also on the “disobedient” behavior of several missionary colleagues: “Since I came back I have not had quite the same feeling of being the head of the family. Two or three members of the group seem to want no head, preferring the independence of the boarding house to the closer living of the family.”139 Whether or not Thurston was directly commenting on Tappert in this letter, Tappert was one of those harboring considerable

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resentment towards the “head” of the family. We can also find the source of her alienation in her personality, for Tappert possessed high personal ambitions, an independent mind, and an acerbic tongue, and was often oblivious to or scornful of the necessity of keeping up appearances on social occasions. For instance, because she was uninterested, she “closed [her] eyes through the whole of the sermon” given by Bishop Hammacher, a special guest at Ginling’s chapel service, which caused her colleagues to think that she was napping. She remarked scathingly on the dubious Christian character of the bishop: “A little more sincerity and less showing-off would commend the office a little more highly and make me feel a little less shame at being called a fellow citizen. He makes me feel about as I do when I happen into a restaurant at the time when some American sailors are loudly demanding that the entire staff of waiters stand at their elbows to give them due service.”140 Such a display of an “uncooperative” attitude obviously would not have endeared her to her senior colleagues, but she also did not appreciate their maternal attitude toward her. For example, when she was on furlough in the United States and sent a survey to Ginling to gather data for her MA thesis, she received this reply from Minnie Vautrin: “Both Dr. Wu [Yifang] and I are not very hopeful about the results. I prophesy that you will not receive more than ten answers out of your sixty sent out. Dr. Wu feels that you will probably not get any from the Chinese institutions. . . . We are making ours out for you, Esther, because we love you and want to help you out, but since the other institutions have no such connection they may not respond. . . . Personally I am disappointed that you are not doing your work in the field of English.”141 To Tappert, who took her research and scholarly pursuits seriously, Vautrin’s letter must have struck her as condescending rather than loving, for the older woman not only prophesied a disappointing return for her survey but also disapproved of her thesis topic. No wonder Tappert later vented her anger to Wu Yifang about her position at Ginling, describing her treatment “as [that of] a juvenile to be mothered or disciplined or subordinated to the senior members.”142 She also blamed her general marginalization at Ginling partly on Wu Yifang’s neglect. In a letter to Wu Yifang, she wrote, “At least three of us wished that you would occasionally have a meal with the third of the faculty who were not invited to meet any important people, who were not on the College council or any important committees, who did not participate in any active way in the life of the college.”143 She may not have enjoyed the kind of public visibility that she had desired. But as onetime chair of the English department, one of Ginling’s most popular and rigorous departments and one that possessed a sterling national reputation,

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she was by no means the “nobody” described in her letter. Thus, we can perhaps detect in this letter that it was her wounded pride and frustrated ambitions speaking. But, Tappert was also clearly speaking for the “underdogs” at Ginling, and her charge revealed the sense of belittlement shared by her less outspoken cohorts. Not only did Tappert find the senior members, the president included, overbearing rather than loving, but she also found most of her peers uncongenial. For instance, her close friendship with Searle Bates, a married missionary then teaching at Nanking and advising at Ginling who often visited and exchanged research ideas with her, apparently caused some public interest and comments. In her family letter she cautioned her parents not to repeat her interactions with Bates to their acquaintances: “This page had better not be published or quoted, not for any personal reasons, but because one never knows how it will be interpreted.”144 She later explained to her parents: “What is said in a casual way merely by means of identification of someone we may know out here has an uncanny way of getting back in a garbled form through distortion or misinterpretation of an innocent remark. . . . You never know by whom or how things will be repeated and Trumbull Street is very near to Yale College where a number of Nanking people are at present.”145 Even her attempts at making friends with the students, such as seeing them in her office after class and hosting Christmas parties for them in her room, did not succeed in driving away her feelings of desolation: “There were occasional periods of depression, due to fatigue, loneliness, physical discomfort, and economic pressure; the sense of loss in long periods of absence from family, friends, and the life of my own country; the feeling of inadequacy, of futility almost, in trying to feed multitudes with our pitifully small gifts of rice of learning, of the Spirit.”146 Tappert’s troubled relationships with various groups at Ginling prompted her to declare to Wu Yifang eventually: “[A]fter seven years of service I had no initiative and hardly a part in its [Ginling’s] life.”147 Refusing Wu’s repeated invitations to join Ginling-in-Chengdu or Ginling-inNanjing, she described her general sense of suffocation at Ginling: I regret that I could not remove the impression the other night that what mattered so much to me at Ginling was personal feelings. My own suffering is insignificant and purely incidental to the distress I have felt because I could not by prayer or good will break through the Ginling fictions which were set up and believed without being investigated and without giving any opportunity to the persons concerned to clarify the circumstances. The energy and power and devotion and willingness to

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adjust and make sacrifices and the need for harmony and beauty which are necessities to me were covered by a clutter of petty annoyances and trivialities and an oppressive sense of duty to hold them all sacred. If I swept them away with an ungentle hand, I should at least have had respect for equally vigorous and courageous criticism based on accurate knowledge.148

Tappert’s case, although perhaps atypical of the missionary faculty members at Ginling, revealed that the family atmosphere at Ginling could stifle personal initiative and autonomy with its insistence on conformity in social behavior and on a rigid hierarchy that allowed little advancement for the junior members. In Tappert’s case, the close living quarters and smallness of the community also compounded the problem of gossip about her. In claiming to speak for the less powerful and less visible “third of the college” that held no important positions, Tappert exposed the negative effects of the family rhetoric. Perhaps Tappert’s malaise arose mostly from her thwarted personal ambitions, but her sense of marginalization and underappreciation echoed Thurston’s feeling at Yale-in-China before she became Ginling’s president.149 Unfortunately for Tappert, when it came to career advancement, even her more senior missionary colleagues had been sidelined because of the “Restoration of Education Rights” movement. Tappert’s difficulties at Ginling, therefore, also brought into sharp relief the changing national political picture, and its impact on perceptions of power and powerlessness, and, eventually, on interpersonal relationships within the Ginling family. The internal power dynamics at Ginling would experience more changes during the Sino-Japanese War in 1937–45, a time of grinding economic poverty and constant threat of death that made the erosion of general morale and morality a serious problem at Ginling-in-exile. However, before I examine Ginling’s changes in the emergency situations of the war, let me try to take stock of Ginling’s growth since 1915. After over twenty years’ development, Ginling had grown into an institution of higher learning well respected and widely accepted in China, despite (or perhaps precisely because of) the increased secularization of its curriculum and campus culture. Before the war erupted in 1937, Ginling had established and implemented both effective accreditation and a popular major-minor system that not only emphasized solid academic training but also satisfied students’ desire for a broad knowledge of the liberal arts. Students who completed 132 credits and fulfilled their major requirements could graduate with a bachelor’s degree. In the first and second years, one credit required one class hour and an hour and a half of out-of-class preparation

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every week. In the third and fourth years, one credit required one class hour and two hours of out-of-class preparation every week. Three hours of a lab session every week could also count for one credit.150 This system provided sufficient flexibility to accommodate students’ diverse interests without overtaxing them with major requirements. Moreover, Ginling now boasted a wide array of disciplines. Majors in the arts included: Chinese, history, English, sociology, music, physical education, and philosophy, and in the sciences there were biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics, geography, premedicine, and prenursing. Minors were offered in education, hygiene, psychology, astronomy, French, and German.151 The wider Chinese society perceived Ginling as an institution that offered unique opportunities to Chinese women because of its academic strength in several disciplines and its well-deserved reputation in innovative pedagogy. Ginling was known for providing excellent instruction in English, sociology, and physical education by the mid-1930s. A Ginling education also promised solid foundations in the humanities and sciences, breadth of knowledge and scope, emphases on instructor-student interactions and classroom discussions, scientific experiment, social practice, and community service projects, all novel concepts and practices in Chinese colleges and universities of the time.152 Ginling also grew physically. Several new buildings were added to the original group of 1923, including another physical education building built in 1929, a new Library- Administration Building, and a new ChapelMusic Building, the latter two both completed in 1934 under the supervision of Mrs. Thurston. In 1933, the three Song sisters also donated a house to be used as dormitory for Ginling Practice School, allowing the Practice School to expand and become a regular comprehensive high school in subsequent years. The four Yan sisters, including the Ginling alumnae Yan Lianyun and Yan Caiyun (see chapter 1), donated a building for a new college infirmary.153 In 1916 Ginling had 9 Chinese students and 1 Chinese teacher; in 1936 it had 259 students enrolled and 44 Chinese faculty members.154 Furthermore, as can be seen from the discussion in this chapter, Ginling had weathered the 1927 Incident and successfully transitioned to having a strong Chinese leadership. However, just as both Ginling’s academic and physical growth and social reputation reached a new height, the full-scale Sino-Japanese War erupted and halted its further development in Nanjing. It can be seen that during this period Ginling’s development paralleled that of the Republic of China, and that the narratives it generated responded to several major themes of the Republic’s history: an increasingly strong nationalist movement, attempts at the reconstruction of

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China, and to a lesser extent, threats presented by the impending colonial invasion of Japan. The examples of Wu Yifang and her Chinese colleagues and students show that they used their bicultural identities to gain agency through their discursive and other endeavors, and thereby wrested power from both Ginling’s missionary supporters and male Chinese nationalists.

Chapter 4

Dispersion and Reunion (1937–45) Dispersed but not dispirited. Through one faith, one hope, still one. Long life to Alma Mater! —Telegraph from the Wuchang unit to President Wu Yifang, October 31, 1937

I shall never forget the faces of the fathers and husbands as they watched their women folk enter the campus. Women were faced with a terrible dilemma in those days—it might mean that in saving themselves from being raped they were risking the lives of their husbands and sons, who might be taken away and killed. —Minnie Vautrin, January 28, 1938

T

he Sino-Japanese War between 1937 and 1945 saw the loss of Ginling’s Nanjing campus to Japanese occupation, the dispersion of Ginling members to different parts of China, material deprivation and life-threatening air raids at Ginling-in-Chengdu, and a general deterioration of the famed Ginling family spirit. The ensuing civil war between the Nationalists and Communists between 1946 and 1949 further tore apart Ginling, until it was absorbed into the state-run Nanjing Normal University in 1952 by the command of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) government. I will examine the final fifteen years of Ginling College as an independent institution of higher education in mainland China in two chapters. I will focus on the experiences of its members during the SinoJapanese War in this chapter while devoting the next chapter to its return

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to Nanjing and eventual dissolution. In so doing, I hope not only to trace how the discourse of the Ginling family changed under these bleak circumstances, but also to continue to explore how the “microscopic” Ginling narratives responded to and shaped the “macroscopic” historical situations in which they developed. Ginling’s war years can be roughly divided into two parts. The years between 1937 and 1941 saw the initial dispersion and reunion of the Ginling students and faculty at Huaxi ba, a little outside the city limits of Chengdu, Sichuan. Although Ginling’s Nanjing campus, under the supervision of Minnie Vautrin, witnessed the horrendous Nanjing Massacre in 1937–38, narratives from other units often displayed a collective exhilaration about braving life-threatening dangers and daily hardships. The second period, the years between 1941 and 1945, was marked by increasing pessimism and depression; Ginling members by now had realized that the war would be more prolonged than they had initially anticipated. The Nationalist government implemented various conservative policies in regard to Chinese women’s education during and after the war. It continued the main ideological thrust of the New Life Movement that it officially launched in 1934, partly in response to the national crisis caused by Japan’s seizure of northeastern China in 1931.1 As Christina Gilmartin points out, the GMD sought to “wed nationalism to the cultivation of traditional values” through this movement, arguing that “for the sake of social regeneration of the country, women had a special responsibility to the nation to cultivate the virtues of chastity, domesticity, and respectability.”2 In June 1936, the Nationalist government deemed it illegal for women to wear extravagant clothes and permed hair. It even launched a “hair-tying movement,” promoting the traditional ji (a bun on the back of the head) rather than bobbed hair, a mark of the “new woman” ever since the May Fourth era.3 After the outbreak of the full-scale Japanese invasion, signaled by the “Marco Polo Bridge Incident,” when the Japanese army attacked the Lugou (Marco Polo) Bridge outside of Beijing on July 7, 1937, the GMD government used the call for national salvation to legitimate a series of policies and regulations that not only made home economics central in Chinese women’s education, but also mandated the dual system of moral tutoring (xunyu zhi 訓育制) and military training in all colleges. Of particular irony for Ginling was that the government justified its totalitarianism by invoking the gendered metaphor of family and parenting. The discourse of the Ginling family manifested different forms and functions in answer to the new conditions of war and increased government control of women’s education. This discourse helped to sustain Ginling through its initial dispersion. Whether members of Ginling stayed

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behind in Nanjing or sojourned in Shanghai, Wuchang, and Chengdu, they unanimously proclaimed to Wu Yifang their devotion to the Ginling family and expressed an ardent wish for return to their home and “lost paradise” in Nanjing. After the reconvening of different units in Chengdu, the family discourse also assisted Wu Yifang and other Ginling women to adapt their curriculum to new sociopolitical conditions. Ginling established its home economics department in 1938 and its own counseling system as a response to both government regulations and the needs of its students. The Chinese faculty members and students eagerly joined in the war effort, at times transgressing the boundaries set by their Christian beliefs and institutional loyalty; the American missionaries also firmly sided with the Chinese resistance despite their pacifist and Christian convictions. Yet, in contrast to the optimistic outlook of the Ginling family in the early years of the war, during the latter half of the war general depression and increasing disillusionment with the GMD at times rendered the family discourse ineffectual. Curiously, reminiscences of this period inevitably take a revisionist turn, transforming grim historical events into cherished memories of youth, vivacity, and camaraderie, and thereby testify to the strong hold of Ginling’s family discourse despite the passage of half a century.

t h e n a n j i n g m a s s ac r e: 1937–38 Ginling College experienced several rounds of dispersion and reunion across China during the Sino-Japanese War, but a small number of its faculty and staff members stayed in Nanjing during Japanese occupation. Although this part of Ginling’s war experience apparently involved only a small portion of its members, it warrants our serious consideration, since the narratives that it generated have not only revealed the metamorphosis of the family discourse under extraordinary circumstances, but also have become a permanent part of both Ginling’s institutional identity and national and international memories of the war. Japan started the fullscale invasion of China on July 7, 1937. On August 13 of the same year, heavy fighting broke out in Shanghai, cutting off transportation between Shanghai and Nanjing. On August 15, the Japanese bombing of Nanjing began and lasted for almost four months, causing untold destruction of property and deaths of civilians. Following the order from the Nationalist Ministry of Education to postpone the opening of all colleges nationwide, Wu Yifang and the Ginling administration made contingency plans. One group of students were asked to become guest students at St. John’s College (Sheng yuehan 聖約翰) and the University of Shanghai (Hujiang

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滬江) in Shanghai, another group at Huachung (Huazhong 華中) University in Wuchang, and a third, originally very small group, at West China Union College (Huaxi 華西) in Chengdu. Wu was persuaded to leave for Wuchang on one of the last steamers out of Nanjing on December 3, 1937, leaving behind a five-person emergency committee under the leadership of Minnie Vautrin; it included Chinese members such as Wu Jingxian (Blanche Wu, ’23) of the biology department and Cheng Ruifang (Mrs. Tsen), the college dormitory director. Vautrin led the remaining faculty and staff members in a flurry of preparation for the arrival of the Japanese army: they put up American flags and proclamations provided by the American Embassy in strategic places on campus; cleared out the college vault and hid or sent valuables elsewhere, including Thurston’s wedding silver and a large amount of cash, which they sent to the American gunboat Panay, only to see it sunk shortly thereafter by the Japanese military on December 12, 1937; made the buildings ready for refugees;4 stored college lab equipment and other expensive machinery in the basement of academic buildings; bought several fire extinguishers in case of emergency; and arranged for important college files to be transported to Shanghai.5 The Japanese army captured the city on the night of December 13, and started their “Reign of Terror” with a massacre in Nanjing, causing twenty thousand reported rapes and a death toll that ranged from thirty thousand to three hundred and fifty thousand by various accounts.6 The foreigners remaining in Nanjing during that deadly winter set up an International Safety Zone committee, trying in vain to maintain a neutral space in the city for relief work. This committee consisted of fifteen men of different nationalities: Lewis Smythe (US), P. H. Munro-Faure (Britain), John Magee (US), P. R. Shields (Britain), J. M. Hanson (Denmark), G. Schultze-Pantin (Germany), Ivor Mackay (Britain), J. V. Pickering (U.S.), M. S. Bates (U.S.), W. P. Mills (U.S.), Edward Sperling (Germany), D. J. Lean (Britain), C. S. Trimmer (U.S.), Charles H. Riggs (U.S.), and John H. D. Rabe (Germany).7 The latter was described by Mary Treudley as “a good Nazi and a damned good scout,”8 but he was, more accurately, a businessman and the director of the Nanjing branch of the German company Siemens since 1931.9 Treudley later remarked on the heady sense of heroism and sacrifice experienced by the foreign men in the city: “I must say the men enjoyed themselves after their fashion. They found odd pleasure in fighting totally unarmed for human lives in pressing danger. It was a strange thrill they experienced in standing between humanity and unregarding force, heightened just a little by realizing that a bullet or a bayonet might wipe them out.”10 In contrast, it was the more “mundane”

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chores essential to the maintenance of the refugee camp at Ginling that consumed all Vautrin’s energy, but she too had to confront death, sufferings, and terror every minute of her waking hours. Past experience had proven that Vautrin possessed not only the necessary grace under pressure and the organizational skills to handle crises but also a stubborn belief that “no man could look after our buildings as well as we could.”11 In her diary entry dated August 27, 1937, she stated that she considered it her mission to stay behind to care for Ginling, because she believed that even in danger a woman should not abandon her children.12 Yet despite her valiant attempts at shielding the Ginling home from Japanese destruction and at rescuing Chinese families in distress, just like a mother protecting her children, even Vautrin was overwhelmed by the situation following the Japanese occupation of the city. On December 8, 1937, Ginling opened its gate to the women and children of Nanjing. They flooded in until the number reached a peak of ten thousand. Vautrin described how “distraught and frenzied women and girls streamed in until every available space within the buildings was tightly filled and at night even verandahs and covered ways were packed closely, head to feet and feet to head.”13 Meanwhile, outside of the gate of Ginling, “robbery, murder, rape continue[d] unabated.” George Fitch, secretary of the YMCA in Nanjing, recorded his experience in a city under siege, calling it “a story of such crime and horror as to be almost unbelievable. He said, “I believe it has no parallel in modern history. It has been a hell on earth. This is a hell I had never before envisaged, but hell it is nonetheless.”14 While the foreign men were engaged in chasing off rapists, looters, and killers all over the city, sometimes even from their own residences, it fell on Vautrin’s shoulders to obtain food and shelter for the Chinese refugees while keeping them safe from rape and kidnap by the Japanese soldiers. Vautrin certainly had more than enough logistical items to occupy herself. Not only did she devise an orderly and fair system to distribute porridge to the female refugees twice each day; she also resolved overcrowding in lodging by loaning beddings to those who had to sleep in the hallways. She came up with the idea of having college staff dig deep holes, and later having them covered with soil and lime, for the disposal of the human waste of more than ten thousand people.15 But all these did not mean that she was shielded from any of the war atrocities and psychological traumas. No amount of preparation and organization proved adequate defense against marauding Japanese soldiers, who assaulted their safe haven on an hourly basis. Yet in contrast to Fitch’s highly evocative account, Vautrin often deliberately softened the psychological shock and physical suffering that she had witnessed or experienced. Moreover,

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unlike Fitch, who often made moral judgments against the Japanese in his diary, Vautrin chose to display a Christian restraint and submissiveness to personal persecutions. Vautrin was able to send out her first report to the rest of the Ginling faculty from the besieged city in mid-January, 1938; communications both in and out of Nanjing had been cut off ever since November 1937. Although she deliberately toned down the cruelty of the picture, there were incidents that even the stoic Vautrin could not describe without losing her composure. She declared that there were certain scenes “a life time will not erase from [her] memory and the memories of those who have been in Nanking through this period.” She said, Never shall I forget the faces of the young girls as they streamed in [to Ginling]—most of them parting from their fathers or husbands at the gate. We realized that young girls of twelve and that older women of fifty and even sixty were not free from mistreatment. I shall never forget the faces of the fathers and husbands as they watched their women folk enter the campus. Often times the tears were streaming down their cheeks as they begged us to “just give them a place to sleep outside.” Women were faced with a terrible dilemma in those days—it might mean that in saving themselves from being raped they were risking the lives of their husbands and sons, who might be taken away and killed.16

Such graphic pictures of Chinese women’s emotional sufferings left an indelible impression on Vautrin’s mind, signifying to her the great need that she must meet in an impossible situation. Discovering that “although an American flag or an American Embassy proclamation did not seem to deter them [the Japanese soldiers], yet the presence of a foreigner was of great help,” many times she would stop eating or sleeping and rush to the summons of the college servants in order to head off Japanese soldiers: “Many is the group that I escorted out of a dormitory filled with refugee women and children or from the south hill residence.” However, one night Vautrin and her group of college guards were tricked into going to the main gate by a group of Japanese soldiers who claimed that they were searching for Chinese troops. There Vautrin was given a mock trial and slapped by the Japanese soldiers, and the college business manager, Mr. Chen, was arrested and dragged away. Another group of Japanese soldiers carried off twelve Chinese women through a side gate.17 The moment would haunt her all her life: “The night of December 17 none of us shall ever forget for it is burned into our memories by suffering. That closing scene I shall never, never forget. Mary, Mrs. Tsen and I

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standing near the gate, the servants kneeling just [in] back of us, Mr. Chen being led out by the officer and a few soldiers, the rustling of the fallen leaves, the shadows passing out the side gate in the distance—of whom we did not know—the low cries of these passing out.18 Vautrin’s narrative not only set up a sharp contrast between the innocent, suffering Chinese women and the cruel, marauding Japanese soldiers but also underscored her own helplessness despite her self-appointed role as a mother defending her innocent children. Small wonder that she felt compelled to invoke divine power, characterizing the release of Mr. Chen and the safe return of six out of the twelve kidnapped girls the next day as “wrought by prayers.”19 Vautrin’s deliberate understatement of blood and carnage may have suggested the normal human abhorrence of extreme violence. As Yomi Braester has argued, “Extreme events cannot be committed to memory because they disintegrate one’s psychological makeup, break down linguistic skills, and collapse social bonds.”20 Yet, curiously, Vautrin also did not condemn the Japanese military in moral terms as had Fitch, who called the massacre “the depredations of a horde of degraded criminals of incredible bestiality.”21 As can be seen from the diary entries cited above, she instead emphasized the traumas that the Chinese women experienced and her own sympathy. That Vautrin chose to focus on the emotional pains of the Chinese women can be seen as her attempt at paradoxically both giving and deriving emotional support by identifying with the victims. She was separated from other Ginling faculty members and fellow female missionaries while taking up the enormous task of protecting thousands of Chinese women in Nanjing. As mentioned, Communications to the outside world had been cut off by the Japanese occupation force since before the fall of Nanjing.22 She thus had no support network of her peers. Taking on a maternal, protective role towards the Chinese refugees while facing alone the very visceral reality of the massacre, she understandably felt unequal to the task of transforming tales of suffering into those of moral exuberance, unlike her colleagues elsewhere, who could still conjure up the Ginling family through words, if not necessarily in reality. In fact, as will be shown in the next section, at the beginning of the war it was common practice among the Ginling faculty and students, whether they were Chinese or foreign, to write to one another and to their U.S. correspondents across the ocean in a heroic and optimistic tone to show their indomitable will and group solidarity. In contrast, Vautrin’s strategy of coping consisted in accentuating the pathos of the situation while offering her own sincere sympathy. In this way, she not only showed her sympathy for the Chinese women refugees, but also effectively found a group to identify with because of her own sense of victimization.

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That is to say, Vautrin found herself unable to produce self-righteous and heroic tales, like those created by male missionaries in the city. She agonized over her impotence to save innocent Chinese people and over her sense that she had compromised on principle and even was complicit in Japanese war crimes. Vautrin had to make hard decisions all the time. One time she was forced to supply Chinese prostitutes for the Japanese army.23 She also tried to persuade older Chinese women to go home in the naive belief that this would somehow satisfy the Japanese soldiers and thus protect the younger, prettier women: “Even during this period of danger we tried to persuade the older women to remain at home with their husbands and sons, even if it meant mistreatment, and let the younger women come to us for protection.”24 This may sound like a bizarre explanation from an avowed believer in Chinese family values that revered the elderly. As Mrs. Tsen explained in her diary, Vautrin may have made this decision following the suggestion of Charles Riggs, a missionary faculty member at the University of Nanking and a member of the Security Zone committee.25 But Vautrin also had to think in pragmatic terms under the circumstances, even though her decisions would always prey on her mind. Just like the Chinese women who had to choose between the lives of their male relatives and safety from Japanese molestation, Vautrin experienced the agony of violation when making decisions in a situation denying any moral self-determination. Considering her own personality and religious belief (see chapter 1), this sense of compromise and victimization must have felt all the more acute to her. It can be seen that Vautrin’s narrative gesture of submissive endurance masked very real psychological anguish. Rather than purging affect and “numbingly representing what one cannot feel,”26 however, she found a certain solace in the fact that she was stoically suffering along with the Chinese women to whom she could only offer inadequate protection despite her best efforts, as if sharing their sufferings and victimization could redeem what she saw as her own disgrace. Yet Vautrin’s identity as a senior missionary faculty member at Ginling and her responsible position as director of the Ginling Emergency Committee demanded not just meek submission to outside persecutions and silent endurance of suffering. It also required that she behave with the poise and optimism befitting a “head of the family” despite her separation from the Ginling group. Consequently, once correspondence became possible, she deliberately included uplifting vignettes in the letters and reports she sent from Nanjing to her colleagues in other parts of China. She constantly expressed heart-felt gratitude for the timely evacuation of the Ginling students and its president: “During these days I have said again and again I was glad that there were no students on the campus

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and that Dr. Wu had been persuaded to leave the city when she did.”27 Perhaps subconsciously she identified herself with those older Chinese women who returned home in an attempt at sparing their younger female compatriots of Japanese abuse. She tried to see great human suffering as a great opportunity for evangelization: “Religion has become a reality to many of us during these days of terror and destruction. Jesus becomes a friend who walks by your side as you go forward to meet a group of fierce men whose shining bayonets are marked with fresh stains of blood. From August on to the present time, every Wednesday evening and Sunday evening we have had a service for the campus and building servants. How they have loved to sing ‘O Save my Country, Lord,’ and ‘We Love our Native Land.’28 She arranged to have Christian ministers come into Ginling to give a series of talks to the refugee women during the winter of 1937 to 1938: “They came faithfully throughout that period, neither rain, nor snow, nor danger daunting them. They had carefully planned the series of talks so that each woman who was interested could hear six messages on the meaning of Christianity.” She also organized a successful Easter service in 1938; a thousand people came to Ginling to view their carefully rehearsed pageant, “‘From Darkness to Dawn,’ portraying the thoughts and suffering and the actions of Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathaca [sic] from the time of the crucifi xion to the resurrection of Jesus, their Master.” Citing one audience member who praised their service as “the one bright spot” in Nanjing, Vautrin stated her confidence in the religious efficacy of the pageant: “We are sure the meaning of the pageant reached many in the audience of a thousand, but if it did not, its influence on the members of the cast will never be lost.” Yet in more sober moments, Vautrin realized the dubious morality of soliciting conversions at such a time. In a later and more reflective report for the year 1937–38 entitled “Sharing the ‘Abundant Life’ in a Refugee Camp,” she recounted one time when the pastor “asked his audience how many would like to become followers of Jesus and all hands went up.” “After that,” she said, “we did not ask lest personal safety and becoming Christians become confused.” In her subsequent reports to the United States and her letters to the Ginling unit in Shanghai, Vautrin focused more on the workshops she organized for the refugee women rather than on their conversion efforts, and she included more details of their normal daily life in Nanjing.29 As the refugee situation became less pressing, Vautrin set up two programs at Ginling for Chinese women from the city of Nanjing and its surrounding areas, and also from places as far away as Wuhu, Anhui Province, and Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province. She started the Experiment Middle

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School for Chinese women on the Ginling campus, then the only women’s middle school in occupied China; it provided three years of junior and two years of senior middle school instruction. She also established a homecraft course, teaching “destitute women” skills such as weaving, knitting, raising poultry, and making candies in order for them to achieve some economic independence.30 Her hard work created for the Chinese women an oasis in a city of nightmarish sufferings. Many years later, the former students of the Experiment Middle School still cherish fond memories of the beautiful campus and its meticulously maintained academic space. For example, Xu Qin, a student at the time wrote in an essay about Ginling, “We could still see wreckage and trash everywhere in the city. But it was like a different world inside Ginling! There were classroom and dorm buildings by the green trees, colorful flowers on the green lawn, and luxuriant vegetable patches in the garden. Inside the classrooms, no windows, doors, floors, desks, or chairs were broken. Everything was dusted spotless.”31 No longer feeling like living “in the heart of a drum,” Vautrin was able to leave campus from time to time without worrying that “our three thousand three hundred will be in danger when we are away.” They celebrated Chinese New Year on January 30, 1938, after a fashion, partaking of a “feast” made of a basket of food sent to them by Ginling’s Shanghai unit: “How good it was to have pork once more and the other good dishes of food that accompanied it. I for one was glad to leave our steady diet of beans even for one meal.” Yet lest her audience should feel sorry for her lack of sustenance and social life, Vautrin reported that she had had her bicycle brought down from the attic and oiled, and that she was “planning to ride out to the National Park very soon for the thought of the blossoms there is enticing us and it is difficult to resist.”32 Yet, despite the similarity between Vautrin’s narrative tone in this account and the missionaries’ gesture of maintaining normalcy in abnormal circumstances in their narratives of the 1927 Incident, her brave words could hardly mask her anguish over the inexorable reality. Her colleagues in Shanghai, for one, saw pathos in her desperate attempts at looking at the bright side. In a 1938 report on the Shanghai unit of Ginling, Florence Kirk wrote, “Frequent word comes from Minnie Vautrin. She writes very bravely, but we guess all the strain of these long weeks. We know she and the others are getting wonderful returns for their faith and interest; it reads a little like the early Church in the enthusiasm for the great certainties.”33 Her Chinese colleague Mrs. Tsen also commented repeatedly in her diary how tired and haggard Vautrin looked all the time.34 Indeed, the forced demonstration of bravery and cheer to her colleagues only added to her escalating exhaustion, depression, and hopelessness,

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which she expressed freely in her diary. In her entry dated April 14, 1940, she wrote: “I’m about at the end of my energy. Can no longer forge ahead and make plans for the work, for on every hand there seems to be obstacles of some kind.”35 Two weeks later, she suffered a nervous breakdown and was taken back to the U.S. For a woman such as Vautrin, who not only took her Christian duties seriously but also had a genuine affection for the common Chinese people, it was small consolation to have earned the soubriquet “Living Buddha” or “Goddess of Mercy” from the grateful refugee women that she had helped.36 She would always dwell instead on the many more that she could not save and those that she had been forced to sacrifice. Missionaries in China coped with the Japanese invasion in different ways, of course. The male missionary George Fitch, a witness to the Nanjing Massacre, saw validation of Christianity in the negative example of Japanese militarism when he asserted: “The Japanese army with no background of Christian idealism, has today become a brutal, destructive force that not only menaces the East but also some day may menace the West.” He also derived comfort from the Chinese people’s acknowledgment of his work: “Our hearts have been frequently warmed by the innumerable times the refugees have expressed appreciation for what we have tried to do.”37 Vautrin’s Ginling colleagues elsewhere condemned Japanese atrocities more directly than Vautrin. Eva Spicer, for example, claimed: “When I think of the elaborate preparations for celebration that they are staging in Tokyo, I feel like praying the Almighty for a nice big earthquake, but I have enough sense left to realize that that is not a prayer that you can possibly make in the name of Jesus.”38 Even Ruth Chester moderated her previously firm pacifist position and stated: “China is waging a war of defense if ever there was one, and is doing it in a magnificent way as far as the courage and morale of her people is concerned. It seems to me inexpressibly tragic that such splendid moral and spiritual values have to be put to such horrible uses.”39 She went so far as to confess: “I admit to having very few reservations indeed in my rejoicing over the destruction of bombing planes and gasoline (good American gasoline, no doubt).”40 Even Thurston, who had repeatedly proclaimed her pacifist views, stated her preference for a Chinese victory: “I want the invader and the one who began it to lose. I don’t pray about it except in a general way of continuing to desire a world quite different from the one we live in now, and free from any desire to return to the status quo ante.”41 They all marshaled unambiguous moral judgments, at times even disregarding Christian universal love or pacifism, to fortify their sense of righteousness and ward off selfdoubt and pessimism.

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This means of catharsis unfortunately was not used by Vautrin; nightmares from the Nanking Massacre continued to haunt her. Yet even during her frequent hospitalization and treatment, she still thought about returning to Ginling to work, declaring: “China is my home.”42 As a final tribute to the Ginling family and her beloved China, she wrote these words just before her death: “Had I ten perfect lives, I would give them all to China.”43 Vautrin’s death testified to the brutality of the Sino-Japanese War, reflected not only in the physical casualties but also in the psychological wounds that it wrought. Her narratives from that period reveal the extent of the trauma ironically through the frequency of her expressions of optimism and submission. Her example also shows that when a Ginling leader was separated from the very community that could offer her support, the normative demands of the family discourse added burdens rather than provided reinforcement. As Vautrin’s experience illustrates, when the “head” had to wrestle with the untenable position of compromising her principles in order to protect those under her care in situations beyond her control, presenting an optimistic facade of Christian faith and “family” devotion to faraway colleagues only added to her distress and self-doubt. This negative impact of the family discourse, although perhaps caused partly by Vautrin’s idealist personality, was nevertheless all too truly verified by her death. Happily for Ginling and for the family discourse, Wu Yifang, its Chinese president, proved able to meet the high demands placed on her physical and mental energies, and was able to lead the Ginling family through the long years of the war.

s h a r i n g t h e fat e of t h e n at ion a l fa m i ly i: a dv e n t u r e s of t h e g i n l i n g fa m i ly i n e x i l e The rest of the Ginling family held up remarkably well at the beginning of the war, thanks to the able leadership of Wu Yifang and Ginling’s dominant family discourse. By the time Ginling started the academic year 1937–38, it had been scattered to different parts of China. As mentioned earlier, the Nanjing campus was left under the supervision of Vautrin while evacuated students and faculty members were asked to become guests of other missionary institutions in Shanghai, Wuchang, and Chengdu, respectively. Wu Yifang, the Ginling president, left Nanjing in December 1937 to join Ginling’s Chengdu unit, and eventually turned this “embryo” into the headquarters of Ginling-in-exile during the war. Dispersion of the Ginling community by no means dampened their “family” spirit. Led by Wu Yifang, the various Ginling units made do with their “guest” status as best as they could while bolstering their morale in two ways: they faithfully

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preserved cherished college traditions, especially the celebration of Founders’ Day, and kept up frequent communication with their president. Wu Yifang played an indispensable role in this campaign for the maintenance of the Ginling family. For instance, sensing the critical need to unite Ginling when its members were first dispersed, Wu sent a telegraph on October 29, 1937, to the groups in Changsha and Wuchang in anticipation of Founders’ Day, to be celebrated in early November of that year: “Our national struggle challenges Ginling family to actively seek and sacrificially share the Abundant Life. Romans 8:35, 37.” On October 30, obviously considering the first telegram insufficient to express her vision, she sent another telegraph to the Shanghai and Hong Kong groups: “May the Ginling family be worthy of the Founders’ and College ideals by humbly strengthening ourselves and sacrificially sharing in the national crisis. Romans 8:35, 37—Alma Mater.” The Wuchang group sent back a telegraph on October 31: “Dispersed but not dispirited. Through one faith, one hope, still one. Long life to Alma Mater.” Meanwhile, the students and faculty in other locations also wrote letters and reports to talk about the various Founders’ Day celebrations they had carried out.44 As an article published by the GCC declared, “The sense of unity in work and ideals which the war has brought has become very important to Ginling morale. Founders’ Day has become one of the symbols of unity of spirit, and each year is celebrated by Ginling women wherever they are.”45 For a disembodied Ginling, the sense of solidarity had to be initiated and maintained in its members through the reenactment of rituals and ceremonies that they had shared in more peaceful times. The Ginling group also needed to construct narratives that signified to distant correspondents their shared membership in both the Ginling family and their national family. Fortunately for the Chinese students and faculty, in the early years of the war their identities as “daughters of Ginling” and citizens of China meshed well, for the dangers and hardships they had endured as Chinese citizens also heightened their longing for a reunited Ginling family in a unified and peaceful China. Therefore, the narrators deployed abundant descriptions of hardships to not only proclaim to Wu Yifang their unremitting loyalty to the Ginling family but also to pledge their allegiance to their native or adopted country, China. The Shanghai unit, led by Ruth Chester and Florence Kirk, talked about daily bombing, lack of instructional and living space, and a general sense of insecurity. Described by Chester as “an island entirely surrounded by Japanese,”46 the Ginling unit in Shanghai had to overcome multiple obstacles in order to carry on their academic work. They had to share space with four other colleges as well as the China Native Product

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Company in the Continental Building (Cishu dalou 慈淑大樓) inside the French Concession in Shanghai. [Chen] Huang Liming wrote in a letter to the GCC dated February 1, 1941, “There are on the 3rd floor, the Soochow University, the 4th floor, the Associated College classrooms, the 5th floor, part of Shanghai University and the 6th floor, Hangchow University. St. John’s University used to be on the 4th floor. Since last fall [fall 1940] she had moved back to her own campus. Ginling Shanghai Unit is on the 4th floor where we have an office and a classroom.”47 Transportation and scheduling became a major headache for the Shanghai unit. Ranging from first-semester freshmen to last-semester seniors with every class in between represented, the students sometimes had to take classes at four different institutions with different schedules: “St. John’s has morning classes only, the Univ. of Shanghai afternoon ones only, and the others have to sandwich theirs in.”48 Some students had to travel back and forth at least eight blocks each way amid constant bombing and blockage of roads, and often on foot, since rickshaws proved prohibitively expensive for everyday use. The students who could take classes in one place did not fare much better, for they could find no drinking water or Chinese newspapers in the office building, and were told not to crowd the elevators or sing during business hours, a rule that made their chapel “a different service entirely.”49 More troubling for the students and faculty were the palpable daily threats to their safety with “robberies, murders, car accidents and strikes happening every single day.”50 Wu Yifang described the Shanghai situation to the GCC: “As a result of the intention of the Japanese military to spread a reign of terror, another fact that there are a large number of Chinese rascals ready to get money by serving the Japanese, there are unimaginable incidents [of kidnap and rape of Chinese women]. Each evening when [the students] arrive home, they say to themselves, ‘Well, another day has passed and nothing unpleasant has happened.’ From this you can imagine the nervous strain in what is apparently a quiet situation.”51 Yet the Shanghai unit also tried hard to send back words of reassurance and cheer. Kirk sought to dispel her own depression with these words of self-consolation: “Sometimes it seems that what we are doing is not important. But we have faith that education is one hope for the future, and in this immediate time it is good for us all to be occupied.”52 Huang Liming, then the dean of students and instructor of PE classes for Ginling’s Shanghai unit, also reported to Wu Yifang the loyalty and success of the Ginling students in Shanghai: It was really a difficult job to convince the girls to transfer. Even the sophomores and freshmen who have never seen the Ginling campus

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The Making of a Family Saga in Nanking are unwilling to do so. We still have a number of students persisting to be guest students at other schools for one more semester, hoping that the College could move back to Nanking next fall. Let us all pray for it. I must not forget to mention that nearly all the girls, now as guest students in other colleges here, are very bright and popular. They are not only active and good-looking, but also very outstanding in scholarship. They know how to take leadership and are willing to serve in various kinds of college activities. They certainly have kept up with and lived up to our Ginling tradition and standard.53

Huang portrayed the Ginling students as excellent scholars, active social workers, and good-looking and popular young women in this letter. Yet her attempts at providing a rosier picture than the reality warranted sometimes created contradictions, for in a more realistic report she described the students as “not especially brilliant in scholastic work but capable and practical, having initiative, spirit of cooperation and service.”54 Such self-conscious gestures of deliberate optimism can also be seen in reports about daily living and working arrangements from other units. Liu Enlan, for example, hastened to reassure Wu Yifang: after her lengthy description of the lack of space and furniture at Huachung University in Wuchang, “Please do not think that my letter is one of complaint. If it sounds so it certainly is not meant to be so. I am happy to feel that one can work at last. I am just thinking aloud and feel rather sad that our work has been so disorganized by the unfriendliness of a neighbor.”55 She also adopted a deliberately humorous tone to depict hardships. For instance, Liu thus reported their lack of privacy in Wuchang, where six women shared one bedroom: “Miss Chow and Miss Dzo are moving in today so we will have six beds in the faculty bedroom and Mou-I will come to spend the weekend with us. From this you will know how attractive we are.”56 Similarly, Ruth Chester described the crowding in Chengdu with good humor. Although the president, her Chinese and English secretaries, the business head, the dean of discipline and her assistant, the dean of studies, and the registrar occupied one office, a situation that made Wu admit that she could not “work well with many people in the same office,”57 Chester declared to the U.S. office: “One moderate-sized room houses the whole of our administration. Although it is a system whose disadvantages are obvious, there is one real advantage, namely, that almost anyone you need to consult is likely to be within reach of your voice if not of your arm, and, if not, he or she is likely to come in soon.”58 With equally high spirits, various Ginling units also described their brushes with death. Liu Enlan reported their intimate experience of an

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air-raid warning in Canton [Guangzhou], where they had stopped by briefly on their way to join the Shanghai unit: “The urgent warning came while we were in the [bath]tubs. Since there was nothing we could do, we proceeded with what we were doing. After bathing there was still no release. Then we proceeded to the laundry. Release came at 11 a.m.”59 Such acts of heroism, of carrying on their duties as usual under trying circumstances, appeared regularly in all the reports. Before Wu Yifang left for Chengdu, she nonchalantly mentioned to the U.S. office that she was dictating to Minnie Vautrin by the moonlight with an air raid going on outside of their office in Nanjing. She remarked, “[T]here is nothing for us to do but to continue this letter since we cannot leave this building, nor can we go to our supper since all fires have to be put out when the signal of the approach of planes is sounded.”60 The Shanghai unit celebrated Founders’ Day in 1937 with the war raging outside: “During the address the sound of bombing and machine gunning nearby was rather distracting, but no stray shells came our way.”61 As a Chinese citizen, Wu explained to her U.S. audience the source of their courage in moral and patriotic terms: “You seem to think I have unusual courage. Not at all. It is rather the impossible doings of the Japanese themselves that give me the confidence that the ways of ‘might’ are bound to fail; and the persistent efforts of our leaders that give me hope.”62 In comparison, the foreign missionaries tended to exalt the heroic forbearance of the Chinese people, a remarkable departure from their previous negative assessments of the Chinese national character (see chapter 1). They admired the Chinese people’s “quiet submissiveness wrought out of long experience that has helped this wonderful race to persist thru all these long years,” and claimed that their capacity for suffering was “one of their saving characteristics—this ability to hold on in the struggle when most of us would give up in the fight.”63 The account of the migration of Ginling’s Shanghai unit to join their headquarters in Chengdu made the most thrilling narrative from the early period of the war. This trip was undertaken by a group of fifteen women: five Ginling faculty members (two of them foreign missionaries), eight Ginling students, and two students from other institutions. The group first took a ship from Shanghai to Hong Kong on July 13; then took a train from Jiulong, and arrived in Hankou, Hubei Province, on July 30; next, they took a riverboat to reach Chongqing, Sichuan; and, finally, a bus from Chongqing to Chengdu, to the campus of Ginling-in-exile in mid-August. Their “long trek” covered between twenty-five hundred and twenty-six hundred miles and used every means of transportation available. It later became a permanent part of the institutional lore of Ginling not only

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because of the grave war situation that added a heady mixture of danger and excitement to this legend, but also because its narration highlighted the resourcefulness, fortitude, heroism, and loyalty of the participants. Florence Kirk, a Canadian missionary who was a member of Ginling’s English department, took up the role of official scribe for this journey. She kept fairly detailed diary entries between July 12 and August 1, 1938, which she later turned into a report to the college. A letter by Ettie Chin, a new Chinese American faculty member of Ginling’s PE department, to the GCC provided the only other surviving account of the long journey. Kirk recorded this trip in the mode of a travelogue, detailing their itinerary and activities with a day-by-day account, and completing it with a map and feedback from the participants. In contrast, Chin’s letter spanned only several days, from July 27 to August 2, 1938. She wrote this letter on the train from Jiulong to Hankou, and described the activities of the group as they traveled across war-torn China from the coast of Hong Kong to unoccupied interior China. Since Chin’s letter illustrated the dynamic of the wartime Ginling family from the unique perspective of a secondgeneration Chinese American returning to work in the “old country,” in what follows I will analyze Chin’s letter in some detail, and then examine it in light of the writings produced by Chin’s Chinese and American colleagues at that time. Chin’s letter started on July 27, 1938, and was typed by her own hand while the train her group rode on was stranded by a Japanese air-raid. They were then only a day from Changsha, Hunan. The letter first described the group’s activities, mentioning that they had left Shanghai on the Empress of Japan on July 13 and arrived in Hong Kong on July 15, and stayed in Hong Kong from July 15 to 25. They were finally able to board a train from Jiulong to Hankou after quite a few false starts and a last-minute scrambling. When Chin started this letter, the group had been riding on the train for two days, and had suffered unrelenting heat, soot, mosquitoes, and an air raid. Interestingly enough, however, in Chin’s letter we can scarcely notice any signs of her own apprehension about physical hardship and danger or other psychological strains brought on by the war. Chin told her reader first about their delightful trip from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Although Kirk worried that the bright moon under which they set sail would invite Japanese bombing,64 Chin was enthusiastic about a number of things: “The steward was very good to us and the girls had special privileges and a special morning breakfast. The Captain was perfectly grand to us and we visited the navigation bridge and had a bit of education on navigation. The trip from Shanghai was short and comfortable. Some of the Ginling alumnae were at the boat to greet us.”65 This

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tone of optimism is also typical of her account of their uncomfortable and dangerous trip on the train from Jiulong to Hankou. They had to cook their own food, constantly cover their mouth and nose with a piece of wet cloth to keep out the soot, sleep in the hallway of the train when temperature in their compartments rose to over 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and take refuge in rice patties and rustic houses when the air raid was on. Chin’s former students who also undertook the journey recalled sleeping next to a pigsty in the farmhouse, and there were some cases of lice infestation among them as well.66 Nevertheless, Chin chose to focus on the positive aspects of the trip only. She stated: “[T]he train was most comfortable, I think, and we all slept fairly well with the exception of the one night when we stopped in Yuchow [Yuezhou, because of a Japanese air raid]” “Our trip up on the whole was a safe one,” she continued, “without much alarm along the way with the exception of one time when there was an air raid warning.” She was light-hearted enough to note that the food situation was satisfactory: “We spent fi fteen dollars and we got some grand noodles which tasted exceptionally good especially when we cooked them ourselves on the train. I had brought a pot pan with me and we had the ingredients to make it delicious. Then there was a continuous fire on the platform where our water for drinking was boiled for us and we could use the fire for cooking.” She also stated that the company of her colleagues and students was congenial: “One of the most wonderful things about this whole group was the way they accepted what had happened and kept a cheerful face and optimistic outlook upon everything even in the face of disaster and suffering.” At the end of the trip, she even claimed to have found the key psychological element that would sustain the Chinese people through the war: “I think this [optimism and forbearance] must be the attitude of nearly all the people in China during the present.” In her praise of China’s beautiful scenery and the Chinese people’s heroic forbearance, Chin’s words very much resembled those uttered by her more experienced missionary colleagues who had worked at Ginling much longer than she had. However, although Chin resembled her missionary colleagues in providing a fairly superficial and romanticized commentary on the China situation from the perspective of an alien observer, she differed from them in her insistence on fi nding a common ground between her American and Chinese heritages: “Many times I thought that the trip along the embankments with mountains towering high above and a large stream of water flowing just below were like the trips I have taken in America. One time especially I was reminded of my

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trip to Yellowstone. China is indeed beautiful and there is more beauty than we can imagine.” Undoubtedly Chin was genuinely inspired by what she saw on this trip and sought to assimilate her new experience by comparing it to what had been more familiar to her up to that point in her life: her experience in the United States. Yet considering the constant signs of war-induced ravages and life-threatening danger, how should we interpret her overly bright narrative tone? Of course, we must consider her age and experience in 1938. Not yet twenty-five and never out of school before she went to China, she may have found her war experience a source of stimulation and excitement as well as danger. Moreover, she was a PE instructor accustomed to an active lifestyle. Her youth and health must have made it easier for her to endure physical discomfort than it was for her more sedentary and older colleagues. Indeed, Kirk noted in her report that Chin even insisted on taking photos when they were taking shelter from a Japanese air raid in the rice fields. One of her former students also recalled that Chin taught them how to sing “Old Father Time” while the group was sailing in the treacherous waters of the Three Gorges of the Yangzi River.67 But, along with these factors, the audience of her letter played an important role in determining her narrative tone. Chin was by no means insensitive to the dangers and hardships caused by the war, despite her age, experience, and personality. In fact, she described those to her friends back in the United States in far franker terms than what she had adopted in the letter. For instance, she found Wuchang, the destination of their train ride, “desolate,” and noted that although it was midnight when they arrived, they “made haste to cross over to Hankow [Hankou] by the last ferry, for in the morning there was no telling but that the station might be bombed. Already many attempts had been made on it.”68 In the letter to the U.S. headquarters of Ginling College, she clearly assumed an optimistic tone in order to impress upon her American correspondent the indomitable will of the group in general and her own strength of character in particular. This show of strength functioned as a testimonial to the group’s Christian strength and faith in God in the face of adversity. Moreover, as I have shown earlier in this section, at the beginning of the war it was common practice among the Ginling faculty and students, whether they were Chinese or foreign, Christian or non-Christian, to write to their U.S. correspondents across the ocean in just such a heroic and optimistic tone. The Chinese and American constituencies of Ginling sought to both demonstrate their morale and group cohesion to the U.S. side and to contain the hardships and dangers they had to endure every day through the

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very act of narrating and sharing such experiences. However, Chin’s letter stands out in that she completely erased any unpleasant and lifethreatening situations, though she was not averse to sharing those with her friends in the U.S. in her more informal correspondence. Seen in this light, Chin’s bright narrative tone and her strategy to focus on the little delightful details of the trip while overlooking the general grave picture functioned as a way for her to claim membership in a group of people to whom she was a relative newcomer and a junior member. Of course, the enthusiastic tone of her letter may easily have painted her as naive and out of touch with Chinese reality, and thereby foreshadowed her experience among them as a second-generation Chinese American who would always be subjected to implicit stereotypes once she started working among them in Chengdu. At this point, however, little did the Ginling women foresee the daily threats to their lives, the poverty and drudgery, or the exacerbated internal friction that awaited them in the years of their exile in Sichuan. The group that had gone on the long trek claimed that they found their patriotism strengthened by what they had witnessed: the beauty and natural wealth of the land and the faithfulness and calm of the people at wartime. Kirk concluded her own report with these uplifting words: “What a wonderful piece of luck that I am here to see these lovely provinces of China! They strengthened my consciousness of the greatness of China’s resources, both human and material.”69 Even the inconvenience waiting for them at the end of their trip did not dampen their enthusiasm. When the group eventually arrived in Chengdu, they had to sleep on the floor because the new dorm was not yet ready, but they answered cheerfully that they were used to sleeping on floors. Although only a relatively small number of Ginling members made the long trek, its significance for the institutional ethos was never in question. The story of this trek became such an inspiring symbol of the invincible Ginling family spirit at wartime that the GCC was moved to declare: “The story deserves permanent record. The mere fact that 2600 miles took two months [sic] of travel time is sufficiently eloquent.”70 But perhaps more important for the individuals who participated in the long trek and Ginling’s wartime exile in Chengdu or other parts of inland China, they “became acutely aware of the country’s vastness and of the formidable dimensions of time, space, and mind that separated China’s modern seaboard from its primitive hinterland.”71 In bringing them into close contact with the poverty-stricken and illiterate Chinese masses for the first time in their lives, Ginling’s wartime exile became an educational adventure that was to change everyone involved for good.

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s h a r i n g t h e fat e of t h e n at ion a l fa m i ly i i: c u r r ic u l a r a dj u s t m e n t s Although narratives of adventure and travel made heroic and entertaining tales, the by far more challenging task during the war years lay in simultaneously preserving the prewar standards of the college and making Ginling viable and meaningful under radically different circumstances. Yet curricular experiments attempted by the Ginling faculty brought into focus the conflicts between Ginling and the Chinese government rather than the harmony of the Ginling family with their national family. As early as 1938, Wu Yifang thought that it behooved Ginling to take the lead in answering the call of the present urgent needs of China: “We should be ashamed of our own callousness and inertia if we are not spurred by such tremendous misery to do more than in normal times. Miss Vautrin’s work, on one hand, and the need for strong personalities in all lines, on the other, make me very uncomfortable to be just following conventional lines of education.”72 Having learned about and shared the sufferings of the Chinese people caused by Japanese invasion, including the Nanjing Massacre that took place around Ginling’s former campus, Wu had originally planned to relocate Ginling to a semirural area in west Sichuan where they could implement a wartime curriculum that would train students to serve China better under the current conditions.73 Yet the limited resources at her command in wartime Sichuan, Ginling’s liberal arts curriculum, and the increasingly stringent control of education by the Nationalist government eventually forced Ginling to settle for guest status at Huaxi ba. In addition to their local host, the West China Union University in Chengdu, Ginling shared space and resources with four other institutions: the University of Nanking, Shantung Christian University (Qilu daxue 齊魯), the Medical School of Central University (Zhongyang daxue 中央), and, after 1942, Yenching University from Beijing. Even Ginling’s limited curricular experiments in Chengdu were seriously curtailed by several government regulations. In 1938 the GMD Wartime National Congress passed Zhanshi geji jiaoyu shishi fang’an gangyao 戰時各級教育實施方案綱要 (Wartime Policies on Different Levels of Education), in which it stipulated that schools beyond the secondary level must “adopt military administrative methods” (junshihua guanli 軍事化管理).74 In 1940 the government demanded that all high schools and colleges establish a tutorial system that gave five or six students to each faculty member for special guidance in their personal life as well as in their study. Ostensibly it was to emphasize “moral education” rather than the “mere handing down of knowledge,”75 but in fact it

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bound advisors and their students together with the threat of government penalization. The government edict stated that advisors were held responsible for the moral character of their students. Not only was each advisor required to write comments about students’ “thoughts and behavior” on their graduation certificates, but also, if students went astray ideologically even after graduation, the advisor would be held responsible and “reprimanded accordingly.”76 In addition to this system of “educational espionage,” as it was called by students of the time, the Ministry of Education also mandated a month-long special training of all upper-classmen for the war effort. Moreover, the Nationalist minister of education at the time, Chen Lifu, claimed that since the war made postgraduate education unfeasible, colleges should focus on the professional and occupational training of their undergraduate students. The ministry consequently banned minors in all institutions and demanded that students complete at least eighty credit hours of major requirements for graduation. Moreover, the ministry stipulated several required courses in all colleges: military training for two hours a week, PE and hygiene, Three Principles of the People, and, after 1940, several hours of community service every week.77 This kind of micromanagement of the college curriculum by the government did much violence to the liberal arts education at Ginling. Ginling had to cancel its minor system, merge sociology with the newly constituted home economics department, and struggle to satisfy other government requirements. The Nationalist government also invoked the trope of the family to justify its increasingly conservative policy and strict control of women’s education. For example, in a confidential pamphlet on wartime educational policies published by the Ministry of Education in 1938, the Ministry outlined a special training program for female students “in preparation for the improvement of family education” in China.78 It specified that: in elementary and high schools female students must be trained in sewing, laundry, cooking, and family hygiene; all provinces and cities must have home economics schools for women who could not afford formal education otherwise; normal schools must train women as future teachers of home economics; and elementary and secondary schools must hold regular meetings of female teachers and students so that they could discuss ways to improve children’s education at home and at school. Although Ginling’s status as a women’s college with American ties exempted it from some of these demands, as an institution of higher education registered with the Ministry of Education it still had to adopt the “tutoring” system and military training. Chen Lifu promoted these two mandatory requirements by deploying the metaphor of parenting. In a public letter to all

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the teachers in China on Teachers’ Day, August 27, 1939,79 Chen argued that school education should emulate family education in contemporary China. His rationale followed this line of thinking: children must have both maternal love and paternal discipline at home, for strict discipline will inculcate respect into children, and tender care, love. In receiving both love and discipline, children will respect and love their parents, and desire to “follow the ways of the sage” in order to please their parents. He argued that the government’s educational policies aligned the tutoring system with military training, and together they embodied the union of maternal love and paternal discipline. Therefore, these two mandatory systems enabled schools to integrate both kinds of parenting methods into their education of students. Conservative discourses on education, such as the theory of “parenting methods” espoused by Chen Lifu, prevailed at the time because the Nationalist government was able to use the discourse of national defense to trump considerations of individual liberty or academic freedom. Faced with China’s national crisis, Wu Yifang and her (Chinese) colleagues found it impossible to live up to the promise to defend Ginling’s autonomy that they had made to their U.S. headquarters when registering Ginling with the Nationalist government in 1930 (see chapter 3). Instead, Ginling had to change its curriculum and thus in effect submitted the Ginling family to authoritarian government rule. The Freshman Month Program and newly established Department of Home Economics represented such measures of curricular adjustment at Ginling. With all its upper-class students attending military training as required by the government, the Chengdu unit organized a special one-month program for its freshmen class in October 1938. Wu later reported to the U.S.: “We aim at starting the freshmen to face the needs and actual conditions of life, in order that they may relate their studies to the solving of problems of living. We also definitely decided to establish a rural service station, which can be used as a laboratory.” The teachers divided the fourweek-long Freshman Month Program into three parts. The first week was allocated for faculty lectures on the general conditions of the nation and the world and the students’ role in the war. Ginling faculty also tested the students’ academic level and physical fitness during this week. The second and third weeks were spent on activities related to education and culture, economy and society, health and recreation, and rural service. These two weeks featured visits to local cultural, educational, and religious institutions, a visit to the theater, and one to a rural village outside of Chengdu. Most creative was the program during the fourth week that focused on students’ “character training.” It entailed the cultivation of four habits

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and qualities valued by the faculty: the ability to “listen more carefully to instructions,” promptness, politeness, and “a more inquiring mind.” The teachers also designed various tests for the students in this week, including several mock packing sessions to train promptness, a realistic-looking skit of murder to develop their skills of observation in an emergency, and two mock parties at which the students acted as hosts and guests respectively to learn proper social etiquette. Their insistence on etiquette training revealed a collective nostalgia for more peaceful and luxurious past times when such training had been an integral part of a Ginling education, but it hardly seemed relevant to their current refugee life. Granted, this kind of training perhaps created for the Ginling group an oasis of beauty and civilization that alleviated the hardships and terrors of the war, as some alumnae claimed. However, it certainly did not fit the goals that Wu Yifang had described for the Freshman Month Program: “We aim starting the freshmen to face the needs and actual conditions of life, in order that they may relate their studies to the solving of problems of living.”80 The Freshmen Month Program received mixed feedback from faculty and students, just as the mixed nature of its designed activities packed into such a short period may have foretold. The visits to various institutions and the rural area acquainted the students with the diverse living conditions and beliefs of one part of inland China, a place more alien to most of them than the United States. However, the “character training” part only replicated the old model of femininity promoted at prewar Ginling. Although this part of the program harkened back to happier days of Ginling and thus linked the freshmen class to the college tradition and its unique qizhi, it also highlighted their status as refugees from westernized metropolitan China, and signaled their alienation from their current location of wartime Sichuan. Many years later, some alumnae still wondered at the hostility that the local student population harbored toward Ginling students’ “modern” ways of social interaction.81 This ill will resulted as much from the class distinction and culture gap between the two groups, which continued to be preserved by Ginling’s wartime curriculum, as from the purported “backwardness” and “insularity” of the local populace. As a former refugee student who had lived in Chengdu for several years before entering Ginling recalls, some of the local students actually came from very well-to-do families, while some refugee students lost their financial support as the war cut off their communications and forced their families’ exile.82 The conflict between the native Sichuan students and refugee students thus seemed to arise less from economic discrepancy than from class and cultural differences, carried over from prewar years, between China’s more westernized coastal area and its hinterland.

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Even their rural tour revealed the unavoidable superficiality of the Freshman Month Program. On the one hand, the faculty rejoiced at the sight of the students laughing off their difficulties in the rural area: the muddy treks among tufts and tufts of rice shoots, ferocious-looking watchdogs, cold lunch, rainy weather, and the dubious hygienic conditions of peasant homes. On the other hand, the visit felt like the slumming of a group of privileged urbanites on their first country tour. The rural village they visited was a “model” town designed and led by the well-known rural reformer James Yen (Yan Yangchu 晏陽初), an American-educated Chinese intellectual and devout Christian. But even such an idealized slice of rural China caused much student criticism for its backwardness; some of the students did not like to “become intelligent about practical rural living” and dreaded a possible return visit.83 The students’ experience during their rural tour in effect revealed the problematic aspect of maintaining the traditional Ginling curriculum in current conditions. Although Ginling had prided itself on training students to “see a social problem” everywhere they looked and opening “the eyes of a girl who was blind,”84 its prewar curriculum was based on the particular “social laboratory” of urban Nanjing, and the faculty more often than not supplied the students with a foreign lens for the study of Chinese reality. Since most Chinese people at the time lived in rural conditions far more primitive than the idealized slice that Ginling students sampled in their Freshmen Month Program, students trained through such a curriculum would not be equipped to tackle the real problems in wartime China. Furthermore, the exigencies of war exposed the fact that the traditional missionary belief in the transformation of Chinese society through the change of personal morality had missed the mark. While “the analysis of China in terms of a moral problem fitted in well with American predilections” and may even have helped to paint missionaries as heroes who strove to save innocent victims of false religions,85 its prescription for a better China could not command enduring loyalty from the Chinese masses, who were concerned more with economic viability and basic survival than with faith or spiritual revival. Thus, we can see the unavoidable limits of the Freshmen Month Program despite the well-intentioned impulse of curricular reform from the Ginling faculty and administration. Ginling’s establishment of a Department of Home Economics generated more positive and lasting results. As mentioned earlier, the Nationalist government’s increasingly conservative attitude toward women was manifested in its promotion of home economics in school curricula across China. The official line from the Ministry of Education was that home economics would prepare female students for their future roles as wives and

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mothers and thus “improve the family education” of the nation.86 Ginling established its own home economics department in fall 1938 not merely because it followed government orders, however. The faculty and administration also felt that this move would enable Ginling both to contribute to the national war effort by producing urgently needed graduates trained in home economics and to strengthen its institutional collaboration with fellow missionary institutions in Chengdu. Yenching University in Beijing had been the acknowledged training center for home economics majors, but in fall 1938 Ginling started to collaborate with West China, Ginling’s local host in Chengdu, in the instruction of home economics. Wu Yifang explained to the GCC other reasons for requesting American-trained staff in home economics as follows: “The need for developing Home Economics in Ginling is really urgent, both from the viewpoint of a women’s college, and also for cooperation with the Agricultural College of Nanking University,” a fellow refugee institution in Chengdu.87 It must be noted that Ginling took the initiative to conceive their home economics major in far broader terms than the norm of the American home economics movement, and thereby allowed its students to branch into other fields and professions after their graduation. A Ginling catalogue of the 1940s described the requirements of the home economics major. First-year students had to complete required courses: all majors had to select Home Administration and Home Administration Practice, the former theory and the latter practice that involved student role-playing as mother, daughter, father, and son. Although these role-playing exercises reinforced gender stereotypes (the mother would always be cook and her daughter assistant cook, while the father would be the home financial administrator and the son his assistant), they did allow the students to try their hands at different gender and familial roles. All majors were also required to select Teaching Methodologies for Home Economics, for which they designed their own teaching materials and thus in effect practiced teaching. Starting from their second year, students could choose from one of the three areas as their majors: Nutrition, Child Welfare and development, or art and dress (meishu yu yishi 美術與衣飾).88 Gael Graham suggests that the teaching of domestic science at missionary schools for Chinese girls developed through “influence from the American home economics movement,” but it also arose from a missionary desire to disarm the criticism that Chinese women’s education would be injurious to their future domestic roles.89 At Ginling a home economics program allowed the missionaries to offer science courses to female students. As early as 1917 Thurston had argued: “The Chinese are not keen about [science] because they do not realize how much they

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need it and the things that it makes possible. I should like to see a genuine enthusiasm for these subjects which would mean so much for the homes of China if educated women took them up.” 90 At Ginling, nutrition majors certainly benefited from Thurston’s argument made in the name of improving Chinese homes, for they were able to take many science courses in chemistry and nutrition normally not required of home economics majors in other institutions. In fact, some Ginling students chose nutrition only because repulsion to blood and gore dissuaded them from a career in medicine. They considered nutrition “preventive medicine” and later developed into researchers, instructors, and practitioners of nutrition and dietary sciences in the U.S.91 Similarly, majors in child welfare and development found themselves studying education in the United States after graduation from Ginling, and were able to establish their careers in teaching kindergarten and elementary school.92 The home economics department’s emphasis on practice prepared them well. For example, for the course Food Administration in Institutions, students had on-site practice at Ginling: they helped out in the college kitchen and the kitchens of the two affi liated kindergartens, and also in the “Department of Supplemental Food” (fushi bu 輔食部)—that is, a college-subsidized little shop that sold nutritious snacks to students at reasonable prices every day at ten in the morning and four in the afternoon. Child welfare majors practiced and observed at the Ginling Child Welfare Lab, which included a kindergarten with thirty children from three up to twelve years old. Classes on dress design, interior decoration, handicrafts, and knitting, needless to say, also included practice. Granted, the personnel appointments of the home economics department proved troublesome for the Ginling administration ever since it began in 1938. In 1944, the home economics Chair Rong Xiaoyun (Yung Hsiao-yun 容篠蘊) resigned, apparently because she had “lost the confidence of the students” and had “not been able to cooperate easily with others.” 93 However, the establishment of this program at wartime Ginling did provide students with broad and solid disciplinary training that facilitated their academic and career advancements later in life. The Chinese women fully realized the potential of a home economics education received at Ginling College, and responded to this new discipline with great enthusiasm. Wu Yifang reported that within a few years home economics had become the “third largest major at Ginling, with its enrollment only next to sociology and English.” 94 Together with English, sociology, and PE, home economics also became a “name brand” (pinpai 品牌) program of Ginling in Chinese eyes.95 Thus, a

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blatant attempt at prescribing Chinese women’s role by the government inadvertently provided a tool of empowerment for Ginling women. In addition to the installation of its Freshman Month Program and the Department of Home Economics, Ginling organized initiatives to serve the rural population, especially women and children, in wartime China. For instance, they established a rural service station in Jenshou [Renshou 仁壽], Sichuan, in 1939, and moved it to Zhonghe chang 中和場, an area closer to Chengdu, in 1943. Students in home economics and sociology regularly went to teach rural women basic literacy, hygiene, and a simple knowledge of obstetrics and gynecology. Yet, although providing much-needed scientific knowledge to the peasants to help them manage their household finances and hygiene, Ginling students could not solve the problem of corruption in the county government. They also participated in the “Five Missionary Colleges Summer Service Corps” to tour the countryside and propagate patriotism to the local peasants during their summer vacation. However, they often found themselves unable to answer probing questions from the local people such as: “You asked us to contribute money and labor. Why aren’t you doing it yourselves? What don’t those people who have sold their land in the country and are now living in foreign-style houses in Chengdu?” 96 These examples demonstrate the perseverance of Ginling’s spirit of social service, epitomized by their college motto “Abundant Life,” despite the exigencies of war, but also reveal the inadequacy of Ginling’s traditional model of humanitarian and charitable efforts as a way to address the urgent war needs in China. Seen from another perspective, Ginling’s curricular reforms during the war enabled Ginling’s students and teachers to contribute to the war effort in their own way and to see themselves as worthy members of their national family despite the college’s adherence to a liberal arts curriculum. The University of Nanking was able to rely on its prewar strength in agriculture to carry on more than one hundred research projects to study the soil and plantation in Sichuan, and later to make commercial use of its findings.97 Ginling’s traditional emphasis on a well-rounded education did not adapt as well to the rural environment of Sichuan. Still, Ginling’s contributions, despite its curricular limitation, clearly demonstrated the commitment of the institution and its members to China’s Resistance War.

h e a d of t h e fa m i ly i n t h e wa r In addition to curricular adjustments, Wu Yifang also attempted to hold the wartime Ginling family together through a variety of other measures

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and programs. At that time the Ginling administration actively pursued unity and solidarity through the dissemination of the family discourse, partly also in response to the Nationalist government’s efforts to promote nation-wide ideological homogeneity through various wartime educational policies. Thurston’s “A Contour History of Ginling College 1915–1940” represented one of the most concentrated efforts of group-maintenance in the face of government interference. In this brief institutional history, she again emphasized Ginling’s strong sense of tradition and its internal cohesion even after Chinese leaders took over college administration in 1928: “There was no break with the past; East and West were held together by the family spirit, which was true to the old Chinese motto, ‘one family under heaven.’” Thurston accentuated both Ginling’s internal solidarity and its firm grounding in the Chinese soil during the current war. She wrote, “Ginling lives away from her buildings, and the joys which haunt her daughters like a dream of heaven. She had endured danger in the streets of Shanghai, discomfort of refugee living in Wuchang, the threat of bombs on the train from Canton—later the actuality in Hankow and Chengtu, where she lives courageously, enduring as seeing the invisible, that happy day when China will be free and at peace, and Ginling will return to her own place.”98 Such optimistic words eventually rang hollow as Ginling students and faculty faced ever-worsening poverty and danger in the eight long years of the war. It fell on Wu Yifang’s shoulders to carry on the main burden of sustaining institutional morale in her capacity as Ginling’s chief administrative officer and the symbol of the Ginling family. Extolled by Thurston as combining in her person “the best in the East and the best in the West,” 99 Wu used her bicultural position and discursive skills to maintain institutional cohesion and to secure external support. Her efforts were threefold: fi rst, she made three trips to the United States between 1931, when the Japanese military seized northeastern China, and the end of the war in 1945, and each time went on extensive promotional lecture tours there; second, she cultivated positive relationships with the missionary Associated Boards of Christian Higher Education in China and the U.S. military in Chengdu; and, third, she managed the college personnel appointments in such a way that it fostered cooperation and forestalled confl icts between its members. However, as will be shown below, Wu’s proclaimed Christian faith and devotion to Ginling also set up an intriguing contrast with her consciousness of her Chinese citizenship. Wu visited the United States in 1933–1934, 1935–1936, 1943–1944, and after the war in 1945 as member of the Chinese delegation to the

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signing of the UN Charter. During her tours, she strengthened Ginling’s ties with its former and current missionary faculty members by visiting their families in various cities and giving talks at their churches; reinforced Ginling’s institutional friendship with Smith College, its sister college in the United States and a major donor through the years; and also conveyed greetings to Ginling alumnae studying in the United States. These activities all aimed at generating more interest in Ginling and thus expanding and solidifying Ginling’s base of support in the United States. Although the war situation in China deteriorated, Wu maintained an upbeat attitude in her tireless lecturing. At a talk given at Smith in 1943, she emphasized the opportunities rather than the hardships that the war had created for Chinese women. She claimed that not only did more Chinese women enroll in institutions of higher education during the war years than before, but that they had also “stepped out of their homes and taken their real share in the national effort.”100 The war also enabled Wu to regain some of the reputation of Ginling that had been tarnished by the report submitted by Dr. Earl Herbert Cressy to the Associated Board in 1926. In her tour in 1935–36 Wu was able to impress the American women, who were facing acute unemployment problems caused by the Great Depression, with the fact that Ginling students received far more job offers than they could possibly satisfy. She said that with an average of three openings for each Ginling graduate, “the highest demand numbered twenty-one for physical education directors.”101 During her trip of 1943, she attributed Ginling students’ excellent performance during the war to their college education: “Because of the chances we have given the students to develop their personalities as a whole, in extracurricular activities and taking responsibilities, they are more serious-minded and are trained not to be pushing and seeking for themselves, but to be quietly doing their own work and duties faithfully.”102 Oftentimes Wu’s speeches gave a far brighter picture of not only Ginling but also of China’s national conditions than the reality warranted. At the annual dinner of the Associate Boards meeting held on May 5, 1943, she confidently declared: “The living conditions certainly are becoming very difficult, but we are an agricultural country and so the farmers and laborers do not suffer. In a way they are better off than they used to be. The only class that suffers the most is the salaried class—the professors, government employees, etc., and they are usually articulate and so they ‘holler.’” Wu understandably related better to the Chinese intellectuals and their wartime concerns than to the working-class Chinese. But by dismissing the very real predicament of the Chinese peasants and factory workers, she not only showed her ignorance about and apathy toward

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people out of her own class, but also let her desire for American support misguide Americans about the general situation in China. Her prediction to her American audience that there would not be a civil war after the Japanese surrender and that the Chinese people would reject communism, both turned out to be dead wrong, and she would have to recant both forecasts in just a few years.103 Wu’s accuracy as a fortune-teller may have left much to be desired, but her talent with words made her a much sought-after speaker not only in the United States but also in China, a visibility that she put to good use: raising Ginling’s public profi le and cultivating goodwill and positive relations with the Chinese government. She reported that within one week in 1938, she had broadcasted once, spoken to six different groups, preached at one Episcopal church, and “been asked to speak at the Women’s World Day of Prayers, and to lead chapel for the Women’s College . . . for three days [that] week.”104 She was also appointed by the Nationalist government to many important positions in addition to her position as a college administrator. She was elected as a member and an executive officer of the National People’s Political Council and to the Executive Committee of the National Christian Council, which duties frequently took her away from Ginling. Her external commitments, in addition to her trips to the United States, became so overwhelming that she was forced to admit: “I have come to realize more keenly that I either have to stop attending to outside activities or to secure a very strong dean for Ginling, otherwise the College is to suffer much from my inefficiency in administration.”105 Yet Wu’s bona fides with the GMD did help Ginling to secure fi nancial help from the government and would later protect Ginling student activists from GMD harassment,106 and her work in public relations could hardly be taken up by others during her absence due to her prominent social position and her friendships with the political elite of the time.107 Known in certain American groups as the “second most important woman in China”108 after Madame Chiang Kai-shek, she indeed possessed much political clout. As a result, she did not have to resort to desperate measures in order to secure government protection and funds necessary for the survival of her college, unlike Chen Yuguang, the president of the University of Nanking, who had to socialize with the minister of education, Chen Lifu, and Zhang Linggao, the president of West China, who named the GMD general Feng Yuxiang and the high official Kong Xiangxi as honorary trustees in order to gain their support.109 Wu fostered Ginling’s relationships with various institutions and organizations not only through her public service but also through

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correspondence and outreach activities. After Pearl Harbor, she immediately wrote to the GCC to express her sympathy and indignation at the treachery of Japanese militarists, now the common enemy of China and the United States: “While the loss was tremendous to America yet this event shows clearly how the American people trust others. Even we in China who have dealt with the Japanese invasion for almost five years were totally surprised by this last demonstration of her treacherous method.”110 Within the space of two sentences, she managed to soothe the injured pride and humiliation felt by the Americans, to pledge China as a trustworthy ally of the United States, and to highlight the perseverance of the Chinese people, who had been battling the Japanese invaders long before the United States joined the war. This letter again demonstrated her felicitous ways with words, which helped her to establish productive public relations. Wu actively participated in the efforts to create programs that could facilitate friendly interactions between the five missionary colleges and the U.S. military presence in Chengdu. In December 1944, Ginling News reported on measures taken by the college, such as giving culture lectures to help the American soldiers understand China and Chinese people better, supplying guides to take them shopping, inviting them to join the Chinese faculty on social occasions, and—one especially popular program: arranging “to have groups of officers and men invited to the home of Chinese faculty for Sunday evening supper,” “so that the Americans have the privilege of friendly informal intercourse with their Chinese neighbors.”111 Wu even supported the idea of six Ginling students dropping their college courses temporarily to serve as typists and phone receptionists at the American air base near Chengdu. She explained her rationale behind this decision to the GCC: This is a very simple thing for American girls to do, yet under the present conditions in Chengtu this decision called for much deliberation and courage. It is because the traditional attitude in Chengtu is still very conservative and the local gentry cannot conceive the idea of girls from good families going to work in an army camp. When Dr. Djang [Zhang Xiaosong], Dr. Chester, and myself helped the girls make up their minds, we faced the possibility of unfavorable criticisms, but we supported the girls’ decision for two reasons: first, as Chinese college girls they should take part in more direct war work [like] college women in America and England. Secondly, the American service men stationed in China have not had the chance to know educated Chinese women. In fact, on the contrary, some of them have come into contact with the

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worst type of girls. We therefore were much gratified when the Commanding Officer told Dr. Djang during her visit to the girls in February, “They are very good girls and they do very good work.”112

This account revealed Wu’s complex and at times confl icted identities as a culturally conservative Christian Chinese president of a missionary college in wartime China. On the one hand, she hastened to reassure the U.S. office of the moral character of the students who volunteered to work for the American air force, citing not only their willingness to free men for more active duties and thus vouching for their patriotism, but also invoking the examples of their counterparts in the United States and Britain in order to justify their behavior. On the other hand, she also emphasized that the support of the college administration originated from an officially sanctioned eagerness to promote wholesome interactions between American soldiers and educated Chinese women in order to foster U.S. soldiers’ understanding of and respect for Chinese women. If the second reason indeed represented her true sentiment, one might infer that Wu’s concern for the reputation of Chinese womanhood and China outweighed her anxiety for the welfare of individual students. Wu was obviously aware of the American soldiers’ associations with local prostitutes and other women of dubious character, called by her “the worst type of girls.” Yet she did not voice her concerns to the GCC about the moral fiber of the American military stationed in China. Instead, she cautioned Ginling students that they would receive criticism from some quarters and possibly experience sexual harassment by some U.S. soldiers. The caution came in her speaking of self-discipline and dignified behavior toward foreigners.113 Her veiled warning against American servicemen was by no means groundless, for the American soldiers did commit a variety of sexual offenses in China. Alumnae recalled that the American soldiers often got drunk and made trouble at local dance clubs, so much so that the Ginling students were forced to walk back to their dorms in groups at night in order to ward off unwanted sexual advances.114 Wu’s pride and gratification upon hearing the American commanding officer at Chengdu praise Ginling students as being “good girls” who “do good work” may well have been mingled with her relief that nothing untoward had happened to mar either Ginling students’ ideal image of the U.S. military or Ginling’s efforts to cultivate positive relations with China’s ally in the war: the United States. While Wu’s proclaimed support for Ginling students working at the U.S. air base may have been intended to express to the GCC her eagerness to develop US–China friendship, it also reconfirmed one significant

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component of Wu’s private self: her racial identity. Wu in fact regarded her nationalist consciousness as an indispensable part of herself. As I mentioned in earlier chapters, she participated in various political activities to protest government weakness in foreign policy during her time as a student in both China and the United States. Her indispensable role in handling Ginling’s registration with the Nationalist government also revealed her racial consciousness. During the Sino-Japanese War, as to be expected, Wu found new occasions and channels to express her patriotism. Having nearly been expelled from the train because of her Chinese citizenship during her lecture tour in the United States in 1936 (during which she also attended the tercentennial celebration of Harvard University as part of a delegation with five other famous Chinese college presidents), she confessed to her friend Bunny Welch in a private letter, “[A]fter the conductor had gone I broke down and cried like a child, feeling hurt about the way my dear old China was treated.”115 She even used this humiliating experience of racial discrimination to stimulate her students’ patriotism. A Ginling alumna recalled that Wu told the students about this experience at a Ginling meeting organized specially to welcome her return from her “glorious” U.S. trip that took her to Harvard as an esteemed representative of Chinese educators. According to this recollection, instead of detailing her warm reception in the United States, Wu narrated how she proclaimed her Chinese citizenship to immigration officers rather than pretended to be Japanese, and therefore had to get off the train in the dark of the night all by herself, until the Chinese Embassy helped her to reach her destination. Whether Wu deliberately changed the story to suit the occasion or the alumna had misremembered the details, this alumna claimed that Wu’s courageous declaration “I am Chinese” left an indelible impression on her mind and prompted her to take part in the “fight for Chinese independence” later.116 The six students who worked at the American air base similarly had their patriotic feelings inspired by Wu’s example. After witnessing the abundant food, clean uniforms, and heating furnaces enjoyed by the American soldiers, they expressed sorrow and righteous indignation on behalf of the Chinese troops who were “fighting in the front, bathed in blood while enduring cold and hunger,” so much so that they could not swallow their meals at the air base, feeling that these were dishes for “them” and not “us.”117 On many other occasions, Wu indeed spoke more like a concerned and indignant Chinese citizen than like a Christian president of Ginling College.118 Yet Wu’s display of nationalist sentiment also helped her perform her public role as Ginling president. Such words and deeds not only demonstrated to the college community her caliber as the patriotic head

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of the Ginling family and a capable leader of the collective Ginling effort in national salvation, but also brought into sharp relief her function as the voice of the college. As I have mentioned earlier, both the Chinese and American constituencies of Ginling unanimously supported the Chinese people’s resistance to the Japanese invasion. In fact, even staunch pacifists like Ruth Chester and Matilda Thurston spoke out against Japanese war atrocities, not to mention more plainspoken Eva Spicer, Esther Tappert, and Catherine Sutherland. Rising nationalist passions during the war prompted the Chinese students to not only actively participate in war relief projects, but also to change the previously bilingual Ginling College Magazine so that is was Chinese language only. This editorial decision had something to do with the declining English proficiency of the student body. However, it also testified to the inescapable connection of the Ginling family to its national family, since the decline of English at Ginling was caused by the inflow of graduates of government-run secondary schools both immediately following their registration with the Nationalist government in 1930 and during their exile in Sichuan. If Wu Yifang at times placed her national loyalty above her Christian faith and institutional affiliation during the war, therefore, she often did so with the expectations and blessings of her fellow Ginling members, for they lived through the same tensions between the universal love advocated by Christianity and the moral judgment against Japanese atrocities prompted by reality, and between their nationalist sympathy and their institutional loyalty. Whatever Wu Yifang’s psychological conflicts may have been, Wu as Ginling’s president valiantly tried to present the face of a united college to the public. While her voice guided Ginling’s outreach communications, her public roles sometimes also demanded her silence. For example, in 1945 Ginling College received the same-size grant from the London Missionary Society as did the University of Nanking. However, the Associated Boards considered that Ginling received a comparatively larger additional income because it was smaller than Nanking. They consequently worked out a plan to redistribute the sum Ginling had received, reducing Ginling’s share by three million dollars and allocating this amount to other (coeducational) universities. In her letter to Ginling’s headquarters in the United States, Wu Yifang wrote: “Even though we could have made very good use of the additional income in our own program, I accepted the reallocation without complaint. However, if our faculty knew it, they would surely feel it unfair, because as a woman’s institution we have been economical about our expenditure, and the departments have been repeatedly asked to manage on a minimum basis.”119 Since Ginling was facing a serious economic crisis at the time and the faculty had, as Wu

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pointed out, always been asked to economize in the past and were paid less than their counterparts in other missionary institutions, Wu felt it unfair of the Associated Boards to reallocate Ginling’s grant without consulting Ginling first. However, she decided not only to accept this highhanded decision without demur but also to withhold this information from the Ginling faculty. She also implied, through the mention of the difficulties that China was facing and her appreciation of the support of friends and colleagues elsewhere in the letter, that she made that decision as a Christian and a patriotic Chinese trying her best to support the Christian cause in China, even if it meant sacrificing Ginling’s own interests in the process. In acting as the mediator between the Ginling faculty and the missionary Associated Boards, Wu also demonstrated to her American sponsors her selfless devotion to the collective harmony and unity of the missionary enterprise in China. Wu’s internal administration at Ginling during the war also left an impressive record. For one thing, she handled deaths and tragedies, all too common occurrences at the time, with poise and unfailing optimism. After the West China campus was bombed by the Japanese for the first time on June 11, 1939, she immediately sent out Ginling students to help injured civilians.120 She also sent a circular letter to reassure all those concerned about Ginling of the safety and heartening loyalty of the college community. After receiving news of Minnie Vautrin’s suicide, she wrote to the GCC to offer condolences and share inexpressible sorrow,121 and held a memorial service and set up a scholarship fund at Ginling to commemorate Vautrin’s service to the college and to China. With more circumspection and less visibility, she sought the harmony and cohesion of the Ginling family through careful selection and appointment of faculty members. As has been mentioned earlier, Ginling in the 1930s saw increased personal conflicts both between the faculty and the students and between the faculty members themselves. They had been temporarily suppressed by the more urgent national and institutional struggle for survival in the early years of the war, but these tensions escalated as the war raged on. The individualistic Esther Tappert, for example, rejected Wu’s invitation to return to Ginling and accused Wu of avoiding “any real facing of fundamental issues.”122 That Wu wrote several letters to Tappert and even offered to meet with her in order to convince Tappert to return to Ginling was just one example of Wu’s efforts to maintain the Ginling family in the war. But at times Wu’s overriding concerns for the harmony of Ginling caused her to make judgments and decisions largely based on prejudices and stereotypes. This can be seen particularly in her hiring decisions for

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the PE department. Although Ginling badly needed capable PE faculty members to help solve a persistent nationwide shortage of PE instructors that was further exacerbated by the war, Wu seemed to mistrust Chinese Americans on “principle.” She explained to the U.S. office: “From our experience with American-born Chinese on the faculty, we have found that if the woman has a Christian background or affiliation, we can at least be sure of certain fundamental conceptions toward life. Otherwise there is the chance that the American-born Chinese may have lost the Chinese culture and, at the same time, may not yet have gotten enough from the West to have a worthwhile working principle of living.” She also used Ettie Chin, a Chinese American PE member of Ginling (who had participated in the legendary long trek from Shanghai to Chengdu in 1938), as a negative example to argue against hiring Chinese Americans. She remarked that Chin was not able to make “contacts with the outside, such as the education authorities and physical education schools in the country.”123 Not only did Wu question the work ethic of non-Christians and the cultural values of Chinese Americans, but she also had no particular fondness for married faculty members. She complained to Emily (Case) Mills: “Because the graduates in [PE] department seem to marry more quickly than in other fields, the demand cannot be adequately met.” Therefore, she required the GCC to send young and single candidates so that Ginling could “have some young persons to give the practical courses, because our own graduates get married and are able to give only the theory courses when babies come along to interfere.”125 But she did not like the head of the department to be too young or too ambitious, for such a woman would either purportedly have “interests in bigger things than being head of only one department” or get married and have babies quickly, while Wu said she would prefer to “count on a permanent chairman for the department.”126 Wu’s letters concerning personnel decisions may sound like glaring examples of discrimination based on religion, race, and marital status, but as unanimous decisions of Ginling’s Chinese and American administrative officers, they reveal both the pragmatic mind-set of the administration and the common stereotypes held true by people of their particular background at the time. Stereotypes of Chinese Americans especially reflected discrimination against this racial group in the United States since before the Chinese Exclusion Acts of 1881.127 Wu appeared narrow in her criteria for candidates also because she had “been greatly disturbed by the condition of self-seeking cliques among the faculties of the big universities,” and felt keenly the necessity to “be very careful in the qualifications of new people we are seeking to invite.”128 Eventually even her skillful administration and linguistic choreography proved unequal to the tremendous task

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of keeping intact the Ginling family in wartime China. The first sign of disintegration was the deterioration of her health. She was diagnosed as having “chronic nephritis,” though she explained: “I feel really all right— the only trouble is that my mind cannot be really relaxed [because] there are so many emergencies coming up, something new practically every day, and some of these things have significant consequences.”129 Later she also had her appendix removed. The worsening of her physical and mental health resulted not only from her overwhelming workload and the deteriorating material conditions, but also from yet another family tragedy: the mysterious disappearance of her younger sister, Wu Yiquan,130 who had been the only surviving member of her immediate family besides herself after the deaths of her parents and older siblings within the space of several months when she was sixteen (see chapter 3). The ailing Wu Yifang in some sense epitomized the disintegration of the Ginling family during the life-anddeath struggle of the national family.

h e av e n or h e l l ? t h e t wo s i de s of t h e wa r s t o r y By 1941, Ginling had settled into its wartime home at Huaxi ba, Sichuan. The collaboration between the missionary institutions in exile appeared to be scrupulously planned and well-coordinated. Wang Guangyuan, a Chinese historian, notes that “[e]very week there was at least one standing meeting between the four presidents for them to discuss affairs related to administration, finance, compensation of employees, and other public relation issues. Therefore, the four colleges, although separated in name, cooperated as one and there was never any indication of conflicts.”131 The registrars’ offices and academic departments of the institutions also worked together, and students were allowed to take classes outside of their own college. This arrangement helped Ginling to maintain a solid curriculum despite the shortage of staffing and equipment caused by the war. Through its residential life the Ginling faculty continued to exercise their power as surrogate parental figures, and thus to preserve the “family feel” of Ginling despite the worsening of the war. Ginling’s dining hall was known as the best-run and most economical among all the colleges in Huaxi ba. Students were allowed to take turns to suggest menus to the college dining service.132 For breakfast students were served rice porridge, steamed buns, roasted peanuts, and a variety of pickled vegetables, and sometimes there was even an egg for everyone. For lunch and dinner they were guaranteed to have four dishes and one soup, which always included meat, a rarity in wartime Sichuan.133 The annual physical

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checkup and supplemental meal system for students with health problems still continued despite the material deprivation as the war went on. Ginling maintained its prewar standards on dress code and posture. Wu Yifang was a model for the students to walk with their “head high, chest forward, and stomach held back” (taitou, tingxiong, shoufu 抬頭, 挺胸, 收腹).134 Wu even subtly persuaded a student to give up wearing red socks by reminding her of the importance of “dignified and appropriate” (zhuangzhong deti 莊重得體) dress for a female missionary college student.135 Needless to say, the faculty also laid out meticulous rules for Ginling’s dormitory life. Students were required to wear clean clothes, behave with politeness and modesty toward one another and knock on doors and wait for a “come in” before entering others’ rooms. They had to use dorm equipment with care, and rise and retire by certain times. They were not to make loud noises in the dorm, litter, invite guests to spend the night, or use dorm teakettles to cook food.136 As was the prewar norm, male guests were not allowed into Ginling dorms except in designated reception areas. All these academic and residential rules facilitated the smooth running of Ginling in Chengdu, and helped to maintain the Ginling family in the earlier years of the war. However, difficulties and challenges also loomed large, and gradually eroded the discourse of the Ginling family. In moving to Chengdu, Ginling, like other missionary institutions, had to leave behind a superior library and the majority of lab equipment. Because of worsening infl ation and the isolated location of Chengdu, it often could not afford to buy items, and even when it was able to purchase new teaching materials or lab equipment it could not manage to have them shipped. Moreover, like other institutions, Ginling faced an unplanned expansion of its student body; the GMD government demanded such an expansion in the name of patriotism and humanitarianism. Colleges were expected to provide a home for refugee students from occupied China; these students would then be eligible to receive government subsidies that provided for basic daily necessities. This expansion of the student body exacerbated the problems of overcrowding of instructional and residential space and the shortage of resources, and lowered the academic standards of Ginling in both admission and instruction. As time went by, frequent Japanese air raids, mandatory military and nursing training for the students, the anti-Japanese propaganda activities and relief efforts, illnesses and malnutrition, and family fi nancial crises all disrupted Ginling’s academic life. Meanwhile, the authoritarian educational policies of the GMD government did damage to its liberal arts curriculum.

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Poverty alone brought plenty of hardships to Ginling. Ruth Chester reported that “the enormous increase in costs” resulted in more cases of malnutrition and tuberculosis among the students. Some alumnae also remembered that the meals at Ginling’s dining hall toward the end of the war, despite the valiant efforts of Ginling faculty and staff who had always insisted on nutritious foods, sometimes consisted of unsavory fare such as “eight-treasure rice” (babao fan 八寶飯) a low-grade rice mixed with dirt, pebbles, and dead insects.137 More disheartening for the missionaries, though perhaps less obvious to the students, was the fact that poverty also created moral deficiencies. Chester found among Chinese students not only “a spirit of asking for all sorts of help and expecting someone to provide it” but also of cheating on exams, though she hastened to add that Ginling did better than its missionary peers in Huaxi ba: “Our girls suffer in joint classes, because most of ours don’t cheat and so they get lower grades.”138 Petty theft also became a serious problem among Ginling students: “The high price that certain special things like electric bulbs bring, makes a far greater temptation to steal; it becomes increasingly difficult to hang onto things that you can’t watch every minute.”139 In response, Ginling-in-Chengdu enforced a new set of rules regarding the safekeeping of personal belongings: students had to have their cash deposited with the college accounting department or at the bank; they could not bring any valuable jewelry; all luggage had to be kept in designated areas; and, if theft occurred, the college faculty members were authorized to search students’ belongings for lost property.140 Still, more than one student was dismissed for theft.141 Small wonder Chester lamented: “Problems like these make the job of training students who will go out with high ideals of Christian service much more difficult.”142 A combination of poverty, palpable dangers from an ongoing war, and separation from their families also caused depression among the students. According to Edward Gulick, who heard through word of mouth, quite a few Ginling students had committed suicide: “I later heard that many students couldn’t stand the strain of inadequate food, air-raid interruptions, increased incidence of TB, and inflation, and that there were numerous student deaths, often by suicide.”143 Years of refugee life also left indelible marks on the physique and psyche of the faculty members. They discovered that poverty weighed on people’s minds. Chester lamented: “We seem forced to think of prices and salaries and other related problems such a large part of the time, and people become so calculating and what would be greedy if it weren’t caused by fear of real inadequacy.”144 In 1927 the Nationalist government stipulated the salary scale of Chinese faculty at government colleges as: $400–600 a month for

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professors (jiaoshou 教授), $260–400 for associate professors (fu jiaoshou 副 教授), $160–260 for lecturers (jiangshi 講師), and $100–160 for assistant lecturers (zhujiao 助教).145 Ginling’s faculty could expect not only somewhat higher salaries but also assorted subsidies. Up to the early 1940s, Ginling’s professors earned $330–500 a month, associate professors $240–360, lecturers $160–260, and assistant lecturers $100–180. In addition, all faculty members were paid $200 a month as a “living expense subsidy” (shenghuo jintian 生活津貼); an “index subsidy” (zhishu jintie 指數津貼), an additional payment calculated according to the inflation index each month and their base salary; a “rice subsidy (mi tie 米貼)”; a “housing subsidy” (fang tie 房貼); a “daily necessity subsidy (riyong ping jintie 日用品津貼)”; and a “salary subsidy” (xin tie 薪貼) calculated on the basis of their ranks: professors an additional $50–80 per month, associate professors $40–50, lecturers $30–40, and assistant lecturers $20–30.146 Yet inflation soon spiraled out of control and nullified this system. After the United States joined in the Second World War, the exchange rate of American dollars to Chinese dollars plummeted and donations from the United States became scarce. Ginling thus was not able to maintain this salary-subsidy system, and even basic instructional materials such as textbooks, chalk, blackboards, and paper became luxuries. Some faculty members had to take two or more jobs in order to make ends meet. Some teachers at other colleges dabbled in black market transactions despite stern warnings from the government.147 Living in the shadow cast by a grim Chinese economy, most faculty members also experienced debilitating feelings of loneliness and isolation. Chester wrote in April 1944: “We are not getting much new life these days and the prolonged war-weariness and economic worries are making us all go rather stale.”148 Although she declared their lack of fashion information from outside China a “desirable by-product” of the war, she also worried that they would “all seem like relics of a forgotten past when [they emerged] from this isolation” and yearned for the “fun” of “having something new now and then.”149 She also remarked: “It is rather discouraging to see the deterioration of character that long years of war and fantastic inflation have produced. Every man for himself and the devil take the hindmost is all too common a philosophy, and breaking of contracts easily justified by the mere fact of a better opportunity. Service, self-sacrifice and loyalty to ideals, are hard to find or to cultivate and we are constantly disappointed in our own group.”150 While missionaries such as Chester suffered disappointments in Chengdu, they faced more danger and isolation in occupied Nanjing. In 1939 Matilda Thurston had answered a call from the GCC to go to Nanjing to replace Minnie Vautrin, so that the latter could leave for a much-needed

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furlough and psychiatric treatment. En route to Nanjing, Thurston was much moved by her Ginling “daughters” who braved enemy fire to welcome her at Shanghai. She remarked, “The loyalty of this little group, some of whom have never known the joys of life in the Ginling home, was a cheering experience.” Yet she found in Nanjing only “emptiness and drabness”: “Within the wall there are some 360,000 persons, which is about half the number inside the city I left in 1936. The lost half includes most of the people with whom I had relations in happier days—all those connected with public life and educational activity, and most of those in business. Churches today may have one-tenth of their former congregations.”151 She sometimes even had to taste “the bitter cup which Minnie had so often to taste four years ago” when drunken Japanese soldiers came at night to demand Chinese women and Thurston “could do nothing to interfere except by prayers.”152 But more grinding than the depressing view of Nanjing and constant reminders of Japanese war atrocities was “the abnormal rise in living costs.”153 In her personal report in March 1941, Thurston noted: “Rice was $45 a picul in September and is $85 now. A family of five needs this amount each month. Bonus additions to servants’ wages amount to nearly 100% of wages paid a year ago and when food is included the cost to us is 66 2/3% what it was two years ago.”154 As a result, the Nanjing unit could not afford heating in any office or classroom in winter, and Thurston was forced to resort to economizing measures such as postponing the use of her stove, “having a wood or soft coal fire in [her] open grate,” and cutting off her little refrigerator to save on electricity bills.155 The constant financial worries of the college made Thurston appreciate all the more the gestures of generosity from friends and the college servants: The amah sent me a dozen eggs and two nice fresh kidneys. They had just killed a pig. That was meat for four dinners and a dozen eggs now are worth four dollars. So it was a generous gift from her. Another friend sent me a big Eight Precious Rice pudding—enough for ten people. I’ll have a party to get that eaten. I got oranges enough at Christmas to last me for about two weeks. Oranges are about a dollar a piece for good ones—Chinese oranges. I face one hardship in the possibility of not being able to buy coffee, but there may be some solution there. It has been [a] luxury for some months past. We are thankful for our good vegetable garden. Of course the supply of American goods is failing.156

In recounting in exact numbers the gifts of food that she received and converting those into cash figures in wartime Nanjing, Thurston expressed

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her gratitude for the friendship showered on her in concrete terms. It also reveals that poverty preyed on her mind in a tangible and even visceral way. This obsession with food was a far cry from her fastidious way of demanding the most elegant and expensive buildings for Ginling just a few years before, when she argued with Wu Yifang over the design of a dormitory, claiming: “I would not be very enthusiastic about trying to raise money [in the United States] for cheaper buildings.”157 Since she was virtually the only missionary working at Ginling-inNanjing, Thurston suffered more unrelieved isolation than the group in Chengdu. Rather than demonstrating her renowned aplomb and reserve, she uncharacteristically admitted to her loneliness and expressed a wish to “hear oftener from the family,” for “life here is really very lonely and apart.”158 After Pearl Harbor, she was ordered by the Japanese military to sign an oath in both English and Japanese promising not to leave Ginling. Class and chapel were forbidden for a week and even her radio was taken away from her. Some Chinese friends managed to drop by, but she was not able to receive any news from outside of Nanjing for several weeks while under house arrest at Ginling. Although she bravely remarked that Ginling made a pleasant internment camp, she admitted: “It’s a good deal like being stranded on an island in the ocean.”159 To cheer herself up and occupy herself in the meantime, she started a series of family letters, never knowing when, if at all, these would be sent out. Yet when she was finally deported from China by Japanese order, she felt rather ambivalent about it: “So far, in my nearly forty years, I have not been looted or despoiled. This time no one knows what will happen to anything and everything on campus.”160 In so doing, she presented a final gesture of loyalty to the Ginling family before she left China for the last time in her life. Interestingly, although the war years disrupted the unity of Ginling and altered the family dynamics in many ways, its members often resignified historical events through their acts of reminiscence many years later. Consequently, they often presented a picture of a united front and spiritual bliss that conflicts with their earlier recounting. In other words, while the most immediate responses to crushing poverty and internal squabble tended to paint a bleak picture of Ginling, the alumnae would later emphasize, in a unanimous tone of great fondness, their supposed spiritual enrichment that transcended the material deprivation of the time. What had been unrelieved sufferings in purgatory, if not hell, would metamorphose into memories of “heavenly” experiences. For example, in the 1940s one student described the harsh living conditions in Chengdu this way:

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People who stay in their rooms to study are unfortunate because our bedrooms are bitterly cold in winter. The cold night air wedges through the cracks of the wooden walls. If you sit there for half an hour your toes are numb. Therefore the best way to keep warm is to sit in bed and study. Our dining room is too small for nearly two hundred people, especially when we are in our winter clothes. There are thirty tables arranged together with only about five inches for passage. When all the tables are full, one must turn sideways to get through and we are glad to be no bigger than we are.161

Despite mentions of crowded dorms and libraries, or of frequent visits of mice and bedbugs years ago,162 they later insisted that Ginlingin-Chengdu truly lived up to its wartime sobriquet “Heaven on Earth” (renjian tiantang 人間天堂). The alumnae fondly recall the “Ten Scenes” of Huxi ba, where Ginling was located, such as: the plum blossoms near one dorm, and the roses surrounding another; a willowlined alley; a bell tower; a Western-style restaurant called “Tip Top”; a noodle shop that sold authentic spicy Sichuan noodles; the Ginling gym, constantly vibrating from the tapping of tap dancers’ feet; and instrument and vocal rehearsals at the music department on the lawn, next to a group of grazing cows.163 They describe the wide variety of cultural and athletic options on campus: drama performances, English club, speech contests in both Chinese and English, American movies in town, and basketball and volleyball matches that attracted large audiences of students, faculty, and staff, and which the Ginling team invariably won.164 Fans of local flavor claimed to have imbibed the cultural heritage of Sichuan while drinking tea and eating snacks with classmates at the ubiquitous teahouses in Chengdu.165 Dances organized at missionary homes regaled the more adventurous and westernized students with Western foods, music, and social interactions with foreigners, sometimes including their own instructors. For instance, Ettie Chin enjoyed a wide social circle of friends and acquaintances, and often took students to the dances with her. There were a few outgoing students who regularly attended social dances with foreigners, but many more Ginling students mastered ballroom dance through the instruction of their peers while living in the dorm.166 Some alumnae also recall a dating scene every bit as lively and exciting to them now as it was fifty years ago.167 The Ginling women, they remark, not without pride, even created a new usage for the English word “local,” borrowing this term to refer to dating, since in some dialect the word for “to talk, chat,” laoke 嘮嗑, happened to be a homophone.168

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Of course, these reminiscences to some extent reflect the narrators’ experiences up to that point in their lives. As students in their early twenties who mostly entered Ginling-in-Chengdu as first-year students, they had no memory of the grand old days at Ginling-in-Nanjing as a contrast to their penury then. Compared to students at other wartime institutions in inland China, they could also justifiably consider themselves “living in heaven” because of Ginling’s location in Chengdu, a city less bombed than Chongqing (the Nationlist government’s wartime capital), the college’s prudent management of fi nances, and more nurturing faculty members and congenial classmates. For instance, Helena Yu chose to transfer from Central University in Chongqing to the more “civilized” and caring Ginling, apparently because of the rude behavior of Central students at breakfast: she was shoved aside and had porridge poured on her hair by male students who made a mad dash to get food in the dining hall.169 In effect, these alumnae have actively undertaken a rewriting of Ginling history through their acts of reminiscing. In accentuating their triumph over adverse circumstances and their spiritual enrichment during the war, they not only are validating their personal virtues and achievements, but also yet again pledging their allegiance to the discourse of the Ginling family by emphasizing that its members supposedly shared the same experience and memory. This revisionist tendency can be detected in the refusal of one alumna to reveal the name of a Ginling student who was dismissed for petty theft, or in the decision of another, normally vocal and outspoken alumna, to answer questions about suicides among the students only in the vaguest terms.170 Their recollections half a century later are belied by earlier writings that recorded the increasing disintegration of Ginling not only during the latter half of the Sino-Japanese War, but also during the civil war between the Nationalists and Communists. As will be shown in the next chapter, Ginling women’s increasing pessimism as the Resistance War dragged on was further aggravated by a rising disillusionment with the GMD after the war. The value of Ginling’ wartime discursive output lies precisely in its exposure of the clashes as well as the cooperation between individual pursuits and collective goals such as China’s national war effort and Ginling’s institutional push for unity and stability; it thus brings into open the complex interactions of personal memories, institutional history, and twentieth-century Chinese history.

Chapter 5

Things Came Undone (1945–52) The long years of refugeeing and struggle for mere existence have made selfi shness a common practice. It is no longer possible nor desirable to hope for a return of the prewar state of things. As a Christian college we should try our best to cultivate the positive qualities in future citizens and we do not want to evade the inevitable change but we must try to practice our Christian living. —Wu Yifang, March 5, 1949

T

he Sino-Japanese War between 1937 and 1945 irrevocably changed Ginling College in many radical and subtle ways, among them the erosion of college morale, a general grim numbness caused by daily encounter of poverty and death, and an increasing trend of selfseeking among its members. The years after the Sino-Japanese War in some respects proved even more challenging for Ginling than the war itself, for after a brief period of hope and joy about their homecoming to Nanjing, students and faculty members felt crushing disillusionment with the GMD government. Under tumultuous political circumstances, the students became more agitated and restless, demanding more rights from the faculty who were struggling to maintain college unity. The civil war (1946–49) between the Nationalists and the Communists further pulled members of the college in different directions. Not only did larger rifts appear within the Ginling community, but many students also left the college to join the People’s Liberation Army of the CCP, and linked themselves with the Communist cause of national salvation. As the Nationalist army’s defense collapsed, the People’s Liberation Army

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took over Nanjing in 1949. Eventually, all Ginling’s foreign members and some of its Chinese faculty members and students departed, and Ginling was amalgamated into the state-run Nanjing Normal University by the order of the Communist government in 1952. As can be expected, the discourse of the Ginling family underwent another round of articulation and enactment during this period of great turmoil. This can be particularly seen in Wu Yifang’s explanation of her decision to keep Ginling in mainland China under Communist rule. Invoking the image of a unified Ginling family sharing the common goal to contribute to New China, Wu first assured Ginling’s American sponsors of the rationality of their decision, and eventually relinquished ties with the United States when national and international politics rendered them unfeasible. Thus, to some extent we can say that Wu’s racial identity trumped her missionary connections, and that patriotic sentiment prevailed over Christian beliefs within the Ginling family. However, it is too simplistic to state that Wu Yifang’s legacy lies solely in the indigenization of Christian higher education rather than the “Christianization” of Chinese higher education. As can be seen from my earlier discussion, power did shift from foreign missionaries to Chinese hands at missionary institutions in the nationwide “Restoration of Educational Rights.” However, even though the pursuit for “Chineseness” in Chinese higher education expressed a deep yearning for cultural authenticity and sovereignty in a time of colonial presence in China, Ginling retained many of the elements that it had borrowed from American liberal arts colleges. Therefore, in seeking to integrate cosmopolitanism and nationalism, a Ginling education was as much a bicultural undertaking as the identity-formation of the people who built the “Ginling family.” And although written materials about the end of Ginling published in mainland China tended to adopt the official CCP line that highlighted intellectuals’ self-reform and conversion to Communism, interviews with those who joined the Communists have revealed suppressed undercurrents. Therefore, this chapter is not so much about the swan song of the Ginling family as it is about another movement in the complex symphony produced by its multifaceted immersion and complex negations in twentieth-century Chinese history.

hom e c o m i n g The news of Japanese surrender reached Ginling in August 1945, causing campuswide rejoice and merrymaking: “The announcement was greeted with clapping and shouting. Then everybody spontaneously made for the

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main gate of the campus. The news had spread rapidly. Thousands of people carrying lighted bamboo torches, with shouts of victory and patriotic songs, began to parade from the campus to the New South Gate, then north to the main street of the city, then back to the Old South Gate and to the campus once more.”1 Even the usually dignified and reserved Ruth Chester joined in, tolling the big campus dinner bell again and again until exhaustion stopped her.2 What occupied most people’s minds, of course, was the overwhelming longing to go home at once. Some students even hoped that the college would end the semester immediately, so that they could be back in Nanjing by spring 1946. However, their homecoming was impeded by both the destruction of Ginling’s Nanjing campus by the Japanese occupation troops and by transportation complications at a time when all institutionsin-exile desired to return home. The Nanjing campus of Ginling had been taken over by the Japanese military on June 19, 1942, and turned into their headquarters in Nanjing. The Chinese faculty members who remained in Nanjing had to wait until August 15, 1945, after the Japanese surrender, to reclaim their much damaged home. But they wasted no time after the departure of the Japanese army, immediately setting up a middle school on campus in order to prevent the use of Ginling campus by the Nationalist army for billeting. Chester went to Nanjing in December 1945 to investigate the damage done to the campus. She reported that although the exterior of Ginling remained remarkably intact, inside the buildings alterations had been made by the Japanese: some doors had been sealed shut and new ones opened. The buildings had been used as barracks by the Japanese; “the walls were dirty and full of big holes,” “all radiators and furnaces were gone,” and “furniture was largely lost,” including twentyone out of the original twenty-five pianos. “The library tables and most of the library shelves were still there,” but all the books were gone, as was all lab equipment.3 Repairs of the campus ensued soon afterward, involving altering the partitions made by the Japanese and making the plumbing work again. Some lost books were retrieved from secondhand bookstores in Nanjing with the help of friends, but many sets remained missing and were never replaced. Meanwhile, Wu Yifang returned from her trip to the signing of the UN Charter, and went to Chengdu to organize Ginling’s homeward trip. Just like their trek westward to unoccupied China in 1938, this long journey yet again demonstrated the resourcefulness and resilience of the Ginling women. In February 1946, the Nationalist Ministry of Education called a meeting of all exiled institutions, to try to coordinate the

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different itineraries of their return trips. According to the government’s master plan, institutions in Chongqing would leave first, so as to leave dorm space for other schools located west of Chongqing when it was their turn to go east. Thus, Ginling would not be able to leave Chengdu before October 1946. Wu Yifang considered this date too late for Ginling to be able to open in Nanjing for fall semester 1946, and consequently started to work on Ginling’s own travel arrangements. The fi nal itinerary worked in this way: the majority of faculty, students, and equipment rode on nine military trucks in four groups over the mountain ranges from Chengdu to Baoji 寶雞, Shaanxi 陜西 Province, from April 16 to May 15. When all groups arrived, they took the train from Baoji to Xuzhou 徐州, Jiangsu Province 江蘇, and then changed trains in Xuzhou to go to Nanjing. The majority of the Ginling members thus arrived in Nanjing by June 1946. One-third of the students returned home to wait for the semester to start at Ginling. A small group of Ginling members took the boat, but were delayed in Chongqing and did not arrive in Nanjing until August 1946.4 Wu Yifang not only assigned faculty directors to each group to oversee details, but also sent communications in advance to acquaintances and local authorities along the way to solicit help. For example, Wu wrote a letter to the governor of Shaanxi, the father of a recent Ginling graduate, to ask for assistance. She also called on the Vice-Minister of Communications in Chongqing and “got him to instruct railway officials to help the travelers get space on trains.”5 One alumna even thought that it was Wu’s reputation and prestige that protected the Ginling women from potential attacks by local bandits on their way from Chengdu to Baoji.6 In any case, Ginling College was the fi rst of all exiled institutions to resume regular academic work back home in 1946, no small feat considering that the Ginling women relied entirely on their own capabilities and connections rather than on official government assistance. Ginling College reopened on its old campus in September 1946, even though students and faculty members still had to endure various inconveniences during the academic year 1946–47. Because transportation routes were flooded by returning refugees after the war, many shipments of teaching material, furniture, and bedding did not arrive until February 1947. Some students had to sleep on wooden floors and others on cots. Still others lived at home while attending school. Ginling’s depleted library and laboratory hardly provided adequate academic support. All these things obviously did not match the picture of the beautiful Ginling home that the students had dreamed of during their exile in Sichuan. But escalating internal confl icts and serious challenges from national

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politics dealt an even heavier blow to the idea of the Ginling family that had sustained its members through the war.

di si n t e g r at ion a n d c ou n t e r m e a s u r e s at p o s t wa r g i n l i n g Thurston, Chester, Wu Yifang, and many others often described the prewar Ginling-in-Nanjing as a utopia of happiness and harmony, and used the prospect of reclamation of such a paradise as the beacon to sail by during the war. Precisely because of the potency of such narratives, the postwar experience felt all the more disappointing to the Ginling community. Rather than the immediate rejuvenation of the Ginling family that their return to Nanjing seemed to have promised in the beginning, Ginling saw further deterioration of morality among its members and the eventual disintegration of the Ginling family. The erosion of general morale and college solidarity had intensified toward the latter part of the Sino-Japanese War, as mentioned in the last chapter. After the war, faculty members such as Liu Enlan also observed a spiritual crisis among the students of Ginling. In January 1948, she wrote, “Youth today is struggling for a vision in the dark. They struggle, they kick around and they bump into hard places and get hurt, then they get more excited and struggle and scream.” She had a particularly negative opinion of what she saw as the frivolous lifestyle adopted by Ginling students, which involved extensive socializing and dating, and she frowned upon what she saw as their forsaking of certain fundamental Ginling values: “The families also seem to have adopted an open-door policy for the social life of their girls. They do not seem to mind girls having men friends or going to the movies. The resulting college spirit is different from what it used to be, even during refuge years in Chengtu [Chengdu]. Naturally the postwar girls have more social graces and other qualities which girls of former years did not have, but they also miss development in many other lines.”7 Liu only made a passing reference to “other lines” of development that the new generation seemed to have abandoned, but Chester frankly expressed her disappointment about what she saw as the loss of the spirit of service and sense of responsibility at Ginling: There is also a widespread lowering of morale and a lack of responsibility. Just this last few weeks, for instance, two of our young assistants, one of them a graduate of Ginling and a Christian, have broken their contracts and left us in the middle of the year; one of them is going to America and it suits her convenience to go now instead of later, while

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the other one gives her mother’s health as an excuse, but her friends intimate that she is also getting ready to go abroad and wanted a few months at home in Shanghai. In addition, another of our recent graduates has done the same thing at McTeiyre. Two of the three didn’t even announce their resignations before the vacation but sent back letters after they got home. Three cases within one semester, in my personal knowledge, give you a little idea of how prevalent this sort of thing is. The general idea seems to be that a contract is to protect the teacher, but offers no protection to the school.8

Even Wu Yifang admitted to the GCC that she had encountered serious faculty and student problems. True to form, however, she only mentioned student problems in passing while highlighting the counseling service the college provided for them: “From the experience of the past eight months, we have been more convinced than ever of the urgent need of such counseling service for the students. They have plenty of personal problems— academic, health, financial, emotional, etc. In educational work, we feel the impact upon our young people of all kinds of confusion and efforts made to attract them to lesser ways of life.”9 However, what Wu Yifang had called the trend of “self-seeking” during the war became even more visible at Ginling after the war ended. Sometimes she found herself caught in the awkward position of having to justify the self-centered behavior of some Ginling members to the U.S. headquarters. The case of Wu Xuanyi (Wu Suen-i), a member of Ginling’s sociology department, was a perfect case in point. Highly regarded by Wu Yifang and the American faculty members at Ginling, Wu Xuanyi received financial support from Ginling to study home economics in the United States. The original agreement was to have her return and develop home economics courses at Ginling after one year of training abroad. However, Wu Xuanyi caused much friction between the GCC and the institution where she studied by simultaneously asking different parties for more funds to continue her studies beyond the one-year limit. Worse still, she ended up marrying another Chinese student and refusing to return to Ginling as she had originally promised. Mrs. Eva Macmillan of the GCC criticized Wu Xuanyi’s behavior harshly. She deplored her “technique of indirection” in writing to different sources to request funds and causing these American institutions to “work at cross purposes,” and called Wu Xuanyi’s attempts at self-justification “pathetic” and “mere twaddle.”10 Macmillan further emphasized to Wu Yifang the negative impact of Wu Xuanyi’s behavior on Ginling’s Chinese members who would want to go on furloughs in the United States in the future: “You know how deeply

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committed the Founders have become to such a plan, and can readily realize how seriously their enthusiasm would be dampened if it were found that Ginling faculty members were not ready to carry out arrangements made with the College.”11 Yet Wu Yifang’s letter to Wu Xuanyi dismissed the incident as a “misunderstanding,” and “a case of not having written more to each other during the winter.” She comforted Xuanyi: “Mrs. Macmillan had it definitely on her mind to plan for your second year of study, yet since she did not write to you about it, naturally you would be anxious and would be making inquiries in regard to possible Scholarship aid for 1940–1941.”12 Judged by the reconciliatory tone of her letters, Wu Yifang obviously still expected to see Wu Xuanyi return, if only after a one-year delay, to Ginling to help develop its home economics program. However, when Wu Xuanyi was studying at Oregon State University, a letter from a secretary on behalf of Dean Milam of the School of Home Economics reached Wu Yifang, reporting that a male Chinese student at Oregon State was “bringing pressure to bear on Suen-i [Xuanyi] in such a way as to make her change her own mind towards her responsibilities to Ginling.” The letter writer was careful to absolve Xuanyi of any offense other than ignorance and to place the blame squarely on the Chinese man: “Miss Milam thinks that nominally they are engaged, although Suen-i [Xuanyi] does not say so. He is a domineering, aggressive type of person and is very ambitious. Miss Milam is quite sure that Suen-i cannot know about what he is doing, for she is not the type of girl who would approve of it or accept money secured in such a way.”13 But Wu Xuanyi did write to Wu Yifang to inform her of her plan of staying in the United States indefinitely. Even though very disappointed, Wu Yifang asked Milam to not request Xuanyi to return her grant, and promised to write to Xuanyi to talk things over. Her intervention apparently failed to bring the prodigal back to China, for Xuanyi got married to her Chinese fiancé and stayed in Oregon until 1948, when she at last returned to Ginling to work as its director of the Child Welfare Training program and to supervise the Child Welfare Center. The negotiations between Wu Yifang and several institutions in the United States regarding Wu Xuanyi’s case showed a self-centered tendency among Ginling faculty and students during and after the war. But this only demonstrated one kind of challenge to Wu Yifang’s continued attempts at resolving any internal conflicts at Ginling to the satisfaction of all parties involved. More serious problems arose from student activism. While the selfish behavior of individual students, alumnae, or faculty members could in theory be punished on moral grounds or perhaps corrected by appealing to their family spirit, Wu Yifang and other Ginling faculty members faced a more tricky situation when political campaigns pulled

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students away from their studies in the very name of patriotism and the spirit of service. In the late 1940s, the political atmosphere became increasingly tense outside Ginling. After a brief period of celebration and hope for China’s postwar future, the conflicts between the GMD and CCP escalated, until the civil war broke out in 1946. Students in Nanjing responded to what they considered government corruption and suppression of freedom of speech with widespread rallies and demonstrations, often ending in violence and the arrest, injury, and killing of students by the GMD military police. In 1946 students protested the rape of a female student, Shen Chong 沈崇, by American soldiers in Beijing. In May 1947, students from Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hangzhou held joint rallies to present their requests to the Ministry of Education, the Executive Yuan (Xingzheng Yuan 行政院), and the Legislative Yuan (Canzheng Yuan 參政院) in Nanjing, listing items such as “Resolve current educational crisis” and “Increase educational funds,” and shouting slogans such as “End oppression” and “End civil war.” The GMD police’s suppression injured over fifty students and caused another forty to be reported missing. Although Ginling students did not participate in these rallies, they walked out of their classes to show support. Ginling students’ previous endorsement of “patriotic” projects, such as their involvement in the May Fourth Movement in 1919 and the May Thirtieth Incident in 1925, bespoke an institutional tradition of social service and patriotism, if not an affinity to radical politics. Ginling students’ racial consciousness and “patriotism” had also been heightened by China’s War of Resistance against Japan. Moreover, the CCP had extended its influence to missionary institutions through various venues. As early as Ginling’s years in Chengdu, the CCP had used (Christian) fellowship groups to propagate Marxism, and proved active even in traditional missionary strongholds such as Yenching University.14 The underground Communist branch at Ginling further intensified their organizing efforts starting in 1948,15 even though Ginling at the time still saw the peaceful coexistence of Christian, Nationalist, and Communist groups.16 As one alumna recalled, Ginling students of different political persuasions rarely came into face-to-face conflicts, though they sometimes resorted to tearing off postings by rival groups.17 In May 1948 Ginling students also took to the streets, and demanded that the GMD government release arrested student activists. During the peace negotiations between the GMD and CCP in 1949, over 60 percent of Ginling students went to rallies to demand that the GMD accept the terms of the CCP in order to end the civil war. The GMD police again attempted to suppress the students, killing three protesting students and injuring over one hundred.

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As a pacifist Christian and as Ginling’s president, Wu Yifang faced a major dilemma. On the one hand, she did not approve of students’ participation in political activism, considering it a distraction from their academic work and also fearing for their safety. At a college assembly meeting in 1948, she sternly warned the students not to get involved in rallies and demonstrations, and to leave national affairs in the hands of government leaders. However, when a student stood up and questioned her how patriotic and self-sacrificing students, qualities always advocated by Wu, could concentrate on their studies amid the raging civil war, Wu backed down and adjourned the meeting.18 On the other hand, Wu took active measures to protect Ginling students against GMD persecution. After violence erupted at the student demonstration in May 1947, she publicly requested Chiang Kai-shek to dismiss the police chief in Nanjing at a state luncheon organized for GMD senators. To the embarrassment and anger of Chiang, she charged that the police chief was responsible for ordering his underlings to beat up protesting students.19 She also took Ginling’s chair of student government in her car to the hospital to visit and comfort the injured students after the violent clash between GMD police and students.20 Upon hearing that the police planned to enter Ginling to arrest Communist suspects and student activists, Wu went in person to lodge a formal complaint with the vice-minister of education, Hang Liwu 杭立武, asserting: “In order to protect the dignity of higher education and the reputation of women’s education, no police or secret agents should be permitted to enter Ginling or arrest our students.”21 Student activists at Ginling were thus protected by Wu Yifang’s call for “all parties to leave campus” (ge dangpai lixiao 各黨派離校). But while shielding Ginling students from government surveillance and oppression, Wu also implemented a series of rules within Ginling in order to comply with government regulations. She also attempted to moderate a restless Ginling student body. In order to avoid government assignment of a Dean of Discipline (xunyu zhuren 訓育主任) to Ginling, she asked a faculty member named Zhang Xianglan to join the GMD and thereby become eligible for this position according to government regulations.22 In 1948 she changed the name of Ginling’s Office of Discipline (Xunyu Chu 訓育處) to that of “Life Advising” (Shenghuo zhidao 生活指導), while stipulating a set of detailed rules for students’ extracurricular activities. Under these rules, in order to gain official approval from the college, extracurricular activities had to serve to “develop abilities, cultivate interests, and train the spirit of cooperation, responsibility, and service, in order to produce a good and healthy personality.” Any student organizations wishing to organize activities had to have the motion passed by a majority of

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their membership, submit an application to the Life Advising Office, and accept its guidance. The college reserved the ultimate right to dismiss any students’ organizations in violation of school regulations.23 She also sent out a memorandum of understanding to student parents in the summer of 1948 asking for their consent to the following three principles: agree with Ginling’s education mission and have full confidence in Ginling’s authority over students; agree that student organizations must register with the college and obey school regulations; and agree that the college would not be held responsible for student activities not previously approved by the college.24 Wu was sympathetic to students’ patriotic sentiment, but she had to act in her role as Ginling president in order to protect the institution and its members from government persecution. As a former chair of Ginling’s student government recalled, Wu Yifang later revealed to her that whenever this alumna had come up to her in her official capacity as a student officer, Wu had always felt quite “nervous” for fear that another student rally would be in the making.25 The student activists, for their part, seemed to understand Wu’s good intentions and her dilemma as a college administrator caught, in Mrs. Thurston’s immortal words, “between the Devil and a hard place,”26 and tried to avoid disrupting academic work as much as possible. For instance, they often chose to hold rallies and walkouts on Sundays, when school was not in session.27 Wu Yifang and the other administrative officers at Ginling tried to pacify student restlessness through counseling. With the help of Mrs. New, they applied for and received money from the Lucius and Eva Eastman Fund in the United States to establish their counseling system. Mrs. New trained four young female Chinese faculty members with no previous experience in psychology or social work through thirty hours of seminar work, at the end of which they were made counselors of the four student dorms. These women functioned as liaisons between students, faculty, and the college administration. They lived in student dorms and helped whoever was in need, conducting personal interviews, assigning rooms, helping improve living conditions, ministering to sick students, and cooperating with the student government. But they assumed a position of power as well as of service. They advised the college administration on scholarship and relief allocations based on their observation of students’ financial situations, and they kept track of student behavior under the office of the Dean of Discipline, a government requirement designed to keep students’ political allegiances and activities under surveillance. Because of the double-faced nature of the counseling system, it elicited from the students both appreciation and resentment. The case logbooks of the counselors reveal that students experienced various personal

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problems ranging from the vocational, the academic, the familial, the emotional, the physical, and the financial, to the religious. Sometimes the counselors were able to provide help and solve the problem satisfactorily. For example, a sociology student writing her senior thesis found no support from her advisor, who appeared to her distant, discouraging, and preoccupied with other responsibilities. The counselor helped the student through by having her write her thesis every evening in the counselor’s office.28 Another student eager to find a part-time job to defray her daily expenses was saved by her counselor from falling into the clutches of a lecherous man; the counselor advised her to call a newspaper office in the city to check the credentials of a man falsely claiming to look for a reporter for that newspaper.29 Sometimes the problems students faced had no easy solutions. For instance, a student engaged to an abusive man felt obliged to marry him because her mother had already accepted betrothal gifts from his family. Although the counselor and the Dean of Studies advised her to dissolve the engagement rather than marry and then divorce, which the student had planned to do, she decided to marry him because she had “already made up [her] mind to have a happy family to console [her] mother since she has been very faint-hearted.” In an inadvertently parody of the potent family discourse at Ginling, the Dean could only tell her that “she should not expect too much of her husband. A husband’s love is somewhat different from a mother’s love.” In another case, a student repeatedly stole from her roommates, filching items such as money, a sweater, shawl, stockings, handkerchiefs, books, towels, and socks, and had to be dismissed and taken away by her brother.30 Although the counselors tried to be upbeat in their reports, they could not help lamenting: The continuous deterioration of the political and economic condition of China intensifies [the students’] feeling of insecurity and dissatisfaction. They just fi nd one way or another to express their restless inner feelings [through] violation of college regulations and rules, personal attacks through bulletins with no regard for the nature and outcome of their allegations. These girls really handicap the counseling program, for no matter what the counselor does, they think that she, a member of the Dean’s Office, stands against them. Sometimes the counselor really feels very disappointed and depressed.31

It can be seen that the counseling system adopted by the Ginling administration only temporized and ultimately proved incapable of resolving students’ psychological problems, for those problems had sociopolitical

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origins beyond the power of one counselor or one institution to correct. Thus, we can say that Ginling’s gradual unraveling amply illustrated the limited power of its family discourse.

regime ch ange and the end Despite increasing conflicts within Ginling, Wu Yifang tried valiantly to preserve the Ginling family. She used the strategy of attributing Ginling’s internal trouble to external factors—just like Thurston, who had blamed the University of Nanking for all Ginling’s trouble in the 1920s (see chapter 3)—while reiterating her confidence in the continual viability of the Ginling family in new historical circumstances. The national and international political situation, however, often intruded to force her hand, and eventually led to the ending of Ginling’s institutional independence. In 1948 the Nationalist resistance to the Communist army collapsed in North China, and Nanjing faced impending military action. Threefourths of Ginling students and some faculty and staff members left the college. As Ruth Chester noted, November and December [of 1948] saw almost complete disruption of college work. From 480 students at the beginning of the semester the enrollment dropped to about eighty or ninety, but a few returned near the end of the semester. Students went and came and went again as the rumors rose and fell and it was more than the registrar’s office could do to keep track of the daily departures and returns. Classes became so small they had to be combined and new schedules made. Many students were applying for the privilege of studying in other places as guest students. Finally, part of the faculty also left, including the registrar, and all was in confusion.32

Some students returned in spring 1949, and stayed when the turnover of Nanjing to the CCP took place. Contrary to the scenario for which Ginling had been bracing itself, it turned out to be a peaceful transition when the Communist army entered Nanjing, and Ginling’s emergency plans for a possible shortage of water or food proved unnecessary. However, the days before and after the change of regime proved no less stressful to the Ginling administration and faculty. Some students had already quit college to join the People’s Liberation Army, while others left for the United States. Those who remained demanded more rights from the administration. For example, they wanted student representation on all important college committees; asked the

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college to reduce both the amount of English used in classes and the PE credits required for graduation; and called for the abolition of the office of the Dean of Discipline, of roll calls in class, and of the English Comprehensive Test, long considered by many as dated and as placing undue burdens on the students.33 It can be seen that these students not only demanded the power of decision-making but also questioned many cherished Ginling traditions such as its traditional emphases on PE and English. Despite these direct challenges to the authority of the Ginling administration, Wu announced to the U.S. office with confidence: “On the whole the students have been reasonable and cooperative [ . . . ] For a time they caused a strain and some worry because they thought the faculty conservative, too slow in responding to their requests. But they did not have ill motives and were not bent on trouble making.” Rationalizing student representation on the college council, she also stated: “It has now become a popular demand, or maybe it should be called an accepted practice in the government institutions.” She cited examples from the United States to support her argument: “Miss Chester found from the Antioch catalogue that the practice of students sharing in the administration had been used there for years. We understand that it has also been tried in other American colleges.”34 She attributed the students’ restlessness to their family and financial difficulties: Quite a number have been cut off from their homes, they worry about the safety of their families and their own continued financial support. There is the challenge and attraction of the victorious liberating army and the appeal for young people to go into the various branches of this work. [ . . . ] The girls have faced the question for the first time as to what type of work they might be qualified to go into after graduation. All such elements contribute to the restlessness of particularly a small group. It is only natural that when they cannot settle down to their studies they find fault with this or that existing practice in the college.35

Rather than characterizing the confrontation between the students and the administration in terms of irreconcilable political or ideological differences, she excused the students’ behavior by citing their anxiety caused by the volatile external environment. In the same vein, Ginling’s favorite villain, the University of Nanking, was once again invoked to rationalize Ginling’s students’ agitation. In the same letter, Wu claimed, “If there were no outside influence over them our problems would be simpler, however, there are the University of Nanking students. It was after the University of Nanking students demanded the organization of a governing

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body consisting of equal representation of teachers, staff, students and servants that I received a letter from our student body on Sunday afternoon, May 20th, asking for the same thing.”36 Wu characterized Ginling’s internal conflicts only as minor abnormalities caused by external factors, and hinted that if left alone, they could have resolved these “family” matters satisfactorily among themselves. Wu adopted this line of argument not just to maintain the facade of a united Ginling to the GCC, but also because she herself needed to reiterate “family values” when faced with the increasing fragmentation of Ginling. That is to say, she employed the family discourse both to reassure Ginling’s American sponsors and to invoke the image of an intact Ginling family as a defense mechanism for both herself and the Ginling community. Wu’s self-conscious assertion of the strength of the Ginling family and its power to withstand external challenges also underlay her explanation of her decision to keep Ginling in Nanjing. Despite increasing uncertainties and the chaos faced by Ginling before a Communist takeover, she insisted to the GCC that Ginling should remain in China and continue its mission of training female leaders for China’s future: Here at Ginling, we faced the question thoroughly last November and came to the conclusion that we would carry on no matter what changes should come to the political set-up. First of all, there is no place secure enough to justify the moving. And secondly, the rapid spread of Communism in China is due not so much to the appeal of Marxism itself as to the decay of traditional culture and complications in the international situation. On top of the revolutionary and evolutionary changes of the last fifty years, the government has disappointed the people since VJ Day by its inefficiency and corruption. The long years of refugeeing and struggle for mere existence have made selfishness a common practice. It is no longer possible nor desirable to hope for a return of the prewar state of things. For the future of the country there has to evolve a new code of living. While we realize that a school is closely affected by the political and social environments, we still think that as a Christian college we should try our best to cultivate the positive qualities in future citizens and we do not want to evade the inevitable change but we must try to practice our Christian living. We realize that we have failed in this responsibility but if we endeavor more consistently and more consciously we should be more able to develop strong women leaders for the future.37

By pointing out that changes were inevitable and necessary for China, Wu Yifang did not so much rationalize the impending regime change as

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answer a call from the Chinese masses as legitimated Ginling’s indispensable role during a transitional period. That is to say, she implied that to remain a model of “Christian living” under changed historical situations, Ginling must embrace new challenges and seek to continue its mission of training strong leaders. Using the first-person plural “we,” she spoke from the location of the consensus of Ginling members who vowed to “try [their] best to cultivate the positive qualities in future citizens.” Wu thus laid claim to a share in Ginling’s contribution to the building of a new China, and presented this sense of mission as a unifying faith and unbreakable tie for the Ginling family. In this way, she not only demonstrated a united front of the Ginling family to the U.S. headquarters, but also justified her decision to keep Ginling in China under CCP rule. Some scholars have attributed Wu’s decision to accept the CCP government to the strong influence of her uncle, Chen Shutong, a CCP sympathizer, arguing that his close emotional ties to Wu Yifang after she lost her parents and siblings at the age of sixteen made him an extremely influential figure in Wu’s life.38 An alumna and former underground CCP member at Ginling, however, claimed that the “progressive faculty members and students” influenced Wu’s decision.39 Wu herself did not reveal who or what ultimately swayed her, but she did repeatedly dodge the personal invitations from Chiang Kai-shek and Song Meiling to go to Taiwan, and even refused to accept the airplane ticket delivered to her by Chiang’s aide in the last days before the Communist takeover.40 But Wu’s decision to accept the CCP government had more complex institutional and personal reasons than mere external influence. Wu adopted a cooperative attitude toward the CCP partly in order to preserve Ginling during an uncertain transitional period. Wu obviously felt some anxiety about potential radical actions and destruction caused by the CCP, for she expressed a wish for them to adhere to “the Chinese tradition of being moderate” in the same letter cited above. Moreover, she may also have taken past experience into account and decided to tackle the CCP in a proactive manner. During the Sino-Japanese War, Wu had written to John Leighton Stuart, then at Yenching University in Japanese-occupied Beijing, to ask for advice on how to deal with government authorities. Stuart gave this advice: “Our policy, in a word, has been to be conciliatory and cooperative in all matters that do not involve any vital principles. It is important to establish relationships as soon as possible with the higher agents of both nationalities.” 41 However, the situation in 1949 differed from that in1937 in one crucial aspect: this time it was another Chinese political force, not an invading foreign army, that would take over China. Given Wu’s nationalist inclinations, she would certainly

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find this prospect far more palatable than the Japanese invasion of 1937. Indeed, when the GMD air force bombed Nanjing in the early days of CCP rule, Wu refused to hang an American national flag on Ginling buildings in order to protect the college, as some foreign banks and schools in Nanjing had done. She rejected this idea on the grounds of patriotism: “This is China and Ginling is a Chinese school. Why should we hang an American flag? This matter involves the integrity of our people and the honor of our nation. We cannot and should not condone this kind of behavior.”42 We can also partly attribute Wu’s decision to her thorough disillusionment with the GMD as well as to her nationalism and her pragmatic efforts to preserve Ginling. As mentioned earlier, before the CCP entered Nanjing, she remarked to the GCC: “On top of the revolutionary and evolutionary changes of the last fifty years, the government has disappointed the people since VJ Day by its inefficiency and corruption.”43 After the CCP army came, she again stated to the Ginling headquarters: “This is a very challenging time to live in China. The Kuomintang [Guomindang] regime collapsed because of its own weakness and corruption, and the people wanted a change.”44 Wu obviously shared her contemporary intellectuals’ disillusionment with the GMD government and optimism about China’s future after “liberation.” Letters by Yenching’s Chinese faculty members at the time, for example, clearly illustrate how a general sentiment of hope and joy suffused this traditional stronghold of missionary education in 1949. Zhao Zichen, Yenching’s dean of the School of Religion for over twenty years, noted that the whole faculty and student body of Yenching were joyously celebrating their “liberation,” adding, furthermore, that every “thoughtful Christian in China” should regard the “impending and swift defeat of the Nationalists with a deep sense of gratitude to God.”45 Lu Zhiwei, the president of Yenching at the time, claimed that to “most of us conscientious Chinese” the revolution was “not China’s dark hour, but rather a new dawn.” He even wrote sardonically to Yenching’s trustees in the United States, “You will forgive us if we do not become despondent because the foreign policy of our old government did not land us where the masses of the Chinese people hoped to be.”46 Chen Yuguang, the president of the University of Nanking, also reassured the students that he would stay despite an imminent Communist takeover in the perilous days of spring 1949.47 Wu’s own words and deeds also clearly show that her acceptance of the CCP was not merely falling back on default—that is to say, only a result of her disappointment with the GMD. Wu endorsed Mao Zedong’s idea of a “New Democracy,” the ruling Communist ideology of the time, for she wrote: “Mao Tse-tung’s New Democracy is aimed to benefit the masses,

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and the good, hard-working people deserve it.”48 Of course, it is difficult to ascertain to what degree Wu Yifang really subscribed to Communism or Marxism at this point of her life, despite claims made otherwise by some Chinese scholars.49 New Democracy, after all, was a relatively moderate proposal from Mao suggesting that China undergo a transitional period of some duration that would be “different from the Socialist Republic of the type of the Soviet Union.” Moreover, Mao called not for the complete and uncritical eradication of all Western influences but for assimilating “whatever we find useful today, not only from contemporary foreign socialist or new-democratic cultures, but also from the older cultures of foreign countries, such as those of the capitalist countries in their age of enlightenment.”50 Thus, it would seem to Wu Yifang that the dominant Communist ideology of the time ensured Ginling’s continued existence under the new regime. In addition to Wu’s acceptance of a moderate Communist party line, the actions of the CCP leaders and soldiers after Nanjing’s handover struck her favorably. She reported friendly communications with the CCP general who captured Nanjing, Liu Bocheng, later the mayor of Nanjing and chairman of the CCP Educational and Cultural Commission that oversaw educational, cultural, and religious affairs in Nanjing. Liu sent his secretary to seek out Wu Yifang and Chen Yuguang even before he entered the city. Wu and Chen went to see Liu on May 2, 1949, and had “an informal and friendly visit” with him and several other CCP leaders, including General Chen Yi, later the mayor of Shanghai. After meeting with Liu Bocheng and other CCP leaders, Wu claimed to “have been deeply impressed by the leaders of the liberating army,” and remarked that she “fully appreciate[d] the gigantic task they have on their hands.” She added in that, in sharp contrast to the GMD soldiers whom Wu had been used to, “the [CCP] soldiers are very well disciplined; they have not bothered the people as the old style soldiers did.”51 Wu Yifang also chose to keep Ginling in mainland China because of her unwavering dedication to Chinese women’s education and her determination to see her own part realized in this undertaking. Past history showed Wu’s full awareness of the critical role that Ginling played in advancing women’s education in China. Her tireless efforts of holding Ginling together through wars and other political upheavals also proved her passion and determination. Her personal ambitions as a career woman, though always understated and eclipsed by her vow to serve the institution and China, rang clear both in her decision to remain single in a society that normalized women’s domestic roles and in her self-image presented to her American correspondents. Thus, it is perhaps less crucial for us to

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pinpoint exactly what motivated her to stay than to interpret her action as another example of Chinese women’s self-actualization through their participation in the collective enterprise of nationalist quest in twentiethcentury China. For Wu Yifang, to make Ginling a meaningful and indispensable part of Chinese society under whatever political regime obviously far outweighed consideration of ideological differences. That she saw her destiny in her work at Ginling was never in question, either. Yet the larger sociopolitical circumstances soon closed in, forcing Ginling and other missionary institutions to make irrevocable changes, and Wu Yifang appeared not to have realized the full ramifications of CCP policies at the time. The CCP organized several meetings with educators of private institutions in Nanjing. By July 1949, the Educational and Cultural Commission outlined their expectations for private colleges and universities. They said that they should register with the government and report the names of their presidents and board members; that there should be required courses in Communism, and the dialectical method, and that instructors of these courses needed to be approved by the government, a regulation seen by Wu as “exactly the practice of the Kuomintang [Guomindang] in regard to the teaching of the San Min Chu I [Sanmin zhuyi]”;52 and that the institutions could set their own tuition based on three considerations: students’ financial ability, paying a living wage to the faculty, and maintenance of the institution. All in all, it seemed to Wu Yifang that Ginling could continue its business as usual, though Ruth Chester felt concerned that the dialectical materialism advocated by the CCP “was more serious because it contained more definite challenges to Christian belief.”53 Wu, in contrast, assured her American friends with these words: “Please tell them that the Communists do make a difference between the government policy and individual nationals. Here in Nanking none of the Western residents have been interfered with in any way and Mr. Hwang, the man in charge of foreign residents, had told me definitely that all the individuals are welcome to stay and carry on their own work.”54 Equally important, her Chinese compatriots’ response to the Communists convinced Wu that the CCP had gained the popular support of the people. When using “we” to announce to the U.S. side that she had the mandate of the whole college to stay in Nanjing, Wu was not misrepresenting the situation. Before the Communist takeover, CCP members among the Ginling faculty and student body organized their own welcome delegation. They met to write slogans and make red flags in preparation for the welcome parade. On April 23, 1949, when the People’s Liberation Army entered Nanjing, these students and teachers took to the streets, calling out slogans and singing songs to cheer the procession of the army

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into Nanjing. Subsequently, “eleven girls left college in groups of twos and threes to go into the Political Corps, the dramatic section, etc., of the liberating army.”55 They would become cadres in the CCP propaganda unit of the People’s Liberation Army.56 Later on, Liu Enlan, a professor of geography and department chair, and a devout Christian, joined the CCP and became a high-placed officer and respected instructor in Harbin Military Academy.57 Wu also saw unmistakable signs of support for the new regime from outside Ginling; in the subsequent months she attended many meetings and a big parade on July 7 that convinced her “how the common people rally to such things both for their own enjoyment and for the sake of showing their cooperation with the new authorities.”58 These scenes of common people’s full embracement of the new regime presented a sharp contrast to the demonstrations, protests, and rallies against the corrupt GMD just a few months earlier, and proved to Wu that the CCP now had the mandate of the Chinese people. She later went to Beijing to meet with her uncle, Chen Shutong, then a member of the People’s Political Consultative Conference (Zhengzhi xieshang huiyi 政治協商會議), a body intended as a forum to reconcile a variety of public opinions and political and business interests. There she stayed to attend the celebration of the founding of People’s Republic of China on October 1, 1949.59 Wu’s acceptance of CCP rule adumbrated her more receptive and cooperative attitude toward the ideological indoctrination that ensued. After the Communist army entered Nanjing, Wu Yifang and the other Ginling faculty members were placed under intense scrutiny. In an ironic tone, Ruth Chester wrote about the month-long mandatory indoctrination of missionaries by the CCP on theories of social development: “It is very hard to estimate the total effectiveness, but I should think it lies mainly in having people understand what the prevailing views are, rather than in widespread acceptance of them.”60 She described the confrontations between some American missionaries and the Communist organizers in a discussion workshop on the idea of “labor creates the world”: “A number of [missionaries] stood their ground valiantly, somewhat to the discomfiture of their adversaries in some cases, who also were not prepared to argue outside a certain very limited area and often could not meet the questions or counter attacks brought against them.” She harbored no illusions about the CCP’s control of dissemination of ideologies: “Each one [of the students] had to hand in a written statement of how it had affected her thinking, and several of the Christian girls wrote that it had strengthened their Christian faith! A number of them are convinced that they are free to say what they think and that that is wanted, and they are acting accordingly.”61 Wu’s report about the study program was more positive and her tone less

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derisive: “It was quite a new thing to have the whole faculty and the students following the same schedule and studying the concentrated course on the History of Social Development. It was a strenuous program but we learned much that we need to know about the new ideology.”62 Wu’s optimism about the future of Ginling and China seemed to be borne out by reality for a time. For about a year and half after the CCP takeover, “a large part of college life went on very much as before,” with the exception of frequent disruption of academic work by “special lectures, parades, and other political functions usually announced at the last moment.”63 Wu reported to the United States on the formation of constructive working relationships between the new regime and Ginling’s faculty and students. For instance, she mentioned that the sociology department at Ginling helped the CCP municipal government in Nanjing to conduct a survey of city prostitutes. As a result of the students’ excellent work, the Police Bureau and the Democratic Women’s League praised Ginling and claimed to have changed their previous opinion of mission institutions as a result: “They said frankly that this experiment made them change their former impression of students from Christian institutions. They referred particularly to the impression that these institutions were isolated and aloof from the community. They added that in the future if there is more social work to be done, they will come to the college again to ask for our cooperation.”64 She also mentioned that several cadres in the People’s Liberation Army visited the Childcare Center run by (Chang) Wu Xuanyi, and were impressed with the nursery and the handicraft classes. She went so far as to condemn Nationalist spies for spreading rumors about Ginling: “I was very curious to read in your letter these words—‘Hardly a month passed without some wild rumor about Ginling.’ I wonder if those rumors are about the same as last summer, that is that Ginling was closed by the Government and re-opened under different management. If so, please be assured that there is no foundation for anything of this kind and the rumors must again have come from the reactionary Kuomintang ‘t’uh wu’ [tewu 特務, spies].”65 However, later events proved Wu too hasty in her early estimation, for her hope for Ginling to carry on as usual fell through when national and international politics conspired to end Ginling’s autonomy. Soon after the CCP military victory over most of China, missionary institutions received order to reregister with the new government and to reorganize their decision-making bodies. This marked the beginning of assimilation of missionary institutions into the CCP national education system. By these two measures, a newly constituted Committee on School Affairs (Xiaowu Weiyuanhui 校務委員會) that was made up of not only administrative

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and faculty members, but also students and secretarial and other college workers would replace the original Board of Control and Board of Trustees of mission schools.66 Since this new body had the authority to appoint or dismiss the college president and to raise funds for the college, it brought significant changes to the power dynamics at missionary institutions. As mentioned in the discussion above, Wu Yifang also felt its effects at Ginling when students demanded more representation and power in decisionmaking. In September 1949, the first meeting of the Political Consultative Conference held in Beijing announced their official “Agreement” (Gongtong gangling 公同綱領) which outlined, among other things, a common standing on education by various political parties. This agreement defined the nature of the education in New China as “new democratic”—namely, it should be “Chinese [minzu de 民族的], scientific [kexue de 科學的], and serving the people [dazhong de 大眾的].” It authorized the government to “reform old educational systems, contents, and methods.” Curricular changes soon took place in various missionary institutions such as Yenching and Nanking; mainly it meant adding the teaching of the classics of Marxism and Leninism, and Mao’s “New Democracy.”67 On May 28, 1950 Wu Yifang attended the first PRC national conference on higher education in Beijing. The Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai, met with Wu and a group of other Chinese Christian educators and leaders, and expressed his wish for the Chinese Church to contribute to the construction of New China.68 This sign of government endorsement heartened Chinese Christian leaders such as Wu Yifang, but the Korean War broke out in June 1950, pulling Ginling further into a national anti-American movement. In October 1950 the Chinese army entered Korea. A national campaign to “resist America, assist Korea, protect our home, and defend our nation” (kangmei yuanchao, baojia weiguo 抗美援朝, 保家衛國) engulfed the land and threw Ginling into new chaos. On September 23, 1950, Wu Yaozong, then official leader of the Chinese Church, published a proclamation entitled “Prevent Imperialists from Using the Church to Harm Chinese People” (Fangzhi diguo zhuyi liyong jiaohui weihai zhongguo renmin 防止帝國主義利用教會危害中國人民), which was cosigned by prominent Chinese Christians and representatives of all thirteen missionary institutions such as Lu Zhiwei and Zhao Zicheng of Yenching, Wei Zhuomin (Francis Wei), president of Huachung, Chen Yuguang, and Wu Yifang, with the exception of the absent representative of the University of Hangchou (Zhijiang 之江). On October 26, 1950, the CCP government issued “Guidelines for National Propaganda of Current Affairs” (Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu zai quanguo jinxing shishi xuanchuan de zhishi 中共中央關於在全國進行時事宣傳的指示), stating that the

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main objective of propaganda should be to “eliminate pro-American, antirevolutionary thoughts and fear for America,” and to “inculcate a general attitude of contempt for and hatred against American imperialists among the people.” A series of editorials published in CCP organs such as People’s Daily and People’s Education (Renmin jiaoyu 人民教育) immediately followed, detailing new requirements for political education in institutions of higher learning. On December 9, 1950 Lu Zhiwei took the lead to sign the proclamation “Destroy American Cultural Invasion” (Dasui Meiguo wenhua qinlüe 打碎美國文化侵略); he was followed by representatives of all other missionary colleges.69 Amid rising Chinese sentiment against “American imperialists,” on November 14, 1950, some students wrote to the Executive Committee of the student government at Ginling, accusing their American sociology professor, Helen Ferris (Fei Ruisi 費睿思), of spreading antirevolutionary messages in her English and sociology classes and of attacking the ChineseKorean alliance against the American invasion.70 The student government published these letters, leading to widespread criticisms of Ferris at colleges and universities in Nanjing. On December 2, 1950, the Xinhua Daily, a CCP organ based in Nanjing, published an article that denounced Ferris, and this was followed by a denunciation mass meeting at Ginling attended by over seven hundred representatives from institutions of higher education in Nanjing. The Ginling students subsequently published a letter to students nationwide, organized a “denunciation team” to go to other schools in Nanjing to expose the “crimes of American cultural imperialism,” and, eventually, cooperated with students from the University of Nanking to send a delegation to Shanghai, Hangzhou, and Suzhou to condemn American cultural imperialism. The tempest in Nanjing reflected a nation-wide movement against American “cultural imperialism” at former missionary institutions. At Nanking, Yenching, Lingnan [Lingnan 嶺南] and other institutions, similar meetings and rallies raged on. Well-known professors at former missionary institutions such as Lu Zhiwei of Yenching also wrote articles to denounce “American imperialism.”71 On December 14, 1950, the national People’s Daily published an editorial entitled “Continue Our Anti-Imperialist Patriotic Movement” (Jixu zhankai fandi aiguo yundong 繼續展開反帝愛國運動), whipping up the anti-American sentiment all over China to a fever pitch.72 Faced with this hostile atmosphere, all American missionary faculty members eventually left Ginling by spring semester 1951; they were either deported or departed voluntarily. The Chinese faculty members who did not completely identify with this aggressive anti-American campaign and did not possess the caution to practice self-censorship also found themselves ensnared

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in a net of denunciation and persecution. An alumna and member of the Communist Youth League recalled that before the arrest of a Chinese faculty member for “anti-revolutionary crimes,” Wu Yifang went in person to visit him while asking the student to wait outside the room as something of a guard.73 The ending of Ginling as an independent institution soon followed. Chester described it as solely a decision coming from above, initiated by the CCP alone: “It was about this time the decision was reached in Peking to combine Ginling with the University of Nanking (the Chinese name of which was Ginling University) into a national institution to be known as The National Ginling University.”74 But in reality the American government took the first step to sever all financial ties between Ginling and its U.S. sponsors. On December 17, 1950, the U.S. State Department ordered a freezing of all Chinese properties in the U.S., and outlawed sending funds to Communist China. The Board of Directors at Smith, following the U.S. government order and frustrated by split views on the use of funds raised for Ginling,75 ruled in June 1951 that “no requests for money for Ginling were to be made any more with the situation as it is.”76 The Smith Alumnae Committee for Ginling, a major fundraiser for Ginling in the US since its inception in 1923, was forced to disband when effective engagement with Ginling became not only illegal but also impossible upon the outbreak of the Korean War. Ginling College thus lost one main source of its operating budget. Meanwhile, the Communist government in China also pushed for financial independence and Chinese leadership at all colleges and universities. In January 1951, the CCP government announced “Policies on Handling Cultural, Educational and Religious Organizations Funded by the United States” (Guanyu chuli jieshou Meiguo jintie de wenhua jiaoyu jigou ji zongjiao tuanti de fangzheng de jueding 關於處理接受美國津貼的文化 教育機構及宗教團體的方針的決定), and called a meeting of institutions of higher education to reiterate the government position of forbidding the involvement of foreign nations in Chinese education. Ginling students and faculty sent a telegram to Beijing to show their support for this government position. On January 6, 1951, the central government in Beijing held another meeting to discuss the future of missionary institutions. The minister of education announced at the meeting that missionary colleges could continue if they could be supported by the Chinese Church; otherwise, they must accept government funding, divest all American influences, and operate as public institutions. Although the United Board of Christian Higher Education sent a telegraph to Ginling and Nanking to ask representatives from these two institutions to go to Hong Kong to discuss future

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funding arrangements, the two institutions decided not to respond to this overture. Instead, following Wu Yifang’s suggestion, Ginling and Nanking merged to become National Jinling University. Li Fangxun, the former dean of the College of Science at Nanking, was appointed as president and Wu as vice president. This institution was reorganized again in summer 1952 in the nation-wide restructuring of higher education by the CCP, called “Yuanxi tiaozheng,” or “Adjustment of Colleges and Departments.” Ginling, some departments of Nanking, and units from various other colleges combined to become the public Nanjing Normal University and to occupy the former Ginling campus. This university offered a bachelor’s degree in Chinese, mathematics, physics, chemistry, education, early education, music, and art, and a junior college degree (zhuanxiu 專修) in biology and geography.77 The “Adjustment of Colleges and Departments” aimed at following the Soviet model to reorganize higher education in order to speed up industrialization in China. It decreased the number of comprehensive universities while increasing the number of schools that could train technical specialists. The number of comprehensive universities dropped from forty-nine in 1949 to fourteen in 1953, while colleges of technology, agriculture, and teacher training increased by 35.7 percent, 61.1 percent, and 175 percent, respectively.78 Seen in the historical context, the encompassing curricular and staffi ng changes that the “Adjustment” brought about also revealed concerted efforts by the CCP to gain control of the nation’s cultural life by eliminating cultural elements from the past and establishing a brand new education system. Ginling’s liberal arts education and its identity as an all-women’s institution were considered inefficient and irrelevant at the time, and became inevitable casualties of this master plan. Although the “Adjustment” made good use of available resources in the short term and to some extent corrected the unbalanced geographical placement of institutions of higher education in China before 1949, in the long run it restricted the growth of the intellectual lives of both institutions of higher learning and the students that they educated, for it ignored the unique needs and workings of educational institutions, emphasized uniformity in ideological bent, uncritically negated all things Western, and compromised academic autonomy. Today some Chinese scholars still blame the “Adjustment” for instituting a Soviet-style system of higher education that forestalled the making of “geniuses” such as the Nobel Prize–winning physicists Yang Zhenning and Li Zhendao, and the literary scholars Qian Zhongshu and Zhao Yuanren, all graduates of Western-style institutions.79

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The ending of Ginling as an institution reveals that it could not live outside and above the society in which it existed and vowed to serve. Wu’s many upbeat letters and reports in the last days of the college, described by Searle Bates as her attempts “to hold on to make a place for the values which she cherishes, in terms of needed and appreciated contributions to that actual society,”80 ultimately fell short of keeping Ginling as an independent institution of Chinese women’s higher education. As a Chinese citizen who loved her country and an ambitious woman intent on making her work matter, it was perhaps inevitable that Wu refused to move either Ginling or herself outside of China even when faced with the prospect of an imminent Communist takeover. Seen in light of both Ginling’s motto of “Abundant Life” and Wu’s action, the amalgamation of Ginling into the Nanjing Normal University in 1952 paid the ultimate tribute to Ginling’s spirit of social service that transcended considerations for individual and institutional autonomy. But the sense of the Ginling family has lived on despite Ginling’s dissolution. In this respect, the grand historical narrative recorded in the official documents of the People’s Republic of China has proved highly misleading, since it too easily painted Chinese members of missionary colleges as staunch CCP supporters vehement in their condemnation of “American imperialism.” Missionary accounts of the time also provide only a limited amount of facts and insights. This is because the missionaries had no access to certain information, given their status as suspected foreign imperialists at the time, and they often blamed the CCP alone for the dissolution of missionary institutions without taking into consideration either the role played by the U.S. government or the ambivalence felt by the Chinese members of missionary colleges. It is the interviews of those involved in Ginling’s last days that constitute the best source, and they reveal undercurrents previously suppressed by both the official discourses of the CCP and by the missionaries. It is, unfortunately, not easy to retrace Wu Yifang’s private thoughts regarding all the swift changes that eventually disbanded her beloved Ginling, since a lot of the written documents and memorabilia in her possession were destroyed or missing after the Cultural Revolution. Because of her reserved personality and the tense political atmosphere after 1949, recollections of her politically sensitive comments also proved rare, except that she still went out of her way to provide financial and other assistance to former Ginling associates when they were persecuted by the CCP. Her correspondence with the United States was cut off for many years until the thaw of diplomatic relations between the two governments, but her interactions with her American friends and former students immediately

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revived in the 1980s, which suggests that her private feelings toward American missionaries had never been as acrimonious as the official documents may have represented. Not only did Wu Yifang harbor ambivalence toward the CCP and have complex motives behind her decision to keep Ginling in China, but the leftist students at Ginling have also turned out to be a heterogeneous group diverse in the extent of their “political correctness.” Some of them joined in the CCP cause not out of a clear and unwavering belief in Communism, but rather out of patriotic passions about the building of a new China81 or the somewhat naive desire to see their own talents bear fruit in nation-building.82 Many Chinese students at Ginling, including those sympathetic to the CCP, formed warm personal relationships with American missionaries even in the last days of the college. One alumna who later became an officer in the People’s Liberation Army air force has remarked that the American missionaries varied in their political persuasions and attitudes toward the CCP, and she expressed her admiration for those who had devoted their lives to education and academic work at Ginling.83 Another alumna, although a political activist and chair of the student government while at Ginling, has many fond memories of her missionary music professor, Rosie Butler. Interestingly, the People’s Liberation Army alumna has classified Butler as a spokesperson for the American government, and recalled that Butler persistently forced on her and another radical classmate several pamphlets that argued for the similarities between Communism and Christianity. When Butler saw them off before they left for the PLA and announced to them “God will always love you,” the classmate replied: “This is impossible right now, but perhaps possible later.”84 In contrast, the former chair of the student government expressed her appreciation that Butler had tried to offer her a teaching job at Ginling after her graduation because of her academic excellence. This alumna got into political hot water in 1950 because she had secured a ticket for Butler to go to a concert given by four visiting Soviet artists.85 These two examples demonstrate that even radical students were considerably more moderate in their private thoughts and feelings toward American missionaries than their public proclamations may have suggested. Their perceptions of American missionaries have also been very much shaped by their personal interactions with individual Americans both at the time and later in life. Interviews with Ginling alumnae show that Communist ideologies did more violence to familial and institutional ties than any other ideologies, since some radical Ginling women renounced their own families and their Christian belief to join the CCP.86

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Yet, as previous chapters have demonstrated, traces of American culture and of Ginling education can still be detected in their habits and collective unconscious even after half a century. The physical shape of the Ginling family may have been vulnerable to political vicissitudes, but the sense of family endures. Sweeping political changes and fierce ideological battles did not eradicate but rather stimulated Ginling associates to reminisce about their experiences of the Ginling family long after its physical dissolution. In this light, the copious Ginling stories told by the alumnae testify to not only their resilience despite half a century of political upheavals and persecutions, but also the alumnae’s resolve in making their own versions of the institutional history count and last.

Epilogue

Resurrection and Reunion

fa m i ly c or r e s p on de n c e

I

n 1977 an unexpected letter came to Wu Yifang from half a world away. It was sent by Anne Louise Welch, a retired American educator and the daughter of Paul and Bunny Welch, respectively Wu’s dissertation advisor at the University of Michigan and his wife, Wu’s close friend (see chapter 3). This letter foretold the emotional reunion of the Ginling circle after a quarter of a century’s physical separation. Significantly, just as the Ginling faculty members formerly maintained institutional and personal ties with their U.S. supporters mainly through correspondence, the reestablishment of such interactions across the Pacific also started with written words. Since Welch’s personal attempts at locating Wu Yifang were part of her filial project of commemorating her late parents, she paid a suitable, albeit unwitting, tribute to the discourse of the Ginling family. Welch’s eventual reconnection with Wu Yifang also demonstrated the endurance of the Ginling circle, for she tracked Wu down through the help of a Ginling alumna, Dr. Hu Xiuying of Harvard University, after previous queries that she had sent to the U.S. State Department had yielded little result. Granted, Welch had not been involved in the establishment and development of Ginling; nor could she be called a reliable witness to Wu’s graduate school experience in the United States because of her young age at the time. But Wu’s tenure as Ginling president coincided with her intercontinental communications with the Welches. Her appointment as the first Chinese president of Ginling had been a groundbreaking event that had caused a great sensation not only in China but also at the University of Michigan. Anne Louise’s father, Paul Welch, enthusiastically publicized

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Wu’s achievements to all and sundry. Wu’s subsequent visits to the United States also took her back to her alma mater in Ann Arbor, where she met with the Welches.2 Wu kept up personal correspondence with Bunny Welch despite her overwhelming workload as Ginling president, and exchanged New Year’s greeting cards, photos, and small gifts with her from time to time.3 Welch’s letter, as a voice from her past, must have invoked for Wu the memory of some of the happiest and most productive years of her life: she had completed her doctorate in entomology at the University of Michigan as a Barbour Scholar in 1928, a rare achievement for a woman, especially a Chinese woman, at the time, and then served Ginling as president and lobbied for its support in the United States from 1928 to 1950. Wu Yifang’s deep attachment to Ginling can be seen from her reply to Welch. Interestingly, Wu used the same discursive strategy previously employed by the Chinese and American members of Ginling: she claimed the power of self-representation by accentuating her legitimate membership in a magnificent collective enterprise such as the building of Ginling. Remembering Welch as “the little girl with big bright eyes and a naughty smile” from fifty years ago, Wu first paid tribute to the memories of her late parents, stating, “They both were very good to me, one directing my thesis and the other [acting] to[ward] me as a real friend. I often remember them.” Then she described her professional achievements after her return to China: “After I returned home, I became the President of a small college for women, and was there over twenty years. Then I was appointed the director of the Education Bureau of Kiangsu [Jiangsu] province, and then as one of the Vice Governors of the province for some years. Now, I am still a deputy to the National People’s Congress.”4 Wu obviously thought of her presidency at Ginling as one of the highlights of her career in China. Although she modestly depicted Ginling as only “a small college for women,” the fact that Ginling both came up first in her brief autobiographical sketch and her emphasis on her tenure as Ginling president for over twenty years indicate the crucial role that Ginling played in her self-definition. Yet Wu hardly mentioned her personal life, let alone the persecutions that she had suffered during the Cultural Revolution, such as the loss of her home and belongings, denunciation by the Red Guards, and her exile and forced labor in the countryside.5 Instead, she focused on the various important offices that she had assumed before her retirement. It may be that her reserve arose from a desire to represent herself as a selfless and patriotic Chinese Christian, but in any case it is worth noting that Wu accentuated her professional achievements even in a private letter of reconnection, and thereby again revealed the important role that career played in her self-imagining.

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Following this early sign of resumption of communication within the Ginling group, Wu Yifang visited the United States in 1979 at the age of eighty-six to accept the Alumnae Athena Award from the University of Michigan. Many Ginling alumnae and former faculty members met with her during her stay in the United States, including her former classmate from the first class of Ginling, Xu Yizhen (Mrs. New). In November 1983, a group of over forty Ginling alumnae and others associated with it paid a visit to their old campus for the first time since 1949. They were led by none other than Ettie Chin, the Chinese American woman who returned to Ginling during the war and worked as a PE instructor for seven years in Chengdu, Sichuan (see chapter 4). This turned out to be an emotional homecoming for all involved: the alumnae took turns in greeting Wu Yifang and presenting gifts to her, even going as far as to kowtow to Wu one by one, a traditional Chinese ritual of greeting one’s parents after a period of separation, a practice that had became virtually obsolete in mainland China after 1949. One excited alumna also knelt down to kiss the ground at the old gate of the college. All expressed surprise and delight that the campus had been kept in good shape, but deeply regretted that Ginling was no more in China.6

g i n l i n g r e b or n Although the Ginling family had found each other after three decades of separation, the eventual reopening of Ginling College still took intricate and prolonged negotiations between various parties. Wu Yifang had been the driving force behind the reinstitution of Ginling by virtue of her political clout (owing in no small part to her symbolic value to the CCP as a patriotic Christian educator, as had been the case under the rule of Chiang Kai-shek), her position as the revered head of the Ginling family, and her tireless efforts to reunite the Ginling alumnae. But she also won wide support for her plan to reopen Ginling from Ginling’s former associates. Wu Yifang’s efforts have been recorded in a series of writings that she authored or coauthored. First, in 1983 Wu published Jin nüda sishi nian (Forty Years of Ginling College), a brief history of Ginling College, with the help of a Ginling alumna, Zhu Qi, attempting at bringing Ginling back to public view in mainland China. In December of the same year, Wu used the time of her hospitalization for respiratory problems to compose a proposal to the Nanjing branch of the Ginling Alumnae Association, suggesting the reopening of an all-women’s college. In 1985, after careful deliberation with her former students, Wu Yifang had Fang Fei, another Ginling alumna, draft a letter to the provincial government

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of Jiangsu, urging the reestablishment of Ginling College within Nanjing Normal University.7 Wu had in mind an institution with a certain autonomy. She suggested that although this new Ginling would function under the umbrella of Nanjing Normal, it would seek funds from private citizens and decide on its curricular emphases, such as applied English and nutrition, the traditional strengths of Ginling before 1949. Wu argued in the letter that the establishment of such a college would help advance Chinese women’s higher education, increase their career opportunities, and ultimately raise women’s status in Chinese society. In order to mobilize various sources of funding both in China and abroad and to facilitate communications, Wu also enclosed a list of names to be added to the future steering committee for this project. According to an alumna’s reminiscences, Wu Yifang appropriated the official discourse of the time for her project of reinstituting Ginling. Wu emphasized to CCP officials not only the important role that education played in Chinese women’s career advancement and gender equality in society, but also Ginling’s potential to unite overseas Chinese under the banner of the Ginling family, and therefore attract support for China’s unification and ascent in the international arena. Thus, in her rationale to reopen Ginling Wu astutely captured CCP’s political imperatives of the time. The government had just started nationwide economic reforms and opening to the world. On her deathbed in November 1985, Wu specifically expressed her fervent wish to reopen Ginling both to Ginling alumnae and to the female governor of Jiangsu Province at the time, Gu Xiulian.8 Wu Yifang’s dream of reinstituting Ginling lived on after her death. At the seventieth anniversary celebration of the founding of Ginling College in 1985, the same year Wu Yifang passed away, the Ginling alumnae unanimously voted to establish a Wu Yifang Memorial Fund in order to raise money to realize Wu’s final wish to reopen Ginling. Ettie Chin was elected the first chair. The Ginling Alumnae Association entrusted the United Board of Christian Higher Education in Asia to manage any funds they raised. All expenses incurred during the building of Ginling would need to be approved by the United Board, but the United Board also agreed to offer matching funds for every dollar that the memorial fund raised.9 Large-scale fund-raising campaigns ensued both in China and abroad. Although mostly retirees short on funds, Ginling associates donated generously. Many familiar names from Ginling’s past appeared on the list of contributors: Ruth Chester, now close to one hundred years old and living in a nursing home; Ettie Chin; Yan Lianyun, a Ginling alumna from a wellto-do family in Shanghai (see chapter 1), and Deng Yuzhi (see chapter 3), the activist and former general secretary of the YWCA in China. Besides

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monetary contributions, the donors also sent books, equipment, and office supplies. The overseas relatives of Tang Shuoyan, Wu Yifang’s classmate from the first class of 1919, and those of Chen Yingmei, the first female Chinese PE instructor who had also taught at Ginling, donated their old residences in Nanjing, though these houses had long been confiscated and reassigned, and at first could not be reclaimed despite numerous tries. Despite the overwhelming support from the alumnae and other former associates of Ginling, it proved difficult to gain official sanction for the reopening of Ginling at the time. The Chinese Ministry of Education did not approve of revival of former missionary colleges in China. The Chinese system of higher education could not accommodate private institutions, since the state in principle controlled the allocation of all financial resources and personnel appointments in higher education. Although Gu Xiulian, the governor of Jiangsu, and Gui Hong, then president of Nanjing Normal University (whose mother-in-law happened to be a Ginling alumna), were sympathetic to this cause, it still took more than two years of intense negotiations for the Ginling group to gain official approval and adequate funds. A meeting held with a group of alumnae including Huang Xuhan, Fang Fei, and Cao Wan, together with Gui Hong and Sun Han, the vice party secretary of Jiangsu Province, eventually finalized the following terms: first, Ginling College could only be established as a second-degree college (erji xueyuan 二級學院) under Nanjing Normal to comply with government regulations; second, since it would take considerable resources to run a college, the new Ginling would be “gongban minzhu” 公辦民助—namely, staterun with aid from private sources; third, the goal of the college was to train professional women, and its curriculum should focus on application, social service, and Ginling’s traditional strengths, and not overlap with majors offered by Najing Normal; and, fourth and last, a steering committee would be constituted to lead this undertaking. Characterizing the reinstitution of Ginling as “opening a window on international exchanges,” the steering committee submitted an official proposal to the Jiangsu Education Commission. Through the tireless efforts of Fang Fei, Cao Wan, and others who had connections within the CCP government, the official approval finally came in March 1987. In fall 1987, the reinstituted Ginling College admitted its first class of sixteen students. The construction of the new Ginling did not end at this point, of course. More fund-raising, the building of the physical plant, the furnishing, the hiring of staff, and the recruiting of students immediately started. Between 1990 and 1993, overseas sources contributed U.S. $100,000 while the Chinese side raised $70,000 in Chinese currency. When Eva Spicer’s old house, now renamed “Yifang yuan” (Garden of Yifang), proved

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inadequate for office and classroom needs, fund-raising started again for a new building in 1994. As a fitting tribute to the family discourse, the donors asked that one or more rooms in the new building be named after their own family members. The total amount of U.S. $300,000 raised in this round, together with the cash value of Chin$50,000 realized for the two donated buildings and an amount of Chin$2,700,000 from the Jiangsu Education Commission, eventually made it possible for a modern classroom-office building to be erected next to Yifang yuan. It occupied twenty-eight hundred square meters of land. The building and administration of the new college relied heavily on Ginling alumnae such as Mei Ruolan and Bao Huisun, who were determined to realize Wu Yifang’s plan and restore the physical shape of the Ginling family. Their task proved no less arduous than the project of building Ginling undertaken by American missionaries between 1910 and 1920. They described their beginning as “three have-nots”: no space, no funding, and no staffi ng. They used one office loaned from the foreign language department of Nanjing Normal as their office, and had to depend on the faculty of this department to instruct their fi rst group of students, who were only studying for a junior college degree in applied English.10 Yet, from this modest start, Ginling today boasts four departments: Food Science, Accounting, Labor and Social Welfare, and Applied English. It has four research centers and two training bases, grants not only a bachelor’s degree in six disciplines but also a master’s in four disciplines, and has graduated about two thousand students since 1987.11 Along with the reinstitution of Ginling College came large-scale memory-making and even mythmaking within the Ginling circle. The commemoration of Ginling’s legacy increased in volume with the exuberant celebrations of its eightieth (1995), eighty-fi fth (2000), and ninetieth anniversaries (2005) in Nanjing, and of the twentieth anniversary of the reopening of Ginling in 2007. The festivities attracted large groups of alumnae, researchers, and government officials each time, and culminated in four volumes of biographical and autobiographical essays, published respectively in 1995, 2000, 2005, and 2007, and collectively entitled Jinling nüer (Daughters of Ginling). These writings not only testify to the impact of Ginling in a century of radical changes, but also ensure the continuity of the Ginling legacy by bridging the gap of memories between the older, pre-1952 generations and Ginling’s newer members, who have entered Ginling since the late 1980s. No other former missionary college has managed to reclaim its name and memories in such a public and officially sanctioned manner in China after 1949.

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Thus, Ginling’s rebirth has once again confi rmed the power and endurance of the Ginling family.

t h e di s c ou r s e of t h e g i n l i n g fa m i ly : f i n a l ac c ou n t i n g Given the complex narratives and discourses produced at Ginling and through Ginling described in this book, how can we most accurately evaluate the contributions and limits of Ginling’s family discourse in the historical context of twentieth-century China? As I have demonstrated, by appropriating both the traditional Chinese family ethics and the prevailing nationalist discourses of its time, this discourse united different constituencies of the Ginling community through war and peace. It helped to build collaboration in work and congenial personal relations across the borders of race, class, and religion. By its very nature as an elastic and generative metaphor, the “Ginling family” provided individual faculty members and students with the opportunity to refashion their own identity and membership in the community, and thus contributed to the selfrepresentation and self-realization of Chinese and American women, both of whose cultural traditions were dominated by men. The efficacy of the family discourse in creating both communal harmony and opportunities for individual growth has been amply illustrated in the narratives by Ginling women. They invariably invoke the Ginling family when proclaiming their devotion to the institution as “daughters of Ginling” in times of emergency. Moreover, their agile deployment of familial metaphors and images when describing their career achievements shows that the discourse of the Ginling family provided them with a useful means of self-signification by claiming membership in a collective enterprise. Although Ginling’s family discourse both facilitated the cultivation of cosmopolitanism at Ginling and enabled its members to pursue individual interests, and thereby contributed to Ginling’s internal cohesion, the outside world frequently viewed the “Ginling family” with suspicion and censure. For one thing, Ginling was never able to completely shed its historical link to the “gunboat diplomacy” of Western colonialism. As has been shown throughout this book, its origin as a missionary college, with its perceived tie to American imperialism, often made its members vulnerable to attacks by radical nationalists. A perennial charge against Ginling by the CCP was that its inherent elitism caused its alienation from China’s large rural population, and prevented the students from establishing any meaningful and deep engagements in China’s national life. Granted, the background of the Ginling students seemed to separate them from the

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common masses: for instance, a survey in 1936 showed only a tiny minority (0.77%) of the students came from a rural background; the majority of student families engaged in business (27.03%), military and politics (29.73%), education (16.99%), the church (5.4%), medicine (5.02%), engineering (4.25%), and other professions.12 In fact, celebrities from all walks of life in the Republic era sent their daughters to Ginling, including the GMD general Zhang Zhizhong 張治中, the scholar Zhang Taiyan 章太炎, the artist Xu Beihong 徐悲鴻, and the political activist Huang Yanpei 黃炎培, just to name a few. They did so regardless of their religious beliefs or the lack thereof. Graduates of Ginling, armed with a liberal arts education and used to the family atmosphere of their alma mater, frequently found themselves disillusioned and even incapacitated by the adversities they encountered in the complex world outside of school. Ginling therefore seemed to have “involved only a small segment of society and had little effect on the reshaping of new political order.”13 Wu Yifang also struggled with these perceived limits of Ginling during her lifetime. Not only did she attempt curricular reforms during and after China’s Resistance War against Japan, but in her last years she also went so far as to question her original vision of Ginling education, embodied in her favorite riddle about lotus seed: “White ivory jar, purple sandalwood lid, in it lies a small bok choy” (xiangya tan, zitan gai, limian you ke xiaobaicai 象牙罈, 紫檀蓋, 裡面有棵小白菜). At an Alumnae Association meeting in 1981, she remarked that although she had originally thought that the metaphor “bok choy” perfectly represented the wide utility of a Ginling education, she later came to question how this “bok choy” came about in the first place. She stated: “While this bok choy is intended for public consumption, it has grown up in an ivory jar and [been] covered by a sandalwood lid. It is too fragile. It should be moved to the field to be exposed to the elements before it can grow into a healthy, large green leafy vegetable [da qingcai 大青菜] needed by the masses.”14 Wu clearly thought that Ginling graduates remained a separate breed from the common Chinese masses despite the college motto of social service. Of course, their difference may simply testify to the superior education that the Chinese students received and the remarkably coherent group identity that they formed at Ginling. But to the wider Chinese society, Ginling students, in clinging to their unique qizhi, appeared unable to tap into the collective needs and desires of the rural Chinese population and to mobilize it for widespread social movements, in a sharp contrast to the achievements of the CCP and its followers who rose to national power after 1949. However, it would be a serious mistake to use the dominant theme of the CCP master narrative of twentieth-century Chinese history—that is,

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the search for national sovereignty in the face of colonial presence—as the only or ultimate criterion to assess Ginling. Ginling’s institutional history showed an increase of Chinese presence and decision-making, and thus can be interpreted as Chinese women’s gradual gain of control of their education, and part of China’s struggle for self-rule against colonial powers. Moreover, while the majority of Ginling associates devoted themselves to a social feminist agenda, some did join in the CCP cause to reach a larger segment of Chinese masses through their work. Indeed, the apparent ease of some Ginling members at converting to Communism seemed to point up the affinity between the three types of “family”: the Confucian traditional family, the Christian institutional family, and the ideal national family promoted by the CCP. They all emphasized collective efforts, uniformity in thought and behavior, and a hierarchical structure validated and supported by an encompassing moral-ethical-religious code. Yet, the value of the Ginling family discourse lies not just in creating homogeneity but also in making possible diversity and alterity, however limited. In pioneering a liberal arts curriculum, Ginling represented a different model for the development of Chinese higher education and Chinese women’s education at a time of increasing utilitarianism and technical specialization. Its traditional strengths in English, physical education, and home economics not only contributed to the self-representation and career development of the alumnae, but can also provide inspiration for China’s reforms in higher education today. And because of the many paradoxes that Ginling represented, it can provide invaluable insights into the theoretical issues that I have set out to explore through the lens of its powerful family discourse. Throughout this book, we can see that the family discourse of Ginling implicitly demarcated the boundaries of class, gender, race, religion, and even generation, even while it promoted family spirit and internationalism. Not only did the insulated nature of this discourse exclude “undesirable” elements from the Ginling family by virtue of its admission and recruitment apparatus and particularly by its vigorous fight against coeducation, but it was also often invoked to marginalize and discipline the “misfits” and nonconformists among its members, such as the more ambitious and thus less “cooperative” American missionary Esther Tappert and Chinese Americans who were caught between two cultures, such as Ettie Chin. The various articulations and realizations of this discourse in twentieth-century Chinese history reveal that missionaries at Ginling frequently employed traditional conceptions of morality and femininity to train “modern” Chinese women, while sometimes the Chinese faculty members chafed at the bondage of their Christian faith and institutional

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affiliation as they sought for themselves a larger, more prominent role in China’s nation-building. Thus, not only did tradition and modernity, and nationalism and internationalism, often work hand in hand even while undermining and subverting each other at the institutional level, but individual reiterations of the family discourse also revealed that there did not exist a monolithic, coherent master narrative of Chinese modernization. The memories of the Ginling women show the untenable position of both the May Fourth antitraditionalist version of Chinese modernity and the missionary conversion narrative that advocated transforming backward Chinese culture through the adoption of an enlightened, social reform– oriented Protestantism. Despite (or maybe precisely because of) the conflicts as well as the cohesion that it produced, the family discourse played an indispensable part in the formation of the institution and the empowerment of individual women. As a missionary college established by a group of female American missionaries in a semicolonial society, Ginling followed a thorny path in tumultuous twentieth-century China. As my book has illustrated, Chinese nationalist and Western missionary discourses placed numerous patriarchal demands on both the female missionaries and the Chinese women of Ginling. These ranged from the missionary and nationalist push for Ginling’s merger and coeducation to the GMD government’s increasing control of Ginling’s curriculum and advocacy for a conservative vision of women’s education, as demonstrated in the New Life Movement and the GMD’s wartime educational policies. In addition, Ginling women had to grapple with colonial invasion, most excruciatingly shown in the carnage of the Sino-Japanese War. Despite all the obstacles and against all odds, Ginling trained Chinese women in new skills for new tasks such as teaching, delineated a new lifestyle inspired by Western modernity and material culture, and formed a strong cosmopolitan community while making possible the self–realization of the “new woman.” At the institutional level, both its enduring impact embodied in its alumnae and its resurrection in China in the 1980s, where no other former missionary institution succeeded in quite the same way, have testified to Ginling’s extraordinary group cohesion. As Thurston remarked (not a little complacently) when comparing Yenching and Ginling after the nationwide transition from missionary to Chinese leadership in the 1930s: “I feel that [at Yenching] there is much less [of] what we have at Ginling in family spirit and much more of individual independence. The Chinese faculty at Yenching all seem to be very individual, brilliant and full of ideas, but not ready to work together under a Chinese leader and not too ready to settle down to teaching.”15

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The trajectory of Ginling’s dominant institutional discourse also illuminates the personal transformations that it made possible. Granted, Ginling College to some extent exemplified what Philip West has termed the “self-defeating success” of Christian higher education, “as well-intentioned reformers and patriots were themselves converted to Western ways that only increased their separation from the masses.”16 But the construction and dissemination of its family discourse ameliorated, if not completely balanced, this inevitable elitism. The family discourse not only enabled the founders to solidify group cohesion at Ginling but also provided much needed emotional satisfaction and power for them as foreign women working in a remote land. Moreover, in their attempts at making female Chinese leaders who would be able to transform Chinese culture through the spread of Christianity, they also found their preconceived ideas challenged and changed. Deliberately accentuating the cultural resonance of the metaphor of the family, the missionary faculty members were able to secure the loyalty of their Chinese colleagues and students to a mock family structure originally modeled on the multigenerational Confucian family. However, the Chinese women also gained agency in participating in the collective creation and dissemination of the family discourse. In other words, the Chinese students and faculty members at Ginling readily adopted the “Ginling family” not just because they had been mostly brought up in the traditional Chinese family. They were also able to bring into dialogue the familiar and familial with the unfamiliar and nonfamilial, and thereby pave the way for their own self-realization by proclaiming their membership in the Ginling family. As Tani Barlow points out, in traditional society “the true mark of the educated funü (woman 婦女) was not her discipline per se or her ability to master body etiquette (lishu 禮數), lijiao (social etiquette 禮教), and guiju (conventional behaviors 規矩), but rather her ability to devote herself through these codified behaviors to the service of her husband’s family.”17 Given that many Ginling women chose remaining single and having a career rather than marriage and children, we can see that Chinese women not only (temporarily) escaped the demands of their natal family by pledging fealty to the Ginling family, but also found ways to explore their potentials after Ginling, if only by shunning marriage. Simply stated, rather than merely acceding to external demands posed by the dominant discourses of the Chinese government or the institution, individual Ginling women invariably manipulated the family metaphor and discourse in order to further the cause of women’s education and their own advancement in Chinese society.

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To paraphrase the immortal words of Zhang Kaiyuan, the well-known Chinese historian of missionary education, the ending of Ginling in 1952 was perhaps “tragic,”18 but Ginling per se is anything but tragic. Ultimately, Ginling made possible a tale of immense courage on the part of Wu Yifang and other members of the “Ginling family,” who not only carved out agency for themselves but also made lasting contributions to the society during an extremely violent and tumultuous period in Chinese history. As my “microscopic” approach has revealed, the making of Ginling’s “family saga” has not only challenged dominant themes and praxes of the existing master narratives of twentieth-century Chinese history, such as the May Fourth antimemory and antitradition posture and the missionary historians’ lament of the unfinished encounter of China and Christianity; it has also questioned the value judgment against memory in current scholarship on historiography.

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Appendix A

Biographical Dictionary

Chester, Ruth: born in Buffalo, New York, in 1894. Having graduated first in her high school class at the age of sixteen, she received her bachelor’s degree from Smith College in 1914. After spending a year teaching high school in Chester, New York, Chester returned to Smith, where she earned her master’s degree in chemistry (1916). She spent a year teaching at Elmira College in New York before going to China in 1917 to be head of the chemistry department at Ginling College, a position she held until 1947. During her leaves of absence from Ginling, Chester worked toward her PhD, which she received from Columbia University in 1934. She continued to teach at Ginling during the war, when the Japanese occupation of Nanjing forced the college to move to Chengdu in West China. During the postwar years, she served as Ginling’s Dean of Studies. In 1951, the Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions transferred her to Forman Christian College in Lahore, Pakistan, where she served until her retirement in 1959. In 1966, she was awarded the Smith College Medal in recognition of her work as an educator. She died in 1997. Chin, Ettie: born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1913 to first-generation Chinese American parents. She received her bachelor’s degree in history from Smith College in 1936, and her master’s degree from the University of Michigan in 1937. After her graduation from Michigan, Chin set out to join the physical education department at Ginling College. By the time she reached China, however, the Japanese occupation had forced Ginling College to leave Nanjing. Chin joined a unit of Ginling students in Shanghai, and in 1938 she accompanied them to Chengdu, Sichuan, in West China, which became the site of Ginling-in-exile from 1938 to 1946. Chin worked in the physical education department at Ginling’s Chengdu campus until 1944, when she returned to the United States and joined the

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faculty at Smith. She served as an assistant professor in Smith’s physical education department until 1953. Chin was an active member of the Smith Alumnae Committee for Ginling for a number of years after her return to the Untied States. In 1953, she married Edward Lim Hong, a restaurateur, and the couple settled in Freeport, Long Island. She served as the first chair of the Wu Yifang Memorial Foundation, and organized various Ginling alumnae trips to China in the 1980s and 1990s. She died in 2005. New [Niu], Mrs. Way-sung [Huisheng] (née Yuh-tsung [Yizhen] Zee [Xu]): born in Suzhou, China, in 1894. She was a third-generation Christian. She graduated from Elizabeth Yates Memorial All Girls’ School in Shanghai in 1910, and taught in private schools in Shanghai in 1910–15. She entered Ginling in fall 1915 and received her BA in history in 1919 from Ginling. At Ginling she formed a lifelong friendship with Wu Yifang, later the first Chinese president of Ginling. She taught in Nanjing and Beijing after graduation, and was married to Dr. Way-sung New in 1924. After her marriage, she continued many of her professional and voluntary activities. She was chairman of the Methodist School Board of Shanghai, and chairman of the Ginling Board of Directors, and active in social welfare and the nurses’ training program in her husband’s hospital. She received her MA from Teachers’ College, Columbia University. She gave birth to a son, Peter, in 1928. After her husband died in 1937, she spent two years in intensive relief work with the International Red Cross in war-torn Shanghai in 1937–39. She taught English at St. Stephen’s College in Hong Kong from 1939 to 1941. In 1945 she served as member of the Preparatory Committee of the Chinese delegation at the founding of the UN, and was the Chinese representative to its Commission on the Status of Women, Division of Human Rights. She worked as a lecturer in various institutions in the United States in 1949–55. She was appointed assistant dean to Western College for Women in Oxford, Ohio, in 1955. After her retirement from Western College in 1959, she concentrated her energies on church activities and the Ginling alumnae group. She became an American citizen in 1961. She died in 1981. Thurston, Mrs. Lawrence (née Matilda Calder): born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1875. She received a BA in mathematics from Mt. Holyoke College in 1896. After teaching in private high schools in the United States, she taught in Central Turkey College for Girls, Marash, Turkey, 1900– 02, under the American Board. She married Rev. J. Lawrence Thurston in 1902, and the couple went to China on the Yale-in-China mission in 1902. After her husband died in 1904, she worked as traveling secretary

Appendix A

257

for the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions in 1904–06, and for the Yale-in-China mission in Changsha, China, in 1906–11. She was appointed by the Presbyterian Board (North) to China in 1913, and taught in Mingde School in Nanjing, China, 1913–15. She was president of Ginling College from 1913 to 1928, during which period she raised funds for a magnificent new campus and established many of the Ginling traditions. After retirement from Ginling presidency in 1928 under Nationalist pressure, she worked as advisor to the president until she returned to the United States in 1936. In 1939 she was called by the Ginling headquarters in New York to go to Nanjing to relieve Minnie Vautrin, whose mental health had been greatly damaged by the trauma of the war atrocities committed by the Japanese occupation army. After Pearl Harbor, she was confined to the Ginling campus in Nanjing until she was deported in 1942. From 1942 until her death in 1958 she lived with her sister, Helen Calder, in Auburndale, MA. She was the coauthor of Ginling College (1955). Vautrin, Wilhelmina (Minnie): born into a farmer’s family in Secor, Illinois, in 1886. She received her BA from the University of Illinois in 1910 (?), and her MA in education from the Teachers’ College, Columbia University, in 1918. She was sent to China as an educational missionary in 1912, and worked as a principal at a girls’ high school in Hefei, Anhui Province. In 1919 she was contacted by the Ginling headquarters in New York to go to Nanjing, China, as acting president and Dean of the college during Mrs. Thurston’s furlough and fund-raising trip in China. She took up the administrative responsibilities of Ginling in the volatile political environment of the May Fourth era. At Ginling she oversaw the building of the new campus, organized neighborhood visiting programs, and established Ginling Middle School. In 1937 she stayed at the Nanjing campus to operate a refugee camp for Chinese women and children during the “Massacre of Nanjing” that lasted six weeks from December 1937 to early 1938. At one point the Ginling campus sheltered ten thousand Chinese women and children. After the immediate crisis passed, she continued to run an experimental school and handicraft workshops for refugee women and girls at Ginling until 1940. She was awarded the highest honor to a foreigner by the Nationalist government on July 30, 1938, the Order of the Jade (caiyu xunzhang 采玉勛章), for her work during the Japanese occupation of Nanjing. With her mental health deteriorating because of the trauma of the war, she was taken back to the United States for treatment. She committed suicide in 1941, one year after she left Ginling. Her last words were: “Had I ten perfect lives, I would give them all to China.”

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The Making of a Family Saga

Wu Yifang: born in January 1893 into a literati family in Wuchang, Hubei Province. Attended new-style schools in Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Suzhou, including the well-known Laura Haygood School for Girls in Suzhou, a mission-founded all-women’s school. Within the space of a few months in 1909, her father, older brother, and older sister committed suicide, and her mother died of grief. With her uncle’s financial help, Wu was able to enter Ginling College in the spring semester of 1916. She was baptized in 1916. She was elected the first chair of the student government at Ginling. After graduation with a BA in Biology from Ginling in 1919, she taught English at the Beijing Women’s Normal High School (later Beijing Women’s Normal University) until she left for the University of Michigan in 1923 under a Barbour Scholarship for Oriental Women. She was chairman of the Chinese Student Christian Association in the USA from 1924 to 1925, and vice-chairman and acting chairman of the Chinese Student Alliance in North America from 1925 to 1926. She was elected the president of Ginling in 1928, the same year that she received her PhD in entomology from Michigan. She was a member of the People’s Political Council, 1938–40, 1941–42, 1942–49. Her honorary degrees included: Doctor of Science (ScD) from St. John’s, Doctor of Law (LLD) from Smith College and Mills College, and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Southern California. She was one of the five members of the Chinese delegation at the founding of the UN in San Francisco in 1945. After 1949, she served as Vice-President of Ginling University (1951–52), director of the Education Bureau of Jiangsu Province, Vice-Governor of Jiangsu Province, and representative of the National People’s Congress in mainland China. She was awarded the Alumnae Athena Award by the University of Michigan in 1979. She died in 1985.

Appendix B

Glossary of Chinese Characters

babao fan

八寶飯

Bairi weixin

百日維新

Baoji

寶雞

baozhi

報紙

baozi

包子

Beiman nüxiao

貝滿女校

Cai Kui

蔡葵

caiyu xunzhang

采玉勛章

Canzheng Yuan

參政院

Cao Wan

曹琬

Cheng Ruifang

程瑞芳

Chengdu

成都

Chen Mei-yü

陳美渝

Chen Shutong

陳叔通

Chen Yingmei

陳英梅

Chen Yuguang

陳裕光

Chongqing

重慶

cimu

慈母

Cishu dalou

慈淑大樓

Cixi

慈禧

da qingcai

大青菜

260

The Making of a Family Saga

Dasui Meiguo wenhua qinlüe

打碎美國文化侵略

dazhong de

大眾的

Deng Yuzhi

鄧裕志

Diandeng bu ming, dianhua bu ling, daolu bu ping, huoche zhuang bing

電燈不明, 電話不靈, 道路不平, 火車裝兵

Dongya bingfu

東亞病夫

erji xueyuan

二級學院

Fang Fei

方菲

fang tie

房貼

Fangzhi diguo zhuyi liyong jiaohui weihai zhongguo renmin

防止帝國主義利用教會危害中國 人民

Fei Ruisi

費睿思

fu

婦

fu jiaoshou

副教授

funü

婦女

fushi bu

輔食部

gaoji

高級

Ge dangpai lixiao

各黨派離校

gongban minzhu

公辦民助

gongguan

公館

Gongtong gangling

公同綱領

Guanyu chuli jieshou Meiguo jintie de wenhua jiaoyu jigou ji zongjiao tuanti de fangzheng de jueding

關於處理接受美國津貼的文化 教育機構及宗教團體的方針 的決定

Gui Hong

歸鴻

guiju

規矩

guoli

國立

guomin zhi mu

國民之母

guoxue

國學

guozi jian

國子監

Gu Xiulian

顧秀蓮

Appendix B

261

Hang Liwu

杭立武

Hankou

漢口

hanlin

翰林

Hao Yingqing

郝映青

Hefei

合肥

Huabei

華北

Huabei xiehe nüzi daxue

華北協和女子大學

Huanan

華南

Huang Liming

黃麗明

Huang Xuhan

黃續漢

Huang Yanpei

黃炎培

Huaxi

華西

Huaxi ba

華西壩

Huaying nüxiao

華英女校

Huazhung

華中

Hujiang

滬江

Hu Xiuying

胡秀英

jiangshi

講師

Jiangsu

江蘇

jiaoshou

教授

Jinghai nüzhong

景海女中

Jinling daxue

金陵大學

Jinling nüer

金陵女兒

Jinling nüzi daxue

金陵女子大學

Jinling nüzi wenli xueyuan

金陵女子文理學院

Jinling yijia qin, zaixiao ru jiating, biye ru jianü

金陵一家親, 在校如家庭, 畢業 如嫁女

Jiujiang

九江

Jiulong

九龍

jixing shehui

畸形社會

“Jixu zhankai fandi aiguo yundong”

繼續展開反帝愛國運動

262

The Making of a Family Saga

junshihua guanli

軍事化管理

juren

舉人

kangmei yuanchao, baojia weiguo

抗美援朝, 保家衛國

kexue de

科學的

li’an

立案

Li Fangxun

李方訓

Lijia huayuan

李家花園

lijiao

禮教

Lin Peifen

林珮芬

linsheng

廩生

lishu

禮數

Liu Enlan

劉恩蘭

Liu Jianqiu

劉劍秋

Li Zezheng

李澤珍

Li Zhendao

李振道

Li Zhenkun

李振坤

Lu Zhiwei

陸志韋

Mei Ruolan

梅若蘭

meishu yu yishi

美術與衣飾

minzu de

民族的

mi tie

米貼

Ningbo

寧波

nü

女

Qian Zhongshu

錢鍾書

Qilu daxue

齊魯大學

pinpai

品牌

qipao

旗袍

qizhi

氣質

renjian tiantang

人間天堂

Renmin jiaoyu

人民教育

Renshou

仁壽

Appendix B riyong ping jintie

日用品津貼

Rong Xiaoyun

容篠蘊

Sanmin zhuyi

三民主義

Sanyu nüzhong

三育女中

Shaanxi

陜西

Shen Chong

沈崇

shenghuo jintian

生活津貼

shenghuo zhidao

生活指導

shengli

省立

Sheng yuehan

聖約翰

shuyuan

書院

Sili xuexiao guicheng

私立學校規程

Sun Han

孫晗

Suzhou

蘇州

taitou, tingxiong, shoufu

抬頭, 挺胸, 收腹

Tang Shuoyan

湯碩彥

Wang Yunfang

王韻芳

Wei Zhuomin

韋卓民

wen

文

wu

武

Wuchang

武昌

Wuhu

蕪湖

Wu Lei-chuan

吳雷川

Wu Xuanyi

吳璇儀

Wu Yaozong

吳耀宗

Wu Yifang

吳貽芳

Wu Yiquan

吳貽荃

xiangya tan, zitan gai, limian you ke xiaobaicai

象牙罈, 紫檀蓋, 裡面有 棵小白菜

Xiaowu Weiyuanhui

校務委員會

xin tie

薪貼

263

264

The Making of a Family Saga

Xingzheng Yuan

行政院

xiucai

秀才

Xiuhua xiang

繡花巷

Xu Beihong

徐悲鴻

Xue Bu

學部

Xunyu Chu

訓育處

xunyu zhi

訓育制

Xunyu zhuren

訓育主任

Xu Yizhen

徐亦蓁

Xuzhou

徐州

Yan Caiyun

嚴彩韻

yanfu

嚴父

Yang Zhenning

楊振寧

Yan Lianyun

嚴蓮韻

Yan Xishan

閻錫山

Yan Yangchu

晏陽初

Yenching

燕京

yidai bu ru yidai

一代不如一代

Yifang yuan

貽芳園

yingyang can

營養餐

yiri wei shi, zhongshen wei fu

一日為師, 終身為父

yuanxi tiaozheng

院係調整

Yuezhou

岳州

Zhang Huilan

張匯蘭

Zhang Linggao

張凌高

Zhang Taiyan

章太炎

Zhang Xianglan

張薌蘭

Zhang Xiaosong

張肖松

Zhang Zhizhong

張治中

Zhanshi geji jiaoyu shishi fang’an gangyao

戰時各級教育實施方案 綱要

Appendix B

265

Zhao Yuanren

趙元任

Zhao Zichen

趙子辰

Zhengzhi xieshang huiyi

政治協商會議

Zhenjiang

鎮江

Zhijiang

之江

zhishu jintie

指數津貼

Zhonggong zhongyang guanyu zai quanguo jinxing shishi xuanchuan de zhishi

中共中央關於在全國進行時事宣 傳的指示

Zhonghe chang

中和場

Zhonghua minguo xunzheng shiqi yuefa

中華民國訓政時期約法

Zhongyang daxue

中央大學

Zhou Enlai

周恩來

zhuangzhong deti

莊重得體

zhuanxiu

專修

zhujiao

助教

Zhu Jingnong

朱經農

Zhu Muci

朱穆慈

Zhu Qi

朱琪

zougou

走狗

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Appendix C

Catalogue of Names and Times of Interviews by the Author

Bao Huisun

鮑蕙蓀

(’49 Music): 10/13/2007

Loretta Chen (Wang)

陳懿貞 (Chen Yi-Djen)

(’41 English): 10/19, 10/20, 10/25, 10/26, 10/31, 11/8, 12/1/2005

Ying-wan Cheng 鄭英環 (Djeng Ying-hwan) (1935–36): 10/16/2005 (Phone Interview) Rockwell Chin 陳兆文 (Ettie Chin’s nephew): 10/7, 10/8, 12/9–12/2005 鄧敬蘇 Deng Jingsu (’52 English): 10/28, 2007 Hao Xiuzhen

郝秀真

(’49 Home Economics): 5/23/2007

Hong Fan

洪範

(’51 History): 10/28/2007

Huang Heluo

黃河洛

(’45 Physical Education): 10/28/2007

Huang Liming

黄麗明

(Chen Hwang Li-ming) (’27 Physical Education： 10/11, 10/12, 11/8, 12/1/2005

Eva Yen-hua Hwang

黄燕華

(’42 Home Economics): 11/3, 11/10/2005 (Phone Interview)

Li Jinhua

李錦華

(’52 Music): 5/23/2007

Liu Yuhua

刘玉華

(1945–46 English): 10/28/2007

Li Yi

李宜 (Li Deyi 李德懿) 李振坤

(’48 Chinese) (5/23/2007)

Li Zhenkun

Long Xiangwen 龍襄文

(’51 Sociology): 6/2/2006 (’42 Physical Education): 11/10/2007 (Phone Interview)

268

The Making of a Family Saga

Ming Djang Lu

盧敏章

(’40 Physical Education): 10/1, 11/7/2005 (Phone Interview)

Lu Yuan

陸源

(’51 English): 6/8/2006

Mei Ruolan

梅若蘭

(’48 Chemistry): 6/2/2006

Loretta Pan

潘紉秋

(Pan Renqiu) (’40 English): 9/14, 9/15, 9/16, 9/20, 9/27, 10/1/2005

Rong Ailun

戎靄倫

(1949–50): 10/20/2007

Wang Yunfang

王韻芳

(’52 Home Economics): 6/2/2006

Xianyu Mingyi

鲜于明義

(’43 Home Economics): 10/28/2007

Helena Yu

喻嫻才 (Yü Hsien-Tsai） (’44 English): 10/31, 11/4, 11/7/2005

Yuan Ailian

袁愛蓮 (Yuen Ai-lien, Eileen Ong)

(’48 Home Economics): 9/14, 9/22, 11/7, 11/10/2005 (Phone Interview)

Zhu Qinghua

朱清華

(’51 Home Economics): 10/20/2007

Notes

in t roduc tion 1. Yü, “Radicalization of China in the Twentieth Century,” 125–50. 2. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 268. 3. For instance, at the Peking Union Medical College, this was a source of some contention between Chinese and American faculty members. See Bullock, American Transplant. 4. “Minutes: Ginling Committee of the Board of Trustees of the University of Nanking” (December 13, 1920), UB, RG 11, Box 124, YDSL. 5. For a fuller treatment of this incident and its aftermath, see Hu Weiqing, “Nanjing guomin zhengfu yu shouhui jiaoyu quan yundong,” 15–20. 6. Gu Changsheng, Chuanjiaoshi yu jindai zhongguo, 354–55. 7. Freedman, “Separatism as Strategy,” 512–29. 8. Littell-Lamb, “Going Public,” 23. 9. I use this term in the sense borrowed from Littell-Lamb, who defined it as women who tended to pursue social ends rather than political ones and participated in social reform rather than in radical projects. 10. Vicinus, Intimate Friends, xxv. 11. For detailed discussions, see Wang Xiaoding, “Situ Leideng yu ZhongMei jiaoyu guanxi,” 90–95; Liu Baoxiong and Zhao Qingming, “Situ Leideng de gaodeng jiaoyu sixiang ji banxue shijian,” 82–86. 12. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 45. 13. Mott, The Decisive Hour of Christian Missions, 64. 14. For a description of the debate on missionary education in China between conservatives and modernists in the American mission movement, see Harris, “American Missions, Chinese Realities,” 38–39, 54–55. 15. Qtd. in Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 49. 16. Ibid., 49–51. 17. The student handbook of 1924–25 at the University of Nanking emphasized that their students should cultivate a “Christian attitude” toward women and girls. They stipulated these rules of student conduct: “Ladies should always be treated with the utmost respect and given preference on every occasion. When you meet a lady whom you know, raise your hat (or, if wearing a Chinese hat, simply bow). In a crowded room, offer your seat. When a lady enters the room stand up. Be of service in every way possible.”

270

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“Nanking Univeristy Student Handbook, 1924–1925,” 69. Nanking University, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 18. Vicinus, Intimate Friends, xxv. 19. Barlow, Question of Women in Chinese Feminism, 40. 20. Ibid., 42. 21. For example, my interview with Eva Yen-hua Hwang Kwong 黄燕華 (’42) on November 3, 2005, confirmed that her father, a non-Christian and participant in the May Fourth Movement, sent her to Ginling precisely because of that reason. 22. For a discussion of the historical connection between nationalism and Chinese feminism, see Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution, 20–24. 23. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 51. 24. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 6. 25. Liu, The Clash of Empires, 154. 26. Cressy, Christian Higher Education in China, 270. 27. For a detailed discussion of this mission, see Jin Baohua and Xiong Xianjun, “Badun diaochatuan laihua kaocha dongyin ji shimo,” 52–58. 28. Cressy, Christian Higher Education in China, 272. 29. For a detailed discussion of this phenomenon, see Vicinus, Intimate Friends, 208–9. 30. Hu Xiuying, “Biye shinian de shenghuo,” Ginling nüzi wenli xueyuan xiaokan [Ginling College Magazine] 103 (June 1, 1943), NNU. 31. Jin Yihong, Yang Di, and Wu Qiong, Wu Yifang de Jiaoyu sixiang yu shijian, 415. 32. B. Wang, Illuminations from the Past, 33. 33. Ibid., 37. 34. Wertsch, Voices of Collective Remembering, 43–44. 35. For a discussion of Zhang’s work on missionary education in twentieth-century China, see Chen Caijun, “Tiaozhan, shiying yu ronghe,” 95–102. 36. Taiwan guoli zhongyang daxue, 1986, and Hong Kong University, 1996, respectively. 37. Zhu Feng, Jidu jiao yu jindai Zhongguo nüzi gaodeng jiaoyu. 38. Whyte, Unfinished Encounter. 39. Lutz, China and the Christian Colleges, 529. 40. Ibid., 502. 41. For example, see Hunter, Gospel of Gentility; Robert, American Women in Mission; and Graham, Gender, Culture, Christianity. 42. Chin, “Beneficent Imperialists,” 327–52. 43. Waelchli, “Abundant Life.”

c h a p t er one 1. Mrs. Thurston, “Autobiography,” 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL.

Notes

271

2. Ko and Wang, “Introduction: Translating Feminisms in China,” 469–70. 3. Guo Weidong, “Jidu xinjiao yu Zhongguo jindai nüzi jiaoyu.” 4. Lewis, Education of Girls in China, 18. 5. Lei Liangbo, Chen Yangfeng, and Xiong Xianjun, Zhongguo nüzi jiaoyu shi, 291. 6. Fenn, Christian Higher Education in Changing China, 67–68. 7. Chu Ji’neng, “Nüxue xiansheng,” 23–27. 8. Lü Meiyi and Zheng Yongfu, Zhongguo funü yundong, 35–36. 9. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 49. 10. Gulick, Teaching in Wartime China, 211–12. 11. Ibid., 14. 12. Qtd. in Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 49. 13. See, for example, Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 27–33. 14. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 5. 15. This was actually not accurate, since North China Union Women’s College awarded four Chinese women diplomas after they completed a fouryear course. See Harris, “American Missions, Chinese Realities,” 91. 16. See Zhou Guping and Ying Fanggan, “Jindai Zhongguo jiaohui daxue de xuewei zhidu,” 13–21. 17. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 19. 18. Wu Yifang, “Report of the President of Ginling College on Trip to America, June 1933-February 1934,” 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 19. Li Baozhen, “Ai Muxiao zhi shen zhi chang de Yan Lianyun,” 35. 20. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 8. 21. Thurston, Starting A College in China (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1915), 4. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 22. Ibid., 3. 23. Elizabeth Goucher, “House and Garden,” in “Ginling College 1916: The Year of Beginnings,” 4–5. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 157, YDSL. 24. Liu En-lan, “A Sketch of the Life of Mrs. Thurston,” Ginling College Magazine 4, no. 2 (June 1928): 8. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC. 25. Liu Gien-chiu et al., Pioneer, 5. 26. Ibid., 8. 27. Matilda Thurston to Calder Family, November 15, 1915. MCTP, Box 2, 2.3, UTS; cited in Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 47. 28. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 191. 29. Horowitz, Alma Mater, 185. 30. Ibid., 181. 31. Thurston, “President’s Report 1915–1916”, 2, emphasis added. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 32. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 9. 33. Liu En-lan, “A Sketch of the Life of Mrs. Thurston,” Ginling College Magazine 4, no. 2 (June 1928): 8. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC.

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34. Ibid. 35. John 10:10 [King James Version]. 36. Wu Yifang, “Jin nüda sishi nian,” 111. 37. Li Baozhen, “Ai Muxiao,” 1:35. 38. Ibid., 36. 39. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 4. 40. Matilda Thurston, “Proposed Yangtse Valley College for Women,” 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 41. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 3. 42. Ibid. 43. Thurston, “Proposed Yangtse Valley College for Women,” 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 44. Robert, American Women in Mission, 188. 45. For example, see ibid., 56. 46. Thurston to NYC, May 18, 1916. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143A, YDSL. 47. Thurston to NYC, January 19, 1917. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143A, YDSL. 48. Graham, Gender, Culture, and Christianity, 42. 49. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 161. 50. Graham, Gender, Culture, and Christianity, 43. 51. Ruskin, “Of Queens Gardens,” 18:72. 52. Thurston to NYC, January 19, 1917. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143A, YDSL. 53. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 16. 54. Matilda Thurston, “Newsletter,” November 1932, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 157, YDSL. 55. Matilda Thurston, “Newsletter,” October 1933, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 157, YDSL. 56. Vicinus, Intimate Friends, 203. 57. “Pei-ou wenti de liangdian yijian,” 28. 58. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 255. 59. Mao Yanwen, Wangshi, 47. 60. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 25. 61. Ibid., 71. 62. Ibid., 3. 63. Matilda Thurston, “Red Letter Day in College,” in “Ginling College 1916: The Year of Beginning,” 12. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 157, YDSL. 64. Thurston, “Ginling College: 1915–1919,” 4–5. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 157, YDSL. 65. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 5. 66. For example, see K.S. Chang, “Ming-Qing Women Poets and Notions of ‘Talent’ and ‘Morality,” 236–58. See also Mann, Precious Records, and Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chamber.

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67. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 240. 68. For example, see Esther Tappert, family letter, February 28, 1937. ETMP, CRPMP, RG 21, Box 1, YDSL. 69. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 244. 70. Wu Yifang, “Jin nüda sishi nian,” 111. 71. Thurston to NYC, January 9, 1917, 4. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143 A, YDSL. 72. Quotations in this paragraph are all from Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 144–45. 73. Ibid., 150, 151–54. 74. Ibid., 154, 162–64. 75. Ibid., 158. 76. Thurston, “President’s Report, 1916–1918,” 14. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 77. Ibid. 78. Thurston, “Ginling College: 1915–1919,” 15. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 157, YDSL. 79. Thurston, “The Higher Education of Chinese Women, Aims and Problems,” 95. 80. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 110. 81. Dong Nyok-zoe, “Life in Ginling College,” in Ginling pamphlet 1917, 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 82. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 111. 83. Matilda Thurston, “Autobiography,” 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 84. Katherine Rawles, “The Ginling 1921 Christmas,” included in “Edited Letters of Mrs. Thurston,” 51–53, Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 85. Matilda Thurston to Calder Family, November 5, 1906, MCTP, Box 1, UTS; cited in Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 23. 86. Xu Yizhen (Mrs. New), “Answers Written to Interview Questions by Jane Hunter [1978].” Y. T. Zee New, CRPMP, RG 8, Box 146, YDSL. 87. Loretta Pan, Interview by the author, September 14, 15, 16, 20, 27, and October 1, 2005. 88. Zhu Wenman, “Chu ru jinnüda,” 296. 89. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 255. 90. Liu En-lan, “A Sketch of the Life of Mrs. Thurston,” Ginling College Magazine 4, no. 2 (June 1928):10. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC. 91. Xu Yizhen (Mrs. New), “Matilda Calder Thurston 1872–1958: A Tribute, ” 1. Y. T. Zee New, CRPMP, RG 8, Box 146, YDSL. 92. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 6. 93. Liu En-lan, “A Sketch of the Life of Mrs. Thurston,” Ginling College Magazine 4, no. 2 (June 1928): 10. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC. 94. Phoebe Hoh, “An Appreciation,” Ginling College Magazine 4, no. 2 (June 1928): 23. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC.

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95. Djang Siao-sung, “Her Devotion to Ginling,” Ginling College Magazine 4, no. 2 (June 1928): 19–21. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC. 96. Matilda Thurston, “Autobiography,” 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 97. Liu En-lan, “A Sketch of the Life of Mrs. Thurston,” Ginling College Magazine 4, no. 2 (June 1928): 11. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC. 98. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 205. 99. Liu En-lan, “A Sketch of the Life of Mrs. Thurston,” Ginling College Magazine 4, no. 2 (June 1928): 2. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC. 100. Graham, Gender, Culture, and Christianity, 81. 101. Nyok-zoe Dong, “Life in Ginling College,” in Ginling pamphlet 1917, 5. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 102. Xu Yizhen (Mrs. New), “Answers Written to Interview Questions by Jane Hunter [1978].” Y. T. Zee New, CRPMP, RG 8, Box 146, YDSL. 103. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 10. 104. Nyok-zoe Dong, “Life in Ginling College,” in Ginling pamphlet 1917, 1–2, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 105. “God’s Kingdom in China,” 1–6. Ginling College Records, Box 1332, SC. 106. Ibid., 4–5. 107. Ibid., 2, 3, 6. 108. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 161 109. “God’s Kingdom in China,” 6. Ginling College Records, Box 1332, SC. 110. Ibid., emphasis added. 111. Harris, “American Missions, Chinese Realities,” 317.

c h a p t e r t wo 1. Quotations in this paragraph are from Matilda Thurston, Starting a College in China, 3; emphasis added. 2. Quotations in this paragraph are from Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 26, 36. 3. Ibid., 25. 4. Ibid., 5, 27, 38. 5. Erh and Johnston, Hallowed Halls, 12. 6. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 27. 7. Ibid., 27–29. 8. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 120–121. 9. Erh and Johnston, Hallowed Halls, 25. 10. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 40. 11. Thurston, “President’s Report, 1923–1924,” 1, emphasis in original. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 12. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 41, 42–43.

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13. Gracia Sharp, “Newsletter,” November 1929, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 157, YDSL. 14. Djang Siao-sung, “Her Devotion to Ginling,” Ginling College Magazine 4, no. 2 (June 1928): 21. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC. 15. Wang Shuh-hsi, “Our Mother’s Ideals and Aims, and My Appreciation of Her,” Ginling College Magazine 4, no. 2 (June 1928): 16, emphasis in original. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC. 16. Fan Zhengyi, “Jin nüda—wo suo sheng’ai de muxiao,” 3:309. 17. Hu Xiuying, “Huainian xiaozhang,” 160. 18. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 107. 19. Thurston, family letter, September 2, 1923, in “Edited Letters,” 126. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 20. For instance, the report of the year 1928–29 by Thurston claimed: “The fact that Ginling was almost the only place in Nanking where visitors could be comfortably entertained, brought to us guests who added more than usual interest to the life of the group.” See Thurston, “Edited Letters,” 158. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 21. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 40. 22. “The Department of Hygiene and Physical Education 1925,” 28. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 23. Littell-Lamb, “Going Public,” 174–86. 24. Katherine Rawles, “Physical Education 1921,” 24. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 25. Ibid., 25–26. 26. DeSmither, “From Calling to Career,” 98. 27. Katherine Rawles, “Physical Education 1921,” 26–27. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 28. Morris, “Cultivating the National Body,” 75–77. 29. Littell-Lamb, “Going Public,” 184. 30. “The Department of Hygiene and Physical Education 1925,” 16–17, 19. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 31. Ibid., 17. 32. Wang Yunfang, interview by the author, June 2, 2006. 33. “The Department of Hygiene and Physical Education 1925,” 6. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 34. Ibid., 2. 35. Boyd, Emissaries, 66. 36. “The Department of Hygiene and Physical Education 1925,” 3–4. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 37. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 144. 38. Emily Case, “Recreation for Women and Girls in China” and “Physical Education for Women in China.” CRPMP, RG 8, Box 268, YDSL. 39. Emily Case, “Recreation for Women and Girls in China,” 2. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 268, YDSL.

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40. Emily Case, “Physical Education for Women in China,” 6–7. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 268, YDSL. 41. See Graham, Gender, Culture, and Christianity, 47. 42. “Hwa Nan faculty to the Trustees,” August 31, 1928. Hwa Nan College, UB, RG 11, Box 114, YDSL. 43. Emily Case, “Physical Education for Women in China,” 7. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 268, YDSL. 44. Morris, Marrow of the Nation, 116. 45. Emily Case, “Physical Education for Women in China,” 4. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 268, YDSL. 46. Emily Case, “Recreation for Women and Girls in China,” 5–7. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 268, YDSL. 47. See the chapter on Chen Yongsheng, in Z. Wang, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment, 259–77. 48. Thurston, family letter, October 15, 1933, in “Edited Letters,” 188, Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 49. Morris, Marrow of the Nation, 9. 50. Graham, Gender, Culture, and Christianity, 4. 51. Morris, Marrow of the Nation, 5. 52. Xie Wenxi, “Zhongguo diyige nü tiyu jiaoshi: Chen Yingmei,” 1:7. 53. Xiao Jialing and Bao Huisun, “Huo wuxiang Zhongguo diyi chenghao de Zhang Huilan,” 1:8. 54. Zhang Huilan, “Tige jianyan ji tiyu fenzu wenti,” Qinfen tiyu yuebao 2, no. 12 (September 1935): 801, qtd. in Morris, Marrow of the Nation, 116. 55. Hwang Li-ming, “What Play Can Do for Ginling,” Ginling College Magazine 12, no. 1 (December 1925): 30. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC. 56. Chen Chen En-tse [Cheng Enci] remarked: “For recreational sports tennis was taught during the first few years here, but when it was difficult to get balls and other expensive equipment, we substituted paddle badminton (locally made) and ping-pong.” See her “A Report of the Physical Education Department since 1937 and the Outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War,” 6. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 154, YDSL. 57. For example, my interviews with Eva Hwang in November 2005 and Loretta Pan in September 2005 have revealed that both of them enjoyed playing volleyball and other sports. 58. “Gulou Taogu nüjiang paiqiu jiaofeng bieji,” Jinda xiaokan 158 (May 20, 1935). SHAN, 649.261. 59. Spears, Leading the Way, 99. 60. Ibid. 61. Thurston, “President’s Report, 1918,” 15. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 62. Xu Yizhen (Mrs. New), “Answers Written to the Interview Questions by Jane Hunter.” CRPMP, RG 8, Box 147, YDSL. 63. “To the Faculty.” Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL.

Notes

277

64. Hwang Li-ming to Ettie Chin, August 13, 1937, private collection of Ettie Chin. 65. Thurston, family letter, September 11, 1921, in “Edited Letters,” 25. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 66. Kwok, Chinese Women and Christianity, 1860–1927, 151. 67. Thurston, family letter, Nov. 5, 1928, in “Edited Letters,” 201, Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 68. For example, see Z. Wang’s discussion of the lives of several Chinese women in the twentieth century in her Women in the Chinese Enlightenment. 69. Graham, Gender, Culture, and Christianity, 45. 70. Graham, “Exercising Control,” 29. 71. For example, see Thurston, letter dated December 20, 1933, in which she commented on the national meet: “The meet gave some feeling of national unity and was, on the whole, pretty well managed, but it still left in my mind the question of the value of competitive sport on such a big scale—for women at least.” Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 72. Graham, Gender, Culture, and Christianity, 49. 73. Kwok, Chinese Women and Christianity, 167. 74. See Chen Yongsheng, “Yige yu shiji tongling de Jinling nüer de huibao,” 1:25. 75. Heinrich, “The Pathological Body,” 252. 76. Louie, Theorizing Chinese Masculinity, 17–18. 77. Brownell, Training the Body for China, 225–26. 78. Thurston, “Higher Education of Chinese Women, Aims and Problems” 95–101. 79. See Wang Xin’en, “Hainian Jinling nüda,” 3:314. 80. For example, see Xiao Jialing, “Yinshui siyuan, yuan zai Jinling,” 2:119–22. 81. Strauss, “Dance and Ideology in China, Past and Present,” 26. 82. Desmond, “Embodying Difference,” 34. 83. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 183. 84. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 25–26. 85. It Happened at Ginling, film (3 reels). Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 382, YDSL. 86. Kwok, Chinese Women and Christianity, 151. 87. Gao, “Nationalist and Feminist Discourses on Jianmei (Robust Beauty),” 546, 562. 88. Thurston, “President’s Report, 1923–1924,” 6. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 89. This was quoted in Wu Yifang’s speech at Smith College, May 7, 1943. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. But I cannot find this comment in Cressy, Christian Higher Education in China. 90. Gu Weimin, Jidu jiao yu jindai Zhongguo shehui, 406–7.

278

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91. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 51. 92. Thurston, “President’s Report, 1925–1926,” 4. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 93. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 52. 94. Liu Gien-chiu et al., Pioneer, 7. 95. Thurston, “President’s Report, 1925–1926,” 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 96. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 31, 21. 97. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 87. 98. Thurston, “President’s Report, 1915–1916,” 8. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 99. Liu Gien-chiu et al., Pioneers, 41. 100. “Bulletin of Ginling, Nanking, China,” 1915, Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 128, YDSL. 101. Cressy, Christian Higher Education in China, 226–27. 102. Wu Qiong, “Zhongguo jiaohui nüzi gaodeng jiaoyu de jiaoyu mudi, neirong, ji fangfa,” 61. 103. Thurston, September 12, 1926, in “Edited Letters,”187, Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 104. For example, Loretta Chen (Wang) expressed that sentiment to me during the interview on October 19, 2005. 105. For example, see Wu Linghua, “Yi Jinnüda Zhongwen xi jiaoshou Chen Zhongfan, Wu Zuxiang,” 3:300. 106. Loretta Pan, interview by the author, October 1, 2005; and Helena Yu, interview by the author, November 4, 2005. 107. Zhang Xiaosong [Djang Siao-sung], “Jiaohui daxue yi yangcheng Zhongwen shifansheng,” Ginling College Magazine 1, no. 1 (June 1924): 23. Ginling College Records, Box 2339, SC. 108. Ng, Changing Paradigms of Christian Higher Education in China. 109. Zhu Zhongzhi, “Wo he Jinling,” Ginling College Magazine 1, no. 4 (June 1925), 13–14. Ginling College Records, Box 2339, SC. 110. College Girls, “Students and Marriage Customs in China,” 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 156, YDSL. 111. Ibid., 4–5. 112. Graham, Gender, Culture, Christianity, 74. 113. Li Zezheng and Cai Kui, “Jiating wenti.” Ginling College Records, Box 2339, SC. 114. Quotations in this paragraph are from Xu Yizhen (Mrs. New), “Answers Written to Interview Questions by Jane Hunter,” 32. Y.T. Zee New, CRPMP, RG 8, Box 147, YDSL. 115. Ibid., 32, 36–38. 116. Seton, Chinese Lanterns, 245, 255–56. 117. Mrs. Walter C. Lowdermilk, “The Modernizing of the Chinese Woman,” 4. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 156, YDSL.

Notes

279

chapter three 1. Bedeski, “China’s Wartime State,” 34. 2. Rawski, Economic Growth in Prewar China, xix-xxiii. 3. Levine, Introduction, xix. 4. Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution, 5. 5. Mao Ssu-ch’eng (Mao Sicheng), Minguo shiwunian yiqian zhi Jiang Jieshi xiansheng, qtd. in Wilbur, Nationalist Revolution in China, 71. 6. Chiang Kai-shek’s statement in North China Herald, February 12, 1927, qtd. in Wilber, Nationalist Revolution in China, 72. 7. Wilber, Nationalist Revolution in China, 70–71. 8. LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 66. 9. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 60. 10. Ibid., 63. 11. G. Stanley Smith, “The Personal Experiences of G. Stanley Smith,” 17. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 12. Emily Case, “Account,” 13, 1–5. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 13. Ibid., 1. 14. Matilda Thurston, “Account,” 6. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 15. Ibid. 16. Thurston, “Newsletter,” December 30, 1928, 5. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 157, YDSL. 17. Case, “Account,” 5, 13. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 18. Ibid., 15. 19. Ibid., 11, 11–12. 20. Liu En-lan, “A Review of the First Month,” 6, emphasis added. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 21. Ibid., 5. 22. Vautrin to NYC, April 16, 1927, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 23. Emily Case, “Account,” 6. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 24. Littell-Lamb mentions that this was actually Phoebe Hoh. See LittellLamb, “Going Public,” 188. 25. Huang Liming [Hwang Li-ming], interview by the author, November 8, 2005. 26. Vautrin to NYC, April 16, 1927, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 27. “Gleanings from Ginling Letters,” March 19-May 10, 1927, 12. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 28. Mary Treudley, letter dated July 15, 1927, 5–6. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL.

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29. Ruth Chester, letter dated September 1, 1927, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 30. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 57. 31. “Gleanings from Ginling Letters,” March 19-May 10, 1927, 1–11. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 32. Thurston, “Account,” 6. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 33. Thurston to NYC, December 30, 1928, 2–3, 5, 8. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 34. Ibid., 9. 35. Ibid., 8. 36. For more discussion on this, see Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 68. 37. Thurston, “To Members of Board of Control,” February 15, 1927, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 38. Thurston, November 10, 1927, in “Edited Letters,” UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 39. See Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 116–17. 40. Zhu Xuebo, Wu Yifang, 2. 41. Ibid., 51. 42. Wu’s personal letters with the Welches demonstrate her friendship with the family. She frequently mentioned Anne Louise in her correspondence. For example, in her letter dated November 13, 1928, she said: “I wonder if she [Anne Louise] still likes me and would entertain me with her tricks if I come over now.” ALWP, #6654, UM. 43. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 64. 44. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 89. 45. “Votes of the Members of the Board of Control,” 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 46. Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 109. 47. Wu Yifang to NYC, May 29, 1928, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 48. For a detailed discussion, see Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 51. 49. Wu Yifang to NYC, May 29, 1928, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 50. Ibid., 2–3. 51. Wu Yifang to NYC, February 25, 1928. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 52. Wu Yifang to NYC, February 9, 1928. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 53. Martilda Thurston to Helen Calder, February 19, 1928. Box 3, 3.28, MCTP, UTS, qtd. in Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 113. 54. Thurston, family letter, June 3, 1928, in “Edited Letters,” 128. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL.

Notes

281

55. E.g., Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 85–148. Also Jin Yihong, Yang Di, and Wu Qiong, Wu Yifang de Jiaoyu sixiang yu shijian, 111–14. 56. Jin Yihong, Yang Di, and Wu Qiong, Wu Yifang de jiaoyu sixiang yu shijian, 148. 57. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 130. 58. Huang Jiezhen, “Cong Wu Yifang yu Jinling nüzi daxue,” 139. 59. Wu Yifang, “Jin nüda sishi nian,” 104. 60. Thurston to Helen Calder, May 31, 1932. Box 3, MCTP, UTS; qtd. in Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 160. 61. Thurston, letter dated November 4, 1930, in “Edited Letters,” 24. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 62. For a detailed discussion of Republic education policies regarding mission institutions, see Huang Heping, “Cong minguo jiaoyu fagui kan minguo de daxue zizhi,” 77–79. 63. Thurston to Miss Bender, December 2, 1927. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 64. Thurston, family letter, November 5, 1928, in “Edited Letters,” 202. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 65. “First President of Ginling College Honored in Connection with Twentieth Anniversary,” North China Daily News, November 9, 1935. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 66. Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 114. 67. West, Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 119–20. 68. Bullock, An American Transplant, 86–87. 69. See “Details of Salary List for 1937–1938—Confidential.” Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 70. Zhu Feng, Jidu jiao yu jindai Zhongguo nüzi jiaoyu, 264. 71. Graham, Gender, Culture, Christianity, 89. 72. Ibid., 85. 73. Lucy Wong to Mrs. Wallace, September 25, 1929. Hwa Nan College, UB, RG 11, Box 176, YDSL. 74. Thurston to NYC, September 6, 1928, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 75. Ibid., 2, emphases in original. 76. For a detailed discussion, see Feng, New Woman in Early TwentiethCentury Chinese Fiction. 77. Thurston to NYC, September 6, 1928, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 78. Ruth Chester, January 1928, “Excerpts of Letters from Ruth M. Chester,” 3. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 79. Thurston to NYC, September 6, 1928, 2–4. 80. Liu En-lan, personal journals, June 8-June 22, 1928; included in “Edited Letters of Mrs. Thurston,” 108–14. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL.

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81. Thurston, July 23, 1928, in “Edited Letters of Mrs. Thurston,” 142. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 82. Thurston to NYC, September 6, 1928, 6. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 83. Ibid., 7. 84. Graham, Gender, Culture, Christianity, 89. 85. Thurston, Ginling Newsletter, October 1933, 1, emphasis added. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 157, YDSL. 86. Thurston to NYC, September 1926, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 87. My interviews with Helena Yu on November 4, 2005 and Loretta Pan on October 1, 2005, both English majors at Ginling, show that some students thought that the University of Nanking had a faculty with stronger academic credentials, especially in English and the sciences. 88. Wu Yifang to B.A. Garside, September 26, 1931. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 89. Wu Yifang to Members of Ginling College Committee, September 16, 1933. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 90. Ruth Chester, “Letter to Dr. Yi-Fang Wu from Dr. Ruth Chester of Executive Committee Faculty, Ginling College, Chengtu, May 14, 1943,” 2, 4. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 91. “Suggestions Regarding the Future of Ginling Growing out of Discussion by the Foreign Faculty in Chengtu (Miss Causer, Miss Kirk, Miss Spicer and Miss Chester), October 1945,” 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 92. Wu Yifang to NYC, January 5, 1946, 2–3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 93. Wang Jun, “Zhongguo jindai nüzi gaodeng jiaoyu de fazhan ji jiazhi shulüe,” 50. 94. For instance, Rong Ailun, a Ginling student in 1949, still advocates that Ginling College be made into an all-women’s independent institution, not just a unit under Nanjing Normal University. Rong, interview by the author, October 20, 2007. 95. Thurston, “President’s Report, 1925–1926,” 5. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 96. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 67–68. 97. Wu Yifang to NYC, May 2, 1929, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 98. Wu Yifang to NYC, October 27, 1929, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 99. Wu Yifang to NYC, May 2, 1929, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 100. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 69–70. 101. Wu Yifang to NYC, September 23, 1930, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL.

Notes

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102. Wu Yifang to NYC, May 2, 1929, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 103. Wu Yifang to NYC, November 1930, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 147, YDSL. 104. Hu Hengqing, “Nanjing Guomin zhengfu yu shouhui jiaoyuquan yundong,” 18. 105. Thurston, family letter, September 28-October 8, 1931, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 106. Searle Bates to Mrs. Edward Wheeler, August 31, 1950, 2. Ginling College Records, Box 1332, SC. 107. Thurston, “Annual Report, 1935–1936,” 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL. 108. Thurston to unknown recipient, July 21, 1928, Box 6, MCTP, UTS; qtd. in Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 121. 109. Ruth Chester, letter dated June 4, 1929, “Excerpts of Letters from Ruth M. Chester,” 3. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 110. Catherine Sutherland, letter dated January 9, 1938. “Letters Received from Catherine Sutherland, Chairman of the Music Department of Ginling College.” Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 111. Thurston, family letter, June 3, 1928, in “Edited Letters,” 130. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 112. “Lu Jingwei nüshi you Guangdong shamian lai han,” Jinling nüzi wenli xueyuan xiaokan 131 and 132 (December 1946). NNU. 113. Tan Sufen, “Nanwang de ziluolan se,” 3:469. 114. Wang Yunfang, interview by the author, June 2, 2006. 115. Mrs. Dwight Morrow, “Speech at Smith Commencement, June 14, 1936,” 3. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 116. Zeng Fangmiao, “Minguo jiaohui nüzi jiaoyu,” 137. 117. Thurston, letter dated December 3, 1930, in “Edited Letters,” 30. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 118. Thurston, letter dated May 12, 1931, in “Edited Letters,” 50. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 119. “Jin nüda gezhong huiyi jilu.” Ginling College, 668.47, SHAN. 120. Thurston to NYC, January 9, 1935, 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 121. Zeng Fangmiao, “Minguo jiaohui nüzi jiaoyu,” 137–39. 122. Thurston to NYC, January 9, 1935, 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 123. Xu Yizhen (Mrs. New), “Mrs. Matilda Calder Thurston: A Tribute,” 5. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 146, YDSL. 124. Xiao Wo, “Wo duiyu Jinling zongjiao guannian tan,” Ginling College Magazine 1, no. 2 (April 1926): 8. Ginling College Records, Box 1339, SC. 125. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 161.

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126. Thurston, letter dated July 5, 1934, 2–3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 127. Emily Case, letter dated March 20, 1927, 1–2, emphases in original. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 266, YDSL. 128. Smalley, “Biographical Note [of Esther Tappert Mortensen].” http:// webtext.library.yale.edu/xml2html/divinity.021.con.html#colOver (accessed April 14, 2009) 129. Tappert, family letter, November 23, 1931. ETMP, RG 21, Box 2, YDSL. 130. Tappert, family letter, February 24, 1930, 2. ETMP, RG 21, Box 1, YDSL. 131. Tappert, family letter, July 29, 1937. ETMP, RG 21, Box 4, YDSL. 132. Tappert to Wu Yifang, September 2, 1939. ETMP, RG 21, Box 7, YDSL. 133. Smalley, “Biographical Note [of Esther Tappert Mortensen].” 134. Tappert, family letter, May 18, 1930, 1–2. ETMP, RG 21, Box 1, YDSL. 135. Loretta Chen (Wang), interview by the author, November 25, 2005. 136. Kirk, Sunshine and Storm, 25. 137. Hunter, Gospel of Gentility, 226. 138. Tappert, family letter, February 28, 1937. ETMP, RG 21, Box 4, YDSL. 139. Thurston, letter dated December 17, 1945, in “Edited Letters,” 96. The year is a mistake judged by the letters preceding and following it. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 140. Tappert, family letter, March 21, 1937. ETMP, RG 21, Box 4, YDSL. 141. Minnie Vautrin to Esther Tappert, March 15, 1933. ETMP, RG 21, Box 7, YDSL. 142. Tappert to Wu Yifang, September 2, 1939. ETMP, RG 21, Box 7, YDSL. 143. Tappert to Wu Yifang, March 14, 1938. ETMP, RG 21, Box 7, YDSL. 144. Tappert to family, February 28, 1937. ETMP, RG 21, Box 4, YDSL. 145. Tappert to family, May 12, 1937. ETMP, RG 21, Box 4, YDSL. 146. Tappert to family, December 1, 1935, 2. ETMP, RG 21, Box 3, YDSL. 147. Tappert to Wu Yifang, September 2, 1939. ETMP, RG 21, Box 7, YDSL. 148. Tappert to Wu Yifang, March 14, 1938. ETMP, RG 21, Box 7, YDSL. 149. Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 32–33. 150. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 131. 151. Nanjing shifan daxue xiaoshi bianxie zu, Nanjing shifan daxue dashi ji, 57–63. 152. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 139–43.

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153. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 80. 154. Huang Jiezheng, “Cong Wuyifang yu Jinling,” 138.

ch apter four 1. For a detailed analysis of this movement and its impact on Chinese women, see Diamond, “Women Under Kuomintang Rule,” 3–45. 2. Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution, 213. 3. Gao, “Nationalist and Feminist Discourses on Jianmei,” 563. 4. Vautrin, “A Review of the First Month—December 13, 1937-January 13, 1938,” 2. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 5. Nanjing Shifan daxue Nanjing da tusha yanjiu zhongxin, Wei Teling zhuan, 49. 6. Bartlett, introduction. 7. Zhang Kaiyuan, preface, xxi. 8. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 219. 9. Wickert, foreword, viii. 10. Treudley, This Stingling Exultation, 219. 11. Ibid., 130. 12. Vautrin, “Diary of Minnie Vautrin.” Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 134, YDSL. 13. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 98–99. 14. Fitch, “Diary of George Fitch,” 10, 4. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 15. Hu Hualing, Jinling yongsheng, 131. 16. Vautrin, “Letter and Report from Miss Vautrin received in New York March 9, 1938,” 7. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 17. Ibid., 4. 18. Ibid., 5. 19. Ibid. 20. Braester, Witness Against History, 7. 21. Fitch, “Diary of George Fitch,” 4. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 22. Diplomatic concerns in the West about offending Japan at first banned all publications from the Chinese side before the Nanjing Massacre. After the city fell, the Japanese “did everything they could to prevent both foreign and Japanese reports from reaching the international media.” See Brook, introduction, 11. 23. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 23; Hu Hualing, Jinling yongsheng, 135. 24. Vautrin, “Letter and Report from Miss Vautrin received in New York March 9, 1938,” 7. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 25. Cheng Ruifang, “Cheng Ruifang riji (yi),” 31. 26. LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 42.

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27. Vautrin, “Letter and Report from Miss Vautrin received in New York March 9, 1938,” 11. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 28. Ibid., 8. 29. Vautrin, “Sharing the ‘Abundant Life’ in a Refugee Camp,” 2–4. Ginling College Records, Box 1337, SC. 30. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 101; Lin Mili, “Wo canjia guo liushou xiaoyuan de gongzuo,” 1:139. 31. Xu Qin, “Huiyi Nanjing xianluo shi de Jinnüda fuzhong,” 3: 271. 32. Vautrin, “The Second Report,” 3, 7. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 33. Florence Kirk, “Report of Shanghai Unit, Written by Florence Kirk, Shanghai, March 27, 1938, Received in New York, April 25, 1938,” 3. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 34. Cheng Ruifang, “Cheng Ruifang riji (yi),” 33. 35. Vautrin, 329. 36. Mrs. Tsen, “Excerpts Made by the Ginling Unit in Shanghai of Letters from Mrs. Tsen, Matron of Ginling,” January 30, 1938, 1. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 37. Fitch, “Diary of George Fitch,” 16. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 38. Eva Spicer, “Excerpts from Letters Written by Eva D. Spicer,” 1, December 8, 1937. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 39. Chester, “Newsletter,” November 10–11, 1937, 6. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 40. Chester, “Christmas Letter from Ruth M. Chester,” November 6, 1939, 5–6. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 41. Thurston to NYC, September 21, 1941, 2. Ginling College, UB, Box 144, YDSL. 42. Hu Hualing, Jinling yongsheng, 194. 43. Treudley, This Stinging Exultation, 271. 44. Wu Yifang, “Telegraph to Changsha and Wuchang,” October 29, 1937; “Telegraph to Shanghai and Hong Kong,” October 30, 1937. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 45. “Founders’ Day 1938,” in “Ginling College in China, 1938–1939,” 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 158, YDSL. 46. Ruth Chester, “Newsletter,” November 10–11, 1937, in “Letters of Ruth Chester,” 4. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 47. Hwang Li-ming to Mrs. Macmillan, February 1, 1941. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 137, YDSL. 48. Florence Kirk to Ruth Chester, Spring 1938, in “Letters of Ruth Chester.” CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 49. Ibid. 50. Hwang Li-ming to Wu Yifang, March 3, 1940, 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL.

Notes

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51. Wu Yifang to NYC, April 1, 1938. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 52. Florence Kirk to Ruth Chester, Spring 1938, in “Letters of Ruth Chester.” CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 53. Hwang Li-ming to Wu Yifang, February 14, 1939, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 54. Hwang Li-ming to Mrs. Macmillan, February 1, 1941, 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 137, YDSL. 55. Liu En-lan, “Letter to President Wu from Miss Liu En-lan,” October 2, 1937, 3. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 56. Ibid., 3. 57. Wu Yifang to NYC, February 21, 1938. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 58. Chester, “Christmas Letter from Ruth Chester,” November 6, 1939, 3. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 59. Liu En-lan, “Account of Trip from Wuchang to Shanghai, Written in Shanghai, January 26–28, 1938,” 5. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 60. Wu Yifang to NYC, October 16, 1937, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 61. Ruth Chester, “Newsletter,” November 10–11, 1937, 3. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 62. Wu Yifang to NYC, January 24, 1938. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 63. Catherine Sutherland, “Letters Received from Catherine Sutherland, from Wuchang,” December 26, 1937, 1. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 64. Florence Kirk, “Ginling’s Migration to West China,” 1. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 65. All following quotations from Chin’s letter can be found at: http://www.library.yale.edu/div/colleges/Smith/bios/EC_3.html (accessed April 14, 2009). My discussion of Chin’s letter in this section is based on an earlier version published in Feng, “Exile Between Two Continents,” 241–48. 66. Loretta Pan, interview by the author, September 16, 2005. 67. Loretta Pan, “A Tribute to Ettie Chin at her 85th Birthday,” May 3, 1998, 2. Loretta Pan’s private collection. 68. “Former City Girl Writes of Experiences in China.” 69. Florence Kirk, “Ginling’s Migration to West China,” 14. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 70. GCC, “Ginling College in China,” February 1939, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 158, YDSL. 71. Israel, Lianda, 57. 72. Wu Yifang to NYC, April 1, 1938. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL.

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73. Wu Yifang, “Jin nüda sishi nian,”104. 74. Huang Heping, “Cong minguo jiaoyu fagui kan minguo de jiaoyu zizhi,” 77–79. 75. GCC, “Ginling College in China,” February 1939, 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 158, YDSL. 76. “Jiaoyu xiaoxi,” 251–52. 77. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 197. 78. “Jiaoyu bu gei Jinnüda de miling,” July 1938, 34. 668. 14, SHAN. 79. Chen Lifu, “Jiaoyubu youguan shishi daoshi zhi shi gei Jinnüda de xunling,” August 27, 1938. 668.17, SHAN. 80. Wu Yifang to NYC, May 27, 1938, 5. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 81. Loretta Chen (Wang), interview by the author, November 8, 2005. 82. Bao Huisun, interview by the author, October 13, 2007. 83. “The Freshman Month Program,” 15. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 84. Mary Treudley, “At Work in a Social Laboratory,” 2. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 203, YDSL. 85. Varg, Missionaries, Chinese and Diplomats, 122. 86. “Jiaoyu bu gei Jinnüda de miling,” July 1938, 34. 668. 14, SHAN. 87. Wu Yifang to NYC, November 18, 1939. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 88. “Jinling nüda xiaoli, zuzhi, yange gaikuang.” 668.23, SHAN. 89. Graham, Gender, Culture, Christianity, 55. 90. Thurston to Miss Bender, January 19, 1917. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143A, YDSL. 91. Eva Hwang, interview by the author, November 3, 2005. 92. Yuan Ailian (Eileen Ong), interview by the author, November 10, 2005. 93. Wu Yifang to NYC, April 29, 1944. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 94. Wu Yifang, “Jin nüda sishi nian,” 107. 95. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 195. 96. Feng Jiawen, “Chengdu shi wu daxue jidu jiao jiaotu xuesheng shuqi xiangcun fuwu tuan zhi yanjiu,” Shehui xue xilie kanwu di shiyi zhong, December 1939. NNU. 97. Yu Zixia, “Kangzhan shiqi jiaohui gaoxiao de qianbian,” 95. 98. Thurston, “A Contour History of Ginling College, 1915–1940,” 2–3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 99. Wu Yifang, “Talk to Smith Alumnae Association,” May 7, 1943. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 100. Ibid., 2. 101. Wu Yifang, “President’s Report 1935,” 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 155, YDSL.

Notes

289

102. Wu Yifang, “Speech by Dr. Wu Yi-fang at the Ginling Luncheon, Ginling Annual Meeting, May 7, 1943,” 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 103. Wu Yifang, “Dr. Wu’s Talk at the Annual Dinner, May 1943,” 4–5. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 104. Wu Yifang to NYC, February 21, 1938. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 105. Wu Yifang to NYC, May 10, 1938, 4. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 106. Wu Yifang, “Annual Report, March 2, 1935” and “President’s Report, 1936–1937.” Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 107. Thurston, January 9, 1935, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 108. See, for example, letter from Florence Kirk to Mr. Evans, July 1, 1941. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 138, YDSL. 109. See Ping Yuxiao and Zhang Sheng, “Yige jiaohui daxue xiaozhang de shengcun zhuangtai,” 114; Qin Heping, “Zhang Linggao yu Huaxi xiehe daxue,” 32. 110. Wu Yifang to NYC, January 8, 1942, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 111. Ibid., 2. 112. Wu Yifang to NYC, April 23, 1945, 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 113. Tan Sufen, “Nanwang de ziluolan se,” 3:470. 114. Mei Ruolan, “Cong Chengdu dao Nanjing,” 2:43. 115. Wu Yifang to Bunny Welch, May 31, 1936. ALWP, #6654, UM. 116. Fang Fei, “Yongyuan liu zai wo xinshang de jiyi,” 169. 117. “Jidi canguan ji,” Jinling nüzi wenli xueyuan xiaokan 123 (January 1945). NNU. 118. Wu Yifang to Rebecca Griest, July 31, 1937. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 119. Wu Yifang to NYC, April 23, 1945, 5. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 120. Kong Baoding, “Wu xiaozhang dui wo de jiaoyu he guanhuai shi wo zhongsheng nanwang,” 2:124. 121. Wu Yifang to NYC, May 9, 1941. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 122. Tappert to Wu Yifang, March 15, 1938. ETMP, RG 21, Box 7, YDSL. 123. Wu Yifang to NYC, February 7, 1945. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 124. Wu Yifang to Mrs. Emily (Case) Mills, September 15, 1947. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 125. Wu Yifang to NYC, April 29, 1944. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL.

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126. Wu Yifang to NYC, February 7, 1945. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 127. For a fuller discussion of anti-Chinese legislatures and their consequences, see Tsai, China and the Overseas Chinese in the United States, 43–103. 128. Wu Yifang to NYC, April 29, 1944, 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 129. Wu Yifang to NYC, December 1, 1944. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 130. Zhu Xuebo, Wu Yifang, 77. 131. Wang Guangyuan, “Kangzhan shiqi de Huaxi xiehe daxue,” 9:140. 132. Xianyu Mingyi, interview by the author, October 28, 2007. 133. Wang Xin’en, “Huainian Jinling nüda,” 2:32. 134. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 192. 135. Kong Baoding, “Wu Xiaozhang dui wo de jiaoyu he guanhuai, 2:124. 136. Sili Jinling nüzi wenli xueyuan xuesheng shouce (September 1940), 22–25. 669.79, SHAN. 137. Eva Hwang, interview by the author, November 10, 2005. 138. Ruth Chester, “Letters of Ruth Chester,” August 1944. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 139. Ruth Chester, letter dated November 1, 1942, 2. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 140. Sili Jinling nüzi wenli xueyuan xuesheng shouce (September 1940). 669.79, SHAN. 141. Loretta Chen (Wang), interview by the author, October 31, 2005. 142. Ruth Chester, letter dated November 1, 1942, 2. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 143. Gulick, Teaching in Wartime China, 165. 144. Ruth Chester, letter dated November 1, 1942, 2. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 145. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 109. 146. “Jiaoshi fuli he daiyu.” 668.39, SHAN. 147. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 207–8. 148. Ruth Chester, “Letters of Ruth Chester,” April 1944, 1. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 149. Ruth Chester, letter dated November 1, 1942, 2. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 150. Ruth Chester, “Letters of Ruth Chester,” August 1944. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 151. Thurston, “Return to Nanjing,” July 28, 1939, 2–3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 152. Thurston, received December 6, 1941, in “Edited Letters,” 16. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL.

Notes

291

153. Thurston, “Once a Year, October 1940,” 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 154. Thurston, “Personal Report, March 1941,” 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 155. Thurston, “Once A Year, October 1940” 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 156. Thurston, letter dated January 4, 1942, in “Edited Letters,” 14. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 157. Thurston to Wu Yifang, February 19, 1937. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 158. Thurston, “From a Family Letter from Mrs. Lawrence Thurston, written on October 24, 1941,” 2. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 159. Thurston, letter dated December 12, 1941, in “Edited Letters,” 9. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 160. Thurston, letter dated May 10, 1942, in “Edited letters,” 23. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 143, YDSL. 161. Che Shu-feng, “Life in a Girl Student Dorm.” 668.125, SHAN. 162. Zhang Xiaojing, “Chunyu rutu cui miao zhang,” 1:245. 163. Zheng Yongmei, “Kangzhan shiqi,” 2:46. 164. Eva Hwang, interviews by the author, November 10, 2005; Helena Yu, interviews by the author, November 4, 2005; and Loretta Pan, interviews by the author, October 1, 2005. 165. Zeng Xinghua, “Huishou wangshi,” 2:91. 166. Ming Djang Lu, interviews by the author, November 7, 2005; and Loretta Chen (Wang), interviews by the author, November 8, 2005. 167. Zheng Yongmei, “Kangzhan shiqi,” 46. 168. Mei Ruoluan, interviews by the author, June 2, 2006. 169. Helena Yu, interviews by the author, November 4, 2005. 170. Loretta Chen (Wang), interviews by the author, November 10, 2005; Loretta Pan, interviews by the author, October 1, 2005.

chapter five 1. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 128. 2. “Yinjie shengli,” Jinling nüzi wenli xueyuan xiaokan 128 (September 1945): 1. NNU. 3. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 130. 4. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 214–15. 5. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 133. 6. Li Zhenkun, interview by the author, June 2, 2006. 7. Liu En-lan, “Paragraphs from Letters from Liu En-lan, January, 1948,” 2. Ginling College Records, Box 1338, SC. 8. Ruth Chester, “Letters of Ruth Chester,” February 1948, 1. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL.

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9. Wu Yifang to NYC, April 29, 1948, 3–4. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 10. Mrs. Macmillan to Catherine Sutherland, July 15, 1940. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 11. Mrs. Macmillan to Wu Yifang, July 15, 1940. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 12. Wu Yifang to Wu Xuanyi, September 27, 1940, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 13. To Wu Yifang, June 5, 1941. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 148, YDSL. 14. Xiao Gaolin, “Huaxi ba jiaohui daxue de xuesheng tuanqi,” 68–70. 15. Hong Fan, “Gaoji jianzhushi,” 1:301. 16. Mei Ruolan, Wang Yunfang, and Li Zhenkun, interviews by the author, June 2, 2006. 17. Bao Huisun, interview by the author, October 13, 2007. 18. Hong Fan, “Gaoji jianzhushi,” 1:300. 19. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 223. 20. Yuan Ailian, interview by the author, November 10, 2005. 21. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 224. 22. Bao Huisun, interview by the author, October 13, 2007. 23. “Kewai huodong guize,” Jinling nüzi wenli xueyuan xuesheng shouce (1948). 668. 23, SHAN. 24. “Sili Jinling nüzi wenli xueyuan xundao weiyuanhui huiyi jilu (1946.10–1948.6).” 668.0168, SHAN. 25. Bao Huisun, interview by the author, October 13, 2007. 26. Qtd. in Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 113. 27. Bao Huisun, interview by the author, October 13, 2007. 28. Suh-han Hwang, “Report on the Counseling Program in Dormitory 400 from February 1948 to June 1948,” 3. 668.109, SHAN. 29. Wu Shui-hsia, “Report on Counseling Work of 500 Dormitory Spring Term, 1948,” 2. 668.109, SHAN. 30. Ibid., 5. 31. Suh-han Hwang, “Report on the Counseling Program in Dormitory 400 from February 1948 to June 1948,” 3. 668.109, SHAN. 32. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 142. 33. According to Long Xiangwen’s reminiscences, she and another student, Huang Yanhua (Eva Hwang), had tried to disrupt the English Comprehensive Test because they disapproved this “unpatriotic” practice. Long Xiangwen, interview by the author, November 10, 2007. 34. Wu Yifang to NYC, July 20, 1949. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 35. Wu Yifang to NYC, June 6, 1949, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 36. Ibid.

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37. Wu Yifang to NYC, March 5, 1949, 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 38. E.g., Zhu Xuebo, Wu Yifang, 105. 39. Cao Wan, “Jin nüda dixia dang shishi chongwen,” 3:320. 40. Zhu Xuebo, Wu Yifang, 119. 41. Stuart to Wu Yifang, December 31, 1937. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 42. Zhu Xuebo, Wu Yifang, 121. 43. Wu Yifang to NYC, March 5, 1949, 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 44. Wu Yifang to NYC, July 22, 1949. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 45. Zichen Zhao, “Days of Rejoicing in China,” Christian Century, 66, no. 9 (March 2, 1949): 265, written January 27, 1949, qtd. in West, Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 196. 46. Lu Zhiwei to McMullen, April 5, 1949, Lu Zhiwei file, UB, qtd. in West, University and Sino-Western Relations, 196. 47. Ping Yuxiao and Zhang Sheng, “Yige jiaohui xuexiao xiaozhang,” 110. 48. Wu Yifang to NYC, July 27, 1949, 6. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 49. For example, see Zhu Xuebo, Wu Yifang, 128. 50. Mao Zedong, On New Democracy, 21, 56. 51. Wu Yifang to NYC, June 6, 1949, 3. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 52. Wu Yifang to NYC, August 1, 1949, 6. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 53. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 143. 54. Wu Yifang to NYC, August 1, 1949, 6. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 55. Wu Yifang to NYC, July 20, 1949. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 56. E.g., Deng Jingsu, a Ginling student in 1949, joined the army and later became an actor in their Wengong tuan (Troupe of Literary and Art Workers). See Li Qiang, “Nihong dengxia de Sichuan nübing,” 2:354–57. Also see Deng Jingsu, interview by the author, October 28, 2007. 57. Zhang Yongbing, Bian Xumin, and Zhang Yinghua, “Zhongguo diyi wei nü haiyang xuejia,” 1:50–58. 58. Wu Yifang to NYC, July 20, 1949. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 59. Waelchli, “Abundant Life,” 284. 60. Ruth Chester to William Fenn, “Letters of Ruth Chester,” March 22, 1950. CRPMP, RG 8, Box 39, YDSL. 61. Ibid.

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62. Wu Yifang to NYC, May 4–5, 1950. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 63. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 144. 64. Wu Yifang to NYC, January 14, 1950, 1. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 65. Wu Yifang to NYC, November 18, 1950. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 149, YDSL. 66. Wang Hongyan, “Xin Zhongguo dui jiaohui daxue jieshou yu gaizao shuping,” 99. 67. Ye Zhangyu, “Jianguo chuqi jiaohui daxue de lishi kaocha,” 66. 68. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 234. 69. Ye Zhangyu, “Jianguo chuqi jiaohui daxue de lishi kaocha,” 69. 70. Nanjing shifan daxue, Nanjing shifan daxue dashi ji, 97. 71. Ye Zhangyu, “Jianguo chuqi jiaohui daxue de lishi kaocha,” 70. 72. Nanjing shifan daxue, Nanjing shifan daxue dashi ji, 97–98. 73. Lu Yuan, interview by the author, June 10, 2006. 74. Thurston and Chester, Ginling College, 145–46. 75. Patricia Page, “Remembering Our Sisters in China,” 10. Ginling College Records, Box 1333, SC. 76. Mrs. Wheeler to Susan McKeever, August 22, 1952, 3. Ginling College Records, Box 1332, SC. 77. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 242. 78. Wang Pu, “Dui woguo wushi niandai yuanxi tiaozheng deshi fenxi,” 8. 79. Ibid., 9. 80. Searle Bates to Mrs. Wheeler, August 31, 1950. Ginling College Records, Box 1332, SC. 81. Hong Fan, interview by the author, October 28, 2007. 82. Deng Jingsu, interview by the author, October 28, 2007. 83. Li Jinghua, interview by the author, May 23, 2007. 84. Ibid. 85. Bao Huisun, interview by the author, October 13, 2007. 86. E.g., Li Zhenkun, interview by the author, June 2, 2006; and Hong Fan, interview by the author, October 28, 2007.

epilogue 1. The alumnae of Ginling College and Ginling Middle School (whether of the Nanjing or Taiwan incarnation) still acknowledge their connections to Wu Yifang and the old Ginling in Nanjing. For example, see the website established by the Ginling Association in America at http://www.ginling.org/ (accessed April 14, 2009). 2. Wu Yifang’s interactions with the Welches have been recorded in her personal correspondence with them. For details, see ALWP, #6654, UM.

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3. For detailed information, see ALWP at UM. 4. Wu Yifang to Anne Louise Welch, November 16, 1977. ALWP, #6654, UM. 5. See Zhu Xuebo, Wu Yifang, 144–66. 6. Gui Hong, “Jiyi zhong Jinnüyuan chengli jingguo diandi,” 4:1–2. 7. Gan Kechao, “Xingjin zhong de yingxiang,” 3:353. 8. Bao Huisun, interview by the author, October 13, 2007. 9. Zhang Lianhong, Jinling nüzi daxue xiaoshi, 247. 10. Mei Ruolan, “Jinnüyuan jianyuan gushi jijing,” 4:5. 11. Yang Suping, “Jinnüyuan ershi nian zhi fazhan bianhua,” 4:35–37. 12. Zeng Fangiao, “Minguo jiaohui nüzi jiaoyu,” 136. 13. West, Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 245. 14. Wu Yifang, “New Year’s Speech at the Alumnae Association Meeting, 1981,” qtd. in Jin Yihong, Yang Di, and Wu Qiong, Wu Yifang de jiaoyu sixiang yu shijian, 410. 15. Matilda Thurston, letter dated May 12, 1931, in “Edited Letters,” 48. Ginling College, UB, RG 11, Box 144, YDSL. 16. West, Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 245. 17. Barlow, Question of Women in Chinese Feminism, 46. 18. Zhang Kaiyuan, “Jiaohui daxue zai Zhongguo.”

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Index

Abundant Life Creation of Ginling motto: 13 Interpretations: 39, 62, 88 Sino-Japanese War, developments in: 178, 182, 197 Post-war, developments in: 239 Adjustment of Colleges and Departments, 3, 238 Aldersey, Miss, 28 Angel in the House, 44, 45, 105 Associated Boards of Christian Higher Education in China Cressy report to: 98, 147 Salary scale: 140 Coeducation: 148, 151 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 198, 204–205 Bairi weixin, 28 Bao Huisun, 247 Bates, M. Searle Wu Yifang, view on: 156, 239 Esther Tappert, relationship with: 166 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 173 Bender, Elizabeth, 132, 135 Boxer Indemnity Fund, 41 Boxer Rebellion, 41 Burton’s China Education Commission, 14, 107 Butler, Rosie, 240 Cai Kui (Tsai Kwei), 106, 151 Cao Wan, 246 Case, Emily Physical Education, establishment of: 79 Physical Education, views on: 82–86, 88, 89 1927 Incident, writing on: 116–122

Growing pains of Ginling, writing on: 162 Causer, Marjorie, 150 Central University (Zhongyang), 190, 214 Chen Lifu, 191, 192, 200 Chen Mei-yü, 109 Chen Shutong (uncle of Wu Yifang), 129, 130, 136, 229, 233 Chen Yi, 231 Chen Yingmei, 78, 87, 95, 246 Chen Yuguang, 200, 230, 231, 235 Chen Zhongfan, 140 Cheng Qian, 114 Cheng Ruifang (Mrs. Tsen), 173–179 Chester, Ruth, 19, 128, 140, 157 Coeducation, fight against: 143–150 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 163–210 Post-war, activities in: 217–237 Resurrection of Ginling, involvement in: 245 Chiang Kai-shek Northern Expedition: 114 Song Meiling, marriage to: 144 Wu Yifang, relationship with: 157, 223, 229 see also Song Meiling; Wu Yifang Chin, Ettie Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 186, 213 Physical Education, involvement in: 206 Resurrection of Ginling, involvement in: 244–245 Misfit at Ginling: 250 Chinese Exclusion Acts, 206 Chungking University, 162, 163

310

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Clark, Elsie, 61 Cressy, E.H. (Earl Herbert), 98, 147, 199 Dagu Incident, 99 Deng Yuzhi, 124, 245 Dewey, John, 44, 65, 161 Dong Nyok-zoe, 62 Empress dowager Cixi, 28 Fang Fei, 244 Feng Yuxiang, 200 Fenn, William, 19, 151 Ferris, Helen (Fei Ruisi), 236 First Opium War, 27, 28 Fitch, George, 174–180 Founders’ Day, 39, 65, 125, 160, 182, 185 Frame, Alice, 142 Fukien Christian College, 142 Ginling College Committee (GCC) Start of Ginling, involvement in: 34–35 Vautrin, appointment of: 52 1927 Incident and aftermath, involvement in: 126–135 Salary scale, handling of: 140–141 Coeducation, fight against: 143, 148, 150, 151 Registration, involvement in: 152–155 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 182–189, 195, 201, 202, 206, 210 Post-war, activities in: 228, 230 Ginling College Magazine, 87, 98, 106, 108, 204 Ginling qizhi, 10, 22, 57, 66, 193, 249 Gu Xiulian, 245, 246 Gui Hong, 246 Gulick, Edward, 30, 209 Gutzlaff, Mr. and Mrs., 28 Hanson, J. M., 173 Ho(h), Phoebe Ying-tsing (Hao Yingqing), 99, 127, 130 Hodge, Margaret, 143 Holy Trinity Christian School, 98 Home Economics

General comments: 9, 250 Nationalist promotion of: 171, 191, 194 Department at Ginling: 172, 194–197 Hu Xiuying, 15, 75, 242 Hua (Hwa) Nan College, 29, 142, 150 Huachung (Huazhong) University 173 Huang Liming (Chen Hwang Li-ming), 87, 92, 122, 183 Huang Xuhan, 246 Huang Yanpei, 249 Huaxi ba, 3, 171, 190, 207–209 Hwa Nan Girls’ Middle School, 84 Indigenization (of Christian higher education), 5, 101, 136, 216 Jervis, Norah, 79 Jinling University, 3, 238 Kang Youwei 2 Kirk, Florence Recollections of Ginling: 19 Coeducation, fight against: 150 Teaching of English: 164 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 179, 182, 183, 186, 188, 189 Kong Xiangxi, 200 Koo, Ellen, 143 Laura Haygood School for Girls (Jinghai nüzhong), 129, 258 Lean, D. J., 173 Li Fangxun, 238 Li Zezheng, 106 Li Zhendao, 238 Liang Qichao, 2, 28 Ling Peifen, 95 Lingnan College, 236 Liu Jianqiu, 124 Liu Bocheng, 231 Liu Enlan Singlehood: 95 1927 Incident and aftermath, involvement in: 121 Salary scale: 140 Coeducation, fight against: 146 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 184

Index Post-war, activities in: 219, 233 Lu Zhiwei, 230, 235, 236 Mackay, Ivor, 173 Macmillan, Eva, Mrs., 220, 221 Magee, John, 173 Mao Yanwen, 46, 145 Mao Zedong, 230 Marco Polo Bridge Incident, 171 May Fourth Movement Discourse on history: 16–17, 251 Antitraditionalism: 47, 253 Student movement: 52, 222 Vernacular language: 102 Male-centered nation-building: 144 New woman: 171 May Thirtieth Incident, 6, 99, 129, 222 Mayhew, Abby, 67, 81 Mead, Frederica, 57 Mei Ruolan, 247 Merrow, Llewella, 78 Mills, W. P., 173 Miner, Luella, 29, 142 Ministry of Education Registration: 112, 150–153 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 172, 191, 194 Post-war, activities in: 217, 222, 246 Moffett, Anna, 117, 122 Moral tutoring (xunyu zhi), 171, 223 Mount Holyoke College, 38, 49, 52, 56, 107 Dwight Morrow, Mrs., 158 Walter C. Lowdermilk, Mrs., 109 Munro-Faure, P. H., 173 Murphy, Henry, 70, 71 Nanjing Massacre, 3, 22, 32, 61, 171–181 Nanjing Normal University, 3, 4, 22, End of Ginling, involvement in: 170, 216, 238–239 Resurrection of Ginling, involvement in: 245–246 New Life Movement, 171, 251 New Woman (New Women) At Ginling: 12, 23, 251 Foreign view on: 109

311

Figure of in May Fourth era: 27, 144, 171 see also May Fourth Movement North China Union Women’s College, 29, 142; see also Yenching University Northern Expedition, 3, 111–114, Response at Ginling: 123, 137 Null, Miriam, 117 Pederson, Esther, 118 Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), 139, 140 Physical Education (PE), 68 Establishment at Ginling: 76–97 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 191, 196, 199, 206 Post-war, activities in: 227 see also Chin, Ettie; Xu Yizhen Pickering, J. V., 173 Qian Zhongshu, 238 Rabe, John, 173 Rawles, Katherine, 78 Reeves, Cora 130 Reik, Elsie, 84 Restoration of Education(al) Rights, 112, 153, 216 Riggs, Charles H., 173, 177 Rong Xiaoyun (Yung Hsiao-yun), 196 Schultze-Pantin, G., 173 Second Opium War, 28 Shantung Christian University (Cheeloo, Qilu), 153, 190 Shen Chong, 222 Shields, P. R., 173 Smith College Archives of: 22 Start of Ginling, involvement in: 35 Faculty connections to Ginling: 57, 63 Visit by Wu Yifang: 135, 199 Gift to Ginling: 73 Visit to Ginling: 158 Post-war, activities in: 237 Smith, G. Stanley, 116, 120 Smythe, Lewis, 173 Social Gospel Movement, 2

312

The Making of a Family Saga

Song Sisters, 101, 168 Song Meiling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek) Xu Yizhen, relationship with: 108 marriage to: 144 Wu Yifang, relationship with: 157, 200, 229 see also Chiang Kai-shek; Wu Yifang; Xu Yizhen Song Qingling, 144 Soochow University (Dongwu), 183 Sperling, Edward, 173 Spicer, Eva, 118, 150, 180, 204, 246 St. John’s College, 153, 172, 183 Stuart, John Leighton Start of Ginling, involvement in: 8, 70 Coeducation, involvement in: 142 Wu Yifang, relationship with: 229 Student Volunteer Movement Historical notes on: 2, 9, 30 Matilda Thurston, participation in: 31, 58 Sun Chuanfang, 114 Sun Han, 246 Sun Yat-sen, 2, 124, 144, 160 Sutherland, Catherine, 157, 204 Tang Shuoyan, 246 Tappert, Esther, 111, 113, 162–167 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 204, 205 Misfit at Ginling: 250 see also Bates, M. Searle; Vautrin, Wilhelmina (Minnie) Thayer, Mary, 73 Thurston (née Calder), Matilda, Mrs., 19, 20, 26 Burton Education Mission, involvement in: 14 Start of Ginling, involvement in: 3162 Building new campus: 67–75, 275n20 Physical education, view on: 90, 91, 94, 97, 277n71 Growing pains of Ginling, writings on: 98–109, 251 1927 Incident and aftermath, activities in and writings on: 111–139 Co-education, fight against: 141–152

Registration and outcome, involvement in: 156–162, 164, 168 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 173, 180, 204, 210–219 see also Student Volunteer Movement; Wu Yifang Treudley, Mary, 19 Ginling, description of: 52–53, 65, 72 1927 Incident, writing on: 123 Nanjing Massacre, writing on: 173 Trimmer, C. S., 173 Tsing-hua University, 6 University of Hangchou (Zhijiang), 156, 183, 235 University of Michigan Historical Library of: 22 Wu Yifang, relationship to: 107, 128–130, 242–244 University of Nanking, 3, 10, 18, 38, 45, 70, 72, 74, 88, 97, 99, 109, 269n17, 282n87, Charter: 34–35; 1927 Incident, activities in: 112, 114, 115, 116, 118, 120 Coeducation: 141–152 Registration: 153–154, 160 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 190, 197, 200 Post-war, activities in: 204, 227, 230, 236, 237; 269n17, 282n87 University of Shanghai (Hujiang), 172, 183 Vassar College, 22, 49 Vautrin, Wilhelmina (Minnie) Biography of: 19 Start of Ginling, activities in: 31–32, 52–53 Yan Lianyun, advice to: 40 Student impressions of: 56–60, 62 Building new campus, activities in: 72 Singlehood, view on: 94 Visit to British gunboat, activities in: 96, 146 1927 Incident, writing on: 122, 128 Esther Tappert, relationship with: 165

Index Nanjing Massacre, activities in: 170–181 Sino-Japanese War, other activities in: 185, 190 Suicide, response to: 205 Matilda Thurston, relief by: 210 see also Ginling College Committee (GCC) Wei, Francis (Wei Zhuomin), 149, 150, 235 Welch, “Bunny,” 130, 203, 242, 243 Welch, Anne Louise, 242, 243 Welch, Paul, 130, 242, 243 Wellesley College Archives of: 22 Evolution of campus culture: 49 Ginling College, faculty connections to: 78, 79, 87 Physical Education: 84, 85, 89, 95 West China Union College (Huaxi), 173, 190, 195, 200, 205, 255 Western College, 101, 135, 256 Whitmer, Harriet, 143, 162 Wilder, H. H., 63, 65 Williams, John, 114 Woman’s Work for Woman, 42, 43, 46, 91, 143 Wong, Lucy, 142, 150 Wooley, Mary, 107 World Christian Students Association, 6, 98 Wu Jingxian (Wu, Blanche), 173 Wu Leichuan, 153, 154 Wu Mouyi, 95 Wu Xuanyi, 220, 221, 234 Wu Yaozong, 235 Wu Yifang, 4, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 33, 34, 35, 39, 50, 91, 94 Singlehood: 95 Xu Yizhen, relationship with: 101, 107, 108 Ginling presidency, assumption of: 111–136 Indigenization of Christian higher education: 136–138 Matilda Thurston, relationship with: 139

313

Salary scale: 140–141 Coeducation, fight against: 149–152 Registration, involvement in: 153–156 Leadership style and public reception of: 156–158 Esther Tappert, relationship with: 165–166 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 170–208 Post-war, activities in: 215–240 Resurrection of Ginling, involvement in: 242–247 Reflections on Ginling: 249, 253 see also Bates, M. Searle; Chiang Kaishek; Indigenization of Christian Higher Education; Song Meiling; Stuart, John Leighton; Tappert, Esther; Thurston, Matilda; University of Michigan; Welch Paul; Welch, Bunny; Welch, Anne Louise; Xu Yizhen Wu Yiquan, 130, 207 Xu Beihong, 249 Xu Yizhen (Mrs. New Way-sung) Biographical sketch of: 33 Wu Yifang, relationship with: 50, 129, 130, 157, 224, 244 Matilda Thurston, recollections of: 62 Minnie Vautrin, recollections of: 62 Physical Education, view on: 90 Singlehood, view on: 101, 107 1927 Incident and aftermath, involvement in: 124 Yan Caiyun, 40, 168 Yan Fu, 93 Yan Lianyun, 40, 124, 168, 245; see also Vautrin, Wilhelmina (Minnie) Yan Xishan, 157 Yang Zhenning, 238 Yen, James (Yan Yangchu), 194 Yenching University, 4 Family spirit: 8 Studies of: 18 John Leighton Stuart, president of: 70 Campus architecture: 71 Salary scale: 139

314

The Making of a Family Saga

North China Women’s Union College, merger with: 142 Sino-Japanese War, activities in: 190, 195, 222 Yenching Women’s College, 108 YMCA, 93, 174 YWCA Study of: 7, 20 Normal School of Physical Education: 76, 79, 81, 85 Physical Education in China, relation to: 93 Ginling students’ views of: 161

Zhang Huilan, 87 Zhang Linggao, 200 Zhang Taiyan, 249 Zhang Xianglan (Hsiang-lan), 150, 223 Zhang Xiaosong (Djang Siao-sung), 103, 201 Zhang Zhizhong, 249 Zhao Yuanren, 238 Zhao Zichen, 230, 235 Zhou Enlai, 235 Zhu Jingnong (Chu, King), 153 Zhu Muci (Dju Muh-tsi), 104 Zhu Qi, 244

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