PART TWO
SETTLED IN CHENGTU

8
Mount Omei Summer
(1906)

On May 10 we entered Chengtu and proceeded along the Great East Street, the city's chief thoroughfare. It was considerably more imposing than any street we had previously seen in a Chinese city. We had reached our goal. It was a momentous day, saddened only by the thoughts of our precious Virginia.

As the Friends were having a gathering of their mission, we were to be entertained temporarily in the home of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Beech of the American Methodist Mission. However, we first went with Warburton and Hetty to the Friends' compound,^[1] where we met Dr. and Mrs. Hodgkin and were welcomed by them and the elder Davidsons, "R.J." and "M.J." We stayed only a few minutes and then went on to the Methodist compound where we had another warm welcome from the Beeches. Their little Margaret was being carried by an amah with bound feet. I was stricken at the sight and felt this must be a frightful ordeal. I soon discovered that thousands, indeed millions, of women in China suffer this way all their lives. Now the custom is dying, but it still is not eradicated.

Dr. and Mrs. Canright lived in another house in the Methodist compound, and near by were the rising walls of the missions new hospital. Mr. and Mrs. Openshaw of the American Baptist Mission in Yachow, four days travel to the west, were visiting in the Canright home. All these foreigners came in that evening to welcome us and hear of our travel. It was almost six months since we left California, and we had undergone a good deal in the way of experience.

Here at the Beech home we were in a foreign house built in a semi-Chinese manner. The upper rooms were low with slanting ceilings. A ve-

[1] "Compound" is the term generally used for a walled enclosure within which foreigners live. It comes from a Malay word, kampong . In China one did not speak of a Chinese compound: it was always a place where foreigners lived—within walls.

11
"Within a few days Bob seated himself at a small bamboo table on
a cornerof this veranda. Opposite him was a Chinese teacher named
Yeh. There began the long pull at language study."

randa surrounded the lower floor. Within a few days Bob seated himself at a small bamboo table on a corner of this veranda. Opposite him was a Chinese teacher named Yeh. There began the long pull at language study which has to pave the way for understanding and work in the land of Cathay. At that time there were no formal language schools. The trial and error system was largely used, and one had little help in grammar and in mastering the elusive tones. Our teacher spoke the Szechwan variety of Mandarin and we were thankful to make a start. I studied also, but very soon began to have attacks of sharp abdominal pain. These left me weak and with little ambition for anything.

After a fortnight we moved over to the Hodgkin residence, where we had an upper east bedroom with veranda. The two Friends families gave a large reception for us. Both Hodgkin and Davidson houses were open and we spent part of our time in each house. The weather was warm, the flower gardens were lovely, and most of Chengtu's foreign community of about fifty people turned out to meet us.

Bob continued his study on the Hodgkin veranda, and I continued having attacks of pain. Before June was far gone, three foreign doctors had a consultation regarding my problem. The pain, they decided, was neuralgia of the stomach, and I was given spirits of ether to allay it. Also, everyone agreed that we should get away for the summer.

Arrangements were made for us to travel to Mount Omei with Laura Hambley of the Canadian Methodist Mission and Helen Witte of the Ameri-

can Methodists. Miss Hambley had not been out [in China] long, but she knew enough of the language to manage the party. Miss Witte had arrived only a few months before us. The pleasure and profit of our first summer was largely due to these two fine friends, particularly to Laura Hambley whose kind thought had suggested that we accompany them and share living arrangements.

We had a small mat-roofed boat for the trip on the Min River to Kiating.^[2] The. ladies had another; the two boats were to keep together all the time. There were numerous vicissitudes on the journey. Mosquitoes were terrible in Kiating. There we left the river and took sedan chairs for a day and a half to Tawosze, a temple on the flank of the sacred mountain, Omei Shan. The mountain itself is over 11,000 feet in elevation, but the temple is at about 2,700 feet. After a miserable night in an inn at the foot of the mountain, we started up the lower slopes of the mountain to the temple.

Miss Witte was so sorry for her chair bearers on a steep grade of rough steps that she got out to walk, Her men then hustled along and soon had such a lead that they could not hear her calling them to wait for her. Of course, they knew that she now wished to ride; but preferring to carry an empty chair, they tarried for nothing. Finally, Bob had to push ahead and overtake them. By the time she got in, Miss Witte was so exhausted by the heat that she announced she would ride no matter how steep the road. Naturally, we were not accustomed to be carried up long, steep flights of rough-hewn steps; so we did have great sympathy for the bearers; and they played up to our compassion. After many similar trips we became used to such travel. We always did what we could to relieve the men. I was content to ride most of the time, but as I weighed only about one hundred pounds, I was not an excessive burden for three or four men. Bob did his climbing on his own feet.

At Tawosze we had two rooms at one side off one of the lower entrance courts. Everything was Chinese save our cots with bedding and mosquito nets. We also had two folding canvas armchairs made after a British army model. We used a square temple table for study and had some heavy wooden chairs that belonged with the rooms. Laura and Helen, our companions, had a larger suite of rooms on the opposite side of the same courtyard, and the four of us combined our eating arrangements. Laura had brought the cook, so she managed him for the first few days; then Helen took her turn; finally I, in my first few stumbling Mandarin words, tried to give directions for meals.

[2] The Min River between Chengtu and Kiating is, by comparison with the Yangtze, a small and shallow stream. So the Boat by which Bob and Grace traveled was much smaller and simpler than the stately houseboat of the Gorges. It was what the Chinese called a wuban ; apart from its smaller size, it lacked the high stern of the Yangtze junk. The trip from Chengtu to Kiating probably took two or three days. Kiating is now known as Leshan.

The cook had never been much more than a table boy and knew little about cooking. Our fare was plain and simple. Helen had an amah, and we a coolie, so there was plenty of help.

All four of us were studying Chinese, but Bob kept at it more consistently than I. The climate seemed to make us sleepy, and we usually took naps after the noon meal. In the late afternoons there were hikes around the temple purlieus, or tennis in the upper stone-paved court in front of the main building. Some thirty-five foreigners were at Tawosze that season. We made many friends and had a jolly time, with picnics to the Flying Bridges and other scenic parts of the mountain, and tennis matches at the temple when there were not too many hui . This particular kind of hui is a gathering of friends or neighbors who visit the temple for collective worship toward some specific end. These groups would arrive in long processions with many banners, firecrackers, and incense. The whole place would be overrun with the worship-pets, who were usually delighted with the unexpected extra benefit of seeing us, our rooms, and our peculiar ways.^[3]

We became well acquainted with Dr. Florence O'Donnell at the temple that summer. She stayed with friends and occupied a room just above our sleeping room. As only rough floor boards separated us, we could hear her every step. When she took a bath, we frequently participated to the extent of a mild shower. Of course, in those temple rooms we had no conveniences and lived in camping style; but we did have portable galvanized bathtubs of oval shape into which the coolie would pour a bucket or two of water. We carried these to the mountain, and there in the temple they proved luxurious indeed.

[3] Grace followed the usual habit of referring to any Chinese religious building as a temple, and those attached to them as priests. There were differences, in both faith and function. Tawosze, as indicated by the sze in its name, was a Buddhist monastery.
In these early days, the foreigners had not yet developed their own summer resorts. In their belief that it was essential for health reasons to get away from the oppressive heat and summer pestilences of the plains, mountain monasteries were a favorite choice. They were usually in a place of quiet isolation, purposely away from large towns. They were almost always in a situation of natural beauty. It was a beauty which their own presence and great age enhanced. One chief reason was that it was only in temple grounds, and on immediately adjacent temple property, that one could see groves of mature, majestic trees. Also, these monasteries were objects of pilgrimage and places where scholars and literati were fond of relaxing close to nature. So the monasteries often had extensive, if simple, accommodations for guests. The abbots in charge apparently had no objection to renting these to apostles of a rival faith.
Relations may have been economic, but faith could not be wholly ignored. Being a monastery, there was always a resident community of monks—whose numbers were governed by the size, prestige, and prosperity of the institution. And the monks, like monks everywhere, had their daily round of religious services. We boys were probably more interested in these than were our elders. The very early morning, soon after dawn, was a good time—as one lay in bed—to hear the deep, unintelligible chanting of the sutras, punctuated now and then by a low-voiced bell or a drum, or the hollow sound of the wooden fish. Of course, the missionaries had their own prayer meetings and religious services on monastery premises—but these were more somber in nature.

During this summer I had the only attack of malaria that I had in China and was in bed for several days. Miss Wilkins, then of the Canadian Mission, was the trained nurse who helped me. How wonderfully she rubbed my aches and pains away! The Canadian ladies of Kiating had brought their own cows up onto the mountain and so were the only people who had fresh milk. They kindly sent me several cups each day while I was sick.

I wrote my mother about this friendly act. As she was always very ardent against cruelty to animals, she at once wrote back that she thought it terrible to take cows up to such places by roads which had flights of steps. In fact, she was thoroughly aroused by this innocent action of the missionary ladies. As we had seen plenty of horses scrambling with riders or heavy loads up the slippery, wet stone steps at Chungking's city gates, a leisurely mountain climb to Tawosze did not seem so bad to us. I wrote Mother how the Chinese outfitted cows and even pigs with straw sandals for such trips, to save their hoofs and prevent slipping on the steps. I also told her of the way pigs are often carried to market in slings made of bamboo slats, each piggy borne by two carriers. Of course, this was after the porker was fattened for sale and was intended to prevent the loss of a pound or two en route to the knife. Still, it gave the pig a ride and showed thought on the owner's part.

Mother was unimpressed. Her last remark in this months-long discussion was to the effect that I had already become hardened to ways that would shock and horrify in America. Five to six months was the normal time for an exchange of letters between Szechwan and California; one almost forgot the question before the reply came back. As to pigs, we have frequently seen them carried in odd ways. As recently as three years ago, riding on North Szechwan Road in a Shanghai ricksha, I suddenly found myself abreast of another ricksha in which rode two well-grown black pigs. One was on the seat, the other on the little foot platform.

An important event of the summer was a trip to Mount Omei's Golden Summit. We joined a party of friends. The intent was to travel simply, but of course we had to take beds and food. We went up the small road called "the ninety-nine turns" and returned to Tawosze by the "big road." The lower section of the small road above the Flying Bridges partly followed the bed of a stream, and the coolies carrying my chair often had to step from rock to rock with water rushing between them. Later the canyon became so narrow that there was no space for foot of man or beast. There we mounted a somewhat rickety "bridge" running lengthwise of the stream. Beams set in sockets cut into the rock walls supported a pathway of rough planks along one side of the gorge. Some of the ninety-nine turns were so sharp and steep that even my simple mountain chair with skillful mountain carriers could not negotiate them until Bob got in between the poles and lifted at the critical moments.

12
This is the type of "mountain chair" that Grace used for her mountaineering trips.
(The actual occupant here is unknown.)

We spent a night at Nine Old Caves, staying in the excellent temple and visiting the outer part of the caves. These were damp and slippery, and full of bats swooping about us. We did not go far in, much preferring the beautiful verdure of the mountainside. Here at this temple, a green-clad cliff hung with ferns, creepers, orchids, and lovely wild begonias was a delectable sight.

Going on, we took in all the pleasures of a slow climb. Because Golden Summit is slightly over 11,000 feet, the temperature change from Tawosze is considerable. Vegetation runs riot all over the mountain. Ferns, rhododendrons, laurels, hydrangeas, and a myriad other species of shrub, flower, and tree delight one's senses at every turn. In clear weather one gets a magnificent panorama from the Golden Summit; the mighty snow peaks of the Tibetan border can be seen in all their glory. We were fortunate to have an unbroken view of the whole line of peaks, a breathtaking sight.

As soon as we reached Golden Summit late one afternoon, our Boy urged us to hurry to the platform at the edge of the great precipice. Here on one side we saw the snow mountains; and on the other side, the setting sun being low in the sky, we beheld our enlarged shadows, heads encircled with rainbow hues, thrown on the clouds below the cliff. A priest standing by assured us that only the good saw this much-desired sight. The phenomenon is similar to the Spectre of the Brocken, seen in the Harz Mountains; at Omei it is known as Foguang (Buddha's glory). Buddhists claim it is light from the aureole of Buddha and a sign of the holiness of the place. Pilgrims wrought up by reli-

gious zeal have thrown themselves over this three-thousand-foot precipice to meet the Buddha; to deter others, a railing is fixed at the cliff's edge.

On the trip down from Golden Summit the Big Road gave us new sights and more extended mountain vistas, as this road follows wider canyons. We also met many ascending pilgrims who choose the larger road because of its better steps and more gradual ascent. Among these were women, frequently with bound feet, who hired men to carry them up the mountain. Loads in these hilly areas are carried on V-shaped wooden back-frames. A passenger sits atop this frame on a couple of wooden slats. This puts him (her) facing in the same direction as the carrier, with knees just above his shoulders. The bearer is equipped with a sturdy crutch-stick like a third leg, When they stop to rest, they place the crutch-stick under the back-frame, lean back to ease themselves of the weight, and catch a brief respite from the heavy toil of the journey. At this time they expel their breath with a peculiar whistling sound. This apparently helps to revive their flagging spirits as well as their weary muscles. On the twisting road one often heard this whistle and knew that a loaded man was resting; sure enough, as one rounded the curve, he would come in view.

At Tawosze, Dr. C. W. Service had a little clinic. As he returned from a trip

13
The "Golden Summit" of Omei, the sacred mountain. Along the crest are
pilgrimage temples. "Buddha's glory" appears, when conditions are right, on the

cloudbank at the left below the great precipice.

14
Back-frames for mountain travel. On Mount Omei about 1907.

to Golden Summit, he heard that a young priest on the upper mountain had been badly mauled by a leopard. Because this was considered to be punishment for his sins, he was turned out of his temple. Nobody would help him, and he was lying helpless and abandoned in a rude bamboo hut. When Charlie [Dr. Service] saw his plight, he asked for him to be put on a beizi [carrying frame] and brought to his clinic. No one was willing to do even this, but Charlie finally persuaded a carrier to bring the wounded man down.

I heard about the affair and suddenly felt a great desire to see the doctor at work. The Chinese assistants had tried to clean up the man but he was a sad sight; dirty, worn with fatigue, and his body covered with itch. He wore only ragged pants, and some bloody scraps of old matting were tied around his body and arm. The wounds were chiefly around the left elbow. In the course of the doctor's cleaning the terrible-looking wounds some solution was used in a syringe. When I saw this liquid going in one opening above the elbow and coming out from two holes, one slightly above the elbow and another below it, I began to feel queerly. One of the Chinese assistants pointed to an open door. I went out and sat down on some steps rising from a small court. The next I knew, I was pushing a big bottle of ammonia from under my nose. The man recovered and became another medical triumph for the hardworking mission doctor, who found need on every side, even on his summer holidays.

Bob made another excursion to Golden Summit, this time with Mr. Manly, to do some exploring. They went to Nine Old Caves and around under the face of the great perpendicular cliff, hoping to be able to get up that way. They found no feasible route; but, scrambling up the side canyon, they fi-

nally came on a charcoal burner's trail and were able to ascend by it to the main ridge of the mountain. On the afternoon of their return after three days of strenuous climbing, Bob took a quick sponge-off and was soon on the tennis court, ready for a set. On his trip he had worn a blue woolen shirt from which the color ran; his white skin was dyed in streaks which did not come off for weeks. He began collecting butterflies this summer and found it an absorbing and interesting avocation.

The summer was not without its romance. Mr. Taylor of Yachow was frequently at our temple rooms for tea. And the tea, of course, was always in the suite of the Misses Hambley and Witte. Helen Witte was very coy, but we all saw how things were going. We jocularly referred to the courting gentleman as "Grey Legs" because of his favorite color in trousers, but this name was never applied to him in person. A mention of his nickname would make Helen blush. Bob and I left Tawosze the day before Laura and Helen. As I left the temple in my chair, I said good-bye to Helen, telling her to look well after Grey Legs, who would soon be lonesome in Yachow. She flushed deeply and burst out: "I'm so glad you know about us; we were wanting to tell you." So the cat was out of the bag! Alas, I was in a poor frame of mind to meet Dr. O'Donnell. She had told me she was sure the two were engaged; but I had said no, and that I'd eat my hat if they were. My only hat on the trip was a sun topee.

9
Our Own Home
(1907)

Back in Chengtu we were soon house hunting. The Friends were willing to let us have land for a house; but we had been told by the YMCA to rent, that there was no money to buy or build. It was difficult to find any suitable place, or one that we could rent if it were suitable. Chinese do not always care to rent to foreign tenants whose ideas of house arrangement and fitments were so different from their own. Mr. Beech finally came to our assistance. The [American] Methodist Episcopal Mission owned a property on a street named Wenmiaogai,^[1] in the southwest part of the city, where it conducted a middle school for boys. It was expected that the school would grow and eventually need a larger place. To the west of the school was a temple.^[2] To the east there was a Chinese residence property. This offered the only solution for the school's expansion. Mr. Beech proposed that the mission buy and lease it to the Y until needed by the school. The mission would have its room for growth, and a present income.

Mr. Beech took us both with him when he went to look at the property. The men insisted that I accompany them so I could penetrate into the women's quarters. Of all the places we had seen, this seemed the most satisfactory, though the rooms I saw were filthy and dark. Our vision looked into the future and saw fresh, clean walls, glass windows, and other foreign additions for comfort and convenience. After long talks and negotiations through a middleman, the purchase was at last complete. Next was a long interval until the owners could move. Then there had to be a mighty cleaning. Finally, we moved, bag and baggage, into the new premises.

[1] Gai in the name means "street." It is the Szechwanese pronunciation of the character jie .

[2] The temple was the local government's temple to Confucius. Its Chinese name was Wenmiao, "Temple of Learning." Because our street was the one on which the temple stood, the street was Temple of Learning Street. The temple helped to make it a good neighborhood and had some fine trees.

A rather imposing front gate opened into a forecourt. Crosswise in this court was a handsome spirit screen. At each side there was access to a small side court. These provided space for the gateman and his family, servants' living quarters, and a stable. Across the north side of the forecourt was an open structure, a sort of pavilion, or tingzi . This was convenient for sedan chairs. Passing through this pavilion, one entered a brick-paved upper court. There were rooms opening off each side and in the pavilion. Across the north side of this court was the main residence. This was a single-story building in the local Szechwan style and five jian long.^[3]

We signed a lease for the property. The mission agreed to pay for lumber and materials for the needed alterations. The YMCA was to pay for the labor. We moved into the rooms on either side of the tingzi . The large room on the east was our living room; the corresponding room on the west was our bedroom. The windows were paper, the doors anything but tight. Luckily it was a record winter for warm, sunny days. Great was the excitement at opening boxes the contents of which we had never seen. Some of our household equipment had been ordered in the spring of 1905; it was now the fall of 1906.

The Ladies' Home Journal in those days had many pictures of house interiors. From them we gleaned many suggestions. Our front hall, with a landing halfway up the stairs and a door under this, was copied from such an illustration. The rooms at the two sides of the upper court were torn down and the material was used to expand the main residence. Both ends of the building were widened and a second story, for bedrooms, was added. What had been a long, single-story structure connected to the side buildings of a court now became an H-shaped, free-standing, two-storied, semiforeign house. Most rooms were Chinese lath and plaster, but there was a wooden wainscoting in the study, and the dining room was panelled in wood. The kitchen was at the back but within the main house. Most people had detached kitchens, so ours was considered a novelty. Of course it lacked any built-in cabinets. But we had plenty of cupboards made according to my plan. Table tops were finished in glistening black varnish with the tung oil base that is now so much in demand abroad.^[4]

There was no one to manage the workmen but Bob; no one to show the masons how to construct a brick fireplace and chimney but Bob. He was kept busy all day, often finding his limitations of language most trying. What we did not know about house construction or domestic management we had to learn, and were glad of advice by those who had been through similar

[3] A jian , often translated "room," is the standard space between pillars in Chinese residential construction. My memory guesses that it is about eleven or twelve feet.

[4] Tung oil, or wood oil, comes from the kernel of a tree that is widely grown in East Szechwan. Before the day of synthetics it provided the base for the best varnishes and used to be a major Szechwan export.

experiences. To our youthful enthusiasm, everything moved at a snails' pace; still, there was progress. Early in 1907 we began to move into the house proper.

The sewing machine whirred hour after hour as I made curtains for every one of the new windows, which boasted so much glass that our Chinese friends were amazed. Next to the glass of our small casements in the big south bay of our living room hung little, ruffled, white dotted-swiss curtains looped back at the sides. Over-drapes were of a soft, rather heavy blue silk figured in a woven geometric design. (This material was later dyed and re-dyed until I finally gave it away in Tsingtao in 1934, still not in any way worn out.) On the floor of this room we put our tan and blue Tientsin carpet. How we danced about on this when it was unpacked and spread on the floor! On my birthday Bob gave me a cute little tea-table with a shelf. He had designed this himself and had it made by a carpenter on the place without my knowledge. What a joy it was to move into a clean, second-floor bedroom with nicely oiled floor, large casement windows, a clothes closet, and an adjoining bathroom with convenient backstairs for the carrying of bath water!^[5]

I was having attacks of severe abdominal pain every now and then. When a paroxysm hit I would hope I'd never live to experience another. Sometimes I seemed to lose my eyesight and could only feel for Bob's hand in my keen distress. We both tried to study as we could, and the teacher came regularly; but I was busy teaching absolutely green servants, and Bob had to be vigilant with the workmen. His neglect might mean a waste of time or material. But any negligence on my part might mean contamination of our food and consequent illness. I had to be on my job.

Looking back, I have seen many excellent servants to whom one can trust the details of foreign kitchens, but their care and method has been learned in the school of eternal vigilance during their training. To tell a Boy once to do a thing is never enough.^[6] The perpetual daily alertness of the mistress, the repetition of instructions over many months is what finally produces care in the hygienic preparation of our food and the cleaning of our rooms. I have frequently heard women exclaim over stupid servants, saying that it is impossible to train them. There are some impossible to train, but usually it is the mistress who lacks the patience or will not take the time.

[5] Our family lived in this house until 1920. All three of us boys were born there. Since I lived in it for the first eleven years of my life, and relatively short times in other places, I always thought of it as "home." When Caroline and I were invited to return to China in 1971, we visited Chengtu and I asked to visit the house. Where we had lived, there resided some twelve families. The whole place had deteriorated sadly. And it seemed much smaller than I had remembered it! By 1984 the whole compound had been torn down and the site covered with rather nondescript modern buildings. The Temple of Learning had disappeared long before.

[6] When the word "Boy" is capitalized, it will refer to the servant, often of mature age and great dignity, who waits on the table and, depending on the household, fills the role of major-domo or butler. A lower-case "boy" is simply a young lad.

After our return from Mount Omei we had to assemble some servants. There were none to be had who could boast any foreign training, but we did try to find men about whom something was known. The cook was a young man known to the Davidsons. The table-boy was a chap who had been a Yangtze tracker. He was young for that hard life and had been brought to Chengtu by one of the Canadian missionaries. We took him, but he had no suitable clothes, and we agreed to buy the usual long cotton gowns. He was to purchase three, and we gave him the money to pay for them.

One day soon afterward there was a great commotion at our front gate. A man was crying to the gateman that we owed him money. Bob went out and discovered that it was the tailor who had made the Boy's three gowns. As we had already given the Boy this money, he was called and had to admit the debt to the tailor. However, he said he had no money. Bob could not have the tailor suffer for our servant's trickery, so he told the man that we would pay him but that the Boy would have to settle with us. This made the Boy exceedingly angry. Realizing that he had lost much face, he flew into a violent, black rage. In a trice, his face turned livid like that of a fury. He threw himself on Bob, yelling, muttering, spitting in his wrath. He seized Bob by the throat and pulled his necktie tight like a noose with his left hand while he struck out with his right in no gentle manner. Bob kept pulling at his collar, trying to loosen it, while he warded off blows. He did not attempt to strike back. Finally the man hit below the belt in a very menacing way.

I had run into the tingzi to find out what was going on. Bob called to me to stay well away; it was impossible to know what the man might do. The gateman had run for the policeman at our corner. This worthy came, but did nothing save look on. A large crowd soon collected at our gate, attracted by the Boy's loud cries that a foreigner was killing a Chinese. But all near enough to see could tell that Bob was not the aggressor. At last, the Boy was prevailed on to leave off his attack. He was then arrested and taken off by the policeman. I had to cut Bob's necktie off. The knot was so tight that it was impossible to untie even when cut free. The man stayed in jail for a week or two and then Bob sent his card to have him let out, Naturally, we did not want to have him working for us. But his old clothes had disappeared so we let him make his departure in one of the new gowns.

This is the only time Bob was ever attacked by any Chinese. By keeping cool and refraining from retaliation, he had all the spectators with him. They saw he had done nothing to warrant the attack. Some of our neighbors (Chinese, of course) spoke later to him and to our gateman about the affair, saying that the Boy had behaved in a very bad manner and that Bob had only defended himself as anyone would. His actions that day won him a place in our whole neighborhood.

Christmas we celebrated quietly at the Canright home on Christmas eve-

ning with the members of the Methodist Mission. We had nuts, fruits, and candy; and enjoyed old-fashioned pastimes such as "Spin-the-platter" and guessing contests. Mr. Joseph Taylor came over from Yachow that winter and married Miss Witte; we saw "Grey Legs" and Helen through the ceremony. This was the first wedding we attended in China. During that winter Archibald Bullock [UC 1906] arrived from California to teach in the government university only a short way down the street from us. He was from Berkeley and had been among the college crowd who saw us off for China. We saw him frequently and liked having him as a neighbor.

In the spring of 1907 I became friendly with the wife of the British consul and used to enjoy her visits. Sometimes she came in the forenoon and we had "elevenses"—cocoa or tea with a biscuit or sandwich. She even helped me hemstitch pongee curtains for the study. Florence O'Donnell was another good friend (we still keep up a correspondence though she left China in 1908). What fun we used to have at dinner parties in those days! Charades were greatly favored by the British. I shall never forget some of them trying to act out words such as "serviceability," "transportation," and "hospitality."

But through all this, our chief concern was to become acquainted with Chinese, particularly the university students who lived near us. One of our friends was Dr. T. Z. Koo, then a young instructor in the government university.^[7] Students and other young men soon began to come around to call and to make friends. Sometimes, we realized, it was mainly to get some practice in English. Bob was constantly meeting new students and finally gathered a group for discussion. They delighted in choosing English names for themselves—such as Lincoln, Bismarck, or Solomon. Often they came to our house for games: tennis, quoits, checkers, and such amusements.

After we settled into our little Chinese house, the rest of 1907 was mostly given to language study. We had few foreign neighbors. The teachers at the government university (three or four were foreigners) were only half a block away; the American Methodists were fifteen minutes by chair. Though we had been told we would be too far away from other foreigners to see much of them, we found that friends came to see us in spite of distance. It was almost an hour's trip over to the Canadian corner of the city, so we could not go there very often.

In the spring of 1907, when I was at my wit's end with the everlasting noise of workmen in our small compound, Bob had sent me over to spend a fortnight with the Canadian ladies. On my return I missed several things

[7] T. Z. Koo became head of student work for the YMCA in China and then became prominent in the international YMCA movement. That Chinese were able to become leaders of the organization in China and then move into a broader international role was one of the differences between the Y and the church-controlled missions.

around the house, the most important being a slender gold chain and a gold locket given by my mother to our baby. I should never have left them in a drawer; but evidently I did, and they were never seen again. There had been a few other thievings earlier, but nothing of moment. I was not well that spring; my severe pain came back; and finally I was upset by a more serious robbery.

We had no safe place to keep our money; of necessity, we had to use suitcases and trunks with foreign locks. We obtained silver dollars by selling Shanghai drafts, usually through the Post Office. There were fifty silver dollars in a roll; they usually came in packages of two rolls, or a hundred dollars. We had been locking these in our sturdiest leather suitcase which was kept in the closet off our bedroom. One May evening we were entertaining the British consul with his wife and some other friends at dinner. While our guests were in the house, we were with them on the ground floor. It must have been during this time that the robbery occurred. We had seen that the money was there during the day. The morning after the dinner, one of us unlocked the suitcase. The steel frame of the case had been forced so that a hand could be inserted. Nearly one hundred dollars were missing.

Such a robbery could not be allowed to go unnoticed. We had to call in the police. They marched all the house servants off—on a day when I had to go to bed ill and a hurry call was sent to the doctor. I lost my hopes of a baby expected for that autumn. I lay for three weeks flat on my back, not even a pillow under my head. Bob had everything to do: cooking, nursing, and all. I had fainting spells and needed to be watched, so he was tied to my bedside. The Methodist ladies took our laundry. They also sent us bread from time to time. The gateman could buy eggs and a few supplies near by; but since there were no other servants to tend the gate, he could not go far. I feel into a sad despondency and wept more than I had ever wept before. Bob was much distressed; the gateman offered sympathy, telling Bob that a woman would often cry a great deal after such a loss. The gateman knew life.

At this juncture, a young man appeared at the gate and offered to work for us. He had been with us for a while a year before but could not get along with the amah we then had. Now, with the amah and all our other servants gone, we gladly took him back. Gradually, other servants were found. The police could not identify our thief, and we did not want to keep the arrested servants in jail indefinitely. Bob finally asked for their release. We could not, however, reemploy them. So the work of training new helpers had to be started all over again.

10
Again to Omei
(1907)

I was still very weak after I got up. It was decided that we should go back to Mount Omei, to Tawosze temple again, for the summer. The first time I went outside the compound gate after my illness was when I rode my chair to our small river boat to start this trip. This time we traveled alone. In Kiating we had another terrific time with mosquitoes. We stayed in the empty house of the Canadian ladies. After we let down our net, these pests came up through a crack in the head of the bed. I doubt if we got half an hour's unbroken sleep that night.

As before, we left our boat at Kiating to proceed by chair to the mountain temple. The Ya River had to be crossed by a ferry. The river was badly swollen and the sky threatened more rain, so we were anxious to hurry on. Bob had to await some of our loads that had fallen behind. I got into the ferryboat with my sedan chair and bearers, the Boy, and a part of our baggage, leaving Bob to come across as soon as he could. Not until we were well out in the stream did I notice how high the waves were running. As we neared the farther bank and were unable to make the usual landing place, I began to see the distress of the boatmen. Our small boat tore along down stream at an alarming rate and they were not able to control it. We were past the gravelly landing and were threatened by large sections of the soft earth bank that were being undercut by the flood and falling into the water. I saw there was fear of our capsizing as the rising wind caught us broadside, so I got out of the sedan chair, freed myself from the boxes and carrying poles, and stood with my arms out of the sleeves of my raincoat. The Boy turned that ashy green which Chinese skin is apt to assume instead of our white pallor of fear. Just as things were looking worse than ever, and a crowd of people on the shore were yelling to us to put back, we saw a small cove where a tiny stream entered the river. Quickly the boatmen shoved with all

their might on the oars and succeeded in pushing the nose of our boat into this haven. Men on shore seized ropes and held us secure. Bob crossed safely on the next trip.

Some days later I wrote an account of this trip in a letter to my parents. Bob asked if he might read it. When he had done so, he asked me as a favor not to send it. I had not thought of how it might strike my father and mother. Bob was always very careful of me, but this could look as though he had been careless of my safety. I changed the account before the letter was posted.

At Tawosze this summer we had a suite upstairs on the north side, on the same level as the tennis court. There was a large living room with a lot of exposed rafters overhead. The bedroom was smaller; and the kitchen scarce merited the name. It was merely a place where one could cook on a makeshift native stove. To it, a dark passage led from our living room. All windows had wooden shutters only, no glass. They were left open and we had plenty of air. If rain came from the north, the shutters on that side had to be closed. The south windows gave onto a veranda, so could always remain open. We hung a few curtains in one corner of the bedroom to make a little private nook for baths and dressing.

We had the same Boy who had come to us in Chengtu when I lay so ill. He acted as a general factotum and was devoted to us. There was also a cook—of a sort. He was the best we could find for the summer. Bob made me promise that I would not go into the kitchen, no matter what happened. I really kept the promise until some weeks after our arrival when we were preparing for another trip to Golden Summit. I happened to venture to the kitchen in search of something the cook could not locate. Our chef, I discovered, had been sweeping all rubbish, including empty food tins, under the rough kitchen table. That heap of refuse was an awful sight for a neat housekeeper! I was not very strong, but I made some metaphorical fur fly.

The Boy was fond of flowers and constantly went out on the mountain-side, bringing back hydrangeas, lilies, begonias in lovely profusion, and many other blooms. He also gathered ferns, roots and all, and fashioned hanging baskets so covered with moss and so filled with drooping ferns that one could not see their bamboo framework. We hung these verdant little baskets on our veranda and in our living room until our place was like a bower.

Bob had swung our big red-striped American hammock from the rafters of the living room, and I spent a great deal of time in it. He also kept two chair bearers for me, as I had no strength for walks or climbs. We used to go out on picnics often, alone or with others, carrying food and water bottles (of course we drank only boiled water, even on the mountain) in the bottom of

my chair. The bearers would sit and watch us eat, filled with wonder at our strange ways. One could see that they had a feeling of commiseration for us as they sampled our queer, cold picnic food.

Keeping food at such a place as the temple was most primitive. We bought a live fowl and perhaps kept it a day or two. Then the cook had to take it outside the temple to kill it; Buddhists do not take life, and our doing so (even off the premises) was only by courtesy of the head priest. We often had a chicken killed Sunday morning and ate it for our noon meal. In the hot weather it would not be safe to eat meat that had been kept overnight, so we tried to finish up such food at the first meal after the killing.

There were some newly arrived missionaries at Tawosze that year. They objected to our having chickens killed on Sunday. The wife came to me and talked long and seriously about how wrong it was to have such work done on the Sabbath; chickens should be killed Saturday if they were for Sunday dinner. I was distressed, but not as much as she hoped. I knew plenty of missionaries had their servants kill fowl on Sunday, so I told her I could not believe my attitude had serious moral implications. It was not a moral issue of the observance of Sunday; it was a necessity for the preparation of wholesome food. An old missionary lady who heard of our conversation took me aside later and told me to pay no attention to such talk. "Tend your own kitchen and foods supplies, and don't mix morals and hygiene." I have always tried to follow her advice.

In the early part of the summer we had a letter from our Chengtu gateman telling us that our house had been entered. The second-floor bathroom window had been broken and entrance effected thereby. The large chest of drawers which stood there had been forced open, in spite of its foreign locks, and evidently things were missing. We wrote to some of the Methodist friends who were in Chengtu during the summer. They visited our compound and discovered that our table linen was the chief loss. We blamed the cook who had been put in jail in May after the dollar robbery. He alone knew where I kept this linen locked up, and certainly he would know that we had left the city. A small alley along the rear north wall of our compound made it possible for a night prowler to scale the wall, about ten feet high, and drop into our tiny backyard far from the gateman, who lived beside our front gate at the extreme south of the compound.

All during 1907, Chengtu foreigners were more or less taken up with plans for entertaining the West China Missionary Conference, scheduled to convene in Chengtu in January 1908. Each Chengtu family would have to keep as many guests in their house as could be managed. In view of this, we had ordered two long Irish tablecloths. These had arrived just before we left for Omei; still unused, they had been locked away for the summer. At this time the Chinese were commencing to fancy the use of tablecloths at feasts

given by officials; our cloths probably became useful somewhere. I could never think of those cloths, and the other wedding linens that were lost, without keen regret.

On our Golden Summit trip that year we stayed an extra day at Nine Old Caves to take in more of the sights of the huge cliff under which the temple shelters. Early on the morning after our arrival, the face of this cliff was alive with monkeys, clambering about in the lush vegetation and chattering away at a great rate. This was a most arresting sight, and it was the only time we ever saw monkeys in their wild habitat in West China.

We took our teacher, Mr. Chu, for the stay on the mountain top. He enjoyed it, and Bob kept up his lessons. I had not the strength for study that summer and was forced to lie about, trying to win back my former vigor. I used to play chess with Mr. Chu, and we three took several rambles about the several summit temples. On any long trip I was carried in my chair. We had marvelous views of the incomparable snow mountains to the west.^[1]

The priests remembered that on our arrival the year before we had immediately seen "Buddha's Glory," and they welcomed us with what seemed to be special regard. They gave us a pleasant suite of rooms. There was a good-sized guest room where Bob could study and where we had our meals, the Boy preparing them in our presence on a small charcoal brazier. Bedrooms opened off either side from this room; Mr. Chu had one, and we the opposite. It was so cool mornings and evenings that we were all glad of the brazier's heat. We spent more than a week at the summit; it was an interesting experience because through our teacher we learned more about the mountain and its temples than we had on our other visit.

On our return to Tawosze we had word from Chengtu that one of the teachers from the government university had been forced to move with his family into our empty house. There had been a big flood in Chengtu, and they had literally been driven out by the high water. This was truly a hard-luck family. The husband had given up a good teaching job in California for what seemed a very attractive offer: a good salary, house, servants, saddle horses, and other benefits such as free passes on the Szechwan railways. Prudently, he decided to proceed alone; his wife and four young children were to await his report before starting out to join him. Arrived in Chengtu, he found that not all was as promised. The housing was a couple of rooms on the campus, where no women were allowed; servants had to be trained; horses could be hired, for a price; and there was no vestige of a railway in Szechwan. But his first mail from America brought word that his family had grown impatient and were already on their way. This was in the spring when we were making over our own Chinese house. The husband anxiously tried

[1] Capping the view would be the 25,000-foot sharp pyramid peak of Minyagonga.

to persuade us to rent a part of it to him. Bob felt sorry for the family and would have agreed. Though it seemed hardhearted, I was firmly against it. The place was simply too small to add a family of six; we needed some peace and quiet for study, and our home was important in the work we hoped to do.

Eventually, the university found a small Chinese house for the teacher and his family. It was close to the university, but on low ground. When the flood came, they had to escape. The husband carried his wife on his back; the oldest son carried the little girl. Our house was the only place to go. We were thankful to be able to provide a refuge.^[2] By the time we returned to the city, they had moved back to their own place, leaving our house in good order. Only our student lamp did not work. I found that their servants had used native oil. After a grand boiling and cleaning and a new wick, it resumed normal functioning.

We became friendly that summer with the old head priest of Tawosze and found him a pleasant, kindly old man, albeit with a remarkable shrewdness and ability to read character. Rumor had it that he had been a man of the world whose desire for a son had never been realized although he took several wives. Finally he decided that he must have offended Heaven, and so sought a priestly life. He had risen to be the head of Tawosze and had made it prosperous.

One of his money-making ideas was the renting of rooms and apartments to foreigners. Once when we were looking at rooms which we thought we might take, we both exclaimed over their age-old dirt and the truly amazing array of spider webs hanging from the rafters. The old priest usually left such affairs to a subordinate, but that day he was with us. He turned to the windows, whose lattices he had caused to be propped open to reveal a mountain scene of great beauty, and remarked: "Do you not come to Omei for rest and a view? Here you have what you seek. These other things do not matter." We once saw his private room; it was an appalling medley of personal belongings, utensils, books, dried medicinal herbs, stores of all kinds, and piles of extra bedding needed for pilgrims. It looked as though there had never been a housecleaning since Creation.^[3]

[2] The family who took refuge in our home from the flood was named Larsen. Not long after this, they left Chengtu and passed out of our lives. By World War II the son, who had spent most of his life in China, became a non-Foreign Service employee of the State Department. I then met him for the first time. In the "Amerasia case" in 1945 he and I were among the six arrested. In the heyday of Senator McCarthy, guilt by association was elevated to new levels. An active group of Washington journalists developed the status of experts through the imaginative use of leaks and tips from persons with obvious access to FBI files. One of these triumphantly announced that Larsen and I had known each other and been associated since our boyhood in China. The association was two years before I was born.

[3] The old abbot's friendship with Grace and Bob probably reflected Bob's developing proficiency in spoken Chinese; as the years passed, it became noteworthy. I have heard Chinese insist that hearing him behind a screen they would not guess that it was a foreigner speaking. But it

was pure colloquial Szechwanese, which could astonish and amuse Chinese from other regions. Having to start out by rebuilding a house certainly helped. Also, it seemed to be against his nature to be with a Chinese—any Chinese—without engaging him in friendly, interested conversation.

The other "business" of the temple was the cultivation and sale of white wax. This is used to harden other waxes and commercial glazes and is quite an important export from Szechwan. It is the product of an insect native to an area southwest of Mount Omei. The insects lay their eggs on the young branches of a certain tree. At the right time the branches are broken off and boiled; the wax rises and is taken off in clean cake form.

The final processing of the wax was at the end of the summer. A large balancing scale was hung outside the old priest's upper temple room so he could see the weighing of all the temple wax. One day I took hold of the large hook and hung my weight on it. I was just seventy catties,^[4] and this was after my summer of recuperation when people were all telling me that I looked well again. I wonder how I looked when I came to the mountain.

A short time before we left Tawosze we had been over to join the first meal in the new cottage of the Beamans at Hsinkaisze. This is now quite a resort with a community of foreign bungalows. The Beaman cottage was the first built there; but only shortly after they moved in, Mr. Beaman was taken ill. They left the mountain, packed up their Kiating home, and had to leave West China. We bought a few pieces of furniture from them, the chief being a handsome desk which had been built to the specifications of a former member of their mission.

From the Beamans we also acquired two fine cows. We also took on Lao Yang, their cow coolie who had been well trained by Mr. Beaman. He proved a quaint old fellow and was a fixture in our household for many years. His wife, whose face was shriveled like a dried nut, also helped with the cows. They spoke a thick, blurred Kiating dialect which often puzzled our ears. Lao Yang liked a nip of hot wine in cold weather for a pain in one leg. A year or two after the old man came to us, our cook wanted a wife; this gay and gallant old cow man took the part of go-between in the transaction.

[4] "Catty" is a Malay word. For reasons now forgotten, early foreign traders in China preferred it to the Chinese word jin . It was usually considered to be one and one-third pounds avoirdupois. Grace's seventy catties would thus be ninety-seven pounds. The imprecision is necessary because the Empire did not concern itself with mundane commercial matters. The merchant guilds in each major trading city established their own standard weights and measures. Furthermore, the jin (or catty) could vary according to the commodity to which it was applied: a catty of tea, for instance, could be less in weight than a catty of coal. This imprecision caused the Encyclopedia Sinica (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1917) to conclude: "It does not seem to be of much use therefore to give a Table of Weights and Measures" (p. 596). The Republic officially adopted the metric system but lacked the power to implement it. In the People's Republic the metric system is universal, "catty" is no longer heard, and a jin is one-half a kilogram (or 1.1 pounds).

We had so appreciated the beautiful flowers and shrubs on Mount Omei that we took back to Chengtu a number of roots and bulbs. Our Boy, devoted to plants, was the one who suggested the idea and he zealously did the collecting. Among the gains for our Chengtu garden were regal lilies, which grew marvelously for us, huge hydrangeas, and yellow-flowered terrestrial orchids.

11
Open House Days
(1907-8)

When we left Kiating that September we hired a cargo boat with a high peng (a rounded mat roof) and a good wooden floor. The Boy had gone with us as cook to Golden Summit and did so well that we now discharged the dirty cook at Kiating, giving him travel money. The hold of our boat was loaded with loose dried beans which looked to be a clean and non-odorous cargo. We put all our things on the floor level, and the boat was large enough to give plenty of room and, best of all, good head space. Our teacher was with us on the boat and we studied as we traveled. We could even sit at our new desk to study and write. The trip to Chengtu was expected to take about a week.

The floods that summer had caused damage along the river and we saw signs on every hand. Once, walking on the bank, we noticed tangled vines above our heads in tree branches. These were peanut vines that had been washed out of the fields and lodged in the trees. Even at Chengtu the river had covered the big stone bridge outside the South Gate. Close to this place, a big section of the city wall had been undermined (and took many months to repair). But, despite the summer flood, the river was now rather low for that time of the year—and our boat was large.

Life was very pleasant for the first two or three days, and we congratulated ourselves on the size and comfort of our craft. Then trouble began. At first we found only a few tiny white worms. In a few hours they had multiplied and were into everything: food boxes, beds, clothing, even into our ears when we took refuge tucked tightly inside a bed net. The little worms were everywhere. Complaints to the captain were useless; worms meant nothing to him. We then tried to hurry the boat, but its draft was considerable and the river seemed to be falling. We could only proceed by the main channel and frequently had to wait for other boats to negotiate narrow spots. After a couple of days of worms, we began to have a pest of little white moths. The

worms were busying themselves in their life cycle under our very eyes. These tiny blundering creatures flew everywhere, and our tempers were decidedly on edge.

I began to feel that we would never reach Chengtu, and the eternal singsong of Bob repeating Chinese phrases after his teacher's intoned speech made me weary beyond words. To be honest, 1 yeas probably as much of a trial to live with as the worms and moths! Bob suggested that from a village about a hundred li from Chengtu,^[1] I could reach the city in a day in my chair, the Boy escorting me. But when we reached the village that evening, it was impossible to find chair men. Next morning it was raining, which ruled out the possibility of making the trip in one day even if bearers could be found. So I settled down to sticking it out on the bean boat. We had still more trouble, having to lighten cargo at one place where the channel was shallow and the current swift. We did not reach Chengtu until the next Tuesday. Then there was a joyous farewell to that nice, clean boat full of its worms and moths with whom we had spent eleven unforgettable days.

We were delighted to reach our Chinese home again. A quick check showed that the robbers had taken practically all my table linen as well as some other things. Otherwise all was in good order. A few days of scrubbing, washing windows, hanging clean curtains, and changing shelf and drawer papers made us as clean and fresh as could be. I liked the new desk very much and had it set up in our living room, where it became my special possession and delight. Bob had a large Chinese desk of red bean wood in his study, so he did not need it. My new desk was of what was called "buried nanmu."^[2] It had a large flat top. On each side above the table top were six small drawers. Between these stacks an open space was just right for a row of books. Below on either side were tiers of large drawers. Many and many a letter I wrote on that desk, and many that I received were stowed inside.

That fall we studied, and continued to widen our acquaintances among Chinese. Bob spent much time and thought making plans and establishing contacts with people. An advisory committee was formed as a preliminary step toward the organization of a full-fledged YMCA. Sunday afternoon meetings were held, sometimes at our house, sometimes at the Hodgkins'.

[1] Ali is generally considered to be approximately one-third of a mile. But when all travel was by foot, precise distance was not as important as a measure of time and effort. The rhythmic flexing of a shoulder pole with a load suspended from each end (or the bamboo poles of a sedan chair) produce a brisk, slightly bouncy stride. Traveling on the level, this standard pace would cover ten li in an hour (on the major roads, this would bring them to a teahouse). Hence the one-third of a mile approximation. But on hilly roads the li could be one-fourth of a mile, or even shorter. Quite consistently, the same distance could be twenty li if one was going uphill, and perhaps only ten li if one was going down.

[2] Nanmu (Machilus nanmu ) is native to West China and was considered to be one of most valuable and beautiful of Chinese timbers. The best trees were reserved for imperial use, often for pillars of the largest temples and palaces. It was also prized for the finest coffins.

15
Tennis teas were an important part of Chengtu social life. One man here
managed to play in a Chinese gown. (Probably in 1908.)

I was still miserable with my severe pain and suffered exceedingly with backaches which wore me out. My cook could not make good bread, and there were no bakeries whatsoever. The bread, rolls, cakes, and cookies all had to come from my hands. For ourselves alone, this was not much; but we entertained Chinese constantly, and they were all pleased to have foreign-style refreshments. Late that year I finally got our new cook, who had been our Boy at Omei, trained to make acceptable cookies and cupcakes. This was a great help. Tea had always to be served to our guests. If they did not eat the cakes served with it, these were gladly pocketed to be taken home to a small brother or sister, to children, or even to a mother interested in sampling the odd things served by the Westerners.

About that time we rented a piece of land at the rear of the Methodist school adjacent to us on the west. It belonged to the mission but was then not needed. It gave us space for two tennis courts with a tea pavilion west of them in the shadow of a high wall. There was also some ground left over for raising vegetables. Eventually we enjoyed many products of our own garden.

Our young friends among Chinese students began to ask if I would call on their families or be at home to receive calls from them. Doors thus opened in both directions, and we became deeply involved in our surroundings. I began to teach English to a few young men. At first my work was individual instruction in conversation and composition. Our careful attention was given to the young man who was later to become the first Chinese YMCA secretary

in Chengtu.^[3] In 1907 I did not keep a careful record of the guests at special teas we had for Chinese students, but I know the total ran into 600 or 700. For 1908 I did keep a weekly record. It gives a total of 967 as counted. However, on numerous occasions we were not able to count late comers, so our figures would read "42 plus" and so on. Also these records showed only those who came to our regular, announced teas. Bob had many individual callers in both those years; in 1908 he doubtless entertained well over 1,200. These contacts were valuable to him and gave me considerable to oversee and manage.

When Chinese women called, I had to drop everything. They often came at inopportune times for us, as Chinese meal hours were not the same as ours, and they would stay and stay and stay. To come at ten in the forenoon, or even around noon, and then sit until three in the afternoon was asking a good deal of a hostess, but we had to conform to the habits of the country. A lady often brought a whole train of attendants: perhaps a sister or two, several grown daughters or younger children, and often four or five amahs. The guests sat down to visit, and the servants stood around gazing at everything and being what one might call movable fixtures in the room. It took me a long time to accustom myself to these calls. Gradually I learned the technique, and despite my lack of adequate language could carry them off with some sort of aplomb. I learned the polite phrases, and could fall back on the children and stock questions. Eventually, some of the women became my real friends, so that barriers no longer made such a chasm between us.

All women guests wanted to see our entire house. Most of them, if they expressed any opinion, thought we wasted too much time trying to be clean: clean kitchens and clean floors were no necessity to them. When I visited their homes, I was impressed by the dirty kitchens and their lack of any adequate attention to the floors. Their kitchens were in what we would call sheds. Most of their floors were dingy brick or grimy wood. Frequent expectoration, together with the habit of allowing babies to urinate freely on the floor anywhere and everywhere, made for unhygienic conditions and offensive odors. Cobwebs never seemed to bother Chinese; to this day I have to call servants' attention to them. Upper walls and ceiling spaces seem never to come within range of the Chinese eye; special orders must be given if you want to be sure that high corners will be cleaned. On the other hand, Chinese take great care in polishing the fiat top and side surfaces of furniture such as cupboards and sideboards; and a Boy will carefully dust framed pictures every day, sometimes even dusting behind them.

[3] The YMCA has always referred to its higher-level salaried personnel as secretaries. The term includes executives, administrators, and program directors. It is, therefore, quite different from the secretary who is an office or clerical employee. Bob, for instance, was always a secretary.

Another of my household duties at this time was my husband's collars. Men were still wearing stiff collars every day. It seemed impossible for the Chinese to get them stiff enough, or to keep from scorching them during the ironing. And there were no tailors in these early years who knew anything about "foreign-style" sewing. So what sewing I needed, I also did myself, by hand and machine. I sent for American patterns and made clothes as I could, studying the illustrations of magazines and inspecting the clothes of new arrivals from home. It was my boast that I could cut out a man's shirt one evening and have it finished, save buttonholes, by the next afternoon. I learned to stitch such pieces without any basting and thus could save time. I taught my amah to do buttonholes. Her first attempts were what my New England grandmother would have called "pigs' eyes," but Amah improved and became a fine buttonholer.

I was busy during these early Chengtu days. Often I rose at 6:30 in the morning to work down my bread. Then there was study, sewing, and general housekeeping. This could include a lot of mold prevention, and packing away all woolens and winter things at the approach of hot weather. Dry cleaners were unheard of, and laundry work demanded much attention and training of servants. It is quite a task to do up men's white summer suits, be they duck, silk, serge, or flannel. I found the Szechwanese to be good washers but poor rinsers. It was my rule to demand ample water for that use. By this means I kept our clothes from taking on that dull, muddy tinge which many housewives regard as one of the prices of living in the Orient.

Late in 1907 the West China Missionary Conference was impending, and I was determined to find a Boy who would be wide-awake and efficient. I interviewed several prospects without success. At last a young fellow named Liu Pei-yun appeared. I had never wanted a country boy, because it seemed to me that some education, however little, would hold more potential for training. This boy was the son of a buyer of silk yarn. He could read and write and was an apt pupil in learning the work expected from him. On arrival he knew nothing whatsoever of any foreign furnishings or usages. When I first showed him how to set the table, he asked what the forks were and how they were used! He became a trusted servant, was married in our home, and worked for us from the fall of 1907 until that of 1920. Bob then helped him set up a business for himself in Chengtu. In later years he visited us several times in Shanghai and has always kept up connection with our family.^[4]

In January the long-planned conference was held. As all the out-of-town people had to pay their own travel expenses, we Chengtu residents were ex-

[4] Liu Pei-yun's service to our family gradually went far beyond the role of cook. I remember him, for instance, far better than the amah who tried to look after me. The business venture, though, had an unhappy ending—but that comes much later.

16
The West China Missionary Conference at Chengtu in January 1908. The building Was the justcompletedhospital of the (American)
Methodist Episcopal Mission. Though Chinese garb was popular, thereappears to have been only two or three Chinese present—and
their positions at the extreme peripheries,right and left, leads one to wonder about their status. Grace and Bob are at the upper right-
hand corner: she with a rather large hat, Bob just behind her with only the top of his face showing.

pected to share by providing free accommodations. Bob and I moved into the ground-floor room behind our living room, giving our bedroom to Charlie and Robina Service of Kiating with their three little girls. Our other upstairs bedroom at the other end of the house was occupied by Dr. and Mrs. Tompkins of Suifu [now Yibin]. A room connecting with the dining room and kitchen, generally used as an ironing room and a place for drying clothes by charcoal heat (often necessary in our Szechwan drizzle), was transformed into a bedroom for two more visiting men.

Of course we did not have this many beds. We used camp cots ourselves. For the guests in the lower room we borrowed two slit-cane bed frames laid across benches. Heavy cotton pugai were quite satisfactory in lieu of mattresses. All the guests came with their road bedding, so there was an abundance to keep us all warm.

The conference was held in the newly completed Methodist hospital at the Shansigai compound.^[5] As some of the attendants were too far from their lodgings to return for the noon meal, their hostesses had to send lunches to the conference building. Also, many were British and devoted to their afternoon tea in a way not always understood by Americans. This had also to be served daily, and made much work for many faithful Marthas, who had little time for the enjoyments of the Marys who could attend all the meetings.

Since our house was relatively near—less than fifteen minutes' walk from the Methodist compound—our guests returned for lunch. Often there were four or five extras. With these, our nine house guests, and ourselves, it made quite a gathering. It was a strenuous time for our kitchen staff and equipment. I had previously arranged with Robina Service that her efficient cook would do all the baking. He turned out bread, rolls, muffins, cookies, and cakes in abundance and took a great load off my shoulders. My cook had his hands full with the other items of our daily needs. We had laid in potatoes from Kiating (hard to get in those days) and had made mincemeat and pickles.

About two hundred and fifty people attended the conference, and it proved to be an interesting and worthwhile gathering. Among speakers from afar were Mr. Sloane of the China Inland Mission and Dr. Arthur H. Smith of Shantung. Mr. Pollard of Yunnan, though of our own West China region, had to travel for as long as any of these to attend. Dr. Shelton and Mr. Ogden came with their wives from Tatsienlu on the Tibetan border, where they had been studying Tibetan in preparation for their move to Batang—thirty days

[5] The hospital where the conference was held was a very solid brick building of three or four stories. Its sturdy construction, and the fact that its surroundings were all low, led to its being used as a fortress by one of the armed Red Guard factions during the violent phase of Chengtu's Cultural Revolution in 1969. When I first returned to Chengtu in 1971, it was surprising to see this old mission landmark bearing heavy scars of rifle and artillery fire.

in toward Lhasa from Chengtu. All five of these leaders have now [1937] passed on.

It was a rare treat for us to see so many foreigners and to meet people of whom we had heard. To me the most inspiring talk was one by Mr. Pollard, who followed his address by presenting several Miao tribesmen who had accompanied him to Chengtu. These rather rough-looking fellows sang in their own tongue the hymn "Washed in the Blood of the Lamb," making a great impression by the evident longing and sincerity in their hearts.

On the last day of January there was much excitement over the visit of the viceroy, His Excellency Chao Erh-feng. The next day was the last of the conference, and Bishop Bashford gave the closing address in the afternoon. A group photograph was also taken that day. The same evening we entertained Dr. Arthur Smith and others for dinner. On the following Sunday, Bishop Bashford conducted a dedication for the new Methodist hospital, which had already been the conference site. This ceremony closed with the celebration of communion.

The next day guests began to leave. To the hostesses this meant providing each party with a cooked roast (beef or several fowls) and plenty of bread for their road boxes. The Charlie Services stayed on with us for their own mission conference. Their baby, Frances, was quite ill for a few days, and I helped her mother prepare whey for her diet. Winifred, the oldest child, had her fifth birthday during these days; we fixed a cake with candles and got up a small party with the Canright children as guests.

Our good friend Dr. Florence O'Donnell was now getting ready to leave China after a five-year term of service. She had become engaged to a man in her home, Nova Scotia. Great was the sorrow among her friends, both foreign and Chinese. For many years we were constantly asked about her welfare. One day before she left, a group of us, including the H. D. Robertsons and Mr. Fox (the British consul, later Sir Harry) took a ramble to some property outside the South Gate which had just been acquired as a site for the West China Union University. We sat on graves there and wondered what our surroundings would look like in a few years. Some one hundred and fifty acres are now the attractive campus of this thriving university. The buildings, trees, shrubbery, and grass have entirely changed the looks of those fields and grave mounds.^[6]

The American community grew slowly. Late in 1907 another young Californian, C. W. Batdorf [UC 1906], had come to teach in the government uni-

[6] During China's Resistance War (1937-45), the West China Union University gave refuge to several leading Christian universities from East China cities occupied by the Japanese. Thus it became, along with Kunming, where the principal government universities found refuge, one of the two leading intellectual and academic centers of China during those war years. Today it has become a much enlarged medical university and dental school. But the local people still refer to it by the old name, Huaxiba (West China campus).

versity near us. He and Mr. Bullock [also UC 1906] kept bachelor's hall together. We were always glad to help them when we could; I made curtains, sheets, and such items for them. Early in 1908, Chee Soo Lowe, a California-born Chinese who had graduated in mining from the University of California [still another member of 1906], came to investigate the mineral resources of Szechwan under employment by the viceroy. He was often in our home and we greatly enjoyed him.

As the Chinese ladies became less bashful I began to have more callers. Many of them besought me to start some sort of classes for them. They wanted to "learn foreign ways," to knit, crochet, and even to bake the light cakes which they ate in our homes. We were constantly invited to Chinese feasts. Here the procedure is the reverse of our custom. Chinese socializing is done before the meal, and the guests leave directly from the table: This meant that we often sat talking while the very food we were to eat was in preparation. We might hear the fowls squawking as they were chased and killed to be served to us later. The men and women always ate in separate rooms: the men in the main hall or some such public apartment, while we women were relegated to women's bedrooms. I was teaching a few pupils and kept busy in spite of not being well. I still had my attacks of severe pain now and then and was forced to spend a good many days in bed.

12
Journey to the West
(1908)

My health was a problem; the doctor thought it might even necessitate my return to America. Such a prospect seemed terrible. I was devoted to our enterprise. I could see with what devotion Bob threw himself into work with young men; it was his very life. I felt I also had a share in it. And we had both learned to love China and the Chinese friends with whom we came in close contact in Chengtu. It was thought best for us to try a lengthy vacation in as different an environment as possible.

It seemed that this summer of 1908 would be our last chance to vacation at any considerable distance from Chengtu. In another year, we expected, the Chengtu YMCA would be organized and require Bob's attention; Mount Omei would be too far away. But for now, we had been to Omei the last two summers and were ready for something new. Furthermore, the elevation of 2,700 feet at Tawosze temple did not give much of a change from the 1,700 feet at Chengtu. Our eyes turned toward the Tibetan border. Here we could be among high mountains in a much cooler and more invigorating climate. Our Chengtu friends, the R. J. Davidsons, had gone in with a small party to Tatsienlu in the previous summer.^[1] From them we learned about the trip and the equipment needed.

The spring was a time of preparations—in addition to our usual affairs. The Sheltons and Ogdens, whom we had met at the conference in January, were in Tatsienlu getting ready to move on to Batang, a big step forward into Tibet. Fortunately for us, the Ogdens stayed when the Sheltons moved on. The only other foreigners in this remote town were the Sorensons of the China Inland Mission and occasional game hunters and plant collectors who passed through on their wanderings.

[1] Tatsienlu is now known as Kangding.

We wrote to the Ogdens for help in planning and could scarcely have arranged our camp without their friendly and thoughtful help. In Chengtu we had new folding camp cots made from a British army model (sewing the canvas tops was very difficult without heavy equipment). We also made new folding chairs, which added greatly to our comfort in camp. Bed nets had to be remade, and several butterfly nets were prepared. Bob had become keen on that hobby and wanted to see what new trophies he might find in higher altitudes. Our supplies were all carefully chosen. We had road boxes of galvanized-iron made. Even though the lids fitted tightly, they were—to our regret—not entirely watertight. Cuts had to be made in the metal sides to attach carrying rings; if a box fell on its side, water could enter. However, they were sturdy and served us well, many of them until we left Szechwan many years later.

Our party from Chengtu consisted of Harold and Vieva Robertson (young Canadians), Miss Collier (an American Methodist), and Bob and myself. We were to go first to Yachow, four or five days overland by sedan chair, and be joined there by Harry and Lona Openshaw (of the American Baptist Mission). The Openshaws were the mainstay of our party. Harry and Lona, along with Miss Collier, were "old-timers." We had been in China two and a half years; Harold and Vieva a little less than two years. Harry spoke Chinese with great fluency and had an outgoing personality that made him quickly popular with everyone around him. With him to manage for us, we felt sure that things would go easily.

One June Saturday, Bob took a language examination. On Monday Dr. Hodgkin started for England where he was to have an operation. That same day, in a mean drizzle, we were completing our packing. Tuesday morning, in a continuation of the same drizzle, we all started off separately from our homes in Chengtu. Our rendezvous was at the stopping place for the first night, eighty li from Chengtu. The inn was a terrible one. It was hot, smelly, and so airless that we felt as if we were suffocating. During the night Vieva and Harold seemingly fainted. One of them called to Bob, but by the time he got to their room both were recovering.

The next day was most trying. Rain fell continuously. The road had no paving of fiat slabs, but was of nigger-head stones in a bed of clay. These rounded stones became superlatively slippery with the tread of feet on wet clay. The going was so bad that we could only manage sixty-five li . The load carriers were even slower than the sedan chairs. Late in the evening, when some of them came straggling in, we learned there had been a robbery. Miss Collier's two boxes had been rifled; one hundred dollars and most of her clothes had been taken. She was happy to discover that another hundred dollars remained. She had purposely separated her money. In one box, the

hundred dollars was at the bottom under a large Montgomery Ward catalogue, from which she intended to compile an order during the leisure of camp. In the gathering darkness, the robber put his hand down and apparently thought the catalogue was the bottom of the box. We all acclaimed "Monty's" good deed of that day!

Our inn that night was again about as bad as one can imagine. Wet filth, pigs, awful odors, and a frightful stuffiness. The Robertsons' bedding-roll had not arrived, and they were tired out after the preceding bad night, so we shared with them. This meant one net for two cots. The floor was unspeakably filthy earth, which sweeping could never make clean. (We believed attempts to clean such places only stirred up germs.) We finally put our two cots on some rickety tables. Miss Collier had sent her servant back with the load carrier to investigate. They returned at two the next morning, which wakened all of us and started a frenzied chorus by the myriad dogs of the village. After breakfast, Bob and Harold went back to the scene of the robbery (only about five li ) while we three women went on to Kiunglai and the Olsens of the China Inland Mission.

We certainly were thankful to get into the Olsens' clean home. Never can I forget the impression her fresh curtains and spotless floors made after those execrable inns. We had a good noon meal and the men soon joined us. They went with Mr. Olsen to see the hsien (county) magistrate about the robbery. (To complete the story of the robbery, when Miss Collier came back from Tatsienlu on her return to Chengtu, she stopped at the Olsens' to see what this official might have accomplished. He returned her money, and presented her with the skeletons of the dresses she had lost. The fiat pieces of dress goods had been neatly cut out of skirt gores and waist sections so that, when held up, each garment's seamy rib-work was all that was left.)

It was pleasant to linger, but we now felt an added urge to reach Yachow. We had planned to spend the weekend there; now we knew we must help Miss Collier to contrive a few garments. We had one more bad inn on the road, and then Saturday saw us in Yachow before noon. We all hurried through baths. Miss Collier was given some material by Lona Openshaw and was able to buy more on the street. That very afternoon we cut two waists, finished one, fitted the other, and had plans under way for Monday's sewing. Miss Collier had sent a runner back from Kiunglai asking her associates at the mission in Chengtu to send underwear and other clothing. We nearly finished a dress for her on Monday, and that night the runner came from Chengtu with a parcel of clothing. We were ready to move on. Our stay at the Openshaw house had been most enjoyable, if busy. It was a mental, as well as a physical, delight to be in clean surroundings. The food was good; laughter and gay banter were sparked by Harry's jovial friendliness; and we worked well, spurred by our eagerness to be off on our journey to the west.

We took the road again on Tuesday morning. We now had new carriers accustomed to mountain travel; and our loads were well packed and lightened. It seemed that bad luck was left behind us for the rest of the journey. Soon we were in mountain glens and canyons, following and crossing streams, rising day by day. The third night from Yachow was in a village just below a 9,500-foot pass. The flowers were lovely: tall lilies with up to sixteen blossoms on each stalk, yellow iris, clematis, and many others.

At Hanyuan we came down to the swift Tung River.^[2] It is an interesting city situated on a point where two valleys meet. Steep banks and walls protect it on two sides; the third, landward side had a moat and a higher wall. One city gate was always locked: the wife of an official had used that exit when running away from her lord and master. The point of the city, looking south, rose high, almost like a mammoth ship. This city was a junction of age-old Asian trade routes. The southern road led to Tali in Yunnan, and thence to Bhamo in Burma. Our route, to the northwest, was the old highway to Tibet. Northeast was Chengtu and, at the end of the road, imperial Peking.

We stopped over on a Sunday at an inn in Nitow which Sir Alexander Hosie described as the best he had stayed at in China.^[3] It was good, but there was a pigsty close at hand. We all slept late that Sunday and had pancakes for breakfast. Harry led prayers for us. These were disturbed by an old hen who had evidently just laid an egg. She flapped about the room, cackling and telling the world of her achievement until laughter overcame us. Harry had two religious services for Chinese in the front part of the inn. We went for a leisurely walk in the afternoon while the servants washed linen, baked, and made ready for an early start in the morning. On Monday afternoon we crossed a pass whose altitude we found, by boiling our thermometer, to be 9,200 feet.

We then descended again into the valley of the Tung and followed up that wild stream for most of a day. At one very dangerous spot there had been a recent flood and landslide; we passed with haste and care. Boats cannot be used on this upper part of the river; people cross in buffalo-hide coracles, tub-shaped and fragile looking. At Luring there was no inn. One had burned, another had been undermined by a flood and fallen into the river. We were obliged to go to the official for help. He gave us rooms in his yamen ,^[4] but

[2] The Tung River is now known as the Dadu. It is a major tributary of the Min, a wild river that is nowhere navigable.

[3] Hosie was a British consular official who visited Szechwan in 1883 and was British consul general at Chengtu in 1903-5. He was renowned for his exhaustive travels all over West China, some of which are recounted in Sir Alexander Hosie, On the Trail of the Opium Poppy (Boston: Small Maynard, 1915?).

[4] A yamen was the residence, official and private, of a county magistrate or higher official of the Empire. The word continued to be used to refer generally to a government headquarters.

there was no place for the carriers and they had to fend for themselves. Besides our party of seven foreigners, Miss Collier had in her charge a Tibetan girl named Ossa, who had been attending the Methodist girls' school in Chengtu for several years. Ossa was a protégée of Mrs. Sorensen, who hoped for her help in teaching women and girls at Tatsienlu. Miss Collier had Ossa sleep in the same room with her.

Luting is the site of a famous bridge. It is an iron-chain suspension bridge swinging across the turbulent Tung River in a single span of 370 feet. The bridge was built in 1701 and has been repaired [rebuilt?] several times.^[5] Thirteen chains support the floor and provide side rails, but one cannot help feeling that the bridge is sketchily built. The flooring is of irregular planking with many open spaces. The palings connecting the side chains are few. And there is an airiness about the whole structure hanging so jauntily over the wild and swirling water.

The bridge, though, is vital. One can visualize a thousand varied caravans which have passed over this old trade route. Travelers from India, Nepal, and High Asia have safely crossed the raging Tung by this tenuous cobweb of man's ingenuity. Hidden away in this obscure Chinese valley, it holds the glamor of mystery. Men are provided to escort animals across; mules and horses proceed with head and tail guides to keep them calmly in the straight and narrow path to safety. Because of the swaying of the bridge, most people walk across. Bob and I did so, but Miss Collier decided to ride. Midway across, the crosspiece at the front end of the chair-poles broke, letting the chair down with a great thump. She walked the rest of the way.

We left the Tung valley at Waszekow at about 5,000 feet and only sixty li from Tatsienlu. The next day we climbed more than 3,000 feet, following the roaring, foaming Lu River until we reached Tatsienlu at 8,300 feet. It was wild country; sometimes our path swung high above a stream, at other times it was at the very bottom of a canyon. Along the road there were many teahouses and resting spots for coolies, travelers, and the heavily burdened tea carriers.

These carriers transport brick tea for the Tibetan trade. Each long, narrow package is covered with plaited bamboo and weighs from thirteen to twenty catties: the usual weight is about sixteen pounds. The parcels are stacked crosswise on a wooden back-frame so that the load rises above the carrier's head and is distributed to his shoulders and hips. Mr. E. H. Wilson, the plant

[5] The Luring bridge has become world famous. Its hairbreadth capture in May 1935 by the Red Army was one of the most heroic, and now legendary, exploits of Mao Tse-tung's epic "Long March." It is also interesting to note, in these days of frequent nonhistorical talk of Chinese "annexation" of Tibet in 1950, that the primary reason for this bridge's being built—almost three hundred years ago in the reign of the Kang-hsi emperor—was to facilitate military communications with Tibet, which was indubitably a part of the Ch'ing Empire.

explorer, records seeing a load containing twenty parcels of fourteen catties each.^[6] The load thus weighed three hundred and seventy English pounds.

The coolies are unable to lift these loads from the ground by themselves, and each carries a crutch-stick to prop up his burden whenever he stops. As he rests he expels his breath with the same distinctive whistle of the beizi carriers on Mount Omei.^[7] They can proceed only at a snail's pace; their average time from Yachow to Tatsienlu is twenty days. This is about one hundred and forty miles and is usually done by chair bearers in eight days. When one remembers the heavy loads, the steep roads and mountain passes, and the frequent storms of wind and rain, it is a wonder that they can do the trip in even three times that needed by sedan chairs.

In some places along the road a little cultivation was attempted, mostly of beans and corn. In tiny pockets of rock-bound earth, one would see three or four bean plants. The farmer had to take extreme care; a false step out of the little foothold for his plants (one could not call it a field or even a plot) might plunge him hundreds of feet into a raging torrent. Some of the hillsides were quite bare; others were partly covered by shrubby growth.

On Thursday, July 9, we had our noon meal fifteen li from Tatsienlu. In the afternoon we were met outside the city by Mr. Sorerisen of the China Inland Mission and reached his home for afternoon tea.^[8]

[6] Mr. Wilson was one of the best-known of the many naturalists who combed West China for new and useful plants. See Ernest Henry Wilson, A Naturalist in Western China (London: Methuen, 1913). He was traveling in the Tatsienlu area during this summer of 1908 (see chapter 13 below).

[7] If Grace had gone climbing with her eldest son, she would not have been mystified by the "distinctive whistle" of the load carriers. To some people it seems natural, when one gets winded, to take an extra deep breath. To these mountain men it seemed natural to facilitate the deep breathing by first clearing the lungs. What Grace heard was an explosive exhalation through open mouth and half-closed teeth. Until I read this account by Grace, I was unaware that I had picked up the habit on mountain trips as a boy, or that it was unusual.

[8] Tatsienlu (or Kangding) is an important trade and administrative center in a border area that is ethnically Tibetan but politically within western Szechwan Province. The town itself has had a large Chinese element. For instance, the tea merchants, and also the carriers of those incredible loads of brick tea, would all have been Chinese, as would probably also the cultivators of those tiny patches of beans and corn that Grace describes. One of its chief attractions to foreigners, including Bob and Grace (and their sons), has been that it is considered to be a "gateway to Tibet." By World War II it was the terminus of a primitive, unpaved motor road. Dick had a chance, during 1945, to try to reach it by jeep from Chengtu but had to turn back because the road was blocked by landslides. Now the road is the main eastern route from China into Tibet and Lhasa. It has been greatly improved and paved; buses and truck convoys are frequent. I had a chance to go this way in 1984 when the Harrison Salisburys and I retraced the route of the Long March. But I, too, was thwarted. The alignment of the new highway passes by and leaves the city off on a short spur. We had a long day's trip ahead and there was no need to stop. I looked down on the fabled city from perhaps two miles away.

13
Tibetan Camp
(1908)

We stayed in Tatsienlu at the home of the Sorensens and found mail from America awaiting us. It was wonderful to be in clean rooms; we luxuriated in baths and clean garments. The Ogdens came over in the evening to visit and help us make plans. Miss Collier stayed with the Ogdens after turning Ossa, the Tibetan girl, over to Mrs. Sorensen.

The next morning our party assembled and was soon en route for the camp site, some thirty li beyond the town. Our road wound up the valley of the Lu River and crossed the bridge which is known as the "Gateway to Tibet." The site was beyond the summer palace of the King of Chala and near a small Tibetan village consisting of a few clustered houses. The sides of the narrow valley were covered with grass, flowers, and shrubs, with no large trees anywhere near. The general effect was like the high mountains in Colorado. Tibetan women walked off with our boxes on their heads or shoulders while their men looked on and nonchalantly rode their horses or gamboled about in a carefree manner. They did not have the curiosity that Chinese always show when any new person or thing enters their range of vision.

Mr. Ogden had rented Tibetan tents for us. Ours leaked: it was made habitable by the loan of a tent fly from the Ogdens. The sides of the tent were separate from the roof and could be raised or lowered to cool and ventilate the tent. Most of the tents were unlined, but ours, about ten by twelve feet, had a lining of figured Indian cotton. The design was printed in tans, browns, and soft reds on white; and the figures were Indian: turbaned, full-trousered people with leopards, elephants, and conventional flower forms. The camp had five sleeping tents and one with extending fly for kitchen and dining room. We four women took turns keeping house.

In the village we bought yak or dzo milk.^[1] From the milk we made butter.

[1] The dzo is a yak-cow hybrid which serves most of the functions of the yak in areas, like Tatsienlu, that are slightly below the high altitude favored by the yak.

Every few days we sent a servant to Tatsienlu. He went down late in the afternoon so as to be there for early morning market on the following day. He was given inn money and was not to go to the foreigners in Tatsienlu unless we sent letters or messages. Food supplies were simple but we could get excellent yak (dzo ?) steaks, a limited variety of vegetables, and expensive eggs brought up from Waszekow. I am sorry to say that these were not always worth the care taken to get them a day's journey to Tatsienlu and then to us. Everyone insisted that hens would not thrive in Tatsienlu; hence the need to bring them up from down the road.

We named our camp "Chala" in honor of the district in which Tatsienlu is situated. Camp Chala was at an elevation of 10,500 feet and near the Lu River, from which we got our water. It was also not far from some hot sulphur springs.^[2] One of the first days we were in camp our servants visited these springs and reported that the water was very hot and very cleansing. They evidently enjoyed a good soaking. Our men then had the coolies clean out the pool so it would be more attractive. We women ventured down there for baths, using a small pup tent as dressing room, and old clothes for bathing garments. The big thrill of our bathing was to follow the warm dip by a cold one in the nearby river. In these and similar hot springs, the Tibetans are reported to take an annual bath, getting in for a long soak and wearing their ordinary clothing. This takes the place of weekly ablutions and laundries for the whole year.

The steep sides of our valley blocked views of the snowy mountains on either side; but at the head of the valley there was a magnificent snow peak with a glacier on its flank. This glacier fed the Lu River, so it is no wonder that its water was like ice. In the clear mornings this peak was a fine sight and seemed very near. Also, in the early mornings there was often frost around our tents. The hardy wild flowers were not abashed by it and grew everywhere, even persisting inside our tents, where they stood under our cots and between the few planks which served in lieu of flooring.

We frequently went on rambles and picnics. The Tatsienlu friends came out to visit us now and then. And there were other occasional visitors. Among them were E. H. Wilson, the noted plant explorer; Mr. Zappey, a bird collector; Mr. Lowe, our Chinese-American mining engineer; and Captain Malcolm M'Neill, a big-game hunter. Once we met a French doctor and his wife who were evidently staying with the Catholics at their Tatsienlu mission. The men also spent a good deal of their time hunting. They shot pheasants and pigeons and kept us so well supplied with the latter that I vowed before the summer was over that I had eaten enough pigeon potpie to last a lifetime.

[2] when I passed this way with the Harrison Salisburys on our 1984 Long March, I thought the motor highway might be close to the site of Camp Chala. So I inquired for hot springs. I found that there are several in the area.

17
Enjoying life at Camp Chala. Grace is in the center. Bob, with his new-grown
beard, is on her left. On her right is Mrs. Sorenson from Tatsienlu, who was
visiting the camp that day with her children (one in her lap, a second held
by a Tibetan nurse at the far right).

The men made several excursions up to a glacial lake. They named it Lake Davidson in honor of E. J. Davidson of Chengtu, who had inspired our own trip by visiting the area the year before. On one occasion Bob and Harold Robertson had the coolies carry up a small tent and food. They spent the night at the lake and then climbed the next day to an elevation of 16,500 feet up the side of the high peak and onto the glacier. They arrived back at Camp Chala in the evening after their two-day trip just as a fierce storm struck us with rain, high wind, and a heavy fall of hail.^[3]

[3] Bob and Grace both loved the mountains and were fervent environmentalists long before being one became so popular. This Tibetan summer was an experience that they often reminisced about. Grace's feeling for nature was rather philosophical. She was a John Muir enthusiast and had most of his books. For Bob the lure was more physical: the excitement and challenge of climbing, and the pleasure of exploration.
For exploration was, indeed, an important and ever-present element. At that time, all the mountain areas of West China and the Tibetan borderland were little known and very sketchily mapped. It was the heyday of plant explorers bringing home wonderful new varieties of flowers such as rhododendrons and camellias. Hunters came for ordinary things like bear and leopard and, more seriously, for Himalayan exotica such as the goral and the serow (genera of goat antelopes); an even greater rarity, the giant panda, was sometimes thought to be a myth (the first live specimen was not collected until the 1930s). It was natural for travelers in these regions to feel a kind of obligation to collect useful information. Note, for instance, Grace and Bob's carrying a boiling-point thermometer (technically, a hypsometer) to determine elevations (relying on the fact that the boiling point of water falls as the elevation rises). Bob started collecting butterflies as a hobby, but he also hoped to find new species.

Housekeeping chores kept the women busy for a good part of the day with preparing meals, giving out supplies, doing laundry, making butter, and such items. In the evenings we played games and almost always went early to bed. The night air grew quickly cool, and our lanterns did not give much light for festivities. The men did get m a good many chess games; I remember going to sleep with two chaps huddled over the chessboard in our tent.

While we were there m camp, Bob received word from the International Committee of the YMCA in New York that we were to buy land and build a residence in Chengtu. This excited and pleased us, and we spent quite a bit of our time thinking and talking about house plans. The International Committee later decided not to build for the time being; so our excitement was all in vain.

We visited the large, barrel-shaped prayer wheels set in a small stream near our camp and turned by waterwheels. We went to see a captured leopard at the summer palace of the King of Chala. We crossed the river and climbed the mountainside to inspect a leopard trap. And we had our own leopard scare one evening at dinner when the servants were alarmed by suspicious noises near the cooking tent. We closed the tents at night, but they were flimsy shelters. We often heard the trampling of dzo s as they grazed nearby, or their whoofs as they ambled off in the early morning. We woke early, for the sun on the roof of a tent was not conducive to lengthy sleep. Often there was Harry, still in his pyjamas and mounted on his horse (named Red), whooping us all up as he tore off for a dip in the hot spring. Jokes and friendly banter made camping jolly for all.^[4]

Harry's mafu (horse coolie), named Lao Tsao, had some friends in Tatsienlu, presumably fellow horsemen. He liked a good time and complained that he was not getting enough money to give him appropriate "face." (The reason for his scarcity of money was that Harry was having a part of his wages paid to his wife and family back in Yachow.) One night there was a commotion among the servants; someone had come from the village, where the horse and his keeper were quartered, saying that Lao Tsao had tried to commit suicide. He first drank as much native wine as he could afford. He then tied his cloth turban around his neck as tightly as possible. (In Szechwan many men wear cloth turbans, especially horse coolies, load car-

[4] The people who shared this trip remained close friends, especially the Services and the Openshaws, who, to us boys, were much-loved Uncle Harry and Aunt Lona, more "real" than those other aunts and uncles in faraway America. When I remember her, Lona had become a comfortably ample, very "motherly" woman. Harry remained spare and full of energy, never silent for long, full of yarns and stories. He and Bob would keep up a steady flow of banter, joshing, and good-humored teasing wit that could entertain both foreigners and Chinese. If there was anyone who understood how to interest and amuse a young boy, it was Uncle Harry. Fate was not kind, for they never had children.

18
Harry and Lona Openshaw (about 1910). Yachow, where
Harry worked,was a small, frontier town. He wore Chinese
clothes because he found thempractical and comfortable,
but he did not follow the example of many of his fellow
missionaries in remote locations, who tried to reduce their
visibility with a queue.

riers, and other outdoor workers.) Harry rushed off to the village to see what could be done. Lao Tsao's throat stricture was removed, and he was revived and admonished—with the aid of some cash to restore his face as a servant of foreigners.

There were three high spots of the summer: a visit to the Dorje Drag Lamasery, a mile outside Tatsienlu, where we witnessed a Devil's Dance; a trip to Jedo Pass (for the men); and a picnic trip to the Moshimian Pass. We also went down to the King of Chala's summer palace to see the barley harvesting. The reaping was carried out by whole families who gathered to make the affair a regular festival. They erected booths to live in and seemingly had a good time at their work.

For the Devil's Dance, our Tatsienlu friends had made plans. We had fine seats on the veranda, or gallery, overlooking the courtyard where the dance

took place. The costumes were of rich materials in the brightest colors and in the most fantastic mariner, with much gold and silver thread, tassels, and jingling metal. Each lama performer wore a large head mask fitted in such a way that his eyes looked out through the mask's mouth. Thus the height of each performer was increased, which added greatly to the effect.

The dancers came out in groups, often dressed in similar style, and performed to the music of drums and long and short trumpets, with now and then a blast from a conch shell. The musicians sat at one side and made a picturesque appearance. The long trumpets were the most intriguing of the instruments,' being some eight feet in length and resting on props near their open ends. The dance movements were stately and resembled in some ways the dances of North American Indians. There were wizards and demons, goddesses and heroes, and kings with many attendants. Some wore human and some animal masks. Of the latter, the most important seemed to be a stag in imposing regalia.

The ignorance about the meaning and symbolism of this ceremony is surprising. It was hard for us to discover what was going on; even our Tibetan-speaking friends were not able to give us much help. Some years later I found an account of this same festival in this very lamasery. Those who are interested may read this fine description in A Tibetan on Tibet by G. A. Combe, a former British consul in China. Mr. Combe characterizes some of the climactic parts of the ceremony as "relics of the human sacrifices of pre-Buddhist days."

We were permitted to visit the shrines in the lamasery. In the main hall there was a considerable collection of brass butter lamps lit in honor of the festival. There were also butter images of some of their deities. We met Mr. Lowe, Captain M'Neill, and others at the Devil's Dance; as we had all brought food, we ate in picnic style together.

After the meal we met the King of Chala, then living in Tatsienlu and so shorn of any former power that he was chiefly tolerated as being useful in providing ula (a form of corvée to provide animal transport) for travel between Tatsienlu and Batang.^[5] The king had two wives; as the first had not produced a child and the second had, he had elevated the latter to a position equal to that of Number One. The women of our party were taken to meet these two queens. Both were similarly dressed in long Manchu-like gowns of heavy dark-blue satin brocade, stiff with gold-thread Chinese characters, which looked like geometric figures on the rich background. Though their

[5] This Tibetan borderland was divided into many small hereditary states, which were treated by the Chinese as tributaries. The heads of the smaller units were called tusi ; chieftains of larger areas were given the Chinese title of wang (king). As Grace says, their power was much circumscribed (especially in a Chinese enclave such as the town of Tatsienlu); but the Chinese government had little direct contact with the rural Tibetans, finding it quite satisfactory to rule indirectly through these native princes.

garments looked Manchu, their heads were elaborately dressed in Tibetan style with braids and much silver, coral, and turquoise ornamentation.

We had not garbed ourselves for attendance on royalty. I was wearing a khaki suit with a Norfolk jacket and short skirt over riding trousers, high boots of tan leather (these always intrigued both Chinese and Tibetans!), and a soft white silk blouse fastened up the front with pearl buttons. The royal ladies had little conversation; the only thing I remember was a question directed to me by the Number One Queen. From the magnificence of her satin gown and heavily ornamented head, she inquired why I wore fish bones on my clothing. She had noticed that my buttons were of pearl ("fish bone") instead of precious metal.

In August, Harry, Harold, and Bob went off with Mr. Sorensen on a trip to Jedo Pass. This pass, some 15,000 feet in elevation, is several days "in" from Tatsienlu on the road to Litang, Batang, and finally Lhasa. The men were gone five days, and the Ogdens stayed with us women in Camp Chala while they were away.

On August 20 the Robertsons and Miss Collier left for Chengtu; the Openshaws and we had decided that we could stay on for another week. On one of our last days, we four went on a picnic to the Moshimian Pass. This was in the opposite direction from Jedo and gave onto the high levels of the Black Tent Tibetans. The altitude of this pass we found, by boiling our thermometer, to be 13,100 feet. Lona rode Harry's horse, and I went in my light mountain sedan chair carried by the men who had stayed with us all summer. It was hard for me to walk at 10,000 feet, and I had used a chair nearly every day. The day was fresh and bright, the air crystal clear, and we had transcendent views of the lofty snow peaks. Four big glaciers were all spread before us as though we could reach them in a short time. However, we knew the distances were deceptive.

We saw many rhododendron bushes and could look across the pass to forests below on the other side of the divide. There was a keen, chili wind, while the blazing sun burned us all and made our skins feel taut and fiery. During our return in the afternoon, the others had all gone ahead while my men were plugging slowly along with my chair. Suddenly there was a snort and a whoof as we were passing a marshy pond in a little meadow. Confronting us was a large, angry-looking dzo with lowered head and long, waving body hair like swinging skirts. The chair bearers began to falter, and the front man called out that they had better put down so all could run. That was the last thing I wanted, since the men could run and I would be left alone with the beast. So I told them not to set down. The old dzo came toward us in a threatening manner, but the men hustled as fast as they could and finally reached some bushes that took us out of the irate creature's sight. Dzo used to graze regularly around our camp; most of them were accustomed to

people and never showed any hostility. The long petticoat-like hair on their lower body and flanks gives them a strange look and makes them appear larger than they really are.

Bob went out several times with Mr. Ogden to hunt bear, but they were never successful.^[6] His largest trophies were pheasant, grouse, and rabbit. One afternoon I saw a bear as I returned in my chair from a trip along a river path above our camp. The animal was across the river, busily gathering berries from bushes close to the water. It stood up and stuffed these into its mouth. We had both wild blackberries and strawberries close to camp.

On Thursday, August 26, we rose early, and I made butter in preparation for the travel ahead of us. We had laundry done. In the afternoon we were in our tent with clean things folded and lying around us on the two cots as we packed our road boxes. There was regularly a stiff breeze in the late afternoon, but that day the wind suddenly turned into a gale. Our old tent blew up and crashed down upon us. It was a great mix-up, but we finally were able to emerge to begin chasing our garments, many of which had blown out as the tent went down. Some caught on bushes; others flew farther afield. Our packing was at last accomplished, and we set up our cots in Miss Collier's former tent for our last night in camp.

Next morning, the fiftieth of our days in Camp Chala, Messrs. Sorerisen and Ogden and Captain M'Neill came out for noon dinner and to help us break camp. Lona Openshaw on Red (Harry's horse) and I in my chair set off for Tatsienlu, leaving the men to finish dismantling the camp.

[6] Bob never lost his zest for hiking and climbing, but he must have lost interest in hunting. He kept his rifle and shotgun, but in the years that I can remember they were almost never used. And I cannot recall that the possibility of my learning to shoot was ever even mentioned.

14
Home from the Mountains
(1908)

In Tatsienlu we stayed with the Ogdens, the Openshaws with the Sorensens. Our plan was to do some shopping in Tatsienlu on Saturday, rest on Sunday, and make an early start for Yachow on Monday. Friday evening, Captain M'Neill came for dinner at the Ogdens; the talk was strictly of hunting, mostly of what might have been. The shopping on Saturday was chiefly of silver. Tibetan silver shops, at least those in Tatsienlu, do not carry much stock, so most of what we wanted had been made to order. One was a long silver chain, like those which Tibetan women use to hold up their aprons. I used it as a muff chain during the winter of 1915-16 when we were on furlough in America. Many people have spoken of it; even strangers have asked where they could buy one like it. Sunday morning we heard Harry preach in Chinese, and in the evening went happily to close the day with a sing at the Sorensen home. But bad news met us, and it was not a happy evening.

The Tibetan girl, Ossa, who had traveled with us from Chengtu under the watchful eye of Miss Collier, had had an intrigue with our cook, Fu. He had seen her on the road and had been coming to her room in Tatsienlu when he came into town to do our marketing. Of course, on all of these trips he had been given inn money. He was also told not to go to the Sorensens' at all unless specifically sent there with messages. The Sorensen home was built in Tibetan style, so they lived on the second floor. This girl occupied a room below the Sorensen bedroom. If she had called out or expressed any alarm at any time, they would easily have heard her.

In true Chinese fashion, everyone in the whole town seemed to have all the facts at his tongue's end. The wretched affair had come to light through the Chinese adherents of the mission, who knew that Fu was about to leave Tatsienlu with us. The girl claimed that entrance to her room had been forced, but this excuse was flimsy; no noise had ever been heard, nor had she

made any complaint to the Sorensens or to anyone else. It seemed to us that the Sorensens were responsible for those who slept on their premises; we also thought the girl should have been sleeping with some older native woman. Naturally, we deplored our cook's conduct; but in camp ten miles away, and having given the man money for his lodgings, it was impossible for us to know where he slept when away from camp.

Fu was fired and haled to the yamen . Monday departure had to be given up as Bob tried to work out some plan for the cook. Despite his guilt, we had brought him on this long journey and could scarcely abandon him far from home. Mr. Sorensen, however, thought he should remain in jail. We had to go on, so departed the next day without him. We did leave some travel money so that when Fu got out of jail he would be able to return to Chengtu. Later he did come back, and his old parents appeared and prostrated themselves before us as they beseeched us to reemploy him. We felt we could not: he had caused us to lose much face.

We left Tatsienlu on September l, and my diary reads: "Pleasant day. Glad to get off from Tatsienlu about 9. Friends came outside city with us. Made 40 li before lunch. At Waszekow about 4:30. Good chair men and all went well. River lovely. Read in Marcus Aurelius . Fresh tomatoes for supper.^[1] Stayed in Mohammedan inn. Smelly, but better than the other."

At Luting we stayed again with Magistrate Pao. He and his wife entertained us at dinner and gave us gifts. The room at the yamen was excellent and we slept well. Next morning we were up early, as always for travel, but not as early as the magistrate. When we passed through the front courts of the yamen , we ran into a judicial show. The Da Laoye ("Great Old Father") sat on the high seat of his authority dispensing justice. A crier with strident tone gave forth a summons. A poor craven countryman tremblingly prostrated himself and knocked his head on the paved floor. The whole scene was like a tale from some book of ancient times: the bright sunrise tints reflected from the whitewashed walls; the vivid robes and hangings against the gray of stones; the court underlings with their inscrutable faces; the shrewd-faced official set over this sparse county. In a few moments we took in a hundred details of the official's prestige, the commoner's dependence. It is no wonder that a good, compassionate magistrate was called "father-mother official." Sometimes when he left a post, a grateful populace would hang a pair of his old boots outside the city gate, hoping he would come back to wear them.

We were told not to hurry; when we finally came to the outer gate, there

[1] "Fresh tomatoes for supper" was worthy of note because they were unknown in the native markets of West China at that time. These tomatoes, therefore, had come from the garden of one of the foreign families in Tatsienlu. And that fact made possible the special treat of eating them fresh, for they had not been fertilized with what we foreigners politely referred to as night soil.

were both the magistrate and his wife to see us off with as friendly a spirit as though they had known us for years. We wished we had more adequate gifts to repay their kindness.

One of Lao Tsao's many friends (he was Harry's famous horse coolie who had attempted suicide) had given him a small monkey. It is thought, in China, to bring good luck to have such an animal around a horse. "Monk" was about the size of a large house cat; he was also cute and full of tricks. He sometimes rode on Red, the horse, or perched on Lao Tsao's shoulder. At this time all Chinese men wore queues. The monkey would sit on Lao Tsao's shoulder, holding the base of his queue. At Nitow, in the good inn, a tiny grey and white kitten was fascinated. She came tremulously out of hiding to see what kind of creature this might be. Monk sat rock-still until she was close, then gave a spring and would have nipped her had his chain been a little longer. The poor kitten jumped a foot straight in the air and fled like a streak. As we passed through the villages, the children ran along calling "Baser, ba-ser," a name for any monkey, as we say "Towser" for a dog. Monk answered with gay capers for their benefit. Harry gave these children picture cards, so they considered our passing a double benefit (though they may have found the biblical scenes a bit perplexing).

On our trip toward Tatsienlu, seated one day at a roadside teashop while the men drank tea and rested, we had been told of a local wonder. A horse had been born without ears. When we expressed polite but mild interest, the horse was brought around for us to view his earless and somewhat dejected appearance. Our homeward journey brought us back to the same spot. It was rainy, the narrow road was a small river, and the men were tired. We sat down to tea with no recognition of where we were. At last, one of us asked. The proprietor's wife exclaimed in great amazement: "Why, you were through here a month or more ago. We showed you our wonderful earless horse and you have forgotten all about it. You don't even remember the name of the place!" We hastened to set ourselves right by assuring her we could never forget the earless horse. So here his memory is now preserved.

One of the agreements of this vacation trip was that husbands would not have to shave. Harry found it impossible to raise a decent beard, so he shaved now and then to avoid our laughter at his sparse hairs. Harold Robertson carried a fine dark bushy beard back to Chengtu, and Bob had a genteel Van Dyke of a sandy color. (In these younger years, his hair was light; as a child he had been a towhead.) The Chinese regard really light hair as white, for they know nothing of blondes save for a rare albino.

One day on our return trip we were sitting in a tea shop and an old woman was much taken with my appearance. My skin has never been white for I am a decided brunette, but she spoke of it as light and clear and admired my rosy cheeks. Finally, she asked if she might touch the flesh to feel if

it were like that of the Chinese. This seemed to satisfy her for a while, but then she asked why a young gu-niang (unmarried girl) should have to make such arduous travels. Harry, acting as spokesman, told her that I was not a gu-niang . "She is married to that man with the beard sitting there on the bench," said he. To the Chinese, beards come only with age. When the poor old crone looked at Bob and saw that, to her, both hair and beard were white, she expressed great sorrow that I had to have such an old fellow for husband. "As for travel," said Harry, "she has already crossed a vast ocean and come many hundreds of miles up the mighty Yangtze River." "And where is America?" asked the ancient dame.

Another old woman, deformed by rheumatism and confined to her bed, we had also seen on our way in to Tatsienlu. Her son had a mountain teashop and had placed her ramshackle bed in the main passage to the inner court so she could open her curtains, hardly more than ragged shreds, and see the world go by. Travelers like us made a red-letter day for the old body. We had sat by the couch and heard her tell how kind her son and his family were. On our return trip, Lona and I stopped especially to see the cheerful old soul. We gave her a bar of soap (I doubt if she knew its use!), foreign [paraffin] candles, and a few small native towels—all we could muster in the way of gifts. She was as ecstatic in her thanks as any young bride and called upon everyone within range of her shrill, piping voice to see how foreigners came to call on her and give her wonderful gifts. She was the happiest old woman in the dirtiest old bed I've ever seen or imagined.

We had only a day and a half of rain, rested over Sunday, and arrived in Yachow on September 9. We were glad to see the city again, and the friends there gave us a hearty welcome. The Taylors ["Grey Legs" and his bride from Mount Omei] had us over for supper and a good visit. We saw Viceroy Chao Erh-feng and his large retinue enter the city. He was on a tour of inspection through his viceregency; and we were thrilled to see such a colorful traveling pageant.

The extra day of rest in Yachow gave our coolie a chance to do laundry, and for us to prepare for the next stage of our travel. This was to go from Yachow to Kiating by bamboo raft down the Ya River. It was a longer route to Chengtu. But the inns on the Kiating-Chengtu road were better than those on the direct Yachow road, which we had suffered in on our outward trip. Also, we wanted to see Dr. Service in Kiating; and we were eager for the rafting experience.

The rafts on the Ya are unique. They are made of heavy entire bamboo stalks laid parallel and lashed together. By heating the bamboos, the front of the raft is curved upward like the front of a toboggan. If passengers are carried, there is a platform of thin planking about a foot high. This is carpeted with matting, and over it is a peng (arched roof) of split-bamboo mats. The

round bamboo poles are slippery with water that sloshes up between the poles. Walking, or even standing, tests one's balance—and means wet feet. Bob wore Chinese straw sandals. I tried to stay on the platform under the peng .

There is a surprising flexibility in the raft. One constantly feels a sinuous movement as it is borne over boulders by the rapid current. In shallow places where the water is swift, there is a curious hissing and crackling noise. This is due to the movement of stones and pebbles in the bed of the stream, with the hollow bamboo tubes acting as sounding boards. There are many dangerous rapids and whirlpools. Shooting these places can be very exciting. We felt at times as if we were riding a great sea serpent. At night we tied up at a small matou (landing place), and were off again at dawn. We left Yachow about ten one morning and landed in Kiating about noon the next day.

We stayed with the Services at Kiating and enjoyed meeting friends there. Charlie Service gave me a medical examination. I had a swelling in my left breast, but it gradually disappeared after some months. After this Tatsienlu summer I had very few attacks of my severe abdominal pain. Years later, at the Mayo Clinic in 1915, the doctors told me I had undoubtedly suffered from gall stones during these early years in Szechwan. When I told them of the trip, arduous and far from doctors and surgeons, which we had taken to benefit my health, they looked at each other and said I had been exceedingly lucky. My trouble had been chronic rather than acute, though each spell seemed acute enough at the time. They also said I might have a recurrence after I reached fifty. So far this has not happened. In any case, I certainly never regretted the Tatsienlu experience.

We traveled by sedan chair from Kiating to Chengtu and arrived there on September 18 [twenty-two days after leaving Camp Chala]. It was wonderfully good to find ourselves again in the house on Wenmiaogai. After tents and low inn rooms, our house seemed lofty and spacious. The grass and shrubs at Camp Chala had been green, but not with the lushness of our Chengtu compound. Little balsams and coral-stemmed begonias grew like weeds along the cement paths; our patch of watercress was thriving by the well; the cypress vines were lovely against the north wall; and the hydrangeas we had brought from Mount Omei were magnificent.

Cooked food had been sent in by friends for our first meals. We reveled in home mail and callers, all at once. We did not get to bed until late, for Bob felt he had to develop film before he slept. The next day was Sunday and we stayed home to rest. In the evening we began to read Fisher's Church History aloud. This should be repeated in blazing type. It was a form of discipline, I suppose. The book had been recommended as suitable for young people of our interests and work. We read for months, but it finally vanquished us; we never completed it. If drier reading exists, I do not know it. It was warranted

to put Bob to sleep; and though I am fond of reading, I hated it with a thorough abhorrence. The book has even disappeared from our shelves.

Our first cook had been a Boy from Chungking whom we trained until he went to jail after the robbery in May 1907. Fu, who came to the gate offering to help us when we had no servant, had stayed with us as Boy that summer and later as cook. It was he who made the fern baskets at Tawosze in 1907 and dug up so many plants for us to take back to Chengtu. He was the cook we had taken to Tatsienlu, and left there in jail because of his trouble with the Tibetan girl. Our cooks, it seemed, were fated! Now, after more than two years in Chengtu and having spent many, many mornings in training two cooks, I found myself back where I had started.

This was not quite true, for I was now much more experienced. I had more language, knew what to expect and demand—and I was ready to try again. I decided that I would train Liu Pei-yun, who had been serving us as Boy. He had been working for some of our friends while we were away during the summer and now came back to us. He was young, willing, neat, quick, and clever. I started in making our bread, doing all the baking and teaching him as I worked.^[2]

In one day after our return from Tatsienlu, Bob was taken on the street for an Austrian, a German, and a Frenchman. About mid-October he shaved his beard and appeared as himself again. Gradually we began to get back into our routine: language study, Chinese callers, and all the usual occupations. We tried to gather our friends together at informal suppers and tea parties where we could meet them easily. Many of the (then) young Chinese still recall these occasions though so many years have passed; certainly we have never forgotten them. Bob started some classes for English and Bible study. Plans [or the starting of the YMCA were moving ahead. We continued our little Y prayer meetings: one Sunday afternoon at our house, the next at the Hodgkins'. Mr. and Mrs. J. P. Davies of Kiating visited us that October with their young John.^[3]

[2] Bob really believed that bread, and its many varieties, was the staff of life. Liu Pei-yun became remarkably adept at producing all of them: bread, cookies, cakes, and especially melt-in-the-mouth baking-powder biscuits that seemed to take no time at all to make. Sunday breakfast was a high point of the week because it meant waffles—consumed by us boys as a form of competition.

[3] Grace mentions the visit of the Davies family from Kiating with their "young John." When she wrote this, she knew that John and I had been close boyhood friends and that it was his example that led me to think of the American Foreign Service. But she could not, unless she was clairvoyant, know the extent to which our lives would later be linked. During World War II we were both attached to the staff of General Joseph W. Stilwell, commanding American forces in the China-Burma-India Theater. As observers on the scene, we came to the conclusion that the Chinese Communists would win the coming struggle for power in China. This led, in the strange logic of the McCarthy days, to our being prominent in the list of those responsible for "the loss of China." And this led, finally, to our both being separated from the Foreign Service. Today when I meet people whose memories reach hazily back to the McCarthy days, the chances are about even that they think I am John Davies. I expect that John has the same experience.

On November 17 in the forenoon we heard of the death of the ill-fated young emperor, Kuang-hsu. Soon after tiffin, a Chinese friend stopped by to tell us that the empress dowager, Tz'u-hsi, often called the "Old Buddha," was also dead. It seemed a strange circumstance to our friend that the death of the old empress had been preceded only a few hours by that of the unfortunate emperor. No reforms could now be carried out under the emperor's patronage.^[4] The friend thought there would be unrest, perhaps even war. He thought it would be wise for foreigners to leave China. We were interested, but not alarmed.

That year my birthday fell on Thanksgiving Day. The American community had a fine goose dinner at the Canrights'. Fourteen people were at the table, one being a Scot. We dug our potatoes in December and had 220 cat-ties of fine ones.

[4] In 1898, after China had lost a disastrous war to Japan and was facing new imperialist demands, the emperor Kuang-hsu instituted a drastic program of reforms. The xenophobic conservative forces of the Manchu regime, centered around the aging empress dowager, quickly staged a coup. The emperor was incarcerated in his palace and the empress dowager, ruling in his name, led China into the catastrophe of the Boxer Rebellion and further decline. Most of the country's scholars and concerned intellectuals sympathized with the plight of the emperor and saw his return to power as the best hope for reversing China's fortunes. The suspicion of Grace and Bob's Chinese friend about the "strange circumstances" of his death was well founded. It is accepted that the vengeful empress dowager, realizing that her own end was near, had the emperor murdered. It was just in time: she died the next day. The emperor's death was actually on November 14; in spite of there being a telegraph line, it was not publicly known in Chengtu until the seventeenth. The successor to Kuang-hsu, designated by the all-powerful empress dowager, was the three-year-old Pu Yi. For further details, see the motion picture The Last Emperor .

15
First Son
(1909-10)

As 1909 rolled around, our foreign community continued slowly to grow. Several new teachers for the government university were added to our neighborhood. At least three American professors (two of them geologists) extended their researches as far as Chengtu.

Our American-Chinese friend, the mining engineer, found himself in difficulties on the Tibetan border. The problem was that his investigation had not found gold in the amounts that the viceroy had hoped for. Since the viceroy was seeking substantial grants from Peking to develop gold production, he did not want to accept the engineer's disappointing report and let him return home. A busy exchange of telegrams over several months gave us plenty of excitement. Discretion dictated the use of a private code: the viceroy was "Jones." Local efforts were unsuccessful; intervention by the American legation in Peking was finally necessary.^[1]

I now had a definite group of Chinese girls and young women who wanted me to start a class. "Just teach us anything," was their plea. Even our strange methods of knitting and crocheting looked attractive to them. They still liked best of all to come for long calls and go all over our house, looking at everything and speculating on all sorts of matters: the way we lived; the

[1] Apart from not finding gold prospects large enough to please the hopeful viceroy, Mr. Lowe's problem was one of citizenship. He was born in the United States and hence was an American citizen; that was the only way a Chinese could become an American citizen in those Exclusion Law days. But Chinese law at that time regarded all persons of Chinese ancestry as continuing to be Chinese citizens—or, more correctly, subjects. It was not easy to convince the viceroy that the "Chinese" whose freedom of movement he was limiting was actually an American, protected by extraterritoriality.
Gold there certainly was in this part of Tibet—enough, for instance, for some temple roofs to be covered with sheets of hammered gold. But it is placer gold, widely scattered in the sands of river beds. The upper Yangtze, above the Red Basin of Szechwan, is known to the Chinese as the Gold Sand River (Jinshajiang). But these deposits have been depleted by centuries of panning. And neither the unfortunate Mr. Lowe nor anyone since has been able to discover any great Mother Lode.

real friendship which apparently existed between Bob and me; and the reason for our being in China.

Early in 1909 it was decided that the projected YMCA should be close to the government university so as to serve as a student center. The university was close to us, so our neighborhood was the logical location. No suitable building could be found. After long discussions, land at the rear of the Methodist school (next door to our residence) was leased. The International Committee of the YMCA loaned US$2,500, and a commodious and useful building was erected. This took up most of Bob's time during the summer and fall of 1909.

Because the building was situated behind the school and hence removed from the street, there was an access problem. It was agreed that there would be a separate entrance and an alleyway leading back to the Y. The planning of this was done by the Chinese secretary of the Y, who had already joined the organization. We were surprised by the size and ostentation of the gate produced under his direction.^[2]

When the building was put up in 1909, the American dollar was worth about two Chinese silver dollars. In 1920, after the building had been used for more than ten years, the American dollar was worth only eighty cents in Chinese silver. As the Y was then moving to a new location, this building was sold. The price received made it possible to repay the debt, with a handsome profit.^[3]

In May we had a two-story veranda built on the west side of our house. This helped protect the study and our bedroom from the afternoon sun. It also gave us a fine place for airing things, which was often needed because Chengtu's climate is very damp. Very soon the veranda seemed to have always been there. Vines quickly reached the eaves; the problem was to keep them from shutting out the air.

In the late spring we always had a big peng erected over the courtyard in front of our house.^[4] One morning the workmen would arrive with great stacks of bamboo poles, large mats woven of split bamboo, and hemp twine. In no time, the pole framework was up and firmly lashed together. Mats were

[2] Gates are important to Chinese because they are expected to indicate the status and importance of what they protect.

[3] When the rate was two-to-one, US$2,500 brought Chinese $5,000. When the loan was repaid, the rate was US$1 = Chinese $0.80. The Chinese $5,000 could then be exchanged for US$6,500, or a profit of US$4,000. This reversal in the normal values of the American and Chinese dollars was one of the temporary effects of trade imbalances during World War I. The normal value was about US$1.00 = Chinese $2.00. The American dollar was usually referred to as the "gold dollar," and the Chinese dollar was either the "Mexican dollar" (which is where many of the coins in circulation had actually originated) or the "silver dollar." Very few foreigners used the Chinese word yuan . When Grace refers to "dollars" it should be understood, unless otherwise stated, that she means Chinese dollars.

[4] A peng is a canopy or awning of bamboo or reed mats. On a vessel or raft it is the arch-roofed shelter; in this case it was a mat awning over the courtyard.

19
The Service house on Wenmiaogai. The view is from the back and shows Grace's
new veranda and its quickly growing vines. In the foreground to the right is the
vegetable garden; to the left is the tennis court. The picture was taken in 1910,
and Jack is the small figure being held by Bob.

then sewed in place. Finally the roller sections were arranged, complete with pulling ropes. These were like shutters that could be open or closed depending on the weather and time of day. The peng was very welcome because it tempered the sun's heat and glare. It allowed us to take down the living room curtains and keep everything open to catch any breeze there might be. In the fall, the men came back and dismantled it. We paid a rent for its use.

For us the great affair of the year was the birth of our eldest son. We were able to have the help of Miss Whittier, a most excellent nurse who was visiting in China and so had no obligation to a mission. The spring began early, and the summer was long and hot. The doctor forbade chair riding; I could not walk any distance, so I remained inside our compound for several months. I had been none too well but was constantly busy with sewing and doing what I could do at home with Chinese pupils and guests. By our count the baby was expected on June 19, and Miss Whittier came that day to stay with us. But the child did not come in June. The Robertsons' son was born June 24; Vieva was much pleased to have her baby first.

All of July's hot, muggy days came and went. Still no baby. Bob had borrowed a bagatelle board from the Davidsons, and we had it on a table in a small screened section of our west veranda. (We couldn't afford to screen the whole house.) There we used to play when it got cooler in the evenings. The only garb I could be comfortable in was a loose white silk dress. The doctor's family went to the mountains and he was naturally anxious to be with them.

Every few days he would come to see me; I was only more hot, tired, and uncomfortable. Finally, one of the Methodist single ladies, who were neighbors of the doctor, asked me bluntly what was the trouble. "There must be something wrong, for the way the. doctor is reading up in his medical books is a caution. He's at it every evening."

On Monday, August 2, the doctor came in the evening. He asked if I'd like to have one of the Canadian doctors called in. I said, "No, they've had several babies over on their side of the city this year and it's a pity if we Americans can't manage one." This cheered him a bit, and the next morning he arrived right after breakfast prepared to start things. I spent a rather uncomfortable day. John Stewart Service was born at 8:20 P.M. on August 3, 1909. He weighed eight pounds and had long fingernails and a nose that seemed somewhat smashed into his face.^[5] We had to use bed nets, and they were a great nuisance in the hot, sticky weather when tending an infant. Kerosene lamps were hot, too. How I longed for one bit of ice in those stifling August nights! Still, we forgot all the discomforts in the joy of the child's safe arrival.

Bob had been delighted with his daughter; he was satisfied with his son. Up to his last weeks, Bob had an unfaltering faith that he would live to be an old man. He often spoke of how he would enjoy age, and hoped that he Would not grow crabbed or intolerant with the years. Knowing his attitude regarding his own life, his first words to me about our son always remained in my mind. As we looked at the baby together, he said. "Here is your son at last; if anything happens to me, he will be your help."

All our friends sent good wishes. The workmen on the new YMCA building brought gifts: eggs, fowls and firecrackers, a pair of small "official" boots, and a marvelous gilt headdress with two long pheasant tail feathers. The boots and hat were to express the hope that the son would have the good fortune of becoming an official. In Chinese fashion, Bob gave a feast in return. Everyone was pleased that we had a son. Chinese friends were glad that they no longer needed to sympathize because we had no children.

After a few days the doctor went off to join his family at Kwanhsien, feeling sure that we were in good hands with Miss Whittier. On the eighteenth of August the baby weighed nine pounds, in spite of the heat. Chee Soo Lowe arrived at last from beyond Tatsienlu, and we were glad to have him with us. His son had been born since he left America, so he was much taken with our baby boy. He stayed a fortnight before leaving for the Coast, and California. Our flowers were beautiful that summer. The moon flowers on the new west veranda were especially prolific; their fragrant blossoms were lovely in the moonlight in late August.

[5] My nose that was "somewhat smashed" made a notable recovery. Large noses are a distinguishing mark of the Service clan, and there is no need for me to take a back seat at family gatherings. In later years there was much banter about the reliability of Grace's long count.

We were tremendously happy over the baby that fall. I soon found myself busier than ever. There was a bout of making curtains for the new teachers at the government university. Then I had an urge to entertain all our friends: Chinese, foreign, everyone. This was a reaction after all those months I had spent in seclusion before the baby arrived. On Halloween we had a fancy dress party, with thirty-four for a buffet supper. We had prepared games, and Bob had marked out a maze on the tennis court. This we could not use because it rained.

In November I had a tea party for Chengtu's five foreign babies born that summer. The parents of three were in the Canadian Methodist Mission. The father of the fourth, Mr. Ritchie, was the local head of the Imperial Chinese Post Office. On my birthday we entertained twenty-four at dinner and had a lovely time. We entertained over one thousand students that year. And by its end, a student YMCA was organized and a building ready.

Our Christmas parcels were soaked in the "old river" [the Yangtze]. Baby shoes and all the cute things we had anticipated were reduced to moldy rags, repugnant to sight and smell. But nothing could depress us for long in those days. The small son was a never-failing source of happiness and always pleased our Chinese friends—though they were amazed at our methods of child care. At least they understood his food, for it was provided by nature.

Dr. Hodgkin, who had helped greatly with all the preliminary work of getting the YMCA started, was now asked to return to England as secretary of the Friends' Mission. This was a blow to the Chengtu Y, just at its beginning, and greatly added to Bob's responsibilities. The Hodgkins stayed with us while they were packing up, and left Chengtu in January 1910.

That same afternoon there arrived at our home a noted globe-trotter traveling in these far places to gather material for lecturing and writing. This gentleman kept us all in a whirl. One of his obsessions was that the only way to get on in the East was to hustle it. He illustrated this by telling how he found sedan chair travel in Kweichow Province to be easy, although he had been told it was difficult. He rode in his sedan chair with a loaded revolver in plain sight in his lap. When the chair men and load carriers were slow in eating their meal, he would simply tip over their table, throw their rice bowls on the ground, push them toward their loads, and yell at them to get started. He thought we all "stood too much laziness" from the Chinese.

Bob told him that, aside from questions of Christian ethics, he could never countenance such actions. They were entirely wrong for transients, but would be fatal for residents like ourselves who wished to win influence and friendship from the Chinese. In short, he did not like to hear such talk at our table. Our guest, we could see, thought we were all lacking in "American spirit." The subject was changed.

This visitor was a self-invited guest. He had heard of us as YMCA people

and sent a telegram asking that arrangements be made for his stay. We presented no bill for board, lodgings, or any of the things we had done for him. And he asked for no accounting; but as he was leaving, after ten days that were hectic for us, he thanked me for his entertainment and handed me the case and works of a dismantled Ingersoll dollar watch. He thought we might find this useful or, if we did not need it now, we could save it for the baby. He also left me another keepsake. My good rubber hot-water bottle, which he had wanted for his bed, evidently met a sharp toenail. No one but a woman some six weeks from a supply of such necessities can appreciate how peeved I felt.^[6]

Mention of our servants, brings to mind a question which frequently arouses criticism from Westerners. How can people, especially those in Christian work, have so many servants? If you were living among coolies and working solely with people who had nothing, you might want to get along with little or no help, provided you could be efficient by so doing. If you want to live as a scholar or merchant lives in China, servants are needed. The Szechwan people do not make as adaptable servants as some other Chinese. They are very independent, and each man intends to do one thing and very little more. The cook will go out to buy (frequently hiring a man to carry his purchases) and he expects to do the cooking, but not the serving at table or afternoon tea. He usually turns up his nose at cleaning, but may clean the kitchen if this is required by his mistress. The Boy will do dusting, he will serve at table, he may iron clothes and do a few such things. The coolie cleans the floors and does all the heavier work (including carrying water if the supply is near). If the family is small, he may do the laundry work; otherwise a washerman will have to be employed. There is usually an amah for bedroom work and to help with the children. If one kept cows, a man was needed to tend them. And finally, there was a gateman; and he usually had a family, which was supposed to ensure that the gate would always be tended.

With no household conveniences, there was a great deal to be done. Public utilities were entirely lacking. The charges which in America go to water, light, gas, and telephone companies have to go in China to coolies for fetching water, cleaning lamps, tending fireplaces, and carrying chits around town.^[7] All our water for cooking, bathing, laundry, and household use had to

[6] For the uninvited guest's impressions of his visit to Chengtu, see William Edgar Geil, Eighteen Capitals of China (Philadelphia & London: Lippincott, 1911).

[7] "Chit" is from a Hindi word chitthi and, as used by foreigners in China, had two meanings. In the interior, where there were no telephones, it was a note or message. An active lady could easily keep a chit coolie busy all day, especially if he had many places where he was instructed to wait for a reply. In the treaty ports, a chit was a bill for bar drinks, restaurant meals, or other charges that had been signed (or initialed) by the person incurring the charge. The chit holder hoped for a periodic settlement, perhaps monthly. This system was convenient and a vital part of the foreign life in the coast cities. Perhaps one reason that it worked was that there

was no way to skip town except by ship, and a ship's sailing was a public and not very frequent event.

be drawn from the well (there were no pumps) and carried to where it was to be used. Kerosene lamps had to be cleaned and filled each day. The cook had personally to attend to marketing (at many stalls and shops), make yeast, do all the baking and cooking, and perform other tasks, such as refining sugar and salt for kitchen use.^[8] (We tried to have foreign sugar and salt for the table.) Then there was milk to scald daily, and butter to make.

One thing to be remembered is the time the servants use for cooking and eating their own meals. This is usually done in a leisurely way; but if there are guests or a special need, servants will toil on without stopping to think of their own affairs. Making good food and doing things that will please guests gives them—the servants—face! No mistress needs to apologize to the staff for guests; they are desired and appreciated. The cook knows there will be more buying; hence more commission in his pocket. The Boy knows he will serve and be close to the excitement of the occasion. Even the hard-working coolie, who likely enough has to wash every pot, pan, and dish, never utters a groan.

Consider, too, the extent to which the housewife is freed from worry. An unexpected visitor arrives shortly before mealtime; she tells the Boy to lay another place. It is up to the cook to supply the food; he always rises to the emergency. Perhaps he exchanges the noon dessert with the one prepared for dinner, or perhaps he works out a subtler plan. But he finds a way. And the hostess, confident there will be a meal worthy of her cook and her house, sits serene.

Chinese all love hot food. Indeed, much of the savor and zest of their dishes are lost when they are served lukewarm or cold. I have always tried to follow the advice given me soon after I set up housekeeping in China: never call a servant from his hot food to do any task. Sometimes it is unavoidable; but if I find they are at a meal, I usually tell them to finish and come back. Another large item in the servant problem is the slow pace at which a servant works. An ironing which we could do in one day takes the coolie three days, and thus it goes. Why should they hurry through one task when it just means something else to do? In the long run, one has to let the house go more or less at the pace of the workers.

Our Chinese friends could not understand the amount of work I used to

[8] Native sugar in Szechwan was sold in dark brown cakes, salt in grey lumps. I remember that we "refined" them but am mystified about how it was done. But Grace by no means exhausts the list of kitchen accomplishments. About once a year we made and bottled a great batch of orange marmalade; Szechwan oranges are great and I still love marmalade. At the appropriate times, we preserved fruit; I think the local cherries and peaches were the best. In the fall there was a great making of mincemeat. And we even made soap for the laundry. We were by no means unusual; some families did even more—like smoking meat or making pickles.

do. They seemed to think it not proper. If one had servants, they should do the work. In Chinese eyes, for me to do my own mending was niggardly because it deprived some needy woman of work. Actually, wages in Szechwan were very low; even in 1935 a friend from there told me her staff of four servants cost less than a well-trained cook-boy and helper in Shanghai.

One expense that I tried hard over the years to reduce was the fuel used in the kitchen. Most Americans would attend to baking and such matters in the morning and bank the fire in the afternoon. But a Chinese cook sees it differently. After the master and mistress have had their breakfast, he goes marketing. When he returns, there is his own meal to prepare and eat. (In Szechwan we always had a Chinese kitchen apart from our own for the servants' use.) After this meal the morning is well along and, as the cook expects to work all day anyway, he sees no need for haste in baking. Finally, I simply reduced my struggle for economy in kitchen fuel to a limitation of supply. I found a small range preferable to a large one; though the smaller would have seemed a handicap to me, no cook ever complained. I made tests until I found the approximate amount of fuel needed for a month. The cook was then held to this amount.

Another reason for having a constant fire is the frequent and unpredictable need for tea. Whenever a guest arrives, tea must be served. This is the Chinese manner of welcome. Hence, there must always be a fire, and water not too far off the boil. This is not easy where there is no gas or electricity.

The accounts for household expenditures went through my hands— except for coal and for fodder and similar costs when we had cows or horses. The fuel was soft coal which was delivered in sizable lumps. This had to be weighed, and one had to be alert to various tricks: stones in the bottom of the basket, too much wetness, or even a foot on a rope hanging from the basket being weighed. I was glad to turn this over to Bob. And, having grown up on a ranch before the day of tractors, he also knew about fodder.

I have mentioned the serving of tea. The Chinese, of course, serve tea to all visitors, day and night. When we set out for China, we had no tea equipment; we soon found it most essential. Staying with English Friends in Chungking and with the Hodgkins in Chengtu, we soon discovered all the requirements and ritual of the tea cult. The majority of the foreigners in Chengtu were British. To the British afternoon tea is no luxury; it is a necessity. It is served to all employees in British offices and shops in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and other ports. When waiting to be served by a sales clerk in a Shanghai shop, I have sometimes been asked to pardon a moment's delay: "My tea's getting a bit cold, I fear." British and Chinese can always get together on tea drinking, but I prefer the Chinese version. To my taste, their milder, more delicate teas, served clear, are much pleasanter than the common British brew, "strong enough to float a ship" and bitter with tannin.

16
Second Son
(1910-11)

After the heat of the long summer of 1909 in Chengtu we began to hope for a cool place to go in the hot weeks of coming summers. I lacked endurance, and the heat always prostrated me. Mount Omei, as I have said, was too far away for Bob's responsibility to the YMCA. Above Kwanhsien, a long day's travel northwest of Chengtu, there was a famous temple named Lingaisze that rented rooms to foreigners. But there was little privacy; everyone was crowded together in a way that hampered rest or relaxation. The verandas were narrow and in wet weather were usually draped with laundry. It seems to be a peculiarity of many missionaries in China that wet laundry hung conspicuously near their rooms never bothers them.

Missionaries had tried to lease land for bungalows near Lingaisze but had always been blocked by some of the Kwanhsien gentry—who feared that the presence of foreigners, even for a few weeks in the summer, might adversely affect the local fengshui .^[1] Bob therefore went beyond Kwanhsien to another hsien (county). Near the small town of Shwangkow he found a suitable site. It was within two day's travel from Chengtu, and close enough to Lingaisze, where foreigners went, to make it possible to reach a doctor in an emergency. After much consideration, we and the Lindsays, of the Canadian Mission, decided to lease land and put up a couple of small bungalows of Chinese style. Later, the American teachers at the government university and the Robertsons also decided to join us. This would give us a group of four bungalows for the first summer.

[1] Fengshui , literally, means "wind and water." Chinese traditional belief held that the dead are able to use the cosmic currents for the benefit of the living. It is to the interest of each family, therefore, to secure and preserve the most auspicious environment for the grave, the ancestral temple, and the home. Most important in these cosmic currents are the forms of the landscape and the directions of watercourses, which are the outcome of the molding influences of wind and water. The common reference to this as geomancy is incorrect. (See Encyclopedia Sinica .)

These houses were of the simplest Chinese construction so that they could be erected quickly and inexpensively: pole frame, wattle-and-mud white-washed walls, with glass windows and wooden shutters. Bob took several quick trips to the site that spring. Dr. Lindsay accompanied him on the first trip, and both were on horses—thus making twice the distance in a day that could be accomplished by sedan chair. Bob's pony was a stupid animal on the bridges, which in remoter Szechwan often leave much to be desired. They had to cross a bamboo-cable suspension bridge with a loosely laid footway of uneven boards. Bob, walking ahead, suddenly heard cries of distress from the mafu and looked back to see the wretched pony lying on its belly across a few planks, all four legs dangling helplessly in the air. It took a good deal of tugging and hauling by all hands to get the animal back on his feet on the uncertain flooring of the swinging bridge.

In April I took Jack with me one afternoon to call on the Methodist ladies. On our return, when we approached our street, we ran into a great jam of people. Finally, the chair men learned from one of our Chinese neighbors the cause of the excitement: part of our house had burned down. The crowd was so thick that my bearers said they would have to put the chair down, but I would not hear to that. So, by yelling and pushing through the crowd, the men at last reached our gate and entered over a mound of broken tile. Four of the servants' rooms at the west side of our outer court had been burned. We had been having the kitchen chimney cleaned, and the range thoroughly scraped and cleared of ashes. The coolie had carelessly thrown the ashes near the building wall, not thinking there might be a live coal among them.

Bishop Cassels and another man had just entered our compound to call on Bob when the fire was discovered. They hurried a man off to get Bob at the Y building next door, and he was quickly there. The police soon had the firefighters on the job. This chiefly consisted of tearing tiles off the adjacent roofs and throwing them down on the blaze to smother it [there was, of course, no piped water]. By the time I arrived, the real excitement was over.

Our friends the Neumanns had told us a great deal about Jim and Mabelle Yard who were coming to Chengtu in the Methodist Episcopal Mission. They arrived in June and I first met Mabelle on the eighth of that month at the Neumanns' home. This is a memorable date for me, as Mabelle has been a constant and treasured friend ever since.^[2]

[2] Mabelle Yard became Grace's closest friend. After they were separated (when our family left Chengtu in 1921), they kept up a constant, voluminous, and very intimate correspondence until Mabelle died in 1954, a few months before Grace. The friendship included the whole two families. Jim's liberal views, on politics but especially on subjects like giving Chinese Christians a larger role in the missionary enterprise, eventually led to his separation from the mission. There were four Yard girls; and we were three Service boys, sandwiched by age between them. They were our closest neighbors, so close comrades in play. The four all went to Swarthmore, and all married distinguished and interesting men. One husband is Louis Harris, the master of

opinion polls. Molly, the third daughter, is currently (1988) head of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

As summer drew near, trouble appeared on the horizon. It concerned the little bungalows that were being built near Shwangkow. Bitter opposition to their presence was being expressed by some of the gentry in the vicinity. It is possible that they had been aroused by their brethren in Kwanhsien, whom we had hoped to avoid by moving to another county. After local efforts were unsuccessful, the trouble at last had to be reported to our consuls (the British in Chengtu and the American in Chungking). As our whole idea was to establish and maintain friendly contacts with the Chinese wherever we were, we could not push our desires after it became clear that nothing would suit the opposition save that we abandon the whole plan. The gentry finally offered to reimburse us for the money we had spent, so they acquired some nearly completed bungalows.^[3] As we had the goodwill of the local people and artisans, we could console ourselves that racial prejudice was held by only a few. But by this time all the rooms at Lingaisze had been rented for the season.

Our old Berkeley classmate Julean Arnold, then a member of the American consulate staff at Canton, wired us in June, from Sian,^[4] that he was coming overland with Professor E. A. Ross, the noted sociologist. They arrived on July 11. A note announcing their imminent arrival came only a few minutes before they appeared. It was a Sunday. Bob was at Shwangkow for the final settlement of the affair of the ill-fated bungalows, and I was entertaining a Canadian lady for the weekend. The cook had prepared a small duck for supper, but managed to piece out the menu—as Chinese cooks usually can.

Bob arrived home the next day, Monday. On Tuesday a telegram informed Julean that his wife was seriously ill in Canton. So our guests left on Thursday. Bob took the two men around the city and they had a glimpse of things, though most of the people we would have liked them to meet were away at the hills. As always, we enjoyed Julean; and we found Professor Ross to be a charming person. The night of his arrival he tiptoed in to see Jack asleep in his crib, told me of his own sons so far away, and assured me that my baby appeared to be a real American child.^[5]

[3] The treaties then in effect, rightly called "unequal" by the Chinese, specified that missionaries should be able to purchase or lease land and buildings for their missionary work. Hence the referral to the British and American consuls. However, the problem of summer bungalows (as a part of missionary work) may have been an issue that the representatives of both governments were not anxious to confront at that time and place. It can be assumed that the offer by the gentry to make reimbursement was "encouraged" by higher authority.

[4] Sian, the capital of Shensi Province, is now known as Xi'an, and has become recently famous as the site of the buried army of clay figures guarding the tomb of China's first emperor. The overland trip from Sian to Chengtu took these doughty travelers twenty-four days.

[5] Professor Edward Alsworth Ross was a pioneer in the field of sociology in the United

States and spent most of his career at the University of Wisconsin. This trip resulted in The Changing Chinese (New York: Century, 1911). In it he speaks of Chengtu as the most progressive of pure Chinese cities—which he regards as "Western influence at its best" (p. 303). Grace's story of the learned professor giving the babe in his crib the accolade of being a real American boy was an old Service family joke.

Before he left, I asked the professor if there was any special home dish he would like. He expressed a desire for a good supply of hot baking-powder biscuits with butter, and syrup in a side dish. He had his biscuits and syrup and was duly grateful. He was tall, and it must have been hard for him to cramp his long limbs into a sedan chair. It was not surprising that the two men had walked much of the way, especially since Julean was a noted pedestrian. They left by small boat to descend the Min and Yangtze rivers and catch a steamer at Ichang.

That summer we had one of the heaviest rains I have ever seen. My diary (for July 27) says: "Cool. It poured torrents all day till after five in the afternoon. Dr. Lindsay came in after breakfast and he and Mr. McCampbell were caught here and stayed for lunch and afternoon tea. Dr. Lindsay spent the night." Bob was able to get over to the YMCA building, but there was no one there. The Chinese simply remained at home and, like Emily Dickinson in her acceptance of life, let it rain. No one tried to keep engagements. Our roof was of Chinese tile, and we had it carefully checked each year. But in this rain, the house leaked in many places, so we were hustling about, moving furniture and setting pails and pans. The Chinese compare summer rain to chopsticks; when one looked outside, the aptness was apparent. This rain fell in rods, not drops. It was as though the sky was a lake with a perforated bottom. The roar of the water on roofs and pavement was thunderous, and spray was everywhere. In Hot Countries , Alec Waugh tells of an Englishman who tries life in Europe but returns to Dominica in the Antilles, saying, "I must hear it rain again." After living in the Orient one can understand that man's feeling.

The last two weeks of August we spent at Lingaisze in rooms that had been vacated by one of the Canadians. It was hot and the mosquitoes were active, so we earned our vacation. Because of muddy roads, the trip took us two days; now there is a motor road, and people can whirl off and arrive in less than two hours. When we went there on this trip in 1910 we took our cow! It seems odd to have such a caravan. But Jack was taking milk and we had to have the supply with us.

That summer there was a sad death in our little foreign community. One of the American teachers at the government university, a neighbor of ours, started off alone for Kiating on his way to Mount Omei. Not far above Kiating his small boat was tied up for the night at a village matou . The boatmen went

ashore, leaving him barefoot on deck where he had been washing his feet in the river. It was dark; there was a bustle of activity among the boats moored close together. But no one heard any splash or cry for help. He evidently slipped on the wet deck and fell overboard, perhaps striking his head on his own boat or the one next to it. His possessions were found intact, and his body was recovered a few days later some distance downstream.

There was a new project for the Y in 1910. Dr. William Wilson of the China Inland Mission at Suining, eastern Szechwan, had created an unusual and impressive science museum. It was suggested that this exhibit merited a broader field of usefulness than was offered by the remote and rather small city of Suining. The location that naturally suggested itself was the provincial capital, Chengtu. Eventually it was settled that the museum would be moved to Chengtu and shown in a hall at the YMCA.

This meant more building. A hall about 60 by 90 feet was put up next to the YMCA building to house the museum. It was also necessary to house the Wilsons. Fortunately, the Methodist boys' school next to us on the west had just moved to the campus of the West China Union University. This made it possible to convert the upper part of the school (the rooms at the north end of the compound, which corresponded in our compound to the rooms we lived in) into a house for the Wilsons. This was quite a large dwelling, bigger than our own. All this construction was under Bob's supervision while carrying on his Y work and language study.

The Wilsons reached Chengtu in May and stayed with us until they could move into their house late in June. By the end of September, his exhibits were in place. They quickly met expectations in drawing Chinese visitors to the YMCA. People were fascinated by models of many contrivances which lighten labor, and gazed at small toy engines with interest and concern. Within a short time, thousands had visited the hall and viewed the exhibit. Many repeated their visits, bringing incredulous friends to see the wonders for themselves.

In January [1911] Dr. Wilson became ill with high blood pressure and other symptoms. It was decided that he should have a complete change, and rest for six months. The best way to achieve this was to return to Suining. They left in early February. In April Cameron Hayes arrived from America to join the YMCA staff. He had been long anticipated and received the heartiest kind of welcome. We prepared a suite of rooms for him on the Wilson compound (just next door to us), and he took his meals with us.

Soon after this Miss Whittier, fortunately again available, arrived for another stay with us. We had an Anglican friend visiting us and sat up quite late on the evening of Sunday, May 7, discussing the education of children. The next morning when the Anglican came down to breakfast, he was sur-

20
The science museum of the Chengtu YMCA in 1910. The director, Dr. William Watson, stands at left center; Bob is in the background at the right.

prised to see nothing of his host and hostess and a stranger alone in the dining room. This gentleman introduced himself as a doctor, and said that the Service family had a new son, born just before seven that morning. Our guest had not even heard the doctor arrive in the compound and was much astonished at the news. So were we, for we had expected to wait for some days longer.

We named this second son Robert Kennedy, after his father and J. L. Kennedy, a dear friend of both of us during college days at Berkeley.^[6]

[6] The new Robert was, naturally, also called Bob. Grace usually makes it clear which Bob she is referring to, but it should be borne in mind that henceforth there are two Bobs.

17
Peony Mountain
(1911)

Bob had been investigating possible places to go for the summer. We decided to rent some rooms in a temple at Danjingshan, about sixty li from Penghsien, north of Chengtu. Our departure was delayed, waiting for some vaccine. My diary describes the journey:

July 5th. Cloudy. Got up at 4:30 and left the house about 7 o'clock. Little Bob was vaccinated at 6 by Dr. Freeman. Roads were fearful and mud the worst ever, so we could only reach Sinfan. Poor carriers.
July 6th. Cloudy. Up early and off after delays. Men very slow. We reached Penghsien at 10 and had to wait there for dinner. Reached temple between 6 and 7 P.M. , but beds and bedding did not arrive until 10:30 and then the cook stayed below with other loads. Put the children to bed on oil sheets spread on the kang .^[1] Tired!!

Yes, we were tired that night. But oh, the moonlight and the charm of that old temple! We had never seen such glorious radiance from the moon. The soft night breeze and vagrant clouds, and the peculiar grey-green of the tangled verdure in the moonlight, placed a spell upon us. I remember how weary, and even cross, I was; but in spite of everything I was wrapt away into Faery. That temple was a perfect setting for a Midsummer Night's Dream.

The main temple building here at Danjingshan had been burned some years ago. A new one had been started, but never finished; only the massive columns and framework stood to tell of unfulfilled hopes. Still extant were various rooms of the lower levels of the old temple. And on both sides of a long court leading up to these there was a fine Buddhist Hell, a gallery of

[1] This is not the flue-heated brick-platform bed of north China. It is a hard-seated couch or divan of wood that looks much like a very wide Chinese chair, wide enough for a person to recline (perhaps, in those days, to smoke opium). The two kangs are different characters, pronounced identically.

almost-life-sized clay figures, picturing all the torments of the damned in the most realistic manner. (When I wrote Mother about this Hell, she replied that nothing could prevail on her to stay in such surroundings. She thought it awful for us to take young children there; and that our actions were another proof of the way our sensibilities had become blunted. I wrote her we did not live in the Hell, but above it.)

This old court had in time past been a charming place; even now in an unkempt state it had much of beauty and repose. An ornamental bridge arched over a tiny watercourse. Guarding the lower approach were two old crepe myrtle trees. They were gnarled but had attained old age gracefully; against the grey of their trunks, the fragile garments of their bright cerise blooms caused the catching of one's breath for very delight.

At the level of the unfinished upper temple, on a rocky ledge overlooking the large lower court, was a suite of guest rooms which had been used in times past by officials of Penghsien when they came to view the peonies from which this mountain temple derived its name, Peony Prospect Mountain. There was a large guest hall about forty-five by twenty feet, with a beautifully balustraded veranda along one side and overlooking the court below. The long opposite wall had a lengthy wooden kang beneath a row of windows opening onto terraces in the rear of the building.

These terraces were where the peonies grew. Their blossoms were gone before we arrived; but one could see that the plants were not in the best of condition. The old caretaker told us some of the roots had been kept for more than three hundred years. One can imagine the charm of this mountain-side flower show in the pride of its full glory being enjoyed by scholars and weary officials. No doubt many a poem had been written in that guest hall, and many a happy hour spent there.

At the south end of the long living room there were two small rooms. The first room had no door, but only a circular moon-door opening leading into it from the living room. We hung an oil sheet over this opening and used it as our bedroom. A wooden door led from this bedroom into a still smaller room which could be locked. This we used as dressing and bathroom. We put up curtains for privacy, nailed shut the lattice windows, and so had quite a useful retreat. Here we kept our traveling boxes and supplies under lock and key. At the north end of the living room were two more small rooms. One we kept for guests; our two serving women had the other. At this time I had a baby amah and a laundress.

There was only one old priest in residence. He seemed to act chiefly as caretaker, but a few times a day he would strike the big bell and a fish-head drum back in some obscure room. The huge Buddha who had occupied the place of honor in the old temple, and around whom the new structure was to

have been built, still sat there mute and immovable, falling slowly into decay as the elements took advantage of his unprotected condition. He looked distressed at his own ruin.

On the night of July 11, all our table silver and the baby's diapers were stolen by a thief. He must have come right into our small bedroom and taken these things from very near while we slept. The silver was in a basket under our low bed. Luckily, our clothes were locked in the dressing room. Evidently the man woke the baby because little Bob cried at a time that was not routine. I got up to tend him and so discovered that the diapers were gone. Our silver was only cheap plate used for outings, but we did miss it sorely. Fortunately, the wash amah had put a few freshly laundered diapers in the locked room that night, so we had them to use until others could be obtained.

We sent a runner off to Chengtu to beg diapers for the baby. A friend who had lost her baby sent some to me. Another friend sent a few knives, forks, and spoons. The thief was never found; we suspected that it was the old temple caretaker or somebody under his tutelage. A few summers later, foreigners traveling through some of the villages nestling at the base of these hills saw small children running about in garments made of birdseye diapering. That nice white cloth was all used, we can be sure of that!

Cameron Hayes, our new YMCA associate, and two young American Baptist men were staying in some lower rooms of the temple. Cameron boarded with us; the other two men had their own cook. Evenings they came up to our big room to play games and visit. The men went on a good many hikes, but I stayed home with the children. Jack played about the big open living room and enjoyed a swing, hung from a rafter, with bars to hold him in. The baby slept most of the time and grew well, weighing twelve pounds at two months.

About the end of July, we began to get letters from one of the missionaries at Penghsien, telling us about antiforeign talk in that district and inquiring rather anxiously how long we planned to remain on the mountain. He reported a local jingle: xian sha yang-zi; hou sha yang-ren (First kill the sheep, then kill the foreigners).^[2] We replied that we were all right (save for our robbery) and had seen nothing to alarm us.

[2] There had been some history of antiforeign activity in Szechwan, generally aimed at missionaries and their converts, and particularly against the Catholics—who had become substantial landowners. This antipathy was strong among the uneducated and was often stimulated by some of the more conservative, traditionalist gentry, who saw the missionaries as subverting Confucian culture and customs. There had been extensive and serious antimissionaries riots in 1895, resulting in forced evacuations and much destruction of mission property. In 1898 there was agitation against Catholics. And in 1900-1903 there was considerable activity, chiefly in rural areas, related to the Boxer movement in north China. The jingle that Grace cites was undoubtedly one resurrected from the Boxer repertoire: "sheep" refers to Christian converts. It is also a good example of the Chinese fondness for puns: the yang for sheep and the yang for foreigners are different characters but, as in the note above, with the same sound.

On August 9 two Chengtu friends, the Misses Collier and Wellwood, arrived and were soon ensconced in our guest room. It had a wooden door instead of an open moon circle and was quite suitable for them; but the wooden walls were so old and dingy that there was no hope of scrubbing them clean. We finally solved the problem: the cook made a big pot of flour paste, and the Boy and coolie papered all the walls and ceiling with any kind of paper that we could lay hands on. There was, of course, no local shop where paper could be bought. It ended up that a good part of the walls were covered with pages from old issues of the Saturday Evening Post that we had brought with us to the hills. One of the guests later complained that she was unable to finish the story that she had started near the head of her bed.

One Sunday evening Amah set up a great screech that a prowler was on the peony terraces behind our rooms. All the men (seven foreigners and some Chinese friends and our servants) rushed out; but whoever it was had fled.

The next morning Bob rose early to go on an all-day tramp. The cook prepared him some breakfast and took the silver out from our bedroom in its basket so Bob could use a piece or two. After Bob left, I lay down again on the bed and fell into a doze. I heard some stirring about in the living room, but thought it was the cook clearing up after Bob's breakfast. Great was our dismay a short while later to find all our meager supply of table silver gone (again!) and also the tablecloth and a few garments which had been hung to dry at night at the end of our veranda. The servants raised an alarm, but no one was discovered around the temple building. The next day Bob had to go down the mountain to report our robbery to the headman of our village. It was probably already known there, but it was proper for us to report such trouble.

Bob had intended to return alone to Chengtu, but after he heard the various rumors and saw that we seemed to have been marked for robberies, he thought it best to stay on with us. In the years 1909 and 1910 we had had only one fortnight in the hills, so we felt justified in remaining until the weather would be better on the sultry plain.

Among Chinese friends who visited Danjingshan that summer was Mr. S. C. Yang [Yang Shao-chuan], the president of the Chengtu YMCA. One of the Chinese Y secretaries and his wife also spent a couple of weeks there. Bob took a number of trips of several days duration, roaming about where the mountains meet the plain, looking for a suitable spot for a summer resort. Danjingshan was not high enough, and other things made it far from ideal. And we had had these robberies. I was not afraid when Bob was gone, but it was good to have Cameron Hayes bring his cot into our living room at night.

On August 25 we had a letter from Mr. Yang in Chengtu. He reported that there was trouble in the city over railroad matters. The Szechwanese had

previously raised a large sum of money, about $20,000,000, which the Peking government had promised would be used for the building of a railroad from Ichang to Chengtu. Recently, word had come that the railroad was to be built by giving a concession to a foreign company, calling for foreign officials and guards. This immediately aroused great resentment against the Imperial government, with a certain amount of antiforeign talk as a by-product. Also the whereabouts of the millions of dollars raised seemed to be in doubt— and has remained so to this day. In August 1911, the feeling rose to fever pitch in Chengtu; the government was accused of corruption, and matters were difficult for the local officials to handle. An organization that called itself the Association of Comrades to Protect the Railroad (Baolu Tongzhi Hui) headed the protests.^[3]

Mr. Yang feared there might be a period of unrest and thought we would be wise to return to the city. We also received letters from foreign friends in Chengtu saying that the city gates were being kept locked. We had planned

[3] There was also in Szechwan a quite different reaction to the impact of the West. It was a large, rich province with a long tendency of proud, semi-independent isolation. Expansion of trade in foreign imports and local exports, assisted paradoxically by the fact that in recent decades Szechwan had come to produce well over half of all the opium grown in China, was leading to the emergence of a new elite of gentry and businessmen. This group recognized the need for modernization but wanted to keep it in Chinese hands.
It may be helpful to recall the setting of the time. The much-weakened Manchu Empire had been ineffectively trying to stave off the demands for concessions by the imperialist Powers. Patriotic Chinese spoke of their country as a melon about to be sliced up. From the perspective of Szechwan, the French had made neighboring Yunnan a "sphere of influence" and were building a railway to Kunming, the provincial capital. There was much British talk that they considered the whole of the Yangtze valley (including Szechwan) to be within their sphere of influence. They also seemed to be threatening Tibet (under Szechwan's supervision) and were actively building railways in North Burma close to the Chinese border.
The Szechwanese answer was a version of what has been called "self-strengthening." Considerable progress toward modernization was being made in the first decade of the century. The new government university, which was a main reason for the Y's being in Chengtu, was the cap of a system of new-style middle and elementary schools. Some modern industry was beginning: an arsenal, a mint, small textile plants, by 1911 even a small electric light plant (but not for the public). Professor Ross, we have noted (chapter 16, note 5), commented on the progressive spirit in Chengtu.
The big problem of development for Szechwan was access. Because the Yangtze was still thought impossible for steam navigation, this meant building a railway to link Szechwan to the rest of China. All of China's railways up to this time had been built by foreigners: all on terms hardly fair to China, and many with conditions inconsistent with full sovereignty. Szechwan's new elite organized a corporation in 1903 to build a railway from Ichang to Chengtu. This went through some reorganization, collected a large sum of money, established a railway school, and did a little preliminary work. The government knew of and approved the corporation. In fact, the provincial government was a form of partner.
In May 1911 the Peking government suddenly announced that all railways would be nationalized, thus putting the Szechwan corporation out of business. A few days later it signed an agreement with a four-Power consortium to build the railway to Chengtu. The worst fears of the Szechwanese seemed about to be realized, inflicted on them by their own national government. Resentment unified all elements of Szechwan society. The Court, far away in Peking, refused the slightest compromise (even regarding the funds lost by the Szechwan investors). Tension grew through the summer. On August 24 (undoubtedly the day that Mr. Yang sent a special messenger with the letter that Grace mentions), there was a large mass meeting in Chengtu, which decided on a strike of businesses and schools. Trouble was clearly brewing.

to go down within a few days; now we hustled about, packed immediately, and left as soon as we could. On the day we left, we had lunch at the village below us and there found the village headman eager to befriend us. He thought we would be safer on the mountain than in Chengtu and assured us of a warm welcome if we would stay with him. He had plenty of rice stored away for any emergency and could protect us. Reason dictated that we decline; we pushed on and spent that night in Penghsien with Canadian friends.

From them we heard many more rumors of what might happen, but nothing definite. At such times we have noticed that many people are overrun with rumors and fears. Many of those tales are reported to the foreigner by servants or Chinese helpers who have found that the foreigner has a ready ear for wild and stirring reports. We never took stock in tales from servants, relying instead on Chinese friends of responsible position who always have more knowledge on which to base opinions and expectations. It has sometimes been impossible to follow the advice our Chinese friends have given us, but we at least have known that it came from fuller knowledge and better reasoning than the tales told by servants, however loyal. At this time, we owed much to Mr. Yang and other friends.^[4]

[4] Grace is right to give credit to Mr. Yang. The YMCA operated in China quite differently from the "regular" missions. A YMCA could not be established in a city until there was a functioning board of directors, all Chinese, to assume leadership and financial responsibility. The International Committee of the YMCA in New York paid Bob's salary, but his role was to advise and assist the Chinese directors. When he first arrived in Chengtu, his first task (besides learning Chinese) was to meet the appropriate type of community leaders and interest them in supporting the Y and perhaps becoming directors. This necessarily took a long time and is one reason for what may seem like a heavy social emphasis during the early years. S. C. Yang (Yang Shao-chuan) was a Christian and a member of a leading Chengtu family and was one of the first to support the formation of a YMCA there. He served for many years as the first president of the board of directors and was certainly influential in getting other community leaders to give their support. He was also active in the Comrades to Protect the Railroad and a member of the newly formed Provincial Assembly (which was also involved in the railway fight). It is Mr. Yang and the other directors of the Y, with all their connections among the local elites, that Grace refers to when she speaks of relying for information on "Chinese friends of responsible position."