Lü’s father kept his promise and took his daughter to the Great Wall. Later she met a high school English teacher from the United States who had a camera and was not shy about using it. He often rewarded his best students with a picture of the student with her report card at the school gate.

But Lü was not satisfied with having her picture taken. She wanted to have a camera of her own. Her teacher noticed his young student’s fascination with his camera and offered to let her use it. Lü shot her first photo when she turned fifteen. He offered her some silver coins to buy film. Since patriotic sentiment ran high at the time, Lü was determined to purchase film made in China. She didn't realize that there was no such a thing; the Chinese had yet to experiment with making film.

Humiliated, she returned the camera and silver coins to her English teacher, declaring that she would make China’s first film stock. Her teacher told her that she should major in chemistry if she wanted to experiment with film. He also gave her a book on Nobel Prize winner Mme. Marie Curie to encourage her interest in science. Decades later, Lü would eventually realize her dream with the aid of her future husband, Sun Mingjing.

Lü met Sun Mingjing at the physics conference at Jinling University in 1930. Lü’s family was not wealthy, so she had to work her way through college. Sun frequented the college library where she worked. Reels of film shot on the college campus attest to Sun’s fascination with Lü Jin’ai.

On New Year’s Day in 1936, Sun invited her to go sightseeing. Lü shared with him her desire to experiment with making China’s own film stock since imported film was too expensive, driving up the cost of producing films. She wanted to contribute to the development of China’s film industry by making film stock. Lü’s ambition deeply touched Sun. Later, Sun would write: “What a match Sun and Lü make!”

In 1935, Lü and Sun developed a shared interest in a new invention, the television. Sun and Lü worked together day and night to translate an American book on the subject into Chinese. They often quarreled over the proper word usage, but by the time the Chinese version came out in August 1935 they had decided to commit to a long-term relationship and pledged to be married.

Jinling University founded the Department of Educational Cinematography (DEC) in 1936. At the age of 26, Sun became its deputy director. Under his direction, DEC made Solar Eclipse, China’s first film in color, in 1936. Filming an eclipse posed some technical challenges. In preparation, Sun experimented with measuring light temperature. Overjoyed when his experiments succeeded, he caught Lü by surprise as he leaned over to hug her. At the time, sweethearts were not supposed to have physical contact before their wedding.

While away on a major expedition through North China on a filmmaking assignment later that year, Sun wrote to Lü frequently, expressing his love for his adventures and for her.
Though a producer for all Jinling films, Sun was involved with multiple aspects of filmmaking. In Air Defense, both Lü and Sun appeared on camera, demonstrating methods to prevent damage from air raids.

Jinling founded a certificate program in electronic education, the first university level academic film program in Chinese history. Sun and Lü teamed up in offering a variety of production oriented film courses.

With the Japanese advancing, Jinling University was soon be evacuated to Western China, along with most Chinese universities from North and East China. On the eve of the Japanese invasion of Nanjing Sun and Lü were wed in the college chapel. The Dean of Students at the Jinling Women’s College, Minnie Vautrin, who later risked her life protecting local Chinese women from Japanese soldiers during the Rape of Nanjing, presided over their wedding. Vautrin wrote about the wedding in her diary on Sept. 20, 1937: “Went to Lü Gin-ai's wedding at Twinem Hall. Unfortunately, the bride was late and the first warning sounded before she came. The urgent warning sounded just as the ceremony was finished and we began to hear the low hum of bombers. Never have I said the Lord's Prayer so fast in Chinese before… ‘

Within a week the newlyweds, with the rest of the university, moved inland to Sichuan Province. Amidst the chaos, Sun and Lü started their life as husband and wife. Since they shared the same fascination with and convictions about the potential of film, their union grew stronger. Sun put Lü's desire to make China’s own film stock at the top of his agenda, spending countless hours helping her in the lab. Finally, she had a breakthrough. As recounted by their daughter, “Mother started her experiment during their exile in Chongqing in 1939. She continued her lab work in Chengdu after the Chongqing bomb interrupted her experiment. The war had cut off the supply of x-ray film. West China Medical School came to mother for aid. Mother succeeded in producing both x-ray film and film stock for making and teaching motion pictures.

Lü used the film stock to take a picture of her and their young son. Lü joined the Jinling faculty as the university moved inland, helping Sun establish majors in the study of photo chemistry and film archives. As Lü and Sun continued to immerse themselves in teaching and lab experiments throughout the 1940s, Lü’s mother, Guo Xiuqing helped rear their children. The anti-Japanese war dragged on, and refugee life became increasingly difficult.

After the Japanese were defeated in 1945, Jinling University and Women’s College made their way back to Nanjing. Sun shot his second film about Nanjing in 1948. Perhaps to trace changes or reminisce about the past, the scenes in this film were almost the same as those that appeared in his first film before the war, including the shots of his wife. They had been young sweethearts twelve years ago. Now they had three children. Sun photographed the happy family attending Christmas Eve services in December 1948. He had turned thirty-seven that year. Little did he know that 1948 would mark the end of his film career.

That spring of 1948, Jinling Women’s College was at the height of its development. More than 470 students were enrolled and the teaching faculty was at its strongest. The main building, the science building, the humanities building, the library, the musical hall and the four dormitories had been newly rebuilt. Both faculty and students worked hard to build the curriculum and took great pride in being part of the beautiful campus.

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the class of 1951 would be Jinling Women’s College’s last. On the graduation certificate, the seal on the diploma had already been changed to read, “The Education Department of the Northeast Military and Political Committee.” That year, Jinling University and the Women’s College briefly were combined and one year later, both were abolished in a wave of educational restructuring aimed at cutting China's higher education ties with the missionary system. The faculty, facilities and campus of the University and College were merged, respectively, into Nanjing University and the new Nanjing Normal University.

When the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan, Lu and Sun chose to stay in China instead of leaving for the United States. In 1952, Sun Mingjing and his entire department were merged with the newly founded Beijing Film School (which later became Beijing Film Academy, the BFA). Like many of his contemporaries, Sun was labeled a “rightist” during the political campaign of 1957-58, and prohibited from engaging in any film -related activities. During the Cultural Revolution, the academy itself was shut down.

After the Cultural Revolution, Sun resumed his teaching and many of the leading technical workers in China's revived film industry were former students of Lü Jin'ai's photochemistry classes.

Sun passed away quietly in 1992, at the age of 81. His wife followed him ten years later. Sun and Lü are survived by one daughter, Sun Jianqiu, an English professor and Shakespeare scholar, and three sons Sun Jiansan, a photographer and former professor at BFA; Sun Jianhe, a college lecturer in computer science; and Sun Jiantong, an artist. All now are retired. The oldest daughter, Sun Jianyi, was a film lab technician and passed away in 2007.

Though love letters with news and photos that Sun wrote to Lü during his long journeys of 1937 and 1939 were confiscated and destroyed by the Red Guards in 1966, in 1982, a worker cleaning a closet at the Beijing Film Academy came across a bag behind a door labeled “Sun Mingjing's materials.” Inside were several hundred negatives and letters that were published in 2004 by the Shandong Pictorial Press edited by Sun Jianqiu.

During his undergraduate education at Kenyon College, he enjoyed baseball, skating and swimming, and was a member of a debate club. Yan graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1861, and later earned an MA degree from Kenyon.

When Yan returned to China in 1861, he became a translator for the British Consulate, then worked at a Christian literature publishing company, and then the Shanghai municipal government.

Yan was active in the local church where he taught Sunday school, ran church charities and prepared for the ministry. Upon ordination, he worked with the new bishop from 1870-79 to set up a mission and a boys’ boarding school in Wuchang, Hubei province, which would eventually grow into Central China University.

Yan’s wife was the daughter of a farmer in the rural Pudong area of Shanghai. She had attended the mission’s school for girls, and after their betrothal, Yan sponsored her for a year of study in Hong Kong so she could learn English. Her great interest in Western music led her to teach piano to the three youngest children.

Yan was a devoted family man, who played checkers and flew kites with his children. He appreciated Chinese art and encouraged the children to perform traditional puppet plays and read the famous Chinese historical romances. Family life was strict, modest and frugal. Mrs. Yan taught the children beginning English as well as Chinese. The importance of education was evident in that each child was given an American middle name to honor those who had helped Mr. Yan obtain his own schooling.

Both Mrs. Yan and her daughter, Julia, blazed trails for Chinese women in public roles. The first time women missionaries were allowed to participate in the periodic nation-wide mission conferences, presenting papers on women’s work in 1890, Mrs. Yan was the only Chinese woman present, attending sessions with her husband. After returning from study in America, Julia was among the early officers of the national committee of the YWCA.

In January 1879, Yan Yongjing became one of the founders and the first principal (headmaster) in charge of St. John’s College. His administrative experience and network of ties in the local business and consular communities made him the natural choice to head up the planning, purchasing of land, and construction of the new campus. Given the bishop’s frequent absences, Yan was often the acting president as well as de facto dean, with the sixty-two resident boys under his supervision. One of six professors, Yen taught mathematics, physics, chemistry and astronomy.

During his decade at St. John’s, Yan also translated a number of important Western books to aid his teaching, including some on medicine for instructing medical students at St. Luke’s Hospital. These volumes included the first book in Chinese on psychology (then called “mental philosophy”), Herbert Spencer’s Treatise on Education, and Thomas Huxley’s Physiology (a major revision of an existing translation).

Yan seemed to seek out ways to champion victims of injustice and oppression. He debated public affairs both in the local English press and as the only Chinese member of the Literary and Debating Society of Shanghai. During the early 1890s, anti-Christian riots broke out in cities along the Yangtze River. When an anonymous attack on missionaries was published in the North China Daily News, Yan wrote to defend them as well as their converts. Yet he also wrote a letter and an article deploring racism in America, so evident in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which were published in New York City media.

In his last few years, despite declining health, Yan lobbied for inclusion of Chinese in the Municipal Council that governed the International Settlement, where most residents were Chinese. He also protested against the exclusion of Chinese taxpayers from the International Settlement’s public garden and the riverside Bund. Even after a separate Chinese Public Garden was created, Yan still refused out of principle to attend public events on the Bund, when Chinese had to stand across the street and peer from afar.

Yan’s protests against the opium trade were part of an effort by mission and Chinese church leaders after their national conference of 1890 in Shanghai. He received an invitation from the British Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade to testify in London before the newly established Royal Opium Commission. Yan conducted a speaking tour of 52 principal cities of England and Scotland to arouse public opinion against the trade.

During the following seven months, he addressed the annual China Inland Mission convention (the CIM was at the forefront of the anti-opium trade campaign) and over 100 other public meetings despite a side trip to Paris and a ten-day hiatus when his health faltered. At a farewell gathering, dozens of prominent civic leaders praised Yan’s passionate and articulate testimony as a needed boost to the anti-opium campaign in Britain.

Upon returning to China, Yan joined the Executive Committee of the newly-formed Anti-opium League. At the time of his death, he was helping to publish and distribute the results of major medical surveys that helped turn the tide of public opinion in both countries. Thus he helped rekindle the flames of public opinion that led eventually to the 1906 Chinese edict against opium use and trade.

Even while teaching on St. John’s beautiful and peaceful campus, Yan would travel to the crowded old Hongkou section of the International Settlement each week to preach in the Sunday morning services at the Church of the Saviour, the mother church of the American Episcopal Church Mission. In 1886, mission leaders reassigned him from the college to the church as rector. For the next decade, Pastor and Mrs. Yan were busy leading the programs within the church as well as its outreach to nonmembers, including Mrs. Yan’s oversight of Christian instruction and care for patients in the local women’s hospital. Early in their ministry, Mrs. Yen became a confidante of American women missionaries, as well as of Chinese church members and household servants.

On completing his tour of England, from September 1894 until March 1895, Pastor Yan then visited America to appeal for funds and personnel on behalf of the American Church Mission in China. Returning to the United States for the first time in thirty years, he was able to visit Kenyon College and renew friendships. While visiting the Virginia Theological Seminary, he likely made arrangements for his third son, Huiqing, to attend the nearby Episcopal High School.

Toward the end of his life, Yan was the acknowledged leader of Shanghai’s American-educated returnees as well as the senior member of the Chinese clergy, an adviser and counselor to civic leaders, foreign missionaries and household servants alike.

Yan’s extended family, for the most part, brought him additional honor. His eldest son was a valued adviser of Viceroy Li Hongzhang, while the youngest three children were doing well in studies abroad. Other accomplished family members had benefited from Yan’s concern and care and were part of his living legacy. One son, Yan Fuqing (F. C. Yen), later received an MD from Yale and on return to China helped establish the Yale-in-China Medical School in Changsha, where he served as its Dean. Later, in Shanghai he was director of the Red Cross Hospital and President of the Central Medical School.

Yan’s younger sister married Cao Zishi, the pastor of a church in Suzhou who practiced self-taught medicine in the Southern Methodist Mission hospital. One of their sons, Cao Yunxiang, was a St. John’s graduate who earned an MBA from Harvard, served as Consul General in London, and then during his term as president of Tsinghua (1922-28) expanded it into a comprehensive university.

During the last decade of the 19th century, Yan suffered from high blood pressure and periodic bouts of depression. His health was failing due to a heavy workload at the church and the rigors of his overseas speaking tour. One main cause of his stress was his second son’s serious addiction (details were a family secret) and consequent loss of work and mounting debts. Despite his prestigious law school degree, he could barely manage to retain work as a translator. Within just a few months after learning that he had a terminal disease, Yan Yongjing passed away. His widow died one year later.

Eulogies came from those near and far. A tribute from one of the missionary couples who first taught with Yan at St. John’s said, “Mr. Yen’s intellectual abilities, combined with his sincere and stainless Christian character, made him one of the greatest leaders of the native Christian community.” An editorial in The Chinese Recorder remarked,

“Other Chinese have been educated in the United States, and returned to their native land to live and labor among their own people, but there was only one Mr. Yen. . . . [H]is words were listened to with profound respect, and his opinion was given the greatest weight. . . . Indefatigable in his labors, wise in his counsels, modest and unpretentious, yet always courteous in his busy life, his death has deprived China of one of her most valuable workers, and the missionary body of a much-loved and respected brother.”

Yan’s moral leadership changed missionary attitudes, British public opinion, and Chinese public culture.

In January 1882, at the age of 12, Kuang traveled to Hong Kong and eventually departed for the West Coast of the U.S. Kuang went directly to Sacramento and lived with his uncle, who worked as a vegetable dealer. On his uncle’s recommendation, Kuang worked for an American family as a cook, earning $1 per week. The uncle encouraged his nephew to study English at a night school set up by the pastor of the Chinese Congregational Church, where he met his mentor, Chen Xiushi (Chin Toy), who later became pastor of the church.

Though Kuang was interested in the Christian faith, he was still troubled by his own behavior. He couldn’t easily discard his traditional Chinese faith and family ties. After the place where he was living caught on fire, he began living in the church, giving him even more opportunities to learn more about Christianity. Half a year later, he was baptized and became a church member.

One day when he was on his way home after work, he met someone from the Salvation Army. After often attending their meetings, he went forward to receive prayer by the preacher. The Salvation Army had long planned to work in the Chinese community, and Kuang now was the most qualified candidate. In 1889, he began to serve with the Salvation Army. He first went to the headquarters of the Army[1] in San Francisco, to receive a half a year of training. After more than a year of traveling and preaching in several cities along the Pacific coast, Kuang was summoned to serve as a cook at headquarters while still preaching among Chinese in spare time. After completing courses in stenography and typing, Kuang returned to headquarters as a clerk instead of a cook. Soon he was promoted to become secretary to the ranking leader of the Salvation Army on the Pacific Coast. During the subsequent four or five years he participated in a literature club and learned to debate and to give public speeches. By the time he left the Salvation Army in 1897, he was an ensign, the first Chinese in the world to be raised to staff rank.

Though Kuang dreamed of going to college, he did not have enough savings to pay for the tuition fees. While traveling in southern California, Kuang met a student at Pomona College, who told Kuang’s dream to Dr. Cyrus H. Baldwin, the President of Pomona College (established by the Congregational Church in Claremont). Dr. Baldwin contacted Kuang and encouraged him to enter Pomona College, indicating that a part-time job would solve the problem of lack of tuition.

After five years in Pomona College, in 1902, Kuang transferred to the University of California at Berkeley. He still worked as a cook or a farm laborer after classes to make a living. Meanwhile, he served as a secretary and assistant at the university’s YMCA. After Kuang finished three more years of study and work, he earned his BA degree in 1905. He received a fellowship to study literature and education at Columbia University in New York City, earning an MA in education 1906.

In 1906, he returned to his motherland for the first time in twenty-four years. He taught English in Canton for one year. In October 1907, Kuang was one of forty-two candidates who took the first national civil service examination designed for returned students by the Board of Education, in Beijing. He scored third best among thirty-eight successful candidates and was awarded the highest-level Jinshi degree as a Doctor of Literature. He was assigned to the Ministry of Post and Communications.

On January 6, 1908, Dr. Kuang married Lin Lian’en (Dr. Laura Lum), an assistant and teacher for the Hackett Medical College for Women, the first women's medical college in China. She was born in California of Christian Chinese parents and came back to China at the age of seven.

The assignment to the Ministry of Post and Communication, however, while prestigious was completely different from Kuang’s desires. In 1908, therefore, he joined the Commercial Press, the largest publishing company in China in the early twentieth century, publishing a wide range of books, magazines, textbooks, and dictionaries that made a significant and far-reaching contribution to the dissemination of knowledge and formation of culture in modern China. For the first several years, Kuang mainly engaged in writing or editing school textbooks in English. The people who worked with him admired both his ability and his personal character.

Kuang’s contribution to English education in Republican China was achieved through the many English texts published by the Commercial Press. In the early twentieth century, the Commercial Press occupied two-thirds of the textbook market in China. From 1907 to 1914, he edited or authored more than 30 English textbooks, including Intermediate English Grammar, English Grammar for English Grammar (I-IV), and A Class-Book of English Letter Writing. The most popular, Model English Reader, published in 1918, went through five editions and sold one million copies in the next twenty-five years. Thus, Kuang achieved his goal of serving the country through English education by his work at Commercial Press.

In 1909, he was invited to address the Educational Association of China (EAC, later the China Christian Educational Association), an organization set up by missionaries to promote the development of Christian education in China. At the meeting, Kuang recommended the standardization of courses in mission schools to comport with the curricula of the Board of Education, in order to secure full recognition by the Chinese government. Kuang’s suggestion was endorsed and later acted upon by a number of missionaries, and he was immediately elected to the EAC’s executive committee. During 1914-1926, he served as a board member of the editorial committee of EAC’s official publication, The Educational Review, and contributed to the journal’s special section called “Government Education.”

Though Kuang had no difficulty attending English services in Shanghai, he and several others organized the Cantonese Union Church in November 1915. On October 7, 1917, a new church was dedicated, with a medical dispensary for the poor, a Sunday school, a Christian Endeavor Society for youth, and other church activities. He also actively participated in the work of the China Continuation Committee, National Christian Council, National Christian Literature Association, and the China Christian Church.

Even before he arrived in Shanghai to join the Commercial Press, he had been invited to become a board member of the Shanghai-based national committee of the YMCA of China (and Korea, at the time) as well as the local Shanghai YMCA. Shortly thereafter, he became an editor of the English magazine, China’s Young Men. Kuang participated in YMCA’s work for more than thirty years and served as president of the national YMCA for ten years, continuing to share in its direction and development until his death.

In 1922, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Pomona College, the third person ever to receive that degree from his alma mater. On September 24, 1922, the New York Times published his story, already legendary, “From Coolie Boy to LL.D.”

After an extended trip around the world in 1922, Kuang further committed himself to multiple civic and philanthropic organizations. Because of overworking, in 1923 his health deteriorated. During the early summer he had an attack of facial paralysis, and the nerve responsible for facial movement on the right side of his face was damaged. Nevertheless, he continued to expand his activities beyond education, social service, and the Christian church, due to his concern for the public welfare of the common people in China.

In 1922, Kuang joined the Rotary Club of Shanghai, which had been established in 1919 as a branch of Rotary International. Kuang later served first as the Rotary’s governor in several regions, as a committee member, and finally as one of the directors of Rotary International. Kuang should be credited with numerous projects, such as the Christmas toy drives, China Institute for the Blind, Russian School for Boys, and Civilian Refugee Aid, all initiated by the Rotary Club of Shanghai during the 1920s-1930s.

In company with other ardent and like-minded Christians, Kuang also initiated and participated in two important national social welfare movements. In 1926, Kuang worked with others to organize the Chinese Mission to Lepers in Shanghai. Through the Mission’s efforts, leprosy clinics were built in a number of cities and over the following decade brought international attention to this new effort in China. In 1928, Kuang with others started the National Child Welfare Association to protect and insure the rights of the children of China, and to promote in every possible way their well-being through child protection, child relief, child health and family education.

Kuang retired from Commercial Press at the age of 60 in 1929. In retirement, he was appointed a board member of the International Rotary and traveled around the world on behalf of the International YMCA and Rotary International. After the Japanese invasion in 1937, he raised funds inside and outside of China to help his compatriots.

After overworking for many years, he suffered many health problems, including an inflammation of the bladder. He died at age 69 on October 3, 1938, and was buried in Hongqiao Road Cemetery. Kuang was survived by his wife, four daughters (Laura, Lucile, Mary and Mae) and a son (Baldwin). They later resided in Taiwan, Hong Kong and the United States after 1949.

Kuang enthusiastically participated in Christian enterprises, especially Chinese Christian institutions, so as to promote the indigenization of Christianity in China. Kuang was one of the most important civic leaders in early twentieth century China. The public welfare organizations launched by Kuang and his partners were organized voluntarily by intellectuals or professionals in China. These civic enterprises helped promote the development of voluntary associations in the Republican era.

Kuang’s Christian character had great spiritual impact on his co-workers and also served as a role model for many others. He was not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus. One evening in September 1931, he spoke to around 500 students at the University of Shanghai on “Why I am a Christian” in the wake of an anti-Christian movement.

John Hunter Morrison, a Presbyterian missionary on his way to India, found some funding for Zeng to enroll in Bloomfield Academy, a boy’s boarding school in Bloomfield, NJ, outside of Newark. After attending there three years, Zeng entered Hamilton College, a Presbyterian-affiliated school in Clinton, NY. His sole funding came from women in the First Presbyterian Church in Utica, NY who refused to extend their assistance past the initial agreement of two years. So Zeng left NY in May 1848 and sailed to Hong Kong.

He was invited to join the ABCFM mission in Canton as a “permanent native assistant,” though he first needed to spend two years studying Cantonese. While he was learning that language, he began to help in conducting Sunday services and distributing religious tracts. By the fourth year, he was preaching at the daily midday service. In 1853, he asked for a higher salary, but being turned down, he left the mission, whereupon Zeng became a manager for two Western firms in Shanghai.

In August 1850 he married Ruth Ati, who was born in 1825 and grew up in Java, Batavia (Dutch Indonesia). She had been educated in a school run by an English missionary, Mary Ann Aldersey, and was baptized in Batavia. They had three daughters and three sons. The children were brought up to be bilingual. Both he and his wife joined the Union Church in Shanghai and were among its earliest members. Zeng’s wife operated a day school for girls in E.C. Bridgman’s Shanghai mission.

Zeng Laishun and Yung Wing met in Shanghai in the mid-1850s. At the end of 1860 Zeng and Yung, together with a couple of Western missionaries, took a two-month trip up the Yangtze River to Nanjing, the capital of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

Like Yung, Zeng joined the imperial government service. He worked with Viceroy Zuo Zongtang, one of the leading self-strengtheners of the era. Zeng was hired to teach at the Fuzhou Navy Yard School that was being set up by Zuo Zongtang. He assisted in the school’s English division and interpreted for James Caroll, the head of the division.

After spending more than five years at the Fuzhou Navy Yard School, Zeng was reassigned to the new Chinese Educational Mission (CEM) to the U.S. Zeng and his older two sons were appointed the English teachers for the preparatory school in Shanghai. Zeng then accompanied the first detachment of the CEM from Shanghai to Springfield, MA. He brought his wife and six children along with him.

Zeng stayed in Springfield in the role of translator, the third ranking member of the CEM. He welcomed the succeeding groups of CEM students to Springfield and arranged for their distribution among host families. After the arrival of the third detachment of CEM students, he hosted a reception in honor of their escort, which seventy-five local notables attended.

On November 3, 1872, Zeng and Ruth Ati formally enrolled in South Congregational Church in Springfield “by letter” from the Union Church in Shanghai. The following year three of their four grown children joined the church ‘by confession.” Spencer, a CEM student, did not.

In late 1873 or early 1874, accompanied by another CEM staff member, Zeng visited Havana for ten days to meet with British and American consuls as preparatory work for a seven week tour of Cuba by the director of CEM, Chen Lanbin, which ultimately stopped coolie trade to that area.

During his time in the U.S., Zeng lectured on many topics to various groups. He spoke at the Hampden County Fair, the Armory Hill Temperance Society, the YMCA, the Sunday schools of three different Congregational churches, and the graduation ceremonies of the Hartford Public High School. His topics included: “education in China,” “manners and customs of Chinese,” and Chinese “tea culture.”

In December 1874, he was called back to China. On his way, he inspected various educational institutions in Europe. His former employers at The Fuzhou Navy Yard School were considering sending their recent graduates there.

He never came back to the U.S. His wife and four children returned to China. Two of the sons remained, to continue their studies at Yale.

Zeng worked for the rest of his life as personal secretary to Li Hongzhang, who was in charge of almost all of China’s foreign relations during the late nineteenth century.

Zeng died in Tianjin on June 2, 1895 at the age of sixty-nine.

They both taught at the Peking Union Medical College (PUMC). Her research focused on the eradication of kala-azar, a disease which, if left untreated, led to death, and which was endemic to rural China north of the Yangtze River.

After the Japanese army occupied North China in the early 1930s, the Wangs moved to Shanghai and became affiliated with St. John’s University medical school. Dorothy taught microbiology at St. John’s from 1943-44.

After the couple was legally separated, Wang continued to work in hospitals in Shanghai and then in Xian, where he died. Dorothy later moved to the United States where she worked at Yale University as a medical librarian while teaching microbiology. Dorothy Xu Wang died in on October 24, 1999 in Colorado Springs, Colorado at the age of ninety-six. An announcement said, “Her death marks the end of a major era in the history of the Huie family.”

Helen married Gui Zhitang, who received a PhD in physics from Princeton. Gui returned to China to teach physics at Yale-in-China (Yali) in Changsha in 1921. After attending Beijing Language School, Helen married Gui on July 22, 1921, in Shanghai and together they had six children.

During the Northern Expedition in 1926, the communists in Changsha directed an attack on Yali’s middle school, Gui and his family moved to Central China University (CCU) in Wuhan. After serving as head of the physics department there, in the fall of 1935, Gui and family left for a year’s study in the United States.

When the war with Japan started in northern China, Wuhan at first was a place of safety for the refugees. But by January 1938 Wuhan too had become a place of danger. The Gui family did not leave immediately because Gui’s mother, age seventy, could not travel in the winter. But Helen put things in order so that they could pack a few suitcases and leave on very short notice, if necessary. “The cheerful and almost happy-go-lucky natures of both Paul and myself stand us [in] good stead in these days,” she wrote to a friend. Even when they spent time in the family shelter during air raids, they kept the children cheerful rather than fearful. Much of their time was spent in relief work because two hundred and fifty refugees were living on the campus. Helen also made clothes for the wounded soldiers and padded clothes and mittens for the soldiers at the front.

After successfully moving Central China University to Guilin, Guanxi province, Gui headed back north and west to join Helen, the children and his mother who had traveled with others from Wuhan University to take refuge in Leshan, Sichuan. He took up his new post as head of the college of science and he and Helen helped to lead Christian activities for students exiled in the remote region. Helen taught English and served as the chair of the foreign language department at Wuhan University. While Gui was in the United State trying to help Americans understand China’s plight and ask for assistance, the family home was bombed several times and Helen and the children had to move from place to place.

Even after her husband died in 1961 after being libeled and mistreated as a “rightist” during political campaigns, Helen continued to teach English at Wuhan University until she retired. In 1979 was she was able to meet again with family members in the United States, when she attended a reunion there.

Helen Xu Gui died from a heart attack at the age of 95 on March 23, 1995 in Wuhan, where she was living with her youngest son and his wife. She was buried next to her husband.

Maria and Samuel arrived in Penang in 1827, serving with the Ultra-Ganges Mission of the London Missionary Society. She and Samuel moved to Malacca in 1829 and to Singapore in 1835. Though her first baby died, she gave birth to Samuel Jr. in 1833, Burella in 1835, and Maria Jane in 1837, who would later marry Hudson Taylor. She was close friends with Miss Aldersey and Miss Buckland. When she became ill after Maria Jane's birth, the family moved back to England in 1841 for her to recover. They returned to Singapore in 1843.

Maria helped her husband in the establishment and running of schools for girls, a work which they both highly valued, despite its difficulty. After setbacks and defeats, they finally succeeded in forming schools for local females.

After Samuel's tragic death in 1843, their friends Sir William and Lady Norris cared for Maria's 10-year-old son for over two years, and then took him back to England. Not long after her husband's death, Maria's baby boy died after being dropped by his nurse. Maria, however, remained strong, and she determined to carry on Samuel's work in China through her own resources. All that Samuel had was given to the mission.

Two years later, Maria married another missionary, Johann Georg Bausum, in Penang in 1845. Shortly thereafter, Maria died in Penang in 1846 and her children were sent back to London, where they were cared for by Maria's family, but it would not be long before they would return to China to serve as missionaries themselves.

Sun Mingjing came to share his father’s obsession with film. He shot his first still photo at the age of five. During his high school years, he would often walk to the nearby auditorium at Jinling University to watch imported silent films, fiction and non-fiction.

In 1927, Sun Mingjing chose to study the science and technology of film, which were physics, chemistry and electronic engineering at Jinling since there was no film major. After the Council for Film Education (CFE) was established at Jinling in 1930, Sun (age 19) was hired as a part-time secretary, responsible for collecting documents and curating films. As a university student, Sun spent seven years learning everything there was to know about film from its chemistry to its art, before finally graduating in 1934 at the age of 23. Sun was hired immediately as a special assistant to Dr. Wei Xueren, the Dean of the College of Science and Engineering.

Wei and Sun collaborated in 1934 on the Council for Film Education’s first production, Famous Scenery in Suzhou. The debut film captured images of a Chinese city renowned for its beautiful stone bridges, pagodas, and meticulously designed gardens, but it captured another kind of beauty too, Lü Jin’ai, Sun’s future wife.

Born in August 15, 1912 in Shanxi Province, Lü came from a family with intellectual curiosity equal to that of Sun’s. One of her teachers noticed his young student’s fascination with his camera and offered to let her use it.. Since patriotic sentiment ran high at the time, Lü was determined to purchase film made in China. After finding it did not exist, she returned the camera to her English teacher, declaring that she would make China’s first film stock. Her teacher told her that she should major in chemistry.

Sun and Lü’s met in 1930 at a conference held by the Department of Physics at Jinling University. In 1935, Sun and Lü developed a shared interest in a new invention, the television. They translated M. G. Scroggie and Kent Bromley’s book Television into Chinese, often quarreling over the proper word usage in translation. By the time the Chinese translation came out in August 1935 they had decided to commit to a long-term relationship and pledged to be married.

Jinling University founded the Department of Educational Cinematography (DEC) in 1936. At the age of 26, Sun became its deputy director. DEC later became the production headquarters for all Jinling films, providing a training ground for students and other aspiring young filmmakers. DEC would make 112 films from 1934 to 1948, of which more than half were shot and edited by Sun. DEC was renamed the Motion Picture Department in 1940 and was again renamed the Audio Visual Center in 1947.

Under Sun’s direction, DEC made Solar Eclipse, China’s first film in color in 1936. Jinling founded a certificate program in electronic education, the first university level academic film program in Chinese history. Sun and Lü teamed up in offering a variety of production oriented film courses.

With the Japanese advancing, Jinling University planned to evacuate to Western China. On the eve of the Japanese invasion of Nanjing Sun and Lü were wed in the college chapel. Within a week the newlyweds, with the rest of the university, moved inland to Sichuan Province. Along the way West, Sun recorded the only film footage of an air raid and bombing by the Japanese in Chongqing, the wartime capital.

Amidst the chaos, Sun and Lü started their life as husband and wife. Sharing the same fascination with and convictions about the potential of film, their union grew stronger. Sun put Lü's desire to make China’s own film stock at the top of his agenda, spending countless hours helping her in the lab. Finally, she had a breakthrough. Lü used the film stock to take a picture of her and their young son. Lü joined the Jinling faculty as the university moved inland, helping Sun establish majors in the study of photo chemistry and film archives. He joined major scientific expeditions organized by the several Christian universities joined together to share the same campus, faculty and facilities in exile in Chengdu.

For the war effort, Sun edited and combined short travelogues he had made depicting famous Chinese scenery into a long film titled Return My Rivers and Mountains. The film urged young men to join the army and called on the public to maintain a patriotic determination to regain lost territories. Sun also made defense films that taught people how to protect themselves against air raids and poison gas attacks.

While traveling in the poor rural areas out West, Sun made a concerted effort to bring his films to illiterate peasants through outdoor film screening.

The chief financiers of Sun’s films included the national bureaus of education, industry and agriculture, the Association of Educational Films, and various local agencies including school districts. The university itself only financed ten projects. The State Bureau of Education (SBE) distributed most of Sun’s films. Jinling also built a film library that was free and open to the public, and functioned partly as a film distribution unit.

Sun was a regular at the screenings of U.S. educational films and later was instrumental in translating ninety-nine U.S. educational documentary films into Chinese. Sponsored by Jinling, Sun spent a year in the United States from June 1940 to 1941, viewing and studying documentary films. After a three-month visit to the University of Minnesota’s Visual Education Department, he wrote a report summarizing UM’s achievement in January 1941, which a milestone in developing China’s film education. To share the vast amount of information he accumulated in the United States, Sun founded Film and Broadcasting, the first Chinese academic journal on film in 1942. With the advent of sound, the journal was later renamed Image and Sound. Using all his savings, together with financial aid from various organizations, Sun purchased and brought back to China the most up-to-date film equipment. This equipment later became the principal teaching inventory for the national film school in Beijing.

After the Japanese were defeated in 1945, Jinling University and Women’s College made their way back to Nanjing. Sun shot his second film about Nanjing in 1948. Perhaps to trace changes or reminisce about the past, the scenes in this film were almost the same as those that appeared in his first film before the war, including the shots of his wife. They had been young sweethearts twelve years ago. Now they had three children.

When the Nationalists retreated to Taiwan, Sun and Lü chose to stay in China. In 1952, Sun Mingjing and his entire department were merged with the newly founded Beijing Film School (which later became Beijing Film Academy, the BFA). Sun was labeled a “rightist” during the political campaign of 1957-58, and prohibited from engaging in any film related activities. During the Cultural Revolution, the academy itself was shut down. After the Cultural Revolution, Sun resumed his teaching. He continued to polish his teaching manuals and lecture notes in his later years, even though he suffered from severe eyesight problems. He never published a single book, and he never made another film.

When the Acadamy reopened the first class of BFA students brushed shoulders with the old master. Included among Sun's new students of cinematography was Zhang Yimou. As one later president of the Beijing Film Academy recalled, “Professor Sun was the pioneer of China’s educational films as well the founding father of cinematography in China. My contemporary 5th generation filmmakers benefited greatly from his teaching.” In 1991, a group of Sun’s students from the Jinling era gathered to celebrate his 80th birthday. Among them was Sun’s last Jinling student, by then the president of BFA.

Sun passed away quietly in 1992, at the age of 81. His wife followed him ten years later. Sun and Lü are survived by one daughter, Sun Jianqiu, an English professor and Shakespeare scholar, and three sons Sun Jiansan, a photographer and former professor at BFA; Sun Jianhe, a college lecturer in computer science; and Sun Jiantong, an artist. All now are retired. The oldest daughter, Sun Jianyi, was a film lab technician and passed away in 2007.

Though love letters with news and photos that Sun wrote to Lü during his long journeys of 1937 and 1939 were confiscated and destroyed in 1966 by the Red Guards, in 1982, a worker at the Beijing Film Academy storage room came across a bag with labels “Sun Mingjing's materials.” Inside were several hundred negatives and letters. The Shandong Pictorial Press later published the letters and photos, edited by Sun Jianqiu, in 2004.

Another fortuitous re-discovery happened in 2002 with Sun’s films. The Chinese Radio, Film, and Television Gazette reported the discovery of “China’s earliest films” in 2003, causing quite a stir among filmmakers and historians in China. Articles and monographs were published and conferences held in honor of Sun’s contribution. In 2004, China Central TV sponsored a 12 episode documentary series, tracing Sun Mingjing’s film career and the historic images he left behind.

Sun made one hundred nineteen documentary films on topics ranging from travel to science, education, industry, agriculture, public affairs, ethnic and folk culture, and religious activities. More than half of Sun’s films were screened widely across China at the time of their production. Included in Sun’s oeuvre were China’s first color film Solar Eclipse (1936) and the first sound film in color, The Frontline of Democracy (1947), both of which have survived, along with Sun's footage of the Japanese bombing of Chongqing. Sun also founded China’s first academic film program and its first film journal.

Cobbold helped to put William Martin's romanization of the Ningbo dialect to use through the translation of books and the promotion of their printing. This new writing system was welcomed by the people of the region, who were amazed to see children and other illiterate people learn to read in a matter of days. He worked on translating the Ningbo Romanized Vernacular New Testament along with Russell, Gough, Rankin, Way, and W.A.P. Martin, and later authorized Hudson Taylor's revision of their text. He also translated Pilgrim's Progress and Line upon Line.

In 1852, Cobbold and his wife escorted Burella and Maria Dyer to Shanghai and Ningbo aboard the Harriet Humble. They taught the girls Chinese on the way, and once in China, they helped to oversee them. Cobbold and Rankin of the Presbyterian mission visited thirteen walled cities on their two tours of Chekiang in 1855-56. Despite China's general resistance to foreigners, they were able to travel in Western dress without being stopped. On occasion, he preached at Dr. Parker's clinic, and he lived in Ningbo until 1862. He then returned to England to become the rector of the parish of Broseley in Staffordshire.

From that year, Huang began to help the missionaries with translation and literary work, since he had received a basic education in the Confucian classics and wrote well. Apart from helping to translate the Bible, from 1874 Huang became the key helper with a Chinese newspaper the missionaries started that year called Zion’s Messenger (Huanshan shizhe yuebao). Huang used the newspaper as a platform to write articles advocating a number of modern reforms. His was one of the first Chinese voices to call for using vaccinations against smallpox, as well as for putting an end to the practice of foot-binding. In addition, he was a strong advocate of mission education who favored instruction in English so that Chinese Christians could tap into Western knowledge and the field of commerce. Education of women was part of his vision and he established two private schools, one 1873 and the other in 1885, to educate his own children, including his daughters.

Starting from the early 1870s, Huang decided to prepare for China’s traditional civil service examinations. He chose this course because he saw the numerous conflicts that Chinese Christians experienced with local society and how they were discriminated against and marginalized by local gentry. Huang believed that if there were Christians who were members of the gentry it would improve the situation. He studied hard and in 1877 obtained the basic shengyuan degree, which was followed in 1894 by the much more difficult juren degree. This was quite an achievement, given the stiff competition for degrees in the latter part of the Qing dynasty. When Huang traveled to Beijing in 1895 to take exams for the highest level jinshi degree (which he never obtained), the Sino-Japanese War was underway, and he suffered the pain both of China’s defeat and the loss of his younger brother, who was a sailor in the navy. Huang then joined other scholars in Beijing in support of Kang Youwei and his call for China to reject a peace treaty with Japan and to immediately seek ways to strengthen the nation.

Upon returning to Fujian, and in light of the dangers facing his country, Huang decided to leave his work at the Methodist Episcopal mission and instead seek to promote a Christianized China through political and educational reform. To this end, in 1896 he used his own funds to launch a secular Chinese newspaper called Fubao, which was the first newspaper started by a Chinese in Fujian. It was a two-page paper published twice a week and it advocated adoption of such reforms as a parliamentary system and a free press. However, after a year he had to shut the paper down because it was losing money.

Three years later, Huang was in Beijing again to take the jinshi exams when the 100 Hundred Day Reform movement led by Kang Youwei started. He not only actively supported this, but through a friend from Fujian who was very close to Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, he became directly connected with the leaders of the movement. He himself submitted eight petitions to the Guangxu Emperor, one of which recommended adopting pinyin to help with the study of Chinese characters. However, when the reform movement met with a conservative backlash and some of its leaders were arrested and executed by the government, Huang was forced to flee quickly to Fujian, since he was number eleven on the most wanted list.

Shortly thereafter, Huang decided to start a new settlement of Chinese in Malaysia in order to escape China’s despotism and Fujian’s poverty. While in Singapore considering where he might establish such a colony, Huang met Sun Yatsen and the two soon became good friends. Huang’s translation into Chinese of a book on American history won Sun’s respect, and Huang admired Sun’s democratic ideals and commitment to Christianity. In 1901, Huang traveled with settlers from Fujian to Sibu, where he founded New Fuzhou. Before long New Fuzhou had a population of over one thousand Chinese, two-thirds of them Christians. Huang spent the next three years attending to myriad administrative tasks needed to get the community established. Unexpectedly, in 1904 he returned to Fujian, in part because his administration of the settlement did not generate enough profit to satisfy the local ruler who had supplied the land.

Back in Fujian, Huang founded the Fujian Daily News and was a leader of Fujian activities during the nation-wide anti-American boycott of 1905, which protested the adoption of exclusion laws by the United States preventing Chinese laborers from entering the country. While he avoided harsh anti-foreignism, Huang did not hesitate to strongly and publicly condemn the American policy.

By this time, Huang had also shifted his political views from favoring reform, as he had in 1898, to supporting revolution. Young J. Allen, the missionary editor of the influential Chinese language Globe Magazine in Shanghai, was a key person in convincing Huang that support for revolution was a legitimate Christian position. Huang then began to distribute tracts calling for revolution and became an active supporter of Sun Yat-sen, sending information on revolutionary activities in Fujian to Sun’s agents in Singapore, who then reported it to Sun in Tokyo. Huang joined Sun’s Revolutionary Alliance in 1906 and was a key figure in planning the Huang Gang uprising and recruiting many of those who participated in it.

From 1907 to 1911, Huang focused primarily on promoting educational reform by founding 34 Chinese secondary schools in the Min County region of Fujian, which he made sure taught Western subjects and inculcated nationalism. Also, in 1909 he was elected to the Fujian Provincial Assembly, which was part of the constitutional reform program that the Qing government had been forced to adopt. Huang became one of the leading members of the legislative body and he proposed numerous reforms, for instance to ensure better use of Fujian’s natural resources, to counter opium and gambling, and to introduce penal reform.

In 1911, after the 1910 Wuhan Uprising began to unravel Qing rule in China, Huang began to spread revolutionary ideology among students at the Methodist Anglo-Chinese Academy in Fuzhou, where he was Dean. In addition, he established the Fuzhou Qiaonan Physical Training Society as a front for the Fujian Revolutionary Alliance where it could train the students who joined the movement. On the 9th and 10th of November 1911, Huang and the Fujian Alliance fought against and defeated the Imperial Army in Fuzhou with the help of these students, and thus brought Qing rule in the province to an end. As a supporter of Sun, Huang was appointed head of the Board of Communications for the provisional Fujian government in November 1911, but his high-level public service soon came to an end when Yuan Shikai deposed all Sun’s supporters in September 1912.

Huang spent his remaining years engaged in various community projects, serving as head of the Board of Trustees for the Fuzhou YMCA, helping to edit a political newspaper, and being sought out as an adviser to government officials. He held his Christian faith to the end. As he lay on his deathbed, he asked his wife to hold up a picture of Christ for him to see, and asked that the picture be laid on his chest as he died on 22 September 1924.

Huang Naishang was one of the most influential and impressive Chinese Protestants of the Imperial era. His experience in ministry and his two decades assisting missionaries in literary work instilled in him a strong faith and an informed Christian worldview, as well as a familiarity with modern knowledge. His Confucian upbringing and success in the civil service examinations were extremely rare for Chinese Christians at the time and allowed him to have significant social influence. Huang used this influence to seek the reform and Christianization of Chinese society through educational and political change. He described his motivation to do these things as Christian altruism, which combined Christian notions of personal sacrifice for the benefit of others with Confucian ideals of public service. Huang’s many years of ministry and community involvement touched numerous lives and did much to enhance the credibility of the church and of Christianity in China.

Liu Tingfang was an exceptional student as he pursued education at mission schools, doing his high school study at Wenzhou yiwen zhongxue (operated by English Free Methodists), and his college training at St. John’s University in Shanghai (run by American Episcopalians). He was also a precocious writer who from the age of fifteen penned articles that were published in missionary newspapers. One of these caught the eye of the prominent American Presbyterian missionary John Leighton Stuart and resulted in Stuart becoming an important friend and mentor to Liu.

Liu Tingfang went to the United States in 1910 to continue his studies, with Stuart helping to arrange his financial support. After finishing his undergraduate studies with a year at the University of Georgia, he received a Master’s degree in education from Columbia University, then a Bachelor of Divinity degree from Yale Divinity School, and a Ph.D. in education and psychology again from Columbia University. While a student, Liu was involved in the Chinese Students Christian Association, serving as president in 1916. He also played a leading role in two Christian secret societies dedicated to “the uplift of China” through research and social reform. Members pledged to help each other in their careers back in China.

During these years Liu met and fell in love with his wife, Wu Zhuosheng, who had grown up in China as the daughter of a Christian businessman in Shanghai and like Liu was in the United States for further study. Liu was also ordained a minister by a Congregational church in Manhattan before he returned to China in 1920.

Originally Liu was planning to work with his mentor John Leighton Stuart at Nanjing Seminary, but when Stuart accepted an offer to become the president of the newly-established Yanjing University in Beijing, Liu joined him there instead. As the first Chinese with a Ph.D. to join the faculty, Liu was instrumental in attracting other Chinese of similar academic caliber to the school, many of them also graduates of Columbia University. Within a year, Liu had been appointed head of the School of Religion at Yanjing, which was rare at a time when Chinese seminary faculties were still staffed mainly by Western missionaries. He also taught psychology and served as Stuart’s most trusted Chinese adviser.

Liu also became involved in a wide variety of other activities, perhaps the most important being his prominent role in Life Fellowship, a group of Protestant intellectuals based in Beijing made up primarily of Chinese, but with some Western missionaries as well. The group was committed to engaging from a Christian perspective the remarkable intellectual revolution that had started in China at the time, commonly referred to as the New Culture movement. Liu was chief editor of their journal, initially called Life Journal but later changed to Truth and Life. Becoming one of the most influential Protestant periodicals in China, it was published on a monthly basis until 1941, a remarkable longevity compared to most Chinese journals of the time.

Liu’s prominence as a Christian educator at Yanjing and editor of Life Journal made him an influential spokesman for Chinese Protestantism. He was selected to serve as the presiding minister at Sun Yat-sen’s funeral, for example. Sun had passed away in March 1925 in Beijing, where he had traveled to promote the unification of China. Since there was a strong anti-Christian movement sweeping China at the time, many of his key lieutenants opposed holding a Christian funeral, but Sun’s wife and son insisted on one, which was held in private and followed by a large public secular funeral. Liu’s role reflected not only his prominence in church circles, but also his close ties to the Song family and the fact that he was a minister in the same (Congregational) denomination in which Sun had received baptism as a young man.

Liu Tingfang contributed in many other significant ways to the development of the Protestant church in China. He played a critical part, along with Cheng Jingyi and Zhao Zichen, in the founding of the National Christian Council in 1922, which missionaries and Chinese Protestants formed to enhance cooperation between a wide variety of Christian groups in China and to address common concerns such as evangelism, rural life, the family, indigenization of the church, and international harmony. He was also the first Chinese to be chosen as head of the China Christian Education Association, in which role he succeeded in preserving a place for Christian education in China, despite the insistence by many Chinese nationalists that Christian schools be taken over by the government. He urged schools to register with the authorities, appoint Chinese leaders, and make all religious classes and activities voluntary. A third area of influence was Liu’s work as the main editor of Hymns of Universal Praise, the most popular Chinese hymnal of the period, selling over 300,000 copies in its first five years. Liu personally translated 164 of the more than five hundred hymns it contained, and six were hymns that he personally wrote.

Liu Tingfang became an important voice for Chinese Christianity overseas, joining or leading delegations to major Christian conferences, including the Conference on Faith and Order at Lausanne in 1927, the World Mission Conference in Jerusalem in 1928, the Oxford Conference on Life and Ministry in 1937, and the Madras Conference on International Christian Education in 1939. At times, Liu also addressed Western Christians on sensitive issues in Sino-Western relations, such as his powerful indictment of the Unequal Treaties at a conference sponsored by the World Council of Churches in Germany in 1927. At a time when Chinese were rarely given access to Western academic circles, from 1926 to 1928 Liu not only lectured in the United States and England, but taught as a visiting professor at such institutions as Boston University and Hartford Theological Seminary, while receiving honorary degrees from Middlebury College and Oberlin College.

Liu was appointed assistant to the Chancellor at Yanjing University in 1928, but his many outside activities, including part-time teaching at other institutions, strained relations with colleagues who thought he was setting a poor example and neglecting his commitments at Yanjing. This led to Liu’s resignation as assistant to the Chancellor in 1931 and departure from Yanjing altogether in 1936, when he was appointed a member of the Legislative Yuan.

This body was one of five main branches of the Nationalist Government, tasked with drafting specific laws in conformity with Party policies. Liu continued his work as a legislator, along with Christian ministry, even after the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, when he was forced to flee with the government to Chongqing. After the Japanese began heavy bombing of the city in 1939, Liu’s weak health was unable to take the strain and he was able to get a seat on a flight to Hong Kong, where he received urgently needed medical treatment, before reuniting with his wife and daughter Grace in Shanghai. In 1941, right before Pearl Harbor, Liu and his family fled to the United States, where he spent the rest of the war helping to raise funds for China’s Nationalist government and speaking about Christianity in China. Liu contracted tuberculosis in 1946, was sent to a Presbyterian solarium in New Mexico for treatment, but succumbed on 2 August 1947 at the age of 54.

Liu Tingfang was in many ways unique among Chinese Protestants of the early twentieth century, combining leadership in Christian ministry, in education, and in broader social engagement with remarkable effectiveness. His many talents served a great deal to build up the Chinese church and Chinese society, while shaping the intellectual life of the Protestant church in China. He was part of a new generation of Chinese Christian intellectuals that helped to make the church more indigenous in leadership and in thinking, as well as a force in the area of modern social reform. Liu gave a voice for the Chinese Church both in the West and elsewhere the world, thereby greatly enriching the global Church. Though he did not enjoy a long life, his strong faith and intellectual gifts left a lasting mark on Chinese Christianity.

Wang Liming was shaped in powerful ways by her mission school education. For one thing, she became a Christian, though there is no clear record of exactly how this happened. As a result of what she learned there, she refused to have her feet bound any longer. In addition, Wang developed strong convictions about the value of women and a desire to improve their position in Chinese society. As an exceptional student, Wang qualified for a scholarship to continue her education at Ruli Academy, a Methodist girls’ high school in Jiujiang, Jiangxi. At one point, a guest speaker representing the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union—a women’s group started in the United States in 1874 and devoted to protecting the family against alcohol and tobacco abuse—addressed the students on the threat of opium to Chinese society. Wang and other students were so moved by the speaker that they decided to form a student chapter of the WCTU. Wang, because of her leadership abilities and upright character, was chosen to head the group, and thus her lifelong tie with the WCTU was born.

Wang Liming won a scholarship from the organization to attend Northwestern University in Chicago at a time when there were almost no opportunities for women in China to gain a university education. From 1916 to 1920, Wang earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in biology. During this time, she also became engaged to Liu Zhan’en, a Chinese Christian who was studying for a master’s degree in education at the University of Chicago. In 1920, Wang returned to China, where she turned down many lucrative job offers in order to continue her work with the WCTU. Liu Zhan’en stayed to complete a Ph.D. in education at Columbia University under renowned educator John Dewey and then returned to China to work with the YMCA. Liu and Wang were married on 1 September 1922.

Wang started a student division of the fledgling WCTU and for two years traveled all across China to challenge both women and men to embrace temperance. Of the more than 100,000 people she addressed, ten thousand signed temperance pledges and she increased the number of student members from two thousand to five thousand. When the WCTU formed a new national structure in 1922 to unite its disparate local chapters, Wang was chosen head of youth work, while the American-trained physician Shi Meiyu was president. Then in 1925, Shi Meiyu resigned, along with her main associates, as part of a larger philosophical and generational shift in the WCTU. Wang was chosen to lead the restructured WCTU with a broader vision. Instead of focusing only on fighting against the vices of alcohol, opium, tobacco and gambling, the group adopted as its slogan “promoting the blessing of the family” and made issues such as poverty and illiteracy part of its enlarged mission. By the late 1920s, the WCTU had expanded to well over ten thousand members, making it the largest Christian women’s organization in China during the Republican period, and second in influence only to the Young Women’s Christian Association.

Wang’s marriage to Liu Zhan’en was a strong one. Despite her many responsibilities with the WCTU, she raised three children with Liu—a son named Guangsheng born in 1924, a second son named Guanghua in 1926, and a daughter named Guangkun in 1928. Wang found great enjoyment in motherhood, though often not easy to balance with other duties. She credited the support of her husband with making it possible to be so actively involved in women’s causes while still having a family. Wang also had a very close relationship with her mother-in-law, who lived with the family from 1923 until her death in 1926.

Wang’s work with the WCTU sought practical reforms of Chinese society, advocating monogamy and strongly opposing the practices of polygamy and prostitution. She rejected the Chinese tradition of arranged marriage as a source of many broken marriages, believing that young people should be free to marry the person of their choice, with guidance from their families. Wang argued for the adoption of a nuclear family structure on the grounds that it would reduce the constant conflict associated with the Chinese extended family structure. Finally, while she believed that women should make family their priority, she also encouraged them to work outside the home.

Under Wang’s leadership, the WCTU became a powerful force for building civil society in China during the 1920s and 1930s. A network of local chapters conducted temperance activities, with occasional large-scale activities such as a three-day anti-smoking campaign in the city of Ningbo in 1923 that involved parades, open-air lectures, and public rallies, all conducted by women. The founding of the Settlement House in Shanghai in 1924 was a pioneering effort to tackle the problem of begging in the city by providing shelter and training in basic skills to poor women and children.

Wang Liming was also an important leader in the general women’s suffrage movement in China. In 1922, she joined the Women’s Suffrage Association (WSA), which sought to have women’s rights enshrined in the nation’s new constitution, then under discussion. Later, she turned the WSA’s Shanghai branch into the Chinese Women’s Suffrage Association, one of the women’s groups responsible for getting the equality of men and women written into the Tutelary Constitution adopted by the Nationalist Party in 1930.

Together with her husband Liu Zhan’en, Wang Liming was active in leading resistance to Japanese aggression. She helped to organize the Women’s National Salvation Alliance after Japan annexed Manchuria in 1931, and along with Liu signed a public proclamation rejecting Japanese demands on China as part of the December Ninth protests of 1935. After Japan invaded in 1937, Liu and Wang continued their efforts, working out of the International Settlement in Shanghai, which was still under the control of the Western powers. As one of the leading anti-Japanese intellectuals, Liu was a major target of the Japanese, and in 1938, to Wang’s great grief, he was assassinated.

Wang fled with her three children to the wartime capital of Chongqing and continued her activities with the WCTU, though on a much smaller scale, starting a childcare center and orphanage. She was also appointed one of the few female members of the People’s Political Council (PPC), a quasi-democratic consultative body founded by the Nationalists to promote public support for the war effort. Wang helped get a guarantee written into the Double Fifth Constitution (adopted after the war) that women would have at least ten percent of the seats in the National Assembly. She was very critical of the Nationalist war strategy, however, so much so that she was expelled from the PPC in 1943. She joined the Chinese Democratic League, a political party favoring democracy and socialism.

When the war ended in 1945, Wang moved back to Shanghai to continue her work with the WCTU and CDL, but had to flee to Hong Kong during the civil war. After the Communists took control in 1949, Wang returned to China and was appointed to high posts in the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress (CPPCC) and the All-China Women’s Federation (ACWF). But rather than get heavily involved in politics, she continued to make the WCTU her main focus. This state of affairs continued until 1957, when during the Anti-Rightist movement, Wang was attacked for refusing to criticize two of Mao Zedong’s main targets. She was removed from all her posts.

In 1966, while Wang was staying with her daughter in Shanghai, the Cultural Revolution broke out. On 1 September, Wang was arrested as a spy of the CIA. The “evidence” consisted of letters she wrote to her “Rightist” son when he was in labor camp and also a typewriter alleged to be a secret transmitter. As she was taken away, Wang said to her daughter in English, “I am carrying the cross of Jesus Christ.” Her family never saw her again. After three years and eight months of suffering in a labor camp, she died on 15 April 1970.

In 1980, a memorial service was held for Wang that was organized by the CPPCC, CDL, and AWCF and which recognized her as a patriot. She was also given a Beijing burial plot in Babaoshan, a cemetery reserved for important leaders. Since the family had never received any of Wang’s possessions, or even her ashes, the only thing they could put in the tomb was a comb that Wang had left behind at her daughter’s home.

Wang Liming was a woman of courage whose Christian convictions led her to devote her life to improving the lot of women and the weak in Chinese society. She did this with great effectiveness as leader of the WCTU and in cooperation with other organizations. That she was able to do so much and still raise a family of three testifies not only to her abilities, but also her commitment to family and motherhood. The sacrifices she made to serve were significant, from giving up lucrative career options to her constant toil to the loss of her husband. In the end, her unjust and tragic death highlights even more the honorable reality of a life well lived.