Salt and Light, Volume 2

More Lives of Faith That Shaped Modern China

Carol Lee Hamrin, Stacey Bieler, Hamrin, Bieler

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN:
  9781606089552
  9781498254502
• eBook ISBN:
  9781621892731
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

The hidden seeds of the Christian renewal in China today include the outstanding Chinese Christians in Salt and Light 2, a dozen new life stories with lively anecdotes and photographs. These reformers made lasting contributions that shaped modern China. Working out of the limelight in their professions, they had quiet but powerful influence on early twentieth-century civil society. Motivated by their faith, they modeled essential virtues. This series helps recover a lost Christian heritage linked closely to a legacy of East-West cooperation in an earlier global era.

Notes

Introduction

1. Francis Fukuyama, The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution of Social Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999) 266–68, 270.

2. For background, see Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Vintage, 1955); and James T. Kloppenberg, Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and American Thought, 1870–1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).

3. Edwin Woodrull Tait, “The Cleansing Wave,” Christian History and Biography 82 (Spring 2004) 22–25; and William Kostlevy, “Saving Souls and Bodies,” Christian History and Biography 82 (Spring 2004) 28–31.

4. Murray A. Rubenstein, The Origins of the Anglo-American Mis-sionary Enterprise in China, 1807–1840 (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow, 1996) 359.

5. Ryan Dunch, “Locating China in the World: Space and Time in Late Imperial Protestant Missionary Texts” (Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies, Boston, March 22–25, 2007) 10. Dunch cites Alexander Williamson, in a preface to Jidu shilu [Life of Christ] in the 1880s, as an example of this.

6. Jessie G. Lutz, “China and Protestantism: Historical Perspectives, 1807–1949,” in China and Christianity: Burdened Past, Hopeful Future, ed. Stephen Uhalley Jr. and Xiaoxin Wu (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 2001) 191.

7. Dan Cui, The Cultural Contribution of British Protestant Mis-sionaries and British-American Cooperation to China’s National Dev-elopment during the 1920s (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1998) 348–49.

8. Peter Chen-main Wang, “Caring Beyond National Borders: The YMCA and Chinese Laborers in World War I Europe,” Church History 78 (2009) 340–49.

9. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Global Shanghai, 1850–2010: A History in Fragments (London: Routledge, 2009) 66–67.

10. John Barwick, “Chinese Protestant Elites and the Quest for Modernity in Republican China” (PhD diss., University of Alberta, 2010), chap. 1.

11. Barwick, “Apostles of Modernity,” chap. 1.

12. Fukuyama, The Great Disruption, 255–62.

Chapter 1: Yan

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to Stacey Bieler for research materials on Yan Huiqing, to G. Wright Doyle for material from the British Library on Yan Yongjing’s speaking tour in the UK, and to Fuk-tsang Ying for material on the 1949 Yan peace mission. I am grateful to Amy Badertscher, Director of Collection Services at Kenyon College; Julia Randle, Archivist at Virginia Theological Seminary; and Laura Vetter, Archivist at Episcopal High School, Alexandria, Virginia.

Notes

1. Yan Yongjing, typed letter, February 28, 1898, “Y. K. Yen” file box, Greenslade Special Collections and Archives, Kenyon College. [Hereafter cited as Kenyon Archives]. This is one of his last letters to his two sons studying at the University of Virginia.

2. Yan Huiqing, copy of “A Short Sketch of the Late Rev. Yung Kiung Yen, M.A.” (unpublished piece by Dr. W. W. Yen, third son of the Rev. Yen), Item no. 15, Kenyon Archives.

3. W. W. Yen, East-West Kaleidoscope 1877–1944: An Autobiography (New York: St. John’s University Center of Asian Studies, 1974) 3. Unless otherwise noted, biographical information on the family is from this source. Yan’s anglicized name, used for publications in English, stands for “Wei-ching Williams Yen,” an alternative romanization to pinyin.

4. His eldest son, Siqing Points Yan, attended Kenyon College for a time in the late 1880s, but returned to Shanghai without graduating. The second son, Ziqing Nelson Yan, attended Columbia University and graduated from New York Law School in the early 1890s. The two youngest sons attended the University of Virginia, where Huiqing Williams Yan graduated in 1901, while Deqing Strong Yan transferred to complete an engineering degree at Lehigh University. The youngest and the only daughter, Qinglian Julia Yan, studied piano at Stuart Hall preparatory school in Virginia.

5. While in the United States, Yan Yongjing went by his name in the Shanghai dialect, Ngan Young Kiung, with most people calling him “Kiung.” The Kiung League of Ascension Church raised funds to support his work in China, beginning in 1880.

6. Kenyon Archives record that he earned an MA in 1869; it was not an honorary degree. He must have completed the class work long distance while working, since there is no record of his return to America until 1894. Yan Yongjing, his younger brother and his eldest son all were members of the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity while at Kenyon.

7. C. Y. Shu, “Rev. Mr. Y. K. Yen, M.A.” (Private circulation, 1985), Item no. 18, Kenyon Archives.

8. Kwok Pui-lan, Chinese Women and Christianity, 1860–1927 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1992) 18 and 127. I did not find a reference source for Mrs. Yan’s name.

9. Seiji Kodama, “Life and Works of Rev. Y. K. Yen, the first to intro-
duce Western psychology into China,” (typescript of an English translation prepared for the Yan family, n.p., n.d.), Kenyon Archives. Accord-
ing to Kodama, Yan lectured from Joseph Haven, Mental Philosophy: Including the Intellect, Sensibilities and Will (New York: Sheldon, 1861). The term “mental philosophy” was used then for what became the field of psychology. Yan published his translation in Chinese in 1898, some years before any other such text was published in Chinese. He had read the book while at Kenyon College, and may have heard or even met Prof. Haven, a professor at Chicago Theological Seminary who received an honorary degree from Kenyon in 1862. Kodama provides Yan Yongjing’s father’s name, Yan Qingyuan, and mother’s surname, Shen.

10. W. W. Yen, “A Short Sketch,” says the letter appeared in the New York Evening Post, followed by a similar article requested by the New York Forum.

11. Ibid.

12. Kathleen Lodwick, Crusaders against Opium: Protestant Mis-sionaries in China 1874–1917 (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996) 34–40, 52, 66–67. Norman Cliff, A Flame of Sacred Love: The Life of Benjamin Broomhall 1829–1911 (Carlisle, UK: OM, 1998) 78–79, refers to an appeal from Chinese Church leaders to the churches of Great Britain in June 1890, which was published in National Righteousness, the journal of the Christian Union. Broomhall, founder and editor, then wrote 45,000 ministers in England, as well as each member of Parliament, with statistics on the use and trade of opium to arouse their concern. Broomhall was also a leader of the older Society and editor of its magazine, The Friend of China, as well as editor before 1895, of the CIM’s publication, China’s Millions, which he used to reinforce his message.

13. Friend of China 15 (October 1895) 56–63.

14. See Huang’s biography in the online Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Christianity. Online: www.bdcconline.net/en/stories/h/

15. Muriel Boone, The Seed of the Church in China (Philadelphia: United Church Press, 1973).

16. Yan Yongjing, reports in The Spirit of Missions 60: 5 (May 1895) 176–77, microfiche, Bishop Payne Library, Virginia Theologica...

Table of contents

• Salt and Light 2
• List of Names
• Introduction
• • Yan Yongjing and Yan Huiqing
• • Ma Xiangbo
• • Kuang Fuzhou
• • The Xu Family
• • Zhou Tingxu
• • Yin Renxian
• • Sun Mingjing and Lü Jin’ai
• • Zhang Boling
• • Time Line
• Contributors
• Sources of Illustrations
• Notes
• INDEX