The families of Kuliang

0:00Discussion keeps the world's turning. This is Round Table. You're listening to Round Table China, I'm Steve Hatharly. Coming up, as part of our National Day Holiday Specials, we're bringing you episodes from NiHOW Are You, a series of cross-cultural conversations exploring how people in China and the United States see, experience, and understand each other. You can also find our show on Apple Podcasts just search for Round Table China. And now let's turn to today's story. In today's episode, Li Yunqi speaks with Ellen McGinnis, founder of the Kulyang Families and Friends Group, about a little-known chapter in the history of China-US relations. More than 100 years ago, families from the US and other parts of the world came to Kulyang, a mountain retreat in Fujo, in southeastern China's Fujyang Province, where they lived alongside their Chinese neighbors.

1:02Over the past 11 years, Ellen and her Chinese research partners have tracked down old photographs, letters, diaries, and family stories to bring that history back to life. But as Ellen discovered, these stories are not just about a place in the past. They are also about friendships, memories, and connections that lasted for generations. So what can these old stories from Kulyang tell us about the connections between Chinese and American people? Take a listen. Hi, so this episode is brought to you from the mountain top in southeast China's Fujian Province. It was about over a hundred years ago, there were some American families that found some retreat here in this place called Kulyang. And one of them was a man named Donald McGinnis. He cherished this place so much that when he passed away, he asked his family's tool, and he asked his ashes, scatters in the reverse below. And today I'm very honored to sit down with his daughter-in-law, Ellen McGinnis.

2:07So first of all, Ellen, thank you so much for joining us. Oh, thank you. Yeah. So you must have been back to Kulyang for many times, but how many times have been back here? I can't even count them. Right, many, many times. Does each visit feel different every time? Well, each visit does feel different because when we first came here, it wasn't very developed. And there wasn't any history around no storyboards, no museum of architecture, nothing. That's all something that my Chinese partner and I have put together. Well, we call ourselves the Kulyang Research Team. And we work 24 hours a day, seven days a week because I'm in America most of the time, and he's here in China. So he works in the day here. I work in the day back there.

3:10So that way it's 24 hours. 24, seven. Yeah. We've spent the last 11 years finding the name list who lived in the house, what their story was. And it's really very remarkable. So you spent, you dedicated a lot of efforts into putting together, finding everybody that used to live in Kulyang and eventually I assume most of them they eventually went back to America. So that's how you found them. Well, Peter's family was here for a summer and they were working here. This father came here as a 19 year old and worked in ACC, Anglo-Chinese college, which was upriver refugee in Yangko. Not far from here. And I'm paying its far, a little far, because they were hiding from the Japanese bombs. So one of the touching stories that I read about is from Lane Belling.

4:14So I read that she was here in Kulyang at the age of around 16 and then went back to the States and never returned for 87 years. And yet she was still able to speak the Fujo dialect. And so a lot of the American families at the time they didn't spend that much time in Kulyang. But the life here actually left a mark on them for years and decades. And I wonder, like for your father-in-law, Donald McKeonius and your husband, was there any more traces from Kulyang that you found on them even after they went back to the States? Maybe not from Kulyang just all by itself. But China definitely. And I think anybody from that period who was born here, Americans born in China, knew China as their home. My husband was born here and we have on this visit today, Priscilla Brewster, who was

5:14born here and her father was born here. And his father came here as a young man. And then so there have been a lot of generations here in China. So for them, China, Chinese culture, Chinese food is home. And my children were, they weren't born here, but they went to school here from second grade on, graduated from high school here. And they also considered China their home. Right. So how many years did your daughter spend here in China? Approximately. Well, they came when they were seven and nine. And they went all the way through school, graduated from school and then went back to the US for college because it really is better if you can be in an English speaking environment for a while while you're learning. Right. So roughly, there was about 10 years of their times.

6:14Yeah, something like that. Teenage years. Yeah. Do they, like other personalities, a little bit different from the kids that grown up in the, in the States? Absolutely. They were all different. They went home and they felt strange. Took a long time for them to adjust. Culture shock. Culture shock. Because they weren't really American. They were Chinese. Right. They were all there kind of in the middle. Well, they were a little more than in the middle because they made a big deal. More to the Chinese site. Yeah. And very happy about it. I know Priscilla's first language was Fucho Hua. Fucho dialect. And my husband went back as a baby, but his brother, his first language was Fucho dialect. Hmm. Okay. So now back to the stories of Kuoyang, right? Yes. We are gathered here and you are known to many people in China, people in Fucho as the

7:16person that spent years of efforts putting together the photos, archives looking for the families that went back to the States. Along with my colleague, Professor Lenny Nan, we are the Kuoyang research team. And we've also added in someone from Kuoyang itself, a village person who grew up, born here, grew up here, and he's helped us a lot. So it was a collective effort by many people? Absolutely. And only good efforts are the efforts where you have a Chinese team and American team, and you work together and what comes out is so much better than what any one person can do. Right. So what we have seen today didn't just come from you, but actually a whole bunch of people. And so there was a lot of efforts being put into trying to recreate the memories and stories from Kuoyang. Yes. So these stories that took place quite distant from the people in America.

8:17Do you think these stories from Kuoyang, they can, for the American people, these are these distant stories are something that they can relate to? Yes. They're very exciting. You know, I think what I was reading about before I came down was I was reading back through the Caldwell family book, and Harry Caldwell came over here in 1900, and he stayed a while, studied the language, some children were born here, but then he went back to the US because he was very sick, and he thought maybe I won't come back because that's too difficult. He decided to come back, brought his whole family back, and his leader said to him, I think you need to learn how to relax. Don't work so hard. Have some hobbies. So he had brought his gun, his big rifle.

9:20And so one of his hobbies became hunting, but not just any animal. He hunted the man eating tigers. In those days, you probably didn't know this, but Fujo area had man eating tigers, and we even have lists of how many people were killed. Was there hunting, partly as a hobby, or actually to help the local villagers? He hunted to eat in America. They used their hunting to eat, but he, here he used his hunting to get rid of the tigers that were eating people. Oh, so for protection? Yes. For the locals. Yes, protecting their animals and also protecting them. Because there was one town, I don't remember which one, it was night, and they were sitting around the table, and there was a little child who had fallen asleep with their head leaning

10:20against the table. And all of a sudden there was this big sort of boom, and a tiger came in and grabbed the child and went running off. And that was so, I mean, it was so awful that Harry called well, picked up his rifle, and went to hunt tigers. And tracked down that tiger. Track down the tigers. So that's one of the many stories that you were able to recover. And it spans a long time and involves so many families. And when they went back, they could have gone back to any state in America. They did go back. Most of them, a lot of them were from the Northeast, and then some from the Midwest, and then some from California. Right. So the time, location, geography, did you say that you spent, you spent 11 years roughly to? So now it's 11 years.

11:21We started off, and we knew nothing. Zero. We didn't even know their names. And now we've got thousands of pages of letters and books and writings that they've made. Scientific writings, writings about education. It's very interesting to see what they thought. Yeah. What would you say that was the strongest motivation that kept you going for 11 years, looking for the stories from all these families that are being scattered all around America? Well, one of the strongest motivations was that I wanted to bring these stories back to life and back to public awareness. Yeah. People shouldn't know more about it. But it should, because this is the basis of people to people friendship.

12:21You know, our people's friendship has got a base in people like the folks here who came to Kool-Aim. So our family is a flying tiger family. Right. Yeah, that was a good one. And that really warms my heart because I know that Don came when he was 19. He was a young man. Right. Well, he was in college, but he'd gone to college early. Fighting for a different country that's not from his motherland. Well, it wasn't just out of the blue. He came here and taught in the high school. So then he had all his friends here. So he already had some connections bonds with China. Lots of friendly bonds with his friends. Nothing complicated, just his friends. And so he knew that China was fighting a war of aggression. And he immediately signed up to come back to China so that he could help the Chinese

13:24people. And many of the children in that age group from Kool-Aim, Fujian area, actually all of China, if they were the right age, they all came back to participate in the war. Because their friends were being attacked. Yeah, so stories like this, they're worth knowing. Not only not just being known by Chinese, by Americans, but actually I will say by everyone that after all we are all the same. And we don't have that much difference between people, nationalities, races. Well, we have lots of differences, but not differences that really matter. You can learn. Yes, you can learn about those differences. Right. Despite those differences, I think stories from here are kind of the reminders that that's reminding that we share a lot of things in common as well. Yes. One of the other stories I read from the Kool-Aim is that for Milton Gunner, he spent 10

14:32years of his childhood here and then in his last moments that he was still mumbling the name of Kool-Aim. I think for people that are new to this story, that sounds a little bit dramatic. So it was an actual story that took place. This is true. It's a true story. Yes. And how did you find out about this story was difficult? Yes, it was very difficult. It took me more than a year to find the Gardener family. I went, I did it again and again, I'd look on the internet. I'd try to find, you know, they're on ancestry.com, see their ancestry, see where they were living. But they had the two nephews had both moved right before I started looking for them. So all the old phone numbers and dresses on the web were wrong. But I finally found one entry.

15:32So then I got in touch with Lee Gardener and we started talking, he started telling me all of his stories and showed me his pictures and his big wall of photos of China. Oh, so they still keep those memories talking? Oh, yes. And Milton was his uncle. So their father was the oldest in the family and Milton was the youngest in the family. So I believe the people that used to spend their time here, they probably miss, Kool-Ai and the Miss Fujo, Miss China for different reasons. Everyone has their personal connection to this place and in the case of Milton Gardener, like based on your research and your knowing of his story, what do you think is from his perspective, what made him miss Fujo Kool-Ai so much? There's only one answer, it's friends. So that's probably universal for everyone.

16:34That's everybody. Everyone. It's not the food that they dream of at night, you know, they miss their friends. And if you've been here for any period of time, like I was in China for almost 30 years, it's your friends that you miss. And that's also what kept you coming back here? Yes, well, I met a Peter's father's former student who's still alive, he's 102, Chuncherming. And we've had a wonderful time talking about the past and when Peter's father was alive and what they did and the school and what the school was like. And I do have Don's diary, which actually is very interesting, a lot of it's gossip. You know, somebody was liked somebody else, a girl. Yeah, that's a real diary. You find it, you know, the very little trivial stories.

17:36Yes, yes. Now they went out on a boat, but then the river got rough and so they had to go back. You know, nothing very earth-shaking. But still, it's the story of his friends. Right. So is it true that most of the people from the Kulang stories have they been able to come back to Fujo? Well, from the families that we've been able to get in touch with, many of them have come back to Fujo. Right. And for quite a number of them, it's an extremely moving experience. There was one man from the billing family. Oh, right. And Dean Billing. So, relating to Lynn Billing. He was, Lynn Billing was his uncle. Right. And when Dean was young, he'd go to his grandmother's house after school for tea and cookies. What kind of tea?

18:37Jasmine tea with milk. So it's really a joint venture kind of proposition, Jasmine tea, but add milk. That's very British or American. He's West. Yes, he's West. And cookies. She didn't really tell him that many stories about China. And when he came back, he was trying to find out about his family. And I could tell him quite a bit because I had already researched the school where his father had been. And he came back looking for his grandmother's tea. And he looked and looked and tried to find it, had a hard time finding it. But I think now he pretty much has it, which tea fragrance was the right one. And the recipe back. Yeah, that was the first year. So that would have been 2016. Okay. And he's been back three times or four times, brought all of his sons back and has helped

19:40us. He's been very helpful, introduced us to his uncle, Lynn. And Lynn had grew up on the mountain from when he was a boy, an infant, all the way until he was in his teens. So he could tell us everything about Kulian. How you came up the hill. What the stores were like. We found out that the club used to be a club lawn used to be a place where they had picnics. We found out all this very specific information that we had no idea of. So everybody has like a little story of this place. And then putting together, that's how you put the puzzles together to have a whole story of this place. I'm wondering. So in the case of Milton Garner, did he ever manage to come back to Kulian? Nope. He was busy with his work. He was a physics professor at UC Davis in California. And he was beloved by his students.

20:44He was also Chinese. And they loved him. And finally, there was war and then he never made it back. Right. That's kind of how I assumed. That's probably a reason why that even in his last moments, he was still missing this place because he never managed to come back. It was his home. Oh, even if he had come back, he would have been missing this place. Yeah, I feel like. You still miss. Yeah, you still miss. You still miss it. No matter how many times you come back. That's right. It's in your heart and in America, you don't have it. So your heart is empty until it's filled with Kulian or China or whatever part of China you've been in when you were a child. I think it's very important. You know, a lot of things build up. And if you think, oh, this maybe is our enemy or something like that, then you don't go there. But if you realize the beauty of China and the beauty of the Chinese people, then you

21:49think, oh, well, me, I'd like to go there. Yeah. You've been back and forth between China and American many times. And we've heard you speaking Chinese very well. What would you say that are the common things that Chinese and American share that Americans don't know, but they should know? I think it's necessary to come here. And that the best way. And that's why I'm so grateful for the Kulian Bond program because it brings young people here and they can really know China. And then they go back and they bring their friends. And that happened with one of the students I knew. He came alone last year. This year he's come back with eight of his friends and his classmates and his little sister. Even invited his friends? Yes. To come back and the flying tiger program. And he's going to come along. Earlier we were saying that now looking back, a lot of people, the first generation of the people in the Kulian stories that were from over 100 years ago passed away.

22:52And then that will come the second and then perhaps the third generation. So the people from the stories there are becoming fewer and fewer of them. But are you hopeful that the stories from Kulian, that they will still pass on even with the people, the characters gone? There are new stories of Kulian that come every year that we have a group of kids from the US come and be together with their Chinese friends. That then a new story is made. It only seems very small right now, but actually in another whatever years, 10, 20 years, 30 years, it'll be a big story. And do you think so there should be more channels, communication programs like this taking place, not only in Kulian and perhaps in Fujo and other cities. And that will perhaps just boost the communication and help us understand each other better. That's just fantastic. And then I found a photo of a party.

23:56And it said on the back, actually the one I saw said 50th birthday. We found that later. It was the 69th birthday. Somebody wrote it wrong. And number wrong. Yeah, it was the console general of American console general of Fujo, Samuel Gracie. And he was at a party on the hillside, like right about here. And he had lots of people sitting at the tables. Was small, black and white photo. And as we really looked at it, we discovered that the people at his party weren't the foreigners. They were his Chinese neighbors. So he had invited 70 people to his birthday party and they were all his Chinese neighbors. That is not something that was very common in those days. That kind of deep friendship with the local people. He was quite a remarkable man. There were many others just like him.

24:56And what we learn from them is a kind of openness. You don't just look at somebody else and say, oh, they're different. So I'm not going to get to know them. It's just wonderful when you see story after story of the Kulang people is a story of someone who was curious and open-minded and didn't mind learning a new way. And they took Chinese culture and made it part of their own. It was such a more difficult situation over a hundred years ago. And I think what we have today, we have much better than our ancestors had. And I think we can do better if people from 120 years ago, they can bond when there were people who are probably a bit more defensive, a bit more careful when it comes to cross-cultural seeing people that look different. If they had courage and determination to make friendships, then I feel like we should definitely do much better.

25:58Yes, we can. We can. It starts with a smile. And I have great faith in our youth. Our young people are really good and open-minded and curious and paying attention. And with our young people, it will be a great future. Thank you so much for bringing the stories of a Kulang back to life again, Ellie. Yeah, it's my pleasure. It was Lee Yoon-cheese, speaking with Ellen McGuinness, founder of the Kulang Families and Friends Groups. And that brings us to the end of today's roundtable. Thank you very much for sharing your time with us today. Don't forget you can find us on Apple Podcast by searching at Roundtable China. I'm Steve Hatharley. And we'll see you next time.