Teaching in Wartime China: A Photo-Memoir, 1937-1939 (review)

Reviews 135 Edward Gulick. Teaching in Wartime China: A Photo-Memoir, 1937-1939. Amherst: The University ofMassachusetts Press, 1995. xiv, 282 pp. Hardcover $29.95, isbn 0-87023-912-0. Edward Gulick is an emeritus professor ofhistory at Wellesley College, where he taught Chinese and Japanese history; he is also the author of several books, including Peter Parker and the Opening ofChina (Harvard University Press, 1973). In 1937,at age twenty-two, just after completing his studies at Yale, Gulick and a classmate headed for a missionary boarding school for Chinese boys in Changsha, capital of Hunan province, to teach English for two years. Teaching in Wartime China is a record ofhis China days, with numerous photographs taken by the author . Two voices weave in and out of the narrative: that of the younger Gulick and that ofthe older, who has the advantage ofthe insight provided by his studies ofChinese and Japanese history, and ofreflective hindsight. Both voices are clearly demarcated by the author, so the narrative moves back and forth in time and age, adding to the wonderful complexity ofhis story. The sojourn in China ofthe young Gulick began only a few months after the Marco Polo Bridge incident that triggered the war between Japan and China that did not end until 1945. There was no concern then that the war would reach Hunan, which was considered too distant from Beijing and the coast, although November 1937 brought the first Japanese air raid to Changsha. In September 1938,the junior classes moved to Yuanling, two hundred miles west of Changsha by dirt road, followed later by the seniors, and the school "kept going throughout the nightmare ofthe war, doing its share in training young Chinese. There was much more interruption ofeducation by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution." Only a few months after Gulick's departure from Yuanling, the Japanese invaders destroyed much of the town in the air raid ofAugust 18, 1939. The middle school was part ofa Yale-in-China missionary enterprise that also included a hospital in Changsha that provided medical care and training. Although originally started by Congregational missionaries, both the school and the hospital were, by design, staffed mostly by the Chinese. They formed the great majority ofthe faculty and administration ofthe school, the aim ofwhich was to train able teenaged Chinese boys to become leaders ofthe new China. The evangelical zeal ofthe earlier China missionaries was still present among the Americans in 1937, but it was not as pervasive as in the past; Gulick himself© 1996 by University came from a familywith several generations ofeminent missionaries who had ofHawai'i Pressserved in such places as Japan, the Caroline and Marquesas Islands, and Hawai'i; but he considered himself one ofthe "unenthusiastic churchgoers" and "disliked old-fashioned missionary evangelism and was positively embarrassed when a 136 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. ?, Spring 1996 young man sought me out for religious instruction so that he could become a Christian." Nevertheless, Gulick and the other Americans in the Changsha hospital and school were dedicated in their work and provided warm and humane support for their students. One gets a feeling of strong concern, dedication, and generous kindness in both the Chinese and the Americans involved in their collaborative enterprise. Speaking from the present, as an older man, Gulick writes toward the conclusion ofhis story: "I found, and still find, the medical missionary at his best to be a singularly stirring and impressive figure. Ifthe story ofthe Good Samaritan is as central to the quintessential Christian message as I think it is, then the medical missionary comes excitingly close to matching role and performance with that Christian ideal." Gulick captures well the ethos of daily life in the school community, reporting on the mundane things important to youthful expatriates: magpie nests, delectable Chinese meals, lemon and pumpkin pie baked by the versatile cook for a party, pummelos, listening to cuckoos, and teaching football to the students. There is warm humor, as well as examples ofcourage and great generosity among some of the admirable and competent Chinese educators and doctors who worked side by side with the Americans. There is the sense of the idealism and...