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My aunt was a nun in the Congregation of the Helpers of the Holy Souls and taught mathematics at Qiming Girls Middle School and Xuhui Girls Middle School. She had one favourite student named Lu Naying. After my father’s death my aunt very much wanted to help me, so she summoned Lu Naying and told her: “My favourite nephew is now an orphan. Why don’t you take him to be your younger brother and your mother can make him her godson.” After Lu Naying went home and talked to her mother, she took me home to pay my respects to Mrs. Lu and to address her as ‘mother’ for the first time. Thereafter Lu Naying always watched out for me, visiting me at the seminary and making clothes for me up until the day I entered the Society of Jesus. Lu Naying was born in 1908 and was christened Catherine and took the Chinese name Naying. Her father was named Lu Bohong with the saint’s name Joseph. He was a famous businessman. He had been general manager of the Nanshi District Electricity Bureau and of the trolley bus company as well as of the water supply company and the Zhabei District Electricity Supply Company. Outside the foreign concessions he was responsible for all the electricity and water utilities. He had also set up the Hexing Steel Co. and the Datong Steamship Co., where he served as general manager. He was furthermore a great benefactor, overseeing the Xinpuyu Hall orphanage, old people’s home and hospice which catered to more than 2,000 people. He set up the Puci Hospital especially for people with mental illnesses, helped set up the Sacred Heart of Jesus Hospital in Yangshupu District, the Sacred Mother Hospital in Zhabei and the Joseph Hospital in Songjiang County. He was also an educator, setting up the Dongjiadu Action Catholique Elementary School, the One Heart Middle School in the Chinese City and the Mingde Middle School in Jiaxing County. He also constructed the Yangshupu Girls Technical Middle School. Most outstanding was his deep Catholic faith, attending mass every day at the 7 Two Elder Sisters Lu Naying and Rong Dexian 32 The Memoirs of Jin Luxian Dongjiadu Road church. Whenever he passed a church he had to go in to pay his respects to the divine presence. In his car he had a copy of the Imitation of Christ from which he would read a passage whenever he had a free moment. At one point he was the chairman of Action Catholique in China and spent his vacations spreading the word in neighbouring counties and villages, constructing many churches. He was connected with many Shanghai hospitals where he would go after work to talk over the Catholic faith with the sick, encouraging them to be baptised. The Pope made him a papal knight. Unfortunately he was assassinated on 30 December 1937 during the Japanese invasion of east China. After Lu Naying graduated from Xuhui Middle School, her father sent her to be headmistress of Mingde Girls Middle School, which he had set up and that was run by nuns. Lu Naying felt that her level of education was insufficient and asked to be permitted to continue her studies at university. But in those days the Bishop of Shanghai had ordered that any of the faithful who allowed their children to attend non-Catholic schools should be refused communion. This was a very big error since in those days there was no Catholic university for women. Aurora University did not yet accept female students. Families with girls in public education could not arrange for them to get higher education, which was very unfair. Lu Naying took up this cause and decided to challenge the unjust regulation. Her father, who was a committed believer, did not feel able to defy the bishop’s instruction. So Lu Naying went on her own to visit the bishop and with the force of her argument obtained his consent. She matriculated at Suzhou Protestant University’s law school and after four years’ hard work obtained her degree. By this time the girls’ school set up by her father was already in operation and she was named headmistress. In the same year the Japanese invaded our country. Shanghai was overrun by the enemy, her father was assassinated and Lu Naying, overcome with grief, went to Belgium to study sociology before returning to China to devote herself to education. During the ‘Cultural Revolution’ she...

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