1921: Little rain, lots of activity

Misting Rain by Song dynasty poet Yang Wanli

Rain comes thin thin and sparse sparse,
Not much, but not nothing.*
Like an envious poet with a mountain in his eyes:**
To block ten-thousand ranges by a curtain of pearls.

*this line is a specific description of how not heavy the rain is
**the poet wants to see the mountain

1921 - age 20

There was a Young Men's Christian Association at my school. YMCA is focused on cities and started in England with more than a hundred year's of history. In the US and Canada, there are many associations. They called themselves North America YMCA. The NAYMCA established China YMCA with headquarters in Shanghai on Museum Street. The Executive Director was Yu Rizhang. Mr Yu was quite well known in China. The association's function was twofold: YMCA in schools, and YMCA in cities. The YMCAs in schools were set in bigger missionary schools. The city YMCAs were in big cities like Shanghai, Nanjing, and Tianjing, Beijing, Wuchang, Hankou, Fuzhou, Guangzhou, etc. The school YMCA was the first line of their work. The YMCA in our school had already been established for quite a few years. Every Christian student in our school was called a basic member. The rest of the students were called general members. The YMCA had several workers and one chief worker. The workers were elected from the basic members. They advocated four principles: moral character, academic excellence, physical education, and teamwork. This year, I was elected chief worker. As for academic excellence, I invited professor Cen Si to give a talk. Most of the people in our school had knowledge limited to within the church. Mr Cen was from Huangpi, and came from a long line of scholars who donated lots of money to schools. His family established a university in Wuchang and they educated many students and had a very good reputation in China. The reason I invited him to talk was to let everyone in the school have something new and interesting to hear and see. Deep inside, I wanted to let all the foreign faculty and staff see what an excellent scholar he was, and see how good we Chinese people were. I didn't ask anyone to go between, I wrote a letter inviting him to the YMCA myself. He replied very quickly and arrived punctually at our school as he said. The content of his speech showed outstanding worldview, his words were so appropriate, his gestures and manner were very at ease. Everybody was so impressed, especially those foreign faculty and staff. From then on, they would never say there are no cultured people in China. 

My school was located in Wuchang, outside Bingyang Gate. Around the area, in the olden days, there were lots of farms. And most farmers were very conservative, and seldom heard the gospel of Jesus Christ. There were quite a few very fervent people in our school who wanted to evangelize. We formed a special evangelical team. I joined them. We used Sunday, our day off school, to go to several of the farms to hold meetings. Every time we arrived in a place, the classmates who sang well would sing hymns very loudly to attract attention. After people gathered, we would start to preach. Usually we would say: people are full of suffering and worry. Most suffering and worry came from sin. Once people sin, they cannot save themselves, only by trusting Jesus can your sins be forgiven and you have new life. Then you can throw off the burdens of suffering and worry and exchange them for peace and joy. It was simple preaching, but if not empowered by the Holy Spirit, it was hard for people to accept. These farmers also couldn't understand our dialect and it was hard from them to accept new things, and our team wasn't a well established group. Since we didn't go regularly, it wasn't very effective. 

There was an upperclassman two years ahead of me named Chen Yenshou, from Hanyang, who was quite capable and had graduated from our school this spring. He was appointed by the Methodist Church to be the principal of the elementary school in Hangkou. Mr Chen and I were very good friends. He and I talked about our summer plans: he wanted to open a tutoring class in English and math. ... So I became an English and math tutor over the summer. Everyone advanced very well and everyone was very happy, this was my first experience as a teacher. The elementary school was called Bridge Opening. In this neighborhood, the Methodist Church established a school for the blind. They accepted several tens of students. Besides using Braille, they also learned crafts. The blind people made all kinds of craft products, very well made. The blind people lived at the school because they knew the area and were very familiar with the surroundings and moved around freely without canes. When visitors came, they could guide them around their factory. There was also a church for prayer meetings and bible study. One time, I went and joined their service as a Christian friend. When we studied the bible, we used the regular printed bible, and they used their Braille. There was a power failure and we couldn't read but the blind people could. In that instance, the seeing people were not as well off as the blind people. Our school Hongdao chapel invited a graduate from the school of the blind to serve as our pianist. At the start of every service, the leader would say, we're going to sing hymn number such and such. This pianist didn't need the book and would just start playing, having memorized all hundred such of the hymns in the book very accurately and better than sighted players. This is my eye witness account.

Every afternoon, we all went to the school field for exercise or sports. Quite a few track athletes trained. To encourage physical activity, every year our school held a competition. This year, our PE teacher Mr Dong, who was trained in Shanghai and had recently graduated, built up the competition with more activities. Because he wanted to promote competition, it required more manpower and money. Every student was either competing or volunteering, no one was left out doing nothing. One of the interesting jobs was to entertain visitors. Because of this big event, there were lots of important officials from the government, as well as parents and friends, and a girls school in Hanyang joined. According to the Methodist Church, in their bylaws, they stipulated single sex education. But the boys school and girls school did not communicate; the exception was this competition when we invited them as a sister school. Besides track and ballgames, these girls toured our dorms, dining rooms, and classrooms. Because of the guests, we paid special attention to cleaning and decorating. These girls, when they came to our school, wore makeup and dressed nicely. Even though the girls and boys did not mingle often, but since we had mutual relatives and friends, and our teachers made introductions, many couples got married between the two schools. One of the main activities for introduction was this competition. 

Most of the students in our school came from elementary schools established by the church and had been educated in the Western style since childhood. Most of the students hadn't studied Chinese very well. Our school invited retired people who had tested into the imperial court to tutor us in Chinese. These old folks dressed in their customary clothing and knew nothing of the modern education practices. We saw these Chinese teachers as artifacts. Because the church established the school, our focus was on English, math, and science and paid little attention to Chinese literature. But several of my classmates were well educated in Chinese because of their family backgrounds. Four of my classmates [names and hometowns] and I often got together to read poems and sonnets, reciting them and writing replies. Because we were all young, we had lots of fun doing this. In these days, I joined them a lot and tried to write lots of poetry. It's too bad most of our poems were lost. I remember one poem that I put in my poetry volume: 

Night Moon Spontaneously Written

As usual, the same pretty moon,
But tonight: circling, doubting.
Heedless of the lonesome person sleeping alone,
The late flower's shadow reflection moves across the window.