To Gulangyu to see old villas

Author: Gong Jie
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-07-01
Features: The traditional view of Gulangyu is just a lush island with waves crashing, but hidden among the trees and flowers are numerous villas that carry the weight of time: the Lin Yutang's bride's room in the Liao Family Mansion on Zhangzhou Road, the Shuzhuang Garden nestled against the mountains and sea, the Huifeng Mansion perched on the cliff, and the Huang Family Garden, a Chinese villa that has withstood the passage of time. The villas still stand on the island, but their owners have long vanished, leaving their pasts unknown. To visit Gulangyu to see the old villas is to witness the fleeting moments and the passage of time, like fragments of mist.
Lin Yutang's bride's room is in a small alley on Zhangzhou Road in Gulangyu. Under the ancient banyan, camphor, and magnolia trees, there stands a very old and rustic British-style villa at No. 44 Zhangzhou Road. This was Lin Yutang's bride's room when he married in 1919, the home of his wife, Liao Cuifeng, and one of the oldest villas on Gulangyu. Lin Yutang, born in 1895 in the pastor family of Wusha Shapazai Village in Pinghe County, Fujian, attended primary and secondary school on Gulangyu. In 1911, he went to Shanghai to study at St. John's University. After graduating from St. John's University in Shanghai in 1916, Lin Yutang, still deeply in love with Chen Jinduan, hesitated to marry Liao Cuifeng, whom he had been engaged to for four years. He accepted the invitation of the principal of Tsinghua School in Beijing and became an English teacher for the secondary division in Tsinghua. Because Tsinghua was founded with the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship, teachers there could apply for government-funded studies in the United States after three years. In 1919, Lin Yutang had been teaching at Tsinghua for three years and believed he was eligible for a government scholarship to study in the United States. However, the authorities at Tsinghua only offered him a half-government scholarship of 40 taels of silver per month. Undeterred, Lin Yutang applied to Harvard University to join the Comparative Literature Research Institute. Harvard accepted him.
Lin Yutang arrived in Xiamen, but the Liao family insisted that he marry Cuifeng and go to the United States together. The family elder said, "Yutang and Cuifeng have been engaged for four years without marrying. If you go abroad without her, who knows when you'll come back?" So, Lin Yutang agreed to marry and go abroad with Cuifeng. Liao Cuifeng, born in 1896, was a year younger than Lin Yutang and already 24 years old. The family elder thought, "This poor pastor's son, if you don't give Cuifeng a dowry of 1,000 taels of silver, who knows what will happen?" Cuifeng also thought, "Girls of her age have already had children. Why isn't Yutang marrying me?" She was eager to marry.
On August 9, 1919, Lin Yutang and Liao Cuifeng got married, and the wedding was held at the (Union Chapel) of the Anglican Church on Gulangyu. This was the earliest church on the island, dedicated to foreigners and high-status Chinese, with services conducted in English. On the wedding day, Lin Yutang went to the Liao family to fetch the bride. The family served him a bowl of longan tea, but Lin Yutang not only drank the tea but also ate the longans, chewing them with great enjoyment, much to the amusement of the Liao women. The bride's room was set in the right room of the middle hall of the Liao family villa. This room still exists today but is very old; it is currently occupied by Liao Yongming, Cuifeng's nephew and a professor. The front part of the villa has collapsed, and the front corridor has been sealed off to become a kitchen. In the reception hall where they once sat together, the chandeliers and camphorwood furniture have long disappeared, and the carved screen doors are also quite damaged, but the spirit remains. If you linger there, you can still faintly feel a trace of the old days' aura!
Now, the relatives of the Liao family living overseas have decided to rebuild this ancestral home. In those days, the couple left the Liao family with $1,000 in hand and took a ship from Gulangyu to the United States. The elderly in the Liao family still remember the scene of Lin Yutang carrying a suitcase and holding Cuifeng's hand as they stepped down the long stone staircase in front of the villa. From then on, Liao Cuifeng would follow him everywhere, drifting with him across the seas, never to be separated. They traveled on the "Columbia" steamship and passed through Hawaii, where Cuifeng suffered from appendicitis. After receiving emergency treatment, they continued the journey and settled in Boston. Due to exhaustion, Cuifeng had to be hospitalized for surgery. Unfortunately, she contracted an infection and had a second operation, unknowingly spending all the $1,000. Lin Yutang had no choice but to send a telegraph to Cuifeng's second brother, asking for another $1,000. When the money arrived, Lin Yutang had been eating old man's cereal for a week, which deeply moved Cuifeng, and their love for each other grew even stronger.
In February 1922, after receiving his master's degree from Harvard, Lin Yutang went to the University of Leipzig in Germany to pursue a doctorate. After studying abroad for over three years, Lin Yutang obtained his doctorate, and Cuifeng was also pregnant. They decided to return to China to give birth. Lin Yutang took up a position as an English professor at Peking University and an English lecturer at Beijing Normal University, beginning to publish articles under the pen name "Yutang." Cuifeng returned to Gulangyu to give birth to their first daughter, "Fengru," but the delivery was difficult, and both mother and daughter nearly died. Around 1971, Fengru took her own life in Taipei.
In 1926, Cuifeng gave birth to another daughter in Beijing, naming her "Yuru," who later became the editor-in-chief of《》(Reader's Digest). Soon after, Lin Yutang accepted an invitation from Xiamen University to become the head of the Literature Department and the general secretary of the College of Chinese Studies. During this time, they often returned to the Liao family's villa on Gulangyu. In 1930, Cuifeng gave birth to another daughter, named "Xiangru." In 1932, while they were in Shanghai, Cuifeng took her daughters back to Gulangyu.
Lin Yutang wrote about 60 books and over a thousand articles in his lifetime, most of them in English. He wandered the world, and Liao Cuifeng was always by his side. In 1966, they settled in Taiwan, and on March 26, 1976, Lin Yutang passed away in Hong Kong at the age of 81. On April 8, 1987, Liao Cuifeng also passed away in Hong Kong at the age of 90.
On April 1, 2002, a statue of Lin Yutang was unveiled in Zhangzhou Banzai Village. Lin Taiyi and his wife, along with Lin Xiangru, returned to their hometown after a half-century separation. After the memorial ceremony, they came to Xiamen, but Xiangru suddenly suffered from abdominal pain. After being diagnosed with acute appendicitis and operated on at Xiamen Zhongshan Hospital, it turned out to be a remarkable coincidence. Eighty-three years earlier, her mother, Liao Cuifeng, had accompanied Lin Yutang to the United States for studies in Xiamen Gulangyu. During the voyage across the Pacific, Cuifeng suffered from appendicitis and underwent surgery in Boston after initial treatment. Eighty-three years later, Xiangru returned to Xiamen from the United States and also had appendicitis surgery. The mother and daughter were truly as if they shared a telepathic connection.
On the morning of April 6, with her stitches still on, Xiangru and Taiyi rushed to the bride's room where her parents had once stayed in Gulangyu. They sat under the magnolia trees at the foot of the long stone staircase, carefully examining the ancestral home and reminiscing about her childhood playing there. They also met the "very good swimmer" brother, Liao Yongming, a professor (Liao Yongming was once the captain of the Xiamen "Wave Swimming Team," swimming across the Lujiang Strait every day to attend Xiamen Tongwen Middle School without taking the ferry).
In the end, the sisters and their current residents in the bride's room, Liao Yongming and his wife, as well as their uncle, took a group photo, fulfilling a long-held wish.