First published 1996 by M.E. Sharpe
Published 2015 by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wilbur, C. Martin (Clarence Martin), 1908
China in my life : a historians own history / C. Martin Wilbur :
edited by Anita M. OBrien,
p. cm.
An East gate book.
ISBN 1-56324-763-1 (alk. paper)
1. Wilbur, C. Martin (Clarence Martin), d 19082. SinologistsUnited StatesBiography.
1. OBrien, Anita M.
II. Title.
DS734.9.W55A3 1996
951.007202dc20
[B]
95-53181
CIP
ISBN 13: 9781563247637 (hbk)
I wrote these reminiscences of a happy and interesting life between 1988 and 1992, and added a bit in 1995. I was urged, particularly by Chinese friends and former students at Columbia University, to have them published.
Historians like to know what a book of this sort is based upon. Is it based purely on memorya rather weak foundation? Or is it more firmly based upon document? I had many documents to help me maintain accuracy. There were letters to my parents and my wife. There were journals I kept on trips abroad. I have quoted often from these sources. In addition, I had pocket engagement books from my years at Columbia, and we kept guest books from 1933 onward. They remind us of the people we knew.
I am indebted to Professor Bernadette Li Yu-ning, my former student and now dear friend, for pressing me to publish and using her influence for a favorable decision. My dear friend, Professor Chang Peng-yuan, proposed to the Institute of Modern History, Academia Sinica, Republic of China in Taiwan that it publish the work, which it was willing to do. These friends also raised a subvention.
I have the greatest obligation to Anita M. OBrien. She voluntarily edited the work, and reduced its length by half.
Many, many thanks go to those fonner students who subscribed to a publications fund, all unbeknownst to me: Chang Peng-yuan (the organizer), Chang Yu-fa, Chiang Yung-ching, Li Yu-ning, Li Yun-han, Shen Ta-chuan, and Su Yun-feng. The East Asian Institute of Columbia University, where I taught Chinese history for thirty-seven years, is a sponsor and supporter of this work.
My beloved wife, Kay Edson Wilbur, has shared more than six decades of life with me. My appreciation for her help is unbounded. To her I dedicate this book.
C.M.W. 8/21/95
1
_____________________________
Childhood
My memories begin with Shanghai, China, though I can dimly recall a little of my infancy in Kobe, Japan. Why was I in those places? Because my father, Hollis Adelbert Wilbur, was a secretary of the International Committee of the Young Mens Christian Association and had been selected and urged by John R. Mott to take up temporary service in Japan after seven years as general secretary of the Dayton YMCA. In November 1909, when I was eighteen months old, Dad and Mother took the train trip to the West Coast with two little children, and then the steamer crossing of the Pacific, to begin the three-year assignment in Japan. They would also serve the Y in China and Korea before they retired in 1940 in Pasadena, California.
My sister Elizabeth was born in April 1904.1 was born on May 13, 1908, and was a sickly child. I suffered from mastoiditis and howled in pain on the train going west until some kindly lady gave Dad and Mother her roomette, where I could be better cared for and others could get some sleep.
Father was a devout Christian with a desire to serve humankind. He was born on April 19, 1874, and was a product of an upstate New York family. His father, Leonidas Franklin Wilbur, was a rural doctor (M.D. Harvard), and his mother, Caroline Frances Martin, a former schoolteacher. They lived in Honeoye, on one of the smaller Finger Lakes south of Rochester, and had five children. One died in infancy. The uncle for whom I am named died in 1894 of yellow fever in Central America, where he was a missionary, only twenty-five years old.
The Wilbur family upbringing was of Christian morality, New England style. It sure took with Father. After teaching in a one-room school for a year, he went to Ohio Wesleyan University and there fell under the influence of the Christian Student Volunteer Movement. He also fell under the spell of Mary Irene Matteson, my mother, whom he first saw singing in the choir. That did it! Mother was about two years older than Dad, and a very pretty young woman. The Student Volunteer Movement, with the motto Win the world for Christ in our generation, brought Dad into his career and ultimately to the Orient. How ambitious and naive that motto sounds a hundred years later! Yet it was an inspiring message to young idealists of the 1890s, and there were many of them in the colleges of America. Although my father was swept into that idealistic movement, he was practical enough not to be taken in by such an ambitious aim. I think he just wanted to live a life of service to his fellow human beings. Work for the YMCA was just such service. Dad was slender, about 5 feet 8 inches tall, with an engaging smile, hazel-colored eyes, and prematurely white hair. We children loved him dearly.
Mother, born on January 19, 1872, grew up in Seville, a small Ohio town south of Cleveland. Her father, Horace E. Matteson, was a merchant who owned a variety store. The seven Matteson children, my uncles and aunts on Mothers side, had a Baptist upbringing, whereas Dads family was New England Congregationalist. Both families were of British and Scottish stock, going back in America for many generations. Dad and Mother were married on August 28, 1901.
