Fujian Hwa Nan Women’s College:

To quote Charles Dickens:  “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”  China in 1908 was very much a society in flux.  The once-mighty Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) was in its death throes, beset on the one side by foreign powers wishing to carve China up into colonies, and on the other by patriotic Chinese nationalists desperately wishing to save China by reforming Chinese society and politics.  The vain and xenophobic Empress Dowager Ci Xi, long resistant to any hint of change (and most famous for using monies designated for the modernization of the Chinese navy to build herself a marble pleasure “boat” in an imperial pond), finally succumbed to the building pressures for reform.  One of the earliest and most significant reforms was the official termination in 1905 of the centuries old examination system, whereby men of talent were identified through rote memorization of ancient Confucian texts.  Instead, the first Western-style colleges and universities were founded, often by Western missionaries.  The more radical reformers even proposed the education of Chinese women.

Amazingly, Morningside College can claim a crucial role in the beginning of women’s higher education in China!  It was a member of Morningside’s Class of 1904, Lydia Trimble, who convinced the Methodist Missionary Society to fund China’s first-ever private college for girls in Fuzhou, China (along China’s coast between Hong Kong and Shanghai).  Ms. Trimble became Hwa Nan’s first president, and was succeeded as president by two other Morningsiders:  Ida Belle Lewis 1909 and Lucy Wang 1921.  Payne Hall, the college’s main building built in 1914, was even patterned closely after Morningside’s Lewis Hall.  Memorabilia in the college archives also disclose that the Morningside community conducted fundraisers to support Hwa Nan well into the 1940s.

Hwa Nan Women’s College survived rampant Warlordism in the 1920s and 1930s, and even the Japanese invasion of China in the early 1940s (when its students and supplies fled inland while dodging Japanese aerial bombardments!).  However, when the Communists came to power in 1949, they forced Hwa Nan to merge with several other schools to form Fujian Teachers’ University.  It wasn’t until 1985 that the efforts of a small but very loyal group of alumni and teachers led to the re-establishment of an independent “New Hwa Nan.”

Today, Hwa Nan Women’s College enrolls some 2,000 women, who are mostly 18 and 19 years old and drawn from throughout China’s Fujian Province. Hwa Nan offers nine majors as part of a three year long program of study, including Applied English, Business English, International Tourism, and even Footwear Design!

I was fortunate to have been a part of two separate delegations from Morningside College in 2008 whose goal was to re-establish relations with Hwa Nan.  The good news is we’ve done just that!  Beginning this fall, Morningside College can expect the first group of up to five Hwa Nan students to arrive for a years’ study as part of an annual exchange.  In return, Morningside has been invited to send one faculty member and two students to Hwa Nan every summer.

Morningside will be kicking off the exchange this very summer!  My wife, Yumiko, and I will travel to Fuzhou the month of July 2009 to teach in their summer program.  We’re looking for two or three students who might like to join us.  Hwa Nan prefers the students teach also (the topic is negotiable, and applicants can be from any major), and in exchange has offered room, board, laundry service and a modest stipend.  If you think you might like to be a part of this unparalleled opportunity to experience Chinese life and culture firsthand at our Chinese sister institution, please contact me ASAP for further details.

Greg P. Guelcher. Department of History & Political Science, Morningside College

For additonal information about Hwa Nan Women’s College, you can reference their website at: http://www.chinawomenscollege.org.