Is it Guling – or is it Kuliang? The good news is that both are correct. Guling is the Mandarin pronunciation, and Kuliang is how “Guling” is pronounced in the local dialect.
The history of Kuliang – how it began many years ago as a Sino-Foreign oasis during the hot summers in Fuzhou
One hot summer day in 1885, a Scottish doctor, Dr. Rennie, was called out to Liang Jiang, a town near Fuzhou City. It was an emergency, so he decided to take the closest route, which meant he needed to climb over the mountains in the Kuliang area. When he walked through Kuliang, he felt delightfully cool, a totally different feeling from the intense summer heat in Fuzhou City. His story about this amazing experience spread amongst his friends, and the next year (1886), Dr. Rennie began to build a villa in Kuliang where he and his family could spend the summer. This was the beginning of the international summer settlement at Kuliang.
Dr. Rennie’s house, next to the Bathgate house in the distance.
But Guling / Kuliang is not only a wonderful place to leave the intense heat of the summer down in Fuzhou City, it was also the site of a thriving summer refuge for foreign residents of Fuzhou from the later 1800s until 1949. At its peak, in 1935 there were more than 330 villas and residences on the mountain, and there was a very complete structure that supported the summer residents. There was a Club for social activities, a proper Post Office with delivery twice a day, a small “Sanatorium” hospital, tennis courts, a swimming pool, and a host of interesting cultural activities including theatrical, literary, and musical performances. The local residents and foreigners lived together very harmoniously, and helped each other out.
This photo was taken at American Consul Gracey’s 69th birthday party in Kuliang in 1903. He invited his Kuliang neighbors to the party, over 80 people.
Hello Elyn,
Nikki let me know you’d left the message for me on her blog post. Feel free to get in touch with me. Kuliang seems like a magical place. My father and his siblings wrote about it extensively.
Best regards,
Susan Haigh
Hi Elyn, I am the director of Confucius Institute at UC Davis. We are putting together a book to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Institute and would like to include the Guling story. On the UC Davis website, I saw your comment to Ronald Gardner, Milton’s nephew. But I have no way of contacting him. Do you by any chance have Ronald’s contact information? It would be great to have an old photo of Guling in the early 1910s. Thank you very much for any help you could give us!
Will get back to you via email…
This Joanne Webster who was born 02/12/39 in Foochow, where we lived with my father Dr John Webster, my mother Mabel Webster and my older brothers and sister, John, Grace, David and my younger brother Timothy.
I know we went up to Kuliang sometimes.
Our family live in UK. Can you tell me any more about Kuliang?
I would be so grateful,
Yours sincerely
Joanne Webster
Hello Joanne,
I have just come across your message and don’t know if this will reach you as it is a few years old, but I am sure that our paths have crossed. I am editing letters written home by my father who was a missionary in Foochow from 1936-1944 – David Akehurst. I have already come across two mentions of your family in letters written in 1936 – saying that your parents were going back to England on furlough and taking their son John ‘a bright little chap of three’. I was born in Kutien near Foochow in 1941. I know my parents spent time in Kuliang and my mother later called out house in England Kuliang!
Hello Margaret – I have written you an email.
Hello Margaret! We are delighted that you have found us, and I will write you an email. Looking forward to talking to you.
I am sure the place is in kuling(now called Mt. lushan), kiukiang(now jiujiang), kiangsi(now Jiangxi province)
I leave my email address you can write to me .
People are often confused by these two international summer settlements with similar names.
Kuliang was the first of the two summer settlements, which grew up in and around the village called Kuliang (Chinese: 鼓岭, Mandarin pronunciation: Guling) ）in the mountains east of Fuzhou starting in 1886, 9 years before the settlement on Lushan with the similar name. The town was referred to as Kuliang (note the “a” in the middle of “Kuliang.”) as it was pronounced in the local dialect.
Guling (Chinese: 牯岭), is a resort town located on top of Lu Shan, Jiujiang, China. It was named “Kuling” by the founders of the town in 1895. Kuling – because it sounded like the English name Cooling, a place where they found cooler temperatures in the summer as opposed to the plains. In this case, it was the foreigners who named the town, and not a local place name.
Hello Elyn, I’m a student at Sun Yat-sen University. As I grew up in Fuzhou, I have been fascinated by the stories and history in Kuliang. I plan to write an essay about everyday life in summer resorts in the early 20th century. I’m wondering if you may have other materials like diaries and old photos or if you are available for short interviews. Please contact me via email. Thanks a lot!
Hello Eli – I sent you an email. I don’t often look in the comments section, so I didn’t catch your query.